Skill question...Expert vs. Connoisseur

[Lord Carnifex]

Originally Posted by Bookman

<snip>

So, here are some questions about what skills we would use for various in-game actions -- perhaps a fun exercise to use to investigate this question:

1) What do horses usually sell for in Tredroy?
2) What do horses usually sell for amongst the plains riders of Al-Haz?
3) This merchant has five horses for sale, and I want the fastest. Which one is it?
4) I am selling a horse to a Pasha from al-Haz. Which might he pay extra for?
5) Has this horse been well-trained, or is it still somewhat wild?
6) This is a fast, well-trained horse. What is it worth?

My answers:
1-2) Merchant skill. I'd give a negative modifier if the character lacked Area Knowledge for the appropriate area.
3) An IQ-based Riding roll. (I suspect that's a controversial judgment.)
4) Connoisseur (horses), perhaps, and it would require Cultural Knowledge of the Muslim states. For example, perhaps the aesthetics of al-Haz mean that a Pasha would pay more for a white Arabian with an untrimmed mane.
5) Animal Handling.
6) Merchant. I don't think that the merchant skill alone covers discerning that the horse is fast or well-trained, but knowing that, it would be merchant skill to adjust the usual price in the marketplace for the added value of the horse's talent or training.
6)

My two cents. As always, reasonable people may disagree.

I find that I agree with you on all six interpretations. Particularily #3 seems a good example of when to use an IQ based Riding roll...

[Ed the Coastie]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Hypothetically, one could have Connoisseur (Comics) or Connoisseur (Pornography), and get bonuses to buy/sell/trade the subject media. Connoisseur (Pornography) might even give +1 to Streetwise instead of Savoir-Faire if one deals nasty porn in the wrong end of town.

Connoisseur (Pornography)? My first thought was to shudder at the idea that such a skill could occur even hypothetically in a role-playing game.

Then, much to my embarrassment, it dawned on me that the only reason that the skill has not yet appeared in my GURPS "Spellgate" campaign is that it just hasn't occured to any of my players to put any points into it. (My campaign sessions invariably go from a PG to an NC-17 rating as soon as my daughter goes to bed.)

[Mgellis]

I think the distinction between the two Connoisseur skills would resolve the issue. One would relate to the value of the writing; the other relates to the value of the book itself as a physical object. Using Literature skill would certainly work, too, although I would argue it would only be appropriate for a character who really did know a lot about the literature itself, along with literary history, critical theory, etc.

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

Connoisseur (Literature) is handy if you're running a branch of Borders. Connoisseur (Rare Books) is required if you work in the books division of an auction house.

But frankly, this character might do better just to crank Literature skill up to a gross level, chuck a few points at Pro Skill (Bookbinding), and run everything else off the defaults if necessary. Simpler, and saves a lot of nitpicking.

[Mgellis]

I agree entirely. Connoisseur could apply to a wide range of subjects. I would say you could have a Connoisseur specialty for any kind of thing that had the following three features...

1) It is something that can be bought or sold (and the skill will let you determine market value...even if it is something you would personally never degrade by trying to make a profit from it)

2) It is something that has aethetic qualities (and the skill will let you make an aesthetic judgement)

3) It is something that is important to one or more classes, professions, subcultures, social groups, etc. (so being an expert makes you look impressive in some way)

Some possibilities...horses, cars, real estate, clothing, electronics, cattle, firearms, dogs, arcade games, carnival rides, fast food, comic books, ancient artifacts, drugs, interior design, etc.

A related issue...where does Hobby skill fit in? To me, this is how it would work...

Hobby <-- you know all kinds of interesting triva about the subject, but are not an expert in determining how valuable items are; your ability to make yourself sound cool with your knowledge is also limited. (The Hobby skill, to me, is mostly a means of fleshing out the character, adding possibilities for roleplaying, etc., although sometimes it leads to useful information. One might apply the -3 penalty to determine an item's value, etc., though.)

