There is only Lite

[Anders]

As for the title of the thread, I would also have accepted "Let there be Lite!"

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Most composers are, if not masters, at least basically competent with every musical instrument they'll be composing music for.

Absolutely not. Being able to write a melody and to imagine what sound it will give is very different from being able to play it. Most composers are highly competent with one musical instrument. They are also often able to play well a couple of other ones. Most often they master the piano or the guitar (or both), because it involves accords. And they have learned the theories of melody and musical composition.

But they absolutely don't know how to play all musical instrument. It is as impossible as knowing all human languages. Of course, they can easily play a very basic and simple little music for children like "Brother Peter" on many instruments, but it is very different from being competent with these instruments.

I play the recorder. I can compose and write little musics that someone will play with a violin, a trumpet, an electric guitar, etc. But, though I learned to play the violin for four years, I am now unable to play it correctly, I've never been able to play complex musics on it, and I'm also unable to play the elcetric guitar or to make the least sound with a trumpet. It doesn't prevent me to imagine what my melodies will give with these instruments (composed thanks to my recorder) and it doesn't prevent a trumpet player or a guitarist to play them easily.

Originally Posted by Anthony

In any case, while this may be a realism issue, I really don't see a game balance issue.

It is not something that would break the rules, indeed. But it is still a balance issue: the player wants to create a musical composer in a campaign which is supposed to be realistic. He takes the most broad musical skill for that at a high level (nothing more logical): Music (Very hard)-18. But he suddenly realizes that his character is able to play every musical instrument in the world with only the familiarity default... His character suddenly becomes an incredible star attraction.

This is almost as unbalanced as taking a too high level of IQ and suddenly realizing that the character knows all mental skill at an unrealistic default level. It doesn't break the rules but it makes a game which was supposed to be realistic totally unrealistic.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Gollum

But it is still a balance issue: the player wants to create a musical composer in a campaign which is supposed to be realistic. He takes the most broad musical skill for that at a high level (nothing more logical): Music (Very hard)-18. But he suddenly realizes that his character is able to play every musical instrument in the world with only the familiarity default... His character suddenly becomes an incredible star attraction.

Really... so what? Charisma would be more effective. RPGs are about heroes, not average Joes, and "good at every instrument" is a perfectly reasonable concept that really doesn't need to be particularly expensive. Musical ability in 3e was 1p/level and failed to break the game.

[dataweaver]

Bear in mind that the Pyramid article tha triggered this involved taking the Guns skill’s nine specialties and replacing them with three specialties plus two techniques, and made the claim that doing so actually improved realism.

I’d be interested in identifying other cases where GURPS may have overspecialized (whether it be through needlessly long and narrow lists of specializations for skills such as weapons or vehicle operation skills, or through too many separate skills that would be better handled as required specializations of a common skill). This topic came about with the suggestion that much of the requested consolidation has already been done by GURPS Lite; thus the notion that we start with its skill list and go from there.

Ultimately, I don’t see this as a play balance issue at all; strictly a realism issue.

[dataweaver]

I’d be inclined to generalize Lite’s Thrown Weapon skill into a form similar to Missile Weapon (i.e., something with varying-difficulty versions) and to incorporate Bolas, Lasso, and Throwing into that instead of Missile Weapon. The distinction is the difference between Spear Throwing (under Thrown Weapon) and operating a Spear Thrower (under Missile Weapon).

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Really... so what? Charisma would be more effective. RPGs are about heroes, not average Joes, and "good at every instrument" is a perfectly reasonable concept that really doesn't need to be particularly expensive.

It all depends on what kind of campaign you want to play. GURPS is not only a universal roleplaying system. It is also a generic one. Which means that you can play in every possible genre.

So, if you can play larger than life heroes like Rambo you are also supposed to be able to play more realistic ones like the soldiers of Platoon or Full Metal Jacket. Or even ordinary characters like you and me suddenly involved in an unexpected adventure (an horror campaign or a post-apocalyptic survival one, for instance).

Originally Posted by Anthony

Musical ability in 3e was 1p/level and failed to break the game.

First, I never said it broke the game. I just said it could unbalance it. Second, Music was just one example.

Let's take Pilot or Driving if you prefer. The problem would be the same. The player wants to create an realistic soldier who is able to pilot and drive several vehicles (like a friend of mine, in our real world) and suddenly has a larger than life character able to use any vehicle including extraterrestrial UFO.

