Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Greetings, all!

This thread is partially inspired by the observation that in GURPS, attributes are relatively cheap compared to skills, such that a wide specialist, and often even a moderate specialist, is too often best built using high attributes.

GURPS' enormous skill list is kinda notorious, and it was barely reduced in 4e. Wildcards, while superficially similar to broad skills, actually serve a different purpose than unified skills, and are priced non-favourably compared to attributes anyway.

So, what I'm thinking is an Alternate GURPS / houserule idea of making a minimalistic generic skill list. As in, fitting not for any one specific setting or genre, but rather flexible enough to cover everything, and in such a way as to prevent further skill creep like 'and now let us add a new Professional Skill (Fisher), because having a Fishing skill is not enough'. That is to say, the intent is to make every skilled task encounterable strictly covered by no less than one standard skill. Sure, unfamiliarity penalties can be a thing, but the intent is to make sure that after gaining the proper familiarities, people don't need to add a second or even third page of a skill list.

Looking at other systems, ones that tend to build skills on the assumption that everything falls under at least one predefined skill, I'm seeing Exalted use 25 (though with specialisations within Craft, which got out of hand for them Real Fast) , FATE Core default to 18, and various incarnations of WoD seem to go for around 30 before adding the skill-bloat-creep supplements. I think GURPS' legacy will make it difficult to reduce the skill list below 50, but even that would be really nice compared to the current list of primary-skills, category-skills and mandatory-specialisation-skills in the Basic Set alone (before counting stuff found all over the place).

I'm not saying that specialisations should be impossible to buy, but it would be nice to avoid bloated charsheets that anyone wanting a flexible character has to deal with. I'm also, once again, not looking for a list that is meant for some specific campaign, but rather a universal/generic one that can be adapted to any or almost any campaign.

If someone's interested in the goal, I'm interested in reading comments, ideas etc.
Thanks in advance!

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Some thoughts on grouping up skills:

Accounting, Administration, Politics, Law, Current Affairs (Business), Finance, Merchant, Research, Market Analysis, Economics, Heraldry, and less-artistic uses of Writing - covered by Bureaucracy.

Assorted ranged weapon skills covered by Marksmanship, with a strong attention to TL-related familiarities (so e.g. no easily picking up a bow and sniping with it until you adapt to using without penalty).

Linguistics, Public Speaking, Writing, Detect Lies, Literature, Poetry, Artist (Calligraphy and Illumination), Gesture, Propaganda, Lip Reading - covered by the Wordsmith skill.

Acrobatics, Aerobatics, Aquabatics, Climbing, Running (sprint), Skiing (sprint), Swimming (sprint), Jumping, Free-Fall, Body Sense, Dancing, - Athletics.

Running/Skiing/Swimming (endurance), Power Blow, Hobby (Feats Of Strength), Roll With The Blow, Lifting, Breath Control, Hiking, Forced Entry - Toughness or Physique.

Acting, Fast-Talk, Disguise, Mimicry (Human Speech), Make-Up, Feints and Ruses in combat, optionally Holdout - Guile or Deceit.

Animal Handling, Falconry, Riding, Packing, - Animal Ken.

Armoury, Mechanic, Carpentry, Cooking, Architecture etc. - Craftsman, with strict familiarities.

First Aid, Physician, Diagnosis, Physiology, Autohypnosis, Biology, Esoteric Medicine, Hazmat (Bio), Hypnotism, Genetics, Bioengineering, biological uses of Chemistry, Poisons, Forensic (biomedical), Body Language - covered by Biotech.

Camouflage, Survival (non-urban), Fishing, Mimicry (Birds and Animals), Tracking, Hiking, Weather Sense/Meteorology, Swimming, Naturalist - covered by Outdoorsman.

Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, Linguistics, Physics, Physiology, Mathematics, Cryptology - Science.

Computer Operation/Programming/Hacking, Electronics Operation/Repair/Engineering, Cryptology, - Wire Rat.

Criminology, Tracking, Traps (detection and disarming), ElOps (Security), Forensics, Search, Observation - Investigation.

Psychology, Body Language, Detect Lies, Brainwashing, Brain Hacking, Sociology, Interrogation, Hypnotism, Autohypnosis/Meditation, Propaganda, Memetics, Teaching - Psych.

Streetwise, Intimidation, Gambling, Pickpocket, Lockpicking, Savoir-Faire (Mafia), Filch, Surival (Urban), Traps, Forced Entry, Forensics/Housekeeping (only to remove clues), Forgery/Counterfeiting, Holdout, Escape, Smuggling - Larceny.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Politics, Current Affairs (business), Current Affairs (politics), Economics, Public Speaking, writing, Propaganda, History! Research, Philosophy (Marxism), Merchant (selling radical papers and books etc), Enthralment, Persuade. Socialist Agitator?

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I'm not sure I understand the purpose of this effort, but I see downsides.

Certainly in many of the examples given it seems to me that it is possible, and even likely, that a person would have some of the skills within an umbrella and not others. For example the typical maverick litigation lawyer is typically tempermentally unfit for learning a lot of Administration.

