Whether flying through a canyon in a blistering-fast

starfighter or dueling a vampire on the rain-slicked

roof of a castle, we expect your character to do exciting

and dangerous activities in the course of their adventures.

Whether those exciting and dangerous actions succeed

or fail is determined by your character’s skills.

Skills represent what your character excels at doing;

the more ranks in a skill, the better your character per-

forms that skill. Anytime your character does something

that has a possibility of failure (and that failure has some

negative consequences for your character), your charac-

ter makes a skill check to see if they succeed or not.

As we’ve discussed previously, skills are used in con-

junction with characteristics to make checks. How this

works is covered on page 13, but in brief, the higher of

the two values determines how many Ability dice 󲊷 you

add to your dice pool, and the lower of the two values is

how many of those 󲊷 are upgraded into Proficiency dice

󲊷. Remember, in Genesys, your character never makes

a check just using their skill, or just their characteristic.

W hat are skills?

Technically, anything that your character might learn

could be considered a skill. However, that would lead

to a skill list that is ridiculously bloated and needlessly

specific. To avoid this, we’ve created a list of skills in

Genesys that are fairly broad and focused on activities

that can lead to climatic moments in a story.

For instance, instead of having separate skills for

running, jumping, and swimming, we have the Ath-

letics skill. Someone with multiple ranks in Athletics

excels at all three activities. Likewise, we do not have

a skill for cooking, because preparing a well-cooked

meal is rarely a life-or-death situation. Instead, we have

the Stealth skill, because sneaking up on an unsuspect-

ing guard or trying to escape from a maximum security

prison probably is a life-or-death situation.

Skills are divided into four categories based on their

general application and use. Combat skills deal with how

a character may act and react in a physical confrontation.

Other skills may be useful during a fight, but generally,

your character uses combat skills to commit violence.

Social skills, on the other hand, deal with how your

character may act and react in a social setting. They essen-

tially mirror combat skills; social skills are how your char-

acter interacts with others (without fighting them).

We classify skills that deal with general actions as gen-

eral skills. This category covers a wide range of activities,

from sneaking and picking pockets to healing friends.

Finally, knowledge skills are entirely cerebral. They

do not govern action—only understanding. We only

have one knowledge skill (called, appropriately enough,

Knowledge) that covers all topics of information. How-

ever, individual settings can have a wider variety of

knowledge skills covering a broader range of topics.

skill ranks

When a character chooses to attempt an action, the

player begins by forming a dice pool. The higher of the

relevant characteristic and skill ranks is used to deter-

mine the total number of Ability dice 󲊷 in the pool.

The smaller of these two values indicates how many of

those dice are upgraded to Proficiency dice 󲊷. A char-

acter who has no ranks in a skill is considered to be

unskilled. This character has a value of 0 for the skill in

question, so their checks for that skill are made without

upgrading any Ability dice 󲊷 to Proficiency dice 󲊷.

Aside from their use in the game mechanics, it may also

be useful to consider what skill ranks represent in a more

narrative sense. Even a single rank in a skill represents a

significant amount of time spent learning and practicing

it. We assume that most characters in your game world

can do the basic, everyday tasks related to a skill without

having a rank in that skill. For example, in a modern day

setting, most characters can drive a car but do not have

ranks in the Driving skill. The kinds of routine tasks they

perform almost never require a skill check (and if they do

need to make a skill check, they can still make the check

without having any ranks in the skill).

The first and second ranks of a skill represent a ground-

ing in that skill, but limited practical experience. At this

point, your character may have just completed a formal

education, taken part in an apprenticeship, or begun

an entry-level job. At this level of competency, your PC

knows the basics of the skill and can routinely succeed at

simple tasks, but is often overwhelmed by complex ones.

The third and fourth ranks are indicative of a true pro-

fessional. These are individuals who have honed the skill

thoroughly and can make their living at it. At this level,

characters might be talented and capable physicians,

respected pilots, or gifted mechanics. Routine tasks are

trivially simple, and these characters have the experience

GENESYS

Part I: The Rules53

to deal with complex tasks. They can even attempt a truly

formidable job with preparation and planning.

