Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by trooper6

The *point* is--because GURPS gives you a base line. Most people have 10s...that's what is says right in the box on B14...you can take that as your starting base and customize on the fly to your taste. I find with 150pt PCs running around, all 8 folks not that useful.

No, it's absolutely not what it says in the box on B14.

And if you look just a little to the left of that box, around entry for 13, it clearly states:
"most normal humans have scores in the 8-12 range."

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Icelander

The primary consideration while creating NPCs should be their role in the campaign. If the GM is running a very narrativistic campaign, the NPCs should be defined by their narrative role. If the campaign is simulationist, the NPCs should be defined by the same things that define real people, some complex set of circumstances and genetics. Only if the game is strongly gamist should the NPCs be defined primarily by their game mechanical builds.

Point costs as such are precisely a gamist aspect of GURPS. That is, in assigning and debating point costs, authors, playtesters, and the line editors repeatedly ask, "Why would players spend points on this when they can get superior benefit from that?" and such questions. The ideal aimed at is to adjust the point costs so that there is no "too good to pass up" option . . . the marginal improvement in character utility for typical players in a typical campaign should be comparable for any two different expenditures of the same points.

What point costs are preventing is players gaming the system. If players could just take any traits they wanted for their characters, free for the asking, some players would want to have characters who could never be beaten or challenged. Or if a trait had a really low point cost, the players who obsess over effectiveness and "bang for the buck" would spot that trait and make a point of always taking it, in order to get characters who could outdo anyone else's characters. And that would both undermine character plausibility and make the game less fun for players who didn't think that way. So GURPS point costs try to remove system hacks of that kind. In effect, point costs are a game design feature that safeguards against excessive gamism.

All of which makes point costs less important for NPCs. If you're a GM and you want to dominate play time, you can do so, by making the PCs ineffective. Or if you want an NPC to talk all over the PCs, you can build the NPC on an unlimited number of points, or give them abilities the PCs can't have and can't counter, or have the environment favor the NPCs, or just fudge the dice roll. On the other hand, if you don't want the NPCs to dominate the PCs, you don't have to.

Still, I find that point costs are a handy rough gauge of how much a character's presence warps the narrative of a campaign. Assigning NPCs more point costs increases the likelihood that they will dominate PCs narratively; thus, by boosting or lowering point costs, I can adjust the dramatic presence of an NPC to better fit what I'm aiming for—to dominate the PCs as much or as little as I think suitable. It's not a perfect measure nor an infinitely precise one, but it has greater than zero usefulness.

On the other hand, it's not a challenge rating type of thing, because there are so many ways in GURPS for a character to be narratively important other than combat. But I'm not a combat-focused GM, so that doesn't worry me.

Bill Stoddard

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Still, I find that point costs are a handy rough gauge of how much a character's presence warps the narrative of a campaign. Assigning NPCs more point costs increases the likelihood that they will dominate PCs narratively; thus, by boosting or lowering point costs, I can adjust the dramatic presence of an NPC to better fit what I'm aiming for—to dominate the PCs as much or as little as I think suitable. It's not a perfect measure nor an infinitely precise one, but it has greater than zero usefulness.

That's precisely where we differ.

I find that adjusting the traits themselves, skill levels and abilities, disadvantages and so on, is the only way to produce such a fit for me.

I tried using point costs and the fact that points spent on an area of the NPC which did not come up in the encounter still count for the total skewed the analysis so much that the presence of points did more obscure the question than illuminate it.

Given what points represent and how NPCs are different from PCs, I think that using points for NPCs has a lower than zero usefulness for most GMs. That is, it adds no information that the actual capabilities and personality of the NPC did not already contain and it all too often ends up acting as a red herring for GMs.

I have on numerous occasions acknowledged that there may be a section of gamers who think sufficiently differently from me to make this incorrect in their case. I do not believe, however, that these people are in the majority or even a significant minority. Additionally, I think that many of those who currently prefer to use the character creation system in full to construct NPCs would be much better served with a specific system designed explicitly to create NPCs.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Icelander

.... Only if the game is strongly gamist should the NPCs be defined primarily by their game mechanical builds.

.... I think that if one really wants a gamist game, there are better systems out there than GURPS. Using GURPS for a gamist game is to ignore most of its strengths and play to its weaknesses.

Although Im not 100% clear on what you mean by gamist, I do define the npcs of the campaign Im currently running by their game mechanics. I even go so far as to shift HP down and Ablative DR UP to simulate a 'Fights at full strength to the end' kind of feel, and it worked GREAT! 40 points of HP with 400 Points of DR really made em sweat!

I don't play any other systems. There may be a better one for gamist games, but GURPS is working great NOW for what Im running, so Im hesitant to accept that a gamist set up plays to GURPS weaknesses. If it does, I cant tell :)

Originally Posted by trooper6

Enjoy your games. I, and my players, enjoy mine.

Troop: You're right on the money. The last saving grace of this thread is that by showing other people how we as GM's have fun with our groups it might inspire others.

On you setting your line at 10, I'm with you. It makes sense in my head that an average guy doing somehting of average difficulty that requires no real training has a 50% chance to do it makes sense in my head. Not EVERYONE is average, but having that line to bounce around is a handy and efficient way to stat NPCs quickly.

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

... why bother to roll the dice if you're already rigging the modifiers to let the guy sneak past?

The modifiers set the difficulty of the task. It also helps me to balance encounters 'horizontally' (e.g. Instead of killing it, lets sneak past it or talk to it).

I normally do it by thinking about how likely it should be that the party succeed and the rest follows from that. For example, What strength should a binding attack be? If I want the strongest player in the party to have a 20% chance of breaking it through quick contest, that math is manageable and easy to do.

