Noodling/Skill Checks

This is sort of an GM kata or something - first I'm going to generate a bunch of nano-scenarios requiring a skill check, then I'll figure out what skill gets tested, and then what the effects of a failure, partial, full, and extra success are. In theory there will be some heuristics that emerge for picking these.

Parameters

This is the usual swashbuckling type setting.

Skills we're using: Academics, Athletics, Brawn, Fingersmithery, Reflexes, ResolveFocus, Science, Stealth, Talk Up, Talk Down, Command, Rapport, Empathy.

Scenarios

Marco climbs the rigging, grabs a rope, and swings onto the nearby ship

• Skill: Athletics
• Failure: Somebody shoots the rope (or the rope, weakened by earlier stuff, breaks), and Marco falls into the water between the two ships.
• Partial: Marco swings over to the other ship but stumbles on landing and is prone.
• Full: Marco swings over to the other ship and lands on his feet.
• Extra: Marco swings over to the other ship, knocking one of the enemy off the ship in the process. (Arguably this is a "fake" bonus, if there are an infinite number of enemies, but if the plan was always to give him a fight on landing, it could be an easier fight)

Sophia jumps out a window, lands on a horse hanging out there, and rides off

• Skill: Athletics
• Failure: Sophia jumps out the window, lands on the horse, and is promptly grabbed by some guards (needs work)but the horse spooks and dumps her, right in front of some guards
• Partial: Sophia jumps out the window etc, but her sword snags on the window sill and is left behind
• Full: Sophia jumps out the window, lands on the horse, and rides off, with some guards in hot pursuit
• Extra: As before, but she gets some rollover bonus for the chase

Marco is accosted by a guard at a party while holding a glass of wine; he throws it at his opponent's face, blinding her

• Skill: Stealth (I think? It seems like this is more about the surprise of producing something essentially hidden and attacking someone who doesn't expect to be attacked than accuracy in aiming)
• Failure: Marco throws the wine, blinds the guard, etc, then turns around to see a second guard (needs work) - the blinded guard kicks out automatically and hooks his ankle, sending him crashing to the ground
• Partial: Marco throws the wine, and the guard is blinded briefly (one round, or one attack or whatever)
• Full: Marco throws the wine, and the guard is blinded for the duration of combat
• Extra: Marco throws the wine, blinds the guard, and then she's distracted and he takes her out without requiring another roll (assuming this is a minor character - if not, maybe he gets a free attack?)

Sophia cuts the rope on a chandelier, sending it crashing down on someone's head

• Skill: Reflexes (I think this is more about precise timing than anything else)
• Failure: The chandelier crashes down, misses the person, and starts a big fire
• Partial: The chandelier crashes down, providing an obstacle but missing the person
• Full: The chandelier crashes down, hitting the person sidewise (but I guess not killing them unless they're minor)
• Extra: The chandelier crashes down, hitting the person and trapping them for a bit

Marco composes a poem on the spot to impress a lady he's just met in the garden to get an invite to her party

• Skill: Talk Up (since this is basically flattery, and this is a "noble" situation)Rapport
• Failure: Another lady emerges from the bushes, thinking he was talking to her, and swoons all over him.
• Partial: The poem doesn't woo her, but she thinks Marco will be a perfect date for her cousin - he'll be expected to stay by her side all party, of course
• Full: She digs the poem and invites him to come
• Extra: She really digs the poem and offers him some useful tips about the party

Sophia intercepts a love letter containing a secret message and decodes it to identify the spy at court

• Skill: Academics
• Failure: She makes a bad deduction from her partial decode and tips off the spy (needs work) (this is inelegant but I think it's the best you can get here - clearly the right failure for this is "instead of finding out information about X, X finds out information about you", it's just a question of working out how to make that happen fictionally. That said, it's also possible the failure should be "you take so long decoding it that the thing you're trying to prevent happening happens", depending on the larger context. You can sort of imagine a failure mode that's like "you decode the letter, and it says "this is the last message using this code, meet me (yesterday) at 3pm to discuss a new code"", with the implication that the failure is now you can't get any more messages this way, but that is kind of a crappy failure in the sense that it just dead-ends this line of investigation without giving any more information (unless it's possible for the player to investigate the 3pm meeting, then you might have something)
• Partial: By the time she has it decoded, the spy will have realized it got intercepted; she does identify him though
• Full: She decodes the message in time to send it on again, so the spy shouldn't know who she is
• Extra: She decodes the message in time to modify it and send it on again, so she can change stuff a bit

