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I don't think this'll be as long as some of the previous Chapters, since a lot of what we talk about when we talk about Attributes relates to Skills.
When I started out, I kind of thought that as I was reading through, I'd take a few notes on mechanics that interested me from a gameplay perspective and attempt to put those to use in a character before actually making one when I was through with the reading. Nothing really stands out in the Attributes as something I think about in those terms, but that's not really a surprise. I don't especially remember seeing a Skill that I thought, "Oh man, that looks like a fun skill to use!" but there are some that look useful and some that are generally always practical.
Skills are broken down into three sets - Mental, Physical, and Social - just like your Attributes. Physical and Social suffer a -1 dice pool penalty for using them untrained and Mental suffers from a somewhat unfair looking -3 for using it untrained, which means that if you plan on using any of those, you'd really better be using them trained or be sitting on a rediculous stack of bonuses. Even if you only plan on using them once in a while, buy one dot (even with experience points later, since Skills are cheap at 1 rank) so you don't eat the huge penalty. Academics, Occult, Computer, Medicine, and Investigation are all pretty good one-dot investments. Chalk them up to paying attention in high school and having taken a CPR course at one point.
WoD has your standard allotment of obligatory combat skills; Melee, Athletics, Firearms, and Weaponry. Thrown weapons are Athletics, bows are firearms. I like the idea that a character reasonably might have one of these at one dot unless they're an enthusiast. Probably Firearms or Brawl, with Athletics being pretty easy to justify for a lot of character concepts. As an ST, I'd be wary of any character starting with three dots or higher for a lot of games - two dots are shown as being normally competent and weapons add equipment bonuses (we'll talk about that later).
Generally, I like the idea of lower point games using Specialties, equipment, and penalties extensively. I like the idea of any good quality piece of equipment adding a +1 to +3 bonus, explaining how someone with a normal attribute level, a normal level of competence, with good quality equipment can do a reasonable job a majority of the time. The world is full of 4-dice pool characters working with that dice pool for a living; I consider that my baseline for normal competency. OTOH, I've spoken with people and played with people who view equipment bonuses as basically twinking or even cheating, and view me asking about them with some level of frustration, but considering that every skill in the book has a small list of bonuses and penalties to pretty much every roll, I think that we can see that the intent was to be using these for almost every situation. So let's get into some specific skills.
Crafts : I consider this to be something of a problem skill in almost any game it's ever been introduced to. It allows you to create stuff for 'free' or discounted amounts with time. I've heard DMs in D&D and STs in WW games complain about how some characters can basically cheat the economy to just create their own arsenal. Not just that, but it's painfully broad and defies playing a game RAW, since it creates an almost obligatory house rule situation. No, you can't use your Crafts skill that you use for painting to repair a car, build a bow, and modify a firearm. It's the same skill listing, but it's not the same skill. You can go the GURPS route and just create a Craft skill for every reasonable (and many ludicrous) situation(s), but that's not the level of granularity that WoD tends to work on. The player and the ST have to hash that out a little bit. That's been the case basically forever.
Drive makes you take a Pilot specialty to use the skill for an aircraft. I tend to let someone with a Craft skill roll one dice for everything (general handyman) and after that, buy a Specialty, and everything else pertains to that. I haven't had to deal with multiple Craft skills in a game yet. I know for Exalted I split it into five.
Drive : There are pretty extensive rules for chases, and an explanation that basic driving with an automatic is pretty much a gimmy. A flaw might actually be No License, that's how basic it is. Kind of like not needing Athletics to walk down the street without hurting yourself. Practically speaking, you might simply give so many bonuses for normal situations that rolling is a needless pain in the ass, since people actually do get into accidents all the time for really dumb reasons.
Survival : There are some pretty finely honed rules for Survival, here. Like, I've never seen anyone use them, but here they are. They're strangely separated from Animal Ken.
Social Skills In General : I know that there are a lot of people who don't like social skills. I've rarely played with anyone who embraced them, and that's frustrating for me because I actually really like them when used appropriately. I make people roll 'em. I also ask people to role-play, but a really good reason or line tends to give bonuses. A lot of times, I just ask for the gist. I think of it a lot like reading a story - there are absolutely times when dialogue for every conversation a protagonist would hold bogs the game the hell down. I've played in so many games where that's the case that it's made me want to tear my hair out, from our one on one session where Katie's character Henry spent 30 minutes trying to find a credible book on ghosts to trying to roll (or pull) a social skill against an NPC during a Cam LARP where I was just told to pull until I failed (no matter how good your skill is, roll it enough and you'll eventually come up short), to the LARP where we literally spent the entire session hashing out the Lex Magic for two weeks running in a Mage campaign.
