[Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Soldier is the IQ/A TL skill for basic military activities that aren't weapons skills or Savoir-Faire (Military). It's learned in military basic training, and from actual combat experience in an organised force, so it's quite unusual to have it without having served, at least in a militia or reserve force. The only default is IQ-5, and no skills default to it. The skill first appeared in GURPS Special Operations for 3e, to the best of my knowledge.

There are several ways to use the skill: to follow correct battlefield discipline, for practical survival, as a daily roll in active service to avoid problems (on a failure) or disasters (critical failure), and for basic tasks that would be covered by other skills. Tasks which would be routine (and thus +4 to skill) for skills like Armoury, Electronics Operation (Communications), Housekeeping, or NBC Suit, at appropriate TLs, would be rolled against Soldier, without any bonus for routine, but with any situational penalties. This doesn't cover significant repairs, research, or new or secret technologies. It's the assorted things, using standard equipment and methods, that any trained soldier should be able to try. Recognising vehicles and aircraft seems to come under Soldier, unless you have a more applicable skill.

Soldiers who specialise in something will learn the proper skill in addition to Soldier: Signallers will have Electronics Operation (Communications) and usually the Electronics Repair, too. Mountain troops will have Survival (Mountains) and Climbing, and so on. Military personnel who aren't in an army make this more interesting: deckhands in a navy certainly learn a lot of things in addition to Seamanship, and Air Force enlisted ranks learn some basic ground soldiering. If the GM wanted to go into details, you could have Soldier specialisations by type of service, so (Land), (Sea) and (Air), and probably familiarity by nation: there are always differences in equipment and procedures. Marines might learn both (Land) and (Sea), or a combined version; paratroopers probably just (Land).

Soldier, naturally, is universal on templates for trained soldiers, although aristocratic officers often lacked it until their training was professionalised in the modern era. Action makes Soldier an example for the "group roll" rule, a possible retroactive planning skill, a skill for carrying out a patrol successfully, a substitute for Traps or EOD (at -5), and a valid skill for dealing with very simple traps, where a proper skill would be at +4, and for keeping watch. AtE allows it for gathering fired cartridge cases, handling chemical weapons (at -4), diagnosing chemical weapon effects, knowing about explosives, spotting minefields, and managing your backpack. High-Tech allows troops trained with rescue equipment to include it in Soldier, rather than needing another professional skill. It can also be used to set up and maintain packs, load-bearing equipment, and footwear as well as weapons, to find well-made magazines for dubiously reliable guns, to place land mines and simple traps, and to find land mines on a Soldier-5 roll.

Infinite Worlds makes the skill subject to cross-world familiarity penalties, since there is an element of knowing how things are usually done. Low-Tech suggests it for siege-engine crews, if a roll is required at all, and LTC2 makes it an option for maintaining armour. Martial Arts points out that Soldier includes the manual labour for building fortifications quickly, and Monster Hunters that you can use it to communicate with gestures -- but only for combat signals. The Power-Ups series has a Talent that include Soldier, but no Wildcard skills, because the Ten-Hut! wildcard covers just about every skill that Soldier stands in for. Social Engineering lets an organised force resist mob feelings with Will-based Soldier, and Back to School touches on basic training. Tactical Shooting has too many applications for this skill to list, while Thaumatology has items that will provide it for you. GURPS: WWII uses it as the primary measure of troop quality, and Zombies has the Soldier X treatment, which has a quality all of its own.

The most important Soldier roll of my GURPS career was in a Madness Dossier playtest game. There was nerve gas around, and nasty stuff at that (Novichok-7). We'd found the enemy's stash of NBC suits, but nobody had the specific skill, and only one PC had Soldier. That roll, to figure out those suits, really mattered.

What have you accomplished with this skill?

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

This one is as close to a wildcard skill as a "regular" skill can be.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I used it once for cops as a generic "knowing how to operate and stow your basic gear" skill, as I needed something they could roll against to represent that knowledge, and to differentiate the street-level uniformed cops who had it from both senior desk-bound folks and investigators from other agencies, who didn't.

(Obviously, this came with the assumption that it only applied to police gear, and would take heavy familiarity penalties or be entirely non-applicable to actual soldiers' equipment and functions, if that had ever come up.)

