There are some things you're a fan of in theory but not in practice.  Lots of skills is one of those things.  In theory--on an intellectual level--I love the concept of characters in RPGs have a large list of skills that represent their background and training.  For instance, if my character is an herbalist, I want him to have skills like botany, brewing, poisoning, foraging, healing, outdoor survival, and so forth.  

However, systems that provide this level of granularity often get bogged down by their own weight.  Since there's a skill for everything, you need to have a particular skill to do anything.  Want to flee from an enemy and hop a fence?  Better having the Run and Jump skills.  Want to throw a net onto an enemy and then fight him while he's struggling to get out of it?  First you need to have the Net skill, and you're going to want the Spear fighting skill, and you're going to have to roll against his Evade skill, and then you need to compare your Spear against his modified Shield skill, and next round he's going to test his Escape From Bonds skill.

This seems patently ridiculous and too much work for players and DMs.  (Your mileage may vary, depending on how much you like Warhammer, Runequest, or Harnmaster.)

Is this the natural fate of narrow skill systems?  Or is there a way to run them without slowing gameplay to a crawl?

I kind of like how Fate handles this.  It generally uses a few broad skills, but then provides for specialization (via 'stunts')

Effectively, this means that the GM only has to deal with a few skills.  The player then can apply their specialization (or ask if it's applicable) in the appropriate circumstances.

I write about skills and skill lists here:

http://iflybynight.blogspot.com/2009/08/skill-list-and-defining-skills.html

-clahs

I think you're talking about two different things here, one is "systems with lots of skills", and the other is "binary systems where if you don't have the skill you can't attempt a task".

To deal with this the difficulty of various tasks should be built into the core resolution system. So an average person should be able to, even without any skill, roll straight off the relevant attribute and achieve easy or average results, perhaps even earning a skill point for their efforts.

Climbing a ladder is easy, and needs no skill. Freeclimbing a crumbly sand cliff is something that only skilled climbers should have a chance to succeed at, although anyone can try and might even get lucky with enough open ended rolls.

An important facet of this is to make sure skills have difficulty levels themselves, so swim or climb would be difficulty 1 and quantum physics would be difficulty 5. That way you can say anyone can attempt skills of difficulty 1, but you need some kind of formal training (even reading some books on it) for skills of difficulty 2-5, pardon the crossover in terms.

There aren't many tasks where no possible skill exists, but for things like resist poison or disease I'd just double up the relevant stat and have the player roll on that.

It's something that really needs to be played by ear, but for the most part those two techniques cover a multitude.

Quote from: The Traveller;715576I think you're talking about two different things here, one is "systems with lots of skills", and the other is "binary systems where if you don't have the skill you can't attempt a task".

To deal with this the difficulty of various tasks should be built into the core resolution system. So an average person should be able to, even without any skill, roll straight off the relevant attribute and achieve easy or average results, perhaps even earning a skill point for their efforts.

Climbing a ladder is easy, and needs no skill. Freeclimbing a crumbly sand cliff is something that only skilled climbers should have a chance to succeed at, although anyone can try and might even get lucky with enough open ended rolls.

An important facet of this is to make sure skills have difficulty levels themselves, so swim or climb would be difficulty 1 and quantum physics would be difficulty 5. That way you can say anyone can attempt skills of difficulty 1, but you need some kind of formal training (even reading some books on it) for skills of difficulty 2-5, pardon the crossover in terms.

There aren't many tasks where no possible skill exists, but for things like resist poison or disease I'd just double up the relevant stat and have the player roll on that.

It's something that really needs to be played by ear, but for the most part those two techniques cover a multitude.

This is right on.
Let me add to it.

Not only should skills have difficulty, but the deeper, more esoteric skills should be subskills of the more basic ones, and the basic ones should be necessary parent skills of the subs.

I like how the approach to skills is somewhat simplified in Gurps ACTION, where many of the individual skills are merged under the "bang (!)" named skill:

Guns!
Mêlée!
Spycraft!
Medicine!

Then everything else is covered under an attribute roll for general character knowledge/ability.

I haven't run it myself but that's how I remember my (admittedly quick) read on it.

Quote from: LordVreeg;715578Not only should skills have difficulty, but the deeper, more esoteric skills should be subskills of the more basic ones, and the basic ones should be necessary parent skills of the subs.

Yeah, that's the ultimate evolution of the system. I usually just reduce the cross referencing by grouping skills into classes and giving a basic set of 3-5 skills to everyone who takes the class, so you choose "physicist" and get mathematics, physics and research, the skills anyone who becomes a physicist is going to have. Then the player can specialise into quantum, nuclear, astronomical, etc. It's approximately the same effect but less complicated than skill trees.

BRP/RuneQuest (the latter to a lesser extent) does this, though it fits mostly characters who are, or at least start out as, humans or human - like in capabilities.

I actually really love 13th Age's backgrounds. In the demos I have run, they work great. 'Carthian Ranger' says in two words what a huge skills list does in other games.