Sometimes you're just like, "Hey, I want to bullshit the bouncer even though I look like a dangerous hobo. I got 3 Presence and 4 Socialize. It's minus three because of murder-hobodom. Let's see." and be fucking done with it.
That said, and I know it's running a little long since I'm bottling up every Social into one note, the rules for vs. PC and NPC interaction with skills are pretty damned good. Vampires and Mages tend to immediately pull the mind-warping bullshit, and there's usually at least one PC who's got it, but there are actual skills that can accomplish actual results if only you don't resort to spamming mind control at every opportunity.
But if you want to argue that social skills are a crutch for poor role-players (or you just want to talk about skills!) hit me up in the comments below. Next time is Advantages (which I'm kind of excited to talk about) and Chapter 5 is Merits. I might meld them together into one larger post, because that'd wrap up the fiddly bits on the sheet, so we'll see.
So! Are there any skills that pop out at me now that I'm looking at them again? Anything where I see them and think, "I bet it'd be cool to play a character with that skill."? Well, not really. It seems advisable to have a few mental skills under your belt and, idealist or not, it seems like it might be a good idea to at least put a point of skill into brawl, weaponry, or firearms. (Even I've got one or two spread out among them since I used to take martial arts classes, I practiced with bows and rifles at Boy Scout camp, and used to do a lot of boffer shit with SCA friends. A combat monster I'm not, but I'm just pointing out that even if you're not, even the most milquetoast individual can probably find some excuse to pick up a dot or to in the WoD.)
Okay, I've spent enough time here. I've got work later and I have stuff I want to accomplish before I have to go in. I'll probably do this and God-Machine and probably call it quits on WIRs, though. I don't think this is helping any of you in particular and I'm not really big on the format, but I've been trying to finish stuff I start out to do so I'll at least wrap this up properly.
I got to see Pacific Rim last night. It was pretty good!
When I started out, I kind of thought that as I was reading through, I'd take a few notes on mechanics that interested me from a gameplay perspective and attempt to put those to use in a character before actually making one when I was through with the reading. Nothing really stands out in the Attributes as something I think about in those terms, but that's not really a surprise. I don't especially remember seeing a Skill that I thought, "Oh man, that looks like a fun skill to use!" but there are some that look useful and some that are generally always practical.
Skills are broken down into three sets - Mental, Physical, and Social - just like your Attributes. Physical and Social suffer a -1 dice pool penalty for using them untrained and Mental suffers from a somewhat unfair looking -3 for using it untrained, which means that if you plan on using any of those, you'd really better be using them trained or be sitting on a rediculous stack of bonuses. Even if you only plan on using them once in a while, buy one dot (even with experience points later, since Skills are cheap at 1 rank) so you don't eat the huge penalty. Academics, Occult, Computer, Medicine, and Investigation are all pretty good one-dot investments. Chalk them up to paying attention in high school and having taken a CPR course at one point.
WoD has your standard allotment of obligatory combat skills; Melee, Athletics, Firearms, and Weaponry. Thrown weapons are Athletics, bows are firearms. I like the idea that a character reasonably might have one of these at one dot unless they're an enthusiast. Probably Firearms or Brawl, with Athletics being pretty easy to justify for a lot of character concepts. As an ST, I'd be wary of any character starting with three dots or higher for a lot of games - two dots are shown as being normally competent and weapons add equipment bonuses (we'll talk about that later).
Generally, I like the idea of lower point games using Specialties, equipment, and penalties extensively. I like the idea of any good quality piece of equipment adding a +1 to +3 bonus, explaining how someone with a normal attribute level, a normal level of competence, with good quality equipment can do a reasonable job a majority of the time. The world is full of 4-dice pool characters working with that dice pool for a living; I consider that my baseline for normal competency. OTOH, I've spoken with people and played with people who view equipment bonuses as basically twinking or even cheating, and view me asking about them with some level of frustration, but considering that every skill in the book has a small list of bonuses and penalties to pretty much every roll, I think that we can see that the intent was to be using these for almost every situation. So let's get into some specific skills.