Marco rallies a group of villagers to get them to storm the church where the bad guy is holed up

• Skill: Talk Down, since it's about leadership (needs work)Command
• Failure: The villagers get freaked out Marco is going to make things worse and lock him in the basement.
• Partial: The villagers go along with Marco, but insist he go at the front, and if he stumbles, they'll leave.
• Full: The villagers grab torches and go for the church.
• Extra: One of the villagers is inspired to pull out some crazy homemade siege weapon they made last year for the village games and bring that along.

Sophia judges a duel where she thinks one of the people might cheat, and wants to ensure the duel is fair

• Skill: Reflexes (if noticing the tiny movement is the most important thing), ResolveFocus (if staying alert through the whole duel is the most important thing), Fingersmithery (if figuring out the tiny movement is the most important thing), Stealth (if detecting a hidden thing is the most important thing) (needs work) (Fingersmithery and Stealth are maybe useful for after-the-fact forensics, but not for the immediate thing)
• Failure: She calls a foul on something that, on inspection, is fine (thinks the blade is poisoned when it isn't or something); her reputation takes a hit and the duel dissolves into a feud (needs work) She gets distracted by someone in the crowd, and when she looks back, one of the duelists is on the ground, and some people are calling it unfair.
• Partial: Somebody wins the duel and then commits a violation after it's wonShe notices a cheat but the duel proceeds before she can stop it, and then the cheater wins; she has to decide whether to call it (needs work)
• Full: She calls out a cheat, the duel proceeds fairly
• Extra: She catches someone's eye and dissuades them from cheating in a way that doesn't hurt their rep, which pleases their patron

Marco gets involved in a high-stakes card game to win back a family heirloom his nephew lost

• Skill: Academics if he's playing fair, Fingersmithery if he's cheating
• Failure: He doesn't win the heirloom back, and has to give someone an IOU besides
• Partial: He loses his horse but does win the heirloom
• Full: He wins the heirloom back as planned
• Extra: He wins the heirloom back, and an IOU from somebody besides

Sophia is looking to find a smuggler who may have been involved in some art heist

• Skill: Talk Down, I guess, since it involves talking to criminalsEmpathy
• Failure: The smuggler is tipped off and gets the jump on her
• Partial: She finds the smuggler, but he's gone to ground somewhere dangerous
• Full: She finds the smuggler at home
• Extra: She finds the smuggler, and it turns out he owes her a favor

Marco duels a pirate on a gargoyle-studded rooftop

• Skill: Reflexes (the main thing is not falling off)
• Failure: Marco takes a tumble and is dangling from a gargoyle
• Partial: Marco and the pirate both end up on the gargoyle
• Full: If the pirate is minor, she falls with a scream; if she's major, she ends up on the gargoyle
• Extra: If the pirate is minor, she falls silently; if she's major, she falls (but is maybe not dead)

Sophia tries to start a rumor about another courtier that can't be traced back to her

• Skill: Talk Up (gossip is a high-class thing) (needs work)Empathy
• Failure: Sophia ends up the butt of a rumor instead
• Partial: The rumor starts, but the rival is able to trace it back
• Full: The rumor starts, and it can't be traced back
• Extra: The rumor starts, and then it snowballs

Marco shoots somebody across the deck of a pirate ship while the ship is on fire

• Skill: ResolveFocus (it seems like this is mostly about sort of staying doggedly on target)
• Failure: Marco misses as the deck collapses under him
• Partial: Marco hits, but then notices his cloak's on fire
• Full: Marco shoots the guy
• Extra: Marco shoots the guy more

Sophia, in the crow's nest at night, keeps an eye out for enemy ships

• Skill: ResolveFocus (the ships aren't hiding as such, you just need to stay focused)
• Failure: Sophia doesn't notice the ship until it's firing at them
• Partial: Sophia sees the ship, but not until it's in a bad position relative to her
• Full: Sophia sees the ship in time to react
• Extra: Sophia sees the ship early, and a small island that could be used for maneuvering or hiding or whatever

Marco incites two duelists to fight over him to discredit them in front of the king

