Question about accounting and administrations skills, which have descriptions as follows:
Accounting
Accountants keep track of expenses,
income, stocks and taxes. This skill
is primarily used to recover taxed
Resources.
Administration
Administration is the skill of running
a business or organization. This skill
is primarily used to recover taxed
Resources.
Obstacles: Just you, Ob 1. A shop,
Ob 2. Confraternity, Ob 3. Small
commune, Ob 4. Small guild, Ob 5.
Small secret society, etc.
How exactly? As far as I understand you recover resources by Getting a Job, which can be whatever skill more or less. How are these two skills “primarily used to recover taxed Resources”. What exactly are those sample Administration Obs if not recovering taxed resources?
If a character writes a belief about recovering their tax die (in a fiction relevant way), then these skills are relevant. This is important if they don’t want to wait to the next resource cycle to use the get a job rules (maybe they’d prefer to use that time for practice, instead).
So, they might say “I need to get my estate in order. I’ll go over the paperwork and see what’s become of my finances” and then you can do an accounting roll, where the intent is to recover tax dice. The ob can come from the listed ones.
As @CoreyHickson says, it can be an alternative to getting a job. Also, note that they don’t include any limitation that it has to be the possessing character’s resources. So, if one character suffers tax on a resources roll, another character with Accounting could “move their funds”, “restructure their debt”, &c. to remove the tax.
Huh. I figured that those skills were used as jobs for recovering resources. If they can be used outside of that time-intensive system, I gotta rethink my Resources doctrine with my guy who has Estate Management. Neat!
If you’re interested in using those skills as job, here’s my take:
1.) The Obs are fixed and so may be more generous than 1 + Tax (an Ob 1 Test to Administrate “Just you” is always gonna be easier than Ob 1+). They’d be based on your stuff, though, so Estate Managing your castle (Ob 4) may be a grander operation than it’s worth. On the upside, you have a castle! Castles are a huge hit with the Ladies (and other people, but Ladies are notable because they often have Estate Management and so can Help you manage your castle. Stewards are also good, too.).
2.) The consequences of failure are more forgiving - using your B6 Sword to fight for money is cool, until you end up injured and broke; I don’t know what job you’re going to use Persuasion for, but failing sounds like a good way to piss people off.
Aside from Resources stuffs, here are some other uses for the skills in question:
Determining that the evil Duke Eimar is embezzling money from you. (Accounting)
Embezzling money from the evil Duke Eimar. (Accounting - if you can get in charge of his books)
Determining what position in the evil Duke Eimar’s cabinet is the most important and overworked and underpaid - thereby getting the most bang for your bribery buck! (Administration)
Determining which suppliers you need to buy out to cease the glassworker’s guild production. (Administration)
Probably some Bureaucracy and Wises would be handy for these, and maybe Logistics. Still, you get the idea.
They definitely can be. Potentially, it comes down to what a specific GM considers a valid intent: a player can always say “I’d like to shift money around to solve my current financial difficulties; I think Accounting is the right skill” but it’s up to the GM to allow/disallow, set an Ob, and set a consequence of failure that fits that game.
So, there is a middle ground of saying the listed Ob’s are for using the skill as a job, so using it within the same resource cycle has a higher Ob and the risk that poking the situation makes it even worse.