Savage Worlds (or other reduced) skill list?

[DaosusLeghki]

What would happen if I were to use the Savage Worlds skill list (32 skills total) or another, reduced, skill list? I could price the skills as VH or even Wildcard skills. Sub-skills covered by the high level skill would be increased as Techniques.

Does this sound crazy? What problems would you anticipate in such an approach?

An example:

Healing (IQ/VH) covers Diagnosis (IQ/H). If a character wanted to be an good healer, they could buy Healing IQ+2 for [16]. They would roll for any skill covered by Healing at IQ+2. If they wanted to be especially good at diagnosis, they could spend [3] more to get Diagnosis IQ+4 (That is, Healing +2)

[Raekai]

Originally Posted by DaosusLeghki

What would happen if I were to use the Savage Worlds skill list (32 skills total) or another, reduced, skill list? I could price the skills as VH or even Wildcard skills. Sub-skills covered by the high level skill would be increased as Techniques.

Does this sound crazy? What problems would you anticipate in such an approach?

An example:

Healing (IQ/VH) covers Diagnosis (IQ/H). If a character wanted to be an good healer, they could buy Healing IQ+2 for [16]. They would roll for any skill covered by Healing at IQ+2. If they wanted to be especially good at diagnosis, they could spend [3] more to get Diagnosis IQ+4 (That is, Healing +2)

I'm not super familiar with Savage Worlds's skill list. At 30-ish skills total, if they cover all/most of the normal skills, I think it's fair to make each a wildcard skill.

I recommend looking at "Pointless Slaying and Looting" from Pyramid #3/72: Alternate Dungeons and "Pointless Monster Hunting" from Pyramid #3/83: Alternate GURPS IV. Each has about 30 wildcard skills used to have full skill comprehension (for the genre, at least) with some overlap, of course. That's why I said I would make a total of 30-ish skills wildcard skills. If you're looking at further streamlining characters, the "pointless" systems are great for that.

Right now, I am using a modified version of the skill list found in Fate Condensed: Art, Athletics, Burglary, Deceive, Empathy, Everyman, Fight, Humanities, Lore, Investigate, Nature, Provoke, Rapport, Science, Shoot, Stealth, Technology, and Vehicles. Each of these is a ×5 wildcard skill instead of the normal ×3 wildcard skill as there are fewer of them, so each covers a greater scope. Of course, as you said, characters are able to buy up certain uses (skills) of the wildcard skill. However, I wouldn't price them as techniques. I priced them at 2 points/level like a Racial Skill Bonus, though I think 3 points/level would also be rather fair.

Furthermore, just to throw it out there, I also use Strength, Agility, Finesse, Health, Charisma, Intellect, Perception, Willpower, Resources, and Contacts as my main attributes. Each is 10 points/level.

For what it's worth, my players and I really enjoy the reduced skill list.

[Black Leviathan]

You'd limit the stories you can tell. Not to be overly critical of people who want to make a game their own to better tell the stories they want to tell, but that is the function of a skill list. It is there to mechanically define who characters are, their profession, training, specialization. It is the difference between a Shaolin Monk and an Irish bare-knuckle brawler. It is especially relevant to games where characters can be defined as much by their expertise as by their incompetence. When you reduce those options you end up making all of the characters more similar, but more importantly you remove characters that could be made be taking away the things that make those characters distinct. That's not specifically a bad thing. It could be an effect you want to deliberately create. But I feel like you're more-so trying to make the game more simplified.

[Apollonian]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

You'd limit the stories you can tell. Not to be overly critical of people who want to make a game their own to better tell the stories they want to tell, but that is the function of a skill list. It is there to mechanically define who characters are, their profession, training, specialization. It is the difference between a Shaolin Monk and an Irish bare-knuckle brawler. It is especially relevant to games where characters can be defined as much by their expertise as by their incompetence. When you reduce those options you end up making all of the characters more similar, but more importantly you remove characters that could be made be taking away the things that make those characters distinct. That's not specifically a bad thing. It could be an effect you want to deliberately create. But I feel like you're more-so trying to make the game more simplified.

No.

Look, by that logic, the best system for characters is the one that creates the most mechanical differentiation between them. You should have thousands of points of differentiation - separate skills for every make and model of gun, every possible movement of the body, every shading of technique. That's the path to stultifying quibbles and dreary procedures instead of actually playing a game.

