Expert Skills
 

I've tried searching the forums and cannot find any threads about Expert Skills. Do any exist? If not, would anyone care sharing their favoirte custom Expert Skills?

Re: Expert Skills
 

I'm fond of using it for -ologies similar to Egyptology; that is, covering a fairly specific region and its culture, history, and any tangible contributions it may (or have been perceived to) have made.

Also, I have a variant Expert: Thaumatology that is more of an "armchair sage" version: "Ah yes, Apportation. You know, it was Phillipe Poirvassie de Ste. Gerarde who first demonstrated a version which could affect multiple items at once. Of course, it was thrice as draining and had a nasty habit of hurling the subject items at whatever the caster was looking at.... But it was a foundation to build on!" Basically, it's what I would see someone like Hermione Granger having a high skill in; rather than actual Thaumatology, which would be somewhat more scary.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Symbology: Couns as Sociology, Heraldry, art, history, psychology or literature for the explanation of symbols.

Re: Expert Skills
 

I like that one. I think I'm going to make it require further specialization for my game (semi-Space Opera, Science Fiction)

Expert Skill seems tailor made for that, especially with Egyptology given as an example.

That seems to be a great addition to the suite of magic skills IMO. In my game ES: Psionics covers that though, but thanks for the contribution to the thread.

Re: Expert Skills
 

While we're on the subject, is this a reasonable use of the Expert skill...

Expert (France). Substitutes for specialties of Area Knowledge, Current Affairs, Geography, History, etc. relevant to France (which would include other countries when they were trading with or at war with France, French colonies, great French scientists and inventions, etc.) Appropriate penalties apply for questions about specific regions (e.g., Geography of a particular village fifty miles south of Paris, History of Avignon, etc.)

This seems like a good way to handle the kind of multidisciplinary knowledge that some people have on certain topics, and certainly avoids the problem of which of dozens of possible specialty skills one might get, and it seems like a good match for things like Egyptology. Does it seem fair?

Mark

Re: Expert Skills
 

Expert Skill: Martial Arts; Medievil Warfare; Roman Empire; Socialism; Psycho Analysis; Soccer.
Expert Skill, as in, "know all about it" but doesn't actually do "it". Maybe that's a prereq for sports commentating (excluding those who've actually played).

Re: Expert Skills
 

In Martial Arts, Expert Skill (Hoplology) covers the study of how people fight. Socialism might be considered a Philosophy skill, though I've never liked the way GURPS handles Philosophy. (The actual academic study of philosophy involves learning about reason, logic, ethics, etc. GURPS treats it as a specialization in something like Marxism or Epicureanism.) Psychoanalysis is probably just a treatment of Psychology. Understanding the rules of games like soccer and other sports are Hobby Skills, technically, so they're easy instead of hard.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Sure, I've used something similar. One of my players took Expert Skill (Celtic Knowledge). Covered pretty much what you were just talking about, but for Ireland.

A different player thought that was unfair, at first. He pointed out that History (Ireland) was IQ/H, so why should the Expert Skill cover that and more for the same cost? That worried me at first, until I realized that a very important part of buying the History skill is all of the default history you pick up with it -- if you buy History (Colonial America), you might never get a chance to roll against that, but you might use the generous default to History (Colonial France) or History (Tribal America). The Expert Skill person doesn't get those -- he's very knowledgeable, but only in his one limited area.

Re: Expert Skills
 

I might have powered Expert skill up a bit. So in our games it's the "knowledge X" skill, where X can be any specific group, race, items or subject. I don't really define them as "can cover this or that skill" but just allow it in any situation where it makes sense, often with modifiers depending on how broad the skill compared to the specific situations.


Some we use are:

Expert (company). For a cyberpunk setting. This lets the user know about a companies working operations, their products, the whos who and so on.


Expert (Elves). For our DF campaign, there is also expert (dwarves, haflings, orcs and so on). Can be used to cover everything from history of the race to basic biology, such as distinguishing between subraces (wild elves and high elves), normal racial traits (orcs are sensitive to light) to a bit of cultural knowledge and politics.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Hoplology - TQ.
What I was thinking with Expert Skill (Soccer or whatever) is not just the rules. I was a football referee - I know nothing compared to a fan of football. I barely understand soccer rules and know only enough background to know why it is Soccer while "Gridiron" is football, eg Rugby football school rules still use a tactic that causes horrific injury, paralysis, even death, which tactic, I am led to believe, was banned from American football by presidential decree before WWI. That's the kind of thing I mean by ES-Sport, that and team backgrounds, annual events, history, league standings... You sports fans just don't realise how much you put into it all. To me "Fan", as in Fanatic, equates to ES(idolised subject).

