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Old 12-11-2017, 01:41 AM   #11
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: The Meaning of the Ally Appearance Roll

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andreas View Post
A sick Minion is also availible in that sense. They could carry him around even if he is too sick to walk.
Except that he'd still be useless. Simply being there doesn't count as an "appearance as an ally". There's also a difference between a temporary disability and being designed to be permanently incapable of doing something. The total pacifist ally can't fight and that's not an Frequency of Appearance issue. Transient obstacles to being able to show up and function normally are.
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Old 12-11-2017, 01:45 AM   #12
Celjabba
 
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Luxembourg
Default Re: The Meaning of the Ally Appearance Roll

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andreas View Post
Not really, many of the reasons you listed are things that can be ignored for a Minion, or even a normal Ally in a great emergency.

A perfectly obedient minion can ignore "maternity and paternity, weddings, sick children's, seniority bonus vacation days". If you need them badly enough it is most often possible for them to show up despite sickness, injuries and emergencies as well.
Sorry, I missed the Minion requirement and was talking about generic allies.
There is a reason for the +50% minion upgrade, and you just described part of it.

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Originally Posted by Andreas View Post
I have never in my life (or at least since I was a young child) been too sick to be physically incapable of showing up and I certainly am not immune to sickness.
Lucky you.
Actually, that was me for the first 13 years of my professional career. Perhaps one or two sick day a year, on bad years.
And then, you find yourself in an hospital, and reality painfully remind you that being too sick to be physically incapable of working does in fact exist.
I hope you will never have to know that.

But we are speaking of average, and never sick is as much an outlier as always sick.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Andreas View Post
As for reasons other than sickness, those can usually be countered by keeping your Ally around you at all times (a live-in butler who always follows you when you leave home for example).
If you pay for a low-availability ally, then always keep him near you , and feed him healing and HT potion to make sure he is healthy enough to work 100& of the time ... I as GM will either reprice the ally with constant availability, or get creative to make him unavailable. And if you deny his legitimate request for a day off for his wedding, you better have paid for Minion, +50% or you can look at your ally leaving you.

Last edited by Celjabba; 12-11-2017 at 01:49 AM.
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Old 12-11-2017, 01:55 AM   #13
Andreas
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Default Re: The Meaning of the Ally Appearance Roll

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
Except that he'd still be useless. Simply being there doesn't count as an "appearance as an ally". There's also a difference between a temporary disability and being designed to be permanently incapable of doing something. The total pacifist ally can't fight and that's not an Frequency of Appearance issue. Transient obstacles to being able to show up and function normally are.
Not necessarily. The minion might very well have some ability that makes him worth carrying around. Or perhaps they are even planning on using him for something like an RPM sacrifice. It can be useful, just less so than usual, just like an ally which has to be carried because it lacks a Flight ability.

This is also a design issue though. The minion has the trade-off of not having resistant or immune to sickness, which gives it more points for other things. This means that it will sometimes be less useful (when sick), just like of a total pacifist is less useful some of the time (in combat).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Celjabba View Post
Sorry, I missed the Minion requirement and was talking about generic allies.
There is a reason for the +50% minion upgrade, and you just described part of it.



Lucky you.
Actually, that was me for the first 13 years of my professional career. Perhaps one or two sick day a year, on bad years.
And then, you find yourself in an hospital, and reality painfully remind you that being too sick to be physically incapable of working does in fact exist.
I hope you will never have to know that.

But we are speaking of average, and never sick is as much an outlier as always sick.



If you pay for a low-availability ally, then always keep him near you , and feed him healing and HT potion to make sure he is healthy enough to work 100& of the time ... I as GM will either reprice the ally with constant availability, or get creative to make him unavailable. And if you deny his legitimate request for a day off for his wedding, you better have paid for Minion, +50% or you can look at your ally leaving you.
Well, as I mentioned, it often applies for normal allies as well in great emergencies. It doesn't make much sense to take time off for a wedding if you are needed to help save the world.

Yes, "never sick is as much an outlier as always sick", but it is not at all unusual to be a lot closer to never sick than sick on a 15 or less.

The point of discussion for this part wasn't to trying to get more use of a low-availability ally. It was whether constant appearance could be appropriate for a human or if it should only be used for "spirits, golems, zombies, robots, and other inhuman entities". I would agree that you should buy constant availibility for an ally you might have work all the time like that.
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Old 12-11-2017, 02:48 AM   #14
hal
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
Default Re: The Meaning of the Ally Appearance Roll

Something like this - has generally reared its ugly head in my campaigns in the nearly 30+ years I've been playing GURPS.

To wit: how do you price an NPC who is planet bound, whose reach is limited to his local region, but the player character can leave the world at will, spend 40 weeks in space, and return to the same world for only 2 weeks? My work around was to simply charge a fee at a grade level as if he were available on a given roll, but bump that up by one or two grades to account for the fact that he's not even potentially in play when the character is off-world. Example, on a 9 or less, but is never available off planet, but is available on a 15 or less when on planet. It is midway between both extremes of always on the planet, and always not on the planet as it were.

