As I read the redraft of the characters chapter, I notice another reference to low tech worlds being "Skill poor" and suggesting people from them start with less skill points.

I feel a little uncomfortable with this as people in a lot of "primitive" cultures on earth actually have skills modern people don;t have, but that are skills nonetheless.

For example, if we were to ask a modern america what skills were important, he'd likely NOT list "finding safe water" among them. But you can bet a lot of people in primitive cultures in some parts of africa, the sahara, etc, sure have that skill and regard it as important.

Also, people in primitive cultures likely have a lot of skills we don't today, Once upon a time the common man knew how to be his own plumber, carpenter, vet, farmer etc. A lot of people in primitive cultures had skills we just don't need today but that doesn't mean that blacksmithing and glass blowing aren't skills. for that matter, being able to spot a predator like a lion or an anaconda looking to eat you before it spots you is a skill too.

I guess I'm not too comfortable with the idea that people in primitive worlds have less skills than we do. They often had a great many useful, survival oriented skills, or they died early. Even the stereotypical "caveman" knew how to make or pick out a good club, kill, skin and tan an animal hide and start a fire with just sticks and rocks. Do you?

So could we say that primitives had skills, just ones we might not consider relevant today, and let them have full skill points, just at lower tech levels? I mean, it's kind of like selling our ancestors short. They survived with very little technology, so they had to have something, like low tech skills, to get by with. We shouldn't say they were unskilled.

True, but not as much as you and I might think.

A lot of those Skills will actually be +0d level.

Yes, people did a lot more things themselves ... maybe they did a lot of the simple carpentry around the place themselves, but ther were still specialist carpenters. And a lot of the Skills probably wouldn't realle be skills or not ones of any real value except in limited and specific circumstances. Basically they would most likely be requirements to increase work efficiency rather than make the practitioner more skilled.

Take Carpentry - in modern times it is building houses, making cabinets or furniture, with or without power tools, from bought lumber. In earlier times an important part of it would have been Felling Trees And Turning Them Into Worked Lumber ... before you even get to construction of houses or making of furniture. Does that qualufy as a) a useful or b) a seperate Skill?

My take is, no, it doesn't ... or not unless you're actually in the Middle Ages, anyway.

Phil

Then, of course, there are those skills that are, really, either completely useless or mostly useless in reality but which chewed up lots of learning time and effort.

Take, for example, Medicine.

Without a basic, correct, knowledge of anatomy (which wasn't really available until the Renaissance started to do actual dissections to overturn classically accepted anatomy based on comparisons with animals that was, unfortunately, quite wrong - and grossly so) and the germ theory of disease (wanna talk the "four humours" theory and bleed someone to balance their humours?) and the scientific method (to discard magick spells and belief in curses, demons etc. as causative agents - hence covering the mouth when you sneeze ... not to stop disease being spread, but to stop evil demons getting in) any time spent studying the theory side (Physician) of Medicine is, well, wasted. You learns lots of stuff that's actually not only not true but basically worthless, or even actively harmful. So, do we count that as a Skill? Hell yes! But it is a waste of space skill, in effect.

Or take Natural Science - which, in Medieval and Ancient Times is effectively all Scientific knowledge rolled up into one. Lots of it - most of it - wrong, and badly so, by modern standard. Takes just as long to acquire as Science: Chemistry or Science: Biology, but is mostly worthless ... and made more so in the Middle Ages and Renaissance by the fact that you had to have Theology quals to be allowed to argue some of it (that's what got Galileo in hot water, not his theories, but that he used them to make what the Church regarded as Theological arguments for which he did not have quals).

Medieval and Ancient teaching methods also, at an academic and even a trade level, left a lot to be desired as well ... lots of wasted time, poorly conceived, constructed and delivered instruction etc. etc.

So, some skills cover much wider areas than their modern equivalents and or involve learning that is basically worthless but which takes up lots more time than learning something that would be worth something. So, in a sense, yes ... Skill poor in practise.

Phil

My 2p worth - I don't like the skills poor mechanic. Going back to the Caveman analogy some of what aspqz said I would disagree with. Because they have less technology they are relying on their skills more rather than less.
I must admit though when I design characters they end up with a lot of skills which possibly come under culture or some such.

For a std caveman hunter I would be thinking of run, 2 weapons, 1 craft, area knowledge, Professional skill of hunter and maybe a herb lore or medicine

I sort of based the "skill poor" notion on the idea that specialization in a society, and to a great degree, formal training is based on the wealth and spare time available.

