[Basic] Skill of the week: Housekeeping

[Phil Masters]

I'd be careful with words like "laborious". Not to say that traditional pre-TL7 Housekeeping isn't laborious, but the man in that generalised hypothetical marital arrangement might be a coal miner or a trawlerman.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Actually, for campfire cooking, I would allow Survival to substitute.

I tend to distinguish these by what defines a "success". With Survival your campfire product is, um, nutritious. With Housekeeping it tastes good enough you'd still eat it if you had a choice. With Cooking people would pay money for it even when they already have plenty of food on hand.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I agree that these tasks aren't all of a level, but assessing them as +0 to +4 is astonishingly harsh. For the first four, not everyone chooses to do them* on a regular basis, but it's pretty harsh that normal adults who do not have Housekeeping have a 50% chance of somehow managing to fail if they decide to clear off dishes or put a bag in the garbage can.

That's why I said "at the hardest." GURPS doesn't really handle the category of "tasks so easy that a normal adult won't fail at them" very well, other than saying "Don't bother to roll," which may actually be suitable for those.

[Kalzazz]

I have certainly crit failed my housekeeping roll at least once, I destroyed my entire work wardrobe (5 outfits) by washing them with a pen

[Bruno]

Put me down as another person who thinks failing to tidy up is not a failed Housekeeping roll, but a failure to roll Housekeeping in the first place.

The worst case scenario of an extended period of no (or limited) Housekeeping is a hoarding house. Generally tidying up, keeping your possessions organized, and knowing when to throw things out might actually be one of the harder tasks based on daytime TV shows (Martha Stewart, anyone) but if you're actively doing it, it's one of those things where failed rolls can be compensated for later. A critical failure is more like the place being embarrassingly messy when you bring home a date or not being able to find your phone charging cable for days.

Not doing it at all for 20 years results in a house literally packed to the ceiling with nothing but goat trails through the heaps of junk. This is combined with other signs of no Housekeeping (no cleaning, terribly hard to cook, etc). It can even involve what I can only call anti-Housekeeping - stacking and ordering your junk, packing more junk into the same space, using it to reduce the odds of teetering piles of junk falling over and ruining your sorting... I'd say that, too, is a (bizarre) form of Housekeeping.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Put me down as another person who thinks failing to tidy up is not a failed Housekeeping roll, but a failure to roll Housekeeping in the first place.

I think that this is easily confused, because people who lack Housekeeping skill commonly also don't attempt housekeeping very often. In fact it may be a mutually reinforcing cycle.

[Kalzazz]

I'm curious, does the hypothetical case of being called to see the Warden for education regarding the important distinctions between uniforms and cat bedding considered a failure of housekeeping or professional skill or what?

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by 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?"

Complementary skills usually apply to subsequent skill rolls, but I could support using this as a compliment to reaction rolls and HT rolls.

Perhaps also Cooking rolls, and maybe even Surgery. "Is everything stocked, easy to find, and up to date?"

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

I'd be careful with words like "laborious". Not to say that traditional pre-TL7 Housekeeping isn't laborious, but the man in that generalised hypothetical marital arrangement might be a coal miner or a trawlerman.

Yes, but this is a moralistic fable about gender roles or gender relations, so cases which don't fit the moral get quietly ignored. I can't think of any of those American sitcoms where the husband is portrayed as having overcome more by 5 pm than the wife and therefore it being fair for them to take a break.

Edit: in other words, when I spoke of "that pattern" I meant the literary one you described in '90s sitcoms, not the real one from the preindustrial world which you described in previous paragraphs.

In Greg Laden's version of the fable the men of the village spent a lot of time sitting around and telling hunting stories and enjoying the local intoxicant and talking about the awesome hunt they were going on real soon now, while the women of the village were moving and working with their hands. But again, I don't know if he was telling it as objective observation, or as a topos to influence a conversation about gender in the US.

[cosmicfish]

If we look at the three basic tasks of Housekeeping, I think that there are plenty of opportunities to fail (the consequences of not doing it at all being a separate issue):

Cooking: A regular failure would give inedible or simply non-nutritious food, while a critical failure could poison someone - undercooked chicken, anyone?

Cleaning: A regular failure might fail to clean effectively (i.e., you swept the floor but didn't mop even though it was sticky), while a critical failure could create health hazards as bacteria and mold build up.

Minor Repairs: Soooo many opportunities for failure. On a regular failure you fail to correct anything (and since these are usually maintenance-type issues, they can lead to problems down the road), on a critical failure you make things worse - "Great, the sink is still clogged but now there is water shooting everywhere!"