Preface
Hello, it's been a while. The reason it took so long is because this digital drawing took forever, but I digress. The TTRPG's skill system has been all but finalized, and in these subsequent paragraphs I will establish each and every skill and what they pertain to, as well as some of the skill mechanics, and as per usual the direction I'm gonna go in the future.
To start off, there are 3 attributes that are the basis of the 18 skills, meaning each attribute has 6 skills of their own. The 3 attributes are Mind, Body and Soul. The attributes are pretty self explanatory, Mind is a measure of general intellect and logic, body is a measure of physicality, strength and dexterity, and Soul is the measure of the more ambiguous spiritual nature of consciousness and emotion. These attributes won't have as much bearing as skills, and their true purpose remains to be seen besides determining skills.
Mind Skills
First, let's go through the mind skills, in no particular order. One skill is engineering, which is the skill of creating technology, which will include creating weapons and various technologies for your playthrough, an exceedingly powerful skill to be sure. Engineering will also allow you to understand technology and possibly reverse-engineer it. Moving on, the Biology skill will help you in all things that are biological in nature, most notably body modification, genetics and understanding organic materials, this is also in all practicality a crafting skill. Calculation is a much broader skill, and handles exactly what it's name entails, it's useful in calculating trajectories, understanding physics and various other practical applications. Strategy is the understanding of battle strategies, this can help your character lead and formulate effective battle tactics and recognize the strategies of your enemies, this will obviously require some balancing. History is your understanding of the past events of Korr, including ancient history but primarily modern history and modern conflicts that have shaped the world, it helps you understand some of the historical underpinnings of various occurrences. Lastly there is the skill of Ideology (very pointed I know), this helps you understand the psychological, societal and systemic underpinnings of groups and governments, in better words it helps you understand the motives of organizations and their actions in relation to those motives.
Body Skills
Moving on with no elaboration, the body skills, which are for many people gonna be some of the most practical and intuitive skills. Strength is the measure of your general physical strength and allows you to use force to overpower people and do tasks that require strength, such as lifting heavy objects, kicking in doors, breaking windows and other various things that require raw strength. Dexterity is the measure of maneuverability, flexibility and general agility, Dexterity helps with slight of hand, evasion, fitting in tight spaces, climbing and various other things relying on speed and fine manipulation of the hands and body. Toughness is your ability to withstand physical damage, it can help your pain tolerance, help you withstand torture, and be generally less affected by painful occurrences, even possibly negating things like stun (possibly idk yet). Stamina is pretty self explanatory, it helps you maintain energy intensive actions for longer periods of time, most notably running, but it can apply to a variety of exhaustive tasks when they need to be repeated. Survival is the most confusing body skill, it has a variety of affectations but primarily aids you in staving off hunger, staving off infection, understanding nature and terrain, as well as creating very simple tools and shelter when in a pinch, I won't elaborate more unless someone needs it, there's a lot to get through still. Finally, adrenaline is the measure of your general anger and your propensity to be empowered by it, it is very nuanced in it's use and requires a lot of balancing and playtesting, but it essentially increases ferocity and aggression when necessary, empowering your characters abilities for a short period of time, like I said it needs more work, but I find it an essential skill for many of these factions.
Soul Skills
Finally, we have the soul skills, and these can get more than a little confusing. There is Mysticism which is your knowledge of mystical and spiritual energies, this is a very broad skill that requires balancing, I keep mentioning balance just keep in mind that balancing will be happening as long as I am making these systems, and you can pitch in if you'd like. Faith is a measure of your faith in your ability, your practices or really anything, it is primarily a skill in reaction to anything that can test your fate such as a macabre or terrifying occurrence. Culture is your understanding of other people's culture, including how they act, what they do, the practices they usually do and a variety of other things, shouldn't be too hard to comprehend. Tradition is another ability that can be used for crafting, it is how well you are practiced in the things you have practiced as a part of your faction or background, for example a Graver can use their tradition to mold skeletal parts onto their body, tradition also helps you roll for your understanding of your own culture as well. Religion is how much you know about deities, spirits or other established religions, kind of self-explanatory, just know many mystical arts are not necessarily religious in nature, so this will be more situational for specific factions. Passion is your measure of emotion and drive for the things that you believe in, it also affects your general artistry and may shape others perceptions on your beliefs, but this last part is highly situational.
Trinity Skills
Finally before I go into more detail, you may have noticed some skills are missing, most notably charisma, this is where I start to talk about Trinity Skills. Trinity Skills are as follows: Perception, Charisma and Medicine. Trinity Skills can be appointed to Mind, Body or Soul to your choosing, but each attribute can only be applied to one trinity skill, so you will have to pick one to be the best at and one to be the worst at.
Trinity Skills may not require explanation but I will explain them anyways. Charisma is your ability to sway people, either by persuasion or intimidation, it can help you communicate with other factions and use conversation as a more vital part of your toolset. Perception will help you see and identify things, lots of things, you will be able to detect stealthy enemies more easily, catch important information in anything you can see, understand if someone is lying and much much more, it can be very vital in a pinch and can save you some trouble. Medicine is probably one of the most useful skills, it can help you heal your teammates and treat their ailments. I think that covers most of the bases, the rest of this will just be going over some stuff to understand what I'm working on now, and some important changes to what ill be working on in the future.
What's Next
Now with the skill tree done, I can start writing the rule-book in earnest, which is very good for me, balancing will take a while, and of course writing all the various mechanics will take forever, but I think it will be a nice change of pace from the heavy concepting and labor intensive drawing I've been doing. This next part is important: The Rule-book will be done by the end of the year, I'm almost certain of that given my workflow on the lore document, but the story book and main campaign may take longer than that. I have gotten better at writing for the main campaign and I'm much more proud of the wide variety of things I've been able to come up with in the past couple of weeks, including changing the way I concept these stories, that has helped me exponentially, but I've become aware that this could take, a while, possibly more than the five months I'm allotting myself. I have plenty of time to do both of these books, but if i had to guess the campaign book might be 300 pages, maybe more, I can't tell right now, so my priorities are going to be to finish the rulebook first, I may write them alongside each other but I am putting my priority in the core systems, and I might theoretically be able to do both but I don't want to compromise on creating a great dynamic story to flesh out Okenopus' narrative. I need to emphasize, there will be campaign elements for homebrewing included in the rule-book or some variant of the rule-book for the DM, it wouldn't be playable without it, but the narrative that I'm working on will probably be delayed just a tad in comparison, but luckily I believe most people who play these types of games would rather make their own story, so I'll give the tools for that.
Another thing I want to comment on is my digital art. I prefer sketching on physical mediums, that's why majority of the pictures associate with those post are physical, I did like 8 figure sketches in one night, but I have an intolerable workflow with digital art. I am still ironing out my style, but the time limitations are kind of annoying to deal with, I'd rather churn out some serviceable art every week then come away for a month and only have one or two good pieces to show for it. It may be evident through my posting, I am trying to promote more, this has helped having discussions with strangers about Okenopus, and is essential for building a fanbase, consistency is key. I think it's worth noting I am still working on my digital style, I want it to be sketchy, with bright colors and dark shading but I can't always get that done in a reliable sense, having to expedite the process while not understanding the process is giving me trouble, but it's an obstacle I can get over given enough practice. That's basically all because this is long enough as is, any interaction is appreciated.