• Skill: Talk Down (this is inciting) or Talk Up (flirting) (needs work)Rapport
• Failure: He says the wrong thing and ends up getting called out himself by one of the duelists
• Partial: They do start the duel, but the king doesn't see it and only hears a rumor
• Full: They start the fight in front of the king and get a reprimand
• Extra: They start the fight and one is badly hurt; the other gets a serious reprimand

Sophia tries to help out the badly-wounded survivor of a duel

• Skill: Academics, or maybe Science since it's "applied"
• Failure: She can't stop the bleeding, he dies (or is unconscious or whatever)
• Partial: She stops the bleeding, but it uses up her last thing of herbs or whatever and can't help anyone else until she gets more
• Full: She patches him up
• Extra: She patches him up, enough for him to get up and act a bit if needed

Marco drives a wagon down a street and through a (closed) city gate

• Skill: Brawn (arguably, but it seems like you're sort of fighting for control of the wagon as it goes)
• Failure: Big smash-up at the gate, and Marco is trapped in the wreckage
• Partial: Marco is thrown free at the last minute; the wagon smashes the gate but now the area's swarming with guards
• Full: Marco smashes through the gate, huzzah
• Extra: Marco smashes through the gate, and the wagon is still patched together enough to be used to flee in

Sophia tries to out-drink a sailor to get him out of the way

• Skill: Brawn (could be ResolveFocus, but this seems mostly about physical capacity than willpower)
• Failure: Sophia's out herself
• Partial: Sophia gets the sailor drunk finally, but she is also pretty drunk herself
• Full: Sophia gets the sailor drunk and she shrugs off most of the liquor
• Extra: Sophia gets the sailor drunk, and in the process he lets something important slip

Marco and his companion set off a blade trap; Marco tries to push his companion out of the way

• Skill: Reflexes (or I suppose Brawn if the most important thing is the speed of pushing)
• Failure: Both Marco and companion get hit normally
• Partial: Marco and companion each take half
• Full: Marco takes the damage, companion takes none
• Extra: Marco takes reduced damage, companion takes none

Sophia and her companion hold up a merchant in an alley

• Skill: Talk Down (this is basically intimidate)Command
• Failure: The merchant's shouting attracts a guard
• Partial: The merchant hands over the stuff, and then the guard arrives
• Full: The merchant forks over the stuff
• Extra: The merchant faints, Sophia can rifle his pockets freely

Marco, in disguise as a guard, tries to bluff his way past some other guards

• Skill: Talk Down (if he's intimidating them) or Talk Up (flattering) (needs work)Command (could be Rapport depending on his approach)
• Failure: Marco says the wrong thing and blows his disguise
• Partial: Marco talks his way past, but another guard is coming with him as an escort
• Full: Marco talks his way past, but they'll file a report on it
• Extra: Marco talks his way past, and convinces them not to let anyone else know

Sophia pushes a big boulder down at a rider in the valley below

• Skill: Brawn
• Failure: The boulder starts a landslide that degrades the dirt under Sophia's feet, and she tumbles down the slope herself
• Partial: The boulder falls down, blocking the path forward for the rider but he can still change course and does, turning back
• Full: The boulder falls down, spraying the rider with debris and slowing his course
• Extra: The boulder falls down, unseating the rider (and the horse runs off)

Marco tries to lift a key from the pocket of a nearby noble

• Skill: Fingersmithery
• Failure: Somebody else sees Marco lift the key, and says "I'll take that."
• Partial: Marco pulls the key out, but then notices that part of his costume has become hopelessly entangled with the noble's
• Full: Marco pulls the key out silently
• Extra: Marco pulls the key out, and there's a letter in there as well

Analysis

Use Frequency

• Academics: ***
• Athletics: **
• Brawn: ***
• Fingersmithery: ***
• Reflexes: ****
• ResolveFocus: ***
• Science: *
• Stealth: **
• Talk Up: ***
• Talk Down: *****
• Command: ***
• Rapport: ***
• Empathy: **

Science is behind the others, and should perhaps be dropped. Athletics is low but it may be lower here than it would be practice - it seems like there are a lot of situations that use it. Resolve might be clearer as Focus (wrt distinguishing what falls under it). Talk Up/Down are fairly comparable, so in that sense the breakdown is good, but it seems confusing to decide what falls under what.