Only a handful of individuals attain the fifth rank of a

skill. Few can adequately appreciate the artistry of a mas-

ter’s craft, so those who attain this level must deliberately

challenge themselves to perfect their expertise. These

individuals are generally driven and passionate about

the skill that they have mastered.

skill Descriptions

This chapter details all of the skills used throughout the

game. Each skill comes with a basic description of what

it is and some brief suggestions for times your charac-

ter might use the skill and for some times when your

character wouldn’t use the skill.

When reading the description, remember that the

Your character should (and shouldn’t) use this skill

if… sections are meant to be suggestions and guidelines,

not exhaustive lists. They should spur your imagination

and give you a frame of reference, not limit you.

Finally, each skill entry describes what settings that

skill is most appropriate for. Your GM can always decide

to use any skill in a setting, of course, but you should

check with your GM before you invest in the Computers

skill for a campaign in a steampunk setting, for example.

Choosing skills

During character creation, you should think long and

hard about what skills to select for your character.

More than talents or characteristics, skills define what

your character is good at doing. If you’re making a medi-

eval knight, your character needs the Melee (Light) or

Melee (Heavy) skill (and the Riding skill if your setting

has a skill for horseback riding), lest they end up in their

first combat encounter and can’t use their sword very well!

Your choice of careers (see page 40) encourages you

to take certain skills over other skills. This can make your

choices for skill purchases easier. However, Genesys

gives you a lot of freedom in your skill choices overall.

Therefore, you should consider what you want your char-

acter to focus in before you start spending XP on skills.

You may also want to talk to your GM about what kind

of game they plan to run, which should help you decide

what skills to invest in. However, no matter what kind of

game you’re playing, there are a few skills you (or at least

one person in your group) should consider investing in.

Unless your game is going to be completely devoid of

combat, you should probably consider investing in at least

one combat skill. If your character concept goes against

TABLE I.3–1: COMPLETE SKILL LIST

SKill Settings Page

Alchemy Fantasy, steampunk, and weird war. 57

Arcana Any setting using the magic rules. 70

Astrocartography Space opera. 57

Athletics All settings. 58

Brawl All settings. 67

Charm All settings. 54

Coercion All settings. 55

Computers Modern day, science fiction, and space opera. 58

Cool All settings. 59

Coordination All settings. 59

Deception All settings. 56

Discipline All settings. 60

Divine Any setting using the magic rules. 70

Driving Steampunk, weird war, modern day, science

fiction, and space opera. 60

Gunnery Steampunk, weird war, modern day, science

fiction, and space opera. 69

Knowledge All settings. 66

Leadership All settings. 56

Mechanics All settings. 60

Medicine All settings. 61

Melee Steampunk, weird war, modern day, science

fiction, and space opera. 67

Melee (Heavy) Fantasy. 68

Melee (Light) Fantasy. 68

Negotiation All settings. 56

Operating All settings. 62

Perception All settings. 62

Piloting Weird war, modern day, science fiction, and

space opera. 62

Primal Any setting using the magic rules. 70

Ranged Fantasy. 68

Ranged (Heavy) Steampunk, weird war, modern day, science

fiction, and space opera. 69

Ranged (Light) Steampunk, weird war, modern day, science

fiction, and space opera. 68

Resilience All settings. 63

Riding Fantasy and steampunk settings. 63

Skulduggery All settings. 64

Stealth All settings. 64

Streetwise All settings. 65

Survival All settings. 65

Vigilance All settings. 65

GENESYS

Part I: The Rules54

being a competent fighter, then make sure some other

members of your group are investing in combat skills.

Likewise, unless your game is going to be a constant

dungeon crawl, at least some members of your party

should invest in social skills. Not everyone has to be a

smooth talker, but since social interactions are just as

important to roleplaying games as fighting, not being

able to interact in social encounters means you won’t be

interacting with a whole chunk of the game.