On the other hand, I would consider reducing inter-skill defaults by 1 across the board.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

This looks like a d6 skills list.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

If its supposed to look like a D6 skills list, could easily look at some of the sundry Open D6 books

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

HERO System is another one to look to as a good example of an any-genre skills list that is small. Of course, they do that partly through having three "misc." skill areas: Knowledge Skill, Professional Skill, and Science Skill. Each is defined when purchased. For example, you might buy Professional Skill (Plumber) or Knowledge Skill (Medieval History), or Science Skill (Chemistry).

Otherwise, skills tend to be pretty broad, with just a few cascade skills such as Driving and Piloting (where you pick from a list of vehicle types when you buy the skill).

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Short of having literally millions of skills, that's going to be a problem no matter where you put the boundaries between them.

I suppose the other limit that still preserves some of the GURPS engine is not to have any skills at all. Just roll everything against the attribute you'd base the skill on instead. Effectively you have as many different skills as your game has attributes. This worked OK back before all games *had* skill lists, and still should.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I actually like the number of skills in GURPS...but I'm a "lots of skills" GM.

However, if you really want to reduce the number of skills radically, why don't you go the Over the Edge route and remove the defined skill list completely? Have the players define their own skills (I think they each character has three Skills/Traits in Over the Edge/Warp)

So one character can have:
Marksmanship
Brawling
Detective

Another can Have:
Businessman
Well-Read
Computers

Then you never have more skills than you need.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

You could use profession.

For example.
Profession ranger would replace the following skills: Survival, tracking, naturalist, and land navigation.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Optional Specialization and Quirks should be able to cover cases like this. Your maverick might have IQ 12 and Bureaucracy-16, but has a Quirk that means for Administration tasks he's working off of the normal Bureaucracy default.

Ideally, you'd want all skills to be the same difficulty for simplicity, with Optional Specialization simply giving a bonus to skill. I'd probably allow two levels of Specialization - Specialized and Extremely Specialized. The former is +1 for your task of interest and -2 for everything else; the latter is +2 for your task of interest and you work off defaults for everything else. Hard is probably appropriate, making Defaulting always be -5, [1] is -2, [2] is -1, [4] is +0, and it costs an additional [4] for each +1.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Have you considered just using the Niches/Challenges from Chapter 4 of GURPS Template Toolkit 1 - Characters? Granted, the Niches define a group of traits and skills to defeat a specific kind of challenge, but when you get down to having skills with a purpose in the game, what better way to limit them than by type of challenges?

There are 30 niches/challenges defined there, which isn't too large for a limited number of skills. It's not necessarily perfect... there's only a single "Combat" niche for example, so you don't divide between ranged and melee weapons as it was in your original suggestion, but then again, that's not so bad either as that tends to be more TL driven than anything else (you can throw in ranged vs melee as specialization). But it at least aligns up with the suggestions of character template design.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I'd take most Esoteric Skills (e.g., Enthrallment or anything with Trained By a Master as a prerequisite) out of consideration for this purpose: those are essentially “supernatural powers” systems, and no more deserve to be covered by a generic skill list than Imbuements or Spells do.

Let me second Kallatari's idea of referring to Niches as a basis for the skill list, complete with the caveat that a strict one-skill-per-Niche list isn’t ideal; but there should be at least one skill per Niche, and more than one per Niche should be the exception.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I seem to recall considering this sort of thing before. One start on a project was here.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I was working on an idea like this by basically looking for skill families and creating a meta-skill that all the others defaulted to. I never got around to building a list of skills, but you can look at my thought process on my blog:

http://diceanddiscourse.blogspot.com/2015/07/skill.html

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I did an article on this topic for JTAS: Condensed Skills for GURPS Traveller. I was only able to cut the list to about 75, though.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I wouldn't say it worked OK. I'd call it a constant problem that was improved massively by adding skills to games.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

There are several purposes for it. Here are some that seem to be more common IME:

• Consolidating skills reduces the chance of having 'orphaned skills' in a campaign - skills that had points spent on them, but never used in-game even though their skill group was relevant. That is, instead of hoping a default or a rare skill comes up, you are essentially guaranteed to use a default-like benefit regarding to a skill-group.
• The long 200-ish skill list looks intimidating to players, and runs a huge risk of a player missing some skill that was important for a concept, particularly if they for some reason haven't memorised the names and bodies of all those skills.
• On the contrary to the above, a modest number of consolidated skills means that a character meant to cover a niche will in fact be able to cover said niche. E.g. a street thief will not somehow manage to miss the somewhat-obscure Filch skill, a xenobiologist will not miss Hazardous Materials (Biological) and NBC Suit etc.
• The current skill list makes skills priced too expensively compared to attributes, but directly reducing skill prices will make achieving high levels too easy. Consolidated skills will instead allow generalists to be priced fairly while preventing cheap 30s.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I'm not disagreeing with you. But note that nearly every RPG that has consolidated skill lists invariably includes some mechanism for customizing a skill. Fate Core uses Stunts, World of Darkness games use Specialties, and so on. Clearly, a raw list of 30ish skills and nothing else is going to be insufficient.

