Skill Sets

The biggest problem with skills lies in deciding which ones your virtual world should have. How many should there be in total? Is 100 skills too many? Too few? From whose point of view—newbies or oldbies?

We should begin by determining what is meant by a “skill.” Most virtual worlds would admit derivatives of crafting—making or repairing things in the virtual world—as qualifying as skills. Some would include weapon skills, and others would also add spells. The disparity is in part due to the different mechanisms by which acquisition works: If you get crafting skills by collecting “skill points” for going up levels but you get weapons skills by buying “training,” the two are distinct. It would be confusing to call them both “skills,” so commonly some other term is used instead (for example, “weapon specializations”).

Ideally, all forms of skills would use the same mechanism. Why should the system by which you learn to make a barrel be any different from the one by which you learn to swing an axe, to brew a potion, or to let rip a fireball? If they are fundamentally different even at abstract levels, that’s fair enough; I wouldn’t necessarily advocate implementing equipment as skills, for example. However, if they’re the same but are implemented differently, perhaps the reasons for that different implementation should be examined.

Spells, for example, are often linked to a character’s level. When you reach level 43, suddenly you gain the ability to cast sidewinder fireballs in addition to regular ones. The spells you could cast at level 42 you can still cast, but with slightly more efficacy. If this approach is good enough for spells, why not use it for crafts? When you reach level 43, suddenly you gain the ability to make mithril horseshoes in addition to regular ones. Alternatively, if you’re using a “skill points” system for gaining new craft and/or weapon skills, why not apply it to spells?

Using the same skill system for crafting, weapon use, spells, and everything else (acrobatics, horse-riding, speaking Elvish) doesn’t mean they can’t be radically different in effect, of course. However, it also doesn’t mean that the problems of deciding what skills to have go away.

Typically, however many different crafting skills, weapon skills, spells, and general-purpose skills a virtual world offers, a handful will be so essential that everyone has them, most will be secondary skills that people have because they had to choose something and another handful will be utterly useless. In a Wild West world, for example, only people who actively like building unusual characters are going to pass on the horse-riding skill.

If a skill is considered by all players to be essential, all characters should be given it anyway. Characters don’t usually have a “walk” skill, because it’s a skill everyone can be assumed to have. As a rule of thumb, if any one skill is adopted by more than 90% of characters ¹, they all ought to get it. Similarly, if a skill is unused it should also be given to everyone (or derived from attributes)—it costs nothing to do so, and it means the remaining skills should be of roughly equal value to players. Of course, it may be that having done all this you find that a new handful of must-have skills emerges. If this happens, either repeat the exercise or split the skills into disjoint sub-skills.

It’s not too difficult to hardwire a universal skill once it’s been identified (assuming you do so before the virtual world leaves beta test). It’s quite tricky to decide what should be skills in the first place, though. Should “horse training” be a skill? Is it different from “dog training,” or are they both examples of “animal training?” Should there be a skill for tree-climbing, or are so few people going to want to do this that it’ll be a waste of time implementing it? Should there be some weighting scheme so that unpopular skills cost less to learn than popular ones ²? Should some skills be more difficult than others anyway—isn’t learning a foreign language comparatively harder than learning to ride a bicycle?

There are, unfortunately, no clear-cut answers. My advice when deciding what skill set to have is to consider what message it sends to players. I’ve seen designs for virtual worlds that have a weapons skill tree five levels deep, yet which had a single “mining” skill that worked as well for iron as it did for diamonds. The message they were sending was, “This virtual world is all about combat.” Similarly, I’ve seen designs that covered the minutiae of everyday life, with skills covering everything from corn-planting to calligraphy to bee-keeping to savoir-faire ³. The message here was, “Nothing is all that important.”

If you want crafting to be a viable career, the skill tree for crafting should be deep enough for people to take it seriously. If you want people to travel a lot, include several skills that make traveling easier. If you think players will want to play bardic characters, include bardic skills. If you don’t want to attract sneaky-thievy characters, don’t have sneaky-thievy skills. Rate each skill for its attractiveness to various player types; if any types are over- or under-represented, adjust accordingly. If you fear spreadsheet abusers, make key skills mutually exclusive (but be aware that this will create a de facto character class system).

Although the number of skills of a particular kind available to characters is one way to send players a message, it’s not alone. In general, skills should be of roughly the same level of abstraction as one other. If in one area they are represented in greater detail than in others, this also can point to an increased sense of importance. Were the “swordplay” skill to be described in terms of how much it increases the damage done, critical hit percentages, weapon recovery time, parrying capability, and resistance to being disarmed, this would give it more significance than a “lumberjack” skill defined solely in terms of how quickly you can fell a tree. Crediting skills with a false sense of importance this way is a particular example of selective depth, a trap that often ensnares the designers of virtual worlds.

As with objects, skills don’t have to have a tangible purpose. If characters need an “interior decoration” skill to change the wallpaper in their houses, then if they want to change the way their house looks they can either acquire this skill themselves or go to someone who has already acquired it. Either way, the result is a matter of aesthetics: The virtual world doesn’t necessarily ascribe any meaning to how the inside of your house looks. Of course, also as with objects, it doesn’t necessarily not ascribe any meaning to it either. Unless you want to make some kind of “we have some skills just for the fun of it” point, if you can find a way to give tangible value to skills, you should do so. Having your house redecorated to a higher standard could win you the envy of NPCs, say, or reduce the chances of its being infested with termites.

Skills that can be used for more than one thing are generally good to have but difficult to contrive. If you can use an axe in combat, does that qualify you to use one as a lumberjack? Or is that a different kind of axe skill? If they’re different, how many people are going to bother with a lumberjack axe skill? If they’re the same, characters will become lumberjacks so they can increase their axe skills while making money. Multipurpose skills have more justification for existing than do single-purpose skills, but they also can have annoying consequences.