Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .

[vicky_molokh]

Greetings, all!

This thread is partially inspired by the observation that in GURPS, attributes are relatively cheap compared to skills, such that a wide specialist, and often even a moderate specialist, is too often best built using high attributes.

GURPS' enormous skill list is kinda notorious, and it was barely reduced in 4e. Wildcards, while superficially similar to broad skills, actually serve a different purpose than unified skills, and are priced non-favourably compared to attributes anyway.

So, what I'm thinking is an Alternate GURPS / houserule idea of making a minimalistic generic skill list. As in, fitting not for any one specific setting or genre, but rather flexible enough to cover everything, and in such a way as to prevent further skill creep like 'and now let us add a new Professional Skill (Fisher), because having a Fishing skill is not enough'. That is to say, the intent is to make every skilled task encounterable strictly covered by no less than one standard skill. Sure, unfamiliarity penalties can be a thing, but the intent is to make sure that after gaining the proper familiarities, people don't need to add a second or even third page of a skill list.

Looking at other systems, ones that tend to build skills on the assumption that everything falls under at least one predefined skill, I'm seeing Exalted use 25 (though with specialisations within Craft, which got out of hand for them Real Fast) , FATE Core default to 18, and various incarnations of WoD seem to go for around 30 before adding the skill-bloat-creep supplements. I think GURPS' legacy will make it difficult to reduce the skill list below 50, but even that would be really nice compared to the current list of primary-skills, category-skills and mandatory-specialisation-skills in the Basic Set alone (before counting stuff found all over the place).

I'm not saying that specialisations should be impossible to buy, but it would be nice to avoid bloated charsheets that anyone wanting a flexible character has to deal with. I'm also, once again, not looking for a list that is meant for some specific campaign, but rather a universal/generic one that can be adapted to any or almost any campaign.

If someone's interested in the goal, I'm interested in reading comments, ideas etc.
Thanks in advance!