Skills

[Trifletraxor]

I've tried to shorten down my skill list and I'm currently trying to make an "occupation" skill. A skill to cover anything related to the profession not better covered by the basic skills.

What I'm currently struggling with is a name for it. So far, I've been calling it "Craft [occupation]", so the skill could f.ex. be craft blacksmith, craft farmer or craft soldier depending on the occupation.

Is this manhandling the English language or is it doable? Do you have any other suggestions? "Roll your occupation farmer skill" doesn't really work, but I'm not totally sure if a craft and an occupation are synonyms or not.

SGL.

[rust]

I have decided to use "Trade" for this kind of skill, because - as I understand it -

Craft is limited to the production of something, while Occupation could include

activities that are not related to any specific profession. So in my setting it is

Trade (Farmer), or Trade (Banker), or Trade (Courtesan).

[sdavies2720]

How about "Livelihood[occupation]"? Modern games could use "Career". Or "Profession", "Living", "Vocation", "Job", or even "Occupation" all work better for me than "Craft".

[Narl]

I agree. I don't think of farming, hunting, fishing, or soldiering as crafts. I do think of brewing, knitting, or blacksmithing as crafts since they involve making something. Profession, trade, occupation, or even vocation would all work better than craft for a general skill term.

[soltakss]

Livelihood sounds good to me.

You could use it instead of Crafts, in a general way, because there's not much point having Livelihood (Blacksmith) and Craft (Blacksmith) together. You could use Craft for secondary or unusual knowledge, a soldier having Craft (Needlework) for example.

I'd give penalties to using Livelihood to act instead of multiple Crafts, though. A Blacksmith might be able to make weapons and armour, perhaps at full chance, but he'd probably have a penalty to making machine parts or making jewellery, even though his skills might be useful.

[Guest Vile Traveller]

I like "Trade" (sounds more RuneQuesty to me). I agree that it could supersede Craft, although I would go so far as to get rid of Craft altogether. I don't like highly specialised skills in my lists, because they hardly ever get used and they are weak in comparison to the range of activities which would be assumed under Trade.

However, I would keep Lore (or Knowledge) as separate from Trade, because Lores are specialised by their nature (I've never liked the general "Plant Lore", "Human Lore", etc.). So I would not have Trade [sage] because a sage is just someone with Literacy and Lore skills. Yes, that puts sages at a disadvantage compared to farmers, but that's why there are so few sages.

[rust]

So I would not have Trade [sage] because a sage is just someone with Literacy and Lore skills.

In my settings "Sage" is more a general description like "Soldier", not a specific

profession or trade. As the soldier is defined by his specific combat skills that

make him a footman, cavalryman, archer and so on, the sage is defined by his

knowledge skills that can make him, for example, an engineer, lawyer or medic.

A Trade (Sage) skill could give some general background knowledge about the

way sages work, for example how to do research, how to write papers, the eti-

quette and customs among sages, and all that, just like a Trade (Soldier) skill

could give a basic understanding of how the military works (ranks, orders, etc.).

However, I would not consider such a skill necessary.

[RosenMcStern]

Interestingly enough, this is exactly the kind of problem I am trying to address with the new ruleset I am working on now.

Basically, I am trying to separate "what you can do" from "what you are", and model the latter as traits and not skills. Historically, in BRP a farmer and a sage hava always had a good deal of the Lore (Nature) skill, and the task of applying background-related modifiers to a common skill has always been among GM's duties. Unfortunately, this leads to an approach that is very similar to the old question that rids the DM in D&D: "Is this appropriate to this character's class?", even if BRP has no character classes. By crystallizing and codifying these aspects into traits (think of Fate Aspects, the concept is very close), these problems could perhaps be eliminated.

So for instance, you can have "Manipulation" as a skill, and "Thief" and "Bowyer" as Traits. This clarifies what a character is good at without any need to create dozens of different skills. I wanted to try this approach in the new version of Merrie England, but this would have changed Simon's work too much and we chose to go for a classical skill-based design.

[sdavies2720]

Livelihood sounds good to me.

