On skill-based resolutions
I'm a big fan of skill-based resolution. I was raised on them, so they're a lot more intuitive for me than "the only relevant info on your sheet is regarding your capacity for violence, avoiding that violence be done upon you, and opening doors". However, when I talk about them, people tend to groan and complain that they're "too intimidating", so I made this little post on how I tend to use them.
To start, I don't like rolling dice. Never did. Don't get me wrong, I like them as an oracle, but if I made a plan and am interacting with the world, they often feel like an unnecessary middleman. Skills, counterintuitively, are perfect for this, because they let you tell at a glance how good a character is at a particular task, and decide if they're able or not to perform that situation. Thus, if your character has a skill of Blacksmithing at Professional level (around 30 ~ 50% in most percentage systems), you can immediately know that yes, they're able to make a sword.
In a skill-less game there might be more hewing and hawing about it. "Was your character a blacksmith? We hadn't thought about background, and a blacksmith would have noticed the craftsmanship of the evil sword back in the dungeon, so they're probably not? But what if they were an apprentice and gathered just enough to make knives, then?" and so on.
But we still have numbers, don't we, so at some point we do roll. Justin H. once put it perfectly: skills are Saves. You shouldn't roll a skill unless you're actively avoiding some negative consequence, usually due to the lack of time or tools for the job. You don't roll a Breath save to jump a fence when you're in no rush for it, do you? So why would you roll Athletics for that? Now, if there were a dragon after you...
This isn't anything new, of course. Almost every skill-based game says that in the "when should you roll" section of the book, right after the oft-skipped "what is an RPG" section, or in the GM Advice section which no one ever gets to, thus it is understandable that many would create such misconceptions (and run games based on those misconceptions, thus traumatising many a gamesman).
So you can tell at a glance if you're able to accomplish a task, and you only roll when avoiding a negative consequence, but doesn't the character sheet still look so big and unwieldy? This is the third thing I enjoy about skill-based systems: they're frontloaded.
When you open a skill system, you might look at the 20+ skill list and think "Goddamn this is so much!" but what you're not thinking about is how much that is eliding from the game in the long run. Most importantly, you're not thinking about how much that is helping the GM.
In a skill-less system, it takes a lot more thought and effort from the GM to make rulings in common situations, as so much of the characters is typically undecided at the start. In a skill-based game, it's all laid out right there, the GM can simply ask you how much you have in the Accounting skill to verify if you'll be able to analyse this logbook and move on with the session, rather than stopping to reflect on if you would or wouldn't be able. This means you need to think slightly harder about your character at the outset of the game instead of offloading that thought into both the future and the GM.
Bonus: A little skill resolution
Recently I made this post thinking about how to implement emotional lack of control in mechanics. It happens that I bought one hundred d6s recently too, and reconnected a bit with Zenobia from Zozer games, one of the first games I ever played, which reminded me of how fond I am of Traveller / Cepheus and the 2d6 resolution. Thus, I was thinking on how I would run it nowadays, and ended up with the following.
Skills go from 1 to 3: Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced.
Typically you only have to roll for something at or above your current level of expertise, or if you lack the tools or time for it. Thus a character at Intermediate generally doesn't need to roll for most things in normal circumstances.
When you do need to roll, it's 2d6 + Skill to hit 8+. Some skills may have their own procedure, and some don't even go from 1 to 3, simply possessing it being enough.[^1]
If you don't have the skill, you receive a -3 penalty or a -5, if the skill is particularly specialised, and if you're even allowed to roll it. Some skills are so ubiquitous and simple that they don't impose a penalty for not having them, such as Athletics or Melee attack, but the disadvantage is that you always need to roll them. The character's background may also reduce a penalty to -3 or 0, within reasonability.
Don't apply any other modifiers unless as a last resort. If circumstances are especially good or bad, consider simply allowing it with a compromise.
Passions
Characters should have the things they most love ranked from 1 to 6. Whenever that thing is on the line, they get a +1 to whatever skill they're attempting (or removing the penalty for not having it, if they're unskilled) if the Passion is from 1 to 4. If it's higher, that bonus is +2.
However, you need to roll your Passion-in-6 whenever you try to go against it, or whenever it is triggered. You're Jealous (Wife) 3 and there's a man courting her? You have 3-in-6 chances for not flying off the handle and intervening. The higher the Passion, the more dramatic the action is. At 6, you're a slave to your Passion, such as Tristan or Anna Karenina.
When you fail spectacularly at the Passionate task at hand (your lord is killed while under your protection), or when it becomes clear that the source of the Passion is no more (vikings murder your family), or you will never have access to the source again (your beloved banishes you from their sight), you need to roll a Passion Crisis. Count as follows, starting at 1:
The Passion is 1 to 4 and the character had used it for circumstances relating to the Crisis: +1
The Passion is 5 or 6 and the character had used it for circumstances relating to the Crisis: +2
The cause of the crisis is due to the character's own action or inaction: +3
Treat the final number as your skill and roll a d6:
If you get a 1, unless in rolls where 1 is the minimum roll, you go mad. The character is removed from the game for a week if the Passion was 1; for 1d6 weeks if it was 2 or 3; for 1d6 months if it was 4 or 5; and for 1d6 years if it was 6. You flee the scene to the wilds and become a beast such as a dragon or a giant bull and may only be brought to heel by true love or friendship, a wizard with suitable magic, or a saintly person.
If you get under the number, you go into a deep depression and get -2 in every roll for 1d6 hours if the Passion was 1; for a day if it was 2 or 3; for 1d6 days if it was 4 or 5; and for 1d6 weeks if it was 6. The character becomes weak and inert, perhaps periodically going blind from crying or becoming enveloped by a strange goop that takes effort to be removed from. He can be healed by true love and the other circumstances above, but this will require some sort of roll, and if the person fails, the character lashes out violently - perhaps slapping his true love before storming off. If the character is attacked, they snap out of it until the attacker flees or dies, or until the melancholic suffers significant damage, in which case they snap out of it permanently.
If you get above the number, there is no effect.
Passions can make a skill go above 3. So, for instance, an apprentice swordsman (1) whose family was taken from him by his apathetic older brother when he was a child and whose vengeance has been the sole mover of his life to this point (Hate [Older Brother] 6) will find that he can fight him (a master Swordsman 3) as an equal. He'll also find that, when his brother asks for mercy at the end of their fight, the apprentice won't be able to give it to him. After striking his brother dead and realising his vengeance is finally over, the apprentice swordsman is left bereaved and lets out a terrible cry as he grows feathers and turns into a massive eagle until the next spring.
The rest
I haven't developed the rest of it because this is essentially compatible with Traveller, Cepheus, and their derivatives like Clash of Steel, so I'll likely use those when I get to run this.