Skills in D&D

hello there and welcome back to Daddy roll the one I'm Martin and this is another of my series of videos on the history of early tabletop role-playing games including Dungeons and Dragons and one of the companies that published them tactical studies roles later known as its descendant company TSR Hobbies today we're going to be talking about the history of skills specifically in Dungeons and Dragons but also the evolution of skills in the tabletop role-playing game uh industry in its very very early days skills were not part of the game if you're new to dungeon dragons you might not know that but they were not originally part of the game and they've developed developed over time not just from the creators from TSR but also other game company Publishers that were publishing things TSR was watching what was going on and eventually they come into the game um in a few different ways but the the first time they're actually called skills in an advanced DND type situation was actually in Third Edition which came out in 2000 and um before that there were some other names for them and there was two different concurrent published games going on in order to understand all that I would highly recommend that you please watch my video on the history of DnD editions before you watch this because I'm going to be referring to a lot of those editions and it will help you to understand what I'm talking about as we go through but let's just jump right into some history here and this is just going to cover some of the main beats but as we just talked about in the original edition of the game there's no skills so this has been a magic which is how you create your characters there's no skill listed in this particular version of the game your character is defined by their six attribute scores um by their species or what we now call Race by their class and then by their equipment and that's kind of it everything else that you want your character to do as a player you thought of that and then you asked the DM can I do this or what if I try this and then the DM would make a ruling and you trusted your DM you work with them and your Dan made a ruling and then uh was it was their job to then apply that ruling consistently moving forward so you might ask hey can I jump off this table or you know whatever you're asking right and the DM has to consider the circumstances and usually would say yes and so these the default assumption in this game is that characters are competent so it's very different from the way that skill systems work now which is that your character has to have a skill to be able to do that thing this game assumes that your character can do that stuff unless the DM has a reason to say not to so there's no horse writing skill in here because you didn't need it all characters are capable of riding horses you don't need to make a check to see if you fall off your horse you just do it now the DM might say there's extenuating circumstances and might make a ruling that you have to make a check in this specific instance and then would have to do that consistently moving forward same thing with swimming you don't need to have a swimming school to know how to swim you just swim the DM might say oh you know you're wearing armor you're going to take a penalty or something like that but the assumption is by default your characters are competent and know how to do these things so that's a difference between this version and a skill based system which sort of actually ends up limiting your character because the more skills that are listed you can't take all them so if you don't take a skill most of these games assume that then your character is not skilled at doing that thing so whether it's hiding or climbing or listening or whatever it is so that's this game 1985 though just a year after this a couple things happened so tunnels and trolls is released this is a completely separate different role-playing game from Dungeons and Dragons however d d was the only game that was out at this time so it is very influenced and based on what d d was like so it's a class and level system and there are no skills in the first edition of tunnels and Trolls but you also have the release of this game I talk about this in my video on the history of uh the second role-playing game so see a link here in the upper right hand corner but this is uh Empire of the pedal Throne this is published by TSR it is not a DND supplement or d d game it's its own separate game however the mechanics are based on DND it does include the same character classes some of the same ability scores but one of the really interesting things in this is that there is a skill system and I talk a lot about more about this in the that video on the on the game so you'll want to refer to that but there's pages and pages in here of a skill system this is only a year after D D's developed and you've already got a class and level system which is adding skills to help find your characters so that's very early on then in 1976 you have more games released and in 1977 you have the release of this version of d d this is homes basic and this is levels one through three and once again there are no skills in this because this is really just a revision of original Dungeons and Dragons just to make it easier for new players to understand you also have the release of this supplement in 1977 this is first fantasy campaign by Dave arneson this is his home campaign of Blackmore published by judges Guild and in the back now Dave arneson has left TSR at this time so this is not a DND supplement but he talks about special interests which are things that your characters might do uh you know what they can spend their time and money on when they're not adventuring right and so he goes into things and these kind of end up being like skills or it's interest that they might have so there's wine it's kind of ridiculous but very much a product at the time there's women but there's song There's wealth but he talks about religion which is kind of a skill in in later editions of the game and then Hobbies which are things like magic research or things about raising and breeding of lycanthropes or making torture devices or making gold or building flying machines these are all things that your characters might be able to do that kind of help Define them so it is kind of like a skill system almost however 1977 also sees the release of traveler this is one of the first examples of a game that is not a class and level system of a role-playing game it's part of the genre of role-playing games but characters here are defined completely by their skills so there's a skill system in traveler it's things like bribery and forgery and Leadership there's tactics there's maintenance navigation like all this kind of stuff that you use to define your characters and this is a real turning point I really look at this game it's it's probably not the only one but it's it's really the biggest one it's the one that's kind of had legs over the decade since it came out to really delineate a point between a class and level type system like Dungeons and Dragons