You roll Survival to survive, right? So a use of Survival might be "You're trapped in the Nevernever until the next full moon. Roll Survival, difficulty 7, take consequences to cover your margin of failure."

Knowledge skills are not weak, they just aren't significantly stronger than other skills. So splitting them would make them weak.

I see little relation between Athletics and Might and Weapons, honestly. Weightlifters don't run well, and swordsmen aren't generally great wrestlers.

But an excellent mathematician can generally handle computer science or biology. I've known a fair number of smart people, and only one or two were specialized. People rarely excel in only one subject at school.

See, that's my point.  In your version of Survival, you're not only abstracting away what survival actually entails, you're simply handwaving it out of existence.  I, meanwhile, would be running a stranded in the Nevernever as a significant event, possibly worth a milestone all by itself, complete with Stealth to avoid detection by predators, Craftsmanship to create shelter if you couldn't find something with your Investigation rolls, which would also be used with Lore as a limiter to find food to keep yourself fed through the night, and then likely throw in a Thaumaturgy Challenge to get the gate open at the proper window of time to get back out before the big nasty you were hiding from clues in to the scent of magic being used.  A single skill for all of that just wouldn't cut it for me.

On the other hand, a person with Might is more likely to have a higher Weapons or Fight skill than someone who has nothing.  A person with Weapons will almost certainly have both Might and Athletics at a fair level, since cardio and strength training are both explicit parts of combat training (note that I am talking about COMBAT training, not simply martial arts classes at a community college in a vaccuum of intent.  A recreational T'ai Chi practitioner MIGHT justify having a low Fists with little to no corresponding physical skills, but that'd be a stretch.)  Again, they're definitely distinct, and yet they will have a tendency to be linked.

As for smart people knowing a lot, yes, I mentioned that tendency, but I don't think that's because they simply have a high knowledge skill, especially before you get to graduate studies (which is the bare minimum I'd consider before you got to Good skill, btw), I view that as them actually investing in knowledge skills in a balanced way.  Most smart people I know I wouldn't put above Average or Fair skill.  Getting Good or higher takes some real work, which talent alone simply can not match.  I don't think it's unusual enough for someone to know more about programming than biology to make it worthy of a Stunt.  Hence the skill split.

First up: read the sidebar on page 136. It will probably be useful to you.

Second up: lockpicking is not like breaking. Nothing ends up broken. This is kind of an important difference.

Third up: lockpicking is kind of a weird edge skill that most people will have never attempted in their lives. So it makes sense for it, like surgery, to be gated behind a stunt.

Fourth up: A high Scholarship rating is not what you use to represent skill at Greek History. That's what stunts are for. A high Scholarship skill means that you are highly intelligent and broadly educated/well-read. As a guy with decent Scholarship in real life, I can tell you that this is not unrealistic.

Which is what I was trying to get at earlier. Scholarship 5 includes everything that being intelligent and broadly educated would make you good at and nothing else. By the same token, Investigation covers everything that being perceptive and analytical would make you good at and nothing else. Finding food outdoors and preparing it so that you can live off of it and finding shelter and so on requires more than being perceptive and analytical.

Fifth up: posts like Haru's are what I was trying to head off with my reply to Mr. Death. Most of the successful DFRPG games I've seen do not fit the mold (s)he speaks of. (I'm thinking of Night Fears, Evil Acts, Forced To Fight, and Enduring The Apocalypse here.) And most of the failed games I've seen do fit that mold. (I'm not saying which, sorry.)

DFRPG is a good system to play mortal gangsters with. It's also a good system for a dungeon crawl, and it can handle a game of high-stakes corporate politics too.

Basically, I think that DFRPG is a pretty general system. It can cover almost anything with only a few hacks. So I don't understand or like the whole idea that it's a game about being Harry Dresden.

Though I suppose I could be misunderstanding what Haru means here.

First:  I am well aware of the sidebar.  I think it's a useful middle ground between separate skills and a kitchen sink skill, but I prefer more well defined skills without having to work through "okay, so what is a reasonable specialty subject?  Is history too broad?  How about language?  Should language be limited to just the rules of grammar and diction, or does it also include literature?"  etc.  I'm aware that most players will never deal with that question.  But *I* do.  Besides that, I don't find that marking specialties is a particularly accurate way of dealing with the situation.  I, for example, have fairly low Scholarship, but that doesn't mean that I only have one or two areas of knowledge.  That just means that I'm not deeply entrenched in books.  However, I don't think Butters has five specialties worth of knowledge, since he's mostly been shown to be a medical whiz (reflected by his stunts) and competent with computers and nerd cred.  Should his Scholarship be bumped down to give him less specialties?  I don't think so.  YMMV.