During adventures, you can expect characters to get

hurt. Medicine is a skill someone in your party should

invest in so they can patch up the other characters.

You should also consider investing in Cool or Vigi-

lance, since these skills help protect your character

from being affected by an opponent’s social skill checks.

Characters with high ranks in these skills are also more

likely to act earlier during a combat round.

Beyond that, the best piece of advice we can offer you

is to make sure your party has a diversity of skills as a

whole. It’s perfectly fine for characters to specialize, as

long as everyone doesn’t specialize in the same skill set. By

making sure your character doesn’t share the same focus

as your friends’ characters, you help guarantee that every-

one in your group gets their own chance to do something

awesome during the game, and you ensure there’s no chal-

lenge that your group can’t overcome by working together.

soCial skills

Social skills govern social interactions between

characters. When your character uses these skills,

they try to convince, force, trick, or make a deal for an

opposing character to do something your character

wants. Thus, social skill checks are often opposed skill

checks. Check out the Social Skill Interactions side-

bar, on page 55, for more about this and Chapter 7:

Social Encounters, on page 118, for more on social

encounters in general.

All social skills work in all settings (after all, basic inter-

actions between people work the same in every setting).

charm (presence)

The ability to compliment, flatter, woo, and generally

make other people like you is something that’s pretty

important to a lot of player characters. For characters

who want to be likable, popular, and good at persuad-

ing other people to do what they want them to do,

Charm is the skill they rely on. A character with a lot of

ranks in Charm may be unctuous and insincerely flat-

tering, or maybe they’re just a genuinely nice person.

your character shoulD use this skill if …

• Your character tries to persuade someone to do your

character a favor, especially if it might be inconve-

nient, expensive, or even dangerous for that person.

• Your character tries to appeal to someone’s better

nature (even if it doesn’t exist!) to get them to do

something out of character for that person.

• Your character tries to flirt with, seduce, or make a

romantic overture to someone.

• Your character tries to make themselves look bet-

ter to everyone around them. A lot of politicians

and public figures have high ranks in Charm.

• Your character performs in front of an audience, act-

ing, playing music, telling jokes, or giving a speech.

your character shoulD not use this skill if …

• Your character is not at all sincere about what they are

saying or doing. If there’s duplicity or lying involved,

your character should use the Deception skill.

• Your character is being polite, but subtly implying

additional and CustoM skills

Hey, GMs! We chose the skills included in Gene-

sys specifically because they are skills with broad

ranges of applications that should show up in

nearly every game and setting. Stealth, for example,

is important whether you’re sneaking up on orcs in

a forest or defense robots on a distant planet.

However, there are skills that are very important

in some settings, but not in others. Skills for fly-

ing spaceships are very important in science fic-

tion settings, but you’re not going to need them

in a fantasy setting. We’ve called these skills out

as only being appropriate for certain settings.

In addition, one of the great things about Gene-

sys is that you can make up the skills you feel are

important for your setting. If you want to look

into inventing your own custom skills, check out

page 190 in Part III of this book.

GENESYS

Part I: The Rules55

violence or some other threat. In those cases, your

character should use the Coercion skill.

• Your character uses their authority (either through

rank, station, or natural force of personality) to

give orders. These are times for your character to

use the Leadership skill.

• Your character interacts with someone who is

already friendly to them, or asks someone to do

something that is not at all an inconvenience for

them (generally, you don’t need to use Charm to

ask your spouse to pick up something from the

store on their way home from work).

coercion (WillpoWer)

Some people believe that the only way to maintain respect

is to be feared. Others have learned that the best way to

get what they want is through screaming and the threat of

violence. When your character attempts to instill obedi-

ence in a target through the use of threats or acts of physi-

cal intimidation, they use the Coercion skill. Characters

with multiple ranks in Coercion are often intimidating,

scary, or even evil individuals. However, even good-

hearted people may use Coercion to intimidate oppo-

nents so they can win a fight without bloodshed.

your character shoulD use this skill if …

• Your character issues a threat, whether or not

accompanied by hostile actions. Even an implied

threat—such as gesturing toward a weapon—falls

under the Coercion skill.

