Rarely used skills

[Chaosmeister]

Hey all, something that came up today while discussing characters. We have a Gambler in the group and the player was making the observation that having a need for a "Gambling" skill is basically a skill tax for that character archetype because realistically speaking how often will the character be able to actually use Gambling during a campaign in a way that has a meaningful impact on the game compared to say Blaster or Com-scan or even Command?

How do you handle this? Can you think of not obvious uses for a skills like gambling?
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Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at!

[Yora]

I think with these things, it's primarily up to the players to make situations where these come into play. In contrast to many other RPGs, there seems to be more a consensus that the players are making the story instead of playing out the scenes the GM has mapped out for them.
Why exactly there is a gambler template in the rulebooks I don't know, but when a player decides to play a gambler as a character, that player should have a general idea how that will come into play.

The obvious use for gambling would be to make money to be able to afford something. Though that's of course risky, as high stake games usually mean highly skilled opponents. But if you have a really high gambling skill, that could be an option.

Something more interest to get through gambling than money would be to get access to information and favors by getting opponents into debts they can not pay.
It can also be a way to get close to important people. To be invited to games where moffs and crime bosses hang out, you'd have to be able to at least make your money last for a long while, so you'd need to be quite skilled at that. If you can't keep up with the skill level and amounts of money that are played for, you'll quickly get thrown out before you can learn anything useful.

Narratively speaking, gambling is also a nice way to get a character into debt or on the bad side of important and powerful people.
In a nonlinear game with no specific goal and where swashbuckling adventure with on the spot improvisation is a big part of the draw, getting your character into a not quite accidental mess can be the source of a lot of fun.

Other skills that I just don't see come up with a few rare exception are Lifting and Swimming. It's obvious how and when you use the Swimming skill, but it's not something that characters ever really need to do in common Star Wars stories.
Lifting seems like something that will only be interesting when you can get it really high to do superhuman things. Putting 6 CP into Lifting just because seems like it would be a waste.

More challenging skills to me are those that deal with the operation and repair of more obscure pieces of equipment that don't really have a presence in any Star Wars works, like ground vehicles, hover vehicles, aquatic vehicles, submersibles, and all types of gunpower weapons. I think these are really useless additions that shouldn't have been put on skill lists in the first place and remained as Blank Skills.
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"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[garhkal]

[Yora]

Yes, sand people come to mind.

But part of the Star Wars style and dynamics is to move on to another planet frequently, often multiple times in the same adventure.
In contrast, investing CP into skills is permanent, making this an extremely undesirable use of this limited resource that governs character advancement.
And it's just as unlikely to run into aliens used to shooting firearms who end up shooting blasters at the heroes for more than one or two encounters.

Same thing with ground vehicles and submersibles.
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"Adventure? Eh... Excitement? Eh... A Jedi does not crave these things."

Iridium Moons Retro-futuristic Space Opera

[Whill]

[garhkal]

[Chaosmeister]

Thanks all. He wasn't complaining and is usually very good at coming up with ways to use his skills creativity. In this instance I am the GM and we do not play a free campaign but the IAG one and there is no Gambling to be had. I may add some in though just to make it more fun. In general we prefer a more "loose" game style hence I prefer the IAG with a short skill list to the detailed ones from 2e and REUP. I would let someone use his blaster skill to fix a weapon jam for example or identify a specific weapon someone uses or to measure how accurate a sniper was or things like that for example.
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Teamwork is essential, it gives them someone else to shoot at!

[MrNexx]

A tangent on gambling: Would you allow someone to use Scholar:Mathematics to count cards, or otherwise influence a gabling roll?
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[Chaosmeister]

[garhkal]

[Whill]

[Sutehp]

Granted this is a bit tangental, but Whill's mention of the MC-13v2 reminded me:

Whill, I'm actually still kicking myself that I never finished those MC-13v2 I promised you.

And now I'm editing an entire Freespace mod (a job that I actually volunteered for!), so maybe karma is paying me back...with interest.
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Sutehp's RPG Goodies
Only some of it is for D6 Star Wars.
Just repurchased the X-Wing and Tie Fighter flight sim games. I forgot how much I missed them.

[Whill]

[Sutehp]

[garhkal]