Second:  "Breaking" doesn't necessarily mean "taken apart beyond repair".  Might does that.  Craftsmanship's breaking trapping I've always seen as "disassembling", which allows it to be put back together again.  In that respect, I think lockpicking is absolutely a subtrapping of breaking, because it's using tools to force a lock to disengage without breaking it completely.

Thirdly:  Fair point on a stunt, though if we maintain the argument on specialties, Craftsmanship is definitely up for inclusion, and locksmith is a definite valid category, which I imagine would include knowledge of the tools to open a lock on demand.

Fourthly:  I stepped away from GURPS and D&D because I don't like the "broadly intelligent" application of a knowledge skill or stat.  I believe that people who focus on learning for the sake of knowledge will probably be broadly knowledgeable, but that's not the same thing as assuming that anyone who is knowledgeable is broadly so.  Again, this is an issue of balance for me.  I don't think stunts are the answer to representing a focus in this matter when a variety of skills does the same thing... without costing precious Fate Points.

Fourthly section b:  I agree.  It requires knowledge of the plants and fungi that are safe to eat, and knowledge on the habitats and patterns of other critters so you don't squat in someone else's home.  Which is why I suggested Investigation limited by Scholarship (or, in my skill list, Medicine, which covers biology and poisons). 

Fifthly:  I agree.  I see DFRPG as a mode of Fate, which is my system of choice.  I'm currently using it to run swords and sorcery.  I can see the system being well up to the challenge of running a more social-oriented game, with no physical combat whatsoever.  In fact, I generally think that's Fate's greatest strength, since physical combat can easily be covered by three skills or less.  Next to magic, social combat tends to be where most of its depth is invested.

More than anything I would argue that this skill is definitely setting appropriate...

Whether or not it's mechanically necessary is going to vary from group to group, but I don't see any negative consequences to including it and because of that I don't see any reason to dissuade others from using it if they feel so compelled.

Thank you.  This is what I was getting at with my OP.  In general, we seem to be on the same page, so I won't bother repeating your arguments.

This may be crazy talk, but I'm thinking about an all-purpose Profession skill. Some thoughts:

Each rank buys you a Skill Trapping from another skill, or lets you make up a new trapping with GM oversight. . All the bought Trappings use the final Skill Rank to resolve. Maybe open to abuse.

Or maybe each Profession (whatever) skill you take allows you to borrow 2-4 Skill Trappings from other skills, with GM oversight (maybe just from the Scholarship/Crafting/Performance skills). Probably not outright combat skills.

Or maybe the skill's purpose is that it simply allows Declarations and Maneuvers within the skill's idiom.

I think Fred's blog has some musings about this, or something very similar.  Don't feel like dredging through it right now, but it'd be worth a look.  I'm not generally in favor of it myself, simply due to a general dislike of trapping-per-skill point.  All of your average skills are going to be sorely lacking, and widely applicable skills are not the same thing as strongly potent skills.  :/

Following your logic, most skills can be derived from one or two more basic skills, but that would lead to pretty short list of skills that wouldn't be enough to fill the pyramid.

Lore for example is basically a specialised Scholarship skill. Deceit is a combination of empathy and performance. Investigation is Alertness combined with Scholarship. Intimidation can be emulated by Presence + any number of skills, depending on the way you want to do it.

But what all skills have in common is, that they perfectly represent the magical gumshoe genre.

Survival kind of has an extra role for me. Just because you know how to play a crowd or command a group doesn't mean you know how to handle an animal. Wilderness skills are almost unnecessary in an urban setting, so you can lump it all into one skill, but I believe it should still be there, just to separate those who have hands on experience from an academic. The same kind of goes for Burglary.

I know, that is something that can and certainly should be represented by aspects, but there is more. Burglary could be covered by other skills, but it would cover way more than what burglary does. The problem is, lockpicking can fit both skills, burglary and craftsmanship, but they come at it from entirely different angles. Yes, Burglary's trappings read pretty much like stunts on various other skills, but like I said above, so does lore in regards to scholarship. I would keep it just for the feel (you know, detectives and gangsters 'n' stuff), and (to come back to the topic) don't really see the need for a homemaking skill for pretty much the same reason. Even in the novels, it is mostly glossed over, and in the game, I don't think it is a skill that will get much use. You either gloss over the things that are covered, or you go into detail, but then you can take the original skills for that.