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I've had it on sheets, but I don't think I've ever rolled against it. I've started putting it under Dabbler as a background skill for characters who were in the military a number of years ago.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Aristocratic societies often handle that (and what GURPS calls Housekeeping) by making the aristoi spent their teens as body servants to someone higher-ranking (grooming their horses, bringing their wine, running their messages, cleaning their armour, fetching their breastplate-stretcher) and sending them hunting without a gaggle of servants. I use Soldier for characters who have a lot of experience camping in rough conditions as part of a group.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

For the "routine tasks" it works a bit like Dabbler, and if GURPS were being rebuilt from scratch that might be a way to approach it.

In my space-navy game I use Professional Skill (Sailor) for this purpose, which I should possibly have called something else; it fits alongside Spacer (living aboard ship, basic shipboard tasks) and Savoir-Faire (Military). Ground troops do have normal Soldier, and there's obviously some overlap.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

That's entirely reasonable.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

A GM with a military background might allow a few additional usages for Soldier skill:

Soldier is obviously the go to skill for performing drill and ceremonial, whether normally or as part of a demonstration team.

A graduate of a wartime “two-week wonder” officer course would arguably have had a ½ point (100 hours) of Leadership in GURPS, 3rd Ed. but that’s below the resolution of GURPS, 4th Ed. A “two-week wonder” could be represented by giving a default from Soldier to Leadership to give a default that’s better than the normal default [no training] but doesn’t amount to having a full point in Leadership. This would also apply to skills like Orienteering [Navigation (Land)] and First Aid.

Soldier can replace some full-blown military skills for limited purposes. Most soldiers don’t have Tactics skill, in that they don’t necessarily know when a tactic or tactical formation should be used but, for the limited purpose of adopting a given formation or executing a given tactic, Soldier, without a penalty, should work just fine. Substituting for Law (Military), for the limited purpose of knowing what the offences are, and possibly what is needed to constitute a particular offence, is another example.

Depending on the era, tactical movement and use of personal camouflage may be represented by Stealth, but it might also allow the substitution of Soldier (possibly at a penalty.)

Heraldry (Military Insignia) allows more than simply recognizing the various rank insignias in use by your nation. Depending on your nation’s insignia you might also be able to “read”: length of service, unit and formation, trade (and level of proficiency in that trade), hazardous duty assignments, wounds (and severity), proficiency with personal weapon, as well as being able to “read” decorations and honors (ribbons and medals) for whether the wearer is a volunteer; what theatres (and possibly particular battles) the person has served in; and, for some people, whether this is a suitable person to share a foxhole with [referencing the maxim "Never share a foxhole with anyone braver than yourself."] Obviously, not all soldiers have this skill, but all soldiers, by default, can recognize the various rank insignia in use by their nation, at least for their service, just by having Soldier. If the time and place are correct, you can also, by default, tell at a glance whether you are looking at an enlisted man (excluding the RSM) [soft headdress and black boots] or, an officer or the RSM [forage cap and brown boots] without necessarily needing to invoke Heraldry (Military Insignia) to do so.

Soldier can justify having a default that might otherwise not be applicable. You might never have seen or thrown a baseball but you can throw a grenade at default. You can climb a cargo net or a Jacob’s ladder even if you never climbed a tree as a kid. In the U.S., you can probably swim 25 or 50 yards in your uniform, even if you grew up in the desert.

Finally, Soldier may allow you to recognize that someone is “a furriner/not one of us” by the choices his Soldier skill imposes. For example, Canada and the U.S. are close allies these days but even if you were to put them in the same uniform, the differences would soon out them, e.g. saying “face” for “turn”, “foxhole” for “trench”, “dogtags” for “ID disc”, saluting without a headdress, cupping the hand when saluting, etc.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

The US Army isn't the only service branch that instills Soldier (unless you propose that Marines use Marine and so on, which seems like skill bloat). Marines say "fighting hole" and do not salute uncovered. I believe the Navy is the same. Also "head", "deck", "passageway", "hatch" for "latrine", "floor", "hallway", "door" and so on.

Also a fighting hole is distinct from a trench. I learned to construct both (although the latter only in snow).

