[Basic] Skill of the week: Administration

[johndallman]

Yawn? Maybe. Basic has it as "the skill of running a large organization" but it often seems to be vital for working inside a large organisation.

That seems to have started with the 1989 first edition of GURPS Special Ops where a half-point of Administration was required in just about all of the proto-templates in in that book. It was also the way to get hold of money from the service, which was sometime necessary, but never easy. GURPS WWII had it as a required skill for all NCOs and officers.

So it gets used as a kind of gateway skill. PC "OK, we need to get the office to do X, Y and Z by tomorrow." GM "Roll Administration ..."

Has anyone done anything more exciting with it?

[vicky_molokh]

You basically can't live without it if you want to have high Rank in a city, a corporation, or an army (as the quartermaster, not commander/intelligence, of course). Stuff ranging from making your empire run smoothly to making sure you can perform a Forced March of your army without serious problems.

[malloyd]

Other than the saving throw vs. bureaucracy, I tend to use it as an analog to Leadership. If you are leading people to do something risky, you roll against Leadership, but if it is something totally safe, use Administration. That makes it not very exciting but sometimes fairly useful.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by malloyd

If you are leading people to do something risky, you roll against Leadership, but if it is something totally safe, use Administration.

As in "organising them to get something they're willing to do done right?" Agreed, but motivating them still seems to be Leadership.

And I forgot the importance of Administration in Mass Combat, although that is really part of its relevance to the military.

[Figleaf23]

I thought it was necessarily boring too, until I saw someone put it on a stat up of Jim Rockford who used it to mislead bureaucracies or to misrepresent himself as a representative of bureaucracies when undercover.

[Mailanka]

I've found it indispensable in the sorts of games I often run. In games with any kind of domain management, Administration is pretty much a must-have skill. In a game with Mass-Combat, it covers your skill with logistics. In a conspiracy game, it lets you understand and map out the organization you are infiltrating, as well as run conspiracies and organizations of your own. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I believe it even helps you in the "Pulling Rank" rolls from GURPS Action.

GURPS is chock full of useless skills, vital skills and the dangerous ones in between, who masquerade as the former and turn out to be the latter. Administration is definitely one of those. In any game where there are organizations, this skill turn out to be very handy.

[sclose1970]

Social Engineering has quite a few uses for Administration. It seems to take the place of Savoir-faire as an influence skill in corporate and government bureaucracies, as well as providing a bonus to reaction rolls in such environments. It can also be used as a complementary skill. After doing a quick search through SE, it was mentioned quite a few times as the necessary skill in certain situations.

[Kromm]

In my current campaign, I've allowed these uses:

• As the "appropriate Influence skill" in an organizational environment (corporate, governmental, etc.). Other skills work but are at "-1 to -10 for using an inappropriate Influence skill" (p. B359).
  
  
• As the skill of running an organization efficiently. I let it act as a complementary skill for one specific organizational mission; e.g., success gives +1 to the effective skill of all staff working toward that objective directly.
  
  
• As the skill for navigating an organization's reports and paperwork when the PCs want something from said organization. Failure means not getting what they want, while degree of success determines the quality of what they get.
  
  
• As the skill of quickly finding the important information upon opening a folder or a cabinet (physical or virtual) full of documents. Speed-Reading is the brute-force approach: read it all, hope for the best. Administration allows an informed guess at where to look.
  
  
• As the detection skill for spotting disinformation and inconsistencies when examining complex forms and schedules.

It's a fairly critical skill to a group of modern spies. It simply doesn't exist when I run fantasy campaigns, though!

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Has anyone done anything more exciting with it?

In the thread Favourite Realm Management System, over in the Roleplaying subforum, I talked a bit about how GURPS defines Economics and perhaps also Finance as TL skills, opening up the possibility of simulating people and cultures with a more primitive and less sophisticated approach to such things, i.e. by, in GURPS jargon, to define some cultured as retarded (or advanced) in certain TL-based skills. Specifically I proposed that medieval Christiann Europe could be severely retarded in Economics, having Economics/TL1 since they were clearly less clued-in about such thing than the Romans were, and they were tL2.

I also talked a bit about labour/personel management, and wrote this:

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

And one could well posit that most people in the slave-owning societies of my Ärth setting, primarily the Norse and Keltic ones (slavery is common in the Moslem lands too, but they're no longer slave-based economies), are retarded in terms of labour management. Sagatafl doesn't have a skill for that, and I don't think GURPS does either, but it's still a thing that it can - probably - make sense for societies and cultures to be retarded or advanced in.

Forum user Sindri then suggested that GURPS' Administration skill could be relevant for that.

I'm not sure if he meant in the sense that cultures and individual characters could have different TLs in Administration (that's what I'd assume he meant), or if he just meant that lordly characters with higher Administration skill would be better able to manage their labour pool, e.g. treat slave better so that in the longer term they'd be more productive, less likely to rebel or run away, and so forth, and generally design the entire work process and the surrounding structure so as to achieve greater motivation for the workers. (Much of the thread was about long-term thinking, and how the medieval mindset usually wasn't inclined in that direction.)

I'm sceptical. But I thought I'd throw it in here, ask what you people think. Does that fall within the scope of Administration? And is it somewhat - or very - sensible to treat Administration as a TL-based skill for this purpose?

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I'm not sure if he meant in the sense that cultures and individual characters could have different TLs in Administration (that's what I'd assume he meant)

To clarify, I meant that labour management (depending on exactly what it refers to) could be Administration. Higher "labour management TL" might allow higher average skills in Administration or it might be better to simulate things by having some methods the skill might use depend on the TL even if the skill isn't /TL. Accounting isn't /TL but double entry bookkeeping is available as a tool to some accountants but not others.