Skills that don't exist but should
- Thread starter Enoki
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I don't know about Germany, but you certainly can in Denmark. And I believe Steve Jackson Games released a whole slew of WWII supplements for their role-playing game GURPS.
Anyway, you're engaged in a classic fallacy. Even if (or should I say 'even though') some unlawful subjects are taboo for roleplaying, it doesn't prove that all unlawful subjects are taboo for roleplaying.
Hans
I use Timelords, which has skills for most everything. I've edited it some - some skills are specializations of others, and shouldn't be their own skill. Others are different enough not to be part of the other skill. Firefighting can default to Damage Control, but a firefighter has a higher skill than the repair party member using his default to DC.
IMO, DC is a separate skill, because you learn the rote methods of firefighting, dealing with flooding, toxic gas leaks, etc. Welding and plumbing are not mechanical, but subskills thereof. You need the basic skill to learn the subskill. Having mechanical-1 would not allow you to weld with any effectiveness (but then I learned how much I DON'T know about welding when I had to take the Quality Assurance Inspector class - why a Quartermaster should be inspecting welds when a Hull Technician is available is beyond me, but Navy logic often isn't logical). Martial Arts is certainly not brawling. Environmental Systems deals with gasses, liquids, and a lot of other things. You and Far-Trader seem to me to be so against "skill-bloat" that you conflate almost anything.
The road you seem to be going down Enoki leads to hundreds of skills meaning you better have dozens of players each willing to play multiple PCs just so everyone can always be sure that somebody in the party (applying the term very loosely) has the needed skill
"OK, there's a passage door here. Who took 'Turn Knob' as a specialization of their 'Open Door' skill?"
"Nobody? OK, somebody make that their next skill acquisition and then teach a designated second. I guess we blow it again. Front and center Demolitions!"
"...no, I don't know if it's locked. I don't care if you can pick the lock. Unless you have the 'Turn Knob' specialization you're just wasting time. Now get clear, the C4 is set."
Amusing, but a little too over the top. I do have hundreds of skills. It's in how you do it. Example: Interrogation / Interview. The description goes into the difference. If you take Interview, you learn how to ask probing questions in a nicer setting, like a journalist or human resources specialist. If you take Interrogation, you may be a cop or spy. 2 skills, same basic idea, but the description means you specify how you learned it. So a retired spy trying to ask questions is going to be a bit rougher than a retired recruiter. It doesn't mean that you need to slog through a small book to get skills. It does mean I can slant skills various ways. That journalist will have a better chance to interrogate someone than an engineer, because he does have Interview. Treat it as Interrogate-1, and go. That spy, trying to be nice and do a little "social engineering" (and when did that term change meaning anyway) uses his Interrogate at -1 to try to get clues to someone's passwords. More depth for little extra effort. I also have skill packages. A woodsman takes every survival skill and outdoors skill that applies to his neck of the woods.
A city-dweller who learns that stuff may well take Wilderness Craft. He does everything the other guy does, but not as well. A country boy who grew up around guns take weapon specialties. A soldier takes Sidearm and Combat Rifleman. The country boy gets to improvise and snipe, etc. The soldier gets to learn how to aim and fire a typical weapon at typical ranges. The former knows all about DA, SA, revolver, semi-auto, bolt, etc. The latter understands what he did learn by rote.
As far as I'm concerned, skills exist (in real life) for a reason. Often, I can manage something without the skill - dogpaddling, say. But I don't achieve the goal as easily as someone who knows what they're doing. I might take 20 minutes to get from the canoe to the dock and be exhausted, while my opponent swam like an eel and has been on dry land for 15 minutes, and is already recovered from the exertion. I can read the anarchist's cookbook, but an EOD tech will have a better idea what he's doing. OTOH, don't even ask me to try coding in machine language. COBOL, Fortran, Basic and RPG, let me refresh myself on it first. Some things you just CAN'T do without training.
I just have trouble understanding the justification. If you show up to my game, we talk about our style of play with new players, and hash out details. But I've never allowed PLAYER knowledge and CHARACTER knowledge to cross the dividing line. Once, in a game of Top Secret, I had two players. One was in my Russian class. Her PC did not take that language. The other was not in my class, but had take that language. When they were captured and the head of station told the interrogator in Russian to torture the male character, she reacted; he didn't. I had to point out that the PLAYER had knowledge the CHARACTER didn't, and so she failed to roleplay appropriately.
Now, in games where we played ourselves, yes, I can see blurring the lines a bit.
I use Timelords, which has skills for most everything. I've edited it some - some skills are specializations of others, and shouldn't be their own skill. Others are different enough not to be part of the other skill. Firefighting can default to Damage Control, but a firefighter has a higher skill than the repair party member using his default to DC.
