And that is a good thing. One of the first major hurdles I see many game designers encounter is the question What skill/abilities/traits/feats, do I need in my game? Whatever you choose to call these, at their core, these are just, what will my players be doing? How will my players be interacting with my game?
I’ve helped a few other designers through this issue before and I’ve struggled with answering it as well. I am going share a few techniques I picked up along the way. Here are a few questions to ask yourself to guide your “skill” creation process. They help me get the correct frame of reference and narrow in one what is fun and important in the game I am creating. If you have some suggestions for what worked for you, feel free to post those below.
What is your Core experience?
Imagine the ideal adventure you want your players to have. Are they hunting for lost artifacts? Exploring alien infested towns in the 50s? Surviving a zombie apocalypse? Create a one shot with your system of a story you want to tell. Using the challenges and uncertainties present in that one shot to determine what skills the players should have.
When you explain your ideal core experience, how much time do you explain each challenge?
If you spend 3 paragraphs explaining how players will be investigating a town for clues, but only two sentences to explaining that the players might experience combat, your game is not about combat. Focus on coming up with skills and abilities that emphasize the main actions your characters will be doing. Investigating a town for aliens? Maybe have skills relating to interviewing people, understanding alien behavior, and operating alien devices. Create some abilities or feats, that allow players to do these more easily.
What do you want your power level to be?
Will your players be superheroes in a fantasy land like DnD? Will they be investigators facing monsters they cannot fathom like in Call of Cthulhu? Keep in mind, this is not a question about how easy it will for the characters to die. You can have a low power settings where character’s lives are not in danger at all. When thinking about this question, focus on abilities and skills that reflect this power level. For example, there might be doors and walls that prevent the characters from reaching their targets. While an ability like snapping your fingers to unlock a door, and walking through walls both functionally solve the problem, the power level of each ability is significantly different. Once you define the power level of your game, it will be much easier to create abilities for your game.
Hopefully this is a helpful way of thinking for you to continue to make progress developing your game. If this was helpful, or you would like to hear more on this topic, or even want to hear about a different topic, post a comment below and let me know what you think.