Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

GURPS has a lot of skills. Different amounts of text are dedicated to each, which is fair: the Exorcism skill is the best place to describe an exorcism, probably, and Crossbow is pretty self-explanatory. But some of them would justify their own supplements: Boardrooms and Curia isn't precisely GURPS Politics, but it's close. What strikes me as more feasible than a supplement for every skill, though, is a book dedicated entirely to skills. For each skill, I'd love to see some combination of the following:

• At-length description of the skill
• Explanation of why other skills allow defaults to this one
• Distinctions between the skill and related ones (what's the difference between Economics and Finance? Body Language and Detect Lies? Electronics Operation: Media and Photography?)
• Common and uncommon uses for the skill
• Common and uncommon modifiers that may apply to the skill
• Techniques that are specific to the skill

EDIT: Now with contributions from other brains!

• Applications of superhuman skill levels, if any
• Familiarity and optional specialization examples
• "If I wanted to cut down the skill list, what skill could do this skill's job?"
• Skills through the ages; does use change much over TL?
• What tools are required to avoid a penalty? Do any provide a bonus? Does this change over TL?
• What genre(s) is this skill appropriate or inappropriate for?

SAME EDIT: That's a long list! I'm sure there are some skills that deserve to have every one of those points lavished with attention over the course of a full page or more, but I'm envisioning a book where, if there's nothing interesting to say for a given point, it's omitted. I don't think anyone needs to be told whether Sewing is appropriate for an Action game. If you take it, you know full well it's so you can say "before we turn in for the night, I'll stitch all the bullet holes in Burt's jacket shut so he doesn't draw attention at the office tomorrow."

There should also, like Talents and Wildcard Skills, be a second section that discusses skills in a general sense. Talk about solo complementary skills. Talk about helping other peoples' skill use. Talk about techniques that might be applicable to a variety of skills. Talk about learning skills in play, and give some realistic/cinematic levers to adjust that. Maybe there can be a list of Cinematic Defaults, defaults that wouldn't be allowed in a gritty campaign but might be reasonable for a campaign where breadth in competence is appropriate even without wildcard skills. Maybe there's a discussion of when and how it's appropriate to cap skills: when it's best to cap them at Attribute+5, when it's best to cap them at 20, when it's best to soft-cap them, when it's best not to cap them at all.

Would there be a market for a supplement like that among forumgoers? What length would be thinking about? I'm thinking it wouldn't be ~250 pages like Powers or Martial Arts. Could 150 get the job done? What do you think?

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

Sounds like a winner to me. Can also throw in more Familiarity examples for skills it could apply to.

I know some people have advocated for a more streamlined skill list somewhere between default and the cinematic feel of Wildcard skills, so there's that as well. But then maybe someone already did it...

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

It would be useful if this book, for each skill, includes the genres where it is useful/advised. Such as Action, Soap opera, DF, Horror, ATE ...

In some genres also some different skills can be simplified in one. Or just the opposite

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

That would be a huge book!

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

I second the notion of suggestions for simplifying the skills list by genre and time period. Including combining skills based on the time period and suggestions of how to combine (should the type Easy, Average, Hard, Very Hard stay the same. Should specializations disappear in certain time periods, genres)

The skill list is a little overwhelming having a way to simply for individual games would be a nobrainer purchase for me almost without the other things.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

I'll edit the main post to incorporate the suggestions! They all look good to me.

It COULD be a huge book, but how many skills justify a full-page write-up, anyway? Many, I'm sure, but maybe not 100. It should include the combat skills, but Martial Arts goes into them in detail, so no need to reprint everything in there; the category skills like Electronics Operation might spill over a page to get into all the subcategories, but for every skill like that, I'm sure there are several that don't need a full page. With no experience in the matter whatsoever, I feel it could be 3/5 the size of Powers or Martial Arts and get its job done.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

The thing is, Martial Arts already IS a book about skills. And it's huge! Social Engineering includes a lot of material on skills, and it's not small. So covering all the skills in one book would mean simply duplicating a lot of material from those two books, which would lessen the appeal.

If you didn't duplicate, but did a book on "all the other skills," its appeal would be a lot less focused. "This is the book to go to for information on how to do scientific research/create works of art/repair machinery/build things/survive in the wilderness/run a business."

Skills as a concept are really simple, much simpler than powers or magic. You can sum up all the general principles in a few pages. And then all you have left is details on how particular skills work.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

I think as an SJG product it's a non-starter. The concept goes against the line's current aversion to omnibus books - especially if they're highly duplicative.

What's needed isn't so much a write-up on every single skill but clarification on the mechanics in all the weird edge cases we see in the forums. But that's not going to happen either, because they're weird edge cases and the only people who run into those problems and care enough about absolute precision are already here, on the forums, asking the questions.