IMO, DC is a separate skill, because you learn the rote methods of firefighting, dealing with flooding, toxic gas leaks, etc. Welding and plumbing are not mechanical, but subskills thereof. You need the basic skill to learn the subskill. Having mechanical-1 would not allow you to weld with any effectiveness (but then I learned how much I DON'T know about welding when I had to take the Quality Assurance Inspector class - why a Quartermaster should be inspecting welds when a Hull Technician is available is beyond me, but Navy logic often isn't logical). Martial Arts is certainly not brawling. Environmental Systems deals with gasses, liquids, and a lot of other things. You and Far-Trader seem to me to be so against "skill-bloat" that you conflate almost anything.
I also have skill packages. A woodsman takes every survival skill and outdoors skill that applies to his neck of the woods.
A city-dweller who learns that stuff may well take Wilderness Craft. He does everything the other guy does, but not as well. A country boy who grew up around guns take weapon specialties. A soldier takes Sidearm and Combat Rifleman. The country boy gets to improvise and snipe, etc. The soldier gets to learn how to aim and fire a typical weapon at typical ranges. The former knows all about DA, SA, revolver, semi-auto, bolt, etc. The latter understands what he did learn by rote.
As far as I'm concerned, skills exist (in real life) for a reason. Often, I can manage something without the skill - dogpaddling, say. But I don't achieve the goal as easily as someone who knows what they're doing. I might take 20 minutes to get from the canoe to the dock and be exhausted, while my opponent swam like an eel and has been on dry land for 15 minutes, and is already recovered from the exertion. I can read the anarchist's cookbook, but an EOD tech will have a better idea what he's doing. OTOH, don't even ask me to try coding in machine language. COBOL, Fortran, Basic and RPG, let me refresh myself on it first. Some things you just CAN'T do without training.
I played P&P and Runemaster as other skill based games, and you use to have more skills on them than in Traveller, so I see a logic about having more things described as skills. Even so, when more Rolemaster Comanions appeared, even the designers saw that with the adding of skills more skill points sould be given, or the characters lost too many possibilities.
Same happened with D&D. I began playing it as basic, and changed to advenced. never went too much far on it (latter editions), but as AD&D was, we assumed any fighter (and most people,for wat's worth) knew how to ride a horse, any magic user or cleric knew how to read, etc..., until skills came and you had to take the skill with your skill points, once again limiting your chracter, instead of adding richness to the play.
In Traveller, you earn (depending the version and luck) an average of 2-6 skills per term. That means that you either make the skills quite broad or the group quite limited.
To give you an example, when MgT has divided the Engineering skill in 5 specialities, you suddenly need 5 engineers (or an engineer with 5 levels) to use all its systems at level higher than 1, where before you only needed 2 persons (electronics was another skill before MgT). So you either enlarge your crew or risk going on with several key points (as some drives) with level 0 skills.
In the example about interrogation/interview you used above, in MT interview could be used as interrogation at -1 (it was not allowed the other way, probably due to the rudeness interrogation is assumed to include), and the same happened with many skills, and that, coupled with the many "unskilled OK" tasks, allowed you what would otherwise need a large party to have all the needed skills (something I miss in other versions).
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They can't play merc's then? That is also illegal...
Slightly incorrect. In MgT, you can have a character with with multiple specialties in a skill. Here's an example, someone makes up a character with Engineering skill.
First time getting Engineering-0. Thus character can do ALL Engineering at Level 0.
Then character gains another level of Engineering and unless the chargen specifies the Specialty the Character could for example take Engineering(Jump Drives)-1.
Then the Character gains another Level of Engineering. Now the Character could take it as Engineering(Jump Drive)-2, or it could be another Specialty at Level 1. And so on and so on as each level of Engineering is gained. One of the guys that I game with has a character that is the Ship's Engineer that has;
Engineering(Jump Drive)-2
Engineering(Power Plants)-1
Engineering(Maneveur Drives)-1
Engineering-0 (For everything else)
The Ship in that game only has 2 Engineers that cover every specialty at a "1" or better.
It's a choice of if you want to become super specialized in one thing, or Good in a broad spectrum of Engineering.
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Fritz_Brown
Super Moderator
In my homebrew chargen I went the opposite direction. (Mainly because I found out how easy it was to start down the path toward that "book".) I have skills that might be considered too broad, but it is up to the referee to restrict them based upon chargen/background. I have about 150 skills (including cascades) total, but they cover pretty much everything. I also have two catch-all skills:
With those I can cover a multitude of sins.
You're right, that's why I also wrote:
With 5 levels of engineer, you could have Enginer (any) 1
I use the "old" definition. Eng. covers drives & Power plant, Electronics covers pretty much everything else.
Perhaps I didn't express myself as well as I intended.
When I said
I understood that made clear that it really meant 5 levels of engineering among your engineering crew .
Perhaps what confused you was when I wrote
as here I really intended to mean to use all its systems at level 1 or higher.
When I said
I understood that made clear that it really meant 5 levels of engineering among your engineering crew .
Perhaps what confused you was when I wrote
as here I really intended to mean to use all its systems at level 1 or higher.
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Do also remember that in MgT, an engineer with a 9+ in his Int and Edu will get an additional modifier to his rolls, making him able to operate at a higher effective level than his mere skill of 0.
