Chgowiz, a rather old guy with an rpg blog asks the question: Why Skill Checks?
In doing so he points out that I'm kind enough to solve his insomina. So I figure that as he's kind enough to plug my blog, I should at least attempt to answer his question.
He's already received a number of good answers in his comments. So I'll deal with the history behind the question.
Chgowiz as I understand it is something of an Old School type of guy. And that explains to some degree where he is coming from. Original and early D&D didn't have skill rules as they are commonly thought of these days- they had classes with a list of abilities.
It just happens that the list of abilities given to a class is also a list of skills. Chgowiz even notes this, but presentation is often everything. By bundling them up in a set of class abilities, skills become transparent to player in a way. You don't speak of your OD&D Thief having Pick Lock skill at 6th level or 'Expert' level or stuff like that. You have a 6th level thief, nuff said.
Now back in the day, that was good enough for most people (and I assume it's good enough for most of the Old School crowd today).
But not for everyone. Some wondered why all 6th level thieves were basically identical in many of their abilities, and why they all had the same ones. They asked questions like, "can my Fighter create poems?" and they weren't happy with the DM saying "roll under your Intelligence" because it meant that everyone with a high Intelligence could now write excellent poems and they knew that wasn't the case.
Some just hated the idea of classes themselves as too limiting and 'unrealistic'.
In any case, a growing number of gamers were calling for more detail and more customization of their characters.
So the first skill systems in early rpgs (Rune Quest, Traveller, etc) did away with classes completely. In effect they took all the skills D&D rolled into their classes and made them into a buffet line. To this they added tons of other stuff, like writing poems. After all, adding stuff was easy you see because they didn't have to fit it within a larger Class structure.
People now built up their character abilities piece by piece to make exactly what they wanted. Too more effort, more time, and more rules (as you had to define each skill, its effect, and its 'build cost').
Things grew from there, and D&D grew with them. It looked at these newer games and saw that customization was good. First it add a simple tacked on skill system, then a full blown one in 3.X, finally expanding into Skill Challenges (sort of a mini-game in a way for skills) in 4E.
So common are Skill Systems now (either in pure form, or hybrid class/skill), that people like Chgowiz ask: "Is this just me not seeing something that I'm missing? "
So, is Chgowiz missing anything? I'd have to say that unless he or his players are interested in the things that skill systems bring (customization, detail, individualized characters)- the answer is no. One doesn't need what one wouldn't use.
For my part, I couldn't do without them. I don't want all Intelligence 17 characters to be equal in everything I'd lump into that stat. I might want one who's a great doctor, and another who's a great Engineer- but I don't want them to be able to switch roles at the drop of a hat.
That said, I do want simple skill systems, and that's reflected in the two games systems I use. Age of Heroes is a roll under your skill level after modifiers, and HERO System is the same thing (the difference is d100 vs. 3d6).
So while Chgowiz doesn't need skills at all, I need them- but I want to make a roll and get it over with and back to the game.
Others however consider skills to be the game (thus things like Skill Challenges and other highly complex skill resolution systems).
It would be interesting to hear from someone in the last camp, as I'm about as confused by them as Chgowiz seems to be by me.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
I consider skills checks to be at least a very important element of the game. First, if skills aren't central in the mechanics of a game, actual gameplay tends to be about whatever is mechanically supported (e.g. combat). If you don't have mechanics around skills but skills pop up regularly in your game, you're left fudging it most of the time. This isn't necessarily bad, because that's what rpgs are partly about, but I'm of the camp that mechanics are fun, and are there to support and reinforce gameplay.
Second, I like skills to be central because they can really drive the plot forward in a range of diverse ways that combat cannot. To do this, skills checks can't just be about simple success or failure (e.g. you obtain the information or you don't through a streetwise test); instead, both success and failure needs to have an interesting outcome (e.g. a failure of a streetwise test gets you into some hot water with drug dealers for breaking protocol while you're talking to them). It's tougher on a GM to play the game this way, but I think it's also more fun because the game will spiral out into unforseeable directions that are actually supported by stuff on character sheets.
IMHO, you may be missing the point.
Take, for example, your hypothetical task of a fighter writing a poem. You seem to see this in the limited scope of statistics. When it comes down to it, such a task (be it crafting an ornate saddle, painting a picture, writing a song) has no purpose in terms of rule mechanics. Your fighter creates an item, a poem. What does it do? It amuses and pleases people. Is that amusement reflected in statistical terms? How does the game rule sub-system of poetry work? Does human poetry please elves? Do orcs care about poetry at all? And so on, ad infinitum. It begs the establishment of a new set of rules. And you'll have to keep track of those house rules in the future.