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I would consider this an example of a Professional skill, even if it isn't listed as such. Captain America uses it in "The Winter Soldier" to deduce that a military building isn't what it's supposed to be - it is built in a way that is counter to regulations.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I agree with you, but I think the idea is a Soldier roll might help to pick up on such clues of someone trying to pass as Army when their background is really Marine. The kind of details that I'd overlook as a civilian, but would stand out to people with military service backgrounds.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Marines also have Soldier (it is even part of the Assaulter Style...); I wasn't advocating a different skill, but rather pointing out that Curmudgeon was being Army-centric.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

And at least some of these things could also/instead be covered by Savoir-Faire (Military):

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

You're getting more into the Savoir-fair (Military) territory there.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

To some extent that should be expected as that was my service and therefore it’s what I’m most familiar with. It’s not entirely a blind spot with me, still “face” instead of “turn” and cupping the hand rather than holding it rigid are national differences, not service differences and the older two-movement broad-hand salute would be an even more telling difference.

To some extent, you’re being U.S.-centric, and it's more of a blind spot with me. Canada doesn’t have Marines but if it ever does form them, they would be closer to Royal Marines than U.S. Marines in tradition, i.e., to some extent they’re “just” another unit in the army, rather than a separate service, or in other words, somewhat more like an Airborne Regiment or the U.S. Special Forces.

My point exactly.

Not entirely. For one thing, drill and terminology generally don’t fall under customs, traditions and regulations. Exactly what does fall under those categories is a bit nebulous because what is or isn’t covered varies from nation to nation. While there are some things that are common to all nations, such as saluting (commissioned) officers, at least when not in the field [saluting an officer in the field is extremely rude as it amounts to hanging a target on him just for the enemy], other things are not and may vary within one nation’s own military. For example, British and Canadian army units which have distinguished themselves may be awarded a battle honor, such as “Amiens 1917” which would be displayed on the Regimental (as opposed to Royal) colour. Unless the unit is a Rifles Regiment, in which case the battle honor is displayed on the drum or the unit is The Royal (Canadian) Corps of Engineers which has been granted the battle honor “Ubique” meaning “everywhere” “in place of all past, present and future battle honors”, or the Royal Regiment of (Canadian) Artillery which share the distinction of the battle honor “Ubique” but wear the honor on the upper scroll of their cap badge as the “guns are their colours”.

I’m not only army-centric, I’m artillery-centric, so here are a couple of specific traditions that do come up as part of Savoir-Faire (Military): the Royal (Canadian) Horse Artillery, when mounted, is entitled to the position of Right of the Line unless the Gentlemen-Cadets of the Royal Military College are paraded as a formed unit, in which case they have precedence; and artillery units are handed over “at ease” whereas all other units are handed over at “attention”.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

The Royal Marines are not part of the British Army. They have some heritage tracing back to British Army units, but have belonged to the Admiralty since 1755.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

They were originally a combination of SPs and commandos. So were the US Marines. They expanded into a full-fledged second army during the Bananna Wars or perhaps a bit before and kept that design when it was realized that this would fit them for a place in War Plan Orange.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

One use of Soldier skill is hefting gear on the march. During the Franco-Prussian war one reason the Prussians blindsided the French is that the French didn't realized that railroads would allow them to put reserves into the field because they assumed they would have to march them all the way up to the frontier before starting the campaign. And it required regulars to know how to carry gear without ending up to exhausted to be of any use.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

There is definitely room for more examples of pre-TL 5 Soldier skill in use.

In GURPS I think that is Hiking skill, maybe one other for carrying heavy loads (or just Lifting ST). After all, you can have a tough old sergeant whose fitness is not what it once was and whose knees don't work very well any more (high Soldier skill, low Move for hiking purposes).

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I put a lot of my thoughts on Soldier skill in this thread a while ago. (My commentary is on the bottom of the linked page, as well as following pages.) As a professional soldier, I hope that I have something productive to say on the matter...

I like Soldier skill. A lot. Admittedly, it can be difficult for a GM who has never been a soldier to implement it well. But it solves the problem of massive point and skill bloat for anyone in the military. It keeps you from having to give every IQ8 conscript a dozen skills like Electronics Operation (Commo), NBC Warfare, Hiking, Armory, Engineering (Combat), Camouflage, Tactics, etc., etc. Also, if you put even one point into each of those then your average soldier will be far too competent. Most know only very narrow applications of these skills. For instance, they can use their own service's squad-level radios including changing batteries, setting frequencies, fills, net protocol, keywords, etc., but if they had full-on Electronics Operation (Commo) then every private would have a decent shot at managing a cellular network or satellite uplink, which is patently ridiculous.