Then you've done much the same thing I have. I probably have more skills, but a lot are specialties. Sorry, but cryptography is complicated enough at tech levels using it that I am not allowing a math major to swag a few rolls, unless he's from a much higher tech culture, and cryptography is in it's infancy on the lower-tech world he's on. Yeah, a math geek from Regina on a TL-6 planet just making codes scientific will know enough about the math theory and such to teach the local experts new tricks. No, a Navy OS from a TL-10 world isn't going to break a TL-9 encryption without a good level in that skill.In my homebrew chargen I went the opposite direction. (Mainly because I found out how easy it was to start down the path toward that "book".) I have skills that might be considered too broad, but it is up to the referee to restrict them based upon chargen/background. I have about 150 skills (including cascades) total, but they cover pretty much everything. I also have two catch-all skills:
With those I can cover a multitude of sins.
A Boy Scout with an Orienteering merit badge will understand the idea of navigating a ship, but will not be able to do it until he learns the full knowledge behind his limited form of navigation. But even a junior Quartermaster finding himself on land can orienteer, because he already knows the principles of navigation.
So there's the skill, then there's the minor skills that are limited versions of them, and then there's the skills that build on them. This is where broad systems fail, IMO. My list allows nuances - if you have exoskeleton ops, you can run a cargo loader. If you put on battledress, you are better able to handle it than someone without exoskeleton ops, but don't know the armor as well as a Mobile Infantry. He, of course, will be able to run your cargo loader, probably as dextrously, but won't know how to arrange the cargo as efficiently - despite having done some of it on working parties, he still doesn't do it as often as a longshoreman, and has different priorities (getting at ammo first, as opposed to loading for stability and center-of-gravity, etc).
I also take backstory into account. A colonel with Cargo Loading hardly ever actually carried a pallet; he ordered it and supervised it. So I tell PCs to keep that in mind.
I don't have Mundane, I roll that into EDU (TL). If you are educated at the local TL +/- 1, you can do any mundane task, like opening doors (including aircar doors). But imagine a WWII era car thief confronted with a modern keyless entry car. I'd have him make rolls at a negative to his electrical systems skill - that, or just smash the window! He still has to hotwire the thing... Now, if he has groundcar skill, he can drive it away. Try putting yourself in his shoes on Rhylanor, trying to steal an airraft.
Some things don't change that much, so I judge the modifiers based on what they're trying to do, and only have them roll if I feel they have a good chance of not knowing the way things work locally - remember Scotty saying "computer?" into the mouse?
In CT the stat modifier was not stated, but the engineer with level 3 skill was also able to use it for all engineering (except electronics related ones, unless he also had the skill).
See that to have skill level 3 in all tasks (again, electronics excluded) for engineer (maneuver drive, jump drive, poer plant and life support) you need 12 engineering level in MgT, to have the +3 modifier with stats 9-11, you need 8 engineering levels (2/each specialty, +1 per stat), and with stat 12-14, you need 4 skill levels (1/specialty, +2 per stat bonus).
In MT you had this DM at skill 5, and an engineer with level 3 skill will use it as level 3 + stat modifier for all engineering tasks (again, electronics excluded). So, to match this engineer, at equal stats, you need the 12 skill levels told above.
That's what I mean about the effects of adding skills (or in this case, subdividing one in specialties). Either you give characters more skills to match the challenge or you leave the players shorthanded.
See that to have skill level 3 in all tasks (again, electronics excluded) for engineer (maneuver drive, jump drive, poer plant and life support) you need 12 engineering level in MgT, to have the +3 modifier with stats 9-11, you need 8 engineering levels (2/each specialty, +1 per stat), and with stat 12-14, you need 4 skill levels (1/specialty, +2 per stat bonus).
In MT you had this DM at skill 5, and an engineer with level 3 skill will use it as level 3 + stat modifier for all engineering tasks (again, electronics excluded). So, to match this engineer, at equal stats, you need the 12 skill levels told above.
That's what I mean about the effects of adding skills (or in this case, subdividing one in specialties). Either you give characters more skills to match the challenge or you leave the players shorthanded.
I use Timelords as my base system, so characters are built with points. I give players points to build their stats with, then use Traveller career tables to see how many terms, and some significant items about their career, then give points to buy skills based on how long their career was. That solves the issue I always felt about Traveller being stingy with the skills, while not allowing PCs unlimited power either.
IIRC Timelords (maybe it was another game wiht symilar name) has a system to create yourself as character... The only time I created a character for it was this way, so I'm afraid I don't know its point related one.
In any case, I don't like the point based chargens usually. It's a personal bias, I know, and they may be good, but without some random elements involved I've seen too many tweens replacing a dead character with those systems.
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And generally this is how MgT handles it. In CT if you went 5 terms, made all of your Re-enlistment, Commision and Promotion Rolls you'd typically end up with what? 11 Skills? Maybe 12? In MgT if you did the same thing, 5 Terms, made all Survival/Commision/Advancement Rolls you typically end up with 20. Sometimes a lot more depending on Career Events. So, the actual play effect is the same, i.e. the Character can accomplish the same things, it just a matter of the level detail.
Complete agreement with you there.
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