Trivia Skills aka Personal Development

[Thkaal]

I have not seen anything representing this, so I have some house rules that I have used which seem to be useful and may find their way into the setting I'm writing.

Prior to entering a career, there are some skills available to characters. However, these skills seem to only develop if you follow an appropriate career. What I propose is a system similar to GDW's TNE.

Each two terms allows a +1 to one personal interest skill. Giving up one skill roll per term will allow a personal interest skill to raise by one, however, there is a -1 DM to advancement roll for focusing more on personal interests than career.

 

[BP]

Not a bad little house rule. 8)

Note: in case you missed it - the optional connections rule provides player's pick of a limited number of skills.

(P.S. - did you mean Trivial Skills...?)

 

[Thkaal]

Trivial as well as trivia.

Remember the TV series Remington Steele? Pierce Brosnan plays a con artist who uses his movie trivia to solve crimes as well as get himself out of trouble.

Or what about someone who just happens to know who played for the Yankees in 1914?

Little things like that add flavor and sometimes, very rarely, useful abilities or information.

 

[AndrewW]

Remember the TV series Remington Steele? Pierce Brosnan plays a con artist who uses his movie trivia to solve crimes as well as get himself out of trouble.

Yup. There's also Anthony DiNozzo on NCIS, though his movie trivia usually doesn't lead to solving anything...

 

[BP]

Remember the TV series Remington Steele? ... Little things like that add flavor and sometimes, very rarely, useful abilities or information.

Unfortunately, yes (just kidd'in - I have to admit I liked the show...)

I'm all for flavor - so you mostly meant giving the option for a new non-essential/trivial, skill?

Not sure I see the value there - that is more RP in terms of flavor and general mental characteristic and situational based checks in terms of usefulness. But, I guess one could look at it as providing a more limited DM than a personal characteristic improvement...

 

[rust]

Trivial as well as trivia.

The potential problem with this is "skill creep", a high number of skills that
are basically useless in almost all situations, have no real connection with
the game mechanics and take "points" away from those skills that are es-
sential for the game.
I tend to allow only skills that have a "market value", which means they
are useful enough that other people might be willing to pay money for
their successful use.
Everything else is just "colour". Players can give their characters several
such "hobby skills", provided they manage to roleplay the characters ac-
cordingly - "hobby skills" that are not roleplayed at least occasionally are
deleted, the character "has lost any interest in this".

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

The Babylon 5 Traveller Setting Book used a skill called Knowledge.

You could be as general or as specific as you wanted in what your knowledge was about.

That skill is part of the OGL for Traveller now, so you can use it in published products as well.

I took the Knowledge idea one step further:

As part of their background skills, they get their EDU DM in levels of Knowledge. Each term they make an EDU throw to get another level of Knowledge. This is in addition to any other skills they may already get for that term.

 

[BP]

Trivial as well as trivia.

The potential problem with this is "skill creep"

Nice term.

(Could apply to overuse of specializations as well - especially high tech societies, where differentiation of technology artifacts is highly unlikely... even today cross discipline technical knowledge can easily be applied due to best practice manuafacturing and operation tech and information dissemenation techniques...)

 

[AndrewW]

Fuzion has the concept of "everyman skills", stuff that every person in a given setting would know. Those 3-5 skills where at a low level but enough to get by in normal life. I.e in the late 20th century you would get Drive-2 (with a scale of 1-10), enough for normal traffic.

I wouldn't say everyone knows Drive-2 or better...

Judge Dredd makes a lot of use of Drive (Lawmaster) skill.

 

[AndrewW]

For RPG use Drive-2 (rated as "basic knowledge/can use the stuff in controled, non-threatening situations in that system) is close enough for the majority of people living in the environment portraied by a game set in 20th century earth. Few people will end up playing Anatolian tribesman (Those can replace it with Sheephandling-2) or something similar.

Then there are those that think they have Drive-10 and don't...

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Drive 0 in Traveller is the equivalent and makes perfect sense.

Personally, I think there should be MORE background skills (at Level 0) and they should be tied to the TL even more.

Spica's Career Book 2 gives some alternate methods for determining background skill as well.

Take a person in the current US or Europe (TL-7).

Drive 0 and Computer 0 make a lot of sense. In Europe Language 0 probably also makes sense.

THEN you could start adding in the education based skills.

Another thing that I have considered is adding a new Characterstic called Technical Ability (Tec). It is how comfortable or "mechanically inclined" someone is and would be used on most Mechanic and Engineer checks and any other "fix it" kind of checks with other skills.

 

[phild]

Maybe I'm just being dense, but a lot of what you've described is already in the game IMHO. It's EDU. That represents an amalgam of ability to learn and retain data, and the information you've already learned and retained. An extremely good proxy for general knowledge.

I also agree with the poster who allows PCs to have any hobby skills they want. If someone wants to speak schoolboy French, have expert knowledge on the manufacture of polyhedral dice or be a walking encyclopedia of Norwich City Football Club, let them. Hell, I may even let it be useful once in a while!

In a 2d6 system, even a +1 is probalistically very significant. I don't feel the need to throw loads of skill levels around unnecessarily. Indeed, more often than not I'm happy enough to allow terms-served to act as a proxy for certain knowledge, so that Drifter-Barbarians can light fires in the wilderness, Army-Infantry can spot a potential fox hole, and Artist-Entertainer can drone on incessently about themselves without a break for several hours ;-)

 

[rust]

I'd prefer Level-0 skills (Can use a skill without penalties for untrained) over the "has serverd a term in x" approach. The Level-0 skills are written down and fixed, no discussions there.

I see your point, but I would still hesitate to use Level-0 skills for trivial
stuff like "Movie Quotes" or "Thai Cuisine" or "Roleplaying Games" that
is purely roleplaying colour and does not require a connection with the
game's mechanics because success or failure would rarely have serious
(if any) consequences.

 

[BP]

Rust stated it well - I would add as a ref, that a player demonstrating fluff as part of their character, should, when neccessary, be given appropriate DMs when rolls need to be made...

Example: a PC lacking Carouse skill, but being played (well) as a womanizer should be treated as Carouse 0 (or better - actually just DM wise) when liasing with females - though not in more general situations.

As to the broad range of skills that Somebody mentioned - I believe MGT handles these nicely already with the Level 0 rules for specialty skills.

Example: Gun Combat regardless of weapon specialty, still provides Level 0 for all gun use. Ditto for Engineering and Drive, etc.

Level 0 represents competency (whether by training or just exposure) - i.e. knowing weapons often have safeties and possibly kickback - and can make one temporarily deaf if fired in a confined space, etc.