I might not be entirely coherent right now due to lack of sleep, so if anything up there is strange, I will gladly sort it out later.

There seems to be a double standard here to me.  Burglary should be kept because it's specific and flavorful enough to be worth redundancy, whereas Homemaker could be folded into other skills despite the fact that including it with other skills makes any such character vastly more knowledgeable about things that have nothing to do with what they would do (remember, Craftsmanship is the skill of making, fixing, and breaking with tools, which makes it the skill of carpentry, metal working, sewing, tanning, construction, plumbing, electrical, engineering, etc.)

Also, I don't agree that Scholarship matches the flavor of the Dresden Files particularly well.  Scholarship is such an absurdly wide skill that I wonder how someone could think that a chemist, a forensics specialist, a historian, a lawyer, and a computer programmer would ALL have the same skill at the same level, with only a few Stunts to differentiate them.  Performance has a similar issue, though not to the same degree.

Hence why I'm in favor of rolling together the more redundant skills (Survival, Burglary) and dividing the more broad knowledge (read: Assessment/Declaration) skills (Scholarship, Performance).  I think it moves the skills in a direction that makes them both more evenly balanced against each other, and allows more meaningful differentiation between characters. 

All of Weapons is using tools. So is some of Scholarship and most of Performance. Also all of Driving and of Guns. Just because it uses tools doesn't mean it's Craftsmanship.

The question you have to ask yourself when deciding what skill something should fall under is not "can I justify this as X", it's "should a character with Superb X be good at this". Your suggestions fail that test. Being a great detective should not imply an ability to survive in the wilderness.

If you're thinking of pointing out that Weapons lets you use all weapons and Scholarship lets you access all fields of science, you're missing the point. See, being generally competent academically or with weaponry makes sense. Most people have specializations (stunts) but the field as a whole is something that you can learn all at once.

Except Craftsmanship is SPECIFICALLY the skill of making, fixing, and breaking (generally the assumption of safely, but not always in the case of demolition) with tools.  Tools exist for everything, I'm not suggesting that a rock climber needs Craftsmanship to set up a belay or a chemist needs it to operate a bunsen burner.  I do, however, think that lockpicking is a very specified form of breaking a lock safely using small hand tools.  Your mileage obviously varies.

I don't actually think that Investigation is defined as the skill of being a detective.  It's the skill of observation and identification, which is vastly important to a detective, but not the only application of the skill.  What else is foraging but looking for and finding edible materials and shelter?

See previous point regarding Schoalrship.  I don't think computer programming and ancient history have much to do with each other at all.  I agree that computer science and advanced mathematics and physics and chemistry can all have easy links between each other, as well as languages and history and law all having easy links between each other...  but not across the ENTIRE field of scientific, medical, liberal arts, and law.  That, to me, seems absurd.

That's why I said "in large part."

Yes, you can use it for many different things, but the focus tends to be on getting out there and going on adventures in/with/around/against the supernatural community. Given that, I don't see how a dedicated homemaker would be much more than a flavor NPC. You could build a character around homemaking, but I don't really see how such a character would actively participate in a campaign enough to be a PC.

Every other skill, I look at it, and I can say, "Yes, you could make that your Superb skill and base a PC around it." Homemaking? Unless we're talking about Maid: The RPG, I don't think so.

Charity Carpenter is a stay-at-home mom who happens to be the wife of a Knight of the Cross, and a former sorceress.  When her child was abducted, she stormed the gates of Arctis Tor herself to get her back.  When her family was assaulted by fae assassins, she jumped in immediately with a nail gun after getting her family to safety.  And yet, no one would confuse her with a primary combatant or a supernatural character, nor do I thikn that anyone would doubt that she COULD BE a PC.  I really do think that her peak skill was Homemaking, with Fight and Intimidation coming behind.

A widowed grandfather has taken prodigious care of his home after his wife passed away, partly in her honor, partly because he enjoys the work and loves his children and grandchildren and rejoices in having them as company.  However, when a band of vampires snatches them away after a visit, his interest in the occult and old army buddies come in handy to track them down and get them back.  His home is his fortress, and he's not likely to ignore the supernatural threats in his city after having such a close personal brush with them himself.  Homemaking peak with Contacts and Lore and Guns as lower tier skills, among other action man type skills atrophied from his active days.

I can readily imagine a character whose main role in a game is to have a supernaturally airtight home base, the same way a character could have the main role of being the money man or being the guy who knows his way around the movers and shakers of the community.

