06-21-2018, 08:48 AM | #111 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.
But we are talking about a character that was created with very strict limits without telling anyone about the limits in the first place. By RAW, the character should have had an attribute spread of ST 12, DX 20, IQ 20, and HT 16 to represent a 'peak' of human performance. The attribute score given by the OP was not even that exceptional for standard GURPS characters, as there are human characters in Basic that are more exceptional than her (Headley with his IQ 16 and Sora with her DX 16).
I think that it would have prevented a lot of argument had we known the assumptions of character creation in the first place. If an individual GM wishes to limit attributes to 15, I doubt that anyone would argue with that, but I think that it is only appropriate in campaigns where the point values are less than superhuman. When you get to 500+ points, the characters are superhuman anyway, so having 'realistic' attribute limits is rather farcical at that point. |
06-21-2018, 08:59 AM | #112 | ||
Banned
Join Date: May 2017
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Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.
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06-21-2018, 09:19 AM | #113 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.
I have no idea what "generation" means in this case. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the actual length of the human reproductive cycle. So I'm not sure why you're calling it that.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
06-21-2018, 09:21 AM | #114 | |
Banned
Join Date: May 2017
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Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.
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Six year old mother. Youngest mothers. Last edited by Alonsua; 06-21-2018 at 09:26 AM. |
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06-21-2018, 09:50 AM | #115 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.
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For a population, a "generation" in a realistic sense is the time from when one group of people are bearing children to the time when their children are bearing children. Since human reproduction doesn't take place all at once, you have to look at the statistical distribution. And it's basic to statistics that you need measures that remove the outliers from your population when you figure the central tendency.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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06-21-2018, 10:12 AM | #116 | |
Banned
Join Date: May 2017
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Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.
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06-21-2018, 10:28 AM | #117 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.
Short of a dedicated eugenics program by a fairly evil (and male dominated organization), nine is simply too low for an average.
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A generous and sadistic GM, Brandon Cope GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com |
06-21-2018, 10:28 AM | #118 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.
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The reasoning about younger mothers doesn't seem to work. Evolution isn't about specific lineages; it's about populations. Populations are defined by mixis (the dispersal of genes through the population through random mating). Yes, you get more rapid genetic change in a species or a population that has faster generational turnover, but the processes that give rise to that involve genetic selection operating on the whole population, and therefore take place at a rate set by the population's mean or median generation length.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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06-21-2018, 10:38 AM | #119 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.
Yes, you should be using average age of the mother when giving birth.
If we use the horribly depressing numbers of the average medieval (or roman, or beaker culture) peasant girl first giving birth at 15, and having a kid every two years until they die at an average age of 25, four of whom die, that gives us an generation gap of 20 years. And I cannot emphasize enough how much this strains the envelope on everything we know. The average lifespan for a peasant has some low numbers, but most of this is due to people dying as children, and even the most pessimistic averages barely approach 25. 15 years is also a pretty generous age for the first child. Teen pregnacies would be common, but they'll mostly be in the later teens, not mid. Now, if we're tracing a mystic line where rapid turn overs are important, you might be able to trace an average 15 year line.
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06-21-2018, 10:47 AM | #120 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.
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But with that system, your character writeup has no stats higher than 15, and therefore no stats outside the range of natural human variation. Therefore you don't need a special superscience explanation for any of those stats. It's a freakish quirk of probability for someone to have two distinct stats at the human maximum, but freakish quirks of probability do happen in the real world, and it's certainly legitimate to have them as the premise of a narrative. Human beings have hard physical limits on how good they can be at any one thing—no real human being will ever be as strong as an elephant or as fast as a cheetah—but we don't have a budget for how much total random good fortune we can have in our genes. So I wouldn't bother with the elaborate handwavy scientific explanation for why Angela's stats are that high. And therefore I don't see that having the science fictional origin story adds anything of substance to her narrative, and I don't see why it should be there. In fact, there seems to be something contradictory about it. On one hand you have her coming from an extraordinary origin, which is classic Myth of the Birth of the Hero stuff; it implies that she really is a kind of demigod or titan, someone who can do things that transcend normal humanity. But on the other hand, you have the story about her being a stage magician, one who's skilled at illusions, which implies that the miracles that attest to her divinity are faked by clever trickery. And also on the other hand, you have her have very high social traits that give her the ability to persuade other people to believe her and to adore her too much to question her, which also implies that her claims to divinity are false, and that her religion is founded on lies. I think those narratives don't work well together, and that's a big reason that I don't see why the character should have all of them.
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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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