Re: Expert Skills
 

I believe that GURPS authors, for the Philosophy skill - as for the History one - are taking their inspiration from university. Of course, philosophy involves reason, logic, ethics, etc., but when you learn it at university, you must specialized in a given period (medieval philosophy, contemporary philosophy...), a given subject (epistemology, moral philosophy...) or even a specific author (Husserl, Spinoza, Marx...).

And some teachers are very good in their specialization but quite bad outside of this topic. Philosophy is so broad that nobody can know everything. Ways of thinking even differ widely form one author to the other.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Slight correction: 'symbology' isn't really in common use as the term for this subject. You'll probably want 'semiotics' instead.

Exactly. A referee has Games (Football). Expert: Football is John Madden, who knows teams, team standings, players, player stats and biography, rules, when and why the rules are the way they are, history of notable games, etc.

If it were my game, I'd be careful with this. I'd limit the depth and detail of historical knowledge that comes with the expert skill. For instance, I'd allow Expert: Celtic knowledge to know the dates of the Famine and how it changed Irish culture and demographics, but not necessarily the economic causes of the famine, names dates and places associated with it, what British policy was at the time and how those policies contributed to aggravating or alleviating the famine, how the famine affected U.S. immigration, and so on. Those would be the domain of a historian.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Hermione IS scary. As the author's pet she casts magic at well above her grade level.

Re: Expert Skills
 

So does the GURPS Philosophy skill. All very useful things if you happen to need to argue with a philosopher.

Expert (Socialism): would be useful for identifying the different flavours of socialism, knowing the history of socialism's development, who the major players were, and what they did and are doing. But it wouldn't give the insider's view of why they do what they do

Re: Expert Skills
 

As I read it, the examples of specialties are things like Maoism, Cynicism, and the like. They're more examples of philosophical points-of-view than academic specialties. Seriously, re-read the skill in the book. If you've taken a few philosophy courses (and I have) it doesn't really jive with how modern academic philosophy is taught and studied.

Re: Expert Skills
 

As far as Philosophy goes, I'm comfortable handling it in a couple of different ways. Either one can specialise in one philisophical system, like Marxism, Stoicism, Buddhism, Rationalism, or Aritstotilism. This lets you answer questions of philosophy as would be considered by those systems. It's entirely meaningful in modern philosophy to speak of Marxist episteomolgy, or Buddhist ethics, or Fascist political philosophy, or so on.

Alternately, a character might specialise in a particular field of Philosophy, like Ethics, Logic, Epistemology, philosophy of science, cognative science, computational science, semiotics, or what have you.

I don't think it breaks GURPS to have both available, and I've yet to see a game hinge on the finer details of Utilitarianism or post-Nietzschean phenomenism. Someday I may finish my proposal for GURPS: Western Thought but I expect that - in the current RPG market - even if SJ Games accepted it, it likely won't come out before 2020 anyway.

Re: Expert Skills
 

There was a very surreal webcomic, which I can't remember enough about to find a link, where in several strips the characters were playing a fantasy RPG in which the colleges of magic were based on different philosophical paradigms. The only one I remember is that the Bayesian (something) cast spells by announcing the probability that the casting would succeed, something like: "I estimate that there's a 74% chance that you will burst into flame."

The author and the denizens of the comic's forums were supposedly hashing out a rules set for the game, which had an alliterative title.

Re: Expert Skills
 

http://dresdencodak.com/2009/01/27/a...and-discourse/

And as it happens I am tinkering around with magical styles inspired by philosophers.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Dresden Codak's Dungeons and Discourse.

Ah, beaten to it.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Sorry to derail the conversation about philosopies and webcomics, but anyone have anything to add on the topic at hand? :)