Be social
Thanks for taking the time to post a new comment or a reply to one! First scan these quick notes, if you please:
General
* Currently, previewing a post is optional; you're welcome to preview or post immediately.
* You should see plain text input by default; click "enable rich text" for fancy formatting tools. (Some people love that and some don't. Be aware that formatting tool performance may vary by browser.)
* With apologies to all, "captcha" questions may face unregistered posters. Otherwise, the spam flow will dwarf the Nile.
Registration and login
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* If you'd prefer to post as an unregistered visitor, that's welcome too. Just leave "Your name" as the default "Esteemed Visitor", or type in some other name. (But if you happen to type in a name used by a registered user – say, "tbone" – you'll get an error telling you so when you hit "post comment". And while your post text should still be there, waiting for a revised user name, there's a chance it could disappear.)
* If you're a registered user but haven't logged in and want to post a quick comment as Esteemed Visitor, that's fine; see above.
* If you're a registered user but haven't logged in, and enter your user name under "Your name" when posting, you'll get an error saying that's the name of a registered user. That's a good thing; it means strangers can't make posts under your user name! But as above, there's a chance of losing your post text. It's best to log in first here, and then start your posting.
Final
All the above is standard stuff for community web sites, but reminders are good; I hate post-related glitches, and hate to see people run into them on this site. On this or any site, it's a good practice to do a quick "Select All" and "Copy" on your post text before hitting "Preview comment" or "Post comment" – just in case.
For more on the whole topic of interaction with the site, please see User Interaction (opens in new window).
Patron advantage
How's everything?
Enjoying your Games Diner meal? Is the wait staff attentive? Is the chef bathed? (Then it must be a Sunday.) You do know that a little eggshell in the French toast adds calcium, right?
If the cramps haven't set in yet, I hope you'll say Hi to the chef or check out the many ways you can contribute to the Diner.
Now eat. Eat up! You're as thin as a rail.
Build a site!
Cast Seek Spell
THE TAKEOUT MENU
For collaborators, contributors, or the curious. Notice of site updates; project announcements; calls for playtesting; etc.
Dividing up skills
You probably won't be surprised to hear that my vaporware project has some similar skill ideas behind it. Some different, too. Tossing out a few for fun:
Animal Handling's most important "breadth" component is type. Types are set by utility in the game (which of course requires massively arbitrary decisions...): Dogs is a type, as is all of Reptiles/Amphibians, as is all of Arthropods. Birds would be a type; Falcons would be a subtype of even narrower breadth.
Other subsets (i.e., narrower breadth versions) would include general Care, Fighting, Training, Riding, Teamster, etc.
Actually, any given Handling skill would be composed of, and specify, its components. Most would be based on the Care component (but Bullfighting, for example, might drop that and pretty much anything but Fighting). A Horse Handling skill likely wouldn't include Fighting (unless it includes capture and breaking); it could add Riding and Teamster components for a broad skill. Arthropod Handling wouldn't include Training (can't really be done). Snake Handling could begin as a narrower-breadth version of Reptile/Amphibian, then could add the Charm component (which wouldn't be part of most animal skills – or is it really just a narrow form of Training, plus some Performance Art?). Falconry would start with its narrow type, and combine Training with a Knowledge component for the sport/etiquette aspect.
And so on. Arts, meanwhile, fall into categories like you mention; using breadth, it'd become possible to create a single Visual Arts skill, for example, instead of separately listing a dozen skills.
BTW, how did 4e make your ideas obsolete? Wouldn't your skills in parentheses still be individual skills, and your categories be suited to handling as triple-cost Wildcard skills? Maybe then your major groups could be bought, say, for 5x the cost of a skill? (That'd make, say, Melee Combat skill a max 20 pts/+1 – a heck of a bargain, yet still inferior in many ways to DX.)