Re: New Skills
 

Business Sense. I broadened the definition of Business Sense to include Bureaucracy.

Business Sense states: General knowledge of business.

That would be how to run a business or organization so that it makes a profit or doesn’t fail.
I gave some of the temples and governments that I created, a few characters that had Business Sense.
Those characters made sure the organization ran even if the Nobles were incompetent leaders. They knew how to keep the Bureaucracy going.
(Those in the government didn’t deal in selling things, so the swindles didn’t involve money. But Red Tape; bribes, nepotism and Old Boy network could be played.)

I did this expansion because I didn’t see anything similar in TFT.

Re: New Skills
 

Wouldn't that really be more a function of "Leadership?"

I've known any number of people who had a thorough understanding of the principles of business or the bureaucracy they were a part of and couldn't lead their organization out of a paper bag...

Re: New Skills
 

When my friends and I played, sometimes we used to just reference a talent we had and its implication was enough.

Note: the following is very flee flow roleplaying and not tied to I roll, you roll. This free flow would go on until an actual tactical map was needed. Hours could pass in gametime before map commitment was needed.

Example: There is internal bickering going on in the party. Player Joe, whose character is not involved in this squabble, says “Cuthbed is going to use Diplomacy to smooth over the group.” The GM nods. (This is a broader use of Diplomacy than limited to hostile races, but other situations that might accept Diplomacy.) The players think about Cuthbed doing his diplomacy thing and agree that it’s a valid thing and quit bickering.

So for me, sometimes just having a non-fighting talent was enough to influence the game. We didn't have to play it. If a player protested not dice-rolling that particular instance, we would go tactical for a few rounds.

Do you sometimes do these non-tabletop Roleplaying or were your games all on the tabletop?

Re: New Skills
 

Most of our roleplaying was narrative in nature -- until we got to the fights. And, of course, if we were in a labyrinth, one of the players would be trying to map it (and exercise in both futility and frustration with the hex system, frequently).

That's one reason I like the dry-erase hexagon sheets idea so much -- it will be much easier to create unique shapes and obstacles for rooms and caves using them than it was back in the day...

Re: New Skills
 

I've been playing Fate since 2005 and I've found that there's a third alternative: non-physical conflict rules. If you have rules like this, you can go to the dice for contests without needing to escalate to violence (potentially). This makes social talents a lot more fun to have. I wrote up a document on contests for TFT a while ago. It has two detailed examples, one of two bards competing in front of a group and one of bargaining with a merchant.

Re: New Skills
 

JohnPaulB - The example you describe is very valid, and would completely fly if I were the GM, or for that matter a player.

Re: New Skills
 

The ability to effectively operate with and within a bureaucracy is very different from the ability to start and run a business. Although huge businesses like modern large public companies do require their leaders to be effective bureaucrats as well.

That said, it’s probably an acceptable abstraction. If my campaign featured bureaucracies that affected the campaigns a lot, I’d create a separate “Admin” talent, like Traveller has.

Re: New Skills
 

Agreed. That's more of a Civil Servant/Apparatchik kind of talent. I can see cases where a person would possess one without the other. But leaders of corporations and such should definitely have both. Possibly one could bring it under the rubric of a skill like Statesman/Statecraft, which also dovetails with one like Diplomacy.

Though I also agree that there's the danger of drawing too fine a line, and that in an RPG setting it's okay to allow skills to encompass a much wider scope as the GM permits. Ideally the players themselves would flesh out how the skill is expressed in their character and the GM would use that as the template ("I am a wandering odd-goods merchant" versus "I am a leading merchant with the East Dran Trading Company", for example). After all, the Scholar skill is one which is very broad, yet there are innumerable kinds of scholarship each individual might excel at.

Re: New Skills
 

Talent rules stay the same as old ITL during character creation (CC). Starting Talents fill up IQ/talent slots.

AFTER CC
Anyone can learn as many Talents as they are willing and able to spend the XP on. (1-500XP, 2-1000XP, 3-1500XP; Wizards pay double the XP for Talents)

Spells cost 500XP for Wizards and 1500XP for non-wizards.

IQ limits the number of spells a character can memorize. Each spell takes up one spell-slot for a wizard and 3 spell-slots for a non-wizard.
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It seems like the XP costs and IQ requirements would be enough to stop a character from learning every Talent in the book. Number of spells known seems to be what needs to be kept in check.

Re: New Skills
 

And another alternative...

IQ limits the number of Talents and Spells a character can know but the two tallies are separate and independent of each other. A character with IQ10 can know 10 slots worth of Talents AND 10 slots worth of spells.

Some Talents take up 1 slot. Some take up 2 slots. Others take up 3 slots. For Wizards, the number of slots taken up by a Talent is doubled. Each spell takes up one spell-slot for a wizard and 3 spell-slots for a non-wizard.

AFTER CC
The XP cost of a Talent or Spell equals the # of talent slots it fills times 500.