[Basic] Skill of the week: Area Knowledge

[scc]

Originally Posted by Kenneth Latrans

Area Knowledge (My Parents' House) is probably a wasted point.

I am a firm believer that if an area isn't going to come up in the campaign characters shouldn't pay points for an Area Knowledge specialty for it. This is why I don't require characters to have Area Knowledge (Hometown XYZ) in a dungeon-delving campaign, though Area Knowledge (Underdeep) or Area Knowledge (Continent) could be pertinent.

If I were to run a game that took place within a megacity, I'd ask any players of characters without Area Knowledge thereof to give a good reason, but not ask where the Area Knowledge is for characters who are newcomers; obviously they come from someplace, but that doesn't mean I have to charge them points for knowing about the layouts of places outside the campaign's scope.

Area Knowledge for a character home town is the sort of thing you get for free. GURPS doesn't handle this well, but I think the free version of Fuzion does. Certain skills are 'Everyman Skills', basically the skills a character would need to survive in the society he comes from, get a +3. Figuring out what these skills are and making a Talent for them, and possibly even giving characters levels in it for free is a worthwhile endeavor to prevent embarrassing situations. While characters might take Survival they may not take Cooking, because they think the skill deal with professional Cooking and not basic need to live stuff

[whswhs]

Low-Tech itself allows the use of Area Knowledge in place of Navigation under certain conditions. This is the sort of thing where you would hire a river or harbor pilot rather than a navigator, for example.

Bill Stoddard

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by scc

Area Knowledge for a character home town is the sort of thing you get for free

I agree. I think most people are going off of their default. Maybe they would have skill 8 or 9 if GURPS could handle giving out those skill levels well.

The people who have a point in this skill are military strategists, city planners, and other people who have sat down and spent a few hundred hours studying the area in question. Other than the two I have listed, not much comes to mind. I don't think taxi drivers even spend that much time learning streets. They're probably using Dabbler and a very high TDM.

This seems like the place where familiarity would be a nice thing to apply to skills, but unfortunately it's only for technologies and not for defaults, so that's a double whammy. I think it's the only way to get defaults to make sense, though, especially in cases like this. The average Chinese person's understanding of NYC and the average New York resident's knowledge will be vastly different. I wish we had a good way for applying familiarity penalties to defaults to handle that.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

This seems like the place where familiarity would be a nice thing to apply to skills, but unfortunately it's only for technologies and not for defaults, so that's a double whammy. I think it's the only way to get defaults to make sense, though, especially in cases like this. The average Chinese person's understanding of NYC and the average New York resident's knowledge will be vastly different. I wish we had a good way for applying familiarity penalties to defaults to handle that.

It's been ages since I read the RAW, but my understanding is that Area Knowledge skill in GURPS isn't just about knowing th physical layout of the area, e.g. main streets and biomes and so forth, but also all the more in-depth stuff, gang turfs and so forth, where different social classes, subcultures and ethnicities (or religions) live.

It follows logically from my understanding that Area Knowledge skill rolls merely to know the basic layout of a city, or a rural area, should be at a very generous bonus, at least +4, possibly even +6.

(Back in the 3E era, I figured I probably had 1 CP in Area Knowledge (Earth). With 4E, it's more likely I've got Current Affairs something, politics and maybe economics/resources too, 1 CP in each, and defaulting Area Knowledge (Earth) from IQ.)

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I agree. I think most people are going off of their default. Maybe they would have skill 8 or 9 if GURPS could handle giving out those skill levels well.

I don't think the Dabbler Perk is that bad.

And that other guy, talking about the Fuzion RPG system. I pretty much don't know Fuzion, but it's a spinoff of Hero System, and Hero System does the same, giving all characters a list of Everyman Skills, based on setting era (e.g. medieval/fantasy, modern, cyberpunk, space science fiction) where they get a skill level of 8, relative to the skill level of 10 or 11 as minimum if they actually buy the skill.

One could posit an Everyman Skills Perk in GURPS, that splits a single CP 4 ways, into skills such as Area Knowledge (Current Area of Residence), Driving, Cooking and House Keeping. Or AK and any 3 other skills deemed to be sufficiently everymannish. Or even 8 skills.

