Regarding The Skill Section on Character Biographies

[Wes]

From what I can see, the two big stumbling blocks in making characters are history and skills. For history, there's only so much we can do. We need characters to fit the setting, and some research is required on the part of new players. But the skills...the skills...

The current "Skill Areas" concept is from the mid 2000s and I wrote it based on things like tabletop RPGs where skills are explicitly listed because they're used for rolls. The divisions of skills into skill areas are pretty arbitrary and there's an arbitrary limit of 7 skill areas for "fairness" but it doesn't work in practice at all because you can stuff as many skills into each area as you want. Also, the skill areas are constantly confused with skills.

My suggestion was to put the flavor text from the skills into the history to better connect a character's skills with their origins. Possibly leaving skills as listed bullet points. But I'm not convinced SARP characters should even need to list any skills in the first place, unless they are unusual for that type of character to know.

Eistheid has suggested that I turn to the community to unscrew the skill system like Fred and other contributors are currently improving the damage estimation system. So, I'm going to call for suggestions to replace or improve the way skills are indicated on a biography. It should reduce the size, complexity, and/or time needed for players to complete the skill section. That's the point. And it's got to be usable for GMs. Writing character skills should be straightforward, and should not be designed as a "test" of new players.

Here are my goals, which any suggestion should aim to meet:

• It needs a wiki guide that
  • is super easy to understand.
  • has a better layout
  • makes clear this is a guideline, not some rigid RPG system
• It should reduce the actual size of the skill section of the bio.
  • Key goal here is to stop having an intimidating 14 separate text areas for skills on the template.
• It's got to be suitable for all of SARP's factions and species.
  
• Should have examples and flavor paragraphs to show it in action.

 

[Eistheid]

First off I'm going to provide a link to the skill page in question so that we have easy access to it from this thread: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=guide:skills

I'm not going to propose any hard solutions because I want to encourage as much input as possible on the subject however I will mention that I primary view the skill list on a character page as a reference for GMs to better plan plots and produce challenges for the players to handle with their unique skill sets. Functionally I see it as a way for a GM to know whether they should have a daring get away in a shuttle, or if the PCs are all going to get there and realize no one knows how to fly the craft.

For the purpose of improving he skill areas on the page I'd like people who have knowledge about the varying areas to provide suggestions on how we might be able to improve the wording to better convey the use of a skill. After all people might not readily know that Humanities such as Psychology would be useful when interacting with others and reading people. It should also be encouraged to make clear what each area of knowledge would provide and what the limits would be.

I'll personally be looking over the wording of the article and will probably begin making suggestions for clarity when it comes to the purpose and implementation of skills. Emphasizing their use as a tool rather than a rule.

Another note might be that we suggest that 4-7 skills is a general baseline average, and make it clear that someone will have to justify more skills through well written history or RP.

Finally I'd appreciate it if people could help gather up the links to racial and organization specific skill sets to attach them all to the main skills guide so that when creating a character they're all easy to find.

 

[Doshii Jun]

We already state that based on a character's intended occupation, their skills change. Soldiers have common skills. Pilots have common skills. Police have common skills. Etc.

We also have the skills, in large part, so we can make a character a special snowflake without them being grossly OP -- a concern that we've had to address far less than we used to when it comes to new players.

Maybe a way of eliminating skill sets is to just have characters adopt occupations like characters in other media use "classes." We already have a lot of them written out, after all.

How would it work?

When a character mentions they're a pilot in the history, just in-link to the "pilot" skill text, and they can scribble out their snowflake specialties however they like (within reason) through their history's narrative.

The classes would be general, but could contain subsets where nationality is important (SAoY, DIoN), or we could leave those more specific sets to their own pages.

Doing this allows the player to expound on what makes their character unique as a police officer, but also brings it home for them (and others looking at the bio) that they have a base series of skills and knowledge. They might be more of a detective, a quartermaster, etc., but they can all do the basic work of a police officer. The same could go for a cook, a janitor, a technician, whatever -- a baseline, with advanced abilities justified with writing.

It also has the benefit of making the player focus on an occupation, and they'd see how that occupation's skillset benefits them, instead of now, where we still have players reaching for skill areas to make their character as plug-and-play for themselves.

What about crosstraining?

I think we keep it up, within reason and if justified by the history. A police officer can be a pilot, as long as their history has some reasonable explanation for it (former military, trained to be a chopper pilot, family flew a lot, whatever).

However, we maintain that a character has a primary occupation, a job at which they trained for and in which they gained proficiency. A player must choose only one job for their character anyway, not 14. It makes sense to group skills this way.

How does this lower the work of the player?

