Character concepts and point totals

[johndallman]

A few ideas formed by the optimization thread:

For a campaign where I have a specific story to tell (which for me, tends to mean a short campaign) I will likely create concept descriptions of the necessary characters, and let the players decide which of them plays which one. If a player doesn't like any of the concepts, they can, of course suggest variations. But knowing the players reasonably well (I tend to be dealing with established groups) means I can usually pitch a set of concepts that the players will be happy with.

For a long-term campaign, I don't usually make character concepts, although I will often identify capabilities that will be needed, or at least very useful. I'll give the players an idea of the setting, and if there's a patron or mission framework they need to be compatible with, and then let them lose. This often gets discussed over e-mail or at a session, so that players can co-operate in defining their concepts, but they don't have to do this.

I give the players a point budget, which is generally intended to be tight, but not stingy. By this, I mean that it's intended that they can be competent for the adventures they'll face, but they'll have plenty of things they they want to upgrade before they start expanding their capabilities to new fields.

Watching the players evolve concepts before they start detailed design is fascinating. For my current campaign, Cabalists in the Infinite Worlds, two of the players' concepts were straightforward and practical, but the other two gave more trouble.

One started in a form that simply made it impossible to blend into most societies, since he wanted to be a spirit inhabiting a specific suit of armour, with no body inside. This doesn't work in a no-mana environment, and is conspicuous almost everywhere. He was eventually talked down to gigantism and a bizarre form of being only partly alive; he's still conspicuous, but his chivalric behaviour helps calm people.

The other wanted for some time to be a vampire. However, in a world-hopping game when you often have no idea of the time of day on the target world, this isn't very practical on 300 points.

How do you handle the concept stage?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by johndallman

How do you handle the concept stage?

I get all the players together, discuss the campaign theme and setting, and ask them all to pick concepts and to make sure that they fit together and don't overlap excessively. I do as much character construction as possible, but then I spend a few weeks sending character drafts back and forth with the individual players. It is to be hoped that the initial draft will reveal whether the point value is suited to the desired concepts.

It can be problematic; when I was setting up Sovereignty, one of the initial players could not cut his character down to 1600 points to save his life, even with a month extension of the start time, and one got stuck at 800 and couldn't bring himself to go higher.

Bill Stoddard

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It can be problematic; when I was setting