[Culture20]

Street signs are only helpful *because* we all have been taught some basic things about street signs. Whether that’s a cultural familiarity or a skill, deciphering pictographic street signs is something that a caveman or Hutt can’t do when transported to 2018 Boston. Planned cities like Manhattan or D.C. make navigation easier, but only if you know they’re planned.

Hobby skills exist for a reason.

Area Knowledge (home town) at default is only appropriate for shut-ins, hermits, or amnesiacs. Everyone else knows something about their neighborhood, nearby shops, streets, and generic town layout.

Also driving: The most common people driving at default in modern USA are 15-16 year olds who are learning. People older than that exist who have never learned to drive, and they are just as bad at it. Driving is a skill with actual points in it. The high number of crashes you see (which are very small, statistically) are because of people choosing to take difficulty penalties (eating/doing makeup/talking on phone/texting/driving much faster than traffic). Default driving is not the norm, and in fact is illegal without a learner’s permit and a passenger who can drive.

There are a lot of skills people have in common with their neighbors in modern society which should be accounted for because GURPS includes settings like IW. The caveman and Hutt don’t have 20 incompetent quirks; they just don’t have 12 years of mandatory education from this era. They are the ones defaulting (the Hutt gets more default options due to higher TL), not Joe Office-Worker. (and conversely, Joe Office-Worker defaults on fire-starting, bow, and blaster pistol skills, as well as Area Knowledge in Nal-Hutta and the Lost World)