[Basic] Skill of the week: Hobby Skill and Professional Skill

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I would generally prefer to obliterate a lot of existing skills and class them as examples of professional skills.

What's the point? PSes are less convienient to write into Talents; they have the implicit stigma of 'You will not get to roll it a lot during the campaign naturally, other than the Job Rolls, but you have to spend points on it for your character job concept', they have poorely enumerated defaults; and the very existence of the PS tag encourages skill bloat, because hey look there already are so many and one more will not hurt', like we see in the list of examples given.

[Railstar]

Mortician – only Professional Skill I have seen actually used. For 2 reasons.

1 – Studying the Onyx Path.
2 – Improved Zombies.

Soldier & Seamanship get used quite a lot by our pirate-maroons, just for making sure the ship runs smoothly and for setting up defences to camp on land.

Otherwise, I tended to ignore Professional Skills, because I dislike the idea of having a skill-set needed to do a job and then adding another skill to do the exact same job professionally – which is the impression I get from examples such as Courtesan from GURPS Fantasy. If the Professional Skill is intended to fill in the gaps between the skills, I would much rather use a Perk to do it – and that way someone with already very high skills is not essentially starting from scratch to learn the profession using those skills.

For an example like the Visual Signalling specialist in the navy, I would prefer to use that as a Technique (Average difficulty).

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Railstar

For an example like the Visual Signalling specialist in the navy, I would prefer to use that as a Technique (Average difficulty).

I find that a bit of a stretch because a technique has to be reasonably specific. Any one visual signalling system would be a sensible technique, but specialist naval signallers were trained in flashing-lamp signals, semaphore, hoists of flags using a code that was partly alphabetic and partly code-book, and probably some more methods. These systems were all separate: they didn't use a common vocabulary or message format, and that caused problems at times.

The GURPS skill system isn't all that flexible in narrowing and broadening skills. Optional specialisation is OK as far as it goes, but that isn't very far.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Railstar

Soldier & Seamanship get used quite a lot by our pirate-maroons, just for making sure the ship runs smoothly and for setting up defences to camp on land.

Those are the sensible ones. They're actually needed to hold an in-world job (you inevitably learn it as a new-on-the-job guy, usually over a period of years, and in terms of simulation or pseudo-simulation or implied simulation, monthly or seasonly rolls are made to see if you screw up, usually at a bonus), and represent informal but long-time training at fairly specific functions in a wide range of related skills (e.g. Soldier can use a field telephone to make a routine call, but can't diagnose problems let alone fix problems). And they may well turn out to be rolled for during traditional (yet-not-dumb) action-adventuring gaming. E.g. something on the approximate intelligence level of GURPS DF/Action/MH. Profession (Cop) or (Law Enforcement) is another example. It makes perfect sense.

But Profession (Banker)... I can't see that doing much of anything.

Likewise, Profession (Fisherman) is really just Profession (Sailor). There's no need to have it.

I think one could try having nebulously defined Dabbler Perks for bankers and fishermen if necessary (although the fisherman would still need Profession (Sailor), but I think even that is excessive. I can't really see any need for it.



Edit: I could see Profession (Prostitute) making sense. To successfully and safely renting out your body to gentlemen who sometimes arent as gentlemanly as would be preferrable. There's some challenge to that (e.g. avoiding getting beat up, or becoming miserable and seeking refuge in alcohol or opium at higher TLs in other drugs, or coming to resent men). It fits the criterion for "covers a wide range of activities, yet related to each other, and it'd be unreasonable to require them purchased as separate skills (let alone defined exhaustively as separte skills)". But it has to be understood as a potentially adventuring-useful skill by the GM (via the text surrounding the rules explicitly stating that it is).