Connoisseur <-- effectively, you know everything the Hobby skill would give you AND you CAN assess value, look suave/cool, and so on. (Someone with this skill can actually make a living with it.)

Expert <-- You do not simply know interesting trivia, but have a genuinely masterful understanding of the subject and can draw pieces of information from a wide range of related skills. However, while you impress people with your deep knowledge of the subject (assuming you don't put them to sleep), your focus is more on "truth" than "value"--you may know what something means, but you might find it harder to figure out how valuable it was. (On the other hand, the rules for Connoisseur suggest that the typical penalty when trying to determine value, if one doesn't already have Connoisseur, would be -3. Someone with Expert (Egyptology) would roll at his level to determine the significance of a certain mummy being in a certain tomb; he would roll at -3 to figure out what he could sell it for.)

Originally Posted by Kromm

I agree. We gave only "high culture" examples in the Basic Set, but they're not the only kind. There are at least as many Connoisseur specialties that go with Current Affairs (Popular Culture) as go with Current Affairs (High Culture), so to speak. Hypothetically, one could have Connoisseur (Comics) or Connoisseur (Pornography), and get bonuses to buy/sell/trade the subject media. Connoisseur (Pornography) might even give +1 to Streetwise instead of Savoir-Faire if one deals nasty porn in the wrong end of town. "Hatchet" Harry Lonsdale likely had a good level at this.

[artichoke]

Originally Posted by Mgellis

Connoisseur <-- effectively, you know everything the Hobby skill would give you AND you CAN assess value, look suave/cool, and so on. (Someone with this skill can actually make a living with it.)

Expert <-- You do not simply know interesting trivia, but have a genuinely masterful understanding of the subject and can draw pieces of information from a wide range of related skills. However, while you impress people with your deep knowledge of the subject (assuming you don't put them to sleep), your focus is more on "truth" than "value"--you may know what something means, but you might find it harder to figure out how valuable it was. (On the other hand, the rules for Connoisseur suggest that the typical penalty when trying to determine value, if one doesn't already have Connoisseur, would be -3. Someone with Expert (Egyptology) would roll at his level to determine the significance of a certain mummy being in a certain tomb; he would roll at -3 to figure out what he could sell it for.)

Parsing synonyms as if they're not synonyms is the problem here. This seems to be a case of an excessive number of skill differentiations.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by artichoke

Parsing synonyms as if they're not synonyms is the problem here. This seems to be a case of an excessive number of skill differentiations.

I'm fairly sure that's the reverse of what actually happened. That is, it wasn't the case that someone first thought of the two words "Connoisseur" and "Expert" and then tried to find a way to give them different meanings. Rather, it was a case of thinking of two different concepts of types of task, and then trying to find words that could be used to name the ability to perform them.

"Expert" in GURPS means someone who has acquired a wide range of "book knowledge" relating to some particular topic. This can substitute for any of several (usually) scholarly or scientific skills relating to that topic—but only to recognize things, recite facts about them, and/or quote the views of different experts.

"Connoisseur" in GURPS was originally called "Appreciate Beauty," and I believe it was first defined in GURPS Japan. It represented the vitally important skill (in upper class Japan) of knowing how to recognize an object's aesthetic qualities and to communicate your response to them. In 4/e it was differentiated into several distinct appreciations of different things, but the emphasis was always on cultivated taste and not on factual knowledge.

Given these two different definitions, names were needed for the different classes of skills. And, well, it's characteristic of English that we have lots of "synonyms" that express the same or similar underlying concepts, but that have different nuances of meaning. Part of good style in English is choosing the word that has exactly the right shade of meaning (one of Heinlein's letters to his agent is a rant about the editor who changed his description of the heroine of The Puppet Masters from "lean" to "slender" and ruined his characterization of her, for example). So using two near synonyms to refer to two different ideas is just the sort of thing a careful writer might do.

