From:	Dark Elf <VESPOSIT@****.SUNYSB.EDU>
Subject:	Skills: DING! Round Four
Date:	Wed, 21 Apr 1993 16:52:42 EDT

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
TRUST ME! THE SKILL WEB IS EVIL! THE ILLUMINATI PUT IT IN THE
SHADOWRUN RULES TO DESTROY US ALL!!! WE MUST STAMP OUT THIS SCOURGE BEFORE
IT IS TOO LATE!!!!
Castagir
hmangold@*******.ac.runet.edu
---------------------------------------------
To which I say---YOU'RE WRONG!!!!! THE LEGION OF DYNAMIC DISCORD PUT IT IN TO
COUNTER THE ILLUMINATI'S ATTEMPTS TO IMPOSE A RESTRICTIVE ORDER ON ROLE-
PLAYING GAMES!!!

Just look at the thing! The problem with inventing new skills is that there
is no way to determine how to place them on the skill web! The skill web is
a chaotic tangle of interrelationships between skills that the Dark Lord
game designers on high decided would work! Let's say you want to add in the
skill "widget use" Now we all know that using widgets is similar to using
computers, so there should be some connection there. We also know that
widget use is closely related to Quickness, so there should be some kind of
connection there. This raises the questions how many nodes do you intervene?
and doea this allow bizzare things like using a widget by defaulting from
firearms (clearly widgets have nothing to do with firearms as we all know),
or piloting a Nightwraith fighter bomber defaulting from widget use!

Also, does the new skill web addition allow easier default paths between skills
that shouldn't have easier default paths? Lets say a character with firearms
skill wants to jimmy a maglock (i don't have the book handy so we'll say that
the default takes you through X nodes). Now when we add in widget use, there
is a path through widget use that only goes through X - 1 nodes!!!!
While this is purely hypothetical, these issues can be a major problem when you
try to alter as arbitrary seeming (at times) a structure as the skill web is.

I have used an imaginary abstract skill (widget use) to avoid people saying
why, there's no way that widget use can link firearms and magical theory? etc..
Now if I had used the well known skill NERPS herding, there would be a problem,
because everyone knows that NERP herding is a direct combination of culinary
arts, ettiquete(inside jokes), and Armed Combat(wet carp thwapping), thus
providing a previously unknown way to cook a gourmet meal by telling jokes
to your friends while hitting them over the head with a wet carp.

All this silliness comes up because in an actual adventure, the on paper
version of Dark Elf (as opposed to the real life version on shadowtk)
saved a teammates life in a peculiar way. Grimjaw (a Troll physad, was
the recipient of a deadly wound courtesy of a fed-ex security guard with
an uzi and an attitude. After the firefight, the team gathers around Grimjaw
and says, OK who's got first aid and a medkit. We all looked at each other
and waited for someone to come forward. After about a minute the GM says, OK
does anyone have anything close. The team then looks at DE and says, hey, how
close is electronics? Well, my reasonably good electronics skill with a
+8 default (correct me if I forgot the exact number) rolls and gets one 6.
Lucky for grimjaw that that one six rolled up to approximately a 21, enough
to overcome the fact that he was lying in a pool of blood in a smoke filled
room while a psycho elf poked at him with screwdrivers and soldering irons
in an attempt to keep him from dying before docwagon got there. It was the
luckiest roll I've ever made, and sice then I burned some karma to learn to
do first aid the right way. I still to this day wonder how attempting to
install an old 80486 microprocessor gives you any clue how to remove bullets,
stich and pressure bandage gunshot wounds etc... The best rationale I could
come up with is that DE looked at the pile of meat on the floor and said to
himself, hmmm, that mass of bleeding flesh looks like that circuit board I
built last week in a strange kinda way. And then proceeded to cauterize using
a micro soldering iron, and stich using fiber-optics...

truth is stranger than fiction!
And it's all a plot anyway!
DE