Everything they need to link to can be nested on one page, and they can click from there as they naturally do research for history. They won't have the boilerplate fields to fill in; everything will be based in the history. There's only a couple in-linked words anyway.

What about skills from other parts of a character's life?

Justified by history, I think that makes sense, but those skills should be just that -- historically represented by the player. Are they poets in their free time? A line or two about it justifies them having some of that skill. Maybe they like to mountaineer -- great! That's totally justifiable in the history, and could possibly be brought into the job that character will have.

Thiiiiiiis feels more like an RPG system, Doshii!

If it feels more RPG-based, it's because it is, but beyond a few basic rules, it's freeform -- and we're already doing it.

The player has the ability to justify their skills how they want. They get to write them their way, into their char's history, instead of purely using our wiki-unfriendly boilerplates. That is mostly what our veteran players do now, as their characters develop through roleplay and gain new experience and skills. We add that to the character.

Yes, there's a focus on job/class/occupation. Even our independent players have characters with some kind of occupation -- Luca Pavone might be a badass now, but he started as a soldier and grew from there. "Occupation" is one of the few unifying traits all of our characters have, faction- and setting-independent, making it an ideal platform to revamp this skills problem.

 

[Syaoran]

While I do think the actual skill system itself is the crux of the problem and Doshii's idea is a good foundation, there are a few concerns I have with it. Namely, we still do rather frequently get people trying to make OP characters, it's just because of a skill limit, instead of the number of skills they have, they increase the strength of them. Like knowing all languages, or being a master in 2 entirely different sword styles while only training in college. So whatever system we take I think we need to put a limiter of some kind people can see, otherwise we will get OPed characters jumping out the wood works, especially if the limit is "good writing" because that's subjective, and what would count as a legitimate reason for a skill would change so much.

The other thing is something I was saying yesterday. Since I run small plots that are non military and have no basic skill requirements, I have to check my player's skills often to make sure when I'm writing a scenario they can actually use their skills, especially the ones they like to use. It was also brought up by someone else that if a skill improves over the course of the RP they would have to write that in the history later. All this means that GMs would have to read through the entire history every time they want to check up on the character's skills, and that's be needlessly tedious, so I think we should keep a section for listing skills.

Now for positive stuff.

I think we should probably break down the old skill page, and change it up some, even if we use this system, I think it will be good reference to have a list of common skills people can consider when they are writing their sheets. Cause those new to the site wont know what kind of skills will be useful beyond the basics. My suggestion with the reorganizing is to first break it into physical and mental skills, and then from there we list more bread related skill like "education" "combat" "lifestyle" and list examples of the kind of skills you would have like "bachelors in science" "military training" "can find their own food in a city for 'free'"

Pretty much things they can look at and help them shape their history, cause the last thing we want is someone forgetting to write out the skills they want and only realizing after they're in RP they forgot to specialize a little.

 

[Moogle]

I'm going to repeat the suggestion I had in the shoutbox just for the sake of recording:

Have buttons (Or maybe a scrollable dropdown?) on the Character Template Generator that automatically put in standard sets of skills. Like doshii said, one for policeman, one for soldiers, etc.

 

[Wes]

Have buttons (Or maybe a scrollable dropdown?) on the Character Template Generator that automatically put in standard sets of skills. Like doshii said, one for policeman, one for soldiers, etc.

We're trying to avoid copypasta, not automate it.

 

[Syaoran]

We're trying to avoid copypasta, not automate it.

We could always have it put a link instead then.

 

[Nashoba]

I have never been a fan of the link to a standard skill set. That really only works for Neko's because of their origin of manufacture. When I created the HSC, the character template page has the basic skills and depending on their occupation the player adds skills from that page to theirs. After that the CCG recommends that the player pick some other skills from the master list or from the other occupations.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Namely, we still do rather frequently get people trying to make OP characters, it's just because of a skill limit, instead of the number of skills they have, they increase the strength of them. Like knowing all languages, or being a master in 2 entirely different sword styles while only training in college. So whatever system we take I think we need to put a limiter of some kind people can see, otherwise we will get OPed characters jumping out the wood works, especially if the limit is "good writing" because that's subjective, and what would count as a legitimate reason for a skill would change so much.

This is a fair point.

First, if we tie a character to an occupation of some sort or another, we tie them to a "starter set" of skills. They get those by default by choosing an occupation. Nothing OP yet.

Second, we demand that they justify any additional skills -- training, hobbies, whatever -- through history. Not necessarily OP.

Third, a GM reviews the character. They are looking not just for a player, but a character that will fit their plot somehow without being OP.

