Bang Skills

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by thrash

How do you imagine assigning levels to these? Do the players select how many points to invest in each, as usual, or are there campaign standards or guidelines?

That would be up to the GM. If I were the GM, I'd set aside a "bucket of points" for these three skills, define three tiers, and let players assign skills to tiers. For instance, I might set aside 108 points for Attribute+2 [48], Attribute+1 [36], and Attribute+0 [24], and let players rank their three wildcards however they like.

Originally Posted by thrash

It's hard to see how one character could have a higher personal wildcard skill than another. Is the former "more themselves" than the latter? More self-actualized? Or just older or more experienced?

Personal wildcards represent backstory. If you have a high value in your personal wildcard at the start of the campaign, you have a longer backstory that reflects having done more in your life before the game started. That may or may not be linked to age – "I'm older and wiser!" is one explanation, but "I had a zest for life and visited 40 countries and held down 20 jobs by the time I turned 30!" is just as good.

Originally Posted by thrash

Similarly, what do differences in BAT! skill level represent? A greater or lesser inclination towards polymathy or dabbling, or perhaps what Traveller used to call Jack-of-all-Trades skill?

In absolute terms, it's just a number shuffle to indicate what you want to be good at. In relative terms, if it's higher than your ultimate template wildcard, it means you're one of those "Specialization is for insects" people, while if it's lower, you're a devotee of your métier.

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't agree about Science!

In the first place, it's intended to simulate characters in cinematic works and genres.

In the second place, in terms of how much characters have to do dramatically, "the science guy" (or gal) really does have only about as much to do as the engineer, or the medic, or the witch, or the heroic warrior—or less.

And in the third place, some other games have just one science skill.

These are all excellent points – especially the second. While I can see a GM saying, "Let's not focus on emulating fiction or other games," because I tend to say that myself, I'm a strong supporter of dramatic niches that merit equal spotlight time. And the fact is, I've yet to play in the game where all of science, or the humanities, or the fine arts, or any other broad epistemological domain wasn't actually less important to the story than practical technology, or fighting, or skullduggery, or magic.

Going beyond the cinematic, there's also a strong case to be made that in the real world, our obsessive subdivision of science is a fairly recent thing. At one point (some say "prior to Margaret Cavendish," others "prior to Isaac Newton," and still others "prior to Ben Franklin"), it was all just "natural philosophy," studied in all its facets by many individuals. Even today, there's a movement toward holistic science and anti-reductionism. Science! might be a halfway realistic skill: The problem isn't that you can't pursue it, but that it's hard to get any good at it. Which is in fact true in GURPS by dint of the steep point cost of wildcard skills.

And of course we have IQ, which for slightly more points per level makes you better at every facet of human endeavor covered by the mind . . .

Originally Posted by whswhs

On one hand, point taken. But on the other hand, that seems to work against the intent of having ! skills be a way of simplifying a character concept. It has 15 standard skills listed as fully covered, and a dozen conditional skills. That's a lot!

The list is there for the exacting players who insist on having it, not because I believe it's the best approach. My own work, Power-Ups 7, does exactly what you recommend:

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you're going to handwave, then handwave. Or as the Basic Set says, "When in doubt, roll and shout!"

Or as I put it:

If the goal of using wildcards is to simplify character design and accelerate game play, a good start is to avoid bean-counting!

When a character is playing their part in the campaign, every skilled activity involves a roll against the most suitable attribute modified by their relative skill level with their template wildcard.

That's explicitly what BAT! was meant to represent in my example. You could have different branches of service with different wildcards of this kind, of course: Intelligence!, Law Enforcement!, Military!, Security!, etc. Heck, in a genre-spanning campaign with heroes from many timelines, you could have BAT!, Delver!, Monster Hunter!, etc., and even a meta World Hopper! skill for people who identify as voyagers rather than natives. I kept my example simple on purpose, to quickly illustrate a point.