I have been thinking about character classes and skills lately, and although I prefer to create characters in terms of skills, I must confess that I have been yearning for greater simplicity than is generally associated with skills-heavy games. Although I have a great fondness for the myriad source books of GURPS 3rd edition and earlier, the character write-ups (and often the vehicle write-ups) tend to give me actual headaches, and I can’t even look at the stat blocks of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd through 4th edition without wincing in pain. The Basic Role-Playing games of Chaosium were my introduction to skill-oriented characters, specifically Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, Ringworld, Superworld, and Worlds of Wonder. The system all of these games had in common addressed many of the concerns I had with the role-playing game I spent the most time playing: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition. Namely, they allowed for greater customization of a character’s abilities, and they allowed for combat rules that were easier to visualize and describe. Instead of the minute-long combat round that consisted of a hazy combination of unspecified attacks, feints, parries, dodges, and attempts to find openings in an opponent’s defenses and culminating in a single d20 roll, Basic Role-Playing offered discrete maneuvers, each of which had its own skill roll: the Attack, the Parry, the Riposte, Dodging, Tumbling, Jumping, etc. Instead of nebulous hit points that comprised a character’s health, luck, and heroic status, hit points in Basic Role-Playing were usually directly related to a character’s Constitution and Size. If a character lost hit points in combat, it was a reflection of physical injury, not an abstract state of general disadvantage. It is an example of how rules in role-playing games evolved to accommodate role-playing rather than war-gaming (which I also enjoy).
Given that I prefer skills, they typically have several shortcomings: proliferation and overreliance. Too large a skill list encourages indecisiveness in character creation, and most such games have very large skill lists indeed. This results in character write-ups that are so long that one can have difficulty imagining the character as a whole entity. In play it can lead to delays in the action as players read through their lists of skills to determine what their options are. Skill proliferation, in other words, impairs that which it is intended to promote: a better role-playing experience. The second shortcoming shares this defect. Certain skills are a replacement for actual ingenuity on the player’s part, and many players and GMs will come to rely on skill rolls rather than utilizing the player’s own abilities. Many social skills deprive players of role-playing opportunities that truly enrich the game. How much more interesting is an actual dialogue between a merchant and an adventurer haggling over the price of some merchandise than a player just rolling his Bargain skill? How much more memorable is a soldier’s morale-boosting speech at a critical moment than a player just rolling his Oratory skill? Observational skills also lend themselves to abuse. If a character is actively searching for something and describes the methods used, why shouldn’t the effort and foresight bear fruit if the object of the search is actually there? What is accomplished by denying something to a creative player on the basis of a failed Spot Hidden roll? Why should a player be encouraged to limit his activity to merely declaring his use of a skill rather than describing what his character does? Skill overreliance stifles role-playing.
I prefer skills to classes, but I want skills that promote role-playing. What is the solution? In a way, I think the answer is a compromise, and I don’t mean classes crammed with skills and feats. Rather, I think skills should be thought of as occupations themselves. GURPS and Basic Role-Playing had occupations and professions that consisted of recommended sets of skills, but I think it might be better just to make the occupations the skills. Unlike a character class system, a character may have a varying number of occupations, some professional, some amateur, that represent how he has spent his life. Each occupation will encompass a variety of abilities that may be inferred. Anything else the character may attempt to do can be accomplished by attribute rolls, player description, or default skill rolls according to the GM’s judgement. This leaves a far greater degree of creative thought at the GM’s and player’s disposal. If, under special circumstances, a player character needs to resort to a roll for those abilities that would normally be role-played or otherwise described (in the case of equal odds, for instance), the GM could assign an appropriate attribute roll or occupation/skill roll.
I’ll try this method with some of my current Fudge projects, and if they work well enough I’ll also add it to Optimum Fudge. On the other hand, maybe I should revisit Plain Trait Fudge. The overlap bears closer scrutiny. At any rate, I think both methods preserve the style of role-playing I enjoy without overburdening the game with redundant options. Further testing, however, is in order.