I'm going to skip the last few weeks of Mike Mearls' L&L column, as he 

seems to have triggered my anti-venom. The only time I'm in favour of his 

work is when someone else describes it negatively. Bad habit that. 8]

    So here's Monte, doing the same thing, only different, in his first 

Legends and Lore column, "Very Perceptive".

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20110927

    After giving a quick bio (dude wrote 3e, eh) he goes over the basics of 

his skill system idea that Mike was talking about recently.

    There's less detail here, more feel-good talky-talk. It's written from 

the perspective of handling a specific problem; conveying information about 

the world to the players without "giving up" secrets, like with the classic 

3e joke "wait, I think I just failed a listen check."

    Which he does by arbitrarily deciding what the players will hear and 

what they won't hear (when the difficulty is of a lower tier than your 

skill, you succeed without needing to act).

    But that's one of the bits of 3e that gets my goat. The fact that some 

tasks like opening locks, searching carefully, or handling traps aren't 

random, but have the result predetermined by the DM. I find that detracts 

from the "game" aspect of D&D for me when I'm running it: I don't want to 

know that much information beforehand.

    For instance: if there's a secret passage leading from near the entrance 

to the boss's lair, which she'll flee from if the PCs make too much noise 

killing her guards; I *love* when the PCs have a small /random/ chance of 

finding that and facing her directly.

    It's more /interesting/ to run that way, for me. Doesn't hurt when it 

comes to playing the surprised boss too, what with it surprising /me/.

    As for dice rolls alerting players that something's afoot, I just use a 

couple different coloured dice that I roll rather often behind a screen. 

Real checks are lost in the noise.

Monte Cook wrote:

> This is all a way to handle the flow of information - particularly secret

> information - quickly and easily, with die rolls involved only when it

> really matters. So that we can keep the game moving at a lively pace

> without sacrificing the fun of exploring the environment with dynamic play

> and creative ideas. So that the rules don't get in the way of the fun.

    I quite like how his system lets players override the dice by doing 

stuff (though perhaps as a base +5 bonus rather than +10), but this thing 

where he assumes I /want/ that much concrete information in the game before 

the players get there and try stuff, that's missing the point a bit for me.

    Plus, while Mike's original idea was messy, the attempt to make the 

whole skill system optional means unskilled characters don't ever get left 

behind (unlike here, though at least they can jump through hoops to win).

-- 

    tussock