The Business: A Palladium That Survives Through The 21st Century (Part 6)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

Time to talk Skills.

No, that's not at all how things work. First, a goofy truth and then the drier explanation.

And In Ludological Terms

Let me put into something a game designer can use.

All Skills can be broken into two types: Can Do Untrained, Cannot Do Untrained.

All Skills can be broken into three grades: Can Do It (Familiarity), Can Get It Right (Proficiency), Can't Get It Wrong (Mastery).

All Skills can be broken into subsets, allowing for Specialization. Two top-tier marksmen are going to differ on fine lines of distinction like this; it's not hard to account for it, keep it simple to use, and still have the intended impact on play.

Learning a Skill is easier or harder depending on if you can do it untrained or not. You are not taking up a Piper Cub untrained. You have no clue as to what to do or how to do it, especially if you're trying to Not Die. (Don't worry, I won't either for the same reasons.) I can sing, but I can't do well at it because I am not trained. Same goes for acting; training in the craft has massive benefits in assuming a persona and putting on a convincing performance.

What does this mean? Palladium has it all wrong.

Skills are to be written like in Traveller: (Skill)-(X). Each Skill listing will what a player can do at each level of proficiency; "Can Do Untrained" is the "Skill-0" equivalent. Once you get to the upper ranks, further development is along lines of Specialization and this will be required; someone who's mastered flying an F-22 still requires a lot of time getting up to speed on an F-35. (Just ask all those Ukranian MIG pilots retraining to fly F-16s.)

Yes, there is a transferable element in play when moving from Very Familiar Thing to Adjacent Thing; someone that mastered the Winchester 1873 will pick up the 1895 over a weekend of practice, and from there can transfer over to the 1903 Springfield within a week and master it within a month.

All of this means that learning, refining, and upgrading Skills is a matter of spending time in training. It does not suddenly come upon you like a plot contrivance in a Mary Sue fanfic.

This requires Fictional Bullshit Tech To Do. It's not How Things Work.

Which means that, like movement, Timekeeping is required.

Yes, even in a Class/Level game like what Palladium publishes. AD&D1e, played properly, demands mandatory downtime when Leveling Up; this is Training Time, and it is how your man gets his improved skills and abilities within the abstraction framework that AD&D1e uses, but a week or so later and he's back for action. Traveller flat-out takes your man out of play for four years because you go back to school. We can lean, on the whole, towards the former end for most things.

Most, but not all. The high-tech skills, the complex skills, and related acitivities (e.g. build a new robot design from blueprints) will take a lot longer.

Consequences

Stand-alone percentile baselines and bonuses are OUT. Every Skill has Minimum Scores needed to pick it up at all (and thus to use it; yes, your man can get deskilled if he gets jacked up- and yes, speaking from experience). Skill checks, when they are required, will use 1d20+Modifiers vs. Target Number. Your man, like MCU Dr. Strange, can end up with part of a skillset permanently cut off due to injury or other disability. (MCU Strange can't do surgery anymore but he can still teach, assist, and advise.)

Skill checks are specified to be made if, and only if, the results are uncertain AND there is stress involved at the point of decision. Messing around on a simulator? No need for a Piloting check.

Borrowing a concept from R. Tal's Interlock system, your man's innate ability to perform under pressure is influenced by his mental state; in Interlock this is COOL and in Palladium this is Mental Endurance. Having plenty of it means that you are unlikely to choke when it matters. (You hear that, Minnesota Vikings?) As this is also influenced by one's experience, this is a score that goes up with level (in Level systems).and factors greatly in matters of high pressure. Loose your cool, and you loose your life.

The "98%" Rule is OUT as being contrary to How Things Work IRL (and thus required for verisimilitude), for the same reason that I tossed Auto-Fail/Succeed on Natural 1/20. Your Skill Checks can go past 100% ("Can't Get It Wrong") and below 1% ("Can't Do it").

And since we're at the Experience topic now, that's tomorrow.