If you are a member of the upper crust, then yes you can hire tutors and teachers and have someone be your personal mentor in any skill that is available. If you are part of the other 99% of the population, your opportunities are limited. While sleeping in the back room for your years as a blacksmith's apprentice, you don't have a lot of spare time to zip down to the local library and read their 27 volumes on biology. You'd get a savage beating or worse if the local nobility caught you practicing with a sword. If you joined the army, you would not get a choice from a dozen different MOS's. The local "guild N" would not just tell you their trade secrets because you asked nice.

The things you need for learning skills are time, money, and availability of knowledge, all of which are in shorter supply in most of the past for most of the population.

That was my thinking, anyway. If someone wants to poke some holes in it, be my guest. But if all PC's come from a social strata where it is no problem, then yes I'd agree that you should not use that rule.

And, as I noted, a lot of the "knowledge" is basically worthless ... you want to train in Medicine in a medieval society, well, you go to University (tho not for Surgery, strangely ... that's a trade rather than a profession) and you spend 5-6 years learning things.

No, in a modern University, that would be 20-24 SP, mostly spent on actual useful knowledge that would buy you actual useful levels in Medicine and related skills. To a professional level, by modern standards.

In a medieval university, well, you spend the time acquiring 20-24 SP worth of knowledge ... but most of it is not only worthless, it is downright wrong and probably dangerously so. You have, in effect, acquired a high level of skill in "Worthless Medical Knowledge" at professional level. In game terms, well, you could tell people why they are sick and know how to treat them, but, realistically, you would actually have less skill than a teenager in modern society and be less effective in understanding why they are sick or, indeed, in knowing how to treat them.

In effect, your "Worthless Medical Knowledge" Skill doesn't even really count as "First Aid" (that's what the Surgeon learnt, and even he, at best, as they used to charmingly put it, knows "the hack of limbs" or, maybe, the local Midwife or Wise Man) ... in fact, it probably should subtract dice from your base Attribute!

And a lot of skills are like that.

Take Smithing, for example.

A lot of your time is spent basically building upper body strength because the techniques/technology involved in smelting iron ore is so labour intensive and time consuming. Basically hammering large chunks of mixed slag and iron till the iron is slag free. We're talking dozens of hours of work per pound of finished product.

A modern blacksmith simply doesn't have to waste his time doing that, and so has time (and, therefore, SP) to spend on actual Smithing skills.

So, a Medieval Blacksmith would have high STR and, probably, AGL, but low actual Blacksmith Skill, while a modern Blacksmith would have high Blacksmith Skill and tools to enable them to work as if they had high STR and AGL.

So, in a real sense, while they spend the same time learning, they spend their SP on things that are, in a modern context, no longer needed, rather than on actual trade skills.

And so it goes.

Phil

And because medicine is such an obvious case of "bad knowledge", I put a note in the EABA v2 skill description to reflect this (page 3.19 in the current draft), noting that it can be applicable to other skills as well.

The comment that a blacksmith couldn't learn to use a sword or read a book can be contrasted with the idea that a nobleman probably wouldn't be able to learn blacksmithing. He can afford to have someone teach him, but socially it wouldn't go down well.

Our modern wealthy society allows much more freedom in what we can learn. In the modern poor world it's socially acceptable to learn other skills, but time and money restrict them. So the range of skills available to people increases with wealth and tech level.

Which I suppose is one argument for a class system, or skill packages, etc.

Actually, though I can't recall specific instances offhand, it wasn't unknown for nobles to learn some Smithing skills ... but, IIRC, that was mainly what you would call Early Medieval before things got too ... too ... Frenchified



Given that there wasn't a lot of what you would call "fencing" in the medieval period (armour made it basically pointless) and that most swords were basically somewhat sharpish wedges designed to bludgeon their way through armour as much as anything else, swordplay of the era involved brute muscle power as much as anything else.

No, it wasn't the only element of swordplay, but it was a greater element than for Fencing, or for what SCA types would assume based on their mock combats (breaking ribs and the like being a contraindicated outcome, AFAIUI )

So, a Blacksmith probably could have learnt to be a moderately good swordsman ... but, unless he could afford the armour to go head to head with a full armoured knight, or even a serjeant at arms, he's gonna come off much the worse ... dead, most like.

But not necessarily because he's a worse swordsman.

(NB: One thing most people brought up on DnD influenced FRPs ... and that's almost all FRP's ... think that there were a wide variety of different swords/polearms or what have you available all at the same time. Not true. Swords developed to deal with Mail or Scale or Lamellar armour are quite different in form and function to swords developed to batter their way through iron plate ... and both are quite different to swords designed for use against basically unarmoured foes in fencing style combat ... )

Phil