Relating this to the aforementioned customization tools, you'll likely note that the list of Specialties in Exalted brings the effective length of the skill list up into the 200ish range; but most people don't notice because (a) you're rarely looking at double-digit Specialties at a time, (b) they're always thematically grouped by the skill they're associated with, and (c) they're usually optional, in that they make you better at something the skill already lets you do rather than enabling you to do sommething that you wouldn't be able to do without them.

This strikes me as a strong argument for breaking out Template Toolkit 1 and referencing its section on Challenges and Niches, where a major purpose is ensuring that a given Niche properly covers the Challenges that it's supposed to cover. Granted, it was written with the standard skill list in mind; but it really could be used to generate a viable consolidated skill list by starting with the list of Challenges and then engaging in somme minor lumping and splitting.

Bringing this around to the customization tools that I’ve been talking about, the section about Splitting Challenges could be referenced when coming up with customizations for a skill when they're not being used to adjust the skill list itself.

And customization tools likewise help keep the costs down. In particular, there are cases in regular GURPS where a single entry on the skill list actually refers to several skills that must be purchased separately; on a consolidated skill list, I'd prefer that such several-skills-in-one entries be converted into a single skill with an initial requirement to select a narrow focus for the skill paired with a customization option that lets you expand its scope.

Using Fate as an example, I could see having a Science Skill that requires you to choose one field of expertise when you select it, but then lets you use Stunts to add more fields of expertise. For instance, a biologist who also studies physics would use the same Science skill for both.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

As a "many skill" GM...these just haven't been a problem for me in my campaigns.

Point 1) No skill will be orphaned. This happens because a) my players will find ways to use their skills. b) I keep note of skills used and make sure than unused skills find opportunities for use. Doing this results in much more interesting campaigns and encounters because it pulls me out of familiar patterns as a GM and trying to figure out an interesting opportunity to use that character's Professional Skill: Sommelier is a great challenge for me as a GM.

Point 2) My players aren't intimidated by a 200 long list of skills because I do all character creation one on one. We have a lovely conversation about character concept and then we go and get the skills that match that concept. If they are super GURPSy they can do it themselves. If they enjoy pursuing skill lists (some players do), they can do that. But we can also just have a conversation. No intimidation.

Point 3) Because we have a conversation about concept, the player is not going to have missed any skill in their concept because checking in on that is my job as GM. If for some reason we both miss something and it comes up in play, all the player has to say is..."Dang! We both overlooked Filch! I totally would have had that skill based on my character concept!" Then I say, "You are right, that was my fault for not thinking about it. Take the skill at one point and you can pay for it with your cps later." But I think that has only happened once or twice in all of my GMing.

Point 4) This just hasn't been that much of a problem. Especially character creation is so much concept driven rather than optimization driven in my campaigns. Also we use Talents. And also I use floating skills to other attributes and to 10 quite often and I use familiarity penalties so spending points in skills is often very useful.

Now, I know there are people who don't like lots of skills. Good for them! They can just use fewer skills. Heck, I offered a solution where everyone just has 3 skills that they define themselves and everything is super simple.

But some people like lots of skills. I am one of them...and players have tended to be as well.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Also, you can just save a few CP at creation to fill in the overlooked skills when they come up. After the first few sessions when the concept and character sheet are firmed up, just spend them with the earned xp.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Yep. I find as long as the players and the GM have really strong senses of the character's concept, these things all work out.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

It's something I've considered - it would be nice to have something between the standard skills and the Wildcard skills. The Power Ups 7 system for creating a Wildcard skill has a systematic methold of combining skills to create Wildcard skills, but it could also be used to consolidate skills at a lower level of difficulty. E.g., using the system suggests a combination of Short Sword, Broadsword and Two Handed Sword should be a DX/H skill. I created a few skills appropriate for a fantasy/low tech campaign. I tried to be consistent with the existing rules (skills are E to VH and can be combined with existing skills.) If this has a whiff of In the Labyrinth, that's deliberate.

Deception IQ/H
Replaces Acting, Fast Talk & Performance

Fencing DX/H
Replaces Main Gauche, Rapier, Saber & Small Sword

Find Per/H
Replaces Observation & Search

Fine Manipulation IQ/H
Replaces Lockpicking & Traps

Flail DX/VH
Replaces Flail & Two Handed Flail

Healer IQ/VH
Replaces Diagnosis, Pharmacy & either Physician or Esoteric
Medicine

Impact Weapons DX/H
Replaces Axe/Mace & Two Handed Axe/Mace

Insight IQ/VH
Replaces Body Language, Detect Lies & Psychology. Use Per based rolls for Detect Lies & Body Language

Ledgermain DX/VH
Replaces Filch, Pickpocket & Sleight of Hand

Outdoorsman IQ/VH
Replaces Naturalist, Navigation (Land),Survival (Any) & Tracking

Pole Weapons DX/H
Replaces Polearm, Spear & Staff

Priest IQ/VH
Replaces Religious Ritual & Theology Must specialize by religion

Sword DX/H
Replaces Broad Sword, Short Sword & Two Handed Sword

Warlord IQ/VH
Replaces Leadership, Tactics & Strategy

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

For the issue of characters possessing incomplete umbrellas, I suggest making specialization free, as Ars Magica did:

For each skill¥, pick one aspect that you're especially good at (+1). You can also save o e point on final cost by picking an aspect you're especially bad at (-2).

