Skills - maybe this game isn't what I'm looking for

[Black Leviathan]

I feel like in all these responses someone had to bring it up but I see most folks talking about routine use skill modifier and pointing out that 11 is a pretty low skill.

Skill checks aren't for every use, It's only when you're struggling or need to make it look easy and only when there's a real consequence to failure. So you'd make a riding check if your horse got bit by a snake or if you're trying to break-in a horse you've never ridden with, or performing on the Dressage Square. 11 is a pretty ordinary skill, what most teenage girls who've been out to the farm a few times have. Those tests are tough for that level of experience and you could fail them very easily. Failure depends a lot on the severity of the circumstances and the margin of the roll. You might fail your riding roll to control your snake-bit horse by one and the horse just wheels around in place in a panic letting the snake strike again. You might fail your roll to break in Mean Butch with a critical failure and he throws you into a ravine. You might fail your roll to perform your dressage routine by 2, but other competitors fail by even wider margins so you win the chance to be rewarded by the Duchess and have a few seconds to speak to her without her handlers.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

I feel like in all these responses someone had to bring it up but I see most folks talking about routine use skill modifier and pointing out that 11 is a pretty low skill.

Which is ironic as in several places GURPS expressly states that this is not a low skill.

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

Skill checks aren't for every use, It's only when you're struggling or need to make it look easy and only when there's a real consequence to failure.

""Your unmodified skill level is called your base skill. It measures your odds of success at an “average” task under adventuring conditions – in other words, in a stressful situation where the consequences of failure are significant." B171

Thaumatology: Urban Magics pg 30 goes at this from the other end:

"The standard rules are designed for adventurers, not for ordinary working professionals. Professionals make one job roll a month. On a critical failure, something bad happens, with harmful consequences – but not usually as bad as a critical failure during an adventure. (...) With one roll a month, a mage with effective skill 15 or less goes 54 months between mishaps, on the average; one with effective skill 16 or better could go 216 months (or 18 years)."

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by borithan

I think this is *mostly* how I envision characters when making them, and as I said, I think actually reflects leading characters in popular culture (which I think will inform many players' visions of their characters) a lot better than detailed backstories do.

While I also prefer PCs that have little significant backstory, that seems like rather a stretch. Popular culture is full of characters who are tied in to the plot to an almost absurd degree through their personal history and/or ancestry. Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and an endless pile of others.

Of course, a ttRPG is often less likely to have the arc of the plot detailed in advance. Retconning connections in as things progress is an option for those who like it but that also favors light initial backstory so you've got plenty of room to insert relevant connections.

[Willy]

The monthly roll for ordinary jobs, is fairly standard in GURPS it was at least in the 3rd Ed. , and is mentioned in the 4th Ed. P. 516.

[Kale]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

I feel like in all these responses someone had to bring it up but I see most folks talking about routine use skill modifier and pointing out that 11 is a pretty low skill.

Keeping in mind the +4 for routine situations, a skill 9 would roll on a 13 or less under uneventful circumstances, so as a GM I wouldn't make anyone roll if they had a skill over 9 for really routine circumstances as they will probably succeed if they play it safe.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

While I also prefer PCs that have little significant backstory, that seems like rather a stretch. Popular culture is full of characters who are tied in to the plot to an almost absurd degree through their personal history and/or ancestry. Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and an endless pile of others.

I always ask players for a short backstory of their character, in writing. I allow them to change it for about a month. Then they need to give me a somewhat longer and more detailed version of their backstory. I'm not talking much. A paragraph would do.

However, I warn them that I will feel free to add anything that doesn't contradict their backstory. Many players have given me quite detailed backstories because of this.

I have rarely used this, but I have occasionally told people that they have run into a friend from their childhood, but that's it.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

I always ask players for a short backstory of their character, in writing. I allow them to change it for about a month. Then they need to give me a somewhat longer and more detailed version of their backstory. I'm not talking much. A paragraph would do.

However, I warn them that I will feel free to add anything that doesn't contradict their backstory. Many players have given me quite detailed backstories because of this.

I have rarely used this, but I have occasionally told people that they have run into a friend from their childhood, but that's it.

...That would seem like a really good reason to stop threatening your players that way, to me.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

While I also prefer PCs that have little significant backstory, that seems like rather a stretch. Popular culture is full of characters who are tied in to the plot to an almost absurd degree through their personal history and/or ancestry. Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and an endless pile of others.

It's notable, though, that for nearly all of these characters, the backstory is revealed gradually over the course of the plot rather than set out at the beginning. For some of them, the backstory was not known even to the creators at the start, but developed as needed over the course of the series. (Luke Skywalker, who you mentioned, comes to mind as an exemplar of this- despite George Lucas's continuing claims that he had a master plan for Star Wars from the beginning, there is clear evidence that the true identity of Luke's father, for example, was a decision postdating the first movie.) I think this is a reasonable approach to take for designing RPG characters- starting out with a rough sketch, perhaps even a stereotype, and filling in the details as they become relevant and as the player gets a better idea of the character.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

It's notable, though, that for nearly all of these characters, the backstory is revealed gradually over the course of the plot rather than set out at the beginning. For some of them, the backstory was not known even to the creators at the start, but developed as needed over the course of the series. (Luke Skywalker, who you mentioned, comes to mind as an exemplar of this- despite George Lucas's continuing claims that he had a master plan for Star Wars from the beginning, there is clear evidence that the true identity of Luke's father, for example, was a decision postdating the first movie.) I think this is a reasonable approach to take for designing RPG characters- starting out with a rough sketch, perhaps even a stereotype, and filling in the details as they become relevant and as the player gets a better idea of the character.

True, certainly, but that's going to happen much of the time as a matter of in media res storytelling even in cases where it's all worked out in advance.

(As for Luke, just within A New Hope Luke is established to be the heir to a Jedi Knight, watched over by another Jedi of note, and connected to Darth Vader by way of his father. Sure, the ESB twist probably wasn't planned in at that point, but ANH-only Luke is already firmly stuck with plot-critical lineage.)

((Particularly in fantasy it seems pretty common for the really important backstory to be a character's parents rather than anything the character themselves did.))

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

...That would seem like a really good reason to stop threatening your players that way, to me.

I got me the backstory writeups, and allowed me to add in the occasional hook. I had one friend who would give me a *very* detailed writeup, except that he left two years unaccounted for. That way, he said, I could put anything I needed to into that time without messing with his backstory. And, he claimed, that if he just wrote the full background that detailed, he felt that it might make me feel as if he's daring me to do something.

Of course, I've known this guy for a long time and we were good friends. He was the best man at my wedding.