Shiv exploit - pregen vs normal, and general Skills confusion

[Razorstorm]

The pregen character SASHA BOLOTNIKOV has the Prisoner exploit Shiv. On her sheet it reads thus:
Sasha's smuggling career was interrupted by a spell in prison on Ganymede. Practiced at improvising weapons from her time in prison, Sasha is always considered to be carrying a knife or a club, even when unarmed, and can use her brawling skill to attack with it.

The normal version of Shiv reads thus:

You are easily able to improvise weapons using your surroundings – glasses, rocks, and so on. You always count as carrying a knife or club.

I really like that Sasha's included the interaction with Brawling, but I'm not sure where that is coming from. Is this an intended benefit of Brawling, or of the Shiv exploit?

In general, after reading through things, the skill section feels very "wishy-washy" because it's clear you wanted to retain space for GM's to change up the skill list and such, but the system is so dependant on them that some important clarity is lacking (I feel this particularly in combat skills). For example - Brawling vs Boxing vs Martial Arts vs Wrestling. Or Tactics vs Reactions, or Reactions vs Dodging. Or weapon skills are quite specific and are clearly tied to equipment, but the equipment tables don't explicitly tie back to those keywords (some are obvious, like Blaster Pistol, but others are not, like Assault Laser, or Grenades, or Electro-arc).

Basically, it seems like some extra guidance about the parameters of skills would be helpful. That openness that you are going for makes lots of sense in the WOIN starter or general books, but in the more specific ones, like NEW, then more clarity becomes very valuable.

Cheers!

 

[Morrus]

I think you're suffering from not having the full core rules yet.

Skills are keywords; nothing more. If the GM agrees it applies to an attribute check, it can be used. The idea is that you can use *anything* as a skill. Sometimes, sure, the mechanical distinction will be one of flavour (boxing, martial arts).

There's a LOT more information on this in the (not yet released) "Playing the Game" section. That's really where the core of the rules are -- you're only really looking at character creation rules there. There's a big section on using skills, forming dice pools, all that stuff. I'm tidying up that section for layout as we speak!

 

[Razorstorm]

That makes sense. Looking forward to it!

 

[Morrus]

One of those examples listed (the unarmed combat skills) is an interesting one. One thing they do - more so in NOW, which has the full martial arts rules than NEW - is form prerequisites for certain martial arts. That makes the distinction important - in essence, they're the starting points of trees. You can't do advanced aikido techniques by taking ranks in boxing, for example. And you can't do some of the "Rocky" boxing inspired things by taking wrestling.