Skills - quantity and level

[CosmicGamer]

This topic was brought up here

I don't think that I'd object to a character having several level-2 skills. In my opinion here are the equivalents (along with Medic skill equivalents):

0 - Basic familiarity (First aid training, lower level EMT)
1 - Apprentice (EMT, Nurse)
2 - Journeyman (RN with considerable experience; medical intern)
3 - Master (medical resident/attending)

I don't think it strains credibility for someone to be good (ie, level 2) at a couple of different things.

I'm actually a lot more opposed to giving characters a dozen+ level 1 and level 0 skills.

but is off that OP topic so I'm starting a new thread.

IMO, there is no problem with having numerous low level skills. Why couldn't someone know how to shoot a few types of weapons, do simple mechanical and electronic repairs, maybe even engineer something simple, drive/pilot a vehicle and a boat, navigate that vehicle to it's destination, be able to perform CPR and other basic first aid, Speak foreign language, entertain and host gatherings, know how to survive in the woods, set up computers for entire companies, wrestle, enjoy hitting the casinos,

Handgun 0
Rifle 0
Mechanic 1
Electronics 1
Engineer 0
Drive Wheeled 1
Drive Watercraft 0
Navigate 0
Medic 0
Language 0
Steward 1
Survival 1
Computer 2
Melee 0
Gambling 0

This is just some of the Traveller related things I can do. Add in Admin, leadership, broker, streetwise and more. The list could go on with non typical Traveller skills like gardening, painting, plumbing, ....

To make a point, if the skills get detailed, instead of just electronics, it could be: repair a child's remote control toy, install a home security system, add an MP3 player to a car sound system, ... and computer skill could be programming, repairing, networking, databases, security,...

So, to me, there is no such thing as too many low level skills, it's just a matter of the game system, the players and the GM, being able to handle it all.

Here is another item pulled from the other thread.

Not mastery. Competency. Now, that's a nebulous term in itself. The rules say someone can have the title "doctor" at skill level 2. But we call just out of med school people "doctor," don't we? He has skill - just not a lot (hence the 2). If he's awesome master, then it's 4, just as the rules say. Game-wise, that means the guy with the 4 can, on average, hit target numbers of 9-11 with his +4 to the roll (assuming a roll of 5-7 on 2d6), which makes him, in adventuring conditions, able to do so called difficult tasks and succeed. Since this does as advertised, and we have an accurate if grainy skill/competency ladder, I think the 2d6 works. I don't see the problem. Since NO dice system is an accurate way to simulate human anything, all we can test it against is dramatic or narrative "accuracy." And in the Mongoose is just fine.

Also, talking of competency, we don't tell people who finished law school "hey, you're not even a real lawyer!" even though they lack experience in court or doing legal documents, etc. They're just new - but they are professionals. They usually have more legal knowledge than the legal aid who does the office paperwork - they just lack experience.

Using Drive (wheeled) as an example, what level would an average driver on the road be? 2? Do you have to be a race car driver to be higher? Limo driver?

What level would a competent driver be? A skilled driver? A trained driver? A professional driver? Yes, it is a bit nebulous.

 

[samuelvss]

IMO, there is no problem with having numerous low level skills. Here is another item pulled from the other thread. Using Drive (wheeled) as an example, what level would an average driver on the road be? 2? Do you have to be a race car driver to be higher? Limo driver?

An average driver on the road would be somewhere between a 1 and a 0.

What level would a competent driver be? A skilled driver? A trained driver? A professional driver? Yes, it is a bit nebulous.

Competent, under normal conditions would be a 0.

A driver who have received specialized training and/or extensive experience across the class would be a 1. Someone with Wheeled Vehicle-1 would be able to back a trailer, drive a fully loaded tractor-trailor combo, operate an ATV off-road, steer out of a bad skid, drive comforatbly at high speed (180-240kph).

A higher ability across these types of skills, and possibly some more advanced (ramming with a sedan, getting out of s sinking car, driving from under the dash, etc) would be a Wheeled Vehicle-2.