Also, the state of the industry has moved back away from skill-based systems and toward more ephemeral, abstracted mechanics (and not only the ones that are "storytelling" based, the mere thought of which makes my skin crawl). If SJG wants GURPS to claw back some market share (as evidenced by DFRPG and the new hardcovers), a skill book is the absolute best way to do precisely not that.

TL;DR:
Yes, but like a broken record I repeat, we are not the target audience.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

I disagree with the assertion that Martial Arts is a book about skills. It includes skills, sure, but it expands on maneuvers, it has templates, it has weapons, it has the most codified system for perks I'm aware of; it goes far beyond skills. Perhaps later I'll give an example of what the write-up for Boxing might look like in GURPS: Skills.

When you say omnibus books, you're thinking of universal things like Powers and Martial Arts, rather than specific settings/systems like Mars Attacks and Dungeon Fantasy? I have observed that trend, but perhaps that's because an edition of GURPS is always going to have a wealth of focused supplements and fewer omnibuses. And it's my humble opinion that GURPS is always going to struggle to beat abstracted-mechanics systems at their own game, so it might as well embrace being skill-based.

For the record, I asked if there would be a market for a supplement like that among forumgoers, not because I expect that we're SJG's target audience, but because we're the audience I personally have access to. I'd love to know whether there'd a market among non-forumgoing GURPS players, but I haven't got them on my mailing list to ask, have I? But I'm not sure weird edge cases would be the ideal target for GURPS: Skills, not that "weird edge cases" is even something I can define. Is "what does Sewing look like at TL11" an edge case? "What can I do with Acrobatics 30"? I'm confident "what can I do with Finance, period" is worth answering, but taking any given skill to TL11 or skill level 20 seems like something that could reasonably happen.

Frex, I remembered I'd been thinking about this idea and posted it because I ended up with Acrobatics 20 on a character without trying too hard, and I thought, none of the uses of the skill that I can find are penalized.* I thought, what do those last four levels do for me, aside from making my acrobatic dodges and controlled falls more consistent if I'm drunk or in the dark or something? Now, is that a weird edge case? I contend that humans can have DX and/or IQ 20, so getting any skill up to that level should be expected, and the benefits of doing so are worth considering.

Exception: "a difficult jump (into a pit, for instance)" on p. 352, which doesn't exactly explain to me which jumps are hard enough to merit a penalty or why - but which GURPS Skills would!

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

I was thinking more of things like GURPS Compendium from 3E, but MA and Powers are close to the same idea.

There is already a formulation, in Basic, for how to determine difficulty, on pp. 345-346. That's for the GM to decide. I suppose you could draw up lists, but that would be drier than Arrakis and has more in common with Rolemaster than with GURPS, I think.

And that's basically the problem: the extent to which a skill's scope is left to GM interpretation is rather well defined in Basic. The Social Engineering book is great but it's thematically tailored, which makes it valuable. Squishing that together with combat skills (Martial Arts) and then all the rest - i.e., an omnibus - gets you something that isn't thematically tailored and therefore loses most of the value of those other two books. And then what you're left with is... a list. And while I may be very far on the crunchy end of the handwave-to-crunchy scale, even I would find that unappealing and not worth my money. A book like that would be a very hard sell indeed, if even I wouldn't buy it.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

First of all: this isn't the first time this book has been proposed in this forum. Same story with one for disadvantages.

Anyways, while this always sounds like a good idea, there are many, many issues here.

• There has already been a supplement on wildcard skills.
• Techniques would also best be served as a separate supplement in the Power-Ups line.
• You know that Kromm has to be the one who writes this, right? The level of system mastery the book needs limits it to just one person, who has other tasks as well.
• Those other tasks are more likely to bring in money. What's the exact market for this? This book idea doesn't really expand the system much, as GURPS Powers did. It's more of what we already use for tasks we already have in-game.
• The various tasks could have their own supplements. Vehicle skills should be in a putative GURPS Vehicles, along with the catalog of vehicles. Animal and plant skills should be in a putative GURPS Bestiary, along with the catalog of animals. (This is a big reason I gainsay making these two supplements a series of PDFs. There can be supplemental series of PDFs for them, but there needs to be a main supplement for each one.)
• GURPS isn't a skill-based system any more than it's an advantage-based system. It's a task-based system. Want that jumping example? It's best off in a book focused on characters that need to jump often, like GURPS Skullduggery.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

You're not wrong, neither in a factual sense, nor do I have a problem with your opinion. I'm not even trying to change your mind; mostly I'm debating to present my point of view to anyone else who might be unsure.