That would not break the game. But that would unbalance the realism of the campaign and could even transform a campaign full of suspense (The Invaders) in an adventure as funny as the A-Team, with heroes able to repair everything, to drive and pilot everything, to use any kind of weapon at amazing level, and so on.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Ultimately, I don’t see this as a play balance issue at all; strictly a realism issue.

Which becomes a problem of play balance as soon as you want your campaign is supposed to be realistic.

Again, I'm not saying that it would break the game. Wildcard skills do exist in GURPS and they don't break the game. But if the GM wants a realistic game, he doesn't use wildcard skills (which are unrealistic and clearly pointed out as unrealistic).

Making "Wildcard" skills like Music (Very Hard), Pilot (Very hard) and Guns (Very hard) the base of the system would make GURPS loose it's generic feature and some of what makes it unique: a game that emphasizes realism. GURPS would then become just another larger than life universal roleplaying system, as Savage World and the Hero System...

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

I’d be interested in identifying other cases where GURPS may have overspecialized (whether it be through needlessly long and narrow lists of specializations for skills such as weapons or vehicle operation skills, or through too many separate skills that would be better handled as required specializations of a common skill).

I would be really interested by that too.

In my opinion, what makes GURPS skill list unintuitive is precisely that some skills are uselessly detailed. It doesn't bring anything to the game, neither from a realistic point of view, nor from a game play one.

Having different skills for driving, or musical instrument brings realism for those who wants it. It avoid every character to become super-pilot-drivers like Looping in the A-team. And those who want characters like him can use the appropriate Wildcard skill.

The different Mathematics subskills may be realistic, but they are absolutely useless during an adventure. Who ever used Mathematic (pure) in a game? And what is absolutely not realistic is the fact that Mathematics is not treated as Physics and Biology. These skills, in reality, have about the same complexity.

Ditto for History. It may sound realistic, but some real people still have very good generic history knowledges. Secondary school history teachers for instance. Unfortunately, they are hard to build without introducing Wildcard skills, which sound a bit strange in a realistic campaign.

[dataweaver]

Originally Posted by Gollum

Which becomes a problem of play balance as soon as you want your campaign is supposed to be realistic.

“Play balance” has a very specific meaning to me, namely some sort of “handicapping” applied during character creation with the intent of restricting design choices so that no one character can dominate the game. The lack of realism in skills becomes a problem as soon as you want a campaign that feels realistic; but it’s not a problem of play balance; it’s strictly a problem of realism (or rather, of suspension of disbelief).

Originally Posted by Gollum

Again, I'm not saying that it would break the game. Wildcard skills do exist in GURPS and they don't break the game. But if the GM wants a realistic game, he doesn't use wildcard skills (which are unrealistic and clearly pointed out as unrealistic).

Making "Wildcard" skills like Music (Very Hard), Pilot (Very hard) and Guns (Very hard) the base of the system would make GURPS loose it's generic feature and some of what makes it unique: a game that emphasizes realism. GURPS would then become just another larger than life universal roleplaying system, as Savage World and the Hero System...

Agreed on all of this. On the subject of Wildcard Skills, I’m thinking seriously of using Buckets of Points from the latest issue of Pyramid, with one of the buckets being Special Abilities and with Wildcard Skills being paid for out of that bucket rather than being covered by the regular Skills bucket. I may even ditch the tripled cost when doing so, on the basis that the price was tripled to set up a differential between regular skills and Wildcard skills that’s not needed when they’re being paid for out of unrelated pools.

But excessively broad skills that exist primarily as a basis for replacing required specializations with optional specializations? No thanks.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by dataweaver

Bear in mind that the Pyramid article tha triggered this involved taking the Guns skill’s nine specialties and replacing them with three specialties plus two techniques, and made the claim that doing so actually improved realism.

True, but that doesn't mean it's entirely the direction I went. In any case, most of the skills with mandatory specialties do have quite substantial shared skills between specialties (to go to the music example, the technical skill of playing a violin isn't very related to the tuba, but there's still quite a lot of shared skill in the form of timing, tuning, melody, ...), so you should probably get some sort of discount for a related skill (which isn't exactly the same thing as a default).

Strict realism, however, often involves microskills -- someone doesn't have 'math', he has linear algebra and tensor calculus and ordinary differential equations and...