A race driver would not necessarily have a -2 skill, depending on other training and experiences. I'm thinking it's pretty likiely that any professional race driver would, because their experiences and interests are probably acute.

I would also say that these skills are a combination of not only training and expereince, but active experience of best practices. Practice does not make perfect: it makes permanent. Practice doing something shabbily, for a long time, and one becomes shabby. To get good one has to know the basics, some advanced techniques, the bad habits, and spend plenty of practice time keeping the three in mind.

So it is perfectly possible for one to have driven their ground car(s) 800,000 km and still be a -0: they have forgotten what miserablely scant training they received, and gotten ingrained into shabby habits in the fairly limited range of wheeled vehicles they drive under fairly limited conditions.

 

[rust]

So, to me, there is no such thing as too many low level skills, it's just a matter of the game system, the players and the GM, being able to handle it all.

Yep, I agree with this.

Besides, the more detailed the skills of a character are, the better the "mental
image" a player can develop of that character. The set of skills a character
has is not only what that character can do, it is also who that character is.
The more such informations a system gives the player, the better he can "vi-
sualize" his character.

Moreover, detailed skills help to distinguish and make characters unique. The
more skills a system provides, the smaller is the probability that characters
have the same or very similar sets of skills. Engineer A does no longer look
exactly like Engineers B and C on the character sheet when he has a couple
of unique skills the others do not have.

And it also makes things easier for the GM. With broad skills, the players can
always argue that this or that is included in a broad skill, while in a system
with detailed skills it is far more obvious what a character can do or not do.
In a system with one Engineering skill without specializations, an engineer
can build or repair almost everything, from a jump drive to a habitat's life sup-
port system to a river dam - not exactly plausible, I think.

 

[far-trader]

It depends on the game and group.

Personally I have a problem with everybody being Jacks of all Trades. Especially as (in most Traveller rules) there's a specific skill for that. Allowing too many level-0 and level-1 skills cheapens that skill and even the odd legit J-o-T through multiple skills. How many is too many is a wide question. The INT + EDU limit would help limit this if it applied to level-0 skills as half points. And I've always figured the CT meme of all characters having level-0 skills in all basic guns and blades was a bad idea.

My own ideal for average CT characters would be allowed 1 skill-3, 2 skill-2, 3 skill-1, and X skill-0 to fill up the INT + EDU limit. So the average person would have 8 skill-0 levels. A truly gifted and educated person (8+ in both) would be allowed 1 skill-4, 2 skill-3, 3 skill-2, 4 skill-1 and X skill-0 to fill up the INT + EDU limit. So the most they would have (15 in both) would be 20 skill-0 levels. They would be true Renaissance characters.

The specific skills could change over time but not the overall limitation. So one might switch specialization from Medical-3 to Pilot-3 by dropping the Medical to level-2 while raising the Pilot level.

Languages is something CT didn't cover in the basic books, but I think skill-0 would be enough to struggle through basic coversation and skill-1 would be basic fluency.

The list could go on with non typical Traveller skills like gardening, painting, plumbing, ....

Not really in the purview of Traveller Though we did have a game where one player wanted an art skill, it was granted, Laser Chainsaw Scupture iirc (favorite medium was superdense metal, i.e. Starship hulls)... a long story.

To make a point, if the skills get detailed, instead of just electronics, it could be: repair a child's remote control toy, install a home security system, add an MP3 player to a car sound system, ... and computer skill could be programming, repairing, networking, databases, security,...

Yep, but Traveller has generally been more... general. Electronics covers all that, and more, in each field. Same for Computers. You need to think broad education. Gun Combat is not just how to shoot a weapon, but how to maintain and prepare it for a wide variety of conditions, how to make your own reloads, even like Kirk in ST, the basic chemistry of gunpowder and a general history of firearms.

Here is another item pulled from the other thread. Using Drive (wheeled) as an example, what level would an average driver on the road be? 2? Do you have to be a race car driver to be higher? Limo driver?

What level would a competent driver be? A skilled driver? A trained driver? A professional driver? Yes, it is a bit nebulous.