• Your character questions or interrogates a prisoner.

• Your character uses physical or psychological torture.

your character shoulD not use this skill if …

• Your character issues orders backed by the threat

of their authority (such as threatening troops with

courts-martial if they don’t follow your character

into battle). In cases like this, Leadership would be

a better skill for your character to use.

• Your character tries to drive a hard bargain with

someone. As long as both sides are still getting

something out of the deal, Negotiation should be

the skill to use.

• Your character interacts with someone who is

already terrified of or completely cowed by your

character. In these cases, any further threats would

be superfluous.

soCial skill interaCtions

Social skills are an informal category of skills that

we’ve created. These skills are skills that your character

uses to interact with other characters, usually outside

of combat. Basically, these are the skills your character

uses when it’s time to talk, rather than fight.

Social skill checks generally use one of the following

skills: Charm, Coercion, Deception, Leadership, or

Negotiation. When your character is interacting one

on one with another character using these skills, the

check is usually an opposed check (see page 25).

This represents the fact that at their core, these social

interactions involve your character trying to influ-

ence the thoughts or actions of another character. The

other character is going to try to resist that influence,

either consciously or subconsciously.

Generally, the social skill used to interact with some-

one determines the skill that someone uses to oppose

it. In Table I.3–2: Social Skill Interactions, we’ve

listed the five social skills, the skills generally used to

oppose them, and why. As always, of course, you can

make an argument that a different skill might make

more sense, but this table should serve as the baseline.

TABLE I.3–2: SOCIAL SKILL INTERACTIONS

Acting Skill Opposing Skill

Coercion, Leadership Discipline: The mental fortitude to disobey orders, or the mental strength to resist
interrogation and face

threats without flinching.

Deception Vigilance: The mental alertness to notice when someone is lying (since lies and deceptions, by
their very

nature, are not something someone announces).

Charm Cool: The ability to keep calm and maintain composure when being charmed or flattered, and to
respond
politely to flattery without giving away something or giving in to someone’s requests.

Negotiation Negotiation: Bargaining is usually a back-and-forth between two sides, with both sides using
their negotiating

skills to try to get as much of what they want as possible.

GENESYS

Part I: The Rules56

D eception (cunninG)

When your character needs to lie to someone, they use

Deception. In fact, the Deception skill covers most

attempts to fool or deceive someone, which makes the

skill one of the more straightforward skills to use. One

thing you should keep in mind, though, is that although

lying is one of the most common ways to deceive some-

one, it’s not the only way. Your character may attempt to

trick someone by only telling them certain facts and omit-

ting others, or by using a misleading phrase. But even if

you argue that your character technically told the truth,

their actions still fall into the category of Deception.

your character shoulD use this skill if …

• Your character tells a lie.

• Your character tries to mislead someone through

clever wordplay or selective omission of certain facts.

• Your character wears a disguise and pretends to be

someone else.

your character shoulD not use this skill if …

• Your character actually believes the things they are

saying (even if they are objectively untrue).

• Your character tells a “white lie,” a minor falsehood

to make someone feel better.

leaDership (presence)

While some may follow out of a sense of duty or fear,

good leaders inspire their followers through a combi-

nation of charisma, bravery, and forceful personality.

We represent this quality through the Leadership skill.

Basically, Leadership is a combination of making smart

decisions, being firm and decisive when doing so, and

instilling a sense of loyalty and respect in your subordi-

nates. Leadership also represents your character knowing

the right decisions to make when authority is called for.

Obviously, military commanders rely on Leadership, as

do politicians, business owners, and even crime bosses.

your character shoulD use this skill if …

• Your character’s allies are suffering from fear (see

page 243), and you want to try to rally them.

• Your character tries to convince a crowd of citizens

to take political action.

• Your character leads troops into battle and wants

to make sure they follow your character’s orders.

