Designing skills really surprised me.\u00c2\u00a0 Stats were easy.\u00c2\u00a0 Rules have been easy (although choosing which of those rules are worth keeping is another matter).\u00c2\u00a0 I figured I’ve played more games than I can keep track of, so I should be able to churn out a skill list with little thought at all.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t have been more wrong and aside from when I was trying to typeset a character sheet, this has been the hardest part of the process so far.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So why was it so hard to list skills?\u00c2\u00a0 Before I can answer that, let’s have a look at the requirements the skills had to fill.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I’m treating weapon skills just like the other skills.\u00c2\u00a0 There will be more of a subsystem with more depth and options, but the actual weapon skills will be plain old skills.<\/p>\n
The only major game I’ve played that does it differently is Dungeons and Dragons.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m sure there are others, but this is the big one.\u00c2\u00a0 Why not do what the big game does?\u00c2\u00a0 Simply, I don’t like that there’s little control over how much your character knows about combat.\u00c2\u00a0 I know you can run or play the game with as much or as little combat as you like, but unless you do nothing but multiclass into characters with half BAB, the fact of the matter is you’re going to have a base attack bonus.\u00c2\u00a0 That represents combat training.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes, any character I’d want to play would have that, but I resent the restriction.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t have to be there.\u00c2\u00a0 I would like my game to let you play a character without combat training.<\/p>\n
Moving on…<\/p>\n
Every skill should have specializations.\u00c2\u00a0 They should be open ended.<\/p>\n
I toyed with the idea of multiple levels of specialization (ie fighting specializes into swords specializes into longswords, etc), but it was obnoxious.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Instead I’d rather just cut them off at one level of specialization.<\/p>\n
This is a hard requirement because of how starting skills works.\u00c2\u00a0 When you have no points in a skill, you can’t buy a skill until <\/em>you get a specialization for it.\u00c2\u00a0 This is contrary to how all the other games I’ve played to specialties.\u00c2\u00a0 It represents that first part of a skill you pick up before learning the general techniques.<\/p>\n Okay, this requirement is a little vague.\u00c2\u00a0 A little abstract.\u00c2\u00a0 Har dee har har.<\/p>\n Actually this is an extension of the specialization requirement.\u00c2\u00a0 I want all the skills to be at the same level of abstraction.\u00c2\u00a0 To use skills from different categories, “speaking” would be the same level as “fighting.”\u00c2\u00a0 “Deception” would then be at the same level as “swords” and “little white lie” would be at the same level as “longswords.”\u00c2\u00a0 What I want to avoid is a system where one skill is at the longsword level of granularity but another skill is at the speaking level.\u00c2\u00a0 I think a system like that would breeze over speaking skills, but spend a lot of time on the specifics of combat.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m okay with skimming past some things, (ie, there will be a single first aid skill – no need for doctors, surgeons, nurses, etc) but the abstraction level should be consistent unless there’s a good reason for it not to be.<\/p>\n No synonyms, minimal overlap.\u00c2\u00a0 When a player takes an action I want there to be a clear way to perform that action (there should be many ways to achieve your goals though).\u00c2\u00a0 There should be a reason for every skill to exist.<\/p>\n “Perfection is achieved, not when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.”<\/p>\n I can’t remember where I read that.\u00c2\u00a0 It was applied to software at the time, but it’s always stuck with me.\u00c2\u00a0 I think it’s applicable here too.\u00c2\u00a0 I want to have the smallest set of skills possible that let characters perform all the tasks they should be able to.<\/p>\n I think too many skills is a design flaw.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t want the GM to punish the characters for failing to take civic engineering.\u00c2\u00a0 Nor do I want the characters punished because they took linguistics and electronics communications, but those skills never came up.\u00c2\u00a0 Can you tell I’ve played GURPS before?<\/p>\n Wait, what?<\/p>\n Okay, this is actually a really specific requirement for this system.\u00c2\u00a0 The others (aside from specialization) have been more like my personal preferences.\u00c2\u00a0 This one is a bit odd though, especially when you consider that strength is the red headed step child stat.