My game is different than yours.  I really like the everyman, Feet In The Water sort of power level, with more or less normal people with normal interests and skills being forced to deal with the sudden influx of supernatural nonsense in their lives.  I think Waldo Butters has a lot to do with that.

A disease could easily be a consequence, and it could easily be such that it would not meaningfully affect the character in a fight.

Point is, as soon as you start thinking outside the box you have to accept that consequences are a lot like Fate Points or stuff doesn't make sense.

I'm not sure I buy that a disease would be a Consequence from anything but magic (which I think is more likely to be the result of thaumaturgy, and likely a maneuver at that) or an infection... which I would model as an environmental attack against the character's Endurance, with an invocation against ANOTHER existing Consequence reflecting the fact that an open wound in a swamp is a bad plan, sir.

In the end, the fact that it doesn't make sense is sort of the reason for this discussion.  I'd also like to point out that I offered a potential solution to the logic problem here by suggesting alternative stress/consequence limits/models.

Also potentially worth a look is Mutants and Masterminds' toughness injury model, which is that every wound taken reduces the character's effective toughness against future injuries, and every time you take a hit, you check to see if your character can keep going.  Eventually, penalties build up high enough that it's simply impossible to beat a roll, and down you go.  Too much die rolling for my tastes, but it's another option.

YS 203-204 (emphasis mine):
"Any time a character takes stress, he may opt to take a consequence to reduce the amount of stress received from the attack. The exact nature of the consequence depends upon the conflict—an injury might be appropriate for a physical struggle, but an emotional state might be apt for a social one. Whatever the consequence, it is written down under the stress track.

Normally, the player taking the consequence gets to describe what it is, so long as it’s compatible with the nature of the attack that inflicted the harm. The GM arbitrates the appropriateness of a consequence and there may be some back and forth conversation before settling on one. The GM is the final authority on whether a player’s suggested consequence is reasonable for the circumstances and severity."

My example is not particularly a violation of RAW: it just may not work for every GM or group.

Huh.  Point noted and ceded.  I guess I inferred stress > consequence rather than actually reading it.  Cool beans.

I know the game is not D20 system nor White Wolf etc.  It is a narrative game, I don't like narratives where I always get stomped or have to flee social encounters or simply ignore them and not "roleplay" as the system suggests.

As long as we're sharing pennies, I'll throw in mine:  Part of the reason I latched onto Fate was BECAUSE of Social Combat.  I loved the idea of having a concrete mechanic for a debate or a shouting match or whatever else.  I don't like forcing players to be eloquent and confident speakers just because they're playing one.  Roleplaying, imo, is the decision making process, not the application of the solution.  The ability to portray an imaginary character is a huge draw for this kind of game, and social fantasy fulfillment is just as vital in my mind as physical or supernatural ones.

My only problems with it thus far are envisioning precise exchanges and how the skills interact, the rate of speed for concurrent physical and social conflicts, and suspension of disbelief when consequences overflow to influence contests that they don't seem to have any bearing on.

I hadn't considered the problem of supernatural toughness getting trumped by social prowess, but now forewarned, I can become forearmed, and for that, I thank you.

*Diaspora's model interests me some...it's more interesting than beating each other with verbal fists until someone cries uncle.

You people need to _never stop feeding me with new games to plunder mechanics from.  ;_;

I think the argument that I see is that others believe that physical health is separate from mental and social health, and that they have lesser impact on other facets.

I would disagree. As I mentioned before Doctors these days are acknowledging that things like social health and even financial health can have a great deal of impact on one's physical wellbeing.

In the long term, I agree, but I agree with Mr. Death on the point of an immediate fight being less likely to be decided by a lack of motivation or a bruised ego.  I can easily imagine the fight going BADLY because of those factors, but the effects of depression on your cardiac fitness are rather outside the scope of the game's conflict/Consequence rules.

To put it in the reverse, I'm not sure I buy that your broken arm is likely to convince you that your quest isn't ordained by God or give in to the scorn of the social elite.  It might be used against you, but it will not DIRECTLY contribute to your defeat in either arena.

Again, imo.

That's certainly true - I see where you are coming from. But it feels like an attempt to give Pure Mortals access to something like Bless This House without taking a supernatural power.

.... And?  They get Lethal Blow and Fleet of Foot, too.  Besides that, Homemaking would be a +1 to YOUR Threshold strength for every two skill levels, as opposed to a flat +2 to wherever you happened to be.  I think it's fair.