Knowledges Instead of Skills
By Nelson McKeeby
A Different Kind of Character Record
When I embarked on the writing of Negentropy in 1979, I deviated from the conventional assumption that a role-playing character required a comprehensive list of game skills. Having previously engaged in various games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller, Gamma World, and RuneQuest, I was well-acquainted with the concepts of attributes, combat rules, and task systems. However, my primary focus for Negentropy shifted towards a more fundamental question: what specific knowledge did this individual possess?
The genesis of the first Troubleshooter record emerged from a school resume form commonly used for internships. This form typically inquired about an individual’s identity, educational background, relevant experience, and the knowledge they could reasonably claim to possess. I found this structure to be intuitive, as Project Negentropy aimed to deploy capable adults into a future where they would encounter practical challenges. A Troubleshooter was not primarily defined by their role as a fighter, wizard, thief, or member of another game class. Instead, their character was characterized by their education, training, technical proficiency, experience, and the equipment they would have access to upon the opening of the Cylinder.
I designated these areas as Knowledges. While the term “Knowledges” may have been somewhat awkward in everyday English, it more accurately conveyed the essence of what I intended to express compared to the concept of skills. A skill appeared to be an isolated game ability that could be activated when a specific rule dictated its use. In contrast, a Knowledge represented a comprehensive body of understanding that influenced a character’s ability to recognize, explain, attempt, and make judgments. For instance, someone who possessed knowledge of electricity did not merely receive improved dice rolls when interacting with electrical components. Instead, they comprehended the principles of circuits, loads, generation, grounding, batteries, motors, and a sufficient grasp of the surrounding subject matter to pose relevant questions before any dice rolls were necessary.
My decision to eschew the concept of classes and levels stemmed from my belief that these traditional elements hindered the development of a more nuanced and versatile character system.
Negentropy never required classes or levels because the individuals entering the Cylinders were already expected to be trained adults. My interest lay in those who had dedicated years to acquiring competence before embarking on the adventure. The game was not about starting as an apprentice and gradually becoming a professional through accumulated experience points. Instead, a physician, engineer, geologist, radio operator, mechanic, or investigator entered the game with a pre-existing body of knowledge that predated the first scene.
This alignment with the premise of Project Negentropy was crucial. Space within a Cylinder was limited, and every person sent forward displaced equipment, supplies, or another specialist who might have been chosen instead. Consequently, the Project had a compelling reason to select individuals who possessed practical skills immediately. A character’s education was not merely an ornamental addition to their background; it was a fundamental reason for their inclusion.
This approach also allowed for more open-ended character development compared to a class system. A physician could possess knowledge of radios, an engineer could be a proficient marksman, a geologist might have extensive field-survival experience, and someone trained in communications could also be skilled in surveying or mechanics. Real people accumulate overlapping bodies of competence, and I wanted Troubleshooters to feel that way. Their valuable abilities stemmed from their learning, not from a predetermined category that dictated their role.
The Rulebook Was Not the Knowledge Base
The most significant consequence of employing Knowledges was that the rulebook did not need to encompass every aspect of a character’s knowledge. The game ladder and the Five Rules effectively managed uncertainty. They did not require detailed descriptions of agriculture, medicine, electronics, geology, weather, mechanics, or any other subject that might become relevant during gameplay. These subjects already existed outside the game’s boundaries.
From the outset, I employed actual books as the basis for the model. Scout manuals proved particularly advantageous due to their compact size, practicality, and the fact that they were written to impart sufficient knowledge about a subject to enable individuals to identify problems and take appropriate action. Army manuals served a similar purpose in providing guidance on field procedures, equipment, communications, weapons, and survival. Encyclopedias, maps, technical books, and any other relevant references I could find fulfilled a similar function.