The problem with that is that not everyone has that.

I know I don't have Driving at more than default, and arguably it's lower than that, since I don't have a license and spent a total of 1 hour on driving practice, on a parking lot when I was 12 (and even with me, physical skills do rust). Likewise I don't think I have 1/4 or even 1/8 CP in Area Knowledge (Copenhagen) even though I've lived here for 10.5 years. I don't know all that much about this city.

But... I'm just throwing this idea out there, in case someone wants to use it.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I don't think taxi drivers even spend that much time learning streets. They're probably using Dabbler and a very high TDM.

Some certainly do.

[Ashtagon]

Originally Posted by Not

I put it on character sheets for gangster or Shadowrun-style games, but I'm never clear how it differs from Streetwise or Urban Survival. It even overlaps a little with scrounging. So I tend to buy up all four. Is that dumb?

Way I understand it, Area Knowledge can substitute for Streetwise or Urban Survival (or indeed, Survival), but only for the areas it covers. Streetwise would let you do that with any kind of urban centre.

[Not]

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

Way I understand it, Area Knowledge can substitute for Streetwise or Urban Survival (or indeed, Survival), but only for the areas it covers. Streetwise would let you do that with any kind of urban centre.

Given that this type of campaign usually stays in one city, I should dump all the points into Area Knowledge (city) instead. Thanks!

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

It's been ages since I read the RAW, but my understanding is that Area Knowledge skill in GURPS isn't just about knowing th physical layout of the area, e.g. main streets and biomes and so forth, but also all the more in-depth stuff, gang turfs and so forth, where different social classes, subcultures and ethnicities (or religions) live.

From the book "This skill represents familiarity with the people, places, and politics of a given region." The level of detail would depend on the area chosen. Area Knowledge (Bronx) would give more detailed knowledge about that area than Area Knowledge (NYC).

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Not

I put it on character sheets for gangster or Shadowrun-style games, but I'm never clear how it differs from Streetwise or Urban Survival. It even overlaps a little with scrounging. So I tend to buy up all four. Is that dumb?

Sufficiently local Area Knowledge can serve for many functions of Streetwise and some of Urban Survival, certainly. But it is, well, Knowledge...Urban Survival and even more Scrounging have a large 'practical' component to them. You can't roll Area Knowledge to build a shelter out of cardboard or dig useful things out of a dumpster, though it might be able to tell you where to find cardboard boxes or what dumpsters might contain what you are looking for.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I agree. I think most people are going off of their default. Maybe they would have skill 8 or 9 if GURPS could handle giving out those skill levels well.

Note that while most people may be going off their default in places that they live, in places that they don't live/haven't lived, they have no default.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

This seems like the place where familiarity would be a nice thing to apply to skills, but unfortunately it's only for technologies and not for defaults, so that's a double whammy. I think it's the only way to get defaults to make sense, though, especially in cases like this. The average Chinese person's understanding of NYC and the average New York resident's knowledge will be vastly different. I wish we had a good way for applying familiarity penalties to defaults to handle that.

The average Chinese person's knowledge of NYC comes from their Area Knowledge (Earth) default. Planet-scope Area Knowledge is very, very low on detail. The New Yorker is using defaults at the City and Neighborhood scope.

Originally Posted by Ashtagon

Way I understand it, Area Knowledge can substitute for Streetwise or Urban Survival (or indeed, Survival), but only for the areas it covers. Streetwise would let you do that with any kind of urban centre.

Area Knowledge at the Neighborhood scope could substitute for Urban Survival or Survival in a lot of cases, though not all. By the City scope, it's not going to be satisfactory for quite a lot of uses...you only know 'important' features at that level, which is likely to pass over a lot of the very street level details you'd apply Streetwise or Urban Survival for.



Two questions come to mind:
-What are rural scopes bigger than 'neighborhood' like? The Basic Set takes an urban and polity-oriented bent past that point, but wilderness Area Knowledge over scopes bigger than a few hundred acres makes a lot of sense.

-What does Geography (Regional) do that Area Knowledge for the same region doesn't do just as well?