This could be tweaked, but I recall that having a specialization on every skill greatly improved initial flavor, but also helped players memorize the tasks within each skill.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Nah, it did work fine. The thing that tended to be irritating was the fixed values, not what you rolled against. There's no real difference between "Roll vs INT" and "Roll vs Knowledge Skill" or "Charisma" and "Social Skill" The main complaint was there was no way to get better. Note that despite the much finer divisions of AD&D Secondary Skills or Top Secret Areas of Knowledge, nobody thought they were much in the way of improvements because they mostly lacked that too. GURPS attributes can already be bought up.

Another approach, why not just use the skill categories (http://www.warehouse23.com/products/...ill-categories)? There are are already the right number of them, and somebody else already did the sorting work. Yes there is some duplication, but so what? Skills always have the problem of stuff that could be done with more than one of them.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Crakkerjakk pruned the skill list back to about 100 or so a while back: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=70859

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Nice builds... :) Though you would probably end up around ~75 Skills that way I guess.

Cool idea, I would really like that in GURPS! :-)

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I've done some work on this topic myself. Depending on the genre, you might be able to get down to fifty skills, but I think you would need to do what other games do and cheat by combining what are individual skills in GURPS into skills where you must choose to specialize. We already have that with the Games skill. You could have a Craft skill, a Science skill, etc. Further, you could compress all the melee weapon skills into a single skill.

If handling the different crafting skills in that way counts as reducing the list, then this is definitely possible. I don't think there's any way to shrink the list much more than I have while keeping a separate butchering and sewing skill, and all that entails.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Grouping specialties certainly helps reduce the load, but that's not the only deal. The other big important thing is that Exalted-style Specialities are optional. I you want to be a master of etiquette, you don't need to go through 4-6 specialities of Socialize - you just buy Socialize 5 and are done with it. In Exalted, this is slightly undermined by the fact that specialities (a) are given out at chargen (you get four for free) and (b) allow you to bust the dicepool cap slightly.

Speaking of specialities, in 4e they seem to be something that is rarely worth the bother with the RAW skill narrowness. The +1 is a minor bonus to a very narrow field in exchange for -1 to everything else, and you need to go over possible specialisation for each and every of your eligible skills. That's annoying more than useful.

(Also, in a way, such grouping is why Skill Categories are a thing.)

While Template Toolkit is interesting, it seems to be too much of a 'make your own campaign-specialised template set' instead of offering a more generic solution.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

That seems to me like bending the world to fit the characters. It's appropriate in some campaigns, but not others. E.g. I'm currently running a campaign that is very mildly cinematic, and such scenario-bending seems not very appropriate. I agree that it can be interesting to have it happen, but it often feels disbelief-suspending.

IME that doesn't always help.

Some players see the very fact of such a retcon as (a) unpleasant in general and (b) an annoying waste of time during a campaign that could've been spent [re]designing the system before the campaign.

I understand. I'm not saying that the few-skill way is the one true way.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

OK, so this is still a raw draft phase, but seems like 25 skills is actually doable. Maybe 30. Here's what I currently have:
http://1drv.ms/1TLSNwy
^ Excel sheet with a conversion list, and a list of the skills to which the conversions go (with the number of occurrences). Note that a single RAW skill can be simultaneously covered by two or more Consolidated Skills.

Copy of the list with counts here, as calculated as of 17-Aug-2015:

My thoughts on the resulting list:
The skills currently don't look quite equal, which may be solved by giving them different Difficulty ratings. The raw number of RAW-skills covered by a Consolidated skill is not necessarily all it takes to estimate worth:
Stealth and Deceit seem like two very low-count C-skills, but IME they get used a lot in campaigns anyway.
Otherwise, a count of 15ish seems OK for an Average skill, 18+ for Hard (though more because some 18+ skills are just too useful, like Larceny and Crafts), 10- for Easy, and 25+ for Very Hard (hypothetically).

A special note on Provoke: this Consolidated Skill is largely inspired by the way a skill of the same name works in FATE, and by the desire to emulate whatever social skill Renegade Shepard possesses in ME2+ (no, it's not just intimidation). It's meant to cover not just intimidation and the like, but also taunts, ability to inspire people through negative emotion, ability to bend rules and get away with it through sheer chutzpah etc. GURPS seems to be somewhat lacking in this area.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Yes. That's why the “(c)” in my post was “they're usually optional” — emphasis on “usually” because nearly every “consolidated skill list” I’ve ever encountered makes specialization mandatory for the likes of academics, crafts, and sciences.

I would not advise using GURPS' standard specialization rules for this project — nor the standard Technique rules, for that matter. Rather, I'd recommend something along the lines of what Fate Core does: have a separate trait that you take to customize a skill, either by improving your roll where the specialization or technique is involved or (more rarely) by expanding the scope of the skill so that it can do things it otherwise couldn't do. In GURPS terms, this customization trait would work best as a Perk.