It's sort of Dabbler (A Bunch of Militaria), though you have to be careful to bear in mind that it is very limited to covering routine (+4 or better) uses of other martial skills. Then, just use massive amounts of time spent as required (see page B346). FWIW Kromm officially opposes thinking of it as a limited form of a bang! skill, even though it clearly works at least somewhat similarly.

Absolutely, it needs to be specialized by nationality, service, and era. Then you can allow familiarity penalties for, for example, A US Marine trying to use a US Army codebook.

I continue to maintain that most privates do not have Savoir Faire (Military), but are rather using Soldier skill to cover what would otherwise be +4 rolls against Savoir-Faire. That should cover recognizing patches, rank insignia, and saluting rules for your own service. (I still can't make sense of US Navy enlisted ratings.) As described in Curmudgeon's post above, IMHO Savoir-Faire (Military) is more often used for covering ceremonies and hobnobbing, which wouldn't get the +4. That's not really RAW from anywhere, though- it just makes more sense to me as a military guy.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I've always allowed soldier skill to be used in place of many fear and will checks. This is mostly at low tech.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I think I'd apply this if you're in a situation where you can "let the training take over" and respond in a standard way. So when you're one pikeman in a square, and the cavalry are charging at you, yes, absolutely (or indeed when you're a 1950s cold war grunt and the horizon flashes white); when you're scouting with a small squad and there's a horrible roar over the hill, not so much.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Soldier is just the skill that fills in the middle ground of the profession. It's like having Law (Police) and Interrogation, but wanting to know whether the inmates awaiting trial are held. It gives you the "lay of the land" on a military base or a battlefield and handles the esoteric knowledge that makes the difference between civilians and veterans so obvious.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I sometimes when driving in hilly country find myself wondering what pieces of ground I would want to occupy. What would Soldier(amateur-dabbler) be?

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I've long felt that there really ought to be a "Police" skill, by close analogy to Soldier, covering exactly that sort of stuff. You've got a profession that involves all sorts of routine maintenance and operation of comms gear, vehicles, and weapons, and generally knowledge of the way that things are done, sometimes because it's the best way, sometimes just because it's useful to have everyone in the organisation doing stuff the same way... Why we got Soldier in 4e but there was resistance to Police eludes me.

Sorry, what does the Professional Skill cover that Spacer or Savoir-Faire (Military) doesn't? I'd think that most of it was Spacer (with a military set of familiarities). Adding a third skill just looks like skill bloat.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

If someone were silly enough to let me redefine GURPS, I'd quite possibly use Soldier as the canonical example of a Professional Skill.

I can see the argument for that, and I thought about this for a while, but I think it's justifiable even if the division is a bit close at times. Spacer is living on and basic operations of a spacecraft. PS(Sailor) as a Soldier-equivalent is for all the things you get to do in the Navy that aren't spacecraft operation: drill, tactics, personal weapon maintenance, whom to salute and when, which cleaning nanites will get your boots shiny enough but not eat holes through them. Savoir-Faire (Military) is not only cross-service but deals more with regulations and customs: who buys drinks for whom, when snogging your girlfriend is OK and when it's Fraternising.

I can easily picture the old lag who's too lazy to do the job well but knows all the rules, the newbie who's got the basic training down but hasn't yet picked up the "way things are done", or the shipboard specialist who's at a loss when he's dropped into a staff job, and they all have different combinations of these skills.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Well, what's stopping you from having Soldier (NYPD)? I mean, if Soldier (US Navy) is valid, that would have to be as well. True, the term might be confusing, but so is Machinist/TL0 for flint knapping.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Having been a radiation remediation tech, an electricians assistant, and a correctional officer, I think that 'knowing how to use job appropriate load bearing equipment to properly stow all your job appropriate goodies on your person' is definitely a professional skill thing in general, and would probably allow a default for such purposes between different such skills

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

There is! GURPS Mysteries p. 112.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

That is entirely depending on the army, i would it only allow in very narrow circumstances as a default.
What i learned in boot camp was at best not entirely useless, and was suboptimal at best.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I really wouldn't specialise Soldier by force. (TL and familiarities are another matter, obviously.) And despite Roger's argument, Soldier or "Sailor" for military sailors still feels like too much skill bloat for me. And "Soldier" for policemen jars with me. (Commander Vimes would certainly have something to say on the matter...)

