As far as skills go what Skill would Singing be under? Any thoughts on how to GM things like characters who want to say sing for a crowd? Should it be completely narrative or does one of the existing skills cover this action or should there be a custom skill for this? Thoughts and help would be appreciated!

Strongly recommend giving this a listen. Almost all the other ones are great too:

http://www.madadventurers.com/skill-monkey-sings/

Well...

I'd go with what you're trying to accomplish with the singing. Is the character trying to get someone's attention (Charm)? Distract the person (Deception)? Convince the person to do something (Coercion)?

Okay... maybe that last one only if you're doing the Star Wars version of screamo.

If it's just a one-off attempt, I'd go Charm unless the character is trying to provoke some other, more specific, reaction from the audience.

Otherwise, there's an always-entertaining and information Skill Monkey episode on the subject.

Edit: Ha! Ninja'd on both fronts.

Depends -

You could make a case for Charm. Elvis had Charm in spades. You could go leadership - Freddie Mercury at Live Aid was rolling nothing by triumphs on stage. You could go Cool (AKA - Prince) - or you just do what I did and create a performance skill and throw some points at it.

or you just do what I did and create a performance skill and throw some points at it.

Was just about to say the same thing.

Although in my case it's easy enough to say that. At the start of every campaign, with new characters, we come up with a couple 'fun' skills that each character has - something for color, something that is not necessarily useful in normal gameplay. I picked "performance", which covers singing (and perhaps playing an instrument someday, when we get her lessons).

Now if I had to throw some XP at it - well, I might find I'm using charm instead.

I think Charm will work fine. Thank you all for the input, it was very helpful. I think Knowledge will work for writing songs, plays etc. Charm should work for singing.

Leadership and Charm are the two skills I'd use, depending on what the intent was. Coerce and Deception are possibilities. Hell, even knowledge (lore) can be justified if you are trying to remember/sing an ancient ritual song of some kind. I can the fact that a group or individual is singing add a boost die to Cool, Discipline, or Resilience checks. This can be representative of marching cadences for the military, where music is played or chanted to keep the troops from breaking ranks and fleeing.

If you feel the need to have more mechanical representation here, instead of making a separate performance skill, what I might do is make a 5 XP talent that someone can buy (very cheap) that is a performance talent. Each selection lets them pick a different kind of performance that they can now do at a professional level. But I would still let the variety of skills apply to how they want to use it. It would just open up a few different options and opportunities to narratively explain just how someone is making that check apply to a circumstance.

But really, this is just something I'd make a part of the narrative background for someone who starts with Performer or wants to make it an important part of their character background during character creation.

But generally speaking, a singer is trying to charm or inspire those he is singing to.

I'm on the same page as KRKappel, in that Charm and Leadership would be the "go to" skills for singing (and likely most other types of performances), though I can see cases being made for Deception if you're trying to draw an audience's attention away from others and keep it focused on yourself.

I was hoping that Far Horizons might go into a bit more detail on performing and what skills to make use of. But it didn't, something I consider a missed opportunity, even if it was just a couple of paragraphs or even a sidebar next to the Performer specialization.

So if you were a magician would that be Deception because you are doing misdirects?

Agent, I'd absolutely say that coordination and deception would be the go-to's for a magician, with some skulduggery. It really would depend on the trick. Are you attempting something that is more like an escape artist? is the trick more about sleight of hand? is it just an incredible feat of dexterity?

Or maybe you're like david blaine, and standing on top of a pole for 12 hours is somehow magic, or holding your breath for a really really long time. That'd be resilience. Or maybe the trick involves something that, even though its a trick and theres a plan, its still very dangerous, like setting yourself on fire. There might be a cool check in there.

Any time you want to build a performance, you really want to do a variety of skills if its a major part of the adventure, or if they are trying to bust out a variety of these types of tricks through the course of an adventure. If you tie them all to one skill, they are just going to want to dump all their ranks into one skill and that attribute as is the nature of many players. By building routines or performances from a variety of skills, you make things more dynamic and interesting, and you avoid players worrying about mix/maxing. Plus, you sort of allow more variety in builds. Some magicians are better at sleight of hand tricks, some are popular more because htey are charming, or tell jokes during their routine. Others have more escape artist routines, etc.

Another option might be to create an Unassociated Talent (a talent not attached to any tree) for 5 points that can only be selected at character creation. Talents of this type can be created for any profession and provide a single boost dice once per session to a skill check specific to that profession.

You would need to give everyone an extra 5 points for this use ONLY at character creation.

Just a thought.

Charm mainly, but if represents something REALLY important in your game add a precise skill like Perform.

Someone has created any houserule talent tree for an Entertainer alternative to the one from Far Horizons?

So if you were a magician would that be Deception because you are doing misdirects?

That would be the use of a Force Power .

Deception actually sounds pretty good.

So if you were a magician would that be Deception because you are doing misdirects?

That would be the use of a Force Power .

Deception actually sounds pretty good.

DUDE! Misdirect would be the greatest performance power ever!!! Like, "watch me disappear."

Granted it would be difficult in large crowds, unless you treated the entire audience as a handful of minion groups...but with some Magnitude upgrade, a high Presence, and a few Force points...a Force-sensitive performer would be awesome.

I've run into performance issues with my character who narratively learned to dance to impress a dancing girlfriend. The character is a Driver so he's very agile, and he could add some coordination to get even better, ... but the concept of the character is he will "never be charming," with average human Presence 2. (There is more to this backstory that makes it worse in this regard, but sticking to the numbers.)

So the way I play it is that basically, no matter how much he studies the mechanics of an art, he will never excel at whatever the intangible is that makes it more than average-ly interesting to watch.

I'd suggest a higher than average Presence for a professional performer, as long as they wanted to be a star instead of "scenery" when on stage. The out for normal characters is they can gather up a lot of Charm (or whatever other specialized skill) and pretty well compensate for a low Presence. But at some point they would top out and wouldn't make it to superstar status.