and a skill based system there are more different types of styles of role-playing games that you can play but I'm going to be talking specifically just about class and level assistance versus skill based because it's relevant to today's topic so traveler comes out in 1977 as skill based then in 1978 you have a game called runequest comes out from a company called chaosian This is a fantasy role-playing game uh it's not a class and level system it has this skill system that's really based around the idea of guilds so there's guilds for Alchemy sages thieves uh armors Mariners Foresters horse Masters things like this and that is how your character sort of Define as like what they're good at based on these kind of relationships that they make so this is very early on from chaos and but we're going to see them come back here in just a few minutes so also 1978 sees the release of the player's handbook for advanced Dungeons and Dragons so this is a concurrent game that's running next to that Holmes basic set that you saw earlier that blue box um this is Advanced DND and there are no skills in here skills come kind of in this book this is the advanced Dungeons and Dragons dungeon Masters Guide this comes out in 1979 so a year after this and in this book there's a section very early on in the up front and it's called player character and non-professional skills and the idea of this is that your player characters are defined really by their class and that's what they've been spending their time on so if you had a Fighter character the Assumption was you were working on getting good at fighting even before you became a first level fighter which coincidentally is why in this game they use level titles at first level Fighters called a veteran it's not an ER like it's it's not a newbie you're a veteran already at first level because the assumptions that you've been working at this for a while however he does go on to say there's some minor knowledge of certain mundane skills might be interesting to a player character you know based on things that maybe they started even before that so what he says is if you want to do that you roll on this table you don't get to pick you roll on this table it's a D100 if you roll 68 through 85 you don't get a skill of any measurable worth if you roll 86 to 100 you get two skills but the skills are things like there's armor Forester Gambler minor uh all kinds of things okay these are really more like backgrounds dense skills and the way that you implement this is all right here in this tiny little paragraph and it basically says the way you implement is that it's up to the DM the DM has to create a situation for a player character to use these skills and then the DM has to also then come up with how to adjudicate how to make a ruling to make that skill make sense so that's it that there's your whole section on skills you can tell it almost seems like an afterthought um they did include it these are the official player character record sheets for first edition and you see there's a section here for secondary skill uh this is an early character that I had a paladin uh and her secondary skill was Hunter I can count on zero hands in the amount of time that came up so we put it down because it was on the sheet but we never really used those um she definitely didn't get any benefits from being a hunter okay so that's 1979 we're going to jump to 1981 now in the release of this game Call of Cthulhu this is by chaosium same same company that made room Quest and this is a full uh skill based game of horror investigating so all there's tons of skills in here and it's things like accounting and anthropology there's charm it's a skill there's climb there's uh Dodge disguise there's Cthulhu Mythos which you don't really want your character to get but they're going to get it anyway based on all the horrific things that they see and so this is a skill based game uh and chaos and has other games that they're publishing at the same time call cthu is kind of the biggest is one what they're really most known for room Quest also but call of cthulha really I think is sort of their Pinnacle of this game design uh they end up taking this the mechanics of these skill system games and writing a universal role-playing game called BRP or basic role playing which is based on a percentile dice skill based system so that's 1981. also in 1981 you have the release of this this game this is my first DND product ever my mom gave this to me as an Easter gift back in 1981. this is mold Vape basic so it's another basic version of DnD and the basic rules cover levels one through three okay and then these are the expert rules now this book didn't come in this box I just keep it in here because it's just easier for me to put them together this covers levels 4 through 14. we're going to look really quickly who wrote this Dave Cook it's also Steve Marsh but for whatever reason they highlight Dave Cook here you're going to want to remember this gentleman's name but we're going to flip forward to page 51. saving versus abilities optional the dma want to have basic character's chance of doing something on his or her ability ratings the strength Etc the player must roll the ability rating or less on the G20 the DM may give a bonus or penalty to the role depending on the difficulty of the action minus four for a simple task plus four for difficult one Etc it is suggested that a roll of one always succeed and a row of 20 always fail so this is an early skill based system that's based on just abilities there's no list of skills it's an ability check just like skills in 5th edition are ability checks this one just happens to be a roll under versus a D20 roll plus a bonus versus a target number this is just roll your ability score under to succeed and then you'll see here it talks about swimming climbing and forging that's this is getting into that competency and it just talks about like your characters are assumed to know how to swim you're they're assumed to know how to climb only thieves can climb sheer services but any character can climb okay so that's 1981. now in 1983 you have these sets come out this is called the Beck me edition of DnD this is a basic game again it's a revision of the one that you just saw this by Frank medzner there are no skills in this game yet all right but now we're going to jump forward again to 1985 the release of this book it's called Oriental Adventures this is a book it's a player's handbook essentially for playing DND but in an Asian style Asian inspired we'll say and it's it's pulp or pop culture Asia just to be clear it's it's not you know it's not historical but it's by Gary gygax it says but then it says with Dave Cook and then if you read the inside it says the design of this game is by Dave Cook so what do we know about Dave Cook well we just saw him in that extra in that expert book where he did that saving versus abilities and if you turn to page 51 and here there is a section on proficiencies which are um they're a weapon proficiencies but then for the first time in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons we see this term non-weapon proficiencies this is an extremely cumbersome way of saying skills I don't know why they didn't just call them skilled but they called them non-weapon proficiencies to distinguish them from weapon proficiencies and then every character got slots for weapons but also they got slots to put into non-weaper proficiencies which are grouped into Artisan Barbarian common in court so these are proficiencies that gives you the base chance of success tells you how many slots that you need you're making D20 rolls versus a number to try to succeed and that is the technically the first skill system in in DND in published books is in this particular book they then continue that with this book The dungeoneer Survival Guide which adds even more of those non-webra proficiencies for the base Advanced d game and then also in Wilderness Survival Guide so that becomes this faux skill system this book comes out in 1986 okay for advanced D then in 1987 you have the start of the release of these books called gazetteers These are books about specific nations in what was called at the time the Known World which was the default setting for the basic d d game later on in 1991 that world will be renamed my stara but now at this point of time it was called the known world and each one of these gazeteers covers again a different nation and as they go along they start to also say oh well here's some some skills that you could have to make it clear that you're from these nations so here's the mineral fat guild book this is gazetteer number nine and it talks about things like appraisal and there's more skills in here than that but this this whole thing is about being merchants and so that that still makes sense right so they actually use the word skills so this is uh coming out in the late 80s and early 90s and eventually these are going to be collected into a book in 1991 called the rules encyclopedia you see that here and they take all these skills from all these different gazetteers and put them into this book this is the rules for the game of the Beck me Edition just without the Immortals that very last set the eye of Beck me is not in here so that was 1981 but we're going to jump back really quick to 1989. this is the release of the second edition advantages and Dragons players handbook so this is a new edition of the game and let's take a look here see who wrote this it's our friend Dave Zeb cook so he created this and so just by pure coincidence there's a section here on proficiencies it says they're optional it's actually on the exact same page that was on in the Oriental Adventures book I think that's just pure coincidence but he talks about proficiencies here gaining weapon proficiencies but then here's our non-weapon proficiencies he also includes a section here on secondary skills if you want to use that system from the dungeon Masters Guide from first edition but he recommends using you know the non-webra proficiencies and you see here they're grouped into General priest Rogue Warrior and wizard this is your list of proficiencies okay so it does repeat a little bit because you see like ancient history shows up in a priest and wizard okay but um the list is pretty long all right and it gets even longer because this series of books is published for second edition these are called the complete books there's one for each class and then they even expand the classes so there was a complete Ninja's handbook there was a complete um barbarians handbook barbarian was not a class and this particular version of the game until that book came out the barbarians handbook but each one of them includes a section on proficiency so you see this is the first one in the series thieves look how many proficiencies are in here and that's on top of the ones that are in here now some of these are expanding what's in here but a lot of them are just brand new and then every book does that and adds new proficiencies so that second edition 1989 these are coming out around 1989 1990 okay we already talked about the 1991 rule encyclopedia so I'm going to jump far forward now because nothing really happens with skills into the release of Third Edition this is actually 3.5 so this is a slight revision to the Third Edition this comes out in 2003. but you see that skills here on page 61 . look at this list of skills look how long this is and it tells you for every class whether it's a class or cross-class skill gives you the related key ability skills now it's changing how skills work in this particular system this is where you start to get it's a D20 add your bonus based on your ability and however many points you put into the skill versus a target number right that's what you're trying to do that was the the addition to this game um having this system baked right in it's no longer optional you're going to use skills and this is your list okay this list is a little cumbersome a lot of people thought it was a little too much so then in 2008 you have the release of the fourth edition book player's handbook and there are skills in here buried at the back there's a lot of reasons for that we can go into that later but here's your list of skills and it's much tightened up versus what you just saw they're starting to kind of group things together so um you know you've got stealth instead of a separately hide and move silently for example so they work very very similarly though it's it's that you know D20 Azure bonus and that brings us to fifth edition okay 2014 and you have your skills in here that are part of your ability score so it's almost on the exact same page that was in fourth edition um so you've got your list of skills and again they're based on your ability scores and it's much tightened up so this this is actually kind of almost going backwards which is what fifth edition was intending to do so you see it's getting back to that original system that was developed way back in 1981 and that expert set which is you know rolling essentially an abilities score check I know you're adding your proficiencies and all that kind of stuff but it's it's getting back to that idea of just making ability check to do things so that's our look through skills and um through the editions of Dungeons and Dragons hopefully you learned something uh again maybe you didn't know that skills weren't always part of the game I'd love to hear your comments on whether you think skills actually add to the game or whether you think they detract um and that will be it for now so I would love to ask if you enjoy this video please do like and subscribe to my channel and uh as always please share it on social media which is the best way for me to grow my channel and leave a comment below as I just asked and if you like to support me please consider buying something in my shop there's a link in the show notes below thanks and I'll talk to you next time

Channel: Daddy Rolled a 1

Views: 8,255

Keywords: ttrpg, dungeons & dragons, D&D, DnD, DnD History, runequest, traveller, call of cthulhu, tabletop RPGs, D&D Skills

Id: cKuUTCUTCq8

Length: 19min 42sec (1182 seconds)

Published: Fri May 05 2023