The Fourth Edition of the GURPS Basic Set ditched skills sorted by category for one big alphabetical listing. That has its merits, but I like having categories as well, as a nice way to quickly check whether a character is equipped with the perfect set of skills.

Well, the GURPS folks took care of that wish shortly after the Basic Set‘s first publication with Skill Categories. Compiled by GURPS fan Eric B. Smith, this freebie download brings groupings back to skills.

Now, how about the same for the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (DFRPG)? With no official DFRPG take on Skill Categories yet gracing gamers’ tables (or PDF readers), I’ve taken it upon myself to whip up a version for my favorite fantasy RPG. Grab it from the download link below. But first, a few notes:

Notes!

General notes

• DFRPG deals in a pared-down subset of the full GURPS skill set, so my document is naturally shorter – a scant two pages, perfect for a front-and-back printed handout.
• I’ve included skills’ Attribute and Difficulty, but to fit everything onto two pages, I’ve left out the skills’ Adventurers page references. (Which is a bit unfortunate. Page references are more useful than you’d think in DFRPG, as some skills are squirreled away in the “Professions” chapter, not the “Skills” chapter. If you use this document as a handout, bundle it with a printout of the “Skills Index” from Adventurers p. 123.)
• Yeah, I tried to get cute with mimicking the DFRPG look and layout, but don’t go measuring page border dimensions and matching up fonts to see how well I did. I didn’t try that hard.
• Mimicking DFRPG‘s funky page dimensions would also be cute, but with printing in mind, I went with plain ol’ international A4.
• It became quickly clear that perfectly copying the categories from Skill Categories is both difficult and unnecessary. There aren’t enough skills in DFRPG to flesh out categories like DESIGN/INVENTION, NATURAL SCIENCES, and TECHNICAL. Other categories seemed safe to consolidate under new names, and yet others categories I renamed because… well, because that yields a better layout when categories are arranged alphabetically. (Hey, the thing’s free.)
• Some of my categories have a lot of skills, so I’ve subdivided them with subcategories.
• It goes without saying that inclusion in or exclusion from a category is highly subjective! As an example, Acrobatics and Climbing have a game association with thieves, but athletic skills like Running, plenty of business skills, and all combat skills have their uses in heists and banditry – yet they can’t all fit under one category. In the end, I hewed toward selecting skills strongly associated with illegal acts, deception, and so on to put together the CRIMINAL/SPY/STREET category.
  The point: To get the most out of this aid, use your good sense to size up all categories of potential interest to your PC’s design.

Specific category notes

• The KNOWLEDGE/LORE category is particularly subjective; a lot of skills encompass a body of knowledge or lore! I almost left out the category entirely, but in the end settled on the loose definition “skills with a heavy knowledge/lore feel, focused more on knowing things than on performing practical tasks”. Viewing practical task-oriented skills with a friendlier eye brings in more entries, particularly skills from the MEDICAL and ESOTERIC (Mental Esoteric Skills) categories.
• Skill Categories has separate CRIMINAL/STREET, POLICE, and SPY categories. Those seem a good approach for my document, too, but the lists end up overlapping a lot. While the consolidated CRIMINAL/SPY/STREET category I ended up with is pretty long, subcategories keep the list manageable without space-eating overlap.
• An observation: A fun thing about skill categories is that their relative sizes – however arbitrary the list lengths may be – offer a peek at where the game places its focus. My biggest categories came out to be ESOTERIC, CRIMINAL/SPY/STREET, and the collective COMBAT categories. Yep, that’s DFRPG for you: PCs all up in magic and mysticism, shady undertakings, and a whole lot of muscle-powered foe-whacking. (The EXPLORATION/OUTDOOR and SOCIAL categories also make a good showing with lots of skills.)

Other notes

• A bonus feature: I’ve included off-the-list skills conjured up on Adventurers p. 93 (Housekeeping, Skating, etc.), marked with asterisks.
• Another bonus feature: All skill specialties are named, either in the lists or in the callout box on the second page listing skills with numerous or open-ended specialties. Bonus to the bonus: These include a handful of specialties culled from SJG DFRPG works other than Adventurers. (There’s a Riding (Frogs) skill? Yep, it’s in print, in Companion 3.)
• There are only five specialties listed for the Psychology skill; they’re all I could find. But perhaps Divine Servitors, Plants, and Nature Spirits would also be appropriate specialties. (Psychology (Plants), not Naturalist, sounds most reasonable to me as the skill for finely grokking the vegetable minds of sentient trees and man-eating mushrooms.)

Here’s something that’s not a feature: This is a quick work, and I’ll bet it contains omissions and/or errors. Do you see any skill I’ve totally dropped? An incorrect Attribute or Difficulty? Presentation-related bugs? A categorization that really, really strikes you as wrong? Leave a comment, or send email to tbone at this site’s domain. Expect small updates for some time.

Download

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Header image: I’m telling you, even Vikings were all about the Boating skill. Vikings! Why do players never want Boating skill?

Northmen Land on Iceland in 872. Oscar A Wergeland, 1877.