Skills, RPGs and me

Liminal is a change for me: it has a skills list.

Since I re-started roleplaying in 2012 or so, I’ve been running very simple games: Fate Accelerated, Cthulhu Dark, and Monster of the Week. None use skills, and characters can do whatever is narratively appropriate.

So I’ve been running Liminal recently (see here for more on this) and I’ve often struggled to run it. What often happens is this:

• Player: “I puff my chest out and suggest to the reporter that he shouldn’t be here.”
• Me: “Okay, sounds like you’re trying to intimidate him. Make a roll”
• Player: “What skill do I use?”
• Me: “Erm, hang on…”

And then we all consult the rulebook and work out which skill we should use. And sometimes it’s not clear, so we have to make something up.

I find the simpler games much easier to GM:

• Player: “I puff my chest out and suggest to the reporter that he shouldn’t be here.”
• Me (Fate Accelerated): “Okay, that sounds like you’re being intimidating. That’s probably Forceful.” Make a roll…
• Me (Cthulhu Dark): “Sure, roll 1D6.”
• Me (Monster of the Week): “Sure, roll Manipulate Someone”

With a skill-based game I find I am spending too much time looking at the rules trying to work out how to interpret the player’s actions. I don’t have to look anything up in the other games.

Some of that is system mastery—but only some of it. While I’ve been playing and running Fate Accelerated for years now, as I have only run Cthulhu Dark once and Monster of the Week twice and I have no problem with them. Liminal is a more complex system and requires more system mastery. 

Isn’t it ironic?

It doesn’t escape my notice the irony in all of this: my first RPG was Traveller, followed by Call of Cthulhu and then GURPS. All skills-based systems, and all now more complicated than I can manage.

I’ve had a Traveller adventure sketched out for ages now, and one thing that is holding me back is whether to use the old Traveller rules (I have 1982’s The Traveller Book, but none of the modern iterations) or run it with Fate Accelerated. Using Traveller rules feels like hard work, while using Fate Accelerated feels like cheating. (But I suspect I would run a better game using Fate Accelerated.)

Looking forward

 As well as that potential Traveller scenario, I also want to run Alien and Fate of Cthulhu. Again, they’re skills-based systems (Fate of Cthulhu uses Fate Condensed, a halfway point between Fate Core and Fate Accelerated.)

I will be interested to see if I have the same problems with them.