Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh
There are several purposes for it. Here are some that seem to be more common IME: - Consolidating skills reduces the chance of having 'orphaned skills' in a campaign - skills that had points spent on them, but never used in-game even though their skill group was relevant. That is, instead of hoping a default or a rare skill comes up, you are essentially guaranteed to use a default-like benefit regarding to a skill-group.
- The long 200-ish skill list looks intimidating to players, and runs a huge risk of a player missing some skill that was important for a concept, particularly if they for some reason haven't memorised the names and bodies of all those skills.
- On the contrary to the above, a modest number of consolidated skills means that a character meant to cover a niche will in fact be able to cover said niche. E.g. a street thief will not somehow manage to miss the somewhat-obscure Filch skill, a xenobiologist will not miss Hazardous Materials (Biological) and NBC Suit etc.
- The current skill list makes skills priced too expensively compared to attributes, but directly reducing skill prices will make achieving high levels too easy. Consolidated skills will instead allow generalists to be priced fairly while preventing cheap 30s.
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As a "many skill" GM...these just haven't been a problem for me in my campaigns.
Point 1) No skill will be orphaned. This happens because a) my players will find ways to use their skills. b) I keep note of skills used and make sure than unused skills find opportunities for use. Doing this results in much more interesting campaigns and encounters because it pulls me out of familiar patterns as a GM and trying to figure out an interesting opportunity to use that character's Professional Skill: Sommelier is a great challenge for me as a GM.
Point 2) My players aren't intimidated by a 200 long list of skills because I do all character creation one on one. We have a lovely conversation about character concept and then we go and get the skills that match that concept. If they are super GURPSy they can do it themselves. If they enjoy pursuing skill lists (some players do), they can do that. But we can also just have a conversation. No intimidation.
Point 3) Because we have a conversation about concept, the player is not going to have missed any skill in their concept because checking in on that is my job as GM. If for some reason we both miss something and it comes up in play, all the player has to say is..."Dang! We both overlooked Filch! I totally would have had that skill based on my character concept!" Then I say, "You are right, that was my fault for not thinking about it. Take the skill at one point and you can pay for it with your cps later." But I think that has only happened once or twice in all of my GMing.
Point 4) This just hasn't been that much of a problem. Especially character creation is so much concept driven rather than optimization driven in my campaigns. Also we use Talents. And also I use floating skills to other attributes and to 10 quite often and I use familiarity penalties so spending points in skills is often very useful.
Now, I know there are people who don't like lots of skills. Good for them! They can just use fewer skills. Heck, I offered a solution where everyone just has 3 skills that they define themselves and everything is super simple.
But some people like lots of skills. I am one of them...and players have tended to be as well.