Which RPGs best model real-world skill development?

[Staffan]

I don't know if it's actually realistic, but the BRP version in the Troubleshooters feels right. Much like classic BRP, you get a tick on a skill when you use it in a significant way (you don't necessarily have to succeed, but you can't "climb the tree to get an Agility tick"). At the end of each session, these can be used for Experience checks (roll d100 above your current skill, if you do you increase it by 1d6%), or put toward learning a language or an Ability. Abilities are things you either have or you don't, and usually let you be better at a particular aspect of a skill, or use the skill in different ways, or sometimes have more story-oriented benefits. Gaining a new Ability usually costs 5 ticks, but it can be as low as 3 or as high as 8.

You also gain a number of free improvement ticks at the end of each session – 1 to 4 for most sessions, with an additional 3 at the end of a full adventure for completing it without unnecessary bloodshed. These work the same as the ticks you get for using skills. You can only use one free improvement tick per skill and/or ability, so the most you can get per session is two per skill (plus possibly one more for downtime).

Depending on how long it will be until the next adventure, you will also get 1 to 4 downtime periods (a week gets you 1, a year or more 4, so it's not linear). One of the things you can do in a downtime period is training, which gives you the same effect as an additional tick. You still can't get more than two ticks for any one skill or ability per "debriefing" phase, so if you both got a "use" tick and used a free improvement tick on one skill, you can't train that particular skill any further during downtime.

What I particularly like is the mix of Abilities and Skills. Skills are fairly broad, e.g. Red Tape covers all sorts of law, bureaucracy, negotiating deals, and so on. But on top of that you can have Abilities like Called to the Bar (makes you an actual lawyer, lets you use Red Tape instead of Contacts for certain things, and gives you a bonus to Status checks). I like this because in real life, you both have fields of general knowledge, but also specific things you just know how to do.

Now, the Troubleshooters is a game meant to mimic comics like Tintin or Spirou, and the skill and ability list reflect that. Some of the abilities aren't all that realistic in and of themselves. But I think the structure of the system feels fairly believable, if not actually realistic.

 

[Ravenheart87]

The problem with BRP is that it doesn't model practice or steady usage, AFAIK, and you learn nothing from failure, only from success (which seems actively perverse). To increase it you then have to roll over it, but you don't even get to check if the roll failed.

It does model practice. There are rules in BRP and RuneQuest for training and research, they just didn't get into every variant of the system. HarnMaster does an even better job, and for those who really love bookkeeping, there is even an option for skill detoriation for neglecting skills.

 

[dbm]

Burning Wheel has multiple meta currencies which are used to track the development of characters. One is generated through achieving skills successes, while another is generated by failures. You need both to develop your skills and the intention is to push players to have their characters try things which are a stretch for them.

 

[Reynard]

It does model practice. There are rules in BRP and RuneQuest for training and research, they just didn't get into every variant of the system. HarnMaster does an even better job, and for those who really love bookkeeping, there is even an option for skill detoriation for neglecting skills.

Once you are competent at a thing, training really only fends off deterioration. Improvement comes from use. And it isn't really that "you learn more from failure" it is that "you learn more from difficulty" whether you succeed or fail. That is,being forced to apply your skill to a more challenging situation leads to Improvement.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Once you are competent at a thing, training really only fends off deterioration.

I think it can also unlock techniques or approaches you might never have found merely through practice, but that does require the training to include those new techniques/approaches (or at least hint at them).

And that's often not the case - one of the products I work with, we're coming up with stuff that the designers probably considered (because they allowed for it), but that's barely mentioned in the documentation, in the slimmest detail possible, and not in any of the of the training, no matter how "advanced". But both my main colleague and I have come up with and shared stuff with each other that we'd have never come up with separately, and that we see no sign other people are actually using (part of this is just that the product is marketed as this simple tool for small teams and cases, and we're using it in complex ways - it is very powerful - with thousands of fee-earners and PAs and huge cases).

For a more game-apposite example, our old bud Miyamoto Mushashi was a master swordsman from basically his mid-teens, but was still learning entirely new techniques, not of his own devising, but from others, decades later. Which I would consider "training", but I guess it's a different kind of training? One that's very much inside the scope for some games, but outside for others.

That is,being forced to apply your skill to a more challenging situation leads to Improvement.

Yeah that's probably the key. Honestly sounds like Troubleshooters is doing the best job so far based on this general discussion, @Staffan is kind of selling me on giving it a go just because it sounds like an interesting take!

 

[Argyle King]

Others have said it already, but GURPS.