This approach necessitated the deliberate separation of game rules and subject knowledge. The rule system addressed questions such as whether a challenging action would succeed under uncertain circumstances. On the other hand, the reference material provided detailed explanations of the actual actions involved. For instance, a die could determine whether a repair attempt was successful, but it could not explain the functions of a carburetor, the behavior of an electrical load, the impact of weather on a route, or the requirements of crops for food production. Without a comprehensive understanding of the underlying situation, introducing additional dice mechanics only concealed the ignorance rather than resolving it.
The Boy Scout merit badge pamphlets emerged as some of the most valuable references during the early stages of the game. I utilized pamphlets covering various subjects, including Automotive Mechanics, Chemistry, Electricity, Electronics, Engineering, Environmental Science, Geology, Metalwork, Surveying, and Weather. These pamphlets were particularly beneficial because they aligned with the specific level of knowledge I required. While they were not written as comprehensive university textbooks, they also refrained from reducing subjects to mere slogans. Instead, they provided sufficient terminology, tools, processes, and practical limitations to enable readers to begin reasoning about the respective subjects.
That structure became a model for my own writing. If an article was about electricity, I wanted a player to comprehend what generated electricity, how it was stored or distributed, what types of loads consumed it, and why one proposed solution might work while another would fail. If the subject was surveying, I wanted the reader to understand what measurements were being taken and what errors would signify. If the subject was weather, the objective was not to provide a Weather skill with a numerical bonus. Instead, the goal was to enable a player to recognize what clouds, pressure, wind, temperature, and terrain might imply for a journey or a camp.
The pamphlets also reinforced a habit I already had: research could be directly applied at the table. I didn’t need to fictionalize every fact before it became relevant. If a real manual explained how something worked and the fictional world hadn’t altered that mechanism, then the real information could be utilized. Negentropy could reserve invention for the parts that genuinely required it.
Growing Food as a Game Problem
One of the early examples I recall involved growing food for the team. The question may seem straightforward if viewed as a conventional game task. A player might say that a character wants to plant crops, the game master might ask for an Agriculture roll, and the dice might determine success or failure. However, that wasn’t sufficient for me. The crucial aspect of the problem emerged before the roll.
We needed to know what could be planted, whether there was enough growing season left, how much land was available, what tools the team possessed, whether water could be supplied, what the soil was like, and how long the characters expected to remain in the area. A crop that produced food in three months wouldn’t address a food shortage next week. Seed alone wouldn’t yield a harvest without labor, water, suitable ground, and time. A person with the appropriate Knowledge could recognize these limitations and select a feasible plan. The Five Rules could then handle any remaining uncertainties.
This became a general pattern: knowledge altered the available choices. A character knowledgeable in agriculture could propose actions that another character might never consider, identify risks before they became failures, and assess whether an apparently appealing plan was practical. Therefore, the advantage of knowledge wasn’t merely a higher probability of success; it was access to better decisions.
Recognizing What Can Be Attempted
This distinction gained increasing significance as the game evolved. In many role-playing systems, a skill is used after a player has already chosen an action. The player describes their desired action, and the skill determines whether the character can perform it. In Negentropy, knowledge often played a role earlier in the process. It helped determine what the character would know to attempt in the first place.
For instance, a person trained in geology might recognize unstable ground, useful stone, a likely aquifer, or evidence of an old river channel. An engineer might examine a damaged machine and distinguish between a repair that required a replacement bearing and one that could be improvised with available tools. A physician could recognize that two patients who both appeared weak might require completely different treatment. A communications specialist could differentiate between a failure caused by the radio, the antenna, the power supply, interference, or the absence of anyone listening on the other end.
This is why I preferred the broader term “Knowledge.” Competence encompassed observation, vocabulary, memory, theory, procedure, and judgment. It was possible to possess enough knowledge to diagnose a problem without being able to perform every specialized repair personally. It was possible to understand what an expert was doing without possessing the expert’s years of practice. The game could represent these differences through circumstances and the Five Rules instead of requiring a separate numerical sub-skill for every aspect of a profession.
