[Basic] Skill of the week: Housekeeping

[(E)]

In a low tech setting I always saw Housekeeping as a complimentary skill to survival. Maintaining gear, managing food and so forth.

[khorboth]

Housekeeping has become a mainstay of fantasy campaigns in my group. Cooking says (if I remember correctly) that it's good for commercial kitchens. We decided that a steep penalty would be in order for using cooking on a campfire, but for Housekeeping in a TL 4- setting, we don't apply a penalty. Every group decides who is cooking, and when nobody has Housekeeping we get to eat half-burned half-raw rabbit-on-a-stick. No rolls, but it adds a lot of flavor (or subtracts flavor).

I'd also let it be used in place of merchant for haggling a wide variety of purchases.

[Not]

Originally Posted by khorboth

Housekeeping has become a mainstay of fantasy campaigns in my group. Cooking says (if I remember correctly) that it's good for commercial kitchens. We decided that a steep penalty would be in order for using cooking on a campfire, but for Housekeeping in a TL 4- setting, we don't apply a penalty.

A very questionable ruling, but whatever works for your game.

[Phil Masters]

Yeah - high-end professional chefs love showing off what they can do with limited resources and ingredients. Whole TV shows have been built round that.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by lachimba

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.

Having one point in and a +4 modifier means you're almost certain to succeed. Having only the default and a +4 modifier means you're quite likely to fail.

[Not]

OK. There was an Amy Adams comedy a few years ago wherein she plays a... I don't remember what she called herself, but her job was to re-arrange the furniture in high-end apartments for sale. Of all the skills in Basic, Housekeeping probably fits best, since it isn't interior design. (That's designing a space for a particular client, and would be a Professional skill or a specialization of Artist.)

[cosmicfish]

Housekeeping is the basic skill of taking care of yourself and your home. Rich people don't need it and often have no avenue for obtaining it. Middle class people either have it or make up for their lack of knowledge by eating out and hiring cleaners and repairmen. Poor people either have it or destroy themselves and their possession because they cannot afford to farm any of this out.

I would expect the non-wealthy to move from default through increasing levels of Dabbler to a single point, starting as a child and getting to 1pt no later than their mid-to-late 20's, depending on their life experiences.

For anyone without this skill, I would either require them to pay some fraction of their COL to make up for their lack, or I would penalize them for their absolute unwillingness to adult. Maybe their landlord serves them an eviction notice because of the mold in the kitchen, or maybe they lose a random amount of money each month because of accounting mishaps, or maybe they wind up in the hospital with food poisoning, etc.

[patchwork]

I've used it most often as a cover skill. Get close to the target by pretending to be/getting hired as a servant, which means demonstrating well-above-average ability in Housekeeping. It comes up quite a bit that way, actually. I've also used it as a supporting skill for Savoire-Faire, Diplomacy and Politics for small-scale and isolated stuff (being good at Housekeeping is one of the requirements to be "in charge" in the manor house/rural commune/etc). It's come up once, I think, for cleaning a crime scene (or at least, a scene that police would find professionally interesting).

I've honestly not used it as a monthly safety check/CoL modifier, but from the looks of this thread I should start.

[Winged]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

That's the interesting question: Should the average IQ 10 character (keeping in mind that there are hundreds of millions, if not billions, of characters in any given RPG world) have 1 point in Housekeeping, or not?

From your high expectations of humanity, I can see that you and I have had very different luck with roommates. :)

I can attest that it is very possible for a person to have an otherwise functional IQ sufficient to acquire a college degree and hold down a job, while still being hopeless about how to do basic household tasks. Things like clearing off dishes before they get to the sink, shutting lights off before you go to bed, locking the door behind you, knowing that putting a bag in the garbage can is important, and making meals that do not come with microwave instructions are all skills I have seen neglected.

Most people do have the above skills, but I think that is because society expects us to have them to such a great extent that we forget we ever didn't have them.

[Kalzazz]

I brought this up with my group, the most amazing quote came of it

Shieldbunny, "Have any of our characters ever taken that skill? Seems like it would make them too closely resemble functional members of society."