Skill Coverage

General area of ownership for each skill, and iconic character who is good at that skill and bad at most others:

• Academics: Examples here cover cryptography, statistics, medicine - in general any formally-studied subject, especially more theoretical than practical. Iconic character: absent-minded professor.
• Athletics: Climbing, swinging, jumping, and riding. Full-body physical action that requires both dexterity and strength. Iconic character: acrobat.
• Brawn: Moving, pushing, resisting alcohol. Stuff involving raw physical strength. Iconic character: burly strongman.
• Fingersmithery: Picking pockets, cheating at cards, small-device manipulation. Manual dexterity and general hand-cleverness (picking locks, juggling, knot-tying, etc). Iconic character: wheelchair-bound cutpurse.
• Reflexes: Getting the timing right, reacting fast, keeping your balance. Iconic character: gunslinger (maybe?)
• ResolveFocus: Staying focused, staying with a thing until the right time. Also covers general willpower. Iconic character: dogged hunter.
• Stealth: Hiding things, finding hidden things. Fooling people (if the fooling is done by keeping things hidden). Iconic character: sharp-eyed ninja.
• Talk Up: Flattery, rumor-mongering, flirting. Interacting with people in a friendly way. Iconic character: smooth-talker socialite.
• Talk Down: Finding people, intimidating people, inciting people. Interacting with people in an unfriendly way. Iconic character: scary mafia don.
• Command: Rallying, threatening. Making people do what you want due to being in a position to give them orders (actually or by threat). Iconic character: mafia don.
• Rapport: Wooing, taunting. Making people do what you want by charm, flattery, or insult. Iconic character: silver-tongued courtier.
• Empathy: Starting rumors, finding the right person to talk to. Understanding motivations, social situations, etc, and having an ear to the ground. Iconic character: gossipy Miss Marple.

Communication Skills Zoom-In

I think two or three is the right number of social skills to support, but I'm not sure Talk Up and Talk Down are the right choices - I don't know if the division of responsibility is correct between them, and relatedly I'm not sure it's always clear which one a task falls under. To attempt to sort this out, here is what I think the general set of tasks are that people will want to do (some of these are covered by examples, some not):

• Convince a guard to let you past (ie, get a low-level functionary to break rules in your favor)
• Bluff a guard that you have the right to be let past (ie, convince the functionary that you're more important than you are)
• Convince a leader to support your plan
• Scare a prisoner into talking
• Taunt somebody into taking a swing at you at the wrong time
• Woo a pretty member of the appropriate gender
• Find out information about somebody (without it getting back to them that you're asking about them)
• Convince somebody that you're somebody unimportant (that you're some stork dude and not Robin Hood or whatever)
• Convince some people that you're some important noble and they should buy you dinner
• Start a rumor about somebody
• Pick up rumors about somebody
• Figure out who to go to for X
• Figure out what the power structure is in a place
• Figure out what someone wants, or what they're afraid of
• Rally some troops with an inspirational speech
• Flatter a lord
• Cut someone down to size with a nasty joke
• Beg for money

Possible splits:

• friendly/unfriendly
• passionate/logical
• individual/group
• break out analysis (what is the situation like here, who do you talk to) from implementation (I am charming/scary!)

Sample characters

Gossipy courtier

• knows how everyone feels about everyone else at court
• knows where to go to start a rumor or do whatever else
• knows who to talk to for tracking down rumors
• good at flattering more important people
• good at insulting/taunting people
• might or might not be good at wooing, in a upper-class kinda way
• not especially good at convincing or intimidating

Mafia don

• knows what's going on in the criminal underworld
• can scare people into doing stuff
• not bad at rallying
• might or might not be good at convincing
• might or might not be good at insulting/taunting
• not good at flirting

Aragon/Athos

• very good at rallying
• good at intimidating
• might or might not be good at convincing
• not good at insulting/taunting
• not good at flirting
• not good at picking up rumors / knowing what's going on politically

Con artist

• good at flattering more important people
• good at fooling people that you're more important than you are
• good at wooing people
• might or might not be good at insulting/taunting
• might or might not be good at convincing
• not good at rallying (I guess)
• not necessarily good at knowing what's going on but often good at sizing things up

New Skills

Ok, new plan is three skills:

• Command: getting people to do something where you're in a position to give them orders (due to position or a threat)
• Rapport: getting people to do something by charm, flattery, or insult
• Empathy: understanding motivations, social situations, etc

These don't really mesh well with the sample characters, to be honest - presumably the courtier has high rapport and empathy, the mafia don and aragorn have high command, and the con artist has high rapport and moderate command and empathy - but they do seem like they cover the tasks in a reasonable way. Command covers a smaller number of situations from the list set than the other two, but in practice it seems like it's still pretty useful, and it's useful for a number of character types.