Psychoanalysis and psychology are like Surgery and biology but you're right - ES(Pa) feels wrong. It's a medical profession - perhaps Psychology and the skills of a doctor make a psychoanalyst but ES(Pa) is a knowledge of the history and methods as opposed to the ability to practice.

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? :)

Re: Expert Skills
 

It really depends on the setting. People can be experts in all sorts of things. What setting are you running?

Re: Expert Skills
 

My setting doesn't matter for this discussion any more than people's settings matter for the perks thread...

I simply would like people to share how they've used expert skill in their games... this way everyone might gain something new. I made the post I did last night trying to bring the thread back to that topic.

Re: Expert Skills
 

One thing I like about Expert skills is that they are so open-ended. Effectively, along with all the -ology skills, you can do almost any "people, places, and/or things" topic, assuming it is complex enough that you need an Expert skill (as opposed to a Hobby skill, which would be more appropriate for something like an "expert" knowledge of a celebrity).

Expert (Foxhounds), for example, covers the different kinds of hounds, their history, famous bloodlines, what a particular hound might be worth on the market, folklore associated with the foxhound, hunting techniques and traditions, the care and feeding and breeding of hounds, hound behavioral problems, etc.

(Yes, I've been reading those stupid Rita Mae Brown books. They're freakin' addictive...)

Re: Expert Skills
 

Compared to Area Knowledge (France), not really. That does all the above but History, and is an Easy skill. History(France) is also a hard skill, so another hard skill that is also broader again makes for a bad comparison.

Re: Expert Skills
 

It sort of does, but okay... For fantasy settings, you can use some of the Hidden Lore examples as Expert Skills, if they are not really all that secret in the setting. For example, if every educated mage knows about ghosts and stuff, he can have Expert Skill (Spirits.)

Also, if you have Magical Styles in the setting, someone might be an expert about them, too.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Only if you are assuming I am asking for campaign/setting help. I'm not. I'm asking for people to share the Expert skills they use for their campaigns. Just like how the person who started the perks thread I linked to wasn't asking for help making perks just for their campaign/setting but for everyone's favorite or frequently used perks.

Those are good ideas too, yes.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Monsterology - Knowledge of warped creatures such as dire animals, cryptids, and some alien races, but only if they are intended to be used as things to kill in the game. Applies as Physiology, Psychology, Hidden Lore, etc. for such purposes.

Bacontology - Knowledge of cured pork products (despite the name, it applies to ham and some sausages as well). Acts as History, Hidden Lore, Occultism, Connoisseur, etc. for such purposes.

Latranology - Knowledge of coyotes, coyote based anthro- or therio-morph races, and cartoon coyotes. Acts as Biology, Physiology, Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology...but only for coyotes.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Thanks to both of you; I knew someone here would remember where to find it again.

"Bayesian Empirimancer". I would have never remembered the word constructions that the author coined.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Expert: The Guy I'm Impersonating.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Expert: The guy that's impersonating me

Might work for a hidden king and the pauper game.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Expert Skill (Chi Lore): Allows you to aswer questions about chi or similar concepts such as prana, odem, atman, etc. can be substituted for Physiology, Esoteric Medicine, or Cinematic skills when discussing the effect of chi manipulation.

Re: Expert Skills
 

One could argue that you could justify an "Expert Skill: [power] Lore" skill for any Power origin that is relatively common in your campaign; and by "relatively common", I mean more people than just you possess it. Not necessarily PCs, but someone other than you has to have had it.

In the case of long histories regarding the Power origin, you could get some real use out of it.

Re: Expert Skills
 

Really any Hidden Lore skill becomes an Expert skill if the lore's not so hidden.

Re: Expert Skills
 

That's a good point. The book gives us a psionic Expert Skill. I was thinking of the fictional aged kung fu sifu trope when submitting it.