New Mechanic Idea: Applied Knowledge

[sirogit]

I was toying with this idea in my head, and was wondering to what degree it's been used before...

As I don't really like how "knowledge" like skills are used in games, I was thinking of an "Applied knowledge" mechanic.

You have normal "Ability" traits, as well as "Knowledge" or "Mental" traits. When performing an action, you normally use your Ability Trait. If you could apply some aspect of the Knowledge Trait to what you're doing, you could add it's score to your Ability Trait.

for say, trying to gut an unarmored person in a vital organ, you could add your "Biology" trait to your "Weapons" skill, or trying to buddy around with a violent psychopath, you could add your "Psychology" trait to your "Sociolize" skill...

I figured this would definately be most suited to a setting somewhere between intellectual and campy, ala Hannibal or the old Star Trek, as it implies a good amount of characters being well versed enough in areas of knowledge that in specialized situations, it puts them near equal-footing with more practical practitioners.

Any comments on whether this has been used before, or why it does/doesn't/Could/NEVER work?

[Jack Spencer Jr]

One real problem I could see is that you'll wind up with a lumbering bulk of traits all named after college courses.

[ethan_greer]

Jack's concern could be alleviated by having a limited list of traits from which the players can choose.

There are similar concepts in various games.  D&D3 has "synergy bonuses" to skills, which are basically bonuses to a skill use if you have another skill at a certain level.  The concept of skill defaults used in GURPS, while not exactly the mechanic you're describing, results from the same line of thinking.  Also, any game that features skill specializations is comparable to what you're describing.

In short, I think that your idea could work.

Edit:  Oh, and welcome to the Forge!

[Daniel Solis]

Welcome! I'm kinda new here too. :)

I've had the same concern with regards to knowledge assisting in practical applications. The way I'm doing it in PUNK is having every relevant trait contribute to the dice pool, no matter if it's a skill, knowledge, favorable conditions or whatever. They're all helpful to accomplishing a task and thus on mechanically equal footing. I figured it was easier that way then considering various bonuses and whatnot.

[sirogit]

Thanks.

I imagined a preset, rather brisk and vague list, something like, Electronics, Human-Biology(Anatomy maybe?), Psychology, Botany, Archeology, Occult... Also I was thinking of several enviroment-based knowledge areas, such as Street and Wilderness. If you wanted to crreate a knowledge area it should be around those lines.

At any time where your character could use any sort of tactics in a situation, E. g., not lifting a rock, you could add your Intelligence rating and your knowledge area, depending on what sort of thing you are dealing with.

I imagine Psychology would need some tweaking, so that you couldn't use it just whenever dealing with another person...

You'd also note this would make Intelligence rating rather valuable, as I think would work for the sort of pulpy-near-future-setting I was thinking of.

[sirogit]

Thanks.

I imagined a preset, rather brisk and vague list, something like, Electronics, Human-Biology(Anatomy maybe?), Psychology, Botany, Archeology, Occult... Also I was thinking of several enviroment-based knowledge areas, such as Street and Wilderness. If you wanted to crreate a knowledge area it should be around those lines.

At any time where your character could use any sort of tactics in a situation, E. g., not lifting a rock, you could add your Intelligence rating and your knowledge area, depending on what sort of thing you are dealing with.

I imagine Psychology would need some tweaking, so that you couldn't use it just whenever dealing with another person...

You'd also note this would make Intelligence rating rather valuable, as I think would work for the sort of pulpy-near-future-setting I was thinking of.

[Dr. Velocity]

I think everyone has considered this issue a number of times, the difference of being strong, and KNOWING how to weightlift properly, or being agile but also KNOWING acrobatic routines, etc. It really gets gritty in the overlapping and abstract aspects, such as Dexterity related to Pickpocketing or Surgery, or Intelligence for Memory, Deciphering Languages or beating someone at chess.

As the breakdown of a skill into its component 'practical applied' and 'academic knowledge' does indeed double, in most cases, any given skill list or group, etc., this would *seem* to me to to be a bit obsessive, even for hardcore simulationists - maybe I'm one of those people from that unofficial idea that gamers start out with complex detailed games and drift toward rules lite and even diceless, but I personally really don't see the viability, for all the extra work, calculation and splitting hairs, of differentiating skills in this fashion, and feel in general, BROADER skills would be even more helpful, so instead of worrying about an attribute and a skill and possibly also an ability, you would only be concerned with what general topics 'Detective' would cover - stats for broad skills seem more to 'average' your raw ability and your academic knowledge of it, but it helps keep things a lot simpler.

And as an aside, I know Gurps always have default skills and bonuses and I think some other rules mods of other games, such as Psionics getting bonuses to their various bio-psychic attempts if they had Biology or Zoology, etc. While thorough, looking at that, I still feel thats just unnecessarily verbiage that won't add anything to the game without also adding extra time for rules checks, etc.

[Mike Holmes]

Maybe more important than the default rules, what's being described here sounds like "augmenting" which is present in many, many games. Essentially a roll to get a bonus on another roll. In some games it's only possible inter-character, but in many you have rules like the Hero System "complimentary skills" rule. Culminating in the version in Hero Wars.

Take Sorcerer for instance. The successes on any die roll become dice added to any other die roll. So, can you use your Biologist Cover to aid your attack? Of course (I'm sure Ron would agree), roll away.

Anyhow, this method of adding Traits together is fairly common. In Story Engine, it's even more direct: you just add up all pertinent Traits into one pool right from the start.

Lots of good ways to do this.

Mike