North American or European? :smirk:

Personal experience would seem to be all you need for a license here in NA is skill-0. Very few drivers ever seem to get beyond that, even many professional drivers. No way the average driver on the road is skill-2. Not even skill-1. I might call myself skill-1, on a good day. Racers yeah, probably skill-2 for nationals. Skill-1 for regionals. Skill-3 are the best of the best.

 

[flykiller]

skill levels by themselves are arbitrary. skill levels tied to a task system mean something. hard to talk about skill levels and their number without reference to the task system that uses them.

I use a results-driven system. skill 1 means routine tasks in that skill are accomplished without any problems. skill 2 means unusual tasks are almost always successful. skill level 3 means difficult tasks are accomplished as a matter of course, with little chance of failure. skill 4 means very difficult tasks are well within reach but the chance of failure is significant. all this, including skill 0 and no skill, fit nicely onto 2d6.

 

[coliver988]

Originally Posted by CosmicGamer
Here is another item pulled from the other thread. Using Drive (wheeled) as an example, what level would an average driver on the road be? 2? Do you have to be a race car driver to be higher? Limo driver?

What level would a competent driver be? A skilled driver? A trained driver? A professional driver? Yes, it is a bit nebulous.
North American or European?

Personal experience would seem to be all you need for a license here in NA is skill-0. Very few drivers ever seem to get beyond that, even many professional drivers. No way the average driver on the road is skill-2. Not even skill-1. I might call myself skill-1, on a good day. Racers yeah, probably skill-2 for nationals. Skill-1 for regionals. Skill-3 are the best of the best.

And then consider that wheeled here can cover motorcycles through 18 wheelers. Took me a while to get to motorcycle-0 even after driving 10+ years in a car (I once fell over because a goat startled me...) I would put a definite negative mod for driving an 18 wheeler - lots of gears, big load handles differently. And I don't think I'd even try backing up!

So I'd have to agree with the general idea that the ref needs to be able to make adjustments on the fly regardless of the skill level, depending on circumstances. And somewhere else there's a thread where the skill level may change according to the TL: for instance, I've no idea if I could even drive a model T (remember the TOS episode, I think A Piece of the Action where Kirk tried driving a car. Of course, I assume he did not have wheeled-0...). So a negative DM based on TL differences as well?? It can get pretty ugly if you want to create a DM for every (or even most) situations. The simplicity of CT's original broadly defined and limited set of skills allows the referee a great deal of latitude for creating the rolls.

(and as an evil aside - it also depends on where the person learned to drive. Living in Western NC, all Florida drivers apparently drive at a -6 DM :devil: )

 

[far-trader]

(snippage)...What do you think?



Dave Chase

Interesting. Have to give it a closer look later. I had been cooking up a CT point buy system (again) a few months back. Thought I had it nailed this time but upon some run through it failed so I set it aside. This might be a better approach. And a separate topic

 

[rust]

What do you think?

In our campaign we treat level 0 skills more or less as a basic familiarity
with a specific field of knowledge or a specific device, so I do not see
a necessity to limit the number of level 0 skills a character can have.

 

[Madarin Dude]

It is hard to say in a lot of ways. There are some skills a novice really can't attempt because lack of knowledge. I can speak from my experience in electronics. Someone might know a few basics but when it comes to skywiring surface mount components (average size of the components. 1/2 a grain of rice) and using a battery of advanced test equipment they are clueless. Looking at soldering skills a novice might get it done and working a few cold joints and you can tell where they worked big gobs a skilled soldering job is undetectable except it looks cleaner neater better than the factory.

It is a complex thing it is easier to just play by the rules. Than to try to simulate every nuance. There are some skills where at low levels just cannot attempt them. wher ea skilled person will know how to do them and accomplish them.

 

[flykiller]

Each term gives you 4 skill points to buy skills

similar to icss.

"The purpose of using skill points is to reflect the fact that some skills are more difficult to acquire than others, that some characters are better than others at acquiring those skills, and that increasing skill levels requires increasing time and effort.