That third step is where we weed out the OPness of a char if it comes through. Because -- hate to say it -- that's a GM's job since we removed character reviewers' authority.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, though! It means that you can define exactly how powerful a character can really be. You can decide if a character has gone beyond the bounds of your common sense and good taste. Or, you can ask them to justify it with better writing.

Some worthwhile notes:

Yes, the "justify through writing" is subjective. It's meant to be. It's a guide, not a rigid system, right? Good writers -- something we want on this site -- should be given some room to show off their stuff. We are encouraging good writing by giving players the chance to better round out their characters through good writing.

We're also investing more power in the GM and the player -- something we always like to do. It creates a relationship between the two. In a way, they are crafting that character together through narrative, not arbitrary bitching about skills

The other thing is something I was saying yesterday. Since I run small plots that are non military and have no basic skill requirements, I have to check my player's skills often to make sure when I'm writing a scenario they can actually use their skills, especially the ones they like to use. It was also brought up by someone else that if a skill improves over the course of the RP they would have to write that in the history later. All this means that GMs would have to read through the entire history every time they want to check up on the character's skills, and that's be needlessly tedious, so I think we should keep a section for listing skills.

If it's done right, this won't happen.

A new PC's history should link to one, maybe two occupations at the most. If they do it right as well, they make the narrative flow well when it comes to highlighting training, skills, etc.

We can play with formatting to "highlight" those bits -- italics, new paragraphs, whatever. It still ends up cutting down on sections on a char bio and on boilerplate text.

I have never been a fan of the link to a standard skill set. That really only works for Neko's because of their origin of manufacture. When I created the HSC, the character template page has the basic skills and depending on their occupation the player adds skills from that page to theirs. After that the CCG recommends that the player pick some other skills from the master list or from the other occupations.

We'd be turning this idea on its head for my proposal, but I don't know how @Wes wants to handle a faction-specific CCG.

 

[Doshii Jun]

So everyone knows: I'll hammer out an example so everyone can see what I'm talking about. Just don't have time right now.

 

[Eistheid]

Looking at what has been talked about so far I think @Doshii Jun has made a good point and has provided something that could potentially work well. I do like the idea of linking to occupations to base the initial set of skills for a character since it would probably help people if they could pick out occupations for the setting and link to the set of skills that goes along with it, cutting down on the research necessary to suss out exactly what someone wants out of a character. This I can see helping new people.

However... I have issues with writing skills into the History since I'm already doing my best to write multiple paragraphs on average for history and I have doubts as to whether I could write in: When, and what skills were learned, as well as to what level of proficiency they were learned, in a manner that wouldn't feel like I had spliced an info dump into the midst of a summary of events.

As such I'm going to wait to give any firm feedback or critique until I can see an example of this in action. As I'm writing this I see Doshii has already mentioned that they'll be doing so when they have time, so I look forward to that.

 

[Wes]

Well, it's been week or so and Doshii has the best suggestion so I intend to use that. I'll update the templates and we'll phase the new version in gradually. The first step is to make sure all occupational pages for player use have the skills listed on them. I'll need FMs to do that for their respective factions. I do not see any need for older character pages to be updated to match the new version.

Also everyone should go here to the other character template thread: https://stararmy.com/roleplay-forum/index.php?threads/character-template-discussion.17678/ - The template updates may also include stuff from there.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Hell, and I haven't done up an example. I apologize. I'll try to do that today.

 

[Aendri]

Wes, could you hold off until we've at least seen that example? Eistheid straight out said they were waiting to see the example before commenting, and I know I was planning on the same thing.

 

[Doshii Jun]

I'm headed home soon, and I'll stay up to tease this out. I'll replace this space with that example.

 

[Doshii Jun]

We'll use a made-up, civilian char first. The other thread Wes linked above deals with changes to how the template looks, so I'm doing just a typed-out history here.

+++++

Occupation

Jensen Windsor, a cook from Nepleslia, works at the Annapuma Cafe in Kyoto. He grew up in Funky City, son of two dads and three moms (they never quite said who actually created him) who worked at a small arms factory together. There wasn't school in his part of the slums, and his parents usually left for long stretches to work at the factory, so he often was left to fend for himself. He learned to love the art of food, judiciously spending the family's money and his time following recipes off the InterNEP. He sent his family off with hearty lunches and spare dinners to help them get through the day. After he reached enlistment age, he joined the Star Army of Yamatai and became a cook, serving on a couple small cruisers. After four years, he separated from the military and got work at the Annapuma.

It took another three years, but he rose from a humble swing cook to co-head chef of the second largest Annapuma in Kyoto.

