Book Idea: GURPS Skills

[McAllister]

GURPS has a lot of skills. Different amounts of text are dedicated to each, which is fair: the Exorcism skill is the best place to describe an exorcism, probably, and Crossbow is pretty self-explanatory. But some of them would justify their own supplements: Boardrooms and Curia isn't precisely GURPS Politics, but it's close. What strikes me as more feasible than a supplement for every skill, though, is a book dedicated entirely to skills. For each skill, I'd love to see some combination of the following:

• At-length description of the skill
• Explanation of why other skills allow defaults to this one
• Distinctions between the skill and related ones (what's the difference between Economics and Finance? Body Language and Detect Lies? Electronics Operation: Media and Photography?)
• Common and uncommon uses for the skill
• Common and uncommon modifiers that may apply to the skill
• Techniques that are specific to the skill

EDIT: Now with contributions from other brains!

• Applications of superhuman skill levels, if any
• Familiarity and optional specialization examples
• "If I wanted to cut down the skill list, what skill could do this skill's job?"
• Skills through the ages; does use change much over TL?
• What tools are required to avoid a penalty? Do any provide a bonus? Does this change over TL?
• What genre(s) is this skill appropriate or inappropriate for?

SAME EDIT: That's a long list! I'm sure there are some skills that deserve to have every one of those points lavished with attention over the course of a full page or more, but I'm envisioning a book where, if there's nothing interesting to say for a given point, it's omitted. I don't think anyone needs to be told whether Sewing is appropriate for an Action game. If you take it, you know full well it's so you can say "before we turn in for the night, I'll stitch all the bullet holes in Burt's jacket shut so he doesn't draw attention at the office tomorrow."

There should also, like Talents and Wildcard Skills, be a second section that discusses skills in a general sense. Talk about solo complementary skills. Talk about helping other peoples' skill use. Talk about techniques that might be applicable to a variety of skills. Talk about learning skills in play, and give some realistic/cinematic levers to adjust that. Maybe there can be a list of Cinematic Defaults, defaults that wouldn't be allowed in a gritty campaign but might be reasonable for a campaign where breadth in competence is appropriate even without wildcard skills. Maybe there's a discussion of when and how it's appropriate to cap skills: when it's best to cap them at Attribute+5, when it's best to cap them at 20, when it's best to soft-cap them, when it's best not to cap them at all.

Would there be a market for a supplement like that among forumgoers? What length would be thinking about? I'm thinking it wouldn't be ~250 pages like Powers or Martial Arts. Could 150 get the job done? What do you think?

[Agent]

Sounds like a winner to me. Can also throw in more Familiarity examples for skills it could apply to.

I know some people have advocated for a more streamlined skill list somewhere between default and the cinematic feel of Wildcard skills, so there's that as well. But then maybe someone already did it...

[lvalero]

It would be useful if this book, for each skill, includes the genres where it is useful/advised. Such as Action, Soap opera, DF, Horror, ATE ...

In some genres also some different skills can be simplified in one. Or just the opposite

[Mailanka]

That would be a huge book!

[mehrkat]

I second the notion of suggestions for simplifying the skills list by genre and time period. Including combining skills based on the time period and suggestions of how to combine (should the type Easy, Average, Hard, Very Hard stay the same. Should specializations disappear in certain time periods, genres)

The skill list is a little overwhelming having a way to simply for individual games would be a nobrainer purchase for me almost without the other things.

[McAllister]

I'll edit the main post to incorporate the suggestions! They all look good to me.

It COULD be a huge book, but how many skills justify a full-page write-up, anyway? Many, I'm sure, but maybe not 100. It should include the combat skills, but Martial Arts goes into them in detail, so no need to reprint everything in there; the category skills like Electronics Operation might spill over a page to get into all the subcategories, but for every skill like that, I'm sure there are several that don't need a full page. With no experience in the matter whatsoever, I feel it could be 3/5 the size of Powers or Martial Arts and get its job done.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by McAllister

I'll edit the main post to incorporate the suggestions! They all look good to me.

