What action would you expect to use for driving/piloting a vehicle or mount, like a getaway coach, steamship, or horse (are there horses?)? None seems to line up neatly. I’m guessing a vehicle aided chases will happen often on scores. Would you just use the crew’s Transport effect rating?
That also makes me curious if Duskwall has horses. It hadn’t explicitly occurred to me, but I guess maybe so unless coaches and other street conveyances are self-propelling. Electroplasmic cars 🙂
In regards of the effects it would be Maneuver. I guess.
Maybe Force if you try to physically will your vehicle to do your biding. Finess if your more relying on your knowledge of machines and stuff. Will if you do it like Luke Skywalker in his X-Wing.
In regards of the actions there are different approaches. Maybe attune if you forced a spirit into the car and try to get it moving more to your will.Â
Prowl if you rely on your driving skills. Tinker if you do it by technical expertise. Discern if you try to find a shortcut (Deceive for a game of chicken or maneuvers playing on hiding). Maybe mayhem if you’d like to catch up onto the target by well, causing mayhem like being in Saints Row?
“OK, you jump into the driver’s seat of the wagon and whip the horses into motion. The casks of leviathan blood thump against each other with ominous gurgles. Behind you, you see some of the Red Sash thugs have jumped into a carriage and are coming after you at top speed. They aren’t slowed down by barrels so they are catching up quickly. What do you do?”
Shout at the horses and ply the whip to try to outrun them —> Command
Try to lose them in the winding streets —> Feint
Plow right through a market leaving chaos in your wake —> Mayhem
Have a previously bribed teamster pull his cart out in your wake —> Flashback to a Supply roll
Though I am curious about the rules regarding vehicles John mentioned once. Its a stretch goal that I may find more attractive then setting goals. ^^;
Wouldn’t it depend on the kind of action you are trying to take?
Riding into a bunch of soldiers to take them down: Mayhem.
Trying to impress someone with fancy riding: Sway.
Trying to follow someone: Stalk.
Good responses, but do they feel right to you? I considered the ‘depends on how you’re using the vehicle’ (command, feint, mayhem, prowl, etc) but it still felt strangely forced. Maybe I’m wrongly expecting something more like Operate (as in Technoir) than like Cool or Hard. Or maybe I’m looking for something that could be a basis of a Driver-style playbook rather than just having vehicles extend PCs existing strengths. Should a commanding Cutter be a good horse-driver? Sure. Should a prowly Lurk be equally good at inconspicuous driving/tailing? Maybe. Should a brawler be equally good at vehicular mayhem? Maybe. Should a con man be equally good at playing chicken? Again, I can see it, but the two skills seem not so directly linked to me.
Is my disconnect remedied simply by thinking that bad drivers just have horrible Maneuver effects to limit their effectiveness on their possibly well-conceived vehicular ploys? I can buy that. So a high-command, high-maneuver cutter could make a great driver of horses, as well as a swift, agile gang rioter. A high-prowl, high-maneuver lurk would be an acrobatic second-story man as well as a great getaway driver.
I’m eagerly hoping J. Walton’s Leviathan Hunter playset dives a bit deeper into crewing vehicles, at least in terms of steamships, although that is still a much more high-level team effort than individually maneuvering a coach or gondola, or just riding a horse.
Everything in the game is an extension of the characters.
If, according to the narrative, they are good with horses, then let them do their things with horses. There isn’t a separate sword skill either, but you can Command with it, or Mayhem, or Attune with or to it if the story calls for it. 
“Driving” rarely plays an important part in Duskwall games, so it’s not a core action for the game. Picking an action based on what you’re doing with the coach or boat is the way to handle it.
Or you could decide that Prowl always covers it, since it’s “general athletic ability” and that may include the coordination of driving a coach.
For modern setting playsets, a Pilot or Drive action is usually part of it.
What Nathan said. If you look at the skills and their descriptions they’re not specific or even really general proficiencies or anything, they’re general activities which inform how a thing was done. A horse, a sword, a boat, a conversation, a drink. You can make mayhem with all of them. In fact you can murder with all of them too since one of the descriptors is engage in skillful combat, minus the conversation, unless of course you can kill precisely with your voice.
There’s also the idea that if there isn’t a mechanic for it that also means something. Since there’s nothing for vehicles, and of course this is just the quick start, then vehicles aren’t that important to the game as it stands or work as we’ve stated within the games mechanics.
To Adam Minnie’s point of it feeling forced. I don’t think it’s forced at all because of what Nathan said.
Poor scoundrels, have to stay fit and walk around 😀
I know that it isn’t the focus intended, yet the players might get the idea to approach a building by a boat (like with GoT and that shadow baby) or put some focus on a horse chase to escape, maybe a car race to catch up.
I think it can be done without like breaking it?