One benefit of this approach is that you avoid skill bloat: as GURPS normally handles specializations, each specialization is effectively a separate skill: even the optional specializations can almost be thought of as “reduce the difficulty level by one (just like required specializations), and default to all other optional specializations at a -2 penalty.” With specializations replaced by customization perks, you never have new skills added to the list, and each skill only ever has one purchased rating tied to it.

True. However, the Challenges are still something that ought to be consulted to make sure you haven't forgotten anything. Give me some time, and I'll see about doing exactly that for your proposed skill list.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

OK, it seems like mixing up optional and mandatory specialisations in this discussion is something that happens but is to be avoided, so . . .
Well, the idea of the consolidated list is to avoid something as fiddly as dozens of mandatory specialisations.

Actually, Techniques look like the way FATE does specialisation bonuses. Pricing is to be estimated at some level, of course.
As for widening the scope of a skill - I have marked some skills with a * symbol in the note column (in the linked document, not in the post), which is meant to denote skill functions that only become available after taking some enabler trait, e.g. TbaM for cinematic combat skill functions. But I see that as a necessary evil.
Having e.g. a dozen scope-expander perks for a dozen ElOps specs would defeat the purpose of skill consolidation. The idea of skill consolidation is that you don't need to specify such fiddly details as whether you know sensors and sonar (which is somehow not a sensor), or one or the other of the two.

[QUOTE=dataweaver;1928463]One benefit of this approach is that you avoid skill bloat: as GURPS normally handles specializations, each specialization is effectively a separate skill: even the optional specializations can almost be thought of as “reduce the difficulty level by one (just like required specializations), and default to all other optional specializations at a -2 penalty.” With specializations replaced by customization perks, you never have new skills added to the list, and each skill only ever has one purchased rating tied to it.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

FWIW, I've been making a point not to conflate them. That said, I could see some merit in an Advantage that you can tie to a skill with mandatory specializations that lets you treat them as optional specializations.

Right; which is why I mentioned (albeit briefly) that mandatory customization ought to be rare.

Pricing is my main issue here: 1 point per +1 is too expensive relative to the cost of a skill. My own pricing for Techniques is to replace each Technique with a Perk that maxes out the Technique or adds +3 if the Technique has no maximum.

“Necessary evil” is a good way to put it, yes.

I know that, which is why I think it should be avoided when it’s reasonable to do so.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Yeah, I tried to support your point by discussing them with (hopefully) more obvious separation.

I'd rather make it completely eliminated other than in the form of familiarity penalties (gunner picking up a crossbow for the first time etc.).

I suppose a +1/[2] is OK as a price for a single specialisation. However, I see it as important to make sure that at this price, a specialisation can't be raised more than N levels beyond the main consolidated skill which covers said spec. N would probably be something between 3 and (points spent on main consolidated skill/2), IMHO. Otherwise jack-of-one-skill becomes too cheap to raise through the roof.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Isn't this already covered by talents?

Isn't this pretty much exactly what talents were designed for? To make it easier to create a specialist without resorting to attribute dumping?

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Remembering what six skills to throw into a talent is the same difficulty as remembering to pick up all six of the same skills at character generation and overlooking them means mostly the same problems.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I suppose, but just because you forgot doesn't mean that the system doesn't work anyway. I mean, you could very easily just ask the GM if there is something you forgot to add it to the talent later, or as a GM, add it if it is necessary.

At least currently you have the ability to lump skills together, and the ability to segregate them easily. People forget stuff all the time; it is much much more fun to be lenient when pertaining to matters like talents since that is the point of playing the game right?

Though, I will admit, the skills section is incredibly difficult for people newer to the system. I had the worst experience trying to teach someone that skill A only does skill A stuff and not things related to skill A.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

No. Or at least, not well -- even if you put every skill under exactly one talent, you'd wind up with more than 25 talents.
Pretty sure the intent is to cut down on the number of fiddly little skills that you might forget about when building a character.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Well the title of the thread is minimalistic (25-50) kills list. And if you put everything into a Talent you would get 25-50. So that seems to fulfill the original thread requirement well enough.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

If you were to then go and delete all the skills, sure.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

That's what people here are asking for. They want 25-50 "skills" so everything is easier.

I still say just have everyone choose three skills they name whatever they want that covers everything that fits their concept a la Over the Edge. 3 skills does everything they need should make the low-skills camp happy.

My single dad character would have had:
Ex-Cop
Tough Guy
Single-Dad

as his three skills. Concept covered. Only three skills.
Now if one really wanted to make this more like Over The Edge, you'd have to take one Incompetency. Gianni's would have been:
Incompetency: Modern Technology.

Personally, I like all the skills and find them in no way fiddly or too hard to remember.

But if it is really all too much, just go the Over the Edge route. That will make character creation, really, really fast and easy.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I'd tend to approach this by offering groups of related skills as a single thing that can be acquired and listed as one thing.

It could be anything group of skills, as long as it makes sense that a character would have learned them all to the same degree.