That's more an argument for not calling Flint Knapping "Machinist". Actually, Meteorology/Weather Sense already gives us a precedent for varying skill name by TL...

Point. It's there ... as a Professional Skill. Which really reinforces Roger's point about Soldier being better described as an archetypal Pro Skill. The rules it includes for routine equipment use could certainly be generalised across a lot of Pro Skills.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

And that shows the problem which you folks face. Soldier is so much more likely to appear on character sheets and be rolled against than other Professional Skills are, so it deserves its own name, but someone in a Stone Age campaign may not know that the skill of making stone tools is under Machinist and Armoury. GURPS gets accused of having too many skills, and of using confusing names (but if they cleared up old mistakes like the name of the Honesty disadvantage, grognards would gripe about that too).

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

...How do familiarity penalties interact with the 'only for +4 or easier tasks' standard? Actually, that might be a question about penalties in general. But it seems like familiarity at least is exactly the sort of thing that should be able to shift tasks from allowed to disallowed.
Civilian ships can have their own eccentric systems that you wouldn't be likely to find on a warship, but probably should roll into their experience of Seamanship.

Admittedly, PCs might find knowing how to work with and around a maritime bulk fish processing system to be a hard bit of knowledge to apply in play, but it's there...

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Depends on the time. One time the seas were lawless and all sailors had to be warriors. Or at least had to know how to get out of the way of such.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I can't really imagine not giving naval special operators like SEALS Soldier, and I'd probably expect naval combat engineers like the SeaBees to have it too.

Shipboard sailors and aviators? Well maybe. They do go to basic or officer training, and get training on boarding operations with personal weapons. They also learn the kinds of basic military courtesies that everybody else does (more even because of their arcane rating system shibboleths). So they should get an analogous professional skill, which is Seamanship, I think. What's the difference between Seamanship and a "Sailor" skill?
As would Joseph Adama. Yeah, I definitely agree that Law Enforcement Officer is the correct skill for law enforcement officers and I'm a little confused why this isn't totally obvious.
Yes, I think this too is obvious. Is there any reason to not think Soldier is a professional skill?

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I don't think that training with personal weapons in any way implies the Soldier skill...

SEALs, SeaBees, and various sorts of marines, being substantially trained for soldiering outside any ships they might be attached to, need Soldier. Ship's crews who are taught how to use a gun don't really.

You could run into a bit of a problem if you had, say, elite boarding teams who really deserve the Tactical Shooting combat benefits of Soldier but have basically none of the primary functions of Soldier as they don't operate outside Crewman environments.
Accuracy of the statement aside, I'm not sure what your point here is.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Yeah that's why I said maybe. Crewman makes more sense. However isn't Crewman for ships Seamanship? That seems a lot like "Sailor" but maybe I'm misreading something. I clarified what I wrote above.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

The non-canonical 'Sailor' skill (or rather Professional Skill (Sailor)) talked about here was expressly in addition to the relevant Crewman skill:

"n my space-navy game I use Professional Skill (Sailor) for this purpose, which I should possibly have called something else; it fits alongside Spacer (living aboard ship, basic shipboard tasks) and Savoir-Faire (Military)."

"PS(Sailor) as a Soldier-equivalent is for all the things you get to do in the Navy that aren't spacecraft operation: drill, tactics, personal weapon maintenance, whom to salute and when, which cleaning nanites will get your boots shiny enough but not eat holes through them."

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

From eariler in the Skill of the week series...

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Ah yes, okay. I agree that would be skill bloat.

I don't think giving SEALS Soldier is skill bloat though, it probably ought to be a primary skill for a SEAL template...

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

As I've said, I agree.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Differences between nationalities even at the same tech level. Commonwealth "about turn" and US forces "about face" aren't just called different things but are performed completely differently.

However, differences within the same nationality but different forces (ie: US Army vs US Marines) aren't as different as you might think. The US Army and US Marines for example have different traditional terminology for some things but use most of the same field manuals, attend most of the same service schools and use much of the same equipment. As a Marine infantry officer my brother attended the Army's Armor Officer course upon promotion to Captain before taking company command. Air Force and Navy personnel attend pre-deployment training on Army posts, learning convoy defense techniques and procedures and basic ground combat tactics.

IMO the skills cover the type of training and experience, not the service where it was acquired:

Soldier covers training and experience in ground combat techniques and procedures, regardless of actual service.