• Your character tries to convince a mob of rioters to

stand down and return to their homes.

your character shoulD not use this skill if …

• Your character threatens to hurt or kill someone

if they don’t obey. This would be a good use of

Coercion, instead.

• Your character tries to convince someone to do

something simply by being friendly and appealing.

Your character should use Charm here.

• Your character has formal authority and issues

routine orders, especially outside of combat or

other stressful situations. If there is no good rea-

son not to obey your character (and your charac-

ter has the rank or station to issue orders), other

people are simply going to obey most mundane

commands automatically.

neGotiation (presence)

When your character wants to make a deal, they’re

going to use Negotiation. If Coercion is threatening

someone, Deception is lying to someone, Charm is

sweet-talking someone, and Leadership is telling some-

one what to do, Negotiation is convincing someone to

do what you want by giving them something they want

in return. The skill in Negotiation comes from getting

as much as you can out of a deal while offering as little

as possible to the person you negotiate with.

your character shoulD use this skill if …

• Your character tries to purchase goods or services

and wants to haggle over the price.

• Your character tries to sell goods or services and

turn a profit. In this case, your character needs to

use Negotiation to raise the price.

• Your character attempts to broker a political agree-

ment or treaty between two parties.

your character shoulD not use this skill if …

• Your character isn’t offering anything in return for

what they want. Getting something for nothing is

something your character can try to do using other

social skills, but Negotiation is predicated on the

idea of an exchange.

• Your character tells someone what to do. Negotia-

tion has to be a bargain, so at the end of the inter-

actions, the opposing party has agreed to do some-

thing, not been ordered to do it.

• Your character wants to buy something for a previ-

ously established price.

GENESYS

Part I: The Rules57

general skills

This group of skills represents the majority of the

actions your character attempts, and is probably the

broadest category of skills in our game.

Some of these skills fit better in certain settings than

in others. We’ve gone ahead and noted which skills

make sense for which settings. GMs, you can choose to

ignore this advice for your own games if you like, but

make sure you inform your players what skills you’ve

decided to use or not use!

alchemy (intellect)

Alchemy encompasses the knowledge and techniques

to brew potions and elixirs. Although Alchemy isn’t

considered a magic skill, the effects of your concoc-

tions may approximate or even truly be magical,

depending on the campaign setting. The limits of

alchemical creations are up to your GM, who will

assign difficulties to Alchemy checks appropriate to

the potency of the brew.

This skill should be used in the fantasy, steampunk,

and weird war settings.

your character shoulD use this skill if …

• Your character tries to identify a potion by taste.

• Your character wants to name the ingredients

needed for a certain elixir.

• Your character tries to prepare a potion, elixir,

poultice, tonic, or similar compound with won-

drous or magical effects.

• Your character attempts to prepare a remedy for a

disease or illness.

your character shoulD not use this skill if …

• Your character attempts to enchant an otherwise

mundane liquid.

• Your character desires to heal someone directly

through medical treatment of their wounds or lay-

ing on hands.

• Your character seeks to transmute lead into gold.

That would clearly be magic!

astrocartoGraphy (intellect)

A galaxy is a big place, and characters in a space opera

game often traverse one (or more) quite a lot. The

Astrocartography skill covers the understanding, use,

and development of star charts, including mapping

undiscovered systems. It also covers your character

plotting courses for interstellar travel.

You should use this skill in the space opera setting.

your character shoulD use this skill if …

• Your character needs to set a course for a system

that is not easily reachable or widely known.

• Your character tries to make sense of an ancient or

damaged star chart (whether physical or electronic).

• Your character plots a course under stressful con-

ditions, such as trying to escape from enemy ships.

your character shoulD not use this skill if …

• Your character pilots a vessel: your character uses

Operating when actually piloting a ship.

• Your character navigates a planet’s surface, which

calls instead for Piloting or possibly Driving.

• Your character travels a well-known route under

normal conditions, which shouldn’t need a check

at all.