E.g.
Sword & Shield: Shortsword, Broadsword, Knife, Shield
Physicker: First Aid (TL3), Physician (TL3)
Farmer: Agronomy, Ax, Animal Handling, Polearm
Roman Legionnaire: Spear, Spear Throwing, Shortsword, Shield, Knife, Hiking

(It's sort of akin to the skill lists in Martial Arts styles, though of course those are used to potentially go hyper-detailed with maneuver sub-skills, rather than to simplify.)

If detail is wanted, there should probably be some relative +/- to certain skills or tasks, since some of the component skills are easier or might be more featured by a typlical person with that skill group.

And of course, each skill group would have a different cost per level of advancement. Which of course has the downside (for purposes of detail and of gratification/reward) that there are many points needed between each level of advancement of a skill group that includes many skills.

This could also be used not just to simplify character sheets & creation, but also to provide a mechanic to offer some realistic discounts to related skills. The default rules always seemed a bit inadequate to represent learning related skills. I'd imagine that most detailed characters would have both skill groups and skills, and some points improving their level in one or two skills that are also in a skill group.

For realism purposes perhaps more than for simplifying (or maybe not), maybe there would also be "Skill Fields" which would be all of the skills that are related to each other, and the total number of points in skills in such a field would result in some sort of default.
All medical skills, or all melee skills, or all ranged targeting skills, or all language skills, or all artistic skills, or all social skills. Maybe this is the skill-learning side of Talents? If Talents are your innate gift in a type of skill, then maybe Skill Field learning represents how much you've learned about that field, and results in increased defaults and a slight skill bonus across the board? Perhaps this could somehow be balanced so as to be a balanced alternative to increasing IQ or DX?

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

There's a reason I concur with the “necessary evil” description of mandatory customization, and why I pointed out that even games that use short lists of broad skills tend to have two or three skills that require customization in some form.

Your reliance on the familiarity rules is an example of the same sort of thing; though I'd argue that in cases such as individual sciences, arts, or crafts, it should take more than eight hours of exposure to a new one before you can reduce the unfamiliarity penalty. Heck, even the notion that a botanist even gets to attempt nuclear physics without months of exposure to it is suspect (though I can swallow that for the sake of minimizing the chances of overlooking something you really ought to have).

Oh, certainly. Though don't you mean “+2/[1]” (i.e., +2 to roll per point spent)?

My own proposal was premised on the notion that customization can never get you higher than “base skill + 3” (for specialties and for techniques that lack caps as written), and frequently can't even get you past “base skill” or even less (most techniques start you out at a penalty and cap you at your base skill; a few start you out at a penalty and cap you at half that penalty). To me, “spend one point to raise a technique or specialty to its cap” is less fiddly than “spend one point per +X to a technique or specialty, up to a maximum of its cap” — and for most techniques, the difference between default and cap rarely exceeds 3 or 4 anyway.

If you want to streamline it further, forbid techniques; then the rule becomes “a specialty costs one point and grants a +3 bonus; and you can't spend more than one point on a given specialty”.

I still haven't gotten around to putting your list up against Template Toolkit's Challenges, and I still intend to do so.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I mostly lurk around here these days, but when I started to wrestle with whittling down the skills list, I reached for the Styles rules as well. I wasn't going to mention it since vicky seems to be going in another direction, but since it came up...

Many skills have considerable overlap. Where does Finance stop and Market Analysis begin? And how does Economics fit into the picture? They aren't so much separate skills as different balances between Current Events (Business), Mathematics (Statistics), and Economics. Then you get cattle-call skills like Merchant, which rolls together a number of distinct concepts, united only by the fact that merchants have them. This just screams "Style rules" to me.

Styles are like a template in that they provide a nice guide to what skills you need whether you're a financier, operations manager, marketer, salesman, or entrepreneur. Then add the style-specific perk to account for that last little bit of domain knowledge that makes the analyst on wall street different from the finance professor.

• It lets you prune the skill list down into something more manageable, while not designing out the potential for hyper-customization if that's what a GM wants. Whatever your choice, you draw from the same condensed list. You can zoom in very deeply in a campaign where it matters, without having background skills become a points dump*.
  
• Say the GM wants to zoom out and have the most abstract profession possible. The style listing gives you the skills and points cost. It's easy to roll the whole list together into a Wildcard skill using the rules in Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills. Then you can buy the whole thing in one go, and if a roll does come up, it's handled with a very broad profession check.
  
• Finally, there's the signalling benefit. By doing this selectively, a GM can communicate to the players which professions will be important (uses style rules) and which will be mostly hand-waved (uses wildcard rules). Players have no confusion about what to buy when designing their character. And if the GM does change his or her mind later, the Wildcard rules mean that the players' investment covers all the bases.

.

.

* By points dump, I mean where you have to buy a long list of overlapping skills to fit your intended background, even though the skills you buy are unlikely to figure into a campaign. Per this quote:

A financier currently needs the long list of skills above to fit their role, even though they'll probably never roll half of them. Whereas the same points invested in "adventuring" skills like Guns or Search grants frequent, direct game advantages. Pruning the list is cleaner and improves game balance.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

The Challenges from TT1 are:

• Animals
• Combat
• Communications
• Crafting
• Deceit
• Detective Work
• Esoterica
• Establishment
• Exploration
• Inventing
• Medicine
• Military
• Mobility
• Money
• Nautical
• Outdoors
• Performing
• Plants
• Research
• Sabotage
• Science
• Security
• Sneaking
• Social Engineering
• Social Sciences
• Space
• Stealing
• Streets
• Technical Means
• Transportation

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

My reliance on Familiarity is. But it's also more of a case of 'for those people who will insist on not letting a person cover a sphere with a taken skill, here is a penalty solution'.

