I've reduced and consolidated the number of skills in the GURPS skill list through combining skills, deleting skills, and creating new skills. I've also taken this opportunity to rename some of the skills to clear up confusion.
There's not a lot of consistency in determining what should be a skill and what shouldn't. There's overlap between some of the skills. Why is there a separate Performance and Fire Eating skill? Why is there one skill to learn all of Biology, but a seemingly endless number of different skills for wielding a sword? Why do some skills, like Housekeeping, include things that are part of other skills? This sprawl makes it difficult for new players to learn the game, makes it difficult to apply house rules (such as my skill pricing house rule, which I'll make a post on in the future), and it is often at odds with the verisimilitude I'm attempting to create when I run the game.
I'm attempting to apply a consistent method for determining what is and what isn't a skill. To do that, I first need to know what a skill is.
A definition: A skill is an activity that is trained through practice by the human brain. Skills aren't physical. If your brain is transplanted into a cybernetic body, the skill is fully retained. A skill is different from an attribute or an advantage in that skills are trained at the same rate by the brain. If you spend a thousand hours practicing any skill, ceteris paribus, you get the same final skill level. This isn't true of attributes. Training may raise Will, or give a level of a leveled perk, but not at the same rate as a skill. In this way, I'm able to draw a clear line between skills and not-skills.
For the sake of this exercise, I'm not including the supernatural skills such as Power Blow or Teleport. Those will need to be addressed separately, perhaps by attaching a skill option to the advantage rules.
Animal Handling†
Fishing
Artist†
Dancing
Disguise/TL†
Erotic Art
Musical Composition
Musical Instrument†
Performance†
Singing
Writing
Accounting
Administration
Business† - For conducting business of any kind. Example: Business (Financial Instruments) covers stocks, bonds, currencies, etc.
Melee Weapons† (Specializations are: Blade Weapons, Heavy Weapons, Pole Weapons, and Rope Weapons.)
Shields
Cloak
Unarmed Striking
Grappling
Blowpipe
Bow
Sling
Throwing
Dropping
Guns
Artillery
Computer Operation/TL
Computer Programming/TL
Armoury/TL†
Butchering
Carpentry
Cartography/TL
Cooking
Counterfeiting/TL
Electrician/TL
Electronics Repair/TL†
Engineer/TL†
Explosives/TL†
Farming/TL
Jeweler/TL
Leatherworking
Machinist/TL
Masonry
Mechanic/TL†
Prospecting/TL
Sewing/TL
Smith/TL†
Games†
Hobby Skill†
Sports†
Deception
Diplomacy
Intimidation
Oratory
Savoir-Faire†
Sex Appeal
Anthropology†
Archaeology†
Architecture/TL
Astronomy/TL
Bioengineering/TL†
Biology/TL†
Chemistry/TL
Connoisseur†
Criminology/TL
Cryptography/TL
Economics/TL†
Expert Skill†
Forensics/TL
Geography/TL†
Geology/TL†
Hazardous Materials/TL†
Heraldry†
Hidden Lore†
History†
Law†
Linguistics
Mathematics/TL†
Metallurgy/TL
Meteorology/TL†
Paleontology/TL†
Pharmacy/TL†
Philosophy†
Physics/TL†
Physiology/TL†
Psychology
Religious Ritual†
Research/TL
Sociology
Theology†
Diagnosis/TL†
Physician/TL†
Surgery/TL†
Intelligence Analysis/TL
War Planning†
Battle Command
Acrobatics
Climbing
Escape
Free Fall
Jumping
Swimming
Camouflage
Stealth
Foraging
Fire-Starting
Knot-Tying
Navigation/TL†
Tracking
Crewman/TL
Driving/TL†
Marine Vessel
Parachuting/TL
Piloting/TL†
Riding†
Scuba/TL
Skating
Skiing
Space Vessel
Area Knowledge†
Body Language
Fast-Draw
Holdout
Lip Reading
Lockpicking/TL
Teaching
Theft
Loading
Alchemy: Now part of Chemistry skill. Pick a lower TL to do lower TL chemistry. Fairly obvious.
