03-03-2019, 08:15 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Shoreline, WA (north of Seattle)
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Re: Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS
Well, sometimes. For some of my other players, they like to build from a template concept or from a particular mechanical bit that intrigues them. ("What kind of backstory would give me Post-Combat Shakes and Intolerance (Wizards)?" "I want a dude with Berserk and Two-Handed Axe/Mace-24. Everything else is just gravy." Etc.)
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03-03-2019, 08:19 PM | #22 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS
Thaty was one of the suggestions about Disads in the 3e Compendia so somebody has probably tried it.
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Fred Brackin |
03-03-2019, 08:50 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Saint Paul, MN
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Re: Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS
We're mostly playing DFRPG at this stage, so most people use the templates and end up with a full docket of disads. As a GM, I encourage people to swap or modify them in play if they're not fitting their vision. I require buying them off if they aren't showing up at all. We don't particularly care whose fault it is when a disad doesn't show up. Maybe as GM I'm too busy to figure it out. Maybe the player intended to roleplay it, but they keep forgetting. Doesn't matter.
Also, though, I don't worry over much about whether all the points fully balance. The purpose of disadvantages is to make the game more fun and to encourage interesting character concepts. They should provide hooks for the GM and dramatic obstacles for the PCs to grapple with. If that's happening, then I'm not worried about making sure every last point is impacting everybody on schedule. |
03-03-2019, 10:22 PM | #24 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS
Quote:
I find GURPS' to be more reasonably priced, in general. In my experience players tend to only fish for disads when point budgets are tight, and they are careful to avoid ones that will affect their intended style of play or character type, which says to me that they aren't giving out too many points (in general). What does irk me is players trying to avoid having to suffer the penalties the disads apply, and not just by not playing them (and thus potentially incurring losses of XP), but by trying to avoid situations where they might apply, even when it makes sense to not avoid those situations. Getting the incentives in play when they come up (as FATE and some other game do) would seem to help avoid this, but it does require tracking such stuff and can result in things going to the extreme, with players trying to make their disad apply in any and all situations (ideally just enough to get the XP, not enough to be a real problem). Mind you, the above is really just more of the players possibly trying to play the GM, and if they're the types to do that, they'll probably do it no matter what, so I suppose in the end all these systems utility depends on the group and the game contract.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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03-03-2019, 10:26 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS
From the photos from that time and earlier, I'm not sure that navies routinely used hearing protection past 'fingers in ears' for smaller guns and 'don't be on deck' for large guns.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
03-03-2019, 10:30 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS
I think it would be fairly easy in most traditional adventuring games. I don't think such a character would live long, though. Too much poking of sleeping dragons.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
03-04-2019, 08:14 AM | #27 | |||
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS
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But sure, getting players to role play their chosen disadvantages is the root of a lot of problems with them. If they can get away with not playing them and the GM isn't inflicting *major* xp penalties for that then yes, they are potentially unbalanced free points. Quote:
But yes, longstanding problem. There's a reason CHA isn't a high priority attribute either. Fundamentally a tabletop game is a social activity, and the social attributes and skills of the *players* tend to bleed through and modify the ones on the character sheets no matter how hard you try. Quote:
It also helps to insist on picking the disadvantages *first*, ideally maybe before you even tell the players what the point limit is, but certainly before they start pricing anything out. There's a lot to be said for write up your character concept in prose sentences and they we'll try to model him with the rules for a game where you really want to emphasize the roleplaying over the war game aspect.
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-- MA Lloyd |
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03-04-2019, 08:21 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Cockeysville, MD
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Re: Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS
In my experience this is an enforcement problem. I use to have this issue and would have players take all sorts of disads that just never were any form of inconvenience to the player. Then I started to keep a list of player disads when I was writing up session plans or keeping a list while running the game and "checking off" when a disad had come into play in a significant way.
This kept me aware of what the player disads were and what impact they were having on the game. If a -20 point disad wasn't causing significant problems for the player, then I'd look for more ways that it should. Another options is to just drop the points gained from a disad that you don't feel is a burden.
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--- My Blog: Dice and Discourse - My adventures in GURPS and thoughts on table top RPGs. |
03-04-2019, 12:51 PM | #29 |
Join Date: Mar 2010
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Re: Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS
You get the behavior you reward. In a game of 250-point characters with -100 points in disadvantages, most GMs balance the game as if they were 350-point characters. Not taking 100 points worth of disadvantages is sabotaging their own character's effectiveness.
IME, there are two solutions. The first is giving the player enough points to begin with, not giving additional points for taking disadvantages and encouraging players to take only those disadvantages they want to actively roleplay. The second is to build the character to concept without regard to point budgets, disadvantage caps, etc. I, personally, prefer the second solution. ;) |
03-04-2019, 01:04 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Feb 2009
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Re: Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS
https://gamingballistic.com/2018/02/...st-by-kalzazz/
I'm fond of my disad bucket approach as above for spreading the load |
Tags |
disadvantage limit, disadvantages, gurps, quirks |
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