Oh, perhaps I should clarify: I meant two points per one level of a sphere-of-competence equivalent to the RAW-skill or RAW-mandatory-specialisation breadth (so e.g. Filch or Guns (Pistol) equivalent).

That's definitely nice.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

In general, good idea. But inclination here is to find a way to split up Melee first; of course I play a lot of action oriented games bat having that one in particular be a Very Hard skill, even for a perk for a +3 to one specialty, makes me cringe.
My first impulse is just a 1/H vs 2/H split, but I think there's a torches-and-pitchforks mob out there for making the current -4 default penalty between modes even worse.
My second impulse is balanced vs unbalanced, but where do you put stuff that was originally covered by wonky skills like Net, Whip, Garrote, and Shield? Never mind the Force <fnu> or Monowire <fnu> skills.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Well, there's something to be said for having the master of multiple weapons be a coherent concept. If the problem is "4 points for +1 is too cheap", that's already a problem for Johnny One-Skill, and I might split into "melee attack" and "melee defense".

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I can think of another way to reduce this problem without changing as much:

If you reduced defaults between skills by a lot, and add a few more defaults for skills that don't have them, raising one skill would end up raising a lot more, and therefore it wouldn't be worth buying attributes for groups of related skills.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

They are already against using talents to improve groups of combat skills, (for "balance" reasons.) Or at least that was the line a long time ago. I don't think that would have changed by now. Though I could be wrong. . .

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Yes, but I wasn't responding to 'they'. I was responding to Bruno.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Following up on my last post, here are how your skill list addresses the various Challenges, to the best of my knowledge:

• Animals: Animal Ken
• Combat: Marksmanship, Melee, Thrown, Unarmed; War?
• Communications: Wordsmith?
• Crafting: Arts, Crafts
• Deceit: Deceit
• Detective Work: Investigation
• Esoterica: Occultism
• Establishment: Bureaucracy, I guess.
• Exploration: Outdoorsman (when navigating in the wild)
• Inventing: Crafts, most likely.
• Medicine: Biotech?
• Military: no clue.
• Mobility: Athletics
• Money: not really covered.
• Nautical: unsure.
• Outdoors: Outdoorsman
• Performing: Arts
• Plants: Outdoorsman
• Research: Investigation, Science
• Sabotage: Larceny? Crafts?
• Science: Science
• Security: not sure.
• Sneaking: Stealth
• Social Engineering: Charm, Provoke, Psych
• Social Sciences: Science?
• Space: unsure.
• Stealing: Larceny
• Streets: unsure.
• Technical Means: Larceny
• Transportation: Drive

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

For the record, the approach I'd suggest would be to use a Familiarity-like setup, but broader and moe expensive: each “familiarity” would be fairly broad (aim at any given skill rarely having more than five or six of them), would default to the core skill at -3 unless otherwise specified, and would be usable without penalty once a Perk is taken to enable it (with you getting one for free).

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Depends on the specific "they." Technically combat skills in Talents are discouraged but not forbidden. The Power-Ups devoted to Talents recommended allowing them only for a few skills in a Talent which strikes me as a little odd - a 15 point Talent for all weapon skills seems less of a point crock than a 5 point Talent covering multiple weapons.

That said, a while back I suggested using Talents to cover overall proficiency in a martial art (or multiple martial arts) and it met with a fair amount of approval including from at least one GURPS professional. So combat skills in Talents are risque but technically legal.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Thinking further, I don't think we should approach this as "How to merge the current skills together," but rather as an all new skill system that covers what's needed. Current rules would be converted on a common sense basis - if we've got an Agility skill or something that covers actions like jumping, tumbling, sprinting, etc, then naturally we'll use that in place of Acrobatics for tic-tacs, Acrobatic Dodges, kip-ups, and so forth.

What these skills should be, however, is a bit beyond me, although I have some ideas. I'll need to think further on them.

Specialization should still be an option - in fact, I'd be inclined to have various methods and degrees of specialization. Assuming we stick with [4]/+1 once you're far enough above default (I'm actually leaning more toward [5]/+1, but I'm not certain how the buildup should be handled - maybe [1], [2], [3], [5], [5]/+1 but that seems to make price jump too quickly), I could see something like the following system.

First off, specialization can be Broad, Moderate, or Narrow. Exact definitions are up to the GM - Broad would typically cover multiple related skills in Basic Set GURPS, Moderate would typically cover a single skill (or a couple of skills with close defaults), and Narrow would cover a single use of a skill. When picking a skill, you may opt to specialize it in one of these categories. Whatever doesn't follow under your specialization is at -3 to skill. Whatever does is at +1 for Broad, +2 for Moderate, and +3 for Narrow. Optionally, you can get a further +2 to your specialization by having your skill not apply at all to uses that aren't covered by it - a character who hyperspecializes his Melee skill to cover Thrusting Broadswords and only Thrusting Broadswords is at +5 to use such, but lacks the ability to use other weapons or fight unarmed at better than Default.

