When does one use Scrounging?

[Sense of Duty (Kittens)]

Scrounging is a cheap skill, but it does not seem to have much that is not covered by other Per skills. When searching corpses for goods is a Scrounging or Search rool necessary to make sure you got everything? What skill is the guy who routinely checks under vending machines for change employing? Scrounging? Observation? Urban Survival?

Scrounging does not seem to be a useful investment of points at all.

[Kromm]

It's the go-to skill whenever a plan calls for old planks, a plastic trash can, foil gum wrappers, a lump of horse manure, etc. It'll turn up, say, old fat or used painting solvents when you're in a modern urban alleyway, about to commit arson, and need a makeshift accelerant. It can find you an improvised weapon that won't simply break on the first hit if you're in the woods, a barroom, the kitchen, etc. when the ninjas attack. It'll turn up odds and ends that could cut costs when making repairs or inventions (Gadgeteering even formalizes this). And it's the skill to use whenever you have lots of something – buttons, bullets, screws, whatever – and need just the right one.

Without this skill, you're pretty much stuck using Per at -4. With it, you're using full Per or better. If you raise it enough, you can try rolls at -10 to locate something useful instantly; e.g., spotting an improvised weapon as a free action in combat.

Not a game session goes by when players don't use it in my campaign. Of course, I run very think-on-your-feet campaigns where the players brainstorm in the real world and come up with plans that require specific items that are plausibly present but which I don't regard as automatic. If you just assume that sort of stuff is automatic, then Scrounging won't matter much.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Sense of Duty (Kittens)

When searching corpses for goods is a Scrounging or Search rool necessary to make sure you got everything?

Search is for sweeping a specific person or area for deliberately concealed items. Scrounging is for walking around the battlefield after 1,000 orcs and 1,000 dwarves kill each other, and locating the specific bits of armor and weaponry you need to equip yourself.

Originally Posted by Sense of Duty (Kittens)

What skill is the guy who routinely checks under vending machines for change employing? Scrounging? Observation? Urban Survival?

That's definitely Scrounging. Observation is scouting for criminal, espionage, military, or police purposes; it's for spotting guards, security, and counter-observers, and concealed vehicles and strongpoints. Urban Survival is about knowing which saggy floors in old buildings will cave in, deducing whether water found in a city is safe to drink, and locating warm vents to sleep next to. Neither has much to do with finding specific, useful items you have in mind for some plan.

[Anaraxes]

How about the skill exhibited by Radar O'Reilly on M*A*S*H, various characters on "Baa Baa Black Sheep", or the James Gardner character in "The Great Escape", involving coming up with some needed item by whatever means, often via a perhaps complicated chain of trades, and often enough something somewhat underhanded? This could be a particular style of Merchant and occasional other skills like blackmail, but the details come across to me more as a special effect of Scrounging. Characters usually refer to the activity as "scrounging" but of course that doesn't mean much in game terms.

[Daeglan]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

How about the skill exhibited by Radar O'Reilly on M*A*S*H, various characters on "Baa Baa Black Sheep", or the James Gardner character in "The Great Escape", involving coming up with some needed item by whatever means, often via a perhaps complicated chain of trades, and often enough something somewhat underhanded? This could be a particular style of Merchant and occasional other skills like blackmail, but the details come across to me more as a special effect of Scrounging. Characters usually refer to the activity as "scrounging" but of course that doesn't mean much in game terms.

Probably a mix of skills. Scrounging to locate the desired item and social skills depending on how you are going to get it.

[Ed the Coastie]

Something like that is mentioned on pg 83 of GURPS Traveller: Ground Forces. I've always assumed that such situations would be examples of Scrounging based upon IQ rather than Per.

[Gnome]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Observation is scouting for criminal, espionage, military, or police purposes; it's for spotting guards, security, and counter-observers, and concealed vehicles and strongpoints.

I would love to hear more detail on use of this skill. I'm never sure how much I should focus on the "without letting others know that you are watching" part of the skill description on 211.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Gnome

I would love to hear more detail on use of this skill. I'm never sure how much I should focus on the "without letting others know that you are watching" part of the skill description on 211.

Threads about that abound . . . I'm hoping somebody bookmarked a few (I didn't!). Here's a summary:

Observation doesn't replace Camouflage, Shadowing, or Stealth, ever. If you don't want to be seen, you also need a skill suitable to the situation. What the "not letting others know" part of the Observation skill specifically means is that the act of using the skill doesn't give away the game on its own – that is, the skill teaches you how not to poke your telescope lens out the window, catch the light on your binoculars, or lean so far out of your hiding place that somebody sees you there. The skill doesn't teach you how to hide in the first place. Without Observation, the GM has carte blanche to say that your great Camouflage, Shadowing, or Stealth roll is for naught, because you're doing something dumb to mess with it. However, if all you have is Observation, "not letting others know" can certainly cover using a telescope or a shotgun mic from so far away that nobody can make the Vision roll to see you anyway.

In actual play, the way it works is that you declare what you're doing to be sneaky and then roll normally for that: NPC's Vision or Hearing vs. your Stealth, his Vision at -10 because you're 100 yards away and not in plain sight, his own Observation vs. your Camouflage because you're in the bushes, or whatever. If you're not detected, go ahead and use Observation. The act of using that skill never allows a new roll for detection, forces a new role for hiding, or compromises your old roll for hiding. However, you cannot say, "I have Observation, and it says it's about not letting others know, so I'm going to use it instead of Stealth to hide." That might let you hide your telescope, but you'll be standing in plain sight right behind it . . .

The one exception is in direct observer vs. observer contests. In that case, the GM might prefer not to roll two Quick Contests of (say) Stealth vs. Observation, because turning four margins of success into two margins of victory, and then comparing two margins of victory to get one margin of victory, is painful on the brain. Settling matters as a Quick Contest of Observation, letting a concealment skill act as complementary to each, is good enough.

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Kromm

In actual play, the way it works is that you declare what you're doing to be sneaky and then roll normally for that: NPC's Vision or Hearing vs. your Stealth, his Vision at -10 because you're 100 yards away and not in plain sight, his own Observation vs. your Camouflage because you're in the bushes, or whatever. If you're not detected, go ahead and use Observation.

For a real-life example, when I was covering the city council for a newspaper in Kansas, the council would sometimes go into closed door session. The hall outside was narrow and doubled as a waiting area for the planning office, with two modestly-comfortable chairs just outside the door. In game terms, I used Acting to seem to be cat-napping in one of the chairs (not unexpected, it was mid-day and often fairly warm) and then Observation to pick up pieces of the conversation behind the door.

[Anaraxes]

I'd think Observation also covers the times you're not hidden, as Rocket Man describes. You know tactics to keep out of sight while Observing in the first place -- but when you're not out of sight, you also know how to Observe without obviously focusing and staring at your target of interest, taking notes in your little notepad, glancing at your watch every time security guard walks by, and all that, when you "case the joint".

Acting skill alone means you fool people into thinking you're just another shopper/tourist/cubicle dweller, but you won't learn anything just by hanging around and Acting. Observation lets gather information while you avoid attention-getting, out-of-character actions that would blow your Acting role and roll, much as it lets you not do stupid things to obviate your Stealth/Camo roll.