Why does a SciFi RPG "need" skills?

[Janx]

No, you can do those things to a limited degree which might or might not be enough to get you out of a bind. Not to mention all the other things you can't do at all.

Well, I'm a good cook. And none of the plumbing fixes I've done have failed (house with old iron pipes is not my fault). I probably can rebuild an engine if I had to. I'd like a few chances to practice before I do an appendectomy on you. I'm pretty sure I can get it out, but some patients prefer to not bleed to death.

Find something I can't do, that my fellow PCs can't do as well that we would encounter as a party in a Modern RPG.

As a a paraphrase of some famous saying, "the GM don't put more on a PC's shoulders than he can handle..."

So it's less about the actuality of what I can and can't do, and more about the RPG spirit of what I can do as a PC.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Here's some examples of skill hubris: my great-uncle was very handy. There is no dispute on that. However, we found out that sometimes he did things in repairing or D.I.Y. projects that a pro wouldn't do.

Once, while he was visiting us, we had a leaky pipe coming off of our garbage disposal unit, and rather than letring us call a plumber, he decided to fix it himself. He did so, and it was fine for many years. Not even a drop fell.

However, eventually, the disposal unit eventually died. My great uncle was back home, so he couldn't volunteer to do the replacement, and neither my dad or I felt comfy doing the job. So we called a pro.

The pro was working on it forever cursing most of the time. After the job was done, we asked him what had cost him so much time and caused so much consternation. He said that the last person who had worked on those pipes had superglued everything together.

We...said nothing.

Less amusingly, there was an episode of Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda that detailed the story of a family killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. The eventual culprit was revealed: the landlord. A notorious cheapskate, he had done a D.I.Y repair job on the house's AC unit, and had installed its ventilation mechanism backwards. To do so he had to hammer it in place to make it fit. The result was that the unit worked in reverse, filling the house with CO.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Which is in my opinion a very poor benchmark for RPGs.
In fiction people never fail, unless the failure is required to ultimately succeed.

... wait, what?

Do yourself a favour. Go and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. Any excuse to watch it or rewatch it is a good one. And count the number of times Indy actually succeeds in what he set out to do rather than merely overcomes obstacles in the way and fails. The answer is that he fails just about every time. Then go and watch any of the listed inspirations for Fiasco. (Fargo or A Simple Plan are good ones). There are entire genres of film where the protagonists emphatically do not succeed - and even Dr Who sometimes screws up.

 

[Derren]

... wait, what?

Do yourself a favour. Go and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark. Any excuse to watch it or rewatch it is a good one. And count the number of times Indy actually succeeds in what he set out to do rather than merely overcomes obstacles in the way and fails. The answer is that he fails just about every time. Then go and watch any of the listed inspirations for Fiasco. (Fargo or A Simple Plan are good ones). There are entire genres of film where the protagonists emphatically do not succeed - and even Dr Who sometimes screws up.

I have to rewatch it because as I remember it Indy recovers the Ark, stops the Nazis and gets the girl.
Indy fails when he is required to fail as everything is scripted. This is not the case in RPGS where a failure really is a failure.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Lets get away from Indy in Raiders as an example, because, as has been pointed out, he was the epitome of the Irrelevant Protagonist in that film. As it was succinctly put:

Had he refused the mission and remained back at the college, the Nazis would’ve found the Ark on their own, brought it to the island, opened it and died the same horrible death.

 

[Bluenose]

First, answer the question, "How many fantasy games use class based systems, and how many do not?" How many of the class-based fantasy systems currently out there aren't retroclones?

Computer fantasy RPGs (and SF ones too) are usually class-based. So much so that I've found people familiar with those are often rather surprised by tabletop RPGs that lack classes. Now, if we're talking strictly tabletop, then outside the circle of D&D and it's imitators/heartbreakers/retroclones the answer is very few - though that's also true with regard to non-fantasy games. Somewhat more common are careers, with pseudo-Class systems that may only apply during character generation - see Traveller, or The One Ring, or in a different way Warhammer Fantasy and the 40K games.


To the OP, I'll offer two suggestions. First, it's the fault of Traveller. The first really popular SF RPG used skills, therefore subsequent games followed suit. Two, it may be it's not so much classes that people don't approve of but levels. Levels usually imply escalating hit points, escalating hit points lead to situations where human beings survive hits by plasma guns, and people who play SFRPGs seem not to be terribly tolerant of this, at least compared to people who usually play fantasy games.

