Skills

These are the skills I decided to use for Van Gogh. This is kind of a lot of material, so I'm going to put a jump break here. 

Skills

Starting characters typically distribute 15 points among skills. Skills cost 1 point per level equal to or below the linked attribute and 2 points per level over the linked attribute.

Athletics (Might): This skill is used for running, climbing, jumping, swimming, throwing, and other feats of physical prowess. In a feudal Japanese samurai fantasy game, this skill would be used by ninja assassins to climb the walls to infiltrate a castle, to cling to the rafters with their legs, and to throw poisoned daggers down from the rafters into the daimyo they were sent to assassinate. In a wuxia epic, skilled warriors could use Athletics to run straight up walls, to leap from treetop to treetop in a duel on top of a bamboo grove, or to hurl a bowl of hot soup and a pair of chopsticks with deadly accuracy in a sudden ambush in a noodle shop. In a WWI game, a brave soldier would use this skill to carry a wounded comrade on his shoulder in a desperate run across no man’s land to the relative safety of a trench or to lob grenades at the enemy. This skill also incorporates some balance and motor control, but it primarily relies on endurance and strength so it falls under Might. This skill determines how fast or how far a character can move in a round. In some environments, the characters may need to make an Athletics roll each round to remain in the environment. For example, in the treetop duel mentioned above, the characters may have to make an Athletics roll each round to stay in the treetops.

Bluff (Cunning): This skill is used to manipulate others through deception. This can be done through fast-talk, trickery, or just outright lying. Outside of its obvious social uses, this skill can also be used in combat for feints and other deceptive tactics. This skill is possessed by con men, gamblers, and fencers (both the ones who say “It's not worth as much as you think. Look at these scratches here. I'll give you 50 for it. Take it or leave it!” and the ones who say “Have you studied Capofera? Wait! What's that behind you?”).

Concentration (Will): This skill is used to shut out distractions or maintain composure in the face of irritations. It is used to oppose the Taunt skill. It can also be used to eliminate penalties from wounds or environmental factors by shutting out the pain, noise, and distractions. This is normally possessed by both meditative monks and unflappable socialites, although they put the skill to different uses: seeking inner peace for the former and avoiding dropping their monocle in their champagne flute when someone says something utterly gauche for the latter.

Driving (Finesse): This skill is used to control directly maneuvered vehicles that move (ostensibly) in two dimensions: cars, tanks, motorboats, hovercraft with a very low flight ceiling, motorcycles, etc. This skill is used in chases and mounted combat. Simply running errands or commuting in normal traffic does not require any skill.

Fighting (Finesse): This skill is used for hand to hand combat of all types: armed, unarmed, grappling, etc. This skill is opposed by the target’s Defense (which is primarily based on their Fighting skill).

Healing (Cunning): This skill is used to deliver medical aid for the sick and injured. This skill covers both emergency first aid and long term care. The effectiveness of this skill depends on the genre and available resources. In a gritty war story, this skill might be limited to stopping the bleeding long enough for the patient to survive the trip to the field hospital and eliminating injuries would only come slowly with time and rest. In a high fantasy story, this skill could be used to apply an herbal poultice and some soothing words that get a rugged warrior back on his feet with some cool new scars but no serious wounds after a night's rest. In a Saturday morning superheroes cartoon story, the Healing skill might involve pulling someone out of a pile of rubble after a building fell on them, dusting them off, and saying “That was a close one! Be more careful next time!” to completely remove all their so-called “injuries”.

Helm (Cunning): This skill is used to pilot indirectly maneuvered vehicles. A motorboat with controls as simple as a steering wheel and a throttle would be operated by the Driving skill, whereas a sailboat that needs to take account of wind and currents and the set of its sails would be controlled with this skill. In a Caribbean pirate game, this skill would be used for sailing ships. In a sci-fi or space opera setting, it would be used for maneuvering bulky freighters or capital ships while more maneuverable and responsive ships (like fighters) would use Piloting. In a Nazi-smashing, two-fisted, pulp action adventure, this skill would be used to pilot a dirigible.

