07-21-2021, 08:17 AM | #11 | ||
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Re: Bang Skills
In terms of what they give for the points, they need a little extra to balance them against not just standard skills, but also attributes and advantages. I disliking shilling my own stuff, but as others have said, "a little extra" is what GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills provides. Wildcards that encompass many techniques at full skill, waive familiarity and TL effects, bestow plot-changing Wildcard Points, and grant many bonuses for high skill – and that perhaps even get an enhanced critical-success range, and work at a higher level when standing in for less-than-Average, -Hard, or even -Very Hard skills – are very much worth the points. The important thing here is not to replace the complexity of excessively long skill lists with the complexity of excessively numerous optional rules!
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There's also an optional rule (Law of the Instrument, a.k.a. "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.") that lets Wildcard Points from any wildcard convert any situation into one where that wildcard applies. That can help a lot. The A Matter of Degree and Not Quite What You Wanted rules also let any wildcard step up in any situation. The recurring theme is that there's a penalty or cost to operate far from home base, but the answer is never a firm "No." Quote:
There are also hybrid solutions like having a small list of standard wildcards plus asking everybody to take their personal one (e.g., Jane!) as well, and then invoking suitable GURPS Power-Ups 7 options. For one thing, the personal wildcard will generate Wildcard Points and bonuses applicable to anything that fits the character concept, irrespective of other specifics. For another, there are rules there that let two wildcards work together, which means the personal wildcard could enhance a situation-specific one. The extreme case is the Ultimate Template Wildcards rule, which replaces specific skills with role-suitable tasks: "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." There's that. There's letting people include a few hobbies in their version of the wildcard or their personal wildcard, as mentioned above. In between is allowing skills to default to wildcards as in GURPS Power-Ups 7, but declaring that any innocuous hobby or interest always defaults to any wildcard, the logic being that in the course of becoming broadly competent, you of course had downtime in which to pursue personal pastimes.
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07-21-2021, 09:05 AM | #12 |
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Re: Bang Skills
One possible approach:
Consider a GURPS Action-style campaign. The GM requires that everybody have three wildcards:
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!"
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
07-21-2021, 11:57 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Los Angeles
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Re: Bang Skills
I *love* Bang/Wildcard skills! Excellent tool for customizing the focus of your game.
I seem to use them opposite of above, though, primarily using Bang skills for the background and 'second tier' skills that round out the character. A PC's primary focus gets one Bang skill ("Mercenary!") as a catch-all for anything it would logically cover (that isn't defined elsewhere), but the PC's primary skills get the full treatment ("Brawling-13, Guns(Pistol)-12, Knife-14,..."). Quote:
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07-21-2021, 02:36 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: Bang Skills
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07-21-2021, 02:43 PM | #15 | |
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Re: Bang Skills
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I mean, I've known someone whose personal wildcard would have covered photographic lab work, advanced motorcycling, police skills, and RPGs, but still...
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07-21-2021, 02:52 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Bang Skills
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07-21-2021, 03:06 PM | #17 |
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Re: Bang Skills
Nothing says the GM can't rule that broadly and clearly useful bits of a biography must be no broader than and compatible with the ultimate template wildcard, and restrict personal wildcards to the scope of what can be deduced from quirks. Obviously, it needs negotiation. On the other hand, if a player actually writes an entertaining novella for me, I might be more liberal. Indeed, that's one possible control: "Pertains to what's in a biography that fits onto a standard 500-word page, written in complete sentences with good grammar and paragraph breaks."
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07-21-2021, 03:15 PM | #18 | |
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Re: Bang Skills
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Which said, I often think GURPS fans go overboard dissecting skills. There are far, far more skills in the system than there were in 1986, and that's largely due to writers who were also fans going a little crazy. Often, the better approach is to take the view, "If you're a hero in this story, then you belong here and your shtick is useful to advancing the plot." I rather think that RISUS is clever this way.
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07-21-2021, 03:33 PM | #19 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Bang Skills
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07-21-2021, 03:43 PM | #20 |
Join Date: May 2021
Location: Eastern Kentucky
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Re: Bang Skills
A lot of neat ideas posted here especially the three bang approach.
Still for me, perhaps I'm new to GURPS, but I'm not wanting to get back to a shorter skill list. I feel I've freed myself from super short skill lists by coming to GURPS. So I'm not hot to try them just yet. Maybe after I've worn out the regular skill list. I do though think that a GM might want to put out a list of skills he feels are the sorts of skills that may be needed so that PCs are getting the right things. Maybe even template them into archetypes. I still like to see what a PC will pick that I didn't think of though and how they will use it in game. |
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bang skills, kromm explanation, power-ups 7, wildcard skills |
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