Skills are acquired during each character generation tour of duty. The number and type of skills acquired are determined by the number of skill points available to the character. A character has (intelligence stat + education stat) / 4 (round down) skill points that he may use during each tour to obtain skills and skill levels.

Example. A player character with intelligence A and education 8 has (10+8)/4 = 4 skill points for each character generation tour of duty.

Skills cost skill points according to their difficulty level. Also, higher levels of skill cost increasing amounts of skill points. See the chart below.

SKILL COSTS
-----------
skill level  1    2    3    4
------------------------------
rating 1     1    2    3    4
rating 2     2    3    4    5
rating 3     3    4    5    6

The list below shows examples of skill difficulty ratings. In general Rating 3 skills require large amounts of formal study, training, and hands-on practice, followed by certification. Rating 1 skills may require nothing more than explanations and personal experience. Rating
2 skills are everything in-between.

Level 3: Starship Pilot, Navigation, Gravitics, Medical, Naval Architect
Level 2: Computer, Engineering, Electronics, Mechanics, Communications, etc.
Level 1: Weapons, Personal Vehicles, Vacc Suit, People Skills, Military Tactics, Zero G, etc.

Examples. Starship Pilot 3 requires 12 skill points total - 3 for level 1, 4 for level 2, and 5 for level 3. Combat Rifle 1 requires 1 skill point total.

Example. Smart Girl has intelligence C and education C which gives her 6 skill points during each tour of duty. In her first tour she picks up Starship Pilot 1 (3 skill points), Vacc Suit 1 (1 skill point), Combatives 1 (1 skill point), and Sidearm 1 (1 skill point), expending
all 6 skill points for this tour. During her second tour she has 6 more skill points available, and expends them all picking up Pilot 2 (4 skill points) and Sidearm 2 (2 skill points). During her third tour she has 6 more skill points available, and expends them all picking up Pilot 3 (5
skill points) and Equestrian 1 (1 skill point).

Example. Gun Bunny has intelligence 7 and education 7 which allows him to expend 3 skill points during each tour of duty. During his first tour he picks up Combat Rifle 2 (1+2 skill points), expending all his skill points for this tour."

 

[tbeard1999]

This topic was brought up here but is off that OP topic so I'm starting a new thread.

IMO, there is no problem with having numerous low level skills. Why couldn't someone know how to shoot a few types of weapons, do simple mechanical and electronic repairs, maybe even engineer something simple, drive/pilot a vehicle and a boat, navigate that vehicle to it's destination, be able to perform CPR and other basic first aid, Speak foreign language, entertain and host gatherings, know how to survive in the woods, set up computers for entire companies, wrestle, enjoy hitting the casinos,

Handgun 0
Rifle 0
Mechanic 1
Electronics 1
Engineer 0
Drive Wheeled 1
Drive Watercraft 0
Navigate 0
Medic 0
Language 0
Steward 1
Survival 1
Computer 2
Melee 0
Gambling 0

The problem is how the task system interacts with the skill levels. Routine tasks in serious situations will be successfully performed 58% of the time for someone with Level 1 skill and 42% of the time for someone with Level 0 skills. I don't think that most folks will be able to perform at that level in serious situations, in a dozen+ different areas.

And in my experience, people often overestimate their competency in fields that they have only a passing familiarity with. I took a 3 hour electronics course for a year long ago; I would not assert that this gives me Electronics-0 (or higher). IMHO, most skills need reasonably constant practice for you to be able to rely on them in an intense situation. And there's only so many hours in a day. Purely academic subjects like History might require less maintenance, but practical skills like electronics, engineering or mechanical need to be exercised IMHO. Athletic skills are especially prone to atropy IMHO.

Look at it this way. In a typical auto garage, the lower level employees will have the equivalent of Mechanic-1. In all likelihood, such a person spends 40 hours a week practicing his skill. In a year, he'll spend as much as 2000 hours practicing his skill. Indeed, even in MGT, each skill level works out to a year or more of training.

Anyhow, if you give a weekend hobbyist level-0 in Mechanics, you are (in effect) saying that working <200 hours per year (one full weekend per month) will give about 2/3 the effectiveness as someone who invests 2000 hours per year in the skill.