Among his specialties:
* Knife work: Having worked in vegetables in the SAoY, Jensen has exceptional knife skills.
* Pastries: His baking started when he was young and only got better as he went. He almost won a 3rd XF-wide pastry competition.
* A killer Canned Kotori: Just try it sometime.
* Working the kitchen: Jensen's a pretty stout chef boss who knows how to zero in on a dish and get his people to get it right.

+++++

The above is a compact example, but it works. The inline link takes you to the occupation page, where eventually we'll have standardized skills. It teases out how he came to the occupation, though it mixes a line or so of history in there. That history might not be needed if it's already written out above, but for this char, we'll let it be.

It's ended with a few of his specialties within that skillset. That's what we're worried about -- just skills in that set.

The trick, however, is that this guy got his skills in the military, so that's cheating of a sort. Ultimately, we will need occupation pages separate of the military, or we find a way to lean on the military ones more often.

The HSC already has tons of occupations pages, so Nash's faction already can do the above.

If we do this with a military member, it's even easier — from a generic or faction-specific page, we link to the occupation just like I did above, then list any specialties within that section.

As you can see, characters become more focused by this process. We won't have characters without some kind of occupation — everyone will get a skillset. However, from that skillset, a char can depart via the history narrative or through the RP into another realm entirely.

What we won't have is characters with random ability in Leadership/Public Speaking, or Humanities, Survival, etc.

Unless you can somehow justify it in writing.

Say we do that with Jensen. He already has SAoY training, so there's a built-in justification there. That's easy mode.

Let's add another skillset instead: Detective work. This would go below occupation.

+++++

Hobby

Jensen always was something of an amateur private eye. There were times where he really had to track down ingredients, and that meant tracking down people. He wasn't bad — it became a matter of knowing the right people who could put him in touch with this person or that one, and down the trail he would go for just the right kind of pepper. He kept up that tracking down of people and augmented it with a kind of food-tracking system of his own. He'd hunt down cooks who he heard used special ingredients he might like, or talk to suppliers to seek out a particular line cook for a recipe — even to get a person's phone number! Other people valued his network and sometimes put it to good use.

Useful tactics he picked up:
* A listener and a talker: He quickly about connections people have, just through talking with them. He usually knows the questions to ask to get what he wants.
* Knowing the hubs: He's learned to read which people have power and authority; i.e., the ones who can get him what he needs.
* Tightening the screws: His network of suppliers, competitors and potential employees gives him a good idea of where he can put pressure on people (customers, employees, so on) to get to his end goals.

+++++

With the above hobby, does it really quite work? For the GM reviewing it, it might. Or it might not. We empower the GM to decide that. However, it's done the same way — link back to an occupation that has the nested base skills, then write it out from there. From the above, we can see that he isn't a pro by any means, and he doesn't have all the skills an actual officer would have (such as combat training, if he weren't SAoY anyway).

So, that's how I'd do it.

What do you all think?

 

[Wes]

What we won't have is characters with random ability in Leadership/Public Speaking, or Humanities, Survival, etc.

Unless you can somehow justify it in writing.

This is one of my favorite parts. People's skills and knowledge come from their experiences, whether that's learning in a school setting or just playing around in the back yard until you know how to do a flip. In Star Wars, Luke learns to fly and shoot by taking pot shots at womprats in his T65, right? That's part of his history. Likewise, if your character history has no point where your character learned to disarm explosives, it doesn't make sense for them to somehow be an expert in that.

 

[Aendri]

I dunno though. Especially for older, bigger characters, it just seems like it could turn out just as big, if not bigger. Take, for example, Kumiko. She started out as a technician in the stararmy, but has an engineering background from school. That's two sections already. Then you add in her time as a frontline fighter, and now you're linking in the infantry page and writing all of that out. Then she studied to specialize as an armorer. So she's got that. Now she's moved up to being a squad leader, acting as the XO of a ship, which would involve a whole new set of skills. If I'm writing out a blurb like that for every one of those occupations, it's just returned to being just as large as writing the skills out was in the first place, but now a GM has to follow all those extra links to get the specific details of what her training is in, instead of just reading the listed skill. That seems especially extraneous, just because the blurbs you have written read almost like most good skills read as anyway, plus a bullet list at the bottom.

 

[Syaoran]

I do want to point out before we go any further, because that seems to be something people are focusing on. The current skill system still makes you justify your skills. That's not really something new to the system Doshii proposed. So I think it would be best if we stop treating it like that's a benefit of the system when it's something we already had in place.

 

[Wes]

I do want to point out before we go any further, because that seems to be something people are focusing on. The current skill system still makes you justify your skills.

No it doesn't. People regularly get away with basically copy-pasting whatever the CCG says they should put in there.