[Design] Skills, specialisations and prerequisites...

[Carl Brown]

Lev:The general principle (if it is sound) is that general
skills lead to specialised examples, so rather than
defaulting to a trait, one defaults to a lower level
(and limited) skill. However, as you've pointed out
for most characters too much specialisation is a pain
- hence the real specialisation only kicks in at
expert and master level. Basic and advanced skills are
pretty broad.

Makes sense?
Karl: Yeh, that makes intuitive sense particularly from someone educated in our system. I've got a Bsc (Hon.) and are working toward a PhD. ask me and a high school leaver with biology something about zebras and we'd have an about even chance but ask about contributions of chromatin in regulating gene expression and I'd be ahead. For those without formal education this might work too. A San would have a specialised version of botany for the Kalahari.
At a meta-level should the game allow characters to have very specialised skills that might never be used. It may be better to have a biology skill and allow characters to have both broad and deep knowledge so that can get some use out of it. Again, if game are to be custom made no problem I curntly have a molecular biologist character specialising in Europan life thats getting a lot of mileage...


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