[Phil Masters]

I don't know if Magic has rules for this, but raising a corpse to action after twelve years presumably doesn't even give you a zombie so much as a skeleton, right?

(Roll vs. Forensics to assess the preservative quality of the soil, I guess. Geology is a complementary skill.)

Originally Posted by whswhs

"Connoisseur" in GURPS was originally called "Appreciate Beauty," and I believe it was first defined in GURPS Japan

Appreciate Beauty was a 3rd edition skill; Connoisseur appeared with 4th edition. I remember the playtest discussion, and I think I can claim the credit.

It was a lesson learned from the Who's Who project, wherein a couple of non-Japanese characters acquired Appreciate Beauty, which seemed a bit odd when that name had acquired such specific GURPS Japan overtones, and the lack of specialisation jarred. (Connoisseurship of various sorts is a classic upper-class hobby; one likes to show that one is spending all that money with taste, don'cha know?) Aside from the ability to create professional critic characters, it also looked terribly appropriate for a certain type of high-end thief.

[Kromm]

Expert Skill and Connoisseur are little alike.

An Expert Skill is a theoretical (often drily theoretical) skill covering a relatively narrow academic specialty that cuts across a remarkably broad swath of traditional disciplines. It's a way of saying, "If you find the widely used division of human knowledge into conventional sciences and classic humanities doesn't let you represent a particular realm of erudition, you can reapportion that knowledge along lines of your own choosing." In a university setting, it almost always covers studies termed "cross-disciplinary" or "interdisciplinary." To first order, Expert Skill is an academic skill similar to History or Physics.

A Connoisseur skill is a practical understanding and appreciation of something valued for its aesthetic qualities. It represents a "gut feeling" for what makes a particular instance "good" – that's why Killjoy gives -3. It's customarily acquired by partaking; if it's taught at all (and many specialties aren't!), it's labeled "criticism": Film Criticism, Literary Criticism, etc. And it has definite socioeconomic overtones; knowing the price tag and who's paying, and who will be impressed, is essential. That last part is almost never encountered in an academic context. To first order, Connoisseur is a social skill not unlike Carousing or Savoir-Faire.

Since this is an undead thread, I'll use an example from a culture famed for its mummies:

• Someone with Expert Skill (Egyptology) could tell you all about the history and geography of ancient Egypt, talk about its societies and their beliefs, and outline its artistic, cultural, linguistic, etc. evolution. Faced with an ancient Egyptian statuette, they could most likely tell you who was reigning at the time it was produced, name the region of origin, and explain what deities or rulers it depicts. They might even be able to decipher any hieroglyphs on the piece.
  
  
• Someone with Connoisseur (Sculpture) could tell you what distinguishes a marketable sculpture from junk, talk about sculpting techniques, point out what's currently considered beautiful, gauge the quality of the medium, and name famous sculptors through the ages. Faced with an ancient Egyptian statuette, they could tell you what it's made of and what it would fetch on the open market, and perhaps identify the dynasty (but probably not, unless they have an optional specialty in Egyptian sculpture).

Beyond "this is Egyptian" and "it's from this dynasty," there wouldn't be a lot of overlap.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

I'd be wary of taking that wording too literally. There are connoisseurs of bubblegum pop or romance literature, and similar fields which still have image problems among the cultural elite, even in the debased postmodernist age; there needs to be a skill for them. Likewise, connoisseurship of, say, fine ales is an authentic skill, but it puts one at a tangent to most concepts of cultural elitism.

Much of that is debatable. Certainly pop or romance (at least if by romance you mean, "Shirtless Warrior Books": Goethe would not be considered the same thing). But fine ales? That certainly seems like a knowledge one would expect of a British gentleman. James Bond seemed more of a cocktail man perhaps, but it is perfectly possible to construct a gentleman detective that likes ale.

[jason taylor]

Maybe connoisseur can be defined as, "a geek that DOES get invited to parties?"