dieselpunk Posted September 22, 2020 Share Posted September 22, 2020 (edited) I've noticed about 50% of my players don't like dealing with skill lists or assigning points to skills during character creation. Many see it as a chore more than empowering describing a character concept. Usually these are the casual or new RPG players, but honestly even I tire of trying to keep lengthy skill lists in memory. My last few games run using FATE Core has shown that my game sessions don't suffer at all with just 18 core skills. So with FATE Core as inspiration I took a shot at whittling down the BGB skill list down to 15 skills that I'm thinking may be a good way to streamline whatever game I try next. It's aimed at settings roughly late 19th-present century. Labels in parentheses are the Fate equivalents. Communication Fast Talk (Deceive) Persuade (Rapport) Manipulation Art Fine Manipulation (Burglary) Craft (Craft) Mental Medicine Science / Knowledge (Lore) Perception Insight (Empathy) Spot (Notice) Physical Dodge Athletics (Athletics) Stealth (Stealth) Pilot/Drive (Drive) Combat Firearms (Shoot) Melee (Fight) The only non-native BRP skill in the above list is "Athletics" which is what I would lump jump, swim, climb, and other feats of physical daring into. I suppose I could really condense things down to just 6 skills by using the categories, but I do like having things finer grain than that. Anything else not covered I'd just boil down to characteristic rolls. Anyone else play with a greatly reduced skill list? If yes, how have you adjusted the starting point allocations? Edited September 22, 2020 by dieselpunk Explain athletics; grammar. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lloyd Dupont Posted September 23, 2020 Share Posted September 23, 2020 I made my own simplified list.. but I will check it out tonight against yours! ^^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roko Joko Posted September 23, 2020 Share Posted September 23, 2020 You could check out OpenQuest (26) and Revolution D100 (13). For starting values it sounds like a Fate pyramid would be good for you. The specific values could be anything. Quote What really happened? The only way to discover that is to experience it yourself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Questbird Posted September 23, 2020 Share Posted September 23, 2020 12 hours ago, dieselpunk said: Communication Fast Talk (Deceive) MANIPULATION (G) Persuade (Rapport) also MANIPULATION(G) COMMAND (A) Manipulation Art no equivalent except maybe CULTURE (A) Fine Manipulation (Burglary) TECHNOLOGY (A) Craft (Craft) also TECHNOLOGY (A) DATA DJINN (A) -- basically cyber hacking Mental Medicine MEDICURGY (A) Science / Knowledge (Lore) SCIENCE (A) SURVIVAL (G) CULTURE (A) Perception Insight (Empathy) no exact equivalent, but there is MYSTIC POWERS (A) Spot (Notice) OBSERVATION (G) Physical Dodge DEXTERITY (G) Athletics (Athletics) probably also DEXTERITY (G) Stealth (Stealth) INFILTRATION (G) Pilot/Drive (Drive) PILOT (A) FORCE (G) basically a strength check Combat Firearms (Shoot) RANGED COMBAT (G) Melee (Fight) MELEE COMBAT (G) Interesting. For comparison, here are the 16 skills listed in the space game Coriolis, which is not a BRP game -- but neither is Fate. In Coriolis there are 8 General skills (G) and 8 Advanced (A) skills, where you can't succeed without some training. As you can see, there is some crossover; I guess that's inevitable when you try to condense the skill lists. Of course, it's a sci-fi game so there are some things you won't find in the 19th century. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NickMiddleton Posted September 23, 2020 Share Posted September 23, 2020 Free League have tweaked their approach to skills in the Year Zero engine (the underpinning rule set for Coriolis also used in their Mutant: Year Zero games, Forbidden Lands, Vaesen, Aliens, Tales from the Loop, Things from the Flood and, heavily tweaked, Twilght: 2000) - but in general have stuck to the basic idea of sixteen skills, and in more recent games linked to one of four stats such that there are four skills for each stat... IIRC WotC were similarly restrained / abstracted with skills in the edition of Gamma World they did based of D&D 4e. