Background Skills [House Rule]

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Sewing is uncommon in the modern era. In pre-modern societies though, almost every woman should have a minimum of 4 CP invested in it by the time she marries, as she will need to make the clothing for her family. By the time that she is 50, she will likely have a total of 20 CP invested in it, and that is assuming that she only is sewing one hour a day. Cooking, Gardening, and Housekeeping would likely be at similar levels, as it is what housewives did in pre-modern times.

It is not compulsory or automatic that time spent doing something counts as training in it.

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Someone who knows no Current Affairs is incapable of just chatting

I don't think that holds up to reality. It would mean that two people each with a single but different Current Affairs skill would be unable to chat with each other.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

If players want to play a character without any points in one or more of the background skill groups, they will need to take one or more levels in the Isolated Disadvantage [-5 CP/level], with each level removing the 5 CP allocated to a specific background skill group.

For -5 to -20 points, Isolated needs to be a lot more limiting. As currently written, it's essentially free points on top of Social Stigma (Ignorant or Uneducated).

I'd call it a flat -5 point disadvantage and rule that it prevents you from having any skill defaults outside of the very limited set of skills you might have been exposed to while growing up; no more than 15 skills. This applies to both defaults from attributes and other skills.

For -10 points, you get no skill defaults whatsoever unless the task is so simple and obvious that you can figure it out from first principles.

For example, for -5 points, a badly-educated and socially-deprived TL7 ghetto kid with Isolated only gets skill defaults with Driving (Automobiles), Fast-Talk, Guns/TL (Pistol), Intimidation, Knife, Melee Weapon (Broadsword or Shortsword), Panhandling, Scrounging, Sex Appeal, and Urban Survival.

For -10 points, you're a newly-programmed robot or a clone straight from the clone bank and have no defaults whatsoever.

In terms of point cost, it's about equivalent to Talent (Jack of All Trades) or an "Anti-Talent."

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Sewing is uncommon in the modern era.

It's uncommon after about TL6, at least in more prosperous societies. In poorer societies where "make do and mend" is the norm it will be much more common even at higher TL.

In any case, regardless of time spent learning the skill, Sewing typically isn't that useful a skill for adventurers, with the obvious exception of Age of Sail sailors. Ditto for Gardening, Farming, and many professional skills.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

By the time that she is 50, she will likely have a total of 20 CP invested in it, and that is assuming that she only is sewing one hour a day.

Skill improvement assumes that you're constantly pushing your skills. Once they reach a certain plateau, most people don't do that, at least for "routine" skills.

In game terms, that means that after you hit skill level 12 or so, you don't get further character points for self-improvement through OTJ training. Treat it as a Quirk.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Rupert

In north western Europe some variety of spinning was nearly universal, as was weaving (common pretty much everywhere). In many places basket-weaving also. And then there's Brewing...

There's also the difference between low-level or survival-level artisan skills and professional-level skills. A medieval housewife might know a bit about spinning, weaving, baking, and beer brewing as defaults from Housekeeping, but she wouldn't have the professional knowledge of those skills unless she actually worked in the trade.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

There's also the difference between low-level or survival-level artisan skills and professional-level skills. A medieval housewife might know a bit about spinning, weaving, baking, and beer brewing as defaults from Housekeeping, but she wouldn't have the professional knowledge of those skills unless she actually worked in the trade.

I disagree. She will develop her own techniques and further her skills. A professional cook while improve faster, they will gain 2.5 CP per year, but a home cook can still get pretty good through practice. A peasant woman will suffer penalise from low quality ingredients and poor equipment though.

[cdru]

Originally Posted by bocephus

However the fact that there really isn't a skill that denotes "small talk, insinuating yourself into a group, assembling tid bits of info to get a local picture, a low level version of spy craft if you will"

I assume that would mostly fall under Diplomacy, as well as using one's reaction bonuses

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I don't think that holds up to reality. It would mean that two people each with a single but different Current Affairs skill would be unable to chat with each other.

That's a bit like saying that people who lack Meteorology skill can't engage in small talk because they can't talk about the weather.

Unless they're severely socially crippled, any reasonably intelligent person can find some topic to open a conversation.

Diplomacy or Psychology skill might give you an idea of what topics might interest a potential conversation partner, other Influence skills allow you to manipulate the conversation to achieve a particular end. Shared areas of interest, like Current Affairs, might act as complementary skills.

[Bengt]

I wouldn't use a house rule to force skills that aren't used on players, the skill list for a character can already be quite long. If these skills do get use I would either tell players that are missing them during character creation about that so they can chose to take them or put them on all the background templates for the setting.

In general I don't think that things that describe the character but doesn't affect play should cost points.

[Crystalline_Entity]

Personally I'd have said this is what skills at default are for. Current Affairs defaults to IQ-4, and Sewing to DX-4, so for an "average" DX 10, IQ 10 character, this can easily result in an effective skill of 11 or 12 due to a favourable task difficulty modifier, which should be adequate for normal (rather than adventuring) use.

For those who spend a significant amount of effort on a skill (e.g. serious hobbies, the skills you need to do your job), I think that's worth investing a point or two, and there's the Dabbler perk to add a bit more resolution for the intermediate levels.

An "average" person is only 25-50 points. I like to model "average people" using the "Normal Janes or Joes" sidebar on Psis 19. If you remove the 50 point psi package, reduce disadvantages to -20 to avoid hitting the disadvantage limit, and reduce all attributes to 10 to compensate, and add "additional levels of attributes, languages and the Dabbler perk" to the list of allowable advantage options, you end up with a 50 point character. That's probably excessive for some people, especially those without wealth or high attribute levels, who may be closer to 25 points.