Bang Skills

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Kromm

One possible approach:

Consider a GURPS Action-style campaign. The GM requires that everybody have three wildcards:

1. A personal wildcard, named for them. This covers their backstory, and their personality, pastimes, and predilections. It mainly serves to stop gaps in incidental, rarely plot-relevant skills and to generate Wildcard Points.
   
2. The ultimate template wildcard for their role. This grants wildcard familiarity and tech level, extra-broad perks and techniques, bonuses, and open-ended criticals with all facets of their trade. It also generates Wildcard Points.
   
3. A wildcard for general action-adventure tasks, named BAT! in homage to GURPS Action 4: Specialists. It stops gaps in plot-relevant skills so that the hero can survive in all action situations, and generates Wildcard Points.

And that's it for skills! There are three characters: Alexis, the "face"; Morgan, the gun nut; and Sam, the techno-nerd.

• Alexis takes their personal wildcard, Alexis!; their template wildcard, Face Man!; and BAT!.
  
• Morgan takes their personal wildcard, Morgan!; their template wildcard, Shooter!; and BAT!.
  
• Sam takes their personal wildcard, Sam!; their template wildcard, Wire Rat!; and BAT!.

The GM lets them roll against their template wildcard whenever their role would be front and center to the situation, which typically means whenever the standard template's core skills would matter.

However, they can always use BAT! for ordinary action-story stuff that suits the campaign even if it's outside their role: driving cars, punching people, shooting handguns, sneaking around, using standard tech (like computers, flashlights, and phones) creatively, and so on.

And they can use their personal wildcard whenever the player can make a good case for the hero having done something similar in their backstory . . . and for hobbies. So if Alexis is a globetrotting wine snob and ballroom dancer who spends their spare time on yachts, they can whip out Boating, Connoisseur (Wine), Dancing, and a boatload of Area Knowledge and Current Affairs specialties, among other things.

But the best part is that BAT! can be used to enhance the template wildcard (so someone with high BAT! is good at shooting but someone with Shooter! and BAT! is better), and that personal wildcards can be used to enhance either with one of the more modest bonuses suggested in GURPS Power-Ups 7 (so it always helps but never as dramatically). Moreover, WP from all three go into a common pool, which can power up any of the wildcards in a suitable situation. Notably, this pool can be used to invoke Law of the Instrument; e.g., Sam could burn 2 WP from their pool to let Sam! work as Wheel Man! to do cool car stuff in a chase, the argument being something like "Well, Sam loves tech and plays a ton of Need for Speed, so duh!"

Personal wildcards? That is *very* interesting. Hmmm.