Now obviously there are other considerations. Maybe the hobbyist was once a Mechanic-3. Maybe he spends *every* weekend working on mechanics. Maybe there's a strong diminishing returns system -- 100 hours per year to maintain level 0; 1000 hours to maintain level 1; 1500 hours to maintain level 2, etc. Maybe he's just a natural at mechanics, but never chose to do it as a career.

Athletic skills are particularly perishable IMHO. As noted, I achieved a high level of competence in an athletic field long ago -- certainly level-3. But after 20 years of non-use, my actual ability in that field can't possibly be better than 0. I *remember* all the techniques; but my body no longer can do them at a high level. To maintain that competency would have required at least 300 hours per year (plus dieting, general exercise, etc.).

So my point is that *serious* competency in most fields takes a large investment of time to achieve that competency *and* a lot of time to maintain that competency.

And as a matter of plausibility, I just don't think that someone can maintain a high level of competency in more than a few fields at a time. Of course, most RPGs are pretty schizophrenic on the breadth of competency that a skill covers, so it isn't always an easy task to translate this idea into game terms.

Also, I agree that dramatic considerations should outweigh plausibility. After all, Indiana Jones was an expert archeologist, an expert historian, an expert at numerous languages, an expert brawler, an expert with a whip, an expert at most general athletic activities, a superb horseman and a master carouser. Of course, do you really want an entire party of Indiana Joneses? If the answer is "yes", then I suppose that you have every right to expect the chargen system to give you such characters. But I submit that the chargen system should not *assume* such a high powered campaign. At the very least, the designer should provide options for different heroic levels.

I also feel strongly that excessive skill overlap makes for a less satisfying campaign. As I've said in the past, I think that every character should be the best at some important skill and ideally, no one else should be able to do that thing very well. A chargen system in which every character will average having ~40% of the available skills at level 0+ frustrates that IMHO.

What level would a competent driver be? A skilled driver? A trained driver? A professional driver? Yes, it is a bit nebulous.

Driving is an interesting skill because (a) most people IMHO overestimate how good they are at it; and (b) we often lose sight of how much time we spend practicing the skill. I'd bet that most suburban dwellers average 15+ hours per week driving. That's 750 hours per year -- far more time than is spent on most hobbies I'd wager.

Yet I see no evidence on our highways that most drivers are very competent in intense situations...

 

[rust]

Another way to handle it could be to make task difficulties different for
characters with different skill levels, as we handle it in our campaign:

To give an example:

The task is to drive an ATV from A to B
a) on a good road on a clear day,
b) on a bad road with snow on it,
c) cross country in a sand desert.

For a character with Drive-0, a) would be an average task, b) a difficult
task, and c) an almost impossible task.
For a character with Drive-1, a) would be an easy task, b) an average
task, and c) a difficult task.
For a character with Drive-2, a) would be an automatic success, b) an
easy task, and c) an average task.

To do it this way is a little more work for the GM, but I think the results
are more plausible.

 

[tbeard1999]

Another way to handle it could be to make task difficulties different for
characters with different skill levels, as we handle it in our campaign:

To give an example:

The task is to drive an ATV from A to B
a) on a good road on a clear day,
b) on a bad road with snow on it,
c) cross country in a sand desert.

For a character with Drive-0, a) would be an average task, b) a difficult
task, and c) an almost impossible task.
For a character with Drive-1, a) would be an easy task, b) an average
task, and c) a difficult task.
For a character with Drive-2, a) would be an automatic success, b) an
easy task, and c) an average task.

To do it this way is a little more work for the GM, but I think the results
are more plausible.

I find this approach overly fiddly, if I still have to jack with a universal task system. You seem to ignore the fact that the whole point of having skill levels and a universal task system is to allow the same task description to apply across the board to folks with all levels of the applicable skill. At this point, you've pretty much "devolved" into CT territory -- each skill has differing, fiddly task definitions. Yet you keep a fiddly universal task system...the worst of both worlds seems to me.

