GURPS: Condensing the skill list

[Gensh]

It's big. Like really big. While this is good for something along the lines of realism, it's kind of dead weight for pretty much anything else. I'd like to condense the list enough that my players won't throw things at me, but am somewhat undecided about how to do it. Just getting rid of the never-used ones like paleoanthropology won't cut it, but I'm unsure as to how small a list I can get before skills start to become appreciably better than advantages. Using the wildcard skill rules won't be that helpful either, since the amount of points dropped just to pick up a new skill could have gone into an interesting advantage instead (and likely will anyway).

Anyone have experience with a smaller list?

[houlio]

I think the latest edition has a set of Skills! that are essentially what you're looking for. Guns! for example was just one skill that covered every gun skill in the game, and Science! did likewise for science skills and so on. If these are too general for you, you can always switch slightly more specific sets.

[Gensh]

I think the latest edition has a set of Skills! that are essentially what you're looking for. Guns! for example was just one skill that covered every gun skill in the game, and Science! did likewise for science skills and so on. If these are too general for you, you can always switch slightly more specific sets.

Yeah, those are the wildcard skills. The problem is that when it comes down to playing 24 points for a Diplomacy! skill or playing 20 points for Diplomatic Immunity, full stop, I think most players would get the latter. So I guess I'm wondering how many I should stick in a bundle and how much it should cost. I'm thinking cutting the number to be comparable with a d20 or ST game and giving it a price tag of 8 points or so would do it. Maybe. Haha, I'm completely BSing.

[Ts_]

Wildcard skills are expensive unless they cover pretty much everything you want. The wildcard skills from Dungeon Fantasy have just 1 wildcard skill per class, for example "Knight!" which includes all knightly weapons, riding and leadership stuff. Sure it costs a lot (about the same as 1 IQ or DX level), but it's a useful mix of IQ- and DX-based skills.

I don't think that there are many character concepts that would make good use of 2 wild-card skills, because then it's really better to just buy attributes. (Unless the GM limits buying of attributes somehow.)

On the other hand ... You're the GM. Give you players more points to spend on skills (and just skills) or reduce the price of the wildcard skills (or make them start at higher levels than Very Hard skills) and they suddenly look really attractive.

A suitable pricing scheme is also given in the form of Talents. Talents are very roughly about 1 point / level / skill and come in sets of 5,10 and 15 skills (or in that vicinity). Part of the bargain is that you also pay for skills that you might not need as much, though. (The 10th weapon skill is only marginally useful compared to the first two ... The other restriction is that normally you can buy Talents only at char gen.) You can always stick with that and it's nice and easy.

From a gut feeling, I like about 30 skills because you can place them all on a page, including the ones you don't have. (I also like Gurps gazillion skills, but I can see the downsides clearly.) I'd suggest to just copy them from the character sheet of some other system. Dnd4 seems to have a list of 17 skills on their character sheets. If you add the needed combat skills for Gurps, you would have a nice number imho.

World of Darkness (whatever version, I've only played in oneshots) also has suitable lists on their character sheets.

Oh, and finally, the easy solution:
Just let your player make up the skills they want ("Pirate", "Sword fighting", "cooking"), then think about how many skills in Gurps it would include (and which, if you want) and then tell them "This costs 15/10/5/1 per level."

Regards
Ts

[fusilier]

You could determine which ones are appropriate for your setting then limit your players to those. Rather than a single master set to apply to all settings.

Or, use the skill set from GURPS Lite (it's free, shouldn't be too hard to find). I don't have a copy of the 4th edition of GURPS Lite at hand, but the 3rd edition has 70 skills. (Although some skills have specializations).

Why, exactly, do you want to limit the skill list? To prevent characters from having skills that will never come up in the game and never be used? To speed character creation?

I play it pretty loose. If a player brings a character to me for approval, and I see a skill that will never be used, I'll point that out, and usually make suggestions about which skills to use instead or where to put the extra points.

[Morty]

The GURPS skill list looks big, sure... until you realize that you won't use more than a handful in any given campaign.

[Gensh]

Why, exactly, do you want to limit the skill list? To prevent characters from having skills that will never come up in the game and never be used? To speed character creation?

Two main reasons. Firstly, there are enough of them that some of the players won't want to look through them at all, so I want to be able to present a short list with no details such that the players can say "I want X, Y, and Z." Secondl, skills have diminishing returns past a certain point. If a player wants their character to develop a skill that will only have limited utility, I don't want them to choose not to because it wasn't worth the points, as with Exalted, for instance. Another concern is that the way I'm doing digital character sheets, I have to have a single list for all characters, and the more skills Skilly McSkilled has, the more cluttered the list gets for everyone else.

[Jay R]

The GURPS skill list looks big, sure... until you realize that you won't use more than a handful in any given campaign.

Exactly. You cut the skill list by letting your players pick from the entire list, and then use the ones they chose.

A large skill list does not affect play of the game. It just let's people design the exact character they want.