What if for example, you have an NPC ally named Guido? He lives in say, Night City off the California Coast in a specific neighborhood. Normally, when you're in his territory, he's going to be available on a 12 or less right? But in today's environment, a simple phone call is usually going to be 100% likely to reach him right? If he doesn't pick up the call - it goes into voice mail right? But Guido, he's got plans and is on his way to make a pickup - and can't get out of that plan for at least 48 hours. But Guido decides to call his cousin, saying "hey Antonio, I've a friend in need, but I can't help, do me a favor and help willya? I'll owe you one." So Antonio shows up even though the players are in Hong Kong, unaware that Antonio is Guido's cousin. In that case - the NPC ally didn't hop on a plane to help, he merely called his cousin.

Now, Guido is unavailable in the next adventure because the GM rolls higher than the activation number. Guido has "Obligations" right? He owes Antonio a favor. Maybe he has to bail out Vinnie from Jail in New York City. Maybe his Mom's sister is in town and family comes first over buddies?

Now - what specifically is the difference between an ALLY and an EMPLOYEE in GURPS? Having an Ally who is also a bodyguard is what, an ALLY who is also an EMPLOYEE? What about an ally who is in love with your character, who sees you being chased by another and perhaps even successfully wining your character's attention? Are they no longer your ally out of feelings of jealousy? What if the GM, <expletive deleted> that the GM can be, decides to saddle your NPC ally with the trait "Proud" and "Jealous" when he builds the NPC? What if your character says something that is really NASTY to the NPC to where his PROUD attribute is activated? What then?

Activation numbers are essentially a game mechanic that is what amounts to - a compact or contract between the GM and the player. It should also be noted that (and I can't stress this enough!!!) ALL, repeat ALL NPC's are the domain of the GM. Even something as simple as a player buying Charisma, Appearance and Voice and expecting an overall +6 reaction roll from NPC's - runs the risk that his character will run into NPC's whose reaction is already determined in advance by the GM, thus nullifying the NEED for a reaction roll at all!

So, maybe the GM needs help with ideas on why NPC's aren't available. Here are some that can be used without even batting an eye...

"I Like you man, but not THAT much. I figured you had it coming and it wasn't my affair. Since you survived it, next time, don't kick the Chief of police in his privates and expect me to bail you out. Sheesh"

"I have to work for a living man, I have obligations. I may love you like a brother I never had, but there are limits - as I don't love you like a lover!"

"Vinnie needed me at the exact same time you did. Vinnie is family - sorry."

"Let me get this straight. I'm with my girl, and we're doing the you know what, and you call me expecting me to stop and help you out? Are you out of your mind!"

"Seriously? The last time I helped you out, you totaled my car, and didn't even offer to help me fix it, and you want me to help you out at 3 in the morning?"

"Sometimes, I wish you'd grow a pair. You got yourself in this mess, and I figured you could handle it well enough on your own. Oh - don't you dare bring up the time you saved my life, I've paid you back for that over and over... Oh maaaannnnnnnn, sometimes I WISH you hadn't saved my life!"

Having an ally doesn't mean the ally is a fanatically devoted follower. Sometimes the Ally has a life of its own. And sometimes? Sometimes the ally is in the grip of his own little emergencies that he doesn't have time for yours. And maybe, just maybe - the habit of only calling on him when you need him might result in a "Instead of rushing to his help at his beck and call, I'll let him stew - maybe he'll learn to appreciate me more the next time when I do help. That will teach him!"

Have you ever as a GM, run into a situation where the players treat their allies as slaves or perhaps like siblings who OWE them a favor without recompense? Have you ever had an ally get badly treated by his so called ally/buddy (the player character) and you as GM thought "if someone treated me like that, I'd be available less often?"

On the flip side, have you as a GM ever offered up an NPC as an ALLY simply because the reaction roll was super high, and the player character did the NPC a favor the player character didn't need to?

My wife once earned a magic item that contained a wish (and in the 30+ years of gaming, I've given those out really sparingly!). I had largely forgotten she had it, because my wife doesn't play those wishes right upon getting them, she hoards it like a miser. Then, one game session set in HARN WORLD, her character meets up with an Elven King who had disappeared hundreds of years ago from the ken of moral man. The Elven king's alternate (parallel worlds meant that you could have a kind King in one parallel reality, and his counterpart in another parallel world could be evil) met him on a field of battle, and possessed him in his final moment before dying. Two souls, one body, locked in a prison of one mind. The elves didn't know of the situation, and my wife's character used her greater wish as an act of mercy. She wasn't thinking "Boy, if I get on the Good King's side, I will be vastly rewarded" but instead "That is the saddest thing I could imagine!". So, with that wish, she gained an Ally who happened to be a King. As a consequence of that act, the King offered her and her's (ie herself and her bloodline) the gratitude of his throne, and gave her four bodyguards who would watch over her home, and a tree that was magical that would grow in her family manor for as long as she owned it.

