[Basic] Skill of the week: Weird Science

[johndallman]

Weird Science is the IQ/VH skill of coming up with wildly advanced, or at least very strange, scientific theories. There is no default, and no skills default to it. It first appeared in GURPS IOU, where there was also a Weird Magic skill. That didn't survive into 4e, although one could make it a required specialisation of Weird Science.

The skill can be used when inventing, or when investigating a technological item that's weird, or at least alien. For inventing, a success gives +1 to the invention roll if you have Gadgeteer, or +5 if you don't. The trivial drawback of this is that the invention will have weird problems, as described on B479. For investigation, a success gives +2 to any other skill rolls you make, and may allow a default roll to operate the device. For both uses, a critical success gives you the results of success, and an important insight into some different problem. Critical failures will do something spectacular, but not necessarily disastrous.

Weird Science shows up as an option on templates for inventors and engineers, but always with the subtext that it marks potential mad science; Casey & Andy makes this explicit. There are things best understood with Weird Science (or not at all) in the Creatures of the Night books, while Dungeon Fantasy reserves the skill for Elder Things and madmen. Fantasy makes it a primary skill for the right kind of Slayer, as does Horror, where conspiracy theorists and plague-fighters can also use it, and somebody needs to keep the disembodied brains alive. Hot Spots: Constantinople is a prime location for weird science in-period, but Infinite Worlds: Britanica-6 uses surprisingly mundane principles, plus lots of ingenuity. Locations: Hellsgate has a metalwork shop that gives bonuses to the skill, although the owner is, naturally, secretive. Magic suggests Weird Science as a core skill for Ritual Magic, which suggests a game that isn't so much freewheeling as avalanche-skiing. Monster Hunters integrates this skill thoroughly into its technology and gadgeteering, and Power-Ups 7 has several Wildcard Skills that include it, although, suspiciously, there are no Talents for it. Then there's Powers: The Weird, essentially a sourcebook for this skill.

Space points out that in a hard-SF game, Weird Science is knowledge of pseudo-science and crank theories, and has a template for a specialist in those; Steampunk 1 discusses where the boundaries of the weird should be for its genre. Supers uses the skill for studying superpowers, and for building machines that affect them, and it's the skill for pushing the limits of technology in Tales of the Solar Patrol. Thaumatology considers the boundaries between science and magic, while Age of Gold leaps into Weird Science as alchemy, and Magical Styles applies it to the Technological college. And if you want Zombies, that aren't purely supernatural, it's the skill to use.

I've never used this skill, as player or GM. My 3e steampunk campaign was just on the edge of needing it, but not actually there. Infinite Cabal is more restrained in its extensions to the universe. I'll show them! They laughed at me at the university!! They laughed at me at the freak-show!!! Bawahaha!!!!

That's the end of Basic's non-combat skills. I'll do the new skills in GURPS 4e books that I have too, but it's a pretty short list: unless I find any more, it will take another three posts.

[Captain Joy]

There was a dedicated Weird Science Pyramid, issue #3/46.

[RogerBW]

Conceptually this skill feels to me quite like the Enthrallment skills: it's an access route to strange powers, which really ought to be bought as their own powers rather than just "if you learn this skill you can do this stuff".

In my Crimson Skies campaign, there was a compulsory specialisation: you could learn e.g. Weird Science (Nikola Tesla), and one PC did so after spending an hour in the back of an autogyro with him (he'd just been rescued and was feeling chatty). Presumably a dedicated Weird Scientist would develop their own specialisation, but it never arose in game.

Originally Posted by johndallman

That's the end of Basic's non-combat skills. I'll do the new skills in GURPS 4e books that I have too, but it's a pretty short list: unless I find any more, it will take another three posts.

Thank you for this - it's been interesting and useful.

[ericthered]

Weird science is ... weird.

I've actually used it several times, but never in play. Usually a player puts it on their sheet, and I'm able to ask them what they mean by it, and point them at something more fitting, like Physics (Psychotronics). Then they use the new thing instead. But it still does its work by finding and identifying those people for me.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Weird science is ... weird.

I've actually used it several times, but never in play. Usually a player puts it on their sheet, and I'm able to ask them what they mean by it, and point them at something more fitting, like Physics (Psychotronics). Then they use the new thing instead. But it still does its work by finding and identifying those people for me.

But why is it always replaced? I mean, "my PC is good at reverse-engineering UFOs and enemy magitech and alien crystal-tech" seems like a niche that just had to come up at least once throughout campaigns?

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

But why is it always replaced? I mean, "my PC is good at reverse-engineering UFOs and enemy magitech and alien crystal-tech" seems like a niche that just had to come up at least once throughout campaigns?

Well, it depends on the campaign.

Take something like Stargate SG-1, where TL8 humans learn to work with alien computers and power systems. Is that Engineering (TL12^) and lots of Cutting Edge Training, or is it Weird Science?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Well, it depends on the campaign.

Take something like Stargate SG-1, where TL8 humans learn to work with alien computers and power systems. Is that Engineering (TL12^) and lots of Cutting Edge Training, or is it Weird Science?

If you're good at figuring out alien tech on your own and using this figuring-out to gain access to Engineering/TL12^, then it's Weird Science. If you're just repeating what you've been taught, then you have Engineering/TL12^. Weird Science to high-TL skills is somewhat like Linguistics is to Languages: the former makes you better at figuring out the latter.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Weird Science to high-TL skills is somewhat like Linguistics is to Languages: the former makes you better at figuring out the latter.

That's a really good point. Are there more skill combinations like that? Thaumatology and spells aren't quite the same.

[Phil Masters]

This suggests that Weird Science may be a valid skill in quite realistic games where characters are exposed to much higher tech than their own TL. It becomes the skill of "We don't have the faintest idea how the **** this **** really works, but we've deduced a bunch of implicit first principles which kinda sorta make sense on their own terms, and we can work from those to guess which buttons to press".

One imagines a caveman with Weird Science skill working out how to start a car...

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Well, it depends on the campaign.

Take something like Stargate SG-1, where TL8 humans learn to work with alien computers and power systems. Is that Engineering (TL12^) and lots of Cutting Edge Training, or is it Weird Science?

In stargate the folks figuring things out probably have Science!, much in the same way Daniel has Historian! The folks who don't have science! are buying engineering and cutting edge training.

This is probably one reason you don't see weird science as much: if its on the table, Science! is probably appropriate, and as far as bang skills go its a really good deal.