Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;989704(The tragically underrated and IMHO actually really influential) Unknown Armies

Where do you see influences of UA on other games or the wider hobby?

Quote from: Simlasa;989735Any examples?

How about:

"Operate Starship and Chew Gum at the Same Time"
"Scathing ('Oooh, Big Words!) Sarcasm"
"Turn radios into Howitzers"
"Comprehension through Pugilation"
"Surrender and still look like a man"
"Balloon Animal Construction"
"Run with Scizzors" (sic)
"Tolerate Hideous amounts of Bloody mutilation and still eat fast foods"

....oh, sorry, that was HoL: Human Occupied Landfill....

I really enjoyed 13th age's backgrounds. So much so that I replaced fate of the Norns skill system with it. Now, I am unlikely to do that for something like Mythras, but for lighter skill systems, backgrounds work very well.

Quote from: Aglondir;989812Which works when Al creates Cup Stacking, Beth creates French Poetry, and Chris creates African History. Breaks down when the new player creates "00 Agent" or "Ninja".

No, it still works just fine. The player still needs to justify why having the "ninja" skill would give them a bonus to do the thing. Presumably this group is playing in a very roleplay heavy game, if skills like "cup stacking", "French Poetry" and "African History" are useful enough that players choose to take them.

Also, in the games that I cited Al, Beth and Chris would all be free to attempt doing "Ninja" or "00 Agent" stuff, they just wouldn't get the skill bonus.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;989728It's very much a trade-off, IMO.

What I like about "make your own skill" systems is that they're incredibly flexible and encourage creativity. (As such, this approach tends to work better in systems that are "looser" and encourage putting a lot of authority into the hands of both players and GMs.) They do require the GM to make a ruling on what's appropriate and what is too broad, but if a GM can't make a ruling on whether or not to include something in the game then the GM is going to have a really rough time of it. (They also work better if players aren't trying to be schmucks, but... ditto. A game with schmucks for players is in jeopardy from a lot of other problems.)

HeroQuest has an interesting way of handling the broadness of skills. When you are in a contest, the player with the narrowest skill gets a bonus. You can take "Weapon Master" and be able to use any weapon, but if you get in a sword fight with someone with the "Swordsman" ability, he is going to get a bonus.

QuoteWhat I like about "skill lists" is the ability to clearly call for a specific skill test: Give me a Persuade test. Give me an Oral History test. Give me a Jump test. When skills can be anything, it can get a little kludgy and require a bit more back-and-forth to figure out whether particular skills apply to this particular test.

This can be a real issue. It's annoying when every check needs to be negotiation. That's why I prefer that games with make-'em-up skills be on the Over the Edge side of the spectrum with a few broad traits. I can easily remember all the traits that players have and call on them as needed. On the other hand, if each player has ten unique skills, I am never going to remember them all.

Someone brought up BoL, I approve of this message!

Negotiation of what a skill does and does not cover is something that I find particularly not fun and also distracting.  It's the kind of thing I want mostly handled before I sit down to play, not during.  Ruling on how the situation affects things is fine.  It's not nearly as distracting.

See, I'm posting from my actual at the table GMing experience. Not white room speculation with facetious examples. As for negotiating what a skill does and does not cover, in the moment I tend to make a quick ruling and move the game along. I am accepting of reasonable pitches for a skill applying.

Quote from: DavetheLost;990222See, I'm posting from my actual at the table GMing experience. Not white room speculation with facetious examples. As for negotiating what a skill does and does not cover, in the moment I tend to make a quick ruling and move the game along. I am accepting of reasonable pitches for a skill applying.

That sounds good, but also makes me wonder if part of the player skill in such a game is being able to play the GM? That isn't necessarily a bad thing, and I suspect most RPGs (along with wargames where the GM can make open ended rulings such as Free Kriegspiel) have that problem to some degree or another. I guess the fact of a major aspect (of not most) of a PCs definition being open to such subjectivity seems ripe for abuse. Of course the real answer is don't play with players who abuse things like that and GMs who allow the abuse.

Frank

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

Quote from: DavetheLost;990222See, I'm posting from my actual at the table GMing experience. Not white room speculation with facetious examples. As for negotiating what a skill does and does not cover, in the moment I tend to make a quick ruling and move the game along. I am accepting of reasonable pitches for a skill applying.

I see no reason why this can't work.  On the other hand, I think one thing that's easy to forget about skill lists is that, in the real world, any reasonable GM will not hesitate to add skills as needed or requested by the players.

If a game can accommodate variable degrees of breadth, then a lack of skill lists can signal that players should be creative.  Also, the GM is implicitly (and often explicitly) encouraged to make intelligent rulings.  A lot of people talk about how balance is of secondary importance to OSR, so varying breadth shouldn't concern us with a little rationality injected by the GM.  Also, I really like the mechanic that Balderstone describes for Heroquest; I have the rules but I haven't gotten that far with them, yet.

But depending on the mechanics, it can be a nice thing to at least have the guidance that comes with skill lists.  For instance, if I'm playing in a game with strong sense of setting like Twilight 2000, Dark Albion, or Jorune, a skill list can be very useful for getting my head in the right space - i.e. these are the things a PC adventurer needs to care about in this world.  This becomes especially important for games that don't hand-wave resource management.

Nope, it never works for me.

The closest concept that I can work with is Sine Nomine's Exemplars & Eidolons where you write a few sentences with facts about your PC and if those facts come up in play, you get a bonus to the ability check.

I go back and forth on this, but, of late, I've settled on having no set list, with certain classes being much better at certain things, i.e., "anyone can attempt to pick a lock, but rogues are much better at it," etc. The only listed skills are the ones classes have advantage on (a la Black Hack). So, maybe it's more accurate to say I like skills folded in with classes?

Games without a well defined baseline skill list are pretty much a non starter for me. To be fair, I also dislike games that give you a seemingly solid skill list then add skills in supplements that de facto change the capability of original characters. To me, skills are too central to the gameplay experience to allow trust to player capricr or freelance/3rd party designer whim.

Quote from: Dumarest;989509This is rather vaguely described. Does the player  state "my PC used to be a fowler" and then he automatically has any associated skills and just rolls vs. a stat and whatever bonus the ref gave him when he wants to use it and there's a chance of failure?

In Lion & Dragon you get skills from your background, or from your class. So you could have something like "Carpentry +1" or "Hide in Shadows +1" or "Occult Lore +2". There are a few classes that can choose some kind of skill aside from those explicitly listed (like a "lore", though ample examples of what makes up a 'lore' are provided).

There's just no place in the book where I bothered to list all the skills there are in one single place.