01-11-2010, 12:39 PM | #831 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
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Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC
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(7 + 7 + 7 + 7 + 7 + 7 + 7 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 + 9 +10 +10 +10 +10 +10 +11 +11 +12 +13 +14 +15 +16 +17 +18 +19 +20)/55 = 10 *grin*
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Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. -RAH |
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01-11-2010, 12:41 PM | #832 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC
(8 + 9 + 11 + 12)/4 = 10. ;) The mean value of a set need not be a member of the set.
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01-11-2010, 12:46 PM | #833 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Houston
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Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC
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Well it depends on what you mean by 'ready for millitary service'. Thats a vague principle. In my head it means: 'The Military will accept these people for enlistment and they may washout during Bootcamp or training.' NOT 'They conform to military Mental/Physical Fitness standards and are ready to be deployed.' For the former, Id think that the military would take anyone as low as 9. For the Latter, Id think it would be 9 min for IQ and DX, 10 for ST and HT. Nymdok Last edited by Nymdok; 01-11-2010 at 12:51 PM. |
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01-11-2010, 01:32 PM | #834 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC
Which suits me just fine, since if you use the Basic Lift guidelines, most healthy Icelandic men are stronger than ST 10. Which in turn is not all that surprising, as most of them are taller than the average of 5'9" and heavier than the average of 150 lbs. too.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! |
01-11-2010, 02:37 PM | #835 | ||||||||
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC
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I wish I could find it now, but there was a thread in which a poster was trying to stat the ability (as a very complex Affliction) of a god in his setting to grant powers (and/or spells; I can't recall) to his followers. The god wasn't a PC, he was the vague heavenly patron of PCs with priestly powers. This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. While there may be good reasons to have a full character sheet for a god, it isn't necessary if you have gods in your setting, even if they interact with PCs in some fashion. To reiterate, the circumstances under which I maintain that full character sheets for NPCs are not necessary, and are reoccurring types of similar posts on this forum are: Quote:
Last edited by sir_pudding; 01-11-2010 at 03:48 PM. |
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01-11-2010, 03:40 PM | #836 | |
In Nomine Line Editor
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Frozen Wastelands of NH
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Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC
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I doubt anyone here has that issue. Need, as in, "find extremely useful in jump-starting my inspiration"? At least two of us exist! And as to why... Because it gives me a structure. I might flail around, foundering on all the... BIGNESS of a universe that I want to use. There's so much to do, I'm like the mule who'll starve to death because she can't decide which of the million-zillion different bales of hay she wants to taste first. Rules, presented in a clear, orderly way, give me a framework. A structure. A way of deciding which bale of hay to bite first, and which to sample second. Which can be combined. "Oh, hey, that sentence implies this implies that implies a cascade of implication that colors in whole swaths of my world now!" Or whole swaths of character. Or whole swaths of plot. "Oh, oh, oh, this will be SO COOL if I do this, because it will interact with that and then this is likely to happen and OOOO, I can't wait!" Neither Bill nor I, I believe, are crippled if we don't have stats. If we need to come up with some random NPC that the PCs have taken an urge to find, we can. (I sure can, anyway.) But the stats, the rules, focus our thinking; we get more ideas for the minute, about the character, the world, the plot. Plus, there's something satisfying about making points balance. I write drabbles, which must be exactly 100 words... Sometimes I fudge a little (hyphenation counts as one word when Word's word-count counts it! or a DI Drabble (111 words) works for a given story...), but it's got an elegance to it. A discipline. An art form. Doesn't mean I can't write a multi-thousand word book. Done that, too.
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--Beth Shamelessly adding Superiors: Lilith, GURPS Sparrials, and her fiction page to her .sig (the latter is not precisely gaming related) |
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01-11-2010, 04:13 PM | #837 | |
In Nomine Line Editor
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Frozen Wastelands of NH
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Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC
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That is a very elegant way of saying that. Yes, the lower the point value, the more the character is focused -- or ineffectual in general -- and thus the less they affect the fictional world. The higher the point value, without deliberately crippling disads tacked on, the more the character has the potential to affect the world. It's like... gravity! O:D (Character points as gravity. Okay, I amuse easily...)
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--Beth Shamelessly adding Superiors: Lilith, GURPS Sparrials, and her fiction page to her .sig (the latter is not precisely gaming related) |
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01-11-2010, 04:38 PM | #838 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC
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01-11-2010, 04:42 PM | #839 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Eindhoven, the Netherlands
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Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC
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You can describe characters in words, you can show what they look like with pictures... or you can illustrate them mechanically. For a one-shot "Fantasy super-heroes," I designed a golem named the Clockwork Titan. He began the game with 40 points of energy reserve that could not be regained except via special methods (a magical winding mechanism that had been lost), and the Draining disadvantage which took 1 point of fatigue from him per day, and the Ultrapower advantage, and Super Strength. Thus, this character had the ability to vastly exert himself and destroy his enemies, but it brought him closer and closer to "winding down completely." There's a poetry there that you can't express with mere words. Sometimes when I'm designing NPCs, I'm not just thinking about how they'll look or what their history is, but also how they'll help the players, or how the players might manage to defeat them. To me, the real beauty of an RPG is the union between mechanics and narrative. I don't really see "fluff vs crunch," because if that's the conflict, we might as well discuss board games vs fan fiction. Instead, I think you get the most out your games when you actually apply mechanical stats to your important characters where possible, not because it's necessary, but because it's awesome. And if we're not playing to have fun, then why are we playing? (And before you answer with "But statting stuff up isn't fun for me!" Well then, at the risk of stating the obvious, don't do it. I'm just explaining one of the reasons I do)
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My Blog: Mailanka's Musing. Currently Playing: Psi-Wars, a step-by-step exploration of building your own Space Opera setting, inspired by Star Wars. |
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01-11-2010, 05:17 PM | #840 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Re: Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC
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To me it's all about the story - I am happy to throw any trait that I thought a npc should have overboard if I realize during play that it will not work for how the story has moved or that another trait would create a better scene or show the NPC in a more interesting light. I do not care a bit about point values and if a rule gets in the way of the story I don't use it. To me conforming to a rules framework during NPC/world/scene creation would make me feel like I was just programming a computer RPG instead of delving into a world of imagination and creative freedom.
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