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Deisgn Patterns of a Successful RPG question

Started by redwing, April 25, 2008, 10:43:01 PM

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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.
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