I don't know if it will change your mind about SWN, but the Revised Edition (SWNRE) has trimmed the skill list down to 25 skills (19 typical like Administer, Lead, Shoot, etc., plus 6 Psionic ones). It still has all the other features your podcast discusses. One way around the "what difficulty is this skill check?" is to borrow a rule from Classic Traveller: when in doubt, throw 2D6, that's the difficulty. For SWNRE you could add +2, to include results of 14.
I really like SWN, even though I have come to dislike its skill system. I still highly recommend the game to anyone. It's got a lot of smart, evocative ideas and is a big inspiration for me.
Rolling 2d6 for difficulty is a way to gamify the problem of identifying DCs, but sometimes it just doesn't make that much sense. It's a good fix overall, but it's a practical measure rather than something which addresses the deeper design issue. Very good suggestion, thank you.
I don't know if it will change your mind about SWN, but the Revised Edition (SWNRE) has trimmed the skill list down to 25 skills (19 typical like Administer, Lead, Shoot, etc., plus 6 Psionic ones). It still has all the other features your podcast discusses. One way around the "what difficulty is this skill check?" is to borrow a rule from Classic Traveller: when in doubt, throw 2D6, that's the difficulty. For SWNRE you could add +2, to include results of 14.
I really like SWN, even though I have come to dislike its skill system. I still highly recommend the game to anyone. It's got a lot of smart, evocative ideas and is a big inspiration for me.
Rolling 2d6 for difficulty is a way to gamify the problem of identifying DCs, but sometimes it just doesn't make that much sense. It's a good fix overall, but it's a practical measure rather than something which addresses the deeper design issue. Very good suggestion, thank you.