Airman covers the skills of an aircrew member.

Seaman covers the skills of a wet navy or merchant crew member.

Spacer covers the skills of a space navy or merchant crew member.

Each might have familiarity for service branch. Some things are the same or similar across services, some are not. Savior Faire (Military) is not the same Army to Navy... tho most can get by when dealing with sister services. As a Soldier I mistook a Chief Petty Officer for a commissioned officer once. On the other hand an M16 is pretty much an M16 no matter what service.

There would also be familiarity for type of vessel or equipment. Seaman for surface sailors is different than for submariners.

An Air Force security forces member learns Soldier... not Airman, tho they may have that, too. A Marine learns Soldier... but may also know Seaman. A space Marine learns Soldier... but may also know Spacer.

Likewise, a military Sailor might know Seaman (tho there are lots of brown-shoe "sailors" who's specialties rarely take them to sea) and might know Soldier if they have significant ground combat training. Any Sailor or Airman who has done a significant ground deployment to a combat zone would probably have at least one point in Soldier.

An Army pilot or crew chief would have a basic level of Soldier but would have higher levels of Airman. A Marine pilot would have Soldier and Airman as well... Marine pilots have significant ground combat training, attending the same Officer Basic Course as other Marine officers.

A SEAL should have Soldier... and possibly Seaman. An Air Force TACP member would have Soldier. A Coast Guard port security specialist might have Soldier, Seaman and Profession: Law Enforcement.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Worth noting that a great deal of Soldier is non-combat.
That one isn't a canonical skill as far as I can tell, and I'm not sure that it should be in real-world aircraft. Even large airplanes don't stay up long and have smalll crews of specialists. And as far as I know nobody's taken the non-pilot helmsman approach to heavier-than-air aircraft.

(What is in the book is Airshipman.)

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

It isn't.
There's an arguable case for it, at various times and places. WWII bomber crews are an example, as are airline stewards, who have significant emergency and safety training, as well as the catering side.
They have not. For that to be workable, things need to happen at a pace slow enough for orders to be spoken and understood. This is not a characteristic of heavier-than-air aircraft.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Bomber crews are pretty firmly in the team of specialists category. You've got one or two pilots, a bunch of gunners (some of whom can't even get out of their firing positions while in flight), and potentially a navigator, engineer, and/or bombardier (any of whom may also man a gun).

Airline stewards with emergency training might warrant something, but having a Crewman skill entirely for proficiency in tasks you probably will never perform seems overdoing it.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Well, it's a conceptual approach. Do you give them a point or two in First Aid, a point in Savoir-Faire (Servant), one in Housekeeping, etc., and then realise in play that you've forgotten Diplomacy — or do you give them "Airline Steward-12, First Aid-13" and assume the first one covers everything they'll need in routine job rolls?

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

That even a merchant sailor had to be somewhat accustomed to naval warfare to survive.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I'm unconvinced that Airline Steward-12 would do anything other than job rolls, which I have more of a problem with than having a few different basic, broadly useful skills.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Its been a while, but a conversation with a player and a perusal of this thread leaves me with a list of things I've used soldier for. All of these are specialties.



Soldier (Security Guard): You aren't a soldier or even a policeman, but you carry a gun, follow regulations, and prepare for trouble. Your run of the mill security guard may not have more than a point in this, or even be missing it, but players usually aren't run of the mill security guards!



Soldier (Infinity Patrol): I use this as a variant of soldier. It allows routine use of parachronics, knowledge of the regulations and policies of the patrol, basic instructions on what to do when things go south, signs and codes to identify comrades, and normal soldier tasks like keeping your weapons clean. I use Soldier rather than professional skill because of the psuedo-military nature of the work and because it emphasizes routine equipment use and organizational training.


Soldier (Naval): Should probably include grunt-level fire-fighting, especially on ships. My youth group got to talk to some military folks from different branches a while back, and they were comparing basic training. Apparently naval combat involves your ship catching on fire a lot.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

This is canonically Seamanship or Crewman, depending on the kind of ship.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

More that fire is really bad if it happens, so they train crews a lot. However, while not disputing Soldier (Naval), it should cover the things that civilian seamen don't learn, and they do learn fire-fighting.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

As a poor, dumb, civilian, I've always considered SF (Whatever)* to be as much the unspoken rules of a given group vs. the formal rules.

