A recent discussion on Google+ prompted me to explain how I use skills:
I usually don’t use skills and backgrounds explicitly in my B/X game but rather I ask the player: do you think your character would know this? Is this something they have done in the past? If so, auto success and write it on you character sheet. So if a player says they know the weather because they grew up as fishers, fine. But next time I ask about finding water in a desert, it is more difficult to explain. That works very well. It is suitably broad (few skills), situational (make ’m up), just in time (no need to tell me at chargen). Just add dice rolling if you think it adds to your game.
Risky situations sometimes involve rolling a d6 and getting a 1 or something similar. In these cases, having a skill would let me grant players better odds up to 5 in 6.
I probably wrote about this before. But then again it’s good to sometimes note that this is still how you do it.
How far I have come since this post I wrote in 2007. 😄
#RPG #Old School