Of course if making an elite 250 point character who is a courtesan it should be possible to just put the mandatory 1 point into the Profession and buy all the skills in full (Sex Appeal, Dancing, Erotic Art, Carousing, etc). Same way if you're building an elite soldier you will put points into Hiking and Savoir-Faire (Military) and so forth, whereas a lower-point value soldier would rely on Profession (Soldier). An elite cop, the kind of genius detective you'd tend to build if given a generous point budget, would have actual Law skill (with a specialization for "stuff that's relevant for cops") and so would not need to use Profession (Law Enf.) for that.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

What's the point?

Because a whole lot of them are setting-dependent anyway.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

they have the implicit stigma of 'You will not get to roll it a lot during the campaign naturally, other than the Job Rolls, but you have to spend points on it for your character job concept'.

I'd remove that too; most professional skills won't be rolled unless you make an effort to find a place to roll it, but that applies to lots of standard skills; how often do you really roll leatherworking?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Likewise, Profession (Fisherman) is really just Profession (Sailor). There's no need to have it.

OK, what other skill tells you where to go to catch fish, of the kind you have the right equipment for, at the current time of your?

A lot of the work done on a fishing boat is clearly Seamanship, and/or Mechanic (Ship), but there's knowledge needed to go find fish - it isn't just a question of putting the nets out. It might be Area Knowledge (Baltic Sea), but plenty of sailors on ferries and cargo vessels have that without being fishermen.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Because a whole lot of them are setting-dependent anyway.

I'd remove that too; most professional skills won't be rolled unless you make an effort to find a place to roll it, but that applies to lots of standard skills; how often do you really roll leatherworking?

Not in a GURPS game, but I've seen another player use the equivalent of leatherworking in another system. But useless point sinks are a bad design. Ideally you should have skills split up in such a way that there's some intersection between the skill(s) you use for character concept and the skills that come up naturally when adventuring. There's a good example of using Accounting to reveal illegal income sources in the big bad's ledgers. But if you use Accounting for the former and PS (Banking) for being a bank accountant, then something is very very wrong.

[VariousRen]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Not in a GURPS game, but I've seen another player use the equivalent of leatherworking in another system. But useless point sinks are a bad design. Ideally you should have skills split up in such a way that there's some intersection between the skill(s) you use for character concept and the skills that come up naturally when adventuring. There's a good example of using Accounting to reveal illegal income sources in the big bad's ledgers. But if you use Accounting for the former and PS (Banking) for being a bank accountant, then something is very very wrong.

I disagree with point sinks being a bad design. Point sinks make decisions meaningful while making a character. If every skill and advantage was created equal, you could pick a random list that is just as good as a carefully constructed character. If a skill like Profession(Useless Job) doesn't come up in an adventure, why are you taking it? If you're taking it because it's an excuse to take a bunch of related skills, it's actually a small unusual backround. In a lot of game types, I wouldn't even bother charging characters points for skills that don't come up in play. In DF, if you say your character was an accountant before going adventuring, sure, go for it! At best I'll let you make default rolls if it ever comes up.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by VariousRen

I disagree with point sinks being a bad design. Point sinks make decisions meaningful while making a character. If every skill and advantage was created equal, you could pick a random list that is just as good as a carefully constructed character. If a skill like Profession(Useless Job) doesn't come up in an adventure, why are you taking it? If you're taking it because it's an excuse to take a bunch of related skills, it's actually a small unusual backround. In a lot of game types, I wouldn't even bother charging characters points for skills that don't come up in play. In DF, if you say your character was an accountant before going adventuring, sure, go for it! At best I'll let you make default rolls if it ever comes up.

Your post seems self-contradictory. On one hand, you say that point sinks make decisions meaningful. On the other, you seem to be saying that you charge [0] for point sinks.

[RogerBW]

When I'm not writing for publication, I'm likely to use PSes as a shorthand for minor NPCs. Bob is an corporate tax accountant for a big city firm, which means he'd have some amount of Accounting, Finance, and relevant Law specialisations; or I can just write him with PS (corporate tax accountant)-12 and have a shorter listing. In effect it becomes a sort of mini wildcard skill. (But he doesn't have the bits of those skills that aren't specific to his job.)