The amount of resolution on the character sheet and in game should be exactly as much as the players at that table want to represent their characters. For a lot of us, extra traits on the character sheet aren't empowering. They're a burden. They make it harder to play the game. It's more to remember, more to deal with, more to feel stupid about because you got it wrong.

The fact that GURPS has SO MUCH to handle is one of the reasons my group has dropped it. I still think it's a great game. But it's absolutely a nightmare to try to streamline it, especially if you ask for help on this board, because grognards will jump in and tell you how the only thing that matters is scrupulous, excruciating, simulating detail. Preferably about combat. Or magic. Or other elaborate, beautifully crafted and complex subsystems that can fill up an evening with dice rolling and math and maps and tactical solutions.

Makes it damn hard to bring new players in. They'd rather play something simple. And to be honest, I'd rather run something simple. So... we're playing Savage Worlds, with all its weird dice mechanics and fast, furious play. I'd rather be running GURPS, but streamlining it was so much work that I gave up - and previous attempts with this group had burned the most complexity-shy pretty hard.

... Sorry. Touchy subject for me these days. GURPS is a good game, and it deserves more love than it gets.

[DaosusLeghki]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

No.

Look, by that logic, the best system for characters is the one that creates the most mechanical differentiation between them. You should have thousands of points of differentiation - separate skills for every make and model of gun, every possible movement of the body, every shading of technique. That's the path to stultifying quibbles and dreary procedures instead of actually playing a game.

The amount of resolution on the character sheet and in game should be exactly as much as the players at that table want to represent their characters. For a lot of us, extra traits on the character sheet aren't empowering. They're a burden. They make it harder to play the game. It's more to remember, more to deal with, more to feel stupid about because you got it wrong.

The fact that GURPS has SO MUCH to handle is one of the reasons my group has dropped it. I still think it's a great game. But it's absolutely a nightmare to try to streamline it, especially if you ask for help on this board, because grognards will jump in and tell you how the only thing that matters is scrupulous, excruciating, simulating detail. Preferably about combat. Or magic. Or other elaborate, beautifully crafted and complex subsystems that can fill up an evening with dice rolling and math and maps and tactical solutions.

Makes it damn hard to bring new players in. They'd rather play something simple. And to be honest, I'd rather run something simple. So... we're playing Savage Worlds, with all its weird dice mechanics and fast, furious play. I'd rather be running GURPS, but streamlining it was so much work that I gave up - and previous attempts with this group had burned the most complexity-shy pretty hard.

... Sorry. Touchy subject for me these days. GURPS is a good game, and it deserves more love than it gets.

I really feel this attitude is missing in gaming. Games should be fun. And yeah, I know I will limit character choice. But I limit character choice any time I define a setting. I limit character choice when I say that this advantage is allowed but this one is not.

Also, notably, I limit character choice when I tell a player he can't heal his buddy's disease because he took First Aid and Physician but not Diagnosis.

Also, in many ways, GURPS needs an instruction manual. It already has 2 (GURPS For Dummies and How To Be A GURPS GM), but it needs one more for players. For instance, what skills do I need to play a doctor? Whoops, I forgot Diagnosis, and now I can't cure diseases. Well, that sucks.

My options are not between infinitely detailed characters and wooden stumps who walk from town to town killing monsters. The choice is between trying GURPS and continuing to play Savage Worlds.

I've been lurking on the forums for years now, and I just wish that SJ Games would release the game that the developers play. I keep hearing of these rules-lite, streamlined versions of the game, but most stuff released for it is full of modifier hunting details.

The objective of this thought experiment is to create an option between "use no skills" and "better get the skill list so we can look up what Economics defaults to." And to do it without breaking the game while giving players a way to make effective characters without becoming masters in the system. Bonus points for getting the character point costs about in line with utility.

Oh, and to the people typing about Templates, you can't use those, they restrict character choice.

*edit* The fact that prior to How To Be A GURPS GM I had to get the list of Everyman Skills and Action Hero skills from a forum post is shameful.

[ravenfish]

While the long skill list is one of the things I personally enjoy about GURPS (when playing a "face", whether I focus on Fast-Talk or Diplomacy is not merely an interesting strategic choice, but something that drives characterization), I don't deny that a comprehensive wildcard skill list- a set of a few dozen at most that, between them, covered essentially everything- would be a worthwhile endeavor.