It COULD be a huge book, but how many skills justify a full-page write-up, anyway? Many, I'm sure, but maybe not 100. It should include the combat skills, but Martial Arts goes into them in detail, so no need to reprint everything in there; the category skills like Electronics Operation might spill over a page to get into all the subcategories, but for every skill like that, I'm sure there are several that don't need a full page. With no experience in the matter whatsoever, I feel it could be 3/5 the size of Powers or Martial Arts and get its job done.

The thing is, Martial Arts already IS a book about skills. And it's huge! Social Engineering includes a lot of material on skills, and it's not small. So covering all the skills in one book would mean simply duplicating a lot of material from those two books, which would lessen the appeal.

If you didn't duplicate, but did a book on "all the other skills," its appeal would be a lot less focused. "This is the book to go to for information on how to do scientific research/create works of art/repair machinery/build things/survive in the wilderness/run a business."

Skills as a concept are really simple, much simpler than powers or magic. You can sum up all the general principles in a few pages. And then all you have left is details on how particular skills work.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by McAllister

GURPS has a lot of skills. Different amounts of text are dedicated to each, which is fair: the Exorcism skill is the best place to describe an exorcism, probably, and Crossbow is pretty self-explanatory. But some of them would justify their own supplements: Boardrooms and Curia isn't precisely GURPS Politics, but it's close. What strikes me as more feasible than a supplement for every skill, though, is a book dedicated entirely to skills. For each skill, I'd love to see some combination of the following:

• At-length description of the skill
• Explanation of why other skills allow defaults to this one
• Distinctions between the skill and related ones (what's the difference between Economics and Finance? Body Language and Detect Lies? Electronics Operation: Media and Photography?)
• Common and uncommon uses for the skill
• Common and uncommon modifiers that may apply to the skill
• Techniques that are specific to the skill

EDIT: Now with contributions from other brains!

• Applications of superhuman skill levels, if any
• Familiarity and optional specialization examples
• "If I wanted to cut down the skill list, what skill could do this skill's job?"
• Skills through the ages; does use change much over TL?
• What tools are required to avoid a penalty? Do any provide a bonus? Does this change over TL?
• What genre(s) is this skill appropriate or inappropriate for?

SAME EDIT: That's a long list! I'm sure there are some skills that deserve to have every one of those points lavished with attention over the course of a full page or more, but I'm envisioning a book where, if there's nothing interesting to say for a given point, it's omitted. I don't think anyone needs to be told whether Sewing is appropriate for an Action game. If you take it, you know full well it's so you can say "before we turn in for the night, I'll stitch all the bullet holes in Burt's jacket shut so he doesn't draw attention at the office tomorrow."

There should also, like Talents and Wildcard Skills, be a second section that discusses skills in a general sense. Talk about solo complementary skills. Talk about helping other peoples' skill use. Talk about techniques that might be applicable to a variety of skills. Talk about learning skills in play, and give some realistic/cinematic levers to adjust that. Maybe there can be a list of Cinematic Defaults, defaults that wouldn't be allowed in a gritty campaign but might be reasonable for a campaign where breadth in competence is appropriate even without wildcard skills. Maybe there's a discussion of when and how it's appropriate to cap skills: when it's best to cap them at Attribute+5, when it's best to cap them at 20, when it's best to soft-cap them, when it's best not to cap them at all.

Would there be a market for a supplement like that among forumgoers? What length would be thinking about? I'm thinking it wouldn't be ~250 pages like Powers or Martial Arts. Could 150 get the job done? What do you think?

It sounds to me like you want a bound printout of the Skill of the Week threads.

I'm thinking it wouldn't be ~250 pages, either - that's far too small for everything you want to include.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by McAllister

Talk about learning skills in play, and give some realistic/cinematic levers to adjust that.

Seems to me there's already a book that talks about that, in considerable detail. In fact I wrote it. . . .

[McAllister]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Seems to me there's already a book that talks about that, in considerable detail. In fact I wrote it. . . .

That's relevant to my interests! But, looking at your works on Goodreads, it's not obvious which one you're referring to. Is that list complete?

Also relevant to my interests: the Skill of the Week posts! I'm not sure I'd want to print out the whole threads, and I'm not sure "what templates has this appeared on" is the most useful information, but they're absolutely trying to do the thing I'm interested in, and I think they're heroic.