Following this, you may opt to "buy up" a specialization (which must be covered by whatever the skill you purchased specialized in, if anything). Broad cost [3]/+1, Moderate cost [2]/+1, Narrow cost [1]/+1. You may only get up to a +2 from any given specialization at this point, and the total bonus here cannot exceed +4. A character who has an unmodified Melee skill at 14 could spend [4] for +2 when using Swords (moderate) and [2] for a further +2 when using Thrusting Broadswords (narrow), for example, giving him skill 14 for most weapons, skill 16 when using a sword, and skill 18 when using a Thrusting Broadsword.

It's likely appropriate to require some minimal investment in a skill before any specialization is available; spending at least [4] in the skill seems appropriate.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Gotta love ambiguity. I'm in the camp of "if it works, use it," and I am all for using talents to cover martial weapons skills, in fact in many of my fantasy campaigns I use a martial talent to govern their melee combat prowess just that way. I just don't understand what the big to-do about it is I guess. -.-

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I'm nearly certain that "don't make a Combat Talent" was just a false alarm in early 4e design, that's long proven unneeded.

You don't break GURPS by having sixteen weapon skills at 18, you break it by having one at 32.
+1 DX -0.25 Speed gives you way more than a 15-point combat talent anyway.

The only problematic version is probably a 5-point Talent covering Karate, Judo and your melee and ranged reason all at once (in a campaign where this is even relevant), but that's for the GM to turn down, much like he would turn down your talent for Stealth, AK, Survival, Engineering, Armoury and Thaumatology, no matter what you call it.

Hint: You can tell a player-created Talent is broken because they try to start with four levels.

At any rate, the prohibition will officially stand because it's on the books, but it's pretty safe to say it shouldn't stop anyone.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Hint: If a talent is remotely not-terrible a player will try to start with four levels if he can afford it and isn't sure the GM will allow it to be increased later.

Because Attributes and skills can always be raised down the road, but sometimes you're stuck with exactly those Advantages you define yourself as having at the outset.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Hint: almost all talents are things you want either 4 or 0 levels of.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

If I am building an Outdoorsman who has most or all of the Talent skills, I don't feel like making him a sooooper genius, and I do want him to be very skilled at those skills (like, I was targeting Stat+3 or +4 kind of area) you darn right I'm going to go straight for 4 levels.

Number of levels of talent bought has a lot more to do with desired final skill levels than "brokenness" - a forest elf Scout in DF is going to go straight for 4 levels of the elf talent because he would have got Bow skill astronomical anyways. A forest elf wizard is not going to bother; he's got no real intentions on being a survivalist or archer (why is he playing a forest elf instead of a high elf? he doesn't like music).

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I like dividing skills into core competencies.


Conflict Resolution
- Movement
- Combat
- Social


Acquisition
- Intel
- Combat
- Transport
- Food and Shelter

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Those look like interesting skill categrories; but they strike me as too broad to use as skills.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Rolling against your sweeping and innate intelligence attribute and rolling against your trained knowledge of poisons seem very different to me. One is for a game that lacks the kind of detail I need to make a good setting.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

If 25 skills is better than 200, then why not go all the way and have say 6-10 character classes instead?

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

What makes you think skills somehow conflate to character classes?

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Thing is, in GURPS terms most classes are a package of skills, Advantages and Attributes. Furthermore, the balance between them varies - Fighter types sink more points into Attributes while Magic Users sink more points into Advantages. In a lot of cases, it's Advantages that distinguish templates most of all.

It's not a question of "better" - the long skill list allows for great precision and means two characters similar in concept ("Big Guy", "Knight", etc) are very distinct in execution. The problem as already mentioned is that the long list can be intimidating, can take a lot of time to create characters and makes it easy to miss some minor but logical niche function (Hazardous Materials, etc.)

One approach to handle this is to create Wildcard skills which by nature cover everything in the character concept. The downside is that this can be too simple and make it seem like all the characters are distinguished by one skill. In addition, Wildcard skills often feel more like professions rather than broad skills, especially for the more esoteric ones.

So this thread is exploring a way to make the skill list simpler while keeping the system skill focused and not distilling it to a single digit skill list.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

And that they're crazy expensive, especially if you want to use them as a replacement for the normal-granularity system in which case it's often logical to try to put more than one such skill on a character.

For me it's the skill granularity of wildcards with the price of "normal" skills that feels most reasonable.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

I don't think that, but it seems to be the natural progression of this project.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Did any progress get !ade on this re OP. I have the same desire.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

Not anything serious. I'm not starting any new GURPS campaigns any the foreseen future, and players will not want to go through rewriting their sheets in my current one, so for now it's just an idea that is left hanging. You may, of course, have some thoughts and questions of your own, based on your vision of the issue, which you can post away.

Re: Alternate GURPS: Seeking a minimalistic (25-50) skill list . . .
 

The easiest minimalistic skill list is probably to just use no skills that aren't in GURPS Lite.