Tag: skills

I group XWN skills into three general tiers. Skill value changes depending on the game. For example, Fix is generally a very broad, useful skill in Stars, but its equivalent Craft from Worlds is less necessary. Something like Heal might seem useful, but is immediately outclassed if anyone has any magical healing, except in Stars where you need it to apply various medicines. Settings, playstyles, GM tendencies, and a host of other factors, can all make these skills change importance.

Tier 1: Profession Skills

Administer, Know, Perform, Pray, Trade, Work

These skills tend to be among the rarest used in actual play. While they are important for a character’s day-to-day life, as they usually represent some sort of job, they’re not often exciting for adventuring. Some classes might use these skills for Effort, and they might feel important for a character’s background, but they tend to be rather low value in general.

Tier 2: Concept Skills

Connect, Craft, Exert, Lead, Heal, Pilot, Sneak, Survive, Talk, Wrangle

The majority of skills live here. Depending on a lot of different things, they may move up or down a category, but in general, these are skills that entire character concepts can be based on. If a player is investing a lot in one of these skills, they should probably have some challenges that use them. Likewise, it can be extremely frustrating for a group if one of these skills is absolutely needed but no one bothered to invest in it.

Tier 3: Essential Skills

Blast, Melee, Notice, Shoot

While you don’t need every combat skill, you likely need at least a minor investment in a combat skill. While technically possible to get by with Swarm Attacks and quirky behavior, most players will want to be able to hit things. And Notice is just generally useful. It is maybe the only skill useful in every classic “pillar” of gameplay (combat, exploration, social). Which asks the question if it is too useful, and should be split up somehow. But I’m trying to keep scope creep out of this project, and rebalancing the entire XWN core is outside what I’m aiming for.

Next, I’ll try to explain Backgrounds, and why I’m not a huge fan of them as presented.

In XWN games, the skill list is one of the most important parts. It sets the vibes for the entire game. With only about 25-30 base skills available, and characters having limited skill points to spend, what those skills are and what they cover matter a lot.

When debating what skills to have in a Western Without Numbers game, there were a few things I wanted to do for sure. The most important was a skill for gun, explosives, and general gunpowder shenanigans. Most XWN games have the Shoot skill, which covers everything from guns to bows to cannons to Death Star lasers. This mostly works in those games because the exceptions to the norm are not very common.

If you’re playing fantasy, most of your Shoot weapons are bows, crossbows, and the like. On the rare chance you find some sort of sci-fi laser gun, it’s not worth having a skill solely for that. Likewise in a science fiction game, most Shoot will be done with guns, and you just kind of handwave it if you want to shoot a bow and arrow for some reason.

As originally designed, my Frontier game was meant to be able to run games in the 18th and 19th centuries. So while guns were on the rise and bows were on the way out, there was more mix than usual. Then when we get to later in the 1800’s and we have cannons and dynamite and things of that nature, the Shoot skill just seems to cover too much for my liking.

Enter the Blast skill. Blast covers all gunpowder-related activities. Both Blast and Shoot can be used for firing guns, but Blast is exclusive for explosives and artillery. This allows a lot of character concepts to be able to use guns, a core component in a Western, while not allowing someone to be equally as skilled with a bow as they are with a gatling gun.

The other new skill is Create. Weird Science is a common fantasy western trope, but I’ve gone back and forth on how to include it. When settling on running a Deadlands campaign, it felt necessary for it to be there as a main option, though nothing except the Mad Scientist Edge gives it for free. But still, if a character wants to be good at using “New Science” devices, the skill is there to invest in.

Finally, the last major skill change is folding Punch into the Melee skill. Blast creates another combat skill, and Punch has always felt a little redundant anyways. There are reasonable concerns about combining the skills, mostly dealing with grappling, but in this game about guns and magic, I don’t think it will come up enough to have a skill tax.

Next, I’ll try to explain my overly convoluted way to evaluate how useful skills are.