What's Your "Sweet Spot" for a Skill system?

[pemerton]

I'm fond of the Blades in the Dark breakdown of Action Ratings, but also games where you can have player-defined specialties such as their career or backgrounds that provide the sole or main bonus to a roll - like Cthulhu Dark or its descendants (Trophy, Cthulhu Deep Green or my own Pipedream RPG). 13th Age does this too in lieu of a skill system to go alongside its 3e/4e hybrid class system.

For years now I've had a preference for systems that handle skills by not using them.
Instead they give characters descriptive elements that explain their skill areas.
Examples:
Big City Corporate Accountant - Roll it for knowing about living in the big city, math, accounting, general business knowledge.
Night Shift Cabbie - Rolled for knowing directions, where things are, places to avoid, driving.

That sorta thing

Thourne, are you thinking of the same range of RPGs as Tun Kai Poh, or have you got different ones in mind?

HeroWars/Quest might be another example.

 

[pemerton]

The rule is always "if you don't care about a thing, it's pointless to bother tracking it." But I would offer the following replies:

Academics - This skill covers everything from Research (the archives kind), to Law, to Writing, to Economics and Business. Basically, if it's a college degree that isn't art or science, this is where it lands. A Professor of Archaeology, a Lawyer, and a Journalist would all have training in Academics.

Language - Unlike most skills, I would argue that the fun way to handle language is binary, so this is actually a catch-all term for a pile of languages, and you either know a language or you don't. Don't care about it? Ditch it.

Seamanship - This is a situationally useful skill, depending on the campaign. It covers handling sailboats, canoes, kayaks, navigating, and so on. It could be hand-waved in most campaigns, especially if PCs leave the heavy-lifting to hired hands, but if you tend to run pirate campaigns, it probably shouldn't be.

<snip>

"Athletics" is simply the catch-all term for things not covered by other physical skills, like climbing, swimming, running, jumping and acrobatics. Fighting? Sorry, separate skill. No system is perfect. But what we don't need is a "Skiing" skill when "Athletics" will do fine.

<snip>

Common Knowledge exists to cover the basic things most character in a setting would know - local history, cooking, religions, etc. This is also where things like reading, writing, and basic arithmetic go. It's also where a lot of the marginally useful skills (cooking, for example) would land.

I think this is a very good argument for there being no Platonic ideal skill list.

In a Cthulhu Dark session that I ran, one PC was a journalist and another was a legal secretary. These both seem to fall under Academics, but played reasonably differently at the table.

A different example: In our Classic Traveller game, we've had multiple PCs with high EDU, and one of the interesting things is working out what that represents. One of those characters has a PhD in XenoArchaeology. The other two, both of whom had quite low INT and had spent time in military service, were extremely familiar with various service manuals. These differences, which we extrapolated from the way those PCs and their backstories emerged out of the Traveller PC-gen minigame, support interesting differences in action declaration and action resolution.

I can think of at least three PCs where Cooking skill has been important to them: one of the PCs in my first Rolemaster campaign (the PC was a Mystic, so many of his spells were similar to AD&D PHB Appendix I psionics - eg he could heat material, create fire, etc, and would use this to support his cooking); my Burning Wheel PC, a knight errant who can cook while camping; the Dwarven Outcast in my Torchbearer game, who can use his skill while camping or journeying to make provisions go further, a big deal in Torchbearer.

One of the other PCs in that first RM campaign had skill both in skiing and in long-distance running. The player was (and remains) very athletic, and his PC reflected that. The character could travel overland, even in winter, better than anyone else. (The character also had excellent juggling skill.)

None of this is an argument that anyone else should break up Academics skill, introduce Cooking or Skiing, etc. But I think it's an argument that there is no "ideal" skill list. If you add Skiing to your list, you're inviting someone to make a PC where being able to ski is an interesting element of that PC. As it was in our game.

 

[Thourne]

Thourne, are you thinking of the same range of RPGs as Tun Kai Poh, or have you got different ones in mind?

HeroWars/Quest might be another example.

Some of those but also Cortex Prime. There is another game I had in mind. I just cant seem to recall the name atm.

 

[Thourne]

Some of those but also Cortex Prime. There is another game I had in mind. I just cant seem to recall the name atm.

