At the beginning of the summer, a friend and I decided to create a new setting for White Wolf's Hunter game. Eventually we decided to build a new game outright.
We've made a great deal of progress, but there are some gaping holes that are holding us back from the playtesting stage at the moment.

This is not one of them. We believe we have a functional skill system in place, but we have not yet tested it, and I'd like some feedback before we do. Hopefully this is the right sub-forum, but regardless.

Personally, when dealing with skills I prefer rules-lite setups like Risus. Defining capabilities by defining the character appeals to me more than defining the character by defining his capabilities. However, the first audience we're designing for is our own group, which by and large does not agree with me. So we came up with a way to hybridize the approach.

We took a great deal of inspiration from Fate (specifically the mechanics used in the Dresden Files RPG). In Fate, along with skills and "stunts" which define character capabilities, there are "aspects", short phrases that help define the nature of the character and provide bonuses in story critical scenarios. Fate links most of a character's aspects to his/her history and development, and to an extent, so do we. The huge difference in implementation is that we explicitly link a character's capabilities to his identity. A character has a number of "Skill Blocks", each representing an area of his expertise (or lack thereof), and each tied to an aspect.

Our current setup uses 8 extremely broad Skill Blocks. Specifically:

• Academia
• Combat Skills
• Vitality //Covers essentially all physical activity.
• Esoterica //Knowledge of the supernatural
• Awareness
• Social
• Survival //Covers skills outside of combat training, that keep you alive.
• Technical //Covers the sciences, as well as computers, and other technical disiplines.

Each block is assigned a rank from Fate's "ladder", which in this case means from Average, to Fair, Good, Great, and capping out at Superb, or (+1)-(+5). We're still figuring out how to specifically distribute ranks, but that seems to be a playtesting matter more than anything else.
Now, this is an extremely coarse abstraction. Too coarse in fact.  So in each block a character defines a specialty that takes on the rank of the block, as well as additional sub-specialties totaling twice the block rank, but individually valued less than the primary.

For example, the player takes the Social block at Great (+4), and defines the Social aspect as "That Guy You Know". His primary skill is Connections at (+4), with secondaries Deception (+3), Wit (+3), First Impressions (+2).

If a character wants to do something that he doesn't have a specific subskill for, he picks a relevant skill block, and gets a rating of Average if the block is Good or higher, and Mediocre (+0) if the block is Fair or less.

This allows the player to explicitly define their characters skills on their own, and (ideally) simulates the clustering of abilities of an actual individual to some extent.
Tying aspects to skills directly seems to complement the wide open skill choices available by adding some definition beforehand, and has a number of advantages when one gets into how we manage our fate point equivalents.

Advancement is a problem we haven't tackled yet, although we want to focus on the acquisition of supernatural power over the advancement of mundane skill, it's something that needs to be hammered out.

So again, I'm looking for some feedback on this scheme before we implement more material that relies on it. It's one of the most complete parts of the game as of yet, although none of it has seen playtesting, we have constructed a concept character or two using it. If you want me to put the rest of the system on the table, I will. I just figured small steps were best.

---Zach

I don't understand - do you have the sub-specialties pre-defined or does the player make them up?

and how does the block work with the sub-specialty?

if you have the block at +4 and a sub-specialty at +2 do they get +6 when they use the sub-specialty?

Ah, sorry if I wasn't clear. Sub-specialty also seems to convey the wrong idea. Let's call them sub-skills.

The sub-skills are entirely defined by the player. It's significantly easier to manage in some blocks than others, though the block aspect provides a good starting point.

This system is more of a skill list generator than it is a skill list in and of itself.
The player will never roll the block directly, though keep in mind that every block has a primary sub-skill at the block's rating.

So no, the block does not modify the rating of a sub-skill in any way at all, although it does determine the various ways it could initially be set.

so I take Social at 4
that really means I get 4 subskills in social at levels 4, 3, 2, 1

I take it the idea is I can't cherry pick and be good just at Swords with Combat and nothing else, and be good just with Deceive in Social and nothing else.

I don't really see the point to it, maybe you can explain.  Why not just let them pick the subskills they want?

What about the idea (cant remember which games use it) of defining character backgrounds rather than skills blocks?

i.e.  A character could be defined by:  Nobleman (3), Freebooter (1), Pirate (5) 

The character would use Nobleman if engaged in social repartee (roll 3 dice) or Pirate if sword fighting (5 dice) etc....

and just by listing these qualities, you get a rough summary of the characters backstory.

Its similar to what you are doing, but the 'subskills' are built in without having to define them - pirates can do all things 'piratey' such as nautical knowledge, fighting, climbing, gambling, drinking, etc...

And you can still have characters specialise by giving them a dice bump in areas - maybe even the 8 areas that you have defined. 

Ah, I see the problem. In the OP, I said:

So in each block a character defines a specialty that takes on the rank of the block, as well as additional sub-specialties totaling twice the block rank, but individually valued less than the primary.

I take it the idea is I can't cherry pick and be good just at Swords with Combat and nothing else, and be good just with Deceive in Social and nothing else.

so essentially you want the players to choose one skill and then have the other skills default to that.  That makes sense. 

It just feels odd to have players create their own sub-skills and give them that much flexibility, but limit it to skills instead of aspects.

I understand the desire to have the abilities more mapped out, but if you really want that you might want to just list out the sub-skills the players can have and really map it out for them.  This hybrid approach seems to have the confusion and abuse potential of the aspect system without the flexibility and simplicity.

watchwaitplot wrote:

stefoid, you're thinking of Risus (there are a few others as well), which I do mention specifically in the initial post. :)
I love the system, but unfortunately we need a more explicit "map" of a character's capabilities than that.
Aspects represent a character's core identity and one of the points of our game is that they are subject to dramatic change over its course. Using them as a numerical stat under those circumstances, is an...awkward proposal.

did I say 'card'?  sorry, I have been playing a lot of beer and pretzels card games lately.  I simply meant that whatever rules are necessary to resolve the feat and the explicit effect of the feat, are listed in that one place - under feat X.  Much like the rules  in certain types of card games.  You only need a simple and short set of general rules, and anything complicated and specific is encapsulated in a specific 'feat/card' that only applies if someone actually has it and uses it.