I've never been satisfied with how OSR games handle skills. Here's how Buck Rogers XXV does it. Mike Pondsmith is credited with game design in the credits!

Skill Checks

Roll D100. If the roll is < your skill rating, you succeed. A 01-05 is an automatic success if you have spent ranks on the skill. A 96-00 is always an automatic failure. Multiply your skill rating times the difficulty:

• Easy: x2
• Average: x1
• Difficult: x .5
• Impossible: x .25

You can attempt a skill if you haven't trained in it, but you don't get to add your attribute or career bonus.


Ability Checks

Roll <= attribute on a D20.


Career Skills

Each career has 8 career skills. For example, the Rogue has Bypass security, Climb, Fast talk, Hide, Move Silently, Notice, Open lock, and Pick pocket.
Every level, you get 40 points to spend on your career skills, but you can't spend more than +15 to any single skill.
Add your attribute rating (usually 3 to 18) to your career skills.
Add your class bonus (if any) to your career skills. (Rogues have a +10 bonus.)


General Skills

Stuff like knowledges, hobbies, and background skills, but you can also buy skills from other career lists. The only requirements are that the skill does not appear on your career list, and you can't buy Medic skills.  
Starting characters must select 4 to 6 general skills.
Every level, you get 20 points to spend on your career skills, but you can't spend more than +15 to any single skill.
Add your attribute rating (usually 3 to 18) to your general skills.
Every level you can add one new general skill. General skills can't exceed rank 80.


My Thoughts

I like it, but I'd probably hack it a bit.
Creating a character sheet in Excel would be a good idea, with columns that calculate the difficulties ahead of time.
I don't like the fact it's < skill rating rather than <= skill rating. It's weird to me that a character with Hide: 23 has a 22% chance of success.
The class bonuses are inconsistent, but I think that's part of the intended design.
XXV was published in 1990. Does that count as old school?

That looks pretty similar to Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, or Pendragon. Whether you consider that old school might depend on when you were in school.

Quote from: Bren;1093612That looks pretty similar to Runequest, Call of Cthulhu, or Pendragon. Whether you consider that old school might depend on when you were in school.

You're right. I'm embarrassed to say that it's been so long since I have played RQ that I totally forgot that. Does RQ have the split between Career and General, though?

Buck Rogers XXVc was a great system and it's sad how much it gets overlooked. Very old-school D&D in style, but with scifi elements baked in. I'll confess that I haven't played it in quite a while, so my memory on the skill system is hazy, but I have fond memories of the game in general.

That is essentially a simplified version of the skill system from Dragon Quest and James Bond.  (The thresholds are different in those systems, but at heart it is the same thing.)  

If you don't like the "off by 1 percent" thing, an easy fix is to declare the "00" result on the d100 as a zero instead of 100.  This also slides the system very slightly towards more success.  Given the inherent "whiff factor" in the raw system, that wouldn't bother me.  Now when your skill is 23, you have a 23 percent chance on an average difficulty check.

I've played around with similar ideas in a home design that I've just about abandoned now in favor of a different mechanic.  There are some neat things you can do with d100 roll under that haven't all been combined into one system (as far as I know), but it isn't without warts, either.

Quote from: finarvyn;1093631Buck Rogers XXVc was a great system and it's sad how much it gets overlooked. Very old-school D&D in style, but with scifi elements baked in. I'll confess that I haven't played it in quite a while, so my memory on the skill system is hazy, but I have fond memories of the game in general.

yeah I really liked it!

Another to put on the list.

I had actually overlooked the Buck Rogers RPG at the time, thinking it was a half-assed cash grab by Lorraine Williams (who had ties to the Buck Rogers IP), but then I took a look at it about a decade ago and was really impressed.

But I really don't understand why d100% skills wouldn't be old school. I know much of the OSR seems to think skills are heresy, and at best they are okay done on a d6, but they literally date back to the first thief class which was '74 (EGG took it from Gary Schweitzer)

Quote from: JeremyR;1093698I had actually overlooked the Buck Rogers RPG at the time, thinking it was a half-assed cash grab by Lorraine Williams (who had ties to the Buck Rogers IP), but then I took a look at it about a decade ago and was really impressed.

But I really don't understand why d100% skills wouldn't be old school. I know much of the OSR seems to think skills are heresy, and at best they are okay done on a d6, but they literally date back to the first thief class which was '74 (EGG took it from Gary Schweitzer)

It's an overlooked gem, that stands up surprisingly well after all of these years. It's got just the right amount of "transhumanism" for me, humans that are genetically modified to live on other planets and in zero-G.

I agree that percentile skill systems are old school. But there's some proto-3E DNA in there; what would later become class and cross-class skills. Could be just a coincidence. I don't know if the XXV design affected the early 3E design.

I've always been fond of XXVc.  I've got a bit of a cross between it and Mechanoid Invasion in a recent game design.  I started with an sf game to do a Warhammer 40000 like universe where most human worlds restrict themselves to WWII technology for fear of an alien race, but wound up doing a fantasy version that got more finished sooner.  Me and my big unfinished projects.

In it, you get 10 career skills, each of which gets an attribute base score +10 for being skilled and +5 per level.  That way you just pick your skills rather than distributing points.

I thought about using the multipliers from XXVc but since it's supposed to be a dead simple system and the multipliers tend to break the scale I went with bonuses and penalties.

Quote from: Aglondir;1093614Does RQ have the split between Career and General, though?

Sort of yes, and sort of no. For RQ/CoC/Pendragon there are backgrounds or previous experience that determine what skills the character starts out with and those typically do have a career/general sort of split so sort of yes. But (with very rare exceptions) there isn't a restriction on improving a skill after play starts based on experience or training (assuming a willing teacher can be found), so sort of no.

The difficulty multipliers are much like 007 Ease Factors, but also like some versions of the RQ family of systems.

After some thought... I don't think it's going to work for me. The skill ratings are too low:

Hide in Shadows for a Rogue, level 1

Att rating: 15% (not unreasonable)
Skill rating: 15% (max)
Class bonus: 10%

Total: 40%

Even for first level, I want the PC's to have > 50% chance with their career skills.

Quote from: Aglondir;1093611XXV was published in 1990. Does that count as old school?

Does it have hit/health points?
How do you die?
Is there XP/Leveling?
How are combat rounds treated?

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1093882Does it have hit/health points?
How do you die?
Is there XP/Leveling?
How are combat rounds treated?

1. Yes.  d6, d8, d10 hit dice
2. At 0 HP
3. Yes, each class has its own table
4. One-minute long

Buck Rogers is a really underrated system and game. I've run it at conventions a couple times, and I find it very intuitive, rich, and flexible.

Quote from: Aglondir;1093857After some thought... I don't think it's going to work for me. The skill ratings are too low:

Then bump it up 10% or more. No reason to toss out the game just for that.