Some skills and talent seem quite easy to get, for example Takedown or Drive. Others can be explained tricks the PCs pick up during adventures. But how do you solve things that should take a long time to aquire, like Trades and Lores. You don't just skim through a handout and suddenly you know all about ancient history. Crafting skills also require a looong time to master. Do you let your players pick something and then say "well, you did all this as an apprentice and now you got the hang of it", or do you plan it with your players before starting play? There are progression tables and all, but I want to make it smooth and "organic" in game. Or should I fast forward the game, say 5 years, during which an acolyte gets his Medicae/Judgement//Chymystry/Wright training? Otherwise, do the Inquisition implant memories/psycho-condition/inject memory-expanding drugs into the acolytes to speed up the process?

I always have my Acolytes spending time learning something in breaks between missions and use my own judgement in roughly how long it could take and indeed if its possible in that time frame. For example I had a large mission split over 4 sessions, and after each one awarded a certain amount of XP etc. I didn't let them spend it on a lot of things because I deemed they would not have had enough time to learn certain things, obtain certain skills etc. The more advanced the skills (+10,+20 etc) the longer it takesto learn I would say or locate something that enables them to learn (in the case of Tech Priests for example downloading 'skills' etc).

For the learning of lore I would say basic would be a few months between missions, with that as the key focus. I would also get the players to RP reasons why, how etc in combination with yourself. For example a Scum character who is in my current group has a contact in a certain place. He stayed there between sessions and gained certain advancements representing he was doing 'underworld stuff' on the world, he did also take some characteristic penalty too which made it seem more realistic and less 'pay for a skill *ping* you now know how to do this.'

vehzeel said:

In DH we indeed do it that way and I think this is OK, as some abstraction is sometimes needed. In WFRP on the other hand we always took care that for every skill one wanted to learn there must be a teacher (PC or NPC). I think this is more vaible in the fantasy setting as it fits more to the sort of restricted environment of fantasy. In 40K one moves from planet to planet, one has a lot of down time either while travelling to and from planets or while being at the Tricorn (or another Inqusition holding) and anyway one has - due to the Inquisition background - more access to all the different professions around in the Imperium IMO.