Remembered, well looked through some stuff to jog my memory actually.
It was Dead Inside. The way Qualities work specifically.

 

[Staffan]

For years now I've had a preference for systems that handle skills by not using them.
Instead they give characters descriptive elements that explain their skill areas.
Examples:
Big City Corporate Accountant - Roll it for knowing about living in the big city, math, accounting, general business knowledge.
Night Shift Cabbie - Rolled for knowing directions, where things are, places to avoid, driving.

That sorta thing

As a general rule, I like that kind of thing better for NPCs. Unless you do a Big Thing of it (like in 13th Age), PCs generally need stricter and more defined skill lists.

 

[Thourne]

As a general rule, I like that kind of thing better for NPCs. Unless you do a Big Thing of it (like in 13th Age), PCs generally need stricter and more defined skill lists.

We have found the opposite to be true at our table. Specific skills just seemed to cause bloat and slowed things down. Knowing if you are an X you can do whatever an X can reasonably do streamlined things. Of Note, in Cortex you have 3 Distinctions that you draw on. So it isn't one descriptive statement and done.
That said, we also play with Specializations w/o skills in most of our Cortex games. So, if a character wants to really show ability in a narrow field they can opt to. The Shadow Killer of Northern Iela and the Guild Thief of Trolande can both use their d8 distinction to sneak/stealth/hide (amongst other diverging activities) but the one with Specialty: Sneak gets to add that d6 to the pool as well. Basics are covered and a toggle for when we want more detail without having to detail everything.

 

[Andvari]

For my homebrew system I've been considering various methods. First a freeform skill system where there's a bunch of suggested skills, with the option of players proposing new skills to the GM if they want something not already there. So essentially unlimited skills.

But since one of my goals was quick and simple character creation, and since I use classes, I thought that was too much. So I instead looked at something like the Castles & Crusades method, where you have a few ability scores with which you perform particularly well. I like this method a lot, but it has some drawbacks because of how abstract it is. One example is that the Cleric, through having a very high Wisdom score, becomes better at a lot of wilderness stuff the Ranger really should be the best at.

My current system is that there's no skill system, but instead each class has a list of around 5 activities they essentially get "advantage" with. For example, the Outlaw has talents like "uncovering hidden things" and "opening locks", leaving the language a little vague so the player has options for how to go about those activities. This leans harder into the classes and reduces character creation complexity, which accomplishes my goals nicely. The downside of course is if you prefer lots of customization options.

 

[Staffan]

We have found the opposite to be true at our table. Specific skills just seemed to cause bloat and slowed things down. Knowing if you are an X you can do whatever an X can reasonably do streamlined things. Of Note, in Cortex you have 3 Distinctions that you draw on. So it isn't one descriptive statement and done.
That said, we also play with Specializations w/o skills in most of our Cortex games. So, if a character wants to really show ability in a narrow field they can opt to. The Shadow Killer of Northern Iela and the Guild Thief of Trolande can both use their d8 distinction to sneak/stealth/hide (amongst other diverging activities) but the one with Specialty: Sneak gets to add that d6 to the pool as well. Basics are covered and a toggle for when we want more detail without having to detail everything.

Admittedly it's a bit fuzzier when using something like Cortex's Distinctions, which are designed to be broad because you only get three of them. I am somewhat more familiar with FATE, where Aspects map fairly well onto Cortex's Distinctions but FATE still has skills separate from that.

 

[Thourne]

Admittedly it's a bit fuzzier when using something like Cortex's Distinctions, which are designed to be broad because you only get three of them. I am somewhat more familiar with FATE, where Aspects map fairly well onto Cortex's Distinctions but FATE still has skills separate from that.

Yah, Fate is good system but for some reason we can never ever get it to click for us. Tried so many times but just a no go in the end.
The beauty of Cortex Prime is you can play it with skills if you want. We just don't use them. I truely love the whole toolkit aproach. Take the pieces you want, leave them you don't.

 

[ThorinTeague]

I guess I am on the other side of this equation - I really like lots of skills. Not sure if I have as good of a justification as you do for your position, but I do get frustrated when skills I consider very different are lumped in the same category. It's not a make or break situation for me in a game - I play a lot of 5e after all. It may be a left over from my WFRP days.

Palladium is the system you're looking for.