Of course, this does point out a common flaw with universal task systems--there is often a far more significant gap in capability (especially with mundane tasks) than such systems can easily show.

 

[rust]

At this point, you've pretty much "devolved" into CT territory -- each skill has differing, fiddly task definitions. Yet you keep a fiddly universal task system...the worst of both worlds seems to me.

It would indeed be "overkill" to define task descriptions for all tasks.

This is nothing that could be dealt with by task descriptions or tables, it
is something the GM has to decide on the spot, because it would be mad-
ness to try to write down descriptions or tables for all possible situations.

But I really think the GM should consider the task at hand, the skill level
of the character trying to solve it and the specific situation when he de-
cides upon the difficulty level of a task.

The opposite way, to treat all tasks the same, no matter who tries to sol-
ve them under what conditions, is simply too implausible for my taste.

 

[tbeard1999]

It would indeed be "overkill" to define task descriptions for all tasks.

This is nothing that could be dealt with by task descriptions or tables, it
is something the GM has to decide on the spot, because it would be mad-
ness to try to write down descriptions or tables for all possible situations.

But I really think the GM should consider the task at hand, the skill level
of the character trying to solve it and the specific situation when he de-
cides upon the difficulty level of a task.

The opposite way, to treat all tasks the same, no matter who tries to sol-
ve them under what conditions, is simply too implausible for my taste.

I agree. But "treating all tasks the same, no matter who tries to solve them" is what universal task systems do.

To use a generic example of a 2d, 8+ target task system -- "Hard Task, +Pilot skill." This is a hard task for all Pilots. But characters with higher Pilot skill will be more likely to succeed. The problem, as you observed with your approach, is that skilled pilot (Pilot-3) might deserve more than a +3 for his skill. Or, an amateur pilot, despite having level 0, might deserve a greater penalty than +0.

Which is why I don't have much use for universal task systems as a general rule. More accurately, this is why I find all the energy expended on them perplexing.

 

[Rraurgrimm]

The task is to drive an ATV from A to B
a) on a good road on a clear day,
b) on a bad road with snow on it,
c) cross country in a sand desert.

For a character with Drive-0, a) would be an average task, b) a difficult
task, and c) an almost impossible task.
For a character with Drive-1, a) would be an easy task, b) an average
task, and c) a difficult task.
For a character with Drive-2, a) would be an automatic success, b) an
easy task, and c) an average task.

*mumble*I wonder how common people manage to get from A to B without any accidents happening about half the time... - must be the reason why sturdy ATVs were invented.

------------------------------------------
@topic:
Skills, their levels and the importance thereof largely depend on the style of play:
I have been part of a Rolemaster group where the GM delighted in introducing new skills every now and then, especially after purchasing new rulebooks. And since a character without a specific skill attempting a task was given a nice negative modifier when trying a task - the players were slowly starting to develop generalists instead of specialists as every character was exspected to do numerous skill rolls during a play session.
I also have been part of other groups (which I admittedly prefer now) where much handwaving was done if it was not important at all how good one performed at a task if a) a character able to act had the skill and b) failure was not as interesting as the other, planned story. That did not leave out the possibility of a skill roll if requested, leading to the usual more or less random results (including fatal failure) and left more room for the story.

I usually love to play a character who is specialist in something. He is a hero after all and he should be able to do something good enough to be better than average. Then comes a small list of skills that are logical or neccessary prerequisites for said specialist hero skill - at a slightly reduced level. And finally there are the hobby skills, the unusual odds and ends that make up the charm of a character.
If a GM allows me to play such a character I am usually fine as I can imagine him easily (the fighter; the pilot; the engineer; the thief. The mage might be a bit more difficult) and usually both the GM and I would agree or disagree if a task in play would be something my character has some expertise in - or if he would try something absolutely foreign and unknown to him.

But if a GM requires everyone in the group to roll on skills that my character does not have all the time - something may have gone wrong. My character concept could be flawed, unsuitable for the campaign. Or the GM might insist on objectively unneccessary skill rolls for too basic tasks, actually hoping for a failure to make things more interesting.
I would not like the latter style of play - as it tends to lead towards generalist characters. And no one seems to like the swiss army-knife type of character.