What I'm thinking is, when I look at an Advantage and I want to know more, I pull up Powers. In 50 pages (starting on p. 39) it doesn't say everything about every Advantage, but it says a lot about a lot of them. It tells me who takes them, what they can be used to represent, what could logically power them, and presents new modifiers when reasonable (as well as a generic modifiers section after that!). I use the Existing Advantages, Modifiers, and Evaluating Power Modifiers extensively, constantly, I've spent hours with those sections of the book, and they're all in the first 112 pages. We don't need GURPS Skills to introduce new skills, and Powers has a lot of material (all of Power Games and Empowered Genres, probably) that wouldn't need an equivalent. But giving skills the treatment that Advantages get between p. 39 and p. 90 would be a damn handy supplement in my eyes.

As for jumping, what's hard about jumping into a pit? Is arresting my momentum as I land to I don't bang into the wall (so a sufficiently large pit would be easier)? Is harder to land after a vertical jump that loses elevation than it would be jumping straight down? Is the problem that I'm assumed not to have line of sight to the bottom until I get right up close to the edge (so having Penetrating Vision would help)? Perhaps I'm hopelessly optimistic, but I suspect there's a level of guideline between the b. 345 / "pits are hard" level and the Arrakis approach.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

That's quite a strong reaction. Care to elaborate?

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

Disagree, I think Martial Arts is more about techniques but has a lot of equipment, adventure seeds, and other things related to the skill.

The main thing I'd like to see is something on consolidating the skill list - for example, I fold Shadowing into Stealth (you just change which attribute you're basing the skill on depending on which use you're using, as an intuitive blending into crowds is more Shadowing while Stealth is more about footing control as you're going, but there's a huge amount of overlap). I also combine Area Knowledge and Geography, Jump and Acrobatics, Performance and Mimicry, Navigation with Cartography, Body Language and Detect Lies, Autohypnosis with Meditation and Mind Strength and Mind Block, Judo and Karate for games where fisticuffs aren't a focus, like an alien conspiracy investigation game. Many of those I think should be a single consolidated skill period instead of just in games where that (those) skill(s) aren't a primary focus. I also tend to fold Savoir Faire into whatever faction knowledge is appropriate, as somebody with Soldier would have to know expectations of lower ranks and etiquette when dealing with higher ranks.

I know there are some wildcard skills, but having investigated Dungeon Fantasy I think that oversimplifies a huge number of skills into what amounts to a single "class skill" when something more like the skill groups of Alternity were called for. Mechanic!, Medicine! and Science! are fine, especially for cinematic games, and you could probably simplify many melee fighting skills to Martial Arts! and peripheral social influence skills in an action game to Acting! However, "everything ever done by a forest ranger!" seems a bit much for me.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

A complete book of skills would IMHO be a waste.
Characters handles most skills pretty well.
Some skills could use more fleshing out and this has been done with skills in books like Martial Arts, Technical Grappling, Social Engineering, Mysteries, Wild Card Skills, Underground Adventures, Wilderness Adventures and others.
I think any fleshing out or expansion would best be done in that vein.
I could see a Power Ups for Gadgeteering that included engineering and scientific skills as well as how various advantages and perks fit.
A book on skills and advantages by theme has the advantage of being focused which makes it smaller, easier to read and reference and buyers are paying for what they want rather than a bunch of other stuff they may not.

Combat skills are covered with the Martial Arts, Tactical Shooting and Gun Fu books. Social with Social Engineering and others in that series. Mysteries helps with investigation and criminal/legal skills.

I can see a Sciences book and more examples of modifiers and task difficulties to some skills but they could be addressed by theme.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

It sounds to me like you want a bound printout of the Skill of the Week threads.

I'm thinking it wouldn't be ~250 pages, either - that's far too small for everything you want to include.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

Seems to me there's already a book that talks about that, in considerable detail. In fact I wrote it. . . .

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

That's relevant to my interests! But, looking at your works on Goodreads, it's not obvious which one you're referring to. Is that list complete?

Also relevant to my interests: the Skill of the Week posts! I'm not sure I'd want to print out the whole threads, and I'm not sure "what templates has this appeared on" is the most useful information, but they're absolutely trying to do the thing I'm interested in, and I think they're heroic.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

I don't know; I almost never look at Goodreads. But the book in question is GURPS Social Engineering: Back to School. Take a look at the free sample to see the ToC, the index, and a couple of sample pages.

Re: Book Idea: GURPS Skills
 

Thanks. I thought about concepts similar to your idea early on in doing those threads, and concluded that discussion of all the skills would make a book far too large for the Power-Ups series, and not focussed enough for a general expansion.