For example, Soldier skill gives you a default to Law (Military) to recall military regulations, but SF (Military) lets you understand which regulations you can ignore, except for the cases where you can't ignore them, and the things that will never be in the regulations but are just "not the done thing."

A good example is that, until WW2, and even afterwards, officers and other ranks just didn't interact socially, on anything other than most superficial level, in the British military services. In the Derek Robinson Book/TV Series, "A Piece of Cake" an American pilot officer deeply embarrasses one of his NCO mechanics by insisting on playing tennis with him.

That a critical failure with SF (Military) due to penalties due to lack of Cultural Familiarity and the pilot's previous experience with the much more egalitarian forces of the Spanish Republicans.

*Streetwise would be a form of SF (Criminal) but it has to cover more than just social rules and also has to cover knowledge of different criminal groups, so it's an Average skill rather than Easy and gets broken out from SF (Mafia, Triad, Biker Gangs, whatever).

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

At TL4 & 5, drill and ceremony pretty much IS soldier skill. The tactics of the era depended on moving men around in close formation, and volume and quality of firepower depended on units maintaining close formation, not flinching or breaking under fire, and firing or charging to contact as a unit.

Well-trained soldiers might not have been able to shoot accurately, but they were able to shoot fast and in unison, and maintain something like a proper formation even when visibility dropped to nothing due to black powder smoke.

All that marching in formation and manual of arms stuff that seems like BS in a TL6 or higher military organization was, once upon a time, essential battlefield survival skills.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

Law Enforcement?

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I think that there's a very good argument for a new "Airman" specialty of Crewman. That gives you all the sort of fiddly knowledge of how airplane systems work which aren't related to driving or navigating the thing. Maybe not so necessary at TL7+, but an essential part of being an air steward/ess or military aircrew member at TL6.

Air Stewardess

Primary Skills: Crewman/TL (Airman), Professional Skill (Steward).*
Secondary Skills: First Aid, Diplomacy, Leadership, Savoir-Faire (Servant).
Background Skills: Area Knowledge (Airports and surrounding areas), Fast Talk, Housekeeping, Psychology, Sex Appeal, etc.

* Air Stewards were originally recruited from stewards/porters who served aboard passenger ships or trains. Since the job basically covers the skill of politely herding and managing paying customers while stuck in close quarters aboard a vehicle, there's enough similarity between pullman porters, cruise ship pursers, "air hostesses", etc. that those jobs all share a common pro skill.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

ALL airline stewards are trained in emergency procedures. That's the main reason they're on board the plane. They just serve drinks and hand out pillows to keep the passengers happy.

Just because you never use certain elements of a skill doesn't mean that you don't practice them. A merchant seaman with a high level of Seamanship might go for his entire career without having to use essential parts of that skill, such as firefighting or lifeboat launching drills.

Air Stewards are trained to deal with medical emergencies, ditching at sea, ditching on land, evacuating the aircraft, use of oxygen and firefighting equipment, use of aircraft intercom systems, and a certain amount of "damage control" in that they can intelligently report damage to the aircraft to the flight crew. They might also be able to fix very minor aircraft problems in flight.

Except for not having to worry about keeping their oxygen masks from freezing up and their electrically-heated suits from failing, the skill set isn't that much different from what the crew of a WW2 era B-17 or Lancaster bomber learned.

Arguably, Crewman/TL (Aircrew) shouldn't be required for flight deck crew, since those jobs are covered by more difficult skills, such as Mechanic, Navigation (Aerial), or Pilot. But, for a large plane where the flight crew and "cabin crew" need to operate as a team, they might have that skill as well.

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

In a situation where characters are making Leadership rolls to quickly convey orders to subordinates, perhaps a Soldier roll should allow the recipient to more rapidly understand and implement the order?

Player: Okay, I want bob and joe to provide covering fire while the rest of the guys rush the doors."

GM: You want to convey that in a one-second turn? Okay, you roll Leadership."

Player: Success by 3!

GM: Okay, each of the soldiers in your squad gets a Soldier+3 roll to understand what you meant...

Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Soldier
 

I think the basic idea here is fine, but rather than rolling each person's Soldier skill individually (which for anything larger than a squad, is a lot of rolls!), I'd roll just once against the average Soldier skill of the whole group, and let margin of failure/success determine how well the group understood and carried out the orders.