Specialized training
 

In order to round out a character’s skill sets, most games I’ve been in have added a myriad of skills like tracking, hunting, camouflage, forward observer, move silently (stealth), listen, navigation (land and/or water), fishing, ambush, escape & evasion, survival, etc. Often, these expanded skills lists are not accompanied by a corresponding expansion of the available training points for the characters, which tends to dilute their overall skill levels as you try to do more with less.

My thought is to consolidate all of these into a couple of broad-based skills which I’m calling Bushcraft and Fieldcraft. I feel consolidation is a natural step as the current skills typically aren’t necessarily stand-alone but work in concert with and complement each other. The more familiar Survival skills (wilderness, desert, cold, etc.) could still be used to represent specialized training for each environment and are a small piece of the new Bushcraft skill.

My working definitions of each are:

Bushcraft is the art of living in wild places with minimal gear, or life without infrastructure. Bushcraft skills include firecraft, tracking, hunting, trapping/snaring, fishing, shelter-building, navigation by natural means, the use of tools such as knives and axes, foraging, water sourcing, hand-carving wood, container construction from natural materials, and rope and twine-making. The skills also support proper knowledge and interactions with animals and plants to promote the sustaining of life over a period of time. This is akin to (and includes) survival skills but is more of a long-term mindset as opposed to the short-term immediacy of survival skills.

Fieldcraft encompasses the tactical skills to operate stealthily and the methods used to do so, which can differ during day or night and due to weather or terrain. Includes camouflage, land and water navigation, understanding the difference between concealment from view and cover from small arms' fire, using the terrain and its features to mask ground movement, obstacle crossing, selecting good firing positions, lying-up positions, camping positions, effective observation, camouflage penetration, counter surveillance, detecting enemy-fire directionality and range, survival, evasion, and escape techniques.

Training for Bushcraft would be via experience and/or through a series a classes such as those offered by Jack Mountain Bushcraft School (jackmtn.com), particularly their Wilderness Bushcraft Immersion course which is a full semester (college credit awarded), which I would designate as a mandatory course for Recon leadership types. Ancient Pathways (www.apathways.com) is another training candidate with emphasis on a desert climate.

Training for Fieldcraft would also be via experience but primarily via police/military style training.

What do you see as the pros and cons to this type of consolidation and is this condensing the skills too much?

I think this is a quite workable approach to the skills necessary for a team to function.

I would probably expand the fieldcraft training to all team members, as a failsafe.