07-02-2022, 05:55 PM | #31 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Attributes Distribution over Populations
Skill defaults are what GURPS IQ is.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
07-03-2022, 03:09 AM | #32 | ||
Join Date: Oct 2007
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Re: Attributes Distribution over Populations
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07-03-2022, 09:55 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Attributes Distribution over Populations
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GURPS is just a game and as long as it simulates the reality you want to play (no matter whether it is the true reality), everything is fine. Now, if something weird suddenly occurs, problems begin to rise at the gaming table. If you come up with a Bruce Lee character who want to flee his foes and is able to climb a cliff, to get involved in a car chase, and drive like an expert pilot, the players will inevitably tell: “Hey! Weren’t we supposed to play in a realistic game world? How can Bruce Lee be able to do all those feats without the least hour of training?” It will immediately break the suspension of disbelief. While it won’t at all with Indiana Jones, Lara Croft or Walter O’Brien, because we know we are in a cinematic genre and that those characters are able to drive any kind of vehicles, use any kind of weapons and always remember the good knowledge at the most appropriate moment. I studied karate for 24 years and go on studying it. I also study kobudo (Okinawan traditional weapons). I’m not as skilled as Bruce Lee was, but I know several men and women who trained much more than me and certainly are. They have a different manner of fighting than Bruce Lee, of course, but would be as effective in combat. Are there able to use any kind of weapon, and to pilot any kind of vehicle (like a plane, or a helicopter for instance)? Certainly not. Yes, innate talent helps you a lot and even make you reach peaks that people without that talent won’t probably ever reach … But talent doesn’t make you magically able to perform outstanding feats without a minimum of serious training. Bruce Lee did train a lot. As did Einstein and Mozart. They even lived a life so devoted to their art that the question of their innate talent remains a question (does it really exist? Isn’t it just such a passion, to the limit of obsession, that makes them work far much more than anyone else?). And all of these famous people ever claimed it: talent may be important, but without work, you go nowhere. Einstein even said that talent represents just about 10% of the skill, the 90% remaining being work. That is why someone who would be able to do everything without serious training sounds so unrealistic. Such human being may exist somewhere, of course, but until proven otherwise, one can legitimately doubt it. Like my grandfather said: “With some well-chosen what if, you could put Paris in a mere bottle.” But anyway, at the gaming table, it would break the suspension of disbelief. And admit that if you met someone who suddenly was able to pilot a helicopter and a fighter just after watching Supercopter and Topgun, you would be very surprised too. And you would hesitate a lot if he suddenly told you: “I never flawned an airliner, but come in that Boeing 777, I'm taking you to Tokyo!” Your “suspension of disbelief” would immediately be broken. Last edited by Gollum; 07-03-2022 at 10:39 AM. |
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07-03-2022, 09:56 AM | #34 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Attributes Distribution over Populations
Not tremendously. There are too many cases where the Real World excellence involves only one Skill (or at msot multiple spcilizations of one skill). Talents are still broadly-based aptitudes.
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Fred Brackin |
07-04-2022, 12:31 AM | #35 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: Attributes Distribution over Populations
I'd say they're secondary to actually buying skills, but I take your point. It's just changing the question to whether putting 1 pt into a skill and getting it at an expert professional level is realistic for high IQ characters.
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07-04-2022, 01:53 AM | #36 | |
Join Date: Dec 2020
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Re: Attributes Distribution over Populations
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Normally a very smart person should have a bonus in learning IQ related skills especially how much time is needed to learn, and maybe a very little in DX skills because he gets the underlying ideas faster. Same goes for high DX folks learning DX related skills, they are just very talented. In the praxis most progress comes from CP you earn while playing not from time sheets you fill out to see what your PC does while not adventuring, so itīs ok. Making the default level of a skills related to the main attribute is a very early design decision from SJG, and itīs better than most other systems handle it. Last edited by Willy; 07-04-2022 at 02:04 AM. Reason: added text |
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07-04-2022, 09:22 AM | #37 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Attributes Distribution over Populations
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I find understanding GURPS to be way easier if you dispel any notions of nature vs nurture from the mechanics.* GURPS attributes are not just talent or genetics. They include training and education as well (in fact, I'd generally say that you can't get high GURPS IQ without formal or informal education, and you can't get high GURPS DX without training and practice). GURPS skills are not just training. You can be "born with" points in anything. GURPS talents are just somewhere in between attributes and skills. ... * I know that the nature/nurture split is a longstanding tradition in RPGs. It's just a very unhealthy tradition, and leads down the road of bad/unscientific things like biological determinism, bioessentialism, etc. |
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07-04-2022, 11:59 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: France
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Re: Attributes Distribution over Populations
Yes, I fully do agree with that. Without entering in debates about biological determinism vs educational determinism (which, in my humble opinion, are often problems of extremism on both sides), humans (as well as many animals) are determined by their nature as well as their culture.
A skill is not just what you learned. It is what you are good at. And you are generally better to learn some skills than some others. Is it due to innate ability, special gifts, or just unconscious desires which makes you love that rather than something else? Who knows? And it is not important. The fact is that we can see it in real life, especially with high level of skills. People who are very good at doing something trained a lot, but are still better than other people who apparently trained as much as them. And if they are very good in their field of activity, they are rarely as good in another one. Some people sound to be very good in several fields of activity, though. But they still rarely reach the same level of performance. Einstein was good as playing violin, but he was just a good amateur, not an expert like Nicolo Paganini. And if they never learned something, they just don’t know it, as everyone. All roleplaying games have to deal with those two components of a skill: the innate and the acquired.
GURPS is in that third category. And it does it extensively because it allows to create cinematic characters very easily. While, in call of Cthulhu, you would have to put a lot of points in a lot of skills (just try to create Sherlock Holmes), it is very simple with GURPS: IQ 18, and that’s almost done. But it is unrealistic, of course. Nobody knows everything about everything like that. Likewise, we all have some background in a lot of skills at low level. All of us can try to take a sword and swing it, or a gun and shoot, even if we didn’t train to do that … GURPS allows it very simply. Now, as masters of karate often said, training is specific. Being very good at something doesn’t make you very good at something else. Even what seems much simpler than IQ or coordination, pure strength, shows it. Yes, muscle training is very specific. A weightlifter is not good at climbing. One can say that there is a difference between pushing and pulling, but that doesn’t solve the problem. A weightlifter is not a good puncher, and a good climber is not a good judoka. So, what does it mean? Just that a skill is not just training. It also includes very specific muscle and coordination training, specific manner of thinking, and so on. To be perfectly realistic, a game should have a lot of attributes (strength should be split in a dozen of ones, if not more), these attributes should make skill faster to learn (not just give a starting level), and training in skill should also improve attributes, because when you learn something, you develop your whole personality. Those who learn sciences, for instance, get faster at learning other sciences, those who learn music get faster at learning to play other musical instruments, and so on. But it would be a mess, and a computer would be required. GURPS allows to do that very simply: few basic attributes, the possibility to have talents, skills which are linked to attributes and also linked among them thanks to the default system, and so on. But since it also allows to play unrealistic characters as well as realistic ones with the same rules, the GMs have to be very careful with the basic attributes level they allow. Do I take IQ 18 for Sherlock Holmes? It depends on the level of realism I want. With IQ 18, he will know everything about everything without getting bored with all the skills he is supposed to know … But Dr Whatson won’t ever laugh because he doesn’t know Jupiter (and don’t even care about knowing whether the earth is round or flat). Last edited by Gollum; 07-05-2022 at 12:05 AM. |
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