What should her allies be priced at for that one eh?

On that note? I will simply add one more thought...

Too bad they couldn't price it for each individual appearance roll possible on 3d6. Wouldn't have been neat to have an appearance roll of an 11 or less? How about one at 13 or less? Maybe one on a roll of a 5 or less? Wait?!!! As a GM, I can implement that on my own without needing it to be written for me! ;)

The game is what you make of it. It serves as a structure to bring order out of chaos - and the GM's job is simply that, keep order in the story, support the story with his NPC's, and give the Players a Stage upon which their characters can interact and evolve the story. All else is secondary.
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Old 12-11-2017, 07:58 AM   #15
Kromm
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Location: Montréal, Québec
Default Re: The Meaning of the Ally Appearance Roll

Appearance rolls represent whatever is needed to make the Ally less than 100% available within the confines of the campaign premise:
  • They can stand in for geographical availability, or, "Does it make sense for my Ally to travel to where I am?"
  • They can stand in for logistical availability – things like the telephone network not having a hiccup when you call the Ally, and traffic not being jammed and cars not running out of gas when the Ally attempts to reach you.
  • They can stand in for social availability, or, "Is my Ally free of other obligations, some of which might be just as pressing as my need for that person's assistance?"
  • They can stand in for ability to function, or, "Is my Ally in a physical and mental state where that person can usefully assist me?"
  • They can stand in for loyalty, or, "Is my Ally inclined to show up to assist me?"
  • They can stand in for chance . . . a million small things can go wrong in life.
If the campaign is one where these failure modes and all others anyone can come up with can be managed – or where none of them really apply – for a particular Ally, it's completely within the GM's rights to insist that Ally have a frequency of appearance of "Constantly" (×4 cost). Going with "Almost all the time" (×3 cost) but gaming the game so that it's really "Constantly" is, bluntly, cheating. If the player doesn't like doing without the Ally sometimes but won't pay ×4 cost, or if the GM doesn't want an Ally that's never unavailable, the GM is absolutely justified in forbidding the Ally.

The Minion enhancement has no bearing on this whatsoever. It means only that you can't lose the Ally advantage by mistreating the NPC – not that the Ally never fails to show up. Zombies are dumb and can wonder off, robots can run into situations beyond their programming, worshippers who will walk into certain death for you can think that something else they're doing is what you really want. If you can't see any sensible way for the Ally ever to be absent, perhaps because they player comes up with 25 pages of orders calculated to keep the Ally constantly available . . . we're right back to "The player pays ×4 cost to waive appearance rolls or the GM forbids the Ally."

None of this changes in campaigns where the Ally jets off to faraway lands on your spaceship and would be in your sight all the time. Either you accept an appearance roll and justify it as "My Ally sometimes has other tasks here on the spaceship and can't help," or you pay ×4 cost.

Finally, while the roll is technically supposed to be "per adventure," it won't break the game if you treat it as "per game session," "per act," "per scene," or whatever suits your gaming style. This is the GM's decision. I don't have "adventures" with beginnings, middles, and ends in my campaigns; I have the life of the heroes, which is one big adventure, and I roll each time an Ally is needed, not at arbitrary breakpoints. However, I've been blessed with players who accept rulings like, "Yes, Ilya, Josef, Oleg, and Vlad know you're saving the world, but you won't get far without provisions, and they were out of armor, repacking the supplies, when the fight broke out."
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Old 12-11-2017, 08:40 AM   #16
hal
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Buffalo, New York
Default Re: The Meaning of the Ally Appearance Roll

I'm largely blessed with similar players as well. That we've been gaming together since 1986 with two of them, and 1987 with my wife, means that we're enjoying the game pretty much as is. My wife treats her NPC's like real people, as does my other friend. The third one has a wee bit of a difficulty at times, but that's largely a function of his personality/capabilities as it were. Just as I'm hard of hearing and have issues, he has some social issues (blind spots mostly) that can cause some issues (which is why Saving rolls versus common sense or IQ are often a life saver for him - well, for everybody really!).

Most of the time, I treat new relationships with NPC's as potentials for turning the NPC's into allies (usually requires good role playing AND good reaction rolls). A natural 18 usually means the NPC has fallen in love, and that has happened a total of maybe three times in what, 30 years of gaming? The ONLY time I've ever awarded a full fledged ally worth more points than the character, at x4 for the cost stems from one incident. Others have always been at the 1 point level for the most part. Then the player expends points to raise the frequency of the NPC representing a deepening of trust or what have you. But then again - I've never been one to be 100% a rules lawyer who follows things 100% as written either. You have NO idea how much I'm fighting to NOT purchase DUNGEON FANTASY RPG just to get the shield bash rules that others claim is better than the 4e rules. I use the 3e rules in lieu of the shield rules from 4e - but that's just me. I can't justify the expense after 12 months of unemployment (thank GOD that spell is OVER!!!)

Someday though, I think I'll try and pick up a copy just for the maps and the rule books. Someday. ;)
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