Quote from: JimBobOzBah, that's chickening out, Unknown Armies or Fudge-style! We need skill lists. If we can make everything up ourselves, what do we pay for game books for?

I came up with a list of 41 skills (about 3 per category), not counting Magic (which is setting dependent -- use the D&D 3e magic types if you need a half-dozen or so placeholders) leaning toward a modern setting.  I'll list them with the caveat that if you use this list in your game, I want credit.  

I threw this list together quickly to match S. John's categories but I've written plenty of lists like this for homebrew games (and Fudge games), so I've got a pretty good idea of what I want in a skill list:

Athletics
  Acrobatics
  Climbing
  Sports
Combat
  Gunnery
  Melee Weapons
  Ranged Weapons
  Thrown Weapons
  Unarmed Combat
Communication
  Languages
  Musicianship
  Performance
Detection
  Searching
  Spotting
Driving
  Aircraft
  Ground Vehicles
  Riding
  Spacecraft
  Watercraft
Gadgeteering
  Agriculture
  Crafting
  Computers
  Construction
  Extraction
  Invention
  Repair
Intrusion
  Entry
  Evasion
Magic
  Varies
Medical
  Diagnosis
  Surgery
  Treatment
Persuading
  Bluffing
  Intimidation
  Persuasion
Scholarship
  Fine Arts
  Humanities
  Physical Sciences
  Social Sciences
Wilderness
  Foraging
  Hunting
  Shelter
  Streetwise

In practice, I'm not sure I'd make all of these things skills and would probably use attributes or some other mechanism to deal with them, which would give me a smaller list.  I'd also adjust the list for a pre-modern setting, reducing and/or renaming things under Combat, Gadgeteering, Medical, and Scholarship but likely adding in more Magical skills.  And, yes, I'm sure you could ruthlessly trim this list and make it even smaller by removing the skills I added to, for example, create a farmer.  I simply have a preference for skills lists that can represent any NPC like a PC, no matter how mundane their skills.

Quote from: JimBobOzRisus Companion (that's a link, mate), p.5, "The Dozen Endeavours".

Thanks.  Sounds worth the $10.  Now if I could only get him to write up his 5 Elements of a Commercially Successful Roleplaying Setting...

Quote from: JimBobOzBah, that's chickening out, Unknown Armies or Fudge-style! We need skill lists. If we can make everything up ourselves, what do we pay for game books for?

I'm not chickening out.  I'm not suggesting we make everything up... I'm saying that a published system should probably vary their skill lists according to the genre and setting.  Tri-Stat comes close to this, with a skill list that has variable costs according to the genre.  But the list itself doesn't change.

Anyway, Fudge has a skill list.  It's quite comprehensive, too.  It can be found in the 10th Anniversary Edition, or online in 5-point Fudge.

QuoteSo come on, guys, how could we flesh out this list to 20-40 skills? "Generic" doesn't have to be "covers every last possibility." Give suggestions, and if people want to hydra some skill out into others for their game, they can.

Savage Worlds has a pretty decent list which makes a reasonable starting point:

Boating
Climbing
Driving
Fighting
Gambling
Guts
Healing
Intimidation
Investigation
Knowledge
Lockpicking
Notice
Persuasion
Piloting
Repair
Riding
Shooting
Stealth
Streetwise
Survival
Swimming
Taunt
Throwing
Tracking

Generic, and tight.

Quote from: John MorrowThanks.  Sounds worth the $10.  Now if I could only get him to write up his 5 Elements of a Commercially Successful Roleplaying Setting...

The Risus Companion is one of those books I regularly re-read.  Along with Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering.  Definitely worth $10.

I count Risus Companion as one of the three greatest supplements in the history of the hobby.  Totally worth the ten bucks.

Quote from: jrientsI count Risus Companion as one of the three greatest supplements in the history of the hobby.  Totally worth the ten bucks.

I got a copy.  Looks good but I have to actually read it.  Thanks, JimBobOz, for the reference.  I think S. John Ross often has incredibly good insight into what makes the hobby (both games and gamers) tick.

The RISUS Companion is awesome.  Not just for RISUS, either.  It's chock-full of just plain great GMing advice and tricks.

The Savage Worlds list is good, but like the similar sort of list in Fallout, covers only adventuring stuff. That works well for a game of high adventure, but not so well if you'd like it to cover more humble stuff, and/or to have "realistic" themes in it. Sure, you can add to it, but it's easier to have a set skill list where what each skill covers changes a little bit from one campaign to another, than some short list, and make new stuff up.

I broke each of the categories into three, as follows,
   
Athletics - Acrobatics   Climbing   Swimming
Combat - Brawling   Fire   Melee
Communication - Languages   Speech   Writing
Detection- Observation   Search   Tracking
Driving - Aircraft   Landcraft   Seacraft
Gadgeteering - Engineering   Handicrafts   Technician
Intrusion- Burglary   Deceit   Stealth
Magic  - Body   Elements   Mind
Medical - Biosciences   Nursing   Physician
Persuading - Acting   Diplomacy   Intimidation
Scholarship - Liberal Arts   Law & Society   Sciences
Wilderness - Hunting   Navigation   Survival

Or, listed without their categories and alphabetically,

   Acrobatics
Acting
Aircraft
Body (Magic)
Brawling
Burglary
Climbing
Deceit
Diplomacy
Elements (Magic)
Engineering
Fire
Handicrafts
Hunting
Intimidation
Landcraft
Languages
Law & Society
Liberal Arts
Life Sciences
Melee
Mind (Magic)
Navigation
Nursing
Observation
Physician
Sciences
Seacraft
Search
Speech
Stealth
Survival
Swimming
Technician
Tracking
Writing


This gives us 36 skills, in the higher part of the range people wanted (20-40).  However, I think it's pretty comprehensive, and of course in any given campaign you could probably eliminate entirely one or two of the categories, and take away 3-6 of the skills.

What each skill covers would change by era and culture. So for example, "Landcraft" would include riding animals and unpowered vehicles before the Industrial Revolution, and would include powered vehicles and exclude riding animals after it. "Aircraft" would include "Spacecraft" once the Spacefaring Age began. I suppose characters would have their own technological eras, so you could have a Spacefaring Age astronaut giving a lecture with a Stone Age Kalahari Bushman in the audience, and afterwards they could arm wrestle - okay, maybe not. In reality people from different tech eras don't mix much, but players like to create misfits and oddballs, so you'd need some rules like that.

A good range of attributes would be,
   Strength
Fitness
Agility
Perception
Education
Confidence

What do you reckon? I'm sure I've missed some skills, and overly-split some others.

I'd probably favour a system where you could have optional specialisations. That way, if a player just wants a character who's a good Meleeist, they can - but if they want to be overall good at Melee, and awesome at Swords, they can. "Optional Hydra Skills" we could call it, in honour of RedFox's lament above.

I think I tend to prefer a longer list to a shorter one, but depending on the game, shorter can be much better.  Supers and pulp games for 2 great examples are styles where I'd rather not worry too much with skill lists.

On the other hand, I spent 2 years in a power heavy old-style Vampire game where my character's linguistic and academic skills (he spoke and wrote 20 different languages by the end of the campaign) made him one of the most versatile and sought after (by allies) characters in the game.