Crafts : I consider this to be something of a problem skill in almost any game it's ever been introduced to. It allows you to create stuff for 'free' or discounted amounts with time. I've heard DMs in D&D and STs in WW games complain about how some characters can basically cheat the economy to just create their own arsenal. Not just that, but it's painfully broad and defies playing a game RAW, since it creates an almost obligatory house rule situation. No, you can't use your Crafts skill that you use for painting to repair a car, build a bow, and modify a firearm. It's the same skill listing, but it's not the same skill. You can go the GURPS route and just create a Craft skill for every reasonable (and many ludicrous) situation(s), but that's not the level of granularity that WoD tends to work on. The player and the ST have to hash that out a little bit. That's been the case basically forever.
Drive makes you take a Pilot specialty to use the skill for an aircraft. I tend to let someone with a Craft skill roll one dice for everything (general handyman) and after that, buy a Specialty, and everything else pertains to that. I haven't had to deal with multiple Craft skills in a game yet. I know for Exalted I split it into five.
Drive : There are pretty extensive rules for chases, and an explanation that basic driving with an automatic is pretty much a gimmy. A flaw might actually be No License, that's how basic it is. Kind of like not needing Athletics to walk down the street without hurting yourself. Practically speaking, you might simply give so many bonuses for normal situations that rolling is a needless pain in the ass, since people actually do get into accidents all the time for really dumb reasons.
Survival : There are some pretty finely honed rules for Survival, here. Like, I've never seen anyone use them, but here they are. They're strangely separated from Animal Ken.
Social Skills In General : I know that there are a lot of people who don't like social skills. I've rarely played with anyone who embraced them, and that's frustrating for me because I actually really like them when used appropriately. I make people roll 'em. I also ask people to role-play, but a really good reason or line tends to give bonuses. A lot of times, I just ask for the gist. I think of it a lot like reading a story - there are absolutely times when dialogue for every conversation a protagonist would hold bogs the game the hell down. I've played in so many games where that's the case that it's made me want to tear my hair out, from our one on one session where Katie's character Henry spent 30 minutes trying to find a credible book on ghosts to trying to roll (or pull) a social skill against an NPC during a Cam LARP where I was just told to pull until I failed (no matter how good your skill is, roll it enough and you'll eventually come up short), to the LARP where we literally spent the entire session hashing out the Lex Magic for two weeks running in a Mage campaign.
Sometimes you're just like, "Hey, I want to bullshit the bouncer even though I look like a dangerous hobo. I got 3 Presence and 4 Socialize. It's minus three because of murder-hobodom. Let's see." and be fucking done with it.
That said, and I know it's running a little long since I'm bottling up every Social into one note, the rules for vs. PC and NPC interaction with skills are pretty damned good. Vampires and Mages tend to immediately pull the mind-warping bullshit, and there's usually at least one PC who's got it, but there are actual skills that can accomplish actual results if only you don't resort to spamming mind control at every opportunity.
But if you want to argue that social skills are a crutch for poor role-players (or you just want to talk about skills!) hit me up in the comments below. Next time is Advantages (which I'm kind of excited to talk about) and Chapter 5 is Merits. I might meld them together into one larger post, because that'd wrap up the fiddly bits on the sheet, so we'll see.
So! Are there any skills that pop out at me now that I'm looking at them again? Anything where I see them and think, "I bet it'd be cool to play a character with that skill."? Well, not really. It seems advisable to have a few mental skills under your belt and, idealist or not, it seems like it might be a good idea to at least put a point of skill into brawl, weaponry, or firearms. (Even I've got one or two spread out among them since I used to take martial arts classes, I practiced with bows and rifles at Boy Scout camp, and used to do a lot of boffer shit with SCA friends. A combat monster I'm not, but I'm just pointing out that even if you're not, even the most milquetoast individual can probably find some excuse to pick up a dot or to in the WoD.)
Okay, I've spent enough time here. I've got work later and I have stuff I want to accomplish before I have to go in. I'll probably do this and God-Machine and probably call it quits on WIRs, though. I don't think this is helping any of you in particular and I'm not really big on the format, but I've been trying to finish stuff I start out to do so I'll at least wrap this up properly.
I got to see Pacific Rim last night. It was pretty good!
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Specialties seem like the kind of thing, in Core, that mortals end up with a lot of, along with an eventual wide array of skills, merits, and equipment because they're getting exp and can't spend it on kewl powerz.
In an odd way, we end up with an explanation for the Bat-God almost by accident.