maliszew: Skills and Feats

maliszew: Skills and Feats

Naturally, some will see this as a potential source of problems; I simply can’t. Roleplaying games are entertainments that demand rules, certainly, but they also demand compromise and flexibility. If I’ve learned anything from OD&D, it’s that this hobby was born out of and grew because of an openness to make judgment calls and run with good ideas even when there were no rules to cover the situation—or when the rules in fact said otherwise. I’ve rather reluctantly come round to believe that AD&D, great though it was, marked the beginning of the end for the style of roleplaying I enjoy and that we don’t see as much of nowadays. I won’t pretend that I can just turn back the clock to that freewheeling earlier era but neither will am I willing to simply grimace and groan every time yet another RPG is released that assumes that platitudinous invocations of Rule 0 are sufficient to convince me that they’re not in fact a wholly different kind of game than the one I fell in love with in late 1979.