Cost of HT.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Xplo

You seem to think a lot of things are useless clutter. Talents, Skills...

I don't think that about Talents or Skills as general matters. My issues are with specific implementations that I consider flawed.

I've seen, played and even playtested the sort of super-simple games you describe but I generally find them frustrating. The lack of detail doesn't give my imagination anything to work with. Indeed, the general lack of constraints and borders leaves thee whole exercise rather amoebic as well as anemic

I don't know that I could fit all te Skills I would want in a rpg into Anthony's upper limit of 50 but with generous use of Craft, Hobby, Prpfession and Science Skills it might be possible..

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I don't know that I could fit all te Skills I would want in a rpg into Anthony's upper limit of 50 but with generous use of Craft, Hobby, Prpfession and Science Skills it might be possible..

Some variant on that is what most games do. Also, combat is often removed from the skill system entirely -- you just have some 'aptitude for hitting things' stats, and then advantages.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Some variant on that is what most games do. Also, combat is often removed from the skill system entirely -- you just have some 'aptitude for hitting things' stats, and then advantages.

Realistically, a lot of what 'combat' covers could be covered under 'psychological ability to ignore harmful input, ruthlessness".

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I don't think that about Talents or Skills as general matters. My issues are with specific implementations that I consider flawed.

Oh? I've misunderstood you, then.

I've seen, played and even playtested the sort of super-simple games you describe but I generally find them frustrating. The lack of detail doesn't give my imagination anything to work with. Indeed, the general lack of constraints and borders leaves thee whole exercise rather amoebic as well as anemic

It takes a certain kind - which is not to imply any deficiency on your part. I've played a few super-simple, narrative-heavy, strong-player-agency games myself, and without clear constraints it can be a real challenge to decide what kind of narrative is appropriate.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anthony

There is also a point where putting more Skills in your game system is useless clutter. Most game systems do fine with somewhere in the range of 20-50.

Fine for very narrow systems and settings. But Gurps is supposed to work for all imaginable settings. 20-50 skills wouldn't begin to cut it.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Fine for very narrow systems and settings. But Gurps is supposed to work for all imaginable settings. 20-50 skills wouldn't begin to cut it.

We could probably cut it down to 100 or fewer between the entries for Hobby Skill, Professional SKill, Expert Skill, and how many skills have /TL specializations.

[Anthony]

Okay, as an experiment, looking at the first 20 skills in Basic (excluding ones that are already part of something else)

1. Accounting: discard; becomes part of Merchant
2. Acrobatics: keep
3. Acting: keep
4. Administration: discard, becomes part of Leadership
5. Alchemy: discard, it's either supernatural ability (becomes part of the magic system) or Knowledge(chemistry)
6. Animal Handling: typically it's just a Profession; extraordinary ability in this area is a power.
7. Anthropology: discard, becomes a Science
8. Architecture: discard, becomes a Science
9. Area Knowledge: probably put into a general Knowledge category.
10. Armoury: discard, becomes a Profession
11. Artillery: becomes a Combat skill.
12. Artist: expand to becomes a category
13. Astronony: science
14. Autohypnosis: delete; buy appropriate advantages
15. Beam Weapons: combat
16. Bicycling: becomes a Vehicle skill
17. Bioengineering: becomes a Science skill
18. Biology: becomes a Science skill
19. Blind Fighting: becomes an advantage.
20. Blowpipe: becomes a Combat skill

That looks entirely reasonable to get all of GURPS skills under 50.

[vicky_molokh]

I like the overall idea of streamlining skills even more than they were in 4e.
50? Maybe. Not sure, really.

But what worries me is the 'becomes an advantage' approach. If taken to the logical end, we'll get things like 'Ally, requires having an NPC in front of you and winning a QC against said NPC', 'Snatcher, requires tools, materials, and a roll' etc. for things like Diplomacy, Smith etc.
I am of course slightly exaggerating, but it is a real issue:
We already have a confusing structure where some of the things people learn in school or dojo or boot camp (e.g. Languages, Cultural Familiarity, Combat Reflexes etc.) are Advantages.
In general, it makes sense to turn things that are never rolled into Advantages, and to make most Advantages (such as Common Sense) have no roll required unless a proper Limitation is taken.

[wellspring]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's still a bit overly broad, in that social skills are poorly correlated with academic skills in either fiction or reality, and linguistic vs mathematical, while more correlated, are still not strongly correlated. That leaves out fields such as art, which also aren't very correlated but usually doesn't matter that much to games so making them into stats seems off.

One need only turn on the TV to see that there's little practical overlap between analytical ability and social skills.

Besides, it fits with the stories we want to tell. Why does the loveable lunk have to blow lots of points buying himself out from under the social skill penalties of having a low IQ? The socially awkward genius (or the arrogant, abrasive one) is a staple of fiction. Think of how many points he gets buying up his int, and then buying it back down in the form of PER, WILL, and Charisma penalties. Doing that essentially gives you IQ as a 5pt/lvl talent, at least until you hit your campaign's disadvantage limit.

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

I think 10/level is a fair price for IQ once Per and Will are removed and turned into their own attributes. DX is okay at 20/level but would be better at 15/level. I think HT is priced fine the way it is, but I'm removing its influence on Basic Speed as silly and a conceptual mess.

IQ is very broad. If you could partition off social skills into their own Attribute and separate out PER and WILL as well, it would still cover quite a lot of ground. But not so much that 10pts/lvl is too cheap. Many IQ skills are less useful in game than the ones based on DX, and many also have significant overlap with other IQ skills.

Recently, I've changed Charisma from an advantage to a core attribute, migrated the social skills (especially the influence skills) to be CH-based rather than IQ-based, and tweaked Influence and Reaction roll systems to accommodate the changes. It works surprisingly well, at least so far. I wrote it up to post to a thread a few months back, but then I started to think that it might be a nice submission to Pyramid instead.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I like the overall idea of streamlining skills even more than they were in 4e.
50? Maybe. Not sure, really.

I wish it were possible to get the number so low. I removed all that I could (I have a post on the topic), and still came in at over 120.

I don't know how I could cut that list in half.