Last week I presented an interaction I had with Jane Williams on the subject of skills in RuneQuest. The main point was the combination of separate skills in a given complex situation. Combat was used for reference but the issue could be about most anything else, say a scientific meeting that usually involves communicative skills and technical skills (at least). Or think about sailing that calls for agility skills, knowledge skills, dexterity skills, command skills, etc. (I’m thinking about solitary sailing but the example opens to an even larger issue, that of the combination of the abilities of different characters in a common goal.) I will keep providing examples related to combat because it is easy to visualize.

I toyed with the idea that to handle these complex situations we can combine two types of character descriptors: Experience fields that model a broad field of life; and narrow skills that model the specific technical ability that may be used in the situation. Each skill may be used in different experience fields. Experience develops through exposure while skills develop through learning, trial and error, and practice.

Let me give a couple of examples that highlight the difference:

First, consider a student in a Shaolin monastery. He is taught kung-fu techniques, thus he is subject to skill learning. But he also has to sweep the training ground, carry water and perform other menial tasks. Even if he does not realise it, his Master considers that this is part of his path to becoming a monk. It is the experience part.

Second example, think about someone that learns how to use the sword in a sword-school through training. Will that person be prepared to fight in the street? On the other hand, consider a punk that learns street fighting the rough way, getting into brawls and gang wars. Does he know how to fight in the training school? The street and the training school are two environments that provide experience (two different types of experience). They also provide specific techniques on how to use weapons; these are skills.

How broad should experience fields be? Should we have an experience field for Fighters, another for Scientists, and so on (thus having experience fields that more or less match the roles I presented earlier in this series of columns)? Or should they be more narrowly defined and we would have something like Mongol warrior, Roman soldier, Japanese samurai? I suppose there is not an answer set in stone to this question. In a sense the decision should be based on the setting but also on gamist considerations (and on to what extent the rules define the setting). Likewise, how narrow should skills be? Once more, the answer is pragmatic more than based on some all encompassing principle of rpg design.

The relationship beween experience and skills is marked at another level. Most skills are related to certain experience fields. A character that learns how to fight within a particular fighting experience field will be able to learn the combat skills connected with that experience field. He will not develop combat skills that belong to a different fighting experience field.

The following rough examples show which fighting experience fields may have which skills: Shaolin fighting monk (martial arts techniques, martial arts weapons); Street fighter (brawling, dagger, 1h and 2h mace, 1h and 2h staff, thrown object, thrown dagger); Courtisan duelist (brawling, wrestling, rapier, dagger, 1h sword, thrown object, thrown dagger, cloak parry, dodge); Soldier (1h and 2h swords, maces, axes, spears, shields and other warring weapons, brawling, pikes and other extra-long weapons, bows and crossbows - long bow in the English brand of soldier); Knight/warrior (1h and 2h swords, maces, axes, spears, shields and other warring weapons, brawling, wrestling, mounted lance, bows and crossbows); Peasant conscript (brawling, 1h and 2h working tools - axes, sickles, etc.); Mongol horseman (brawling, wrestling, 1h sword, dagger, 1h mace, mounted lance, bow, mounted bow).

The Soldier does not know how to use a mounted bow, for instance. What happens when characters from different experience backgrounds fight each other?

There’s a further complication: To a certain extent experience fields may overlap. The Mongol warrior, the European Knight and the Circus horseman, all learn how to ride a horse. If they face each other which should take the lead? I can see only one workable answer to this issue and it is to have well-described experience fields, meaning that the description of the experience field should say what the character can or can’t do, and how well. If one is trying to use a horse for Mongol style skirmishing then the Mongol warrior’s experience is more relevant; yet, the Mongol will be disadvantaged if he tries to participate in a head-on knightly charge.

Still, this only slightly compounds the problem. For a start, it forces the game design to be a lot more specific about the description of experience fields than what might be desirable. And how do we decide which experience field should be more relevant in the concrete situation? When do we decide that the fight will follow the pattern of a Mongol skirmish instead of a Medieval charge?

Let’s go back to our Shaolin monk. Suppose he is facing a European warrior, both without weapons. The European warrior uses his warring experience in European battlefields in combination with his brawling and wrestling skills. The monk uses his experience on the dangerous roads of deep China combined with his kung-fu skills. In situations like these I would tend to consider that the experience fields and the skills are equivalent so they can be used against each other.

Still, there may be situations when one of the sides should be advantaged. Let's go back to the sword duelist and the street punk. If they are fighting a duel and the street punk is trying to follow duel rules, he should fight as per his experience in duels – and in this case the duelist gets the advantage of his experience. On the other hand, if they are fighting in a back alley of XVII century Paris, the relevant experience is the one that covers street-fighting – and then the street punk would be more at ease with the situation.

What if a character has a skill from his experience field and the other does not have a corresponding skill in his experience field? Say, a bunch of peasants armed with 2h staves and 2h slicks is attacked by a formation of soldiers armed with 2h spears. The peasants are able to fight the soldiers with their peasant tools but they don’t have a skill to fight with it. In this case they only fight with their attritutes and their experience.

Well, this more or less defines the way experience fields and skills work. A character can use any skill that is relevant in the situation. If he does not have an approriate skill he does not apply the same. He also uses the experience field that is most appropriate. Which concrete skill and which concrete experience field should be used is something that may only be decided in context.