Hanako Games

silly question about skill classification

#1 by RedSocialKnight - Oct 19 2008

This is the most trivial and nitpicky question ever, but it is tormenting me.

I'm designing a life-sim in which different skills are placed together in groups of three. Skills in the same group have the same gameplay mechanic (basically a bunch of different minigames, not all of which are designed yet, and none of which are coded for real because I am only just learning how). And leveling up skills of the same group will pair you the same "rival" character.

I am tortured about how exactly to group some of the last few skills, though. Here is the firm part of the list as it stands now:

Home Skills
- Cooking, Cleaning, Gardening
Science Skills
- Medicine, Laboratory, Engineering
Training Skills
- Animal Taming, Childcare, Management
Physical Skills
- Fighting, Fitness, Sports
Rogue Skills
- Hunting, Stealth, Destruction

and here is the part of the list that is still up in the air. Should it be:

Charm Skills
- Conversation, Music, Dance
Creative Skills
- Writing, Fashion, Drawing

OR

Performance Skills
- Dance, Music, ???
Language Skills
- Writing, Conversation, ???
Art Skills
- Fashion, Drawing, ???

I am kind of leaning toward the longer skill list, but if so, what should be the third item in each group?

#2 by hanako - Oct 19 2008

Charm Skills
- Conversation, Music, Dance

There's something slightly old-fashioned about this grouping, it makes me think of romance novels, when ladies were supposed to have 'accomplishments' of the proper sort to show how refined they were. If you're not aiming for that sort of setting, it's probably better to stick with the longer skill list, in my opinion.

Performance Skills
- Dance, Music, Acting?
Language Skills
- Storytelling, Poetry, Debate/Persuade?
Art Skills
- Fashion, Drawing, Handicrafts?

#3 by RedSocialKnight - Oct 22 2008

How did I miss this post? I thought no one had replied, sorry.

I actually kind of like having one super-retro skillset -- with a retro-femme rival character to go along with it -- for those who don't want to make their heroines ninjas or knights or tycoons.

I really like your handicrafts suggestion. But since posting I've started tinkering with the rest of the list some more (instead of Training, a Social set with Management and Conversation...?) -- and what I'm realizing is that I'm nitpicking the system in order to procrastinate work on learning how to actually code the damn thing! Once the system is actually closer to a reality, it'll make more of a difference which skills I plug into it.

To work! (by which I mean, play)