Research skill

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by malloyd

I think the thing here is that Research doesn't let you *do* anything with the information. If all you care about is a particular fact, you don't need any other skills. If you have to physically do something with it, or reason from it to some other conclusion, which is after all what you usually want information for, you'll need another skill. It's the same principle as Intelligence Analysis or Observation really. They all let you acquire information, they don't let you use it for anything in particular.

Quoted for truth. And have you ever tried reading an advanced medical textbook or the wiki page on some obscure mathematical topic? you get nowhere fast! Sure, you may have a chunk of information on exactly what you want, but you can't really use it.

On the other hand, Library's have subject librarians for a reason. having a -5 or -4 (countering a 'routine' bonus) for not knowing the subject isn't a terrible idea.

[Kromm]

Research isn't always specific to the knowledge covered by other skills, either – there's plenty of information you might want to know that isn't closely related to any other skill. Research is really useful for turning up such facts, because it's also the skill of using card catalogs and search engines; exploiting tables of contents, indexes, and guide words; analyzing charts, tables, outlines, and bullet lists; and so on. You can roll against it when time is limited and you have to find the phone number in the old white pages, spell in the magic grimoire, single book in the library, etc. in "adventure time." Someone without the skill would need +5 to offset the default penalty and thus have to take 30 times as long; so while you find that passage or number in a second, or the book in a minute, the untrained need half a minute or half an hour to do so.

[Xplo]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

How is this supposed to work? According to the rules, it seems I could find exciting stuff about, say, treatment of a disease even if I don't know the squat about physiology, pathology or pharmacology. If it's in the book I can find it...

Have you never done actual research, for work or a college assignment?

Research is not as simple as "look it up in the book". (Well, I guess it could be, for very simple subjects - the kind that would grant +10 and be resolved as "okay, you Google it".) You nearly always have to start by defining the scope of the problem or subject, because you aren't familiar with the problem or subject, because if you were you wouldn't have to research it. So you start by looking at various sources and trying to get a big picture grasp of what it is you need to know, and then you start nailing down the details.

Sources aren't always easy to find, especially if you're looking for very particular information. I've done searches on things where after clicking through half of the links on five or six pages of search results I either haven't found what I was looking for, or only found it in terms too general or too technical to be useful to me. Sometimes, important information simply isn't documented at all - or if it is, you can't find it. Sometimes sources offer contradicting information and then you have to evaluate them. Frequently you might want access to scientific journals or proprietary or classified information that you either can't get outright, or aren't willing to pay for.

Usually when you get far along enough in this process, you can begin to compile or synthesize the answer(s) you were looking for.

I don't know how to interpret what I found - is that a separate issue? Do I roll against the pertinent skill to do that? Or is that part of the skill?

If you have no skill in, say, Chemistry, and you're trying to research a chemical process, then you could use Research to find good sources, but you might need Chemistry skill to understand the process when you find it. Or you could keep researching and maybe you can find enough good, helpful material to help you figure out what all that gibberish means without having to actually learn the entire skill first... but probably not.

Sticking with existing GURPS mechanics, I'd suggest that a technical skill can act as a complement to Research, and then that Research roll can act as a complement to the technical skill. This means that skilled or genius-IQ characters are more likely to benefit from research than ordinary unskilled folks. Or use GM fiat to decide whether the character can use the information he finds or if it's simply over his head.