Outcome Effects

The already-known observation is you often need to know what the intent of performing the task is to decide what the non-standard outcomes' effects should be - "Marco composes a poem on the spot to impress a lady he's just met in the garden" provides for a lot less punchy effects (partial: she's only partially impressed; extra: she's extra impressed) without the "to get an invite to her party" part. It still feels like task resolution and not conflict resolution to me, but it's got some elements of the latter. Beyond that, let's see.

Failures

A bunch of the failures are flagged as needs work. This implies that good failures are hard to do. That said, overall, they generally seem pretty solid that a failure means that the thing you're trying for doesn't happen (the blinding with a thrown glass of wine failure is an exception here, which is maybe why it feels like it needs work; the finding a smuggler failure also essentially lets you find the smuggler, but that feels ok since realistically this is one of those "you have to do this for the plot to proceed" skill checks). Furthermore, the failures seem pretty good about not only does a failure mean you don't accomplish the task, you fail in a way that changes the situation such that you can't retry the task immediately. Sometimes the failure means you can't ever accomplish the task (trying to impress lady to get party invite), and sometimes it means you have to do some other task first and then will either automatically accomplish this task or can re-attempt it (falling in the water when trying to swing from ship to ship probably gets handled by the character having to swim to the ship and then scale the side, at which point they've presumably accomplished their intent of getting to the other ship). I think I'm ok with this level of variance - presumably even if you can't re-attempt a particular task, you can take a step back to accomplish your higher-level intent some other way.

Partials

I used to be really into partials as giving the player a hard choice, but I only did that in one of these. It turns out that sticking with the rule that the most important thing is to have each skill roll cause the situation to change makes it hard to think up choices, since too often one of the choices is to keep the status quo. Like for gambling, the partial result is they get what they want, but they lose something else. An obvious choice here would be "do you want to get the macguffin and lose the other thing, or quit without getting the macguffin", but then the second choice means nothing was actually accomplished by this skill roll (except losing valuable time). You can imagine decent outcomes here - like, the player says "well, I can't win it gambling so I'll have to ambush the guy with the macguffin after leaving the gambling den" but that is putting a lot of weight on the player to think of that, and it seems unfair. (And it seems like it's presuming too much to make the choice "do you win the macguffin and lose the other thing, or ambush the guy?" and they'll be like "hey, I was just rolling gambling skill, not ambush a dude skill"). Anyway, all that said, of the partial results, here are the penalties that make them partial:

• Character gets what they want, but it's not as effective as they wanted
• Character gets what they want, but suffers some other loss or exhausts a resource
• Character gets what they want, but something else comes up they have to deal with
• Character gets part of what they want, but not the other part
• Character doesn't get what they want, but something else happens that is helpful to accomplishing the intent
• Character doesn't get what they want, and the situation changes in a way that isn't helpful or harmful

This seems like a pretty good list! These seem to do a pretty good job of ensuring the situation changes so, again, it's not useful to just retry the action (at least, assuming that whatever the effect was changes the situation substantially enough).

Fulls

These almost all just give the character what they asked for. In a few cases there's a slight penalty (Marco talks his way past the guards -> the guards let him by, but will file a report) but this is basically about future consequences, and really that could happen on any roll. The reason it's made explicit here is to contrast with the partial and extra outcomes, which make more guarantees about certain consequences.

Extras

I don't how much this is normally supposed to be like the normal success only moreso, vs like the normal success plus some other bonus. In practice here are the kinds of extra outcome effects:

• A rollover bonus to a future task likely to come after this one
• The action is even more effective than expected (ie, bigger numbers)
• Character gets an additional optional thing they can do as part of this action
• Character gets a new resource of some kind

These seem pretty good too, but I bet there are a few more options. They might not happen enough to matter, though.