I like skills. I think they can be tricky, however. You want enough skills so you can make the character you want to play, but you don't (or at least I don't) want so many that there is considerable overlap between them. You also don't want so few, that they are too broad and just don't cover enough ground.

Quote from: Soylent Green;367561A lot of good points so far. However I'd say you can't just look at skills in isolation, you have to consider the relationship between Skills and Attributes.

Are the Skills tied to an Attribute or free floating? How do the Skills and Attributes interact mechanically? Do Attributes add to Skills, affect the cost of buying Skill levels in point based system or act has a hard cap to Skills? Are the Skills incremental or binary? Do you even need Attributes if you have a Skills?

Each of these has approaches has its own merits and flaws which makes it hard to make blanket generalisations.

And it can be even more complicted.  How do general skills relate to other skills or with more advanced skills?  How do basic skills affect more detailed, advanced skills?  How do you adjudicate more hidden skills, or how do you increase ability in the skills? How do you control for more advanced skils being hard to find?  How does one control for how well differrent sources teach a skill?

Quote from: LordVreeg;367590And it can be even more complicted.  How do general skills relate to other skills or with more advanced skills?  How do basic skills affect more detailed, advanced skills?  How do you adjudicate more hidden skills, or how do you increase ability in the skills? How do you control for more advanced skils being hard to find?  How does one control for how well differrent sources teach a skill?

I have seen a number of systems answer these questions differently. I think how far you want to go in answering many of these questions mechanically, will also impact how complicated the overall sytem is. GURPS spent a bit of time addressing them. Personally these are not issues I get overly concerned about as a player. Even though knowing advanced theoretical physics, takes a long time in the real world, in an rpg it doesn't imbalance the game (in fact the physicist often has a harder time than the police officer surviving). For some of these concerns, especially in a modern game, real world knowledge can sometimes be more helpful than mechanics. I can easily look up how difficult it is to get into a PhD program for example. Generally I don't like the system to tell me how to interpret skill ratings. What I mean is, I want some freedom to say my character has a 7 in physics instead of a 10 because he went to a smaller college or has a learning disability. But when the system starts getting into the nitty gritty of how all that stuff works, I tend to ignore it.

Quote from: Silverlion;367545I'm alright with simple things like Secondary Skills from 1E, or 2E AD&D.

"I am a fighter who grew up in the Woods" lets him do fightery things and woodsy things.

I don't need detailed skill lists for gaming. It is sometimes nice for some kinds of games. (Everyone is a cop/secret agent/starship operator) to create difference from the similarities. Mind you, I like skill based games. It just isn't always needed for every game I play.

In Star Trek and Star Wars, virtually every character can fight, fly, investigate, and operate any ship systems they come into contact with.

I actually prefer large skill lists with light descriptions - Palladium.

You have a feeling of depth from them, but you can use them for a variety of things and skirt the rules if you have to.

Skill systems are fine, but I like them to be broadly defined.

Star Wars Saga Edition, Spirit of the Century, True20, and even Iron Heroes seem to have the right amount of skills.

Icon Star Trek has a few too many. They really need to be less defined.

Aces and Eights? Hell no. I don't need a game to have 100+ fiddly skills.

As always, these kinds of things are subject to taste.

Quote from: LordVreeg;367590And it can be even more complicted.  How do general skills relate to other skills or with more advanced skills?  How do basic skills affect more detailed, advanced skills?  How do you adjudicate more hidden skills, or how do you increase ability in the skills? How do you control for more advanced skils being hard to find?  How does one control for how well differrent sources teach a skill?

In my Amber system because there is no skill list and all players are different all players come up with different overlapping skills and some players come up with lots of their own skills that overlap.
It doesn't matter cos the system is kind of loose anyway and at the end only the final narrow skill number matters.
Generally a generic Skill like Outdoorsman has 20 points less at each skill. So 40 outdoorsman means they can fish or track at 20 skill. If they had Outsdoorman and tracking I woudl take the 20 points from thw outdoorsman and add the tracking skill to get a narrow skill total. This works in amber where skills are relatively trivial compared to being able to alter 'reality' but you could convert it easily and add a skill list if you wanted.

The advantage of the loose structure is that the player who just wants to give their character a few Generic skills can where as the guy that wants the detailed skill list can have that too and I run both sorts of character in the same game and it works fine.

Another neat use of skills is implicit communication at the table. Skills selected during character generation is quite a good indicator about the type of conflicts/complications the player is interested in (with a non-beginner at least). Of course when one chooses to create a thief in D&D it is also a clear statement about expected complications (lock picking, trap avoidance, sneaky tactics...) But skills offer a little more details about players intentions.

As others noted before, all skills based systems aren't equal. Some are flexible, some are rigid. Some offer many combinations by associating skills and traits. Some goes into insane level of details (Yay I'm now a master in knowledge of Russian post stamps!) or let players make broad statements (I'm an experienced cowboy, that means I shoot well and can ride a horse my eyes closed right?)

I'd say every gamer should try class based and skill based systems at least once. Basically if you played some old school D&D and some Call of Cthulhu you should start to get a feel for the differences, but there's a lot more choice out there.

