Deisgn Patterns of a Successful RPG question

[redwing]

I've been thumbing through John Kirk's work, and I'm having a slight difficulty understanding the differences between Gifts, Skills, and Traits. I was wondering if anyone could explain the differences to me?

In D&D, I believe skills=skills, feats=gifts, and class abilities=traits. However, I believe class abilities could also fall under gifts. Where am I going wrong?

Thanks in advance!

[Selene Tan]

The Trait pattern, as John Kirk describes it, is used to allow players to customize characters and specify their abilities, without the use of pre-defined ability lists. In other words, Traits are abilities or characteristics made up by the players rather than selected from the game's options.

D&D class abilities, then, are also Gifts; John Kirk mentions this as one possible way to grant gifts in the "Implementation Concerns" section of the entry on Gifts.