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieselpunk Posted September 23, 2020 Author Share Posted September 23, 2020 11 hours ago, Roko Joko said: You could check out OpenQuest (26) and Revolution D100 (13). For starting values it sounds like a Fate pyramid would be good for you. The specific values could be anything. I did glance through RD100, but they also have traits to expand the skills which I'm not interested in doing as it just moves the problem around. In fact, I'm annoyed by Knowledge and Science being somewhat duplicative, but kept the 2 to have some more ways of differentiating characters. The point allocation "problem" is closely related to reducing the skill list. The one thing with BRP that's bugged me is that points have to be distributed across so many skills that it's easy to be crappy at everything (e.g. No skills of at least 75%). I need to test, but hoping the standard number of points will work fine. Having characters with multiple high skills encourages people to try things. I'd rather see (and play) a character who has a high chance of success at a skill doing difficult things then feeling like I only have 30% chance of success at a normal skill check. But this is another topic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Al. Posted September 23, 2020 Share Posted September 23, 2020 23 hours ago, dieselpunk said: I suppose I could really condense things down to just 6 skills by using the categories, but I do like having things finer grain than that. Anything else not covered I'd just boil down to characteristic rolls. Anyone else play with a greatly reduced skill list? If yes, how have you adjusted the starting point allocations? Since the sweet spot for BRP games is generally* reckoned to be 50-75% why not: 70 65 65 60 60 60 55 55 55 55 50 50 50 50 50 * with the ever-present provisos that all generalisations are rubbish and there's no such thing as consensus on the interweb 1 Quote Rule Zero: Don't be on fire Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atgxtg Posted September 23, 2020 Share Posted September 23, 2020 On 9/22/2020 at 3:19 PM, dieselpunk said: I suppose I could really condense things down to just 6 skills by using the categories, but I do like having things finer grain than that. Anything else not covered I'd just boil down to characteristic rolls. Anyone else play with a greatly reduced skill list? If yes, how have you adjusted the starting point allocations? If you wanted too, you could reduce it down further by just using characteristic rolls. Skills, if you want them, could just apply a modifier or multiplier to the attribute rolls. It all comes down to just how much you want to abstract things. Quote Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mugen Posted September 27, 2020 Share Posted September 27, 2020 My own aptitudes list : Aim Athletics Balance Education Melee Manipulation Nature Perception Pilot Social Supernatural (Magic/Psi) Resilience I add lspecialties" and "skills" on top of it. Specialties only add a bonus in specific circumstances. Skills are a category of specialties you need to have in order to do some tasks. Magic, crafts and knowledges are Skill examples. Some actions related to a Skill are possible with a malus, at the GM's discretion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaot Posted September 27, 2020 Share Posted September 27, 2020 Basically what I'm doing right now for my Ravenloft game. Acrobatics (dex) Athletics (str) Art Craft Evaluate Insight Fast Talk Persuade Natural World Physik Search Skulduggery Stealth Then I have a bunch of advanced skills. Alchemy, Hypnosis, etc. Quote 70/420 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonL Posted September 29, 2020 Share Posted September 29, 2020 Tweaking/Pruning/Tuning the skill list is a great way to communicate to your players what the game is about. Modern GURPS has a lot of good advice about how you're explicitly not supposed to use ALL those different skills, and that granularity should be dialed up or down to suit the game at hand. (RoleMaster could stand to learn a thing or two there.) 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mugen Posted October 2, 2020 Share Posted October 2, 2020 On 9/27/2020 at 8:42 PM, Chaot said: Fast talk Persuade The way I understand it, Fast talk is for confusing people, and Persuade for convincing them your arguments are right. As for myself, if I wanted a game with two Communication skills, I think I'd have one to speak with an individual, and another for crowds. