Some games, such as Shadowrun, recognize the differences by categorizing skills: some skills in Shadowrun are Active, some are Knowledge. Yet the mechanics for both categories remain the same; the categorization has no real impact on the feel. Most games don't even go this far.
Is it even worth treating different skills differently? The more subsystems and exceptions we build, the harder the rules are to remember and teach, after all. Yet, there are some advantages for this increased complexity.
Are All Skills Created Equal?
In a game where every skill uses the same mechanic, the results can occasionally be jarring.
When swinging a sword, or climbing a brick wall, there may well be a good chance of both failure and success: a skill check makes sense in these circumstances. But when facing down a monstrous creature, does rolling to recognize it make sense? You've either heard about it or you haven't. You can try to justify this as measuring the odds that you've heard of this creature before, or determining whether you remember the knowledge; however, this doesn't match what's happening in the heat of the moment. Remembering something, or recognizing something, isn't an action you choose to take.
In maintaining immersion, I find it helps to match each roll of the dice to some action the character is taking; when the character swings his sword, the player rolls the dice and the two are in sync. If the roll does not correspond to some action taken by the character, then immersion is broken by the sudden introduction of a loading screen. The character stands there doing nothing while the player takes time to do math and wait for the GM to adjudicate her result. It also interrupts the flow of the game: the GM has to pause her narration and wait for the result of a die roll before she can continue setting the stage for the upcoming scene.
Furthermore, treating all skills the same gives rise to the age-old problem that all GMs must eventually handle: should the players roll Perception to notice something hidden? The very act of rolling a skill check gives the players information that they may not have, if the check is failed. Good players won't use that knowledge, staying firmly in the head of their clueless character, but that disconnect still puts distance between player and character.
So how do we fix it so that skills that behave differently in the game world are treated differently by the rules? It's simple: we break skills down into two categories, Active skills and Passive skills.
Active Skills
The rules of most games are already set up to handle Active skills perfectly. When a character performs an action, the player rolls the skill check. Active skills include things like weapon skills (Blades, Archery, Firearms), athletic skills (Climbing, Running, Jumping), technical skills (Repair, Construction), and the like.
Some skills are ordinarily Active, but occasionally function Passively. An example could be Firearms: to fire a gun is an Active skill check, but recognizing the make and model of a pistol would be something a character does Passively. Other skills are normally Passive, but can be used Actively: knowledge skills can be rolled Actively when doing research.
So games already handle Active skills. What about Passive skills?
Passive Skills
You may already have an idea of what I'm going to propose. Since dice rolls should sync with character actions, and Passive skills do not involve action, you shouldn't roll a Passive skill.
D&D has already dabbled with this idea, with Passive Perception. The idea is that any time a Passive skill needs to be checked, you compare the difficulty of success against a passive score (often the result of an average die roll plus the amount of training in the skill); if the number is higher than the difficulty the character knows or notices the thing, otherwise she doesn't.
However, even as Active skills have slight differences in how they're handled (an attack is rolled against a target's defense, for example, while a Climb check is rolled against a fixed difficulty), so too do Passive skills. There are three main categories of Passive skills, each needing to be handled slightly differently.
Knowledge Skills
A knowledge skill is any skill related to remembering or recognizing something. These can be primarily Passive (such as Theology), or can be a restricted use of an Active skill (using Firearms to recognize a gun by the sound it makes when fired). Either way, the way they're adjudicated is simple: compare the passive score of the skill against the difficulty or rarity of the knowledge the character is seeking, with success resulting when the score is higher.
This means that, excepting strange corner cases where a skill's rating decreases, a character will always know the same things today that she knew yesterday. You don't have to remember, for every type of creature or organization or bit of occultism, whether the party has encountered it already; if they knew obscure facts about it the first time, they'll still know the second time and every subsequent time.
Perception Skills
Obviously, Perception falls into this category of skills, but so do things like Insight. Any skill that determines whether you notice something subtle or hidden is a Perception skill.
You could handle these skills the same way you handle knowledges: compare the passive score against a difficulty, with success meaning you notice the detail. However, hidden information can be a major part of certain types of challenges, and just always giving the characters that information can be anticlimactic. Here's my recommendation.
Instead of success meaning the character automatically notices the detail, it instead means some vague inkling that there's something she's missing. If walking down a hallway with a disguised door, a high Passive Perception could mean that she gets the feeling she should search this corridor more carefully. Then, when the party decides to actively search for something, the perception skill becomes Active and is rolled.
If engaged in a conversation with someone who's got something to hide, a high Passive Insight could mean the character senses that the person is avoiding certain topics. It is then up to her to press for more information.
This maintains a sense of mystery in the game, and also has the advantage of cutting down on the players' need to search every nook and cranny, or cross-examine everyone they talk to, for fear of missing something. If their Passive Perceptions don't ping, they know (or think they know) that they don't have to worry about searching.
Resistances
The third and final type of Passive skill is the Resistance skill. These are things like Willpower and Fortitude (often they are a stat instead of a skill). In effect, a Resistance is any skill that acts as a defense.
Rather than comparing the passive score of a Resistance against a fixed difficulty, the Resistance instead acts as the difficulty for an attack made against the character.
You can even handle Active skills as Resistances. For example, if a guard is searching for the character, you might decide that the guard rolls Perception against the character's Passive Stealth. Of course, if the character is actively hiding, the dice come out.
Some defenses are more active than others. It is up to the GM and players to determine whether skills like Dodge fall under the category of Active or Passive. Personally, I feel that it's only Active if a player declares that his character is doing it in advance; if the character is focused on doing something else (say, attacking an enemy), the defense is Passive.
Writing a Conclusion: An Active Skill
By treating Passive skills differently, a game can mold the proper feel for knowledges and perception. A GM can keep a list of each player character's passive scores, speeding up play and improving the flow of the game. Every die roll becomes more exciting, as it actively maps up to some important action taken in the game, never being watered down with things like "knowing something".
What do you think? Are the benefits worth the extra bookkeeping? Maybe you refuse to give up your dice, and will roll for everything you possibly can; maybe you're like me, and have such terrible luck that avoiding rolling whenever possible is a good thing.
Now roll me a Reading check to see if you remember the content you've just read.
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