Final Ultimate Master Skills List, Mk 2

Skills are crucial because they're the way the heroine interacts with the game world.  They're also one of the things that should make your heroine unique – without a robust way of tracking what your agent can and can't do, all agents can do everything.

WHAT SKILLS DO WE NEED?
Here's a list of things the heroine will definitely have to do during the main quest:

• Have sex (including kinky, fetishised sex that she's not necessarily personally into)
• Dance on a stage
• Seduce NPCs
• Plant bugs and hack devices
• Deceive people
• Flirt
• Meet new people
• Drink alcohol
• Negotiate and persuade
• Physically capture a terrorist

And here's a list of things she'll probably do in side quests:

• Learn Muay Thai
• Fight bad guys hand-to-hand
• Shoot bad guys
• Pick locks and break into buildings
• Act in adult movies
• Swim, snorkel, scuba
• Learn to meditate
• Drive cars, motorbikes, tuk-tuks, jet skis
• Look after animals
• Learn to cook Thai food
• Take drugs
• Provide first aid
• Help her friends solve problems
• Do cam shows
• Sing karaoke
• Gamble
• Give presentations & briefings
• Plan and execute intelligence operations
• Stake out locations and photograph suspects
• Detect and evade surveillance
• Pursue or be pursued by her enemies
• Set a table
• Learn to speak Thai
• Give massages
• Write reports
• Research things
• Interrogate suspects
• Oil wrestling
• Withstand interrogation
• Withstand being nipple clamped/butt plugged/spanked etc
• Analyse the brothel's finances
• Etc

GRANULARITY
If we have too many skills, the coding, UI and scenario design become complex (because there are lots of skills to manage).

But if we have too few skills, the writing becomes complex (because the game mechanics can't support the scenes that writers want to create).

Too granular
Imagine if the game had both Sneak and Hide skills.  Writing a stealth scene becomes complex, because you have to write a version for characters who can Sneak but not Hide.  (I guess the guards can't see her until she stops moving. 😀)

This solution is too complex.  One Stealth skill would be better design.

Too vague
What if the game had only two skills: Action Heroine and Porn Star?  That's superficially attractive because it's so simple, and it broadly covers all the scenarios above.

But writing now becomes more complex.  Imagine writing a scene where a thug chases the heroine into a dead-end alley.  You want to give the player a choice – scale the wall and escape, or turn and fight!

But if both paths use the Action Heroine skill, the player decision is meaningless – both outcomes have the same chance of success or failure.  The game mechanics can't produce what the writer wants (a genuine decision point) so the writer's job is now a lot more complex.

This solution is oversimplified.  Separate Fight and Climb skills would be better design.

Just right
We need a skill system that supports a wide range of activities but also doesn't have a skill list that looks like a telephone directory.

FINAL ULTIMATE MASTER SKILLS LIST, MK 2
Here's the new starter skill list.  (More skills will be added as writers need them; for instance, if the heroine learns how to give massages in Bangkok, we can add the Massage skill.)

Each skill has a level from 0 (rookie) to 10 (legend).  Training or practical use of a skill can make your heroine level up.

• Charisma (social interactions)
• Dance
• Driving
• Firearms
• First Aid
• Hand-to-hand
• Party Animal (alcohol/drugs consumption)
• Sexpertise (skill in bed)
• Sports
• Tradecraft (spy stuff)

I know what you're thinking: isn't this too vague?  And the answer would be yeah...except for the clever bit.

THE CLEVER BIT
Each skill can have a number of "specialities".  These are different from skills because the heroine either has them, or she doesn't; they don't each have their own level.

Example specialities:

• Dance: Cheerleading, Pole Dancing.
• Drive: Car, Motorbike
• Hand-to-Hand: Officer Self Defence, Muay Thai
• Sexpertise: Anal, Deep Throat, Masochist
• Sports: Climbing, Running, Swimming

Sometimes it's easiest just to see things.  Here's how this might look on a character sheet:

(This agent has Dance +2 with no specialities; Drive +1 with the Car and Motorbike specialities; and Sports +2 with the Swimming speciality.  The green bars show her progress to the next level.)

How this works

• You don't need to be a specialist to do simple tasks (like dancing in a nightclub, or riding a jetski).  The heroine uses her Dance or Drive skill for these.
• Some tasks (like pole dancing, or riding a motorcycle) are for specialists.  If the heroine has the Pole Dancer or Motorbike specialities, she can do these things without a problem; again, she just uses her Dance or Drive skill.
• If she doesn't have the required speciality, the task difficulty increases by one level (so a Routine difficulty motorbike task is Hard if you're not a biker).  She still uses the same skill, but she's less likely to succeed.

The point of this feature

• Simplifies the skill list.  The heroine now has one Dance skill, not separate levels in Pole Dancing, Cheerleading, Nightclub Dancing, etc.
• Still lets us model the heroine in complex detail.  A heroine with Sexpertise +2 (and no specialities) is great in bed, but will struggle with things she's not into (like deep throating and anal).  A heroine with Sexpertise +0 (and the Anal speciality) is okay in bed, and okay at anal.
  
  A heroine with Sports +0 (and the Climbing speciality) is only moderately athletic, but she does climbing.  She can scale the wall to escape (if her fitness holds out).  A heroine with Sports +3 (no specialities) is very athletic, but has no climbing experience.  She may still be able to climb the wall through her sheer athleticism.

I feel like I've spent way too long on this feature already; but it's a core problem identified in the MFAGA 2 plan, and if we don't fix this in a way that it stays fixed then it makes every single scene in the game slower to write, for me and for future contributors.  I'm feeling pretty good about this solution, but it will be a few days before we start actually coding it, so please help with critiques/feedback.