The Game Master Had to Learn Too
This approach placed an unusual burden on the game master. If a player character possessed a Knowledge that the game master didn’t understand at all, the game master couldn’t fairly adjudicate the situation by pretending expertise. The solution was usually to look something up. The game became a shared research exercise because both sides could discover that their assumptions were wrong.
I regarded that as a strength. A game about highly educated people entering unfamiliar conditions should occasionally force the players to learn something. The purpose wasn’t to turn every session into schoolwork. Most questions could be handled quickly, and many details didn’t affect the outcome enough to deserve research. The Five Rules included triviality for exactly that reason. However, when a real physical or technical question became central to a decision, finding out how the thing actually worked usually produced a better situation than inventing a rule on the spot.
The game master still had authority to decide what happened in the fictional world. Real knowledge didn’t eliminate judgment because the characters rarely had perfect conditions, complete information, or unlimited resources. Research established the shape of the problem, and the game ladder established how uncertainty was handled within that problem.
Knowledge Was Not Omniscience
A Knowledge also didn’t mean that a character automatically knew every fact in a field. Real subjects are too vast for that. Someone trained in medicine can encounter an unfamiliar disease, an engineer can face a machine outside their specialty, a geologist can misread incomplete evidence, and an experienced mechanic can make the wrong diagnosis. Knowledge established competence, not omniscience.
This approach ensured that difficulty stemmed from the situation itself rather than artificially weakening the character. For instance, a Troubleshooter could be an exceptional physician but still lack the necessary laboratory equipment to diagnose an infection. Similarly, an expert radio operator might comprehend the issue at hand but be unable to repair a burned component without replacement parts. A botanist could possess the knowledge of plant cultivation but face challenges due to unfamiliar soil or climate conditions.
These limitations became particularly advantageous in the future setting. Troubleshooters carried the accumulated knowledge from an earlier era into conditions that might have undergone significant transformations. Their scientific habits remained relevant even when specific facts became obsolete. A character might not be familiar with the local species, language, political system, or diseases, but they could still observe, compare, test, and learn. Consequently, knowledge provided players with a practical method for approaching the unknown without overwhelming them with an encyclopedic understanding of the future.
Knowledge and Team Composition
This system also influenced my perspective on the Troubleshooter team. It emphasized that no single individual needed to possess all the knowledge. A team could effectively distribute competence among its members, resulting in enhanced strength due to diverse approaches to problem-solving. Medical, engineering, scientific, communications, navigation, supply, security, and investigative knowledge could overlap without becoming identical.
This approach fostered practical cooperation rather than merely thematic interactions. For instance, in a medical scenario, the physician might diagnose the patient, the communications specialist might contact another settlement, the supply person might locate the required medication, and the engineer might ensure the refrigeration system functions long enough to preserve the medication. In an exploration scenario, the team might begin with geological knowledge, require surveying and weather expertise, and conclude with mechanical work on a damaged vehicle. The characters’ areas of expertise provided reasons for players to engage in questioning and information sharing.
The team’s structure shifted from a collection of combat roles to a more functional field organization, aligning with the original resume-based character record. I was curious about each individual’s contributions to the expedition and how their skills complemented one another.
Combat was indeed a significant knowledge area, especially in swords-and-sorcery adventures where defeating monsters was often central to gameplay. Negentropy incorporated combat, with weapons posing a danger, but I wanted the character record to convey that combat wasn’t the sole measure of competence.
A brief firefight could be crucial, but other skills could determine the team’s survival for the next week. These included repairing the radio, treating the wounded, finding clean water, crossing a river, identifying a storm, operating a generator, or negotiating with a settlement. The character system needed to assign equal conceptual weight to these abilities, even if they didn’t require equally complex rules.
This was another reason why external reference material became so valuable. Combat had clear game procedures due to the need for rapid decisions based on position, attack, wounds, and weapons. However, many other challenges became more engaging when the rules were kept out of the way until uncertainty arose. For instance, a character skilled in performing a routine electrical test didn’t need to roll simply because electricity was involved. The action became a game problem only when circumstances made failure significant.