Battle Command: This skill replaces Tactics. I think the name better explains what Tactics actually does and how it's different from Strategy.
Bolas, Lasso, and Thrown Weapon: These are now part of the Throwing skill. Apply familiarity penalties.
Business: This skill replaces the Merchant skill, as well as the Finance and Market Analysis skills. Mandatory specialization. Use familiarity penalties.
Detect Lies: I don't think this is something humans can actually do, so I'm removing it. What I've read indicates that if someone trains at detecting lies for thousands of hours, they still detect lies at no better than chance level.
Falconry: Becomes a specialization of Animal Handling. I have no idea why this was a separate skill in the first place.
Fire Eating, Fortune-Telling, Group Performance, and Ventriloquism: These are all now Performance specializations. I'm not sure why these were separate skills.
Forgery: This skill is now part of Counterfeiting. Apply familiarity penalties.
Gardening: Now part of Farming. Apply familiarity penalties.
Gambling: Now Games specializations.
Herb Lore: Now part of Pharmacy skill.
Housekeeping: This is functioning as a wildcard. Instead buy low levels of its component skills.
Influence skills: There was a lot of overlap here. If there's interest on my reasoning on these, I'll do a separate post on these.
Literature: Now a Connoisseur specialty. We don't have a separate skill for Film study. Connoisseur is the skill for studying a particular form of art. If we were to have Literature as a separate skill rather than a specialization, we'd need to list a hundred separate skills for this.
Loading: This skill now includes Packing and Smuggling. Apply familiarity penalties.
Makeup: This skill is now part of Disguise.
Melee Weapons: I've rolled the different melee weapons into a single skill with different specializations. These will default to one another at a high level. More on that in another post.
Naturalist: This skill was more of a wildcard than an actual skill. Purchase low levels of Biology, Geology, and Meteorology to replicate the function of this skill.
Observation: This skill previously had three different functions. First, it was used as a replacement for Per when it was a higher level. Second, it was used to observe people without being noticed as doing so. Third, it was used to analyze sense data. To replace these functions, use Per rolls for the first, Deception or Stealth for the second, and IQ for the third.
Photography: This skill is now an Artist specialization. If Painting is part of Artist, then so is this.
Poetry: Now part of the Writing skill. Use familiarity penalties.
Poisons: Use either Chemistry, Pharmacy, Physician, or some other skill instead, depending on the particular use. I can't see any reason for this to be a separate skill.
Soldier: Like Naturalist, this skill was functioning more as a wildcard. Instead purchase low levels of Armoury, Electronics Operation, Engineer, or whatever. This doesn't make sense to have in addition to those other skills.
Theft: This skill covers picking pockets and grabbing things out of plain sight. Pickpocket and Filch were two separate skills.
Traps: Now part of Mechanic skill. Use Mechanic skill to build and operate on traps. Use an attribute roll to find traps.
Typing: Okay, so people can train and get better at this, but I don't know if this follows the same skill learning as everything else--that is, it might be better handled as something other than a skill, like a perk--and I think it might be below the level of resolution we can expect out of a roleplaying game.
Urban Survival and Regular Survival: These were both acting as wildcards. I've separated out their component parts as best I can. Purchase those instead.
War Planning: This skill replaces Strategy. I think the name better explains what Strategy actually does and how it's different from Tactics.
I intend to do a post in the near future explaining how I envision defaults, familiarity penalties, and task difficulty modifiers working with this new skill list.
I don't agree with many of your changes, but a lot of the simplification of secondary skills makes sense to me. At lot of the inexplicable skills like Fire-Eating are remnants of the days in 1st-3rd edition was GURPS had poor line-editing and all kinds of wacky stuff got accepted from writer's manuscripts (see the 1st edition of GURPS Japan, if you can find it, for a lot of horrible examples).
ReplyDeleteYour revision of the Influence skills is interesting. I'd like to see a post expanding on them.