Game Mastery

Last time I talked about my system, I looked at some of the challenges in writing up a list of skills.  By the time I got to the skills, I was out of steam and it was just a list.  I’d like to go back to some of those skills now and talk about some of the things I’m doing with them that I think are interesting.  This is mostly a look at some of the special cases I’ve come up with rather than an exhaustive list of all the skills.

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This sounds like a dumb question.  I really want to insult myself for thinking to ask it.  But every so often I’ll make a comment about how RPG characters shouldn’t speak in game rules and I’ll get corrected because of course those characters are familiar with their stats and abilities.

I try really hard to be accepting of other player styles than my own.  When I get invited to a game, I don’t try to convert them to my style but I try to find the fun in their style.  Even if I don’t enjoy it myself, I try to be aware that there are players who do and I may even try to figure out who those players are.

But I can’t for the life of me figure out who would want to play in a game where the characters know their own stats, levels, and such.

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Designing skills really surprised me.  Stats were easy.  Rules have been easy (although choosing which of those rules are worth keeping is another matter).  I figured I’ve played more games than I can keep track of, so I should be able to churn out a skill list with little thought at all.  I couldn’t have been more wrong and aside from when I was trying to typeset a character sheet, this has been the hardest part of the process so far.

So why was it so hard to list skills?  Before I can answer that, let’s have a look at the requirements the skills had to fill.

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