An odd little idea to ponder: In a standard skill system, the value of a skill determines the chance of success, and are used in a sort of "restaurant menu" fashion. For example, your character enters into a conversation with a rent-a-cop that just saw him steal a ring from a jewelry counter, and might choose to apply his intimidation or fast-talk skill to avoid a direct conflict. A quick roll determines whether he succeeds or fails. What if we changed things around a little. Entering into a situation causes a skill check against all applicable skills (sorted into categories such as communication and combat). Each skill that succeeds opens up a number of options to the character for that particular character (which would be drawn randomly from a pool for each skill). Like in the above example. The character enters into the conversation. Skill checks are made against his intimidation, diplomacy and fast-talk skills. The intimidation and fast talk skills succeed, so the character is presented with the following options: *present a menacing sneer. * "I was just trying to polish off a bit of tarnish" if intimidation and diplomacy succeeded instead, the options would be different: * "20 dollars says you didn''t see that" * pat the gun shaped bulge in your pocket. The player chooses the action that he wants his character to perform, then a difficulty check based on the character traits of the guard would be made (for example: intimidation vs. brave guard == difficult, intimidation vs. cowardly guard == easy, diplomacy vs. loyal guard == difficult, etc). Perhaps as an alternative method (and for a more stylized form of play) the skill just automatically works if it can be chosen. Therefore, not all skills are available to the character at all times, he has to sort of "have the idea" to use them. The technique is then performed correctly, but the difficulty of the task determines the actual chance of the technique having the desired effect. As for the actual interface of choosing the options, I was thinking of a series of animations that would pop up in an overlay when such choices were presented (probably supplemented with text for conversations, etc). The player would then click on the one they want. This idea is in it''s infancy, but thought I''d get it out there to hammer it into a more sophisticated form. For Mother GameDev!

This idea looks good. I think it can reinforce the role playing experience. But I wonder how the player would feel about it:
Let''s say he is roleplaying a thieve and as such he relies heavily on his fast talk skill. In your first example the player is presented with all his skills (fast talk, diplomacy, running, ...) accordingly to his way to play he will choose fast talk and see if he succeeds or not. In your second example he will be presented with the available skills at that moment: if fast talk is not there the player will say "Hey! where''s my skill ?". So I guess you need to add a little introductory text explaining why some skills are not proposed like "Surprised by the agent appearance, you can''t find any clever words."; else you risk loosing the suspension of disbelief effect.

In some RPGs, the more you try one skill the sooner you will be able to improve that skill stat. In your system, how does the skill improvement system works since all skills are automatically checked ?
- Will you check each time the player gets access to that skill ?
- Will you check each time the player gets access to that skill and succeeds in using it ?
- Will you let the player spend advance points into that skill without looking wether he uses that skill or not ?
- Any other solution ?

Ghostly yours,
Red.

Automatic working skills if it can be choosen?

and where is the adventure in that?

Say the system checks all skills before i decide what skill i want to use and only displays the ones i am successfull with, how can i fail?

i would have each encounter in a kind of group, and on each encounter check what decisions the player had done before in that group, and sort the possible reactions on frequenty in the earlier encounters.

so if a thief get caught in stealing, and used fast talk in most of these situations before, fast talk will be in the top of the list of possible reactions.
but do not sort them by rolling a skill test before and then sort on fail/success...

To Omnibrain:
If I did understand pwd clearly, he was not talking about automatic succeeding skills. He was rather explaining a different system to vary the player play (or to enforce player role playing). In some RPG games, you know you can succeed when you are a young dwarf warrior with 18 in strength and 2 in intelligence. Of course the role playing can be questionnable since all the player does is attack first then ask questions. This may lead to a boring game.

With pwd''s system, our dwarf encounters a village guard: instead of the player choosing "bash guard with heavy battleaxe", pwd''s system will check what will be the dwarf available skills at that moment (Diplomacy, Attack, ...). The player will then be presented with the options available like:
"Pleased by the guard''s finely wrought iron armor, you decide not to attack:
- Where did you get that armor ? (Diplomacy skill)"
Then after the remaining proposed skills are offered, success or failure will be computed. Which leads us to another twist in pwd''s system. What happens to our dwarf when he applied his diplomacy skill and that did not work ? I guess that the skill systems must be ordered so as to reflect the character spirit.

To all (variant on pwd system):
I would propose to organize skills between from the most basic survival one to the most elaborate (flee - attack - spell cast - diplomacy, four skills). Let''s get back to our example: our dwarf is in high spirit, he found a beautiful gem in a valley nearby (spirit = 3). That means that when encountering the guard, the skills available would be of level 3 or more (thus spell cast and diplomacy). If the guard offends our dwarf in some way, then the dwarf spirit will fall to 2 (thus he may choose between attack, spell cast and diplomacy).
The skill span proposed to the could be dependent on the intelligence of the creature (intelligence 1 means a skill span of 1 thus when the spirit of the creature is at 2, there is only one skill given: attack - if the skill span is 2, there are two skills given: attack and cast spell).
The controlling player should then be given an indirect control of his skills by enhancing his character spirit level. Why not when eating and drinking or any event related to the character''s character. The dwarf is hungry and at spirit level 1 (you don''t fight on an empty stomach). He goes to the bar and grumbles agressively "Beer". The beer is good that adds to its spirit level (goes to 2). The dwarf orders a complete meal, the maid is pretty and the meal is good: it adds 2 to its spirit level (goes up to 4). Now our dwarf feels happy and communicative and will try to talk to the maid - the skill available will be Diplomacy ("My ! your eyes are beautiful !").
This is not a state system but it adds to the roleplay of the game. The drawback might be the indirect control the player has on its character: the game designer must always detail appropriately why some skills are used and why some other are not.
Of course, the game designer must also check that our dwarf must not get into a fetid and gloomy dungeon with high spirit else he might try diplomacy to an ork (and you know that dim witted orcs do not like it, moreover from a dwarf ). That could be easily cared for: when a dwarf enters a gloomy dungeon, his spirit level decreases by one (it gets from 4 to 3 : spell casting), when the dwarf sees an orc, his spirit level falls to 2 (attaaaaack !).

What do you think about it ?

Ghostly yours,
Red.

I think Neverwinter Nights used a system which was something like that - if a required skill for an additional option was high enough a dialogue option would be enabled, allowing the player to make a skillcheck.

i for one don''t like it. nothing personal, pwd... i just don''t think you should disallow a player to use one of his skills. by forcing "roleplaying" you are actually taking away from the choices the player can make.
perhaps the player wants to try diplomacy, even though it probably won''t work (or maybe they don''t know, in character or out-of-character, that it won''t work). why should the game stop him from trying?
just my opinion...

I like the idea in general. However, I''d like to see failure options as well. If you failed in diplomacy, fast talk, and intimidation, your options would be:
$20 says your corrupt, fascist ass lets me go.
I was just steali...errr...polishing this ring.
* sneer like a thief who got caught red handed by a rent-a-cop stealing a ring

The less likely the failure, the funnier the failure option.

I personally prefer the precalculated success option, where there''s no chance of failure after the option''s been presented and chosen.