Subject: Expanding the skill realms
From: Hal Carmer <[email-masked]>

Hello Folks,
  Here is an "experiment" that might be worth looking into...

GURPS GIVENS:

1) All skills are at a default level if a person has no experience in the
skill.  Generally speaking, the defaults would be as follows:

a) easy    (stat)-4
b) average (stat)-5
c) hard    (stat)-6

Mental Very hard seems to be the exception with regards to having a
default.

Proposal:
1/10th of a point is equal to 10 hours of study
1/4 th of a point is equal to 50 hours of study

PROPOSED NEW SKILL EXPERIENCE CHART:

               DIFFICULTY OF SKILL
FINAL 
SKILL
LEVEL           Easy        Average     Hard   Very Hard
----------------------------------------------------------
Stat-5                                  1/10     1/4
Stat-4                        1/10      1/4      1/2
Stat-3         1/10           1/4       1/2       1
Stat-2         1/4            1/2        1        2
Stat-1         1/2             1         2        4
Stat+0          1              2         4        8

At the lower skill levels, the cost for skills is the same for IQ or DX
skills, so I didn't bother to separate them.  So why did I bother
"creating" this chart?  Seems to give a smoother progression for the
character with regards to learning.  Also, a person who is shown a small
amount of information should show some difference over a person who has
been shown nothing.
  Now, a person who has just finished conducting a 10 hour guns
study/shooting program, will have a skill of Dex-3, as compared with the
kid who did nothing save watch TV to get his information (ie default).

  When dealing with editic memory, the ability to double or quadruple
one's knowledged based skills is handily accessable to the 1/4 points in a
skill.  When someone with editic memory attempts to learn a skill with
only a few hours, it takes 12.5 hours for level 1 editic memory to equal
1/4 (after modification due to doubling).  A person with level 2 editic
memory would require only 2.5 hours of instruction/study to equal the 1/4
level of skill.

The reason I bring this up to you (the list) is because a group of us were
discussing old game runs, and one that people remembered fondly was the
"aftermath" campaign, where players had to design analogs of themselves to
represent themselves in the game.  Quite a few remembered that GURPS was
too "course" in it's point representations to do a good job representing
actual skill levels.  Also, gun training could be better modeled with this
set up.  10 hours, along with roughly 300 rounds of ammo, and a player is
now entitled to state that they have a skill of DEX-3, plus any IQ
bonuses.  Thus, an IQ 12, DEX 11 pistolier, with 10 hours training, would
have a modified skill of 10 with a pistol.  After 50 hours, his skill goes
up to 11, and with 100 hours, the skill goes up to 12.  Under the old
method, such training would be reflected with a skill of 9 until the
character was enrolled in training for 100 hours, then it suddenly jumped
up to 12.
  I will be using this for a short time to see how it pans out.  If anyone
else uses this method, let me know after a time to see if it was worth the
hassle or not.  IIRC, didn't the experience point cost for skills chart
get modified in this manner once before to include the 1/2 point in
Physical Hard skills category where in earlier editions, it was not there?

Hal