Real World Elite skill levels

[rpd]

In my current game I'm toying around with the idea of having an NPC that would be a wunderkind in their field, in this case chess. The character would be the next big thing in the chess world, and regarded as having a serious chance of winning the next world championship. He may legitimately be the best player in the world and he is definitely at least top ten.

Although it doesn't really matter for the purposes of my game it made me wonder, what skill level do you give a character like that? Not just for chess but in general. What level do you think would best model, in Gurps terms, someone who is the best or one of the best in the world at something? Presumably it'd be higher for mental skills than physical skills.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by rpd

Although it doesn't really matter for the purposes of my game it made me wonder, what skill level do you give a character like that?

If I recall from How to be a GURPS GM:
12: Primary Job Skill
14: Life and Death Primary Job Skill
16: Good enough to stand out
18: Best of a Generation
20: Top Master Alive
22: Top Master Ever
24: Mythical Master

--

As an aside, unless the PCs play chess and might play the NPC, you don't actually need to give him a skill level.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by TGLS

If I recall from How to be a GURPS GM:
12: Primary Job Skill
14: Life and Death Primary Job Skill
16: Good enough to stand out
18: Best of a Generation
20: Top Master Alive
22: Top Master Ever
24: Mythical Master

My approach is pretty close to that. I say 12 to get a job, 14 to get a high-risk job like combat pilot or surgeon, 16 to be respected in your profession, 17-19 to be acclaimed, and 20+ to be legendary/one of the best of all time.

[Polydamas]

There used to be some guidelines from GURPS Who's Who. GURPS Tactical Shooting has two experts' comments on the skill levels which give shooters realistic-feeling effectiveness in combat. There is always p. B172

[awesomenessofme1]

For certain skills (ranged weapon skills in particular), you can actually practically test out the implications of stats (eg, "this skill level lets you reliably hit a target at X distance under range conditions"). Skills like chess are mainly defined in relation to each other, so you pretty much have to decide what you think is reasonable.

[Anders]

Here's Kromm's ladder of skills.

[Phil Masters]

Other posters have covered this properly; my own working guideline is "12 will get you a job in most occupations, because you'll hardly every fail in routine, +5, day to day tasks, and even with modestly tricky, +0 tasks, you'll succeed significantly more often than not, so your colleagues won't regard you as dead weight. 15 is required for jobs where success is literally a matter of life and death, such as Pilot or Surgeon, because even if most tasks are +0 (but have another roll to recover from failures), you won't kill very many people".

All of which said, Chess may be a weird exception. Grandmasters seem to be frighteningly obsessive types, who spend most of their time practicing and honing their skills over years and years, and unlike most jobs, there aren't many secondary/supporting skills into which you can and should divert some training points. (Pilots have Navigation and Mechanic, Surgeons have Physician and Pharmacology and alternate specialties, special forces troops have at least half-a-dozen skills, chess masters have Games (Chess) and that's it.) So I wouldn't argue much with putting chess grandmasters into the 20+ range.

[Willy]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

All of which said, Chess may be a weird exception. Grandmasters seem to be frighteningly obsessive types, who spend most of their time practicing and honing their skills over years and years, and unlike most jobs, there aren't many secondary/supporting skills into which you can and should divert some training points. (Pilots have Navigation and Mechanic, Surgeons have Physician and Pharmacology and alternate specialties, special forces troops have at least half-a-dozen skills, chess masters have Games (Chess) and that's it.) So I wouldn't argue much with putting chess grandmasters into the 20+ range.

That may be most likely the case with a lot of other board games like Go, Chess and many other games of this type.
I would not use it for games of change, where you can use a math skill to bolster your chances to win. And for games of chance, who are played with contact to your opponents like poker, I would add a lot of skills for the cream of the crop like psychology and bodyreading to get a hint about your opponent and how he thinks he is doing, acting and similar skills not to give away your position, and of course math to calculate chances. Feel free to add some other usefull skills, that was the ones which came directly to my mind when thinking about it.

[whswhs]

Assuming that all that matters is relative scores (that is, ignoring critical successes and failures by either player), a Chess-12 player going up against a Chess-16 player will win about 14% of the time, or about one game in seven. I'd agree that a grandmaster ought to win more than that and thus should have a higher skill.

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by Willy

That may be most likely the case with a lot of other board games like Go, Chess and many other games of this type.
I would not use it for games of change, where you can use a math skill to bolster your chances to win. And for games of chance, who are played with contact to your opponents like poker, I would add a lot of skills for the cream of the crop like psychology and bodyreading to get a hint about your opponent and how he thinks he is doing, acting and similar skills not to give away your position, and of course math to calculate chances. Feel free to add some other usefull skills, that was the ones which came directly to my mind when thinking about it.

Agree with these. Other useful ones for a poker player would be:

- Eidetic Memory to remember how opponents played particular situations before, which assists in hand-reading.
- Luck for obvious reasons.
- Talent related to gambling.
- Less Sleep to play those all nighters without tiring.
- any and all socially useful skills and Advantages: Diplomacy, Charisma, Contacts etc., to assist in getting invited to the most profitable games which tend to exclude dead-eyed professionals who just sit there and grimly take everyone's money.