Games with just skills?

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E-Rocker

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While the specific terms used from game to game vary, I pretty strongly dislike how most of the RPGs I'm familiar with give you stats/numbers for Attributes, like Strength, Mind, Agility etc., and also give you numbers for Skills, like Driving, Shooting, Research, etc.

In reading a bunch of different systems so I can contribute to the Character Creation thread, I discovered that Mutant Bikers of the Atomic Wasteland 20th Anniversary Edition uses just Skills & no Attributes. I've yet to have an opportunity to actually play that game, but I love the approach.

What other RPGs are there that use just skills?
 
Warlock only uses skills and no attributes.

Paranoia XP is borderline. It has governing skills (Violence, Hardware etc.) and lots of subskills under those.

Unknown Armies 3e uses madness meters and those govern skills. It also has identities and passions, but no standard attributes.
 
I’ve been playing a couple games that do this, and have been reading another with the intention of running it.

Blades in the Dark characters have Action Ratings. So you may have two ranks out of four possible in Skirmish, which is your ability to fight. Are you good at skirmishing because you’re a burly brute or because you’re quick and skilled? It’s up to the player.

Spire does it similarly by breaking things down to Skills which are pretty specific and then combining that with Domains, which are like broad areas of knowledge. These are binary, you either have them or you don’t. The way it works is a dice pool of d10s; you get one for attempting an action, you get one if you have a relevant Skill, you get one if you have the relevant Domain, and you may get one more from additional options (situational or class abilities and the like). So if you’re trying to infiltrate the headquarters of a local crime family, and you have the Sneak Skill and the Crime Domain, you’d get dice for both. If you were instead negotiating with the crime boss, you’d use the Compel Skill and the Crime Domain.

I’m currently reading Night’s Black Agents because I may decide to run The Dracula Dossier. Its skill system is very traditional in the sense that there is a huge list of skills and they’re very specific, much like Call of Cthulhu and similar games. The significant difference is that the Gumshoe system (at least this iteration) eschews personal stats for characters and just relies on the skills.

I tend to like this kind of approach overall. I feel it’s far less restrictive in how a character seems.
 
In reading a bunch of different systems so I can contribute to the Character Creation thread, I discovered that Mutant Bikers of the Atomic Wasteland 20th Anniversary Edition uses just Skills & no Attributes. I've yet to have an opportunity to actually play that game, but I love the approach.

What other RPGs are there that use just skills?

First, thanks. It's always a thrill for me when Mutant Bikers of the Atomic Wastelands, or any of my games, gets a nod. When you are giving everything for free, a nod now and then is pretty much all return one gets!

Technically Fate is a Skill only game (things you might consider attributes are mixed into the skill list). But that all makes sense because both Fate and MBAW are derived from Fudge, which, by design,allows for ditching attributes, or skills or anything. It really is that fluid and customisable.
 
Fate can use either, although most designs go for skills over attributes.

Fighting Fantasy and it's descendants has one real attribute - SKILL - but it's sorta a "general heroicness" rather than any specific quality.

Gumshoe systems are skill-based.
 
Another game I can think of a bit like this is AMP: Year One. It's a supers game, there are no Attributes, but a list of 22 skills. Those skills include things that in other games would be considered Attributes, but there is no separation between the concepts of Skill & Attribute. If your character is good at lifting things, put points in Might, if they good at driving a car, put points in Travel, etc. Oh, and as you might expect, there are super powers.
 
I'm glad someone else asked this question, because I've been wanting to.

I've been trying to figure out if Dead of Night from Steampower Publishing (I wrote the system) was the first game to go purely skill-based.

Looks like it wasn't. But it was unique in how it paired opposite attributes and applied the Tension mechanic to guide narration. So I have some salvageable contribution.
 
Fate and Blades in the Dark as mentioned above.

MiniD6 (which I am currently pondering using for a campaign) has an optional rule for running skills only.
 
IIRC Gunslingers & Gamblers Streamline Edition and Privateers & Pirates, which also uses the Streamline System, both from FJ Gaming, use only skills.
 
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Trophy Dark and Trophy Gold both have no attribute stats. Just skills. You get one for your back ground and 3 for your occupation, and even those aren't associated with a number. They allow you have an extra d6 when you're attempting to do something.
 
Just to add a bit to what I said above,

With Fudge, I've generally aimed to use either attributes or skills. In Mutant Bikers of the Atomic Wastelands I went with skills. It works fine but I find what is lost is the "character at a glance" function that attributes can provide. The overall picture of the character is there, but it hidden in across the skill. It can be a bit of a forest/trees situation. Which in a sense is realistic, people aren't narrowly defined by a couple of traits, but was Mutant Bikers of the Atomic Wastelands. Realism wasn't a priority.

With my more recent Fudge builds I've gone for attribute only, with Gifts providing the extra bit of customisation. That capture the character at glance quite well, but it has it's own challenges. In particular it is fiendishly hard to come up with a list of attributes that feels complete, consistent and which equally valuable to a charcter. (I am pretty sure Strength turned out to be the dump stat of choice in Cyberblues City.

As an aside, Fate gets away with the skill not attribute approach because Aspects takeover the character-at-a-glance function.
 
Tiny Dungeon and its spin-off games use traits, which are essentially skills and attributes combined. For example, traits include attributes like Strong or skills like Alchemist.

That's kinda what Over The Edge does with Traits. Mostly they cover what we would think of as skills (Cat Burglar, Brawling), but they can also describe what might be covered by attributes in other systems (Strong, Tough) if so desired.
 
That's kinda what Over The Edge does with Traits. Mostly they cover what we would think of as skills (Cat Burglar, Brawling), but they can also describe what might be covered by attributes in other systems (Strong, Tough) if so desired.
Yeah, but any system using those also uses some kind of Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey logic to it's resolution system which can be a bug, not a feature.
 
Something tells me, skills aren't going to be the only difference between these two people, especially when it comes to combat...
View attachment 42335
..that's why even though I prefer skill-based systems, I like having attributes for other metrics.
Incon . . never mind.
 
Something tells me, skills aren't going to be the only difference between these two people, especially when it comes to combat...
View attachment 42335
..that's why even though I prefer skill-based systems, I like having attributes for other metrics.
Hard to argue with that girth.:-)

On that, this guy would suffer in FATE, I guess, if Fighting/Physique are separated. But, if he was gonna bear hug someone maybe? Sorta like him chasing Wesley around in Princess Bride.
 
I've not played it, but I just read that The Elephant & Macaw Banner rpg uses only skills, which can be developed to three levels: Apprentice, Practitioner and Master.
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