Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
 

Chapter 10 Success Rolls starting p 343 talks about skill rolls. It refers to bonuses for mundane actions and as mentioned above, riding a trained horse for an hour or so should likely be a +4, equivalent to the book example of a "commute to work in a small town".

Time Spent discusses bonuses for spending extra (or less) time, not usually applicable to Riding but say you are trying to open a lock or tidy up a crime scene, you can swing things in your favour that way.

A non-mundane example of checking vs. Riding to mount a horse would be if you are being hotly pursued by armed bandits at the time. That's a +0 roll.

Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
 

Maybe you should suggest that your gm read this forum, pointing him to this thread. I have very few rolls outside of combat or other stressful situations. For example, riding a normal riding horse at night in a major thunderstorm.

One fun alternate rule from Pyramid was called "taking it to 11". I use this for many non-combat situations. All skill rolls are assumed to be 11. No more rolling, but the players need to learn their bonuses. Things go faster.

Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
 

There are modifiers for just about every roll you do in Gurps, starting with Task Difficulty pp.345. In most unstressful situations, menial tasks should not even require a roll.

It's a GM judgment, really. There are too many modifiers to accurately calculate them all up and still have reasonable playtime.

Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
 

I am a big believer in aplying large negative modifiers when appropriate, but I have to agree. Riding a horse on a decent road during a clear day with moderate traffic is going to be a +4 (mounting a horse should be at least a +6). Now, riding the same horse at night (-7 to skill) during a blizzard (a -5 to skill) cross country (a -3 to skill) bareback (-2 to skill) using only your knees because you hands are tied behind your back (-3 to skill) is likely going to be a suicidal -20 to skill (letting the horse find its way is generally a much better idea because it likely knows what it is doing better than you).

Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
 

I think that's the larger problem here, not the rules so much.

At the risk of glibly summarising, is your GM running a "any little thing can kill you, so check for everything" kind of game?

Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
 

That's p. 343 and p. 345 respectively.

Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
 

First, a mechanical point:
Look at the skill description in Characters. There are often important modifiers there. In this case, a +1 and a +5 that often both apply to 'normal' riding. If you've got the +5, that'll take your problem right out of the picture.

(Also, follow through on the reference and read the skill Mount. A decent trained mount can give even a non-rider a semi-tolerable chance to get and stay seated. That said, trying to do things with default skill levels tends to be extremely ineffective unless you're being assessed massive situational bonuses. Do not depend on skills you don't have actual points in unless you really know what you're doing.)


But really it sounds more like you have a problem with your GM that can't really be fixed by talking to us. It might be fixed by talking to them.

Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
 

A minor failure at a routine task, like riding a horse down a road shouldn't mean much even if you did roll. It probably just means you struggled a bit with keeping the horse from making an unwanted turn or something. Perhaps relevant if you're trying to impress an NPC with your spotless riding, but otherwise irrelevant.

Even a critical failure (which likely only happens on a 1-1-1 result due to all the bonuses probably just means 'The horse suddenly stopped while you were distracted. Make a normal-difficulty roll vs Riding to avoid falling out the saddle'. On success you remain seated, though embarrassed by the fumbling around.

In short, don't roll for everyday routine stuff. This goes for any roleplaying system. You can make player characters behave like complete buffoons in D&D or World of Darkness too by demanding they roll vs Acrobatics to climb ladders or Athletics to walk up stairs, or whatever, but that isn't how any of these systems are meant to be used.

Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
 

Sorry, that was a pair of typos. That should be B343 ("When to Roll"), and B345 ("Task Difficulty").

Re: Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for
 

One can usefully take this further. The PC detective is examining the crime scene and makes a Search roll. In my game that's not "did you find the clue or not": I want you to find the clue. It's the quality: how quickly did you do it, did you find anything else that might help you more, and so on. So the character who put lots of points into the skill still does a better job than the one who didn't, but the game isn't held up for want of the gatekeeper piece of information.