Education/Skills in Rifts

[eliakon]

I have noticed in a number of threads here that there seems to be an assumption that people in Rifts should have very few skills as they are in a 'post apocalyptic wasteland' and thus will never have any access to 'real training.'

I am curious as to where this idea arises?

I ask because when I look at the game stats they don't look to be that way at all. The closest is that in Rifts Language and Literacy are separate skills instead of a combined skill in some of the other game lines.
The reasons I say this are

1) Most classes have a pretty hefty number of skills with the option to take a pretty wide assortment of high level skills.

2) The limitations on what skills you can take are pretty lax. There are a surprising amount of classes that can take engineering, medical doctor, all sorts of advanced science and technical skills and the like/

3) The 'basic skill package' for being an educated member of society in Palladium is just Language <native>, Literacy <native>, Basic Math, Drive <automobile>, and computer operation... which is something that a vast number of classes start with

4) most characters will NOT start out growing up as wanderers on the wastes... most characters seem to originate in the various towns, cities, and high tech nations that dot the countryside. Nations that are capable for the most part of totally maintaining advanced super science equipment, and have very high levels of technology, medicine, and the like.

5) there are over a dozen universities just in North America, not counting all the various rouge scholars... any one of whom is basically a full school in and of themselves.

6) Other than a tiny handful of classes most classes are not noted as being 'prmitive' or 'uneducated'

Now yes... I get that there is some fluff about the lack of education. And it does appear that the 'peasentry' for lack of a better term is often not very well educated. And there are a few places (Dinosaur Swamp and Madhaven for example) where you do find there is a real lack of education.... but for the most part the world of Rifts is not post apocalypse. Thats chaos earth. Rifts is post-post-Apocalypse at best and more like modern Europe which would NOT consider itself a post apocalypse culture... Dark Ages, Vikings, Mongols, Huns, Goths, Black Death, Spanish Flu and two World Wars aside...

Am I the only person that looks at things this way? Have the players I have played with over the last few decades been atypical in that there have not been a lot of people taking few if any skills and instead that I have had a lot of mechanics, and engineers, and spies, and doctors, and medics, and mages, and other experts and not a lot of saddle tramps, and vagabonds, and barbarians?

[taalismn]

That's been an oft-voiced concern that Rifts may have lost its 'post-apocalyptic' grimdark edge in that high-tech kingdoms and highly educated folk are popping up all over, in a setting more 'post-post-apocalyptic' where the next logical step with transportation being able to go borderline supersonic should be opening up the equivalent of interstate commerce and the such-like.
Real and Gritty RolePlayers will tell you a properly grimdark Rifts campaign would be played with tramps, vagabonds, city rats, and barbarians, and come across more like 'A Quiet Place' crossed with 'The Walking Dead' and 'Cloverfield'

[Nightmartree]

I've never considered a lot or few skills as an indicator of the level of hell your standing in. Its more the type of skills and location that determine how bad it is. You can always learn skills from someone in an apprenticeship or maybe you were a college boy from a big city holding it together...but things happen and now your a traveling mechanic, doctor or pianist in the wider scarier world beyond the safe(er) streets of your home city. I mean juicers are pretty much the heart of desperation, giving up all the potential and chances ahead of you to be faster, stronger, tougher in the hope of accomplishing SOMETHING in the few years you have left. But every juicer or borg needs a scientist and doctor to make them.

Rifts earth with my group always gets played as a mix of super high tech in some hands, guns in another guys hands, and magic wherever it wants to be. So...less post apocalyptic and more wild west, you have some places that are safe, some that are more advanced, and some where a guy and his guns are all the law you'll find, and in between them is a land filled with danger and chaos. Sometimes you'll travel a road and it'll be a stroll through the country, other times your wading through mud and demon blood as the ley line storm rages and the rift spews forth horrors that can tear mortal man limb from limb.

Basically though I don't think your skill count is what makes a setting post apocalyptic or not, its where you are, what your doing, and what skills you have. I've seen more than one post apocalyptic story where they have and work with science that makes rifts look low tech, and rifts is in many ways what you make of it as well.

[RockJock]

For me it is less the skill count, but what the available skills are. The average farm, or small town human, similar sdc d-bee should have plenty of skills, but they are not going to have a huge overlap with say a City Rat.

Here is a list of sort of "country" skills I've used in the past when it made sense. Basically this isn't an end all be all list, but they make sense to me for availability away from "book education" locations like small towns and farmsteads.
Communication
Barter
Language
Sing
Espionage
Wilderness Survival
Horsemanship
Horsemanship: General
Mechanical
Basic Mechanics
Medical
Animal Husbandry
Brewing: Medicinal
First Aid
Holistic Medicine
Military
Camouflage
Physical
Physical Labor
Pilot
Boat: Paddle
Science
Math: Basic
Technical
Breed Dogs
General Repair
Jury Rig
Leather Working
Masonry
Rope Work
Salvage
Whittling
Pretty much any Lore
Wilderness
Carpentry
Hunting
Identify Plants and Fruit
Land Navigation
Preserve Food
Skin and Prepare Hides
Track and Trap Animals
Wilderness Survival

[dreicunan]

People who can survive in a post-apocalyptic or wilderness/wild west style setting will by necessity be quite skilled, book-learning optional. We've always approached it that way, and used various system hacks over the years to reflect the problems with Palladium's approach to some skills (especially language skills). Personally, I think that most classes are too under-skilled,compared to what they should be!

[Blue_Lion]

You have to remember PC do not represent every man. They are the ones with talent, and found some way to get trained. Perhaps they where trained by a scholar that made his home in their community and past on tech skills, Or apprentice with a skilled operator to learn skills. Maybe they came from a university, or military training program. Perhaps the skills where past on from their parents in home schooling.

Thing is formal education has never been the only way a people learn skills.
Take the true tale from a boy from a poor village in Africa.
William Kamkwamba was a 14 year old boy in a Malawi village. A drought caused finical difficulty so his parents could not pay for food let alone aford to send him to school. He found a old electrical text book in the village library and taught himself the fundamentals of electrical engendering creating a wind turbine to provide power to his families home, that he wired for lighting created a crude electrical switch from things he could salvage and a battery to power the lights when there was no wind. He also manage to create a DC/AC converter. He also created a primitive short range radio transmitter.
He managed to do all that with stuff he manage to for the most part scavenge. He taught himself concepts that where not widely known(no one in his village had any knowledge of this principles) in the area he grew up. In a time the area he was growing up in was starving struggling to survive he managed to learn skills that where unheard of in his superstitious little village.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/117 ... d-the-wind

[Zer0 Kay]

That's been an oft-voiced concern that Rifts may have lost its 'post-apocalyptic' grimdark edge in that high-tech kingdoms and highly educated folk are popping up all over, in a setting more 'post-post-apocalyptic' where the next logical step with transportation being able to go borderline supersonic should be opening up the equivalent of interstate commerce and the such-like.
Real and Gritty RolePlayers will tell you a properly grimdark Rifts campaign would be played with tramps, vagabonds, city rats, and barbarians, and come across more like 'A Quiet Place' crossed with 'The Walking Dead' and 'Cloverfield'

What no Thundarr?