 

[Janx]

Lets get away from Indy in Raiders as an example, because, as has been pointed out, he was the epitome of the Irrelevant Protagonist in that film. As it was succinctly put:

Yeah, the Big Bang Theory pretty much exposed the world to the revelation that Indie could have stayed home and the exact same things would have happened.

In fiction and RPGs, the protagonist gets thrust into situations they are ill-suited for just as often as they are well suited for them. The clever ones manage to MacGuyver a solution that sometimes works.

That's can't happen if the Shuttle Pilot gets +20 to his piloting rolls, and +0 to anything else because absolute lack of skill in a skills-based RPG pretty much means lack of any practical chance.

So, the fix, that Star Wars Saga Edition implemented that I am espousing is to ignore "total lack of skill" and assume that a broad experience enables the PC to be somewhat skilled at it. I had suggested 1/2 their skill level in the prime area, so our example high level Shuttle Pilot would get a +10 to do non-piloty things because he has likely done a lot of non-piloty things in all those years.

 

[Derren]

In fiction and RPGs, the protagonist gets thrust into situations they are ill-suited for just as often as they are well suited for them. The clever ones manage to MacGuyver a solution that sometimes works.

That's can't happen if the Shuttle Pilot gets +20 to his piloting rolls, and +0 to anything else because absolute lack of skill in a skills-based RPG pretty much means lack of any practical chance.

So, the fix, that Star Wars Saga Edition implemented that I am espousing is to ignore "total lack of skill" and assume that a broad experience enables the PC to be somewhat skilled at it. I had suggested 1/2 their skill level in the prime area, so our example high level Shuttle Pilot would get a +10 to do non-piloty things because he has likely done a lot of non-piloty things in all those years.

So it does come down to everyone being good at everything. Lockpicking, Piloting (Land, Air, Sea, Space) , Wilderness Survival, Subterfuge, Mechanical Repairs, Electrical Repairs, Technobabble skills, Programming, Diplomacy, ...

I didn't buy the "experienced characters know and can do everything" explanation in 4E and I do not buy it now.

Besides you seem to have the wrong idea of "MacGuyver a solution". To do that one has to apply the skills you have in an unconventional way to solve a problem, but what is the point when you can do everything?

 

[Janx]

So it does come down to everyone being good at everything. Lockpicking, Piloting (Land, Air, Sea, Space) , Wilderness Survival, Subterfuge, Mechanical Repairs, Electrical Repairs, Technobabble skills, Programming, Diplomacy, ...

I didn't buy the "experienced characters know and can do everything" explanation in 4E and I do not buy it now.

Besides you seem to have the wrong idea of "MacGuyver a solution". To do that one has to apply the skills you have in an unconventional way to solve a problem, but what is the point when you can do everything?

Key words you keep using that I keep avoiding. "Good at everything"

In the scale of a guy who swings +20 at his day job, +10 (proposed number. Maybe it's lower) in everything else isn't good at everything. Especially weighed in the scope that his non-day-job problems will be scaled to the same higher DCs that his actual primary skill set would be used.

Basically, He's facing a 30DC problem, and can't using his +20 piloting skills to get out of it.

If he can come up with an alternative, it's going to take a skill to resolve it. he's got to roll against that DC30 sometime.

MacGuyver didn't succeed because he had duct tape and bamboo. He succeeded because he had the broad breadth of skills to utilize the duct tape and bamboo.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

MacGuyver didn't succeed because he had duct tape and bamboo. He succeeded because he had the broad breadth of skills to utilize the duct tape and bamboo.

No, Angus MacGuyver succeeded because he had a few skills fairly maxed out and he applied them to every problem.

He never sang or danced his way out of a pickle, spotted a forgery with his understanding of art history, demonstrated uncanny marksmanship to shoot a tiny (living or nonliving) target at a range, nor used his linguistic skills to clear up a misundersanding, displayed a mastery of unarmed combat that would shame a black belt, did some nifty combat piloting in a jet... That's what guys like James Bond, Jason Bourne, Ethan Hawke, or maybe The Most Interesting Man in the World do.

Instead, he applied his science- for the most part, mainstream physics, chemistry and biology- and engineering skills to solve EVERYTHING.