[DaosusLeghki]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

While the long skill list is one of the things I personally enjoy about GURPS (when playing a "face", whether I focus on Fast-Talk or Diplomacy is not merely an interesting strategic choice, but something that drives characterization), I don't deny that a comprehensive wildcard skill list- a set of a few dozen at most that, between them, covered essentially everything- would be a worthwhile endeavor.

Well, the reason I mentioned buying sub-skills as a Technique is that if that's something that you care about, you have the option to dial it in more. If it isn't, you can just say "my guy talk good," drop a bunch of points on "Social" and be done. It does necessarily mean that the character that specialized will be better at using that sub-skill, and (for the same points) worse at everything else.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

You'd limit the stories you can tell. Not to be overly critical of people who want to make a game their own to better tell the stories they want to tell, but that is the function of a skill list. It is there to mechanically define who characters are, their profession, training, specialization. It is the difference between a Shaolin Monk and an Irish bare-knuckle brawler. It is especially relevant to games where characters can be defined as much by their expertise as by their incompetence. When you reduce those options you end up making all of the characters more similar, but more importantly you remove characters that could be made be taking away the things that make those characters distinct. That's not specifically a bad thing. It could be an effect you want to deliberately create. But I feel like you're more-so trying to make the game more simplified.

Yes, but sometimes the stories you want to tell don't involve precise and accurate distinctions between characters. If you wanted to run a heavy duty martial arts campaign, you'd want a lot of detail to specific skills and abilities. But in some campaigns, you don't want to be that precise either because you want to avoid a long list of skills or because the distinction simply isn't important for your game. Perhaps you're more concerned about the personalities (i.e., mental disadvantages) of your monk & brawler rather than precise distinctions in skills.

[Rupert]

Note that Savage Worlds actually has a lot more than 30 skills. It just hides a whole bunch of them in the 'Knowledge' entry.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by DaosusLeghki

What would happen if I were to use the Savage Worlds skill list (32 skills total) or another, reduced, skill list? I could price the skills as VH or even Wildcard skills. Sub-skills covered by the high level skill would be increased as Techniques.

Does this sound crazy? What problems would you anticipate in such an approach?

An example:

Healing (IQ/VH) covers Diagnosis (IQ/H). If a character wanted to be an good healer, they could buy Healing IQ+2 for [16]. They would roll for any skill covered by Healing at IQ+2. If they wanted to be especially good at diagnosis, they could spend [3] more to get Diagnosis IQ+4 (That is, Healing +2)

Well, Savage Worlds is kind of an odd example because some skills are as broad or broader than GURPS Wildcard skills (e.g., Fighting) and some are pretty narrow (Climbing, Intimidation.) The Angel/Buffy Cinematic Unisystem RPGs have a more reasonable list - 17 skills that would be Wildcards in GURPS plus a fill in the blank option (called Wild card strangely enough) for oddball cases.

If you want to go the all Wildcard skill route, I recommend the GURPS Wildcard skills supplement as it gives a long list of such skills as well as guidelines for creating them. I also recommend looking at Pyramid #3/72 and #3/83 for implementations of Wildcard only skills. Note that the Wildcard skills in those games are narrower than typical for WildCard skills but compensate by adding in Destiny points. Without the Destiny Points the skills are worth more like 7 points per level than 12. I'd also note the use of "buckets of points" - there's a predetermined point total in skills which can be increased but not decreased. That limits the issue of trading between Attributes & skills. Savage Worlds and Angel/Buffy already do this.

If you want to condense the skills but not as extreme as Wildcard skills, you'll need to do that yourself. You might try some of the ideas from the Wildcard rules for quantifying costs if you're that fussy. So for combining skills:

Assign a point value to each skill included in the new skill:

Easy: 1
Average: 2
Hard: 4
Very Hard: 8
Defaults to another skill included: 1

After adding them up, the new skill is:

1 point is an Easy skill.
2 points is an Average skill.
3-4 points is a Hard skill.
5-8 is a Very Hard skill.

So, e.g., Pole Weapons, including Spear, Polearm & Staff. Each is an Average skill, so 2+2+2=6. But Polearm and Staff both default to Spear, so that makes 2+1+1=4. Pole Weapons would be a Hard skill.

Other skills could be similar - e.g., a general Axe/Mace Hard skill which includes one and two handed Axe/Mace as well as Throwing(Axe/Mace.) I think I started a list somewhere if you're curious.

For your Healing skill in particular, it's fair enough to include Physician as well as Diagnosis but Surgery is already a VH skill and should be kept separate.