One of the things I talked about in my previous post was desire to condense the attributes and skills system of the WOD down to a more manageable form; whilst thinking about this i’ve been looking at the Fate Core skill list:
- Athletics
- Burglary
- Contacts
- Crafts
- Deceive
- Drive
- Empathy
- Fight
- Investigate
- Lore
- Notice
- Physique
- Provoke
- Rapport
- Resources
- Shoot
- Stealth
- Will
I think that this is a very neat list that covers an awful lot of the stuff that people commonly do in RPGs and it’s designed to work well in a number of different settings but i’m not sure if i’ll use it as is for my WOD conversion since I want to keep the feel of the game rather than write a Fate hack.
WOD has always had that whole attributes + skills thing going for it and I want to condense down the attributes as well; I considered using the Power, Finesse and Resistance groupings from NWOD, but to my mind they aren’t particularly evocative of what attributes they cover so i’ve decided to fall back on a more simple grouping cribbed from the old Minds Eye Theatre live-action WOD games:
- Physical
- Mental
- Social
Because I want it to be obvious which skills generally go with what attributes i’m planning to group the skills under their respective attributes (something that NWOD actually does already) – I want there to be a roughly equal number of skills for each attribute.
Below is the list of skills from Vampire: the Requiem along with my notes and alteratons:
Physical skills
- Athletics – the skill can be kept as is.
Brawl– this will be amalgamated into a single fighting skill.- Drive – this skill can be kept as is.
Firearms– this will be amalgamated into a single fighting skill.- Larceny – this skill can be kept as is.
Stealth– the areas this covers can be covered by Larceny.Survival– not keen on keeping this skill but unsure what to replace it with.Weaponry– this will be amalgamated into a single fighting skill.
Mental skills
- Academics – this skill can be kept as is and can cover a wide range of areas, representing more book-learned knowledge.
- Crafts – this skill can be kept as is, representing more hands-on knowledge; I may look at renaming it, I think this would neatly cover the previous survival skill as well.
Computer– this skill can be got rid of and what it covers folded into academics.- Investigation – this skill can be kept as is.
Medicine– the skill can also be folded into academics.- Occult – the occult is an important part of the WOD so i’ll keep this.
Politics– the skill can also be folded into academics.Science– the skill can also be folded into academics.
Social skills
Animal Ken– I will get rid of this, perhaps it can be covered by backgrounds or folded into the new crafts ability.- Empathy – I might keep this since it represents acquiring knowledge about people based on understanding them, rather than actual interaction.
Expression– I plan to get rid of this.- Intimidation – I want to keep this since, along with socialise it represent the two opposite ends of socialising.
Persuasion– I plan to get rid of this.- Socialise – I want to keep this as is.
Streetwise– I plan to get rid of this.Subterfuge– I plan to get rid of this.
So our finished skill list (after tweaking) looks like this:
Physical skills
- Athletics
- Drive
- Fighting
- Larceny
Mental skills
- Academic Learning
- Hearth Wisdom (renamed crafts)
- Investigation
- Occult Knowledge
Social skills
- Empathy
- Intimidation
- Socialise
The list is looking pretty good for a work in progress with almost all the skills that we would need; I may take a leaf out of Fate‘s book and attempt to convert some of the things that had previously been covered as background (resources, haven, etc) into skills that can be rolled rather than static ratings that give you a flat bonus, but i’ll cover that in future posts.
For now i’m pretty happy with the cut-down list, any comments are of course welcome.