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieselpunk Posted October 4, 2020 Author Share Posted October 4, 2020 My latest revision based on some tests creating a Pulp Cthulhu swashbuckling aviator. I made the character first using normal rules and then tried to see about recreating it under my latest version of the abbreviated skill list. I used the CoC7e Option 5 Quick Fire Method (i.e. 70, 60, 60, 50, 50, 50, 40, 40, 40) to get the starting skill percentages. Having fewer skills and a pre-made point pyramid definitely made things faster. The character after starting assignments looked like this: Skill % Persuade 60 Fine Manipulation 50 Repair 40 First Aid 30 Knowledge 20 Science 20 Science (Navigation) 60 Insight 5 Spot 40 Dodge 50 Athletics 40 Stealth 10 Drive 20 Pilot 70 Firearms 20 Melee 50 He is reasonably competent across the board with an emphasis on piloting, navigation, and people skills (inspired from the swashbuckler archetype in Pulp Cthulhu). I'd throw in another 100 personal interest points for customization with a starting skill cap of 80% on any particular skill. The biggest deviation from normal BRP/COC is how I'm choosing to handle Knowledge and Science. The default chance for someone succeeding at any knowledge or science skill is INTx2. This is my attempt at heading off the problem of "Does anyone have Science (Botany)?" because no one thought that would ever come up in play. If you do want to be a Botanist then take Science (Botany), write it in, and assign points (with INT x2 as the base). Functionally, Science and Knowledge are the same, but I kept the terms as a helpful way for players to think about specialties. For more precise builds, each skill has a starting base percentage (with ties to certain characteristics likely to be higher than the normal BGB starting levels). I haven't tested this, but it seems like a starting pool of 560 points (sum of the CoC quick start pyramid + 100) would yield an appropriate start for a pulpy character. Since the skill list is short, I wouldn't bother with occupations other than as RP concepts. Skill Base Notes Persuade APP X2 Includes Fast Talk and Intimidate; Charm is a charisma roll Fine Manipulation DEX x2 As in BGB Repair 10 As in BGB First Aid 30 As in BGB; medicine is a specialty in Knowledge or Science Knowledge INT x2 Base chance for all knowledge ; can only be improved by taking a specialty Science INT x2 Base chance for all science; can only be improved by taking a specialty Insight 10 As in BGB Spot 20 As in BGB Dodge DEX x2 As in BGB Athletics CON x2 Includes swim, throw, jump, climb in BGB Stealth 10 As in BGB Drive 20 As in BGB; add pilot skill with base of 1%+POW if needed Firearms DEX x2 As in BGB but no specialties Melee STR x2 As in BGB but no specialties Not sure when I'll get to play test this. For a campaign and players that enjoy the system I really don't have many issues with running char gen RAW. But for a one shot, quickly making competent characters, NPCs, or introducing new players this may be an alternative. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieselpunk Posted October 4, 2020 Author Share Posted October 4, 2020 On 9/27/2020 at 2:42 PM, Chaot said: Basically what I'm doing right now for my Ravenloft game. ... SearchSkulduggery Stealth Then I have a bunch of advanced skills. Alchemy, Hypnosis, etc. Bonus points for using the term Skulduggery! I might have to steal that. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaot Posted October 8, 2020 Share Posted October 8, 2020 On 10/2/2020 at 1:51 AM, Mugen said: The way I understand it, Fast talk is for confusing people, and Persuade for convincing them your arguments are right. As for myself, if I wanted a game with two Communication skills, I think I'd have one to speak with an individual, and another for crowds. Yeah. Fast Talk is for short term gain and is used to confuse, take advantage or pressure people into doing something that may be against their best interest. It is also a quick skill and often will leave the person who you Fast Talked unhappy. Persuade involves laying out a position and trying to change a person's mind about their opinion or stance. This is a long term diplomatic skill and takes a longer time to accomplish. The person must be willing to listen to your words as well. Fast Talk and Persuade can both be used against individuals and groups. On 10/4/2020 at 10:27 AM, dieselpunk said: Bonus points for using the term Skulduggery! I might have to steal that. It's such a lovely word that conjures up all that thievery stuff. I'm going back and forth on whether to leave the basic skills of Search and Stealth and put Skulduggery into the specialty skill category. Quote 70/420 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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