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 SKILLS
Skills weren't always part of RPGs,
but once they were introduced, they became popular. Of course they
did—they made characters more believable, and gave those characters cool
things they could do! I remember an RPG years ago coming
out that had 60 Skills, and a game reviewer referred to this as a
veritable candy store of skills. I had played the game, and there was no
doubt it was more skills than any other game. And I agreed: 60 skills made
characters much more fun. But even 60 wasn't nearly enough to cover all the ideas
in my head.
Lots of Skills
AQ! has over 300
standard Skills, which doesn't include plenty more to be found under
Special Effects—not to mention
those in Astroscape Zero. Others
can be introduced in other supplements, and players and GMs can agree on
creating others. Standard Skills
are organized into Skill Areas, which are further grouped under Skill
Groups. For example, Mental Control (MEN) Skills and Combat Focus (FOC)
Skills are Skill Areas under the Martial Arts Skill Group. Geographical
Familiarity (GEO) Skills and Outdoor & Wilderness (OUT) are Skills Areas
under the Everyday Skill Group. This makes browsing for Skills pertinent
to the character type you're building quick and easy. Skills are based on Category and
Quality Scores, and every Skill has two formulae: one for Quick Characters
and one for Complex Characters. A Complex formula may be INTQUO + 25,
while the Quick version would be Mentality + 25. Easy for either type of
player using the dual-format
character-creation system.
Real Uses
Virtually all Skills have
real uses in games. They aren't just there to inflate the number to 300.
Each one is described in detail. Okay, I might have sneaked a few Skills
that seem silly and extraneous, but I can assure you that most have been
playtested, and all have been reviewed by the core playtest team, who
discussed them and decided whether they were useful.
Rolegamer Democracy -
What's this?
In my gamer polls, there was near-unanimous
agreement that more Skills was better than fewer Skills. But there was
also near-unanimous agreement that Skills had to actually be useful in
game play. Every one of those 300 Skills was specifically gauged as to
whether it had the likelihood of reasonable use. Worldwide playtesters
loved the number of Skills, and that they weren't extraneous
space-fillers.
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