You could use it instead of Crafts, in a general way, because there's not much point having Livelihood (Blacksmith) and Craft (Blacksmith) together. You could use Craft for secondary or unusual knowledge, a soldier having Craft (Needlework) for example....

I read (probably mis-read) Trif's original post as wanting to separate Craft (knowing how to make things of a certain type) from Livelihood (how to make a living in a profession). So, for instance, I know a lot of people with high Craft[Artist] and a very low Livelihood[Artist].

But if you're trying to just get to a few skills, I'd merge those together into one set of knowledge. Wasn't this called Profession or something like that in an earlier version? I agree any one term looks ugly in some implementations. Maybe "Craft or Livelihood"?

[Trifletraxor]

However, I would keep Lore (or Knowledge) as separate from Trade, because Lores are specialised by their nature (I've never liked the general "Plant Lore", "Human Lore", etc.). So I would not have Trade [sage] because a sage is just someone with Literacy and Lore skills. Yes, that puts sages at a disadvantage compared to farmers, but that's why there are so few sages.

I've never really liked Lores as skills. They usually gets very general and I need to modify the rolls a lot, so I've pretty much dumped them.

I read (probably mis-read) Trif's original post as wanting to separate Craft (knowing how to make things of a certain type) from Livelihood (how to make a living in a profession). So, for instance, I know a lot of people with high Craft[Artist] and a very low Livelihood[Artist].

I was trying to find a suitable name for a profession/occupation/trade/livelihood skill. Something that would sound okay when you say "Please roll your ....[occupation] skill." Craft [occupation] sounded okay, but probably doesn't make that much sense with all occupations. Might just go for Trade [...].

Thanks for all the suggestions!

SGL.

[sdavies2720]

I was trying to find a suitable name for a profession/occupation/trade/livelihood skill. Something that would sound okay when you say "Please roll your ....[occupation] skill." Craft [occupation] sounded okay, but probably doesn't make that much sense with all occupations. Might just go for Trade [...].

Thanks for all the suggestions!

SGL.

I just call for an "Armorer Skill" roll (for instance). Only if they ask where/what the skill is do I tell them, "Craft[Armorer]". Making all those skills specifications of the Craft skill has the advantage of bunching them all up on the character sheet. That makes it much easier when we can't remember whether we called the bookkeeping skill, "Scribe", "Accountant", "CPA", or something else.

Steve

[sdavies2720]

[OT Mini-rant]

Can we change the format of the reply section of this site? ALWAYS, when I finish a "quickreply" or "Quote reply" I hit the "Reply to Thread" button (Which is colored, big, and obvious as opposed to the "submit reply" button which is small, grey, and crowded against the input box and other buttons).

Needless to say, hitting that "Reply to Thread" button brings up another input box, which doesn't have any of the text I've just entered.

This time, I did it not once, not twice, but three times before posting (pre-coffee).

[/OT Mini-rant]

Steve

[Guest Vile Traveller]

I thought that was just me who did that. Thanks for making me feel not quite alone in my frustration, Steve!

Woah - almost did it again, there!

[Trifletraxor]

[OT Mini-rant]...This time, I did it not once, not twice, but three times before posting (pre-coffee).[/OT Mini-rant]

[Greville]

It looks like I'm late to this one, but what about calling it a Vocation?

You could have Vocation: Soldier, Vocation: Farmer etc

[Trifletraxor]

I'm going for Trade as the name of the occupation skill. What are your skills do you use in your game? A long one or short one?

My current list is: Athletics, Devise, Dodge, First Aid, Influence, Listen, Ride, Sense, Sleight, Spot, Stealth, Streetwise, Survival & Trade (_______)

[rust]

A (rough) translation of the skill list for my current Asornok fantasy setting looks

like this:

Animal Lore

Animal Training

Appraising

Area Knowledge

Art*

Athletics

Bargain

Boat

Craft*

Dancing

Dodge

Dog Sled

First Aid

Foreign Language*

Healing

Intuition

Legend Lore

Magic Script

Mother Tongue

Music

Nature Lore

Navigation

Oratory

Perception

Plant Lore

Repair

Sign Language

Sky Lore

Spirit Lore

Stealth

Storytelling

Survival

Tracking

Trapping

* covers several skills