Nymdok

Welcome back my friends to the thread that never ends. We're so glad you could attend! Come inside! Come Inside!

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I tried using point costs and the fact that points spent on an area of the NPC which did not come up in the encounter still count for the total skewed the analysis so much that the presence of points did more obscure the question than illuminate it.

But you're emphasizing the single encounter. I'm emphasizing the entire session, or even multiple sessions, during which the NPC may make multiple skill rolls in different situations, and it's not possible to predict in advance which skills will be needed or what situations will arise. It's only NPCs for whom I plan a large presence for whom I would do a full individual character sheet, after all.

Bill Stoddard

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

But you're emphasizing the single encounter. I'm emphasizing the entire session, or even multiple sessions, during which the NPC may make multiple skill rolls in different situations, and it's not possible to predict in advance which skills will be needed or what situations will arise. It's only NPCs for whom I plan a large presence for whom I would do a full individual character sheet, after all.

When I introduce NPCs, I can usually only be certain of a single encounter. Any others are hypothetical and statistically, probably not all that common.

But even if we were to compare only those NPCs who appear on multiple occasions, that still doesn't make equal point costs anything close to equal utility. In the case of PCs, that is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that a PC will generally only select a trait if he foresees some use for it. For NPCs built to be as realistic as possible, many expensive traits will be irrelevant to the character.

The fact that a given NPC once studied a competative sport and was good at it despite physical mediocrity might never impact his interactions with the characters, even in hundreds of sessions. In fact, if the competative sport is one that the players or their characters are not interested in and if it grants no abilities useful in day-to-day life, that's pretty probable.

Military service in the past sounds like it should become relevant and in fact, it often does. But not in any way that would make it relevant whether I spend 50 points and a lot of time statting out their military education or just mentally note the effects on their personality and behaviour during times of stress. The former elite forces sergeant with 20 years of service who know works as a merchant (and is worth, oh, let's call it 320 points) and the merchant who is very good at his job due to his ambition to better the life of his family (and is worth about 0 points) might both be important or neither of them might be*. Their point value doesn't tell me anything about them that their life stories and mental feel for them as characters hasn't already told me.

*Both present in my campaign, but which one the players hire will determine who makes more than one appearance.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Point costs as such are precisely a gamist aspect of GURPS.

GURPS points are actually much weirder than that -- point costs for abilities are based on a mixture of mechanical impact (a gamist concern) and rarity/difficulty to acquire (a simulationist concern).

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

I don't see how that fits the usual bell curve. If the median is 10 and 1 sigma is 1.7, you've got the usual 34.13% falling between 8.3 and 10, and the usual 34.13% falling between 10 and 11.7 - that right there is 68.26%, much more than your 50% figure and still not covering people all the way to 8 or 12, or the people who round up or down to those values. Are you using some particular method of rounding or otherwise mapping the continuous or fractional values to the integral attribute scores?

Here's what I did: If there are 10 people of 6 billion with a stat of 20, on a normal distribution centered around 10, that's 1/600M with that value, which is +10 from the mean.

I used Goal Seek in Excel to find what sigma would give me that proportion of people (1 in 600M) at a score of 20+ using 1-normdist(20,10,SIGMA,TRUE). That value is 1.69.

Looking for the fraction of people between 8 and 12, I did this:

NORMDIST(12, 10, 1.69, TRUE) - NORMDIST (8,10,1.69, TRUE)

That value is 76.33%, so something about my original typing must have had an error in it, since my methodology was the same from last night to today. Oops.

[trooper6]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

No, it's absolutely not what it says in the box on B14.

And if you look just a little to the left of that box, around entry for 13, it clearly states:
"most normal humans have scores in the 8-12 range."

[Quote 1] B14: "A score of 10 in any attribute is free, and represents the human average."
[Quote 2] B14: "Most characters have attributes in the 1-20 range, and most normal humans have scores in the 8-12 range."
[Quote 3] B14: "10: Average. Most humans get by just fine with a score of 10."

I don't know how you read those statements, but here is how I read them.
Most humans (rather than Orcs or Elves) have attributes that fall between 8 and 12 [Quote 2]. Those are your general limiters. Within that span, not only is 10 the human average [Quote 1], but most humans also have a scores of 10 [Quote 3].

I see no where in this section the implication that 8-12 are evenly distributed. The book says 10 is the human average [Quote 1], and that most humans have a score of 10 [Quote 3], so I go with that. When I customize those scores, I tend to stay within the normal human ability range of 8-12. [Quote 2]

I don't read the phrase "8-12 range" as being equivalent to "8-12 average."

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by trooper6

[Quote 1] B14: "A score of 10 in any attribute is free, and represents the human average."
[Quote 2] B14: "Most characters have attributes in the 1-20 range, and most normal humans have scores in the 8-12 range."
[Quote 3] B14: "10: Average. Most humans get by just fine with a score of 10."

I don't know how you read those statements, but here is how I read them.
Most humans (rather than Orcs or Elves) have attributes that fall between 8 and 12 [Quote 2]. Those are your general limiters. Within that span, not only is 10 the human average [Quote 1], but most humans also have a scores of 10 [Quote 3].

I interpret it as meaning "10 is sufficient to live a typical person's life without too much trouble" not "Most people are 10s in every stat". The Bell curve that runs so much of the game suggests that in while 10 would be the most common numerical statistic, a majority of people would have stats other than 10 in one or more of their characteristics. Not, of course that it matters when it comes to dealing with NPCs, since the difference between 9 and 10 or 10 and 11 in an NPC is not going to be obvious to the players anyway.