Quote from: boulet;367613Another neat use of skills is implicit communication at the table. Skills selected during character generation is quite a good indicator about the type of conflicts/complications the player is interested in (with a non-beginner at least). Of course when one chooses to create a thief in D&D it is also a clear statement about expected complications (lock picking, trap avoidance, sneaky tactics...) But skills offer a little more details about players intentions.

As others noted before, all skills based systems aren't equal. Some are flexible, some are rigid. Some offer many combinations by associating skills and traits. Some goes into insane level of details (Yay I'm now a master in knowledge of Russian post stamps!) or let players make broad statements (I'm an experienced cowboy, that means I shoot well and can ride a horse my eyes closed right?)

I'd say every gamer should try class based and skill based systems at least once. Basically if you played some old school D&D and some Call of Cthulhu you should start to get a feel for the differences, but there's a lot more choice out there.

Now, that's the truth.  choice and experience is always good.

Some genres trade well in strong archetypes, while others require more shades of gray. Strong archetypal characters are less likely to need skills, because their skills tend to be subsumed in the archetype.

My personal preference for skills is a small number of broadly applicable skills. Jump, Tumble, Climb? Nah. Acrobatics? That's my winner right there.  

Quote from: boulet;367613Another neat use of skills is implicit communication at the table. Skills selected during character generation is quite a good indicator about the type of conflicts/complications the player is interested in (with a non-beginner at least). Of course when one chooses to create a thief in D&D it is also a clear statement about expected complications (lock picking, trap avoidance, sneaky tactics...) But skills offer a little more details about players intentions..

:nono:

I pick skills that make sense based on my character's background and experience. They may have little to do with what I expect the character to be doing over the course of the game.

A character sheet is not made of tea leaves. Please, referees everywhere, stop trying to think for your players!

Quote from: The Shaman;367685I pick skills that make sense based on my character's background and experience. They may have little to do with what I expect the character to be doing over the course of the game.

That's interesting, if not alien to me. Why would someone spend char gen resource on skills (or whatever traits) that they don't plan on using at all?

I mean you can reach a sheet of paper and lay down the character's story if it's something you like to do. Sure, the PC was a monk once, but he turned that page and even he's supposed to be well educated on religious matters, doesn't mean you want it to happen at the table. You don't have to spend x points on theology or what not for the sake of character description, do you?

Chronica Feudalis has a neat mechanic for this: backgrounds. It's a trait without value that describes the character but doubles as a metagame indicator. For instance our previous character could have "was a Dominican monk a long time ago". That means the player wants this background as part of who the character is but at the same time says "I don't want this side of my character to come in play". I haven't plated CF yet so I can't say if backgrounds are useful or not, but it's interesting.

QuoteA character sheet is not made of tea leaves. Please, referees everywhere, stop trying to think for your players!

Well of course this isn't going to replace a nice pitch/survey about what the next game should be about and what kind of characters players want to play.

OTOH if I create a political/military leader type of character (with lots of social and military skills) I'll be a bit pissed if we spend more than a couple sessions playing survival pixel bitching in whatever desert wasteland. Once again better communicate before starting the game but the GM should see the potential frustration written on my character sheet.

Quote from: ShamanA character sheet is not made of tea leaves. Please, referees everywhere, stop trying to think for your players!

Think for them, I can't keep up with them!  My friggin online guys spend their spare time rolling up and creating characters.  I get to see them after they are done all the time.

I'm including on a 5 year old PC.
One nice thing about a good skill system is that you can keep the overall powerlevel down easier, since there is an option to learn new skills outside of class.

Quote from: boulet;367691That's interesting, if not alien to me. Why would someone spend char gen resource on skills (or whatever traits) that they don't plan on using at all?

Because you are the weak, and I am the tyranny of evil men.

But I'm tryin', boulet. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd . . .

[/superfly tnt]

I actually never said anything about not using the skills on my character sheet. What I said was is that what's on my character sheet may not reflect my character's current or future interests.

Maybe my character was a hitman who's trying to get out of the life, to walk their earth like Caine. He has a set of skills he's acquired over the years which may or may not serve him well in the future. Since the future is undefined at the start of the game - and the bloody referee better bloody well not be bloody defining it for me - I have no idea at the start what skills will be relevent and what won't. Part of playing this particular character is making do with what I have, come what may.

So don't think to much. You don't know more about my character than I do, so please don't presume to see it as some sort of secret love letter to the future of the game.

We cool?

LordVreeg, what game system is that character sheet from?

I like skills and can get into a detailed system, but that character sheet looks... complicated. It might not be if you understand it.

Quote from: Malvor;367737LordVreeg, what game system is that character sheet from?

I like skills and can get into a detailed system, but that character sheet looks... complicated. It might not be if you understand it.

It's mine.
You're right on both counts.  Familiarity makes it easier to understand, and this particular character sheet has a few advanced options I don't always run (hit location being one).
But I'd be lying if I called it easy.  

Something about it attracts players; I've got a waiting list in both live groups and my online crew, and we've been playing this setting and system for 26 years.

I mean, this ins someone elses thread, So not to shanghai in any way.  One of the neatest things a skill based system does is allow us (in our particular subset) to gice experience right into the skill that is used.  There is no point buy, or list to pick from when breaking a level.  You leanr skills from guilds or schools; you get experience in skills you use.  No getting better in picking locks by killing stuff, no getting better in Hit Points without fighting and without getting hit. (No shit, 10 exp given per hp of damage taken).