Using “General purpose” skills

[Hide]

There are skills for “general purposes” which potentially encompass a small group of skills (w/o the need of buying wildcards).

Some examples are soldier and seamanship.

How do you treat them in play?
What skills would you cover with these 2?
Do you have other examples?

[Stormcrow]

I'm not sure I agree with your premise. Soldier and Seamanship are indeed each composed of various smaller subskills, but they're below the level of full-blown GURPS skill. I don't think you'll really find a set of skills that will actually replace each of them. You're not going to find separate skills to operate each of "anchors, hatches, mooring lines, pumps, sails, windlasses, etc.," for instance. Soldier explicitly overlaps a bunch of other skills, but only for the most basic of uses — for instance, a Soldier can strip a rifle without learning Armoury (Small Arms), but can't repair or make rifles.

[Hide]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

I'm not sure I agree with your premise. Soldier and Seamanship are indeed each composed of various smaller subskills, but they're below the level of full-blown GURPS skill. I don't think you'll really find a set of skills that will actually replace each of them. You're not going to find separate skills to operate each of "anchors, hatches, mooring lines, pumps, sails, windlasses, etc.," for instance. Soldier explicitly overlaps a bunch of other skills, but only for the most basic of uses — for instance, a Soldier can strip a rifle without learning Armoury (Small Arms), but can't repair or make rifles.

Indeed, I am well aware that catch-all skills do not exist in GURPS per-se, and I understand that for such purpose the best way to attain such a thing is through a wild card.

My posture is that you require specific skills when you want professional ability on a specific subject or if the setting expressly demands it (i.e. Olympics: Pentathlon, requiring skills on its 5 disciplines).

Thus, I believe that skills such as soldier, administration and seamanship, etc. can do the trick when it comes to skills you won’t be using too often.

For example… I have played in settings in which I am a pirate visiting a friend in the desert and wilderness, but I get caught in a dungeon and now I need to escape (with some loot, indeed).

For the sake of integrity I could pick swimming, savoir-faire (pirate tales), knots (for tying the ship & stuff in the ship), engineering (naval), carpentry, metalworking, forward observer, cartography, etc. But it is very obvious that I won’t be using these skills in the desert.

So, I could pick seamanship instead, right? That could do if I ever need swimming in the only river of the city, knowing some OK pirate tales to tell, or tie my horse after I “parked it” after I arrived. On the other hand, I won’t be relying on defaults as if I was a neophyte.

Unless your job demands specialization, IMO the knowledge or “sub-skills” which construct certain “general purpose skills” should be enough to cover a fair amount of basic activities implicit to the “general purpose skill”, without needing to employ defaults or buying the specific skill.

But to what extend? What skills would you group?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Hide

My posture is that you require specific skills when you want professional ability on a specific subject or if the setting expressly demands it (i.e. Olympics: Pentathlon, requiring skills on its 5 disciplines).

I tend to handle things like that using Professional or Expert Skills.

Originally Posted by Hide

But to what extend? What skills would you group?

Its really to broad to reasonably answer.
It would be more likely I would invent some professional skills for a setting and apply defaults to it. Take PS: Bartender as an example, counting change, mixing drinks, knowing the local regulations, etc base roll.
Where to shop for drinks? Maybe Merchant with Bartender as a complementary roll.
Carousing? You could default off Bartender if that skill was higher.

[Hide]

Oh I see, professional skills it is. In other words, soldier and seamanship could be (more or less) an example of professional skills; that sounds fine indeed.

[Bengt]

I've found the Soldier description in the rulebook too vague to be useful and would love to hear some examples of situations people have used it for in their games and what the benefit of a success was.

[Hide]

Originally Posted by Bengt

I've found the Soldier description in the rulebook too vague to be useful and would love to hear some examples of situations people have used it for in their games and what the benefit of a success was.

It could justify setting up a camp, gathering food and sending distress signals if for some reason you lack survival and got "lost".

[Maz]

I also use such skills as a Savoir-Faire skill for the type of people who have it.


So Soldier could work as Savoir-Faire (military). Administration could work as SF (administration personal) and so on.

This does make some existing savoir-faire skils redundant. But I'm ok with that.


Otherwise I allow such skills to cover other skills if it would be a very easy use of the skill (such as a +2 or +4 bonus). Or in other words "stuff I usually wouldn't bother making rolls for".

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Hide

There are skills for “general purposes” which potentially encompass a small group of skills (w/o the need of buying wildcards).

Some examples are soldier and seamanship.

How do you treat them in play?
What skills would you cover with these 2?
Do you have other examples?

Soldier, Seamanship, and Crewman, are basically the same idea as the more generic Professional Skill.

Another class of inclusive skills are Expert Skills and to a lesser extent Hobby Skills.

In some limited ways I handle them all on a spectrum of difficulty from Easy (Hobby) through Average (Professional) to Hard (Expert).

To decide whether such a skill can be used for a given roll, I use my GMly judgement based on the following question: 'Would a (fill in the blank*) be expected to be able to know/do that without specialized training?' Sometimes I will apply a (usually negative) modifier if I think they would be less good at the thing in question but still have a shot at it. This is method is something I tell players about when I recommend or see them select such skills.


*E.G. video gamer, stamp collector; soldier, baker; Egyptologist, conspiracy theorist.

[khorboth]

We've used these a bunch. Examples:

The klaxons go off. Roll the better of soldier or spacer to know where you need to go.

You need to get into your TL10 armor in a hurry? Roll soldier to go faster.

Is the tide coming in or out? Roll sailor.

Did we remember to bring the standard kit which includes rations and a tent even though we didn't explicitly say that? Roll soldier.