On Skills (A Praise of Hack & Slash)

Ever since I posted I Hate Skills, I've been doing some research and thinking on the subject, taking quite a few notes and batting around some ideas, but that's a post for later. Today, I just wanted to share with you an extremely well produced and thorough series of posts by Hack & Slash on the subject. It's quite a few posts, but if you're into game design at all, the author has some very good points to make.

On Skills in Games (A Surprising Insight)
On Skill Deconstruction: An Assessment
On Skill Deconstruction: Why Roll for Resolution
On Skill Deconstruction: Why Skill Light is Not Pixel Bitching, Nor DM Fiat 
On Skill Confusion: The Character Customization Conundrum
On Skill Confusion: The Accuracy of the Roll
On Skill Deconstruction: FUDGE
On Skill Deconstruction: The Middle Road
On Skill Deconstruction: 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons
On Skill Deconstruction: Rolemaster
On Skill Deconstruction: 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons
On Skill Deconstruction: Hackmaster
On Skill Deconstruction: A Summary
Skills: A conclusion with 10 Rules

If you've got a bit of time, it's well reasoned and presents some food for thought. It's certainly added a few entries to my notebook. Hope you get as much out of it as I did.

Until next time,