Intimidation (Will): This skill is used to frighten or coerce others through threats and fear. It can be used by gangsters who extort protection money from a shopkeeper, or by a tribal warrior who uses his fierce battle cry to make his enemies fatally hesitate in battle, or a vigilante who wears a costume to frighten cowardly and superstitious criminals. Like Bluff, this social skill can also be used in combat: against enemies to throw them off balance or to drive allies onward (like a gruff sergeant or commissar who makes his men too afraid to retreat).

Investigation (Cunning): This skill is used to track down and piece together clues and other vital bits of information. This can be done through interviewing witnesses, reading forensics reports, doing research at the library, or using an internet search engine. In a mystery story, it's vital that the detectives find clues (otherwise there is no story) so characters will inevitably find clues when there is a mystery to solve, but this skill will help to find higher quality clues, look in the right places, ask the right questions, and find the meaningful connections between clues as well as recognize red herrings.

Knowledge (Cunning): This skill represents academic training, book learning, rote memorization of facts handed down through oral tradition, or other formal education appropriate to the setting and the character's background. This skill can be bought multiple times with differing specialties, such as Knowledge (History) or Knowledge (Science), although this is usually not required for most purposes unless specified. A more specialized Knowledge skill can be used to produce more useful, specific, or obscure information. For example, an adventurous archaeologist with Knowledge (History) who is exploring an ancient ruin could remember useful and pertinent (but very obscure) historical facts on a basic success but his allies relying on general Knowledge would need two or more successes to know the same information. The more specialized the Knowledge skill is, the more information that can be recalled with a basic success. All the bits of everyman information that characters might have picked up in their lives (which will vary according to the backgrounds of the individual characters) are called Common Knowledge and can be accessed with a simple Cunning attribute roll if the characters lack an appropriate Knowledge skill.

Notice (Cunning): This is a character’s ability to actively notice things of interest. It is used to oppose the Stealth skill of others, to search for hidden things, to catch someone cheating at cards, to read body language, or to hear hidden bandits lying in ambush on the side of the road ahead, etc.

Persuasion (Will): This skill is used to influence the actions and attitudes of others. This can be done through rational arguments, emotional appeals, or other methods. Influencing a character through fear uses the Intimidation skill and influencing a character's actions through anger uses the Taunt skill; the Persuasion skill would be used to appeal to other emotions (love, desire, greed, sense of duty, etc.) or to non-emotional channels such as logic. Some characters may be more susceptible to some approaches and unlikely to be swayed by other methods. Some characters are immune to some forms of persuasion (e.g. trying to seduce a eunuch or making emotional pleas for mercy from a rampaging killbot). This skill may be used in combat to boost allies' morale and rally one's comrades.

Piloting (Finesse): This skill is used to pilot directly maneuvered vehicles that move in three dimensions in air, water, the vacuum of space, or another medium. In a modern setting, this includes helicopters and airplanes. In a sci-fi setting, this would include starfighters and other space craft. In a fantasy setting, this could include the submarine of a gnomish pirate, goblin war kites, or a magical flying carpet. This skill is normally only used in chases and combat because routine flights don't require rolls.

Repair (Cunning): This skill is used to repair, maintain, alter, and otherwise tinker with equipment and machinery. In settings that have non-living characters, such as robots in a sci-fi setting or golems in a fantasy setting, this skill is also used to heal their injuries and treat their “illnesses”.

Shooting (Finesse): This skill is used for most ranged attacks, such as archery, firing a gun, or vomiting forth blasts of lightning with magical powers.

Stealth (Finesse): This skill is used to move quietly and hide from view. This covers the stereotypical ninja-in-black-pajamas ability to vanish into the night, but it also covers getting lost in a crowd, carrying a concealed weapon, cheating at cards by slipping a card into or out of one's sleeve, or surreptitiously slipping a dose of poison or drugs into someone’s drink. In combat, this skill can be used to blindside someone (by maneuvering around them while they are distracted).