What's the point? Who cares? I don't mean that as a derogatory rhetorical question. At the game table, who really cares about your fighter's poem? The answer is simple: the players and the Game Master. Nobody else in any other game group.
Nevertheless, a fighter who writes a poem would be an amusing event that could happen in a game. How would such a thing be resolved in an old school game without a skill system? Simple. The player writes a poem.
I imagine that a critic of the old school style would respond to my comments with, "What would you have the player do? Write a real poem right there at the game table? There is no way that I could do that!" Well, you don't have to write up a real poem. The player could just say, "I write a poem about how I slayed that dragon in the last encounter." Perhaps another player would joke about how he should put some amusing event from that encounter in the poem. Perhaps the GM could suggest that embellishments to the story could be made involving half-clothed damsels in distress.
Boiled down to its essence, the advent of this poem is entirely for the benefit of the gamers at the table. If the existence of the poem is significant, the player can note it in his records. If, at a later time, the player has his fighter recite his poem to a new NPC, the DM can make a ruling right there on the spot. Perhaps a Charisma attribute check? How about no dice rolling at all? Have the player, in very general terms, explain how he presents his poem and summarize its content in the briefest terms possible. That's called role-playing. And the bottom line is fun.
Or, you can have a dice roll that says your character wrote and performed a poem well. That's just a statistic. And boring to many players. And starts the game down the path of creating skill rolls for everything that happens. And establishes an infinite number of things that your player-character CAN'T do.
IMHO, it's much more fun to make things up as you go along. The game master should make spot judgements and then move on to the next event in the game.
@Supah: How important skills are is something that differs between groups.
I would consider them important in my games (and I think my system choice reflects that)- however not so important in method (I roll them and get back to playing the game), but important in result.
I wouldn't use them if success and failure didn't have an impact. So course they do.
@M.gunnerQuist: And this is where I think you miss the boat.
If you play in a campaign where there is no value to a successful poem, there there is no value. However that doesn't apply to everyone.
However a good poem in my campaigns can impress NPCs, open doors to others and have a dept impact on the course a character's life.
Or it might just entertain the players at times. And surely that's a worthly effort in a rpg as well.
No I consider it possible that Chgowiz shares your view. If it's not killing something or furthering the dungeon crawl, perhaps he too considers it without value.
If true, my point still stands. He asks why? And I have provided the history and reasons for an answer. It's up to him (and you) if you care about it.
First, if skills aren't central in the mechanics of a game, actual gameplay tends to be about whatever is mechanically supported (e.g. combat)
Well, I don't think this is true. RPGs more than any other game allow you to create "gameplay" out of nothing. RPGs with central skill systems strongly encourage grounding everything in skills, and
indeed many times I have become frustrated with these games, having the feeling of "Can't I just do something without having to make a $#@! skill roll, for once?" Even a simple game with Universal Mechanism X can actually be quite stifling because there's the impetus to make everything an offshoot of that universal mechanism. RIsus has short rules, but they can loom large and stark over RP in many situations where "incomplete" RPGS like OD&D are silent except for the blanket suggestion of verisimilitude.
You also wind up in situations where the skill list clashes with RP. Like, for example, the player who gives an awesome speech but whose character doesn't have the "make speech skill", being shown up by the Blandest Roleplayer in the World who min-maxed that skill.
Skill systems are not without their disadvantages, and I don't Chgowiz is necessarily suffering a lack of customization, detail, or individualized characters for not using one. Not just that it meets his taste, but that "consider the PC background and wing it" can provide all of that you want.
@K. Bailey:
First I would claim that the player "who gives an awesome speech but whose character doesn't have the "make speech skill" has managed a epic fail at roleplaying.
The character has no such ability, so why is the player doing something he in-game can't?
Indeed, to limit role-playing and judgement to those things reasonable to the in-game character is the primary reason for a skill system in the first place.
Rejecting them allows anything to happen (or to reject anything from happening) at the whim of the GM and/or players.
You may as well remove all the rules from my PoV.
So in the end, it a case of drawing a line. It varies by taste. But really, it shouldn't be difficult to understand why most games today use a skill system.
Post a Comment