So yes, I would appreciate some kind of limit to the maximum amount of skills my character can have - or the maximum skill level. If my GM remembers that and if he tries to avoid situations where it is critical for every character to have a special skill - or even worse a special set of skills.

 

[spinwardpirate]

I'm a big fan of fewer skills and lower levels. Skill bloat tends to ruin things, imho, and I prefer characters to be identified as "he's the guy with the good mechanics skill" or "she's the ace pilot". I don't like situations where everyone is the ace pilot, as well as the crack shot, and so on.

 

[rust]

I don't like situations where everyone is the ace pilot, as well as the crack shot, and so on.

Yep, in our campaign I take care that each character has at least one
field where he is significantly better than all the other characters, some-
thing that makes him unique and distinguishes him from all other charac-
ters.

There are several reasons for doing this, but in my opinion the most im-
portant one is that it ensures that each character (= each player) has a
chance to be important and get some "spotlight" during adventures.

However, I also very much like it when characters have a high number of
low level skills, "everyman skills" or "cultural skills", based upon their back-
grounds. This enables the players and me to design more diverse charac-
ter backgrounds and to give the setting more "colour and depth".

 

[tbeard1999]

Yep, in our campaign I take care that each character has at least one
field where he is significantly better than all the other characters, some-
thing that makes him unique and distinguishes him from all other charac-
ters.

There are several reasons for doing this, but in my opinion the most im-
portant one is that it ensures that each character (= each player) has a
chance to be important and get some "spotlight" during adventures.

However, I also very much like it when characters have a high number of
low level skills, "everyman skills" or "cultural skills", based upon their back-
grounds. This enables the players and me to design more diverse charac-
ter backgrounds and to give the setting more "colour and depth".

Agreed in general.

One skill that I've always thought should be explicitely noted in RPGs is that adventurers are generally capable of "normal activities" that competent folks would generally be familiar with. This helps limit skills bloat.

It is, of course, culturally and setting dependent. But for instance, an early 21st century Terran adventurer would probably know how to:

-Use common computer software (Microsoft Office)
-Setup a plug and play network
-Surf the internet and use google effectively
-Shoot normal small arms with 0 level effectiveness (though loading such guns may require familiarity)
-Use basic first aid -- applying pressure to stop bleeding, use a tourniquet, etc.
-Drive a car or truck
-Use basic climbing gear
-Swim
-Carouse at 0 level
-Change a tire
-Fish
-Read
-Operate consumer devices like GPS, Ipod, Cellphone, phones, walkie-talkies, etc.
-Figure out simple devises like a radiation detector, air sniffer, etc.
-Change batteries
-Follow installation instructions for electronic devices comparable in complexity to audio or home theater systems
-Effectively use over the counter medications
-Understand how to santize items
-Cook
-Follow operation instructions for simple devices or computer applications
-Balance a checkbook

Etc.

Most of these things could be expressed as separate skills, but really--what's the point? Why not just let 'em do it by default?

Of course, a player could always specify that his character *can't* do some of these things. Maybe the referee will compensate him if the choice is entertaining.

 

[rust]

Most of these things could be expressed as separate skills, but really--what's the point? Why not just let 'em do it by default?

True, and this is the reason why we only use "colour" low level skills in our
campaign, and all the rest is indeed something done by default.

With "colour" skills I mean those that emphasize the character's background
and distinguish the character from those with other backgrounds.
For example, someone from a low tech agricultural planet should have a dif-
ferent set of low level cultural skills than someone from a high tech colony
in a domed habitat on a hostile planet or someone from a floating settlement
on a mid tech water world.

Mongoose Traveller handles this with a homeworld skill, but in my opinion a
(small) number of low level cultural skills gives a much better picture than
the single homeworld skill.
So, in our campaign a character usually has up to five level 0 skills that are
typical for his specific background, and the low level skills that are common
to all the backgrounds (most of the ones on your list) are handled via de-
fault.