Social Circles (Cunning): This skill is used to interact with the various social circles of the character's setting. Like Knowledge, this skill is often taken with different specialties (typically based on social strata or professions). For example, a police detective or mafia enforcer in a modern setting might have Social Circles (Streets) for gathering rumors about the activities in the criminal underworld (or they may have informers who use this skill on their behalf). A smuggler in a space fantasy setting might have Social Circles (Docks) for dealing with longshoremen, nosy customs agents, and the potential rivals and customers in the smuggling and "legitimate cargo" business. A suited corporate stooge in a cyberpunk setting might have Social Circles (Corporate) to represent his familiarity with and connections in the world of business and high finance. A knight in a fantasy campaign might have Social Circles (Court) for understanding the etiquette and political maneuvering that happens among the noble class. Specialties can also be applied to a limited physical area of the campaign such as “The South Side” or “The East End” for a campaign set in one city or “The Denetholian Worlds” for a space opera campaign or “The Grand Duchy of Ayonne” for a medieval fantasy world. As with Knowledge, using Social Circles without an appropriate specialty will typically require an extra success to achieve the same results as one success with a specialty.

Survival (Cunning): This skill is used to find basic necessities like food, water, and shelter in hostile environments common to the setting. In a standard fantasy campaign, this would allow a character to forage for food in the wilderness. In a dystopian sci-fi game set in a massive megalopolis with mile-high skyscrapers that blot out the sun, this skill would allow a character to find a soup kitchen (or other source of free food) and a relatively safe squat to spend the night. In truly hostile environments, like a research station in space or the deep sea, this skill would also be used for emergency procedures like quickly putting on a protective suit before a hull leak results in the character's suffocation/drowning or how to take shelter from a sudden radiation storm.

Taunt (Cunning): This skill is used to anger another character through insults (to their honor, pride, social status, etc.) or just through being irritating (like a matador waving his cape in a bull’s face). The primary use of this skill is to cause an enemy in combat to make a foolish hot-headed mistake that can be exploited or to make a cutting verbal jab at someone in a social situation that provokes them into an ill-considered action. The simplest taunts cause the target to direct their anger at the character who made the taunt; however, with greater difficulty the taunter can direct the anger elsewhere (e.g. “He's laughing at you behind your back. Are you going to take that from the likes of him?”). In combat, this skill can be used to keep allies motivated as well as provoke enemies into doing something stupid.

Wrangling (Cunning): This skill is used to ride horses or other living creatures as well as to drive carts and other vehicles drawn by them. This skill is also used to give orders to trained animals and other non-sapient beings. In a sci-fi setting, this skill would also be used to direct and control primitive artificial intelligences like robotic cargo lifters while a necromancer in a fantasy game might use this skill to direct his zombie minions. In combat, this skill is used for fighting while mounted or to give orders to trained animals or unintelligent minions.

You may have noticed that a lot of skill descriptions use the phrase "in combat". That doesn't mean that I think Van Gogh games will be all combat all the time, but I like combat and action scenes in general. I think that combat and other action scenes like chases can be much more interesting if skills other than Fighting and Shooting can be used for an advantage. I think that characters will have much more flexibility as well as personality if "Fighting 3, Intimidation 2" is just as useful in combat as "Fighting 5". I want to encourage that variety and diversity. Not only is it cheaper to make a character with a variety of lower level skills instead of a few higher level ones, but characters with diverse skills don't lose much effectiveness compared to specialists. 

There are some skills that I intentionally cut out of my initial list. For example, Performance. I thought about it and decided that Performance would just be a particular way of using some of the other skills. If you want to play a musical instrument to demonstrate your mastery of playing technique, you can use Knowledge with a specialty in your instrument (and music critics will tell you that your playing is "proficient, but soulless"). If you want to play an instrument to move an audience to tears, you would use Persuasion with "cry at my moving performance" as a goal. If you want to play an instrument and sing to boost your allies in battle like a D&D bard, you would use Persuasion through music instead of through rhetoric. If you want to sing in a really scary way to frighten your enemies like an Iron Kingdoms fellcaller, you would use Intimidation through singing. If you want to portray an acting performance, you could use Bluff or Persuasion with the goal "treat my role as a real person until the curtain falls". Most other skills are just examples of Knowledge or specific uses of another skill. For things that are just a specific application of one of the broad skills, like a character who is really good at bargaining (Persuasion) or reading people to see how they're really feeling or thinking (Notice), there are Talents to provide the character with a boost in those particular situations.