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t realize that until I made this requirement, but it totally stymied me when I tried listing strength skills.\u00c2\u00a0 It turns out that most games will have a consistent number of skills in the other stats and strength will be left with less than half those skills.<\/p>\n So why such a weird requirement?<\/p>\n I’m trying to satisfy an idea I had.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve always liked the idea of RPGs that grow your skills as you use them.\u00c2\u00a0 It works reasonably well in computer games – 1000 successful jump checks gives you an increase in your jump skill.\u00c2\u00a0 That sort of counting doesn’t make sense in a pen and paper game though.<\/p>\n So what do we count instead?<\/p>\n I figured we could get meta with it.\u00c2\u00a0 Count skill increases.\u00c2\u00a0 For ever 5 skill increases in a stat, that stat goes up by 1.\u00c2\u00a0 Not a lot of overhead and it makes some sense too.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe 5 is too low, but that’s what playtesting is for.\u00c2\u00a0 Best of all this means\u00c2\u00a0 I have less balancing to do when it comes to advancement – I don’t have to figure out how many XP points increase a skill as opposed to a stat.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re tied together and the only way to increase your stats is with skills.<\/p>\n But what about the same number of skills across stats?\u00c2\u00a0 What’s that got to do with this?<\/p>\n Let’s stick with the 5 skill points leads to a stat point thing.\u00c2\u00a0 Let’s say your strength skills are athletics and swords.\u00c2\u00a0 Each skill can hold 10 points.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s 20 points for all your strength skills, meaning you gain 4 strength over your career.\u00c2\u00a0 Intelligence has 3 different book smarts skills, perception, and magic lore.\u00c2\u00a0 Those 5 skills have 50 points, meaning your intelligent character can increase his main stat 10 times over the game.\u00c2\u00a0 That just doesn’t seem right.<\/p>\n Alternatively, I could make the increases dependent on the number of skills.\u00c2\u00a0 If strength only has 2 skills and it takes 2 points to increase the skill, I can get my +10 strength by the time I’m done.\u00c2\u00a0 Intelligence would need 5 skill points to increase a stat, also getting +10.\u00c2\u00a0 But the strength character would advance a lot more quickly.\u00c2\u00a0 That also doesn’t seem right.<\/p>\n I thought about this one for a while and in the end the only real solution I found was to give each stat the same number of skills.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Enough babbling.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s what I ended up with.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Strength:<\/p>\n Polearms, one handed, two handed, brawling, muscle, athletics, manual labor, endurance.<\/p>\n Agility:<\/p>\n Ranged weapons, dodge, parry, initiative, thievery, stealth, ride, (empty)<\/p>\n Charisma:<\/p>\n Negotiation, comprehend, deception, charm, networking, culture, perform, (empty)<\/p>\n Intelligence:<\/p>\n Academia, world knowledge, machinery, willpower, perception, profession, survival, first aid<\/p>\n I didn’t quite make the specialties requirement.\u00c2\u00a0 Endurance, dodge, comprehend, and willpower are considered defensive skills.\u00c2\u00a0 They aren’t used on their own and exist to let you resist other skills.\u00c2\u00a0 They aren’t really specialized and everyone will have them.<\/p>\n There’s a glut of knowledge skills.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not sure if this is a problem.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a bigger glut, but I purged some.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to avoid the problem of the smart character knowing ALL the things.\u00c2\u00a0 Somebody who has spent time in academy, shouldn’t have real world knowledge.\u00c2\u00a0 OTOH, I also don’t want to run a book reading sim.<\/p>\n I’ll probably talk about the differences between skills next time.\u00c2\u00a0 For now, I’ve typed enough and the thought of describing 28 different skills seems way too tedious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Designing skills really surprised me.\u00c2\u00a0 Stats were easy.\u00c2\u00a0 Rules have been easy (although choosing which of those rules are worth keeping is another matter).\u00c2\u00a0 I figured I’ve played more games than I can keep track of, so I should be able to churn out a skill list with little thought at all.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nodice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gm.sagotsky.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Abstraction level<\/h2>\n
Uniqueness.<\/h2>\n
Quality over quantity.<\/h2>\n
Same number of skills in each stat<\/h2>\n
The Skills<\/h1>\n