Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 06-21-2018, 08:48 AM   #111
AlexanderHowl
 
Join Date: Feb 2016
Default 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.
AlexanderHowl is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-21-2018, 08:59 AM   #112
Alonsua
Banned
 
Join Date: May 2017
Default Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.

Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
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.
I tried to answer that by the third page.

Quote:
Also, the setting is a bit "special", with 15 being the human maximum in any score (15 Strength means someone weighs 420 lbs or more, while 15 IQ means that someone´s intelligence quotient ranges 180-220 Stanford-Binet, which welcomes to Stephen Hawking being IQ 13 and Leonardo Da Vinci being IQ 14).
Alonsua is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-21-2018, 09:19 AM   #113
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
You´re clever and I like it. It gets a bit more complicated than that, and actually the generation timing in this specific case is 9 years, for even weirder reasons, while the regular generation timing is 15 years.
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.
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-21-2018, 09:21 AM   #114
Alonsua
Banned
 
Join Date: May 2017
Default Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
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.
Yes, it has everything to do with the length of the human reproductive cycle actually.

Six year old mother.
Youngest mothers.

Last edited by Alonsua; 06-21-2018 at 09:26 AM.
Alonsua is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-21-2018, 09:50 AM   #115
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
Yes, it has everything to do with the length of the human reproductive cycle actually.

Six year old mother.
Youngest mothers.
But going by "youngest mothers" has nothing to do with the length of the reproductive cycle in a meaningful sense. I mean, if you were trying to decide how much a human being weighs (say, for elevator design) you wouldn't use either the very smallest or the very heaviest human beings, right?

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.
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-21-2018, 10:12 AM   #116
Alonsua
Banned
 
Join Date: May 2017
Default Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
But going by "youngest mothers" has nothing to do with the length of the reproductive cycle in a meaningful sense. I mean, if you were trying to decide how much a human being weighs (say, for elevator design) you wouldn't use either the very smallest or the very heaviest human beings, right?

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.
Historical average maternal age is fifteen, but I made a few assumptions to lower it to nine in this specific case. Basically that the younger the mothers are, the more evolved their lineage will be over time.
Alonsua is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-21-2018, 10:28 AM   #117
copeab
 
copeab's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
Default Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
Historical average maternal age is fifteen, but I made a few assumptions to lower it to nine in this specific case. Basically that the younger the mothers are, the more evolved their lineage will be over time.
Short of a dedicated eugenics program by a fairly evil (and male dominated organization), nine is simply too low for an average.
__________________
A generous and sadistic GM,
Brandon Cope

GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com
copeab is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-21-2018, 10:28 AM   #118
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
Historical average maternal age is fifteen, but I made a few assumptions to lower it to nine in this specific case. Basically that the younger the mothers are, the more evolved their lineage will be over time.
Is that average at the birth of the first child? Or average at the birth of the first daughter? Because only 50% of children (approximately) are female, the latter age is necessarily greater than the former. Or is it average at the birth of the first child, or the first daughter, to reach reproductive age without dying? In a population with nontrivial infant and child mortality, that age can be significantly older again.

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.
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-21-2018, 10:38 AM   #119
ericthered
Hero of Democracy
 
ericthered's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
Default 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.
__________________
Be helpful, not pedantic

Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog

Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one!
ericthered is online now   Reply With Quote
Old 06-21-2018, 10:47 AM   #120
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Rip/Criticize my character: Angela Copperfield.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonsua View Post
In my specific gaming system 15 is about the human* maximum, with it being equivalent to 175-200 SB IQ or 420 lbs muscle mass. I´m considering allowing 16 with an appropriate Unusual Background... But I will see.
I would not say that that's necessarily wrong. Indeed, I've speculated about running a version of GURPS where the highest attribute that gives you a skill default is 16 (so you can have skill-12 for Easy skills and skill-9 for Very Hard ones); anything higher than that implies really crazy levels of broad general competence.

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.
__________________
Bill Stoddard

I don't think we're in Oz any more.
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:44 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.