Routine competence and the Five Rules were key elements in achieving this balance.
The Five Rules prevented Knowledges from turning into constant dice rolling. If a trained character performed a routine action under normal circumstances, it could simply be trivial. Competence meant that ordinary professional work usually happened without drama. The dice entered when time pressure, damaged equipment, missing information, injury, poor conditions, unusual complexity, or some other circumstance made the outcome uncertain.
This was crucial to the feel of the characters. I didn’t want an expert physician to have a significant chance of failing to use an ordinary bandage or an experienced mechanic to repeatedly fail simple maintenance because of the dice’s luck. That kind of uncertainty made the character less believable. The game ladder allowed the game master to distinguish routine work from meaningful risk.
On the other hand, Knowledge could not make an impossible action possible. An engineer could not repair a completely missing engine with a screwdriver. A physician could not replace blood that did not exist. A radio operator could not communicate through a system with no power and no functioning transmitter. Expertise helped define the limits more accurately; it did not erase them. This connection between Knowledge and possibility became one of the strongest safeguards against both arbitrary failure and magical competence.
Learning During Play
Characters could also acquire new knowledge, but I didn’t want learning to behave like purchasing another item from a menu. Some things can be learned quickly. A competent mechanic can become familiar with an unfamiliar vehicle after studying it. A person who already understands one radio system may learn another with relatively little difficulty. However, other subjects require years of education, supervised practice, or experience that cannot be compressed into an adventure.
The distinction between learning a local procedure, vocabulary, route, or machine and becoming a surgeon or structural engineer was crucial. A character could easily expand their existing knowledge rather than acquiring an entire profession from scratch. Therefore, the game didn’t require a universal experience-point price for both scenarios.
This also meant that contact with the future could gradually transform the team. Initially, troubleshooters relied on their knowledge from their own era, but survival demanded them to learn local agriculture, languages, technologies, creatures, laws, medicines, trade practices, and routes. Their education provided a foundation, and experience in the future made that foundation applicable in novel ways.
Why I Preserved the Term
Over the years, the language surrounding character abilities evolved and became more formal. However, I retained the concept of Knowledges because it encapsulated a fundamental aspect of Negentropy. The game posits that acquiring knowledge about a subject alters an individual’s perspective on a problem. Characters don’t merely possess a bonus; they possess concepts, procedures, expectations, and the ability to differentiate between situations.
This philosophy eventually led to the creation of entire sourcebooks. If healing was deemed important, I wanted comprehensive material that explained sufficient medicine for both players and game masters to reason about patients. Similarly, if communication was crucial, the game needed to explain radios and networks. If engineering was significant, it required explanations of machines. The sourcebook didn’t replace the Knowledge; instead, it provided the people at the table with a shared understanding that enabled them to utilize it effectively.
The original Scout pamphlets served as an exemplary model for this purpose. They assumed that readers could acquire real knowledge and then apply it. Negentropy expanded upon this idea into a fictional world where what a person knew could hold as much importance as what weapon they carried.
A Character’s Value Lies in Their Contributions to the Problem
The initial character record was based on a school resume, as that was how I was accustomed to perceiving competence. A person’s resume would include education, experience, interests, training, and practical skills. As I developed Negentropy, this starting point became increasingly suitable.
Troubleshooters were chosen for their ability to bring valuable knowledge to situations where the solution was unknown. Their character sheets didn’t need to predict every task they might encounter. Instead, the game would prompt them to consider their knowledge, available resources, the physical situation, and whether uncertainty persisted after gathering these facts.
This principle remains the foundation of Knowledges. A character isn’t interesting because a number on their sheet indicates their proficiency in Engineering. Instead, they’re interesting because Engineering alters the questions they ask when unexpected events occur, such as a power outage, a malfunctioning pump, a bridge under load, or the discovery of an unfamiliar machine in a ruin. Knowledge enables new choices. The game ladder determines the outcome when these choices intersect with an uncertain world.