[Basic] Skill of the week: Housekeeping

[lachimba]

Anyone with a full time cleaner or servant probably doesn't have it. Ergo any full time cleaner or servant probably does.

You can be very concerned with appearances, hardworking, cleanliness obsessed and still not have it.

I imagine a model/fashion designer who parties hard, always looks immaculate, but has a full time assistant cleaning up after them.


I don't think I have it. I can vacuum, wash clothes and mop up etc but it's all TM+4 kind of stuff.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by CeeDub

However, I think that one or more points in the skill reflects nicely that a PC makes something of a habit of doing their household chores regularly. They certainly rack up the required amount of hours of practice to pick up a skill point.

ETA: Lack of the skill, on the other hand, is a nice indicator of someone who does household chores only when they have to. Slobs, procrastinators... someone who has no routine for these things and has to make it up as they go. Kind of the definition of defaulting to IQ.

That thought also occured to me, before I read your reply. That points especially in Housekeeping can partly represent ingrained habits (anti-procrastination habits) whereas lack of points in that skill can represent ingrained bad habits. I mean, you can do that with most skills, but it seems to me to make particularly sense for Housekeeping.

Only partly, though, because there is still that thing about knowing which detergents to use to get out a difficult stain, without needing to use your Contact (Parent w. higher Housekeeping skill). And even more so a professional cleaner, as depicted in Luc Besson movies or in GURPS Action, knows how to remove stuff quickly.

[Gedrin]

I've required Housekeeping rolls to determine reaction modifiers when meeting someone at the home. "Did you keep the living room clean or is it full of armor your workaholic character is cleaning?"

Similarly, I've allowed Housekeeping to modify chances to catch local diseases. "Do you have rodents?" "Did you put away the food properly?"

Oddly, the most frequent use has been in cases where the PC's wanted to stock up quickly or find something in their home. "Is the pantry well stocked?" "Can I find a hammer?" "Do I have an A cell in a drawer?" (Obviously, if it's explicitly in their inventory, they keep track of it, but not necessarily so for common household items and tools.)

[simply Nathan]

I've "used" it in Stat Yourself threads and on one or two fantasy heroes.

[Pseudonym]

It's a funny thing. It's one of those skills that seems super recommended because it's usefulness is underestimated supposedly, but then again, in a meta-game sense, a lot of people follow the advice that you only exercise skill rolls when the result of failure might be "interesting." Cleaning evidence I guess is one place where failure might be "interesting" but the likely failure of me mopping my kitchen is... I have some streaks or a missed spot, and a critical failure might be... I need to go by more cleaner, which *probably* doesn't count as interesting enough to roll for. (I have to hand it to some people thinking of ways to make it interesting though)

Now "mopping my kitchen" isn't a task executed under adventuring levels of stress, so I assume I have some high modifiers to make a foregone conclusion even more gone than 'fore, but what might be a situation where one is performing any of these housekeeping tasks under adventuring levels of stress?

• Darning socks
• Cleaning house
• Paying bills
• Cooking simple meals
• Yardwork

I kinda like the earlier mentions of using it for assisting reaction modifiers, or having everything well organized and stocked, so maybe a good mechanical usage of housekeeping could be to convert cost of living expenses into something useful? Maybe, if you have a good housekeeping ability, you own all the staples you need for everyday living because you thought ahead to keep the kitchen stocked, the supply closet full, and the toolshed in working order? Maybe, a good housekeeping roll could give a discount on monthly cost of living because you shopped smart and didn't have to shell out for expensive repairs because you've been maintaining your home appliances?

Just spitballing, because I legitimately think it is a kind of interesting topic, but I've never seen it applied practically, and usually when I hear about it being applied, it kinda feels like it is being used as a solution to a lateral thinking puzzle (although, that's interesting too) rather than in a totally straightforward "intended" way.

But then again, sometimes background skills are just background skills, and sometimes one character point in one skill just doesn't have the mechanical benefit of one character point in another skill.

[RogerBW]

It's not clear to me whether I have this skill (depending on how the split with Cooking works, but I don't want to open that can of worms again). This generally seems to show up on about one character per party, more in more realistically low-level games.

I don't think it's ever particularly come up in play, other than as a quick roll for "my friends are coming over, how much of a pit is my place".

Naturally it should appear on the template for a robotic vacuum cleaner. (And if you think nobody would want to play one, how about a robotic vacuum cleaner possessed by a murderous spirit?)

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by lachimba

Anyone with a full time cleaner or servant probably doesn't have it.

Well, there is the old joke about the person who frantically cleans and tidies the house just before the cleaner is due, in order to avoid having the cleaner think the worst of them. Said to occur quite regularly in reality, actually.

That probably ties up to the phenomenon of someone who has risen from Status 0 to Status 1 or higher. They probably learned Housekeeping before - indeed, the rise may be partly down to them having a well-organised, tidy lifestyle - but at higher levels, not having a cleaner or servant would be considered declassé in many societies.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Naturally it should appear on the template for a robotic vacuum cleaner.

Yes, it should really appear very regularly on character sheets for AI companions in Transhuman Space. (They teleoperate the robot vacuum cleaner if necessary.)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Well, there is the old joke about the person who frantically cleans and tidies the house just before the cleaner is due, in order to avoid having the cleaner think the worst of them. Said to occur quite regularly in reality, actually.

I actually know someone who has a more pathological version: "I can't hire a cleaner because I can't get things clean enough to have them come in."

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

I don't think it's ever particularly come up in play, other than as a quick roll for "my friends are coming over, how much of a pit is my place".

I've seen it happen a few times as "Someone has Housekeeping, so this is no problem."

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I've seen it happen a few times as "Someone has Housekeeping, so this is no problem."

This is probably how it gets used most often in my games too. The thing is Housekeeping is a lot like Mechanic (something that won't break repairably during an adventure), or even Armoury (heavy weapons) - it may cover routine maintenance of stuff that might even be vitally important to have working, but you're not going to play out making the rolls, because they are still *routine*.

A lot of job skills have much the same problem, you only roll against them for monthly job rolls. Requiring a monthly Housekeeping for pretty much everybody and inflicting some minor injury, illness or substantial repair expense on a critical failure wouldn't actually be unreasonable. Hm, maybe a model based on freelance jobs with margins of success reducing your monthly cost of living instead of generating "real" income.