Quote from: Archangel Fascist;715567First you need to have the Net skill, and you're going to want the Spear fighting skill, and you're going to have to roll against his Evade skill, and then you need to compare your Spear against his modified Shield skill, and next round he's going to test his Escape From Bonds skill.

This seems patently ridiculous and too much work for players and DMs.  (Your mileage may vary, depending on how much you like Warhammer, Runequest, or Harnmaster.)

Is this the natural fate of narrow skill systems?  Or is there a way to run them without slowing gameplay to a crawl?

There are two main alternate approaches that I think of.

1) A tree system or skill grouping system, where you have broad skills at a fixed level, and then differentiate specialties only for certain important cases. These systems has some extra overhead, but allow you to dial between broad skills and narrow skills.

In practice, I think they tend to come down to either the mostly same as narrow skills (like CORPS) or mostly the same as broad skills. I personally prefer the mostly-broad with options for specialization, which is a fair description of FATE.

2) Player-defined skills

These include like what Kaiu describes for 13th Age - previously used in Over the Edge, Unknown Armies, and many others. Rather than a fixed skill list, the player defines a category (like a career) for his skills. The typical issue that I see is that jobs often involve differing levels of skill. All three of "Park Ranger", "Police Detective", and "Army Sniper" will have skill with guns. However, suppose that three characters are all equally expert in each of those fields. Should they be rolling the same for shooting?

If you say no, and that you have to adjust the skill level to reflect how central shooting is to the job - then that means that there are all sorts of adjustments and decisions that have to be made in play about how well each skill applies.

QuoteAll three of "Park Ranger", "Police Detective", and "Army Sniper" will have skill with guns. However, suppose that three characters are all equally expert in each of those fields. Should they be rolling the same for shooting?

I'd say that Army Sniper is a profession with more training than Police Detective, which has more training than Park Ranger.  So an Army Sniper would likely be better at shooting, but that's because he's spent more time training.  In game terms, if you're an accomplished Army Sniper, you have more XP.

Another good take on broad-based skills is found in the Kerberos Club setting for Wild Talents – a subsystem for building custom skills similar to the one WT uses for superpowers. For instance, one character has a skill called "An Officer And A Gentleman" which covers leadership, strategy/tactics, etiquette and possibly even combat and horsemanship.

I found it a bit too much work – I'm good with most skill systems I play with, d20, BRP, SW, Traveller, WoD, as well as WT/ORE's baseline system – but it certainly is one way of doing it

Quote from: The Butcher;715627Another good take on broad-based skills is found in the Kerberos Club setting for Wild Talents – a subsystem for building custom skills similar to the one WT uses for superpowers. For instance, one character has a skill called "An Officer And A Gentleman" which covers leadership, strategy/tactics, etiquette and possibly even combat and horsemanship.

I found it a bit too much work – I'm good with most skill systems I play with, d20, BRP, SW, Traveller, WoD, as well as WT/ORE's baseline system – but it certainly is one way of doing it

The "issue" with those broad skills is that they are, well, sometimes too broad - a skill like "An Officer and a Gentleman" can be basically claimed to be usable in every situation, from a firing competition to cake carving. So they work, as long as the game is more narrative than strict.

Quote from: Rincewind1;715629The "issue" with those broad skills is that they are, well, sometimes too broad - a skill like "An Officer and a Gentleman" can be basically claimed to be usable in every situation, from a firing competition to cake carving. So they work, as long as the game is more narrative than strict.

I think they might work just fine as long as the GM keeps a tight rein, but I have no experience to back that up.

Quote from: The Butcher;715630I think they might work just fine as long as the GM keeps a tight rein, but I have no experience to back that up.

Well, I've played a bit of Cold City and Wolsung (Wolsung has something like Aspects from Fate in it, to make a long explanation short). The problems I've encountered so far (from player's perspective, I'm starting a campaign tomorrow set in Fallen London on Fate) is this:

1) The GM is too "lenient", letting people to invoke those aspects too much, without proper story/dramatic explanation, or with explanations that are too much of a stretch. The latter isn't that much of a problem, as it can be a good laugh, and sometimes after all, make sense - such as invoking a skill of an Explorer archeotype in Wolsung while fighting a golem, saying that I've discovered during my travels an ancient temple, where I found an amulet with Kaballah writings, which, when thrown, can damage golems greatly - it's a bit complicated, yes, but it has a precedent in the adventuring shows and novels, where characters often suddenly produce such mcguffins. The former is a much more of a problem though, and I've seen it happen - not as much as lack of Viking Horns, but simply problems of game's flow. But when your party's Spy Extraordinaire starts trying to substitute Acrobatics for Persuade because he's got ranks in them...yeeeaaaaaah.

2) The GM is too scared of being the lenient GM, and keeps the reings= too tightly. This results in  that he makes an unspoken rule that only one "Aspect" can be invoked at any given time. Which is fine and dandy most of the time, but sometimes there are just situations for which you built the whole set of Aspects, for the character to shine.