They should really fix that in Cabaret Chicks on Ice!

[AmesJainchill]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

Not laughing at you, Peter. Laughing because Fit, Very Fit, Unfit, and Very Unfit were originally created for horses, making this an ironically funny discussion!

That's cute. I'll have to mention it at my game tomorrow...

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

It should be extremely rare. In fact, most animals should have Unfit - humans are built for endurance running. See also this.

Yes, I watched "Life of Mammals" a couple of years ago. Cool scene.

Originally when I read the endurance hunting scene in Brin's "Uplift War", in the mid 1990s, I didn't believe it at all, but later on I've started to think it is probably very realistic, that apart from humans and wolves and some other pack hunters, other animals aren't evolved for long-distance running.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Perfect Organism

Wouldn't it be better to simply give most animals fewer FP? As I recall, Fit (and Very Fit, Unfit, etc.) isn't supposed to be a racial trait at all.

I agree with this. Fit/Unfit and so forth describes individual variation within a species.

It should certainly be possible for a world builder to declare that Very Fit is a Taboo Trait for a certain species.

The felinoids of my space opera setting have this. If they were written up in GURPS, Very Fit would be a Taboo Trait, and Fit either costs an UB or requires Trained by a Master (monastic assassin traiing including biofeedback and metabolism control training). As the felinoids say, the first human who tried to run a marathon died; every felinoid who has ever tried running one has also died. They're most definitely a white-fibre-muscle-type species.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Perfect Organism

Wouldn't it be better to simply give most animals fewer FP? As I recall, Fit (and Very Fit, Unfit, etc.) isn't supposed to be a racial trait at all.

Why? (Well, Orcs have it, but I guess you won't accept that as a proper precedent.)

[DanHoward]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

Don't believe me? Buy Roleplayer #21, from the early days of GURPS Third Edition, and read the article The Noble Steed, by Ann Dupuis. She created the fitness traits specifically to better describe how close to ideal health a horse is.

So yeah. A horse can definitely have Very Fit. :)

A horse can be "Very Fit" compared to other horses. But is the norm for a horse Unfit? GURPS Very Fit relates to an average human, not an average horse. Does a Very Fit horse have similar endurance tio a Very Fit Human? I'm thinking not (humans are one of the best endurance runners on the planet) and that there is an argument for giving Unfit or maybe just a FP penalty to a typical horse fed on a typical diet.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

humans are one of the best endurance runners on the planet

I thought that was because of an efficient gait rather than having particularly disproportionate endurance.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by martinl

I thought that was because of an efficient gait rather than having particularly disproportionate endurance.

Might also be because humans are willing to do things to themselves that almost no animal will, re the upthread mentions of
...Pheidippides. There are almost no circumstances in which an animal will do that to themselves (more or less knowing they might be killing themselves the whole time).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheidippides

[Peter Knutsen]

A few more things:

Prices are given for food, in the core books, but I'd like an elaboration of this.

For instance, food (and also drink) could be divided into quality classes, so that there's a price stated for a Cheap meal, a Good meal, a Fine meal and a Very Fine meal, depending on whether it's for a slave or a god-emperor, or someone in between.

Likewise with drink. I don't need a differentiation between cider, beer, ale, wine and mead, but I'd like Cheap drink, Good drink, Fine drink and Very fine Drink, and in this case I'd like both per-mug prices, per-jug prices and per-barrel prices (although a mug of Cheap drink probably falls well below $0.25) to take into account bulk discounts (one barrel with 40 mugs in it doesn't cost 40 times as much as one mug-full).

Also lodging, as in renting an inn room, on a day-to-day basis, week-to-weey basis, or for several months: How much discount is given for longer periods? And yes this is ignoring the fact that in one specific setting - Christian medieval Europe - there were legal limits for how long inn lodgers could stay; I'm not interested in history but in economics; what would be realistic discounts for long inn stays?).

IIRC GURPS Basic already covers clothes, but if it doesn't, I'd want that too (Cheap to Very Fine). Probably also add in cloth dyes (non-dyed cloth, versus normally dyed cloth, expensively dyed cloth, or really expensively dyed cloth), although another approach is to assume that the amount of dying correlates with quality, so that a Very Fine piece of clohing is automatically dyed in brilliant and expensive colours - it's not a separate choice. Even if it isn't available as a separate choice, I'd like some information about which dyes are easy or difficult to make, and also how long they tend to last (I recently read that saffron dye tends to not last very long).

What about slave prices? I know there are some rules in GURPS Basic 3E , but they don't answer immediate and pertinent questions about human loot. For instance, in terms of GURPS Vikings, how much more valuable is a Very Beautiful slave girl, compared to an Attractive slave girl? Is one more Beautiful female captive worth the risk of overloading our longship, or isn't she? (Age also ought to be factored in, although that would be extremely controversial if approached realistically, so I very much doubt SJ Games will look into the issue).

More generally, what's the cost of an unskilled slave, a strong unskilled slave (or a very strong one), or a skilled slave? A literate and educated slave?

Also brothel service costs. I really have very little idea how much that would cost, in a low-tech setting. I've made my own guesses for Sagatafl, but those are only guesses, with very little basis in anything (incidentally I also divided brothels into quality levels, and IIRC I have four). And how much more does a brothel visit cost if prostitution is illegal (which it wasn't for most of history)? And what about casual prostitution, meaning negotiable affection with a female who is not a career prostitute? In light of the risk of pregnancy, which wil happen sooner or later, it can't be very cheap (male prostitutes can, however, at least if it is legal, since men don't get pregnant. On the other hand, I doubt male prostitutes are very common - again for reasons that should be obvious).

[Jovus]

Could we also get quality modifiers for ranged weapons and armor? Or is that out of place in a book that only deals with TL 0-4?

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Jovus

Could we also get quality modifiers for ranged weapons and armor? Or is that out of place in a book that only deals with TL 0-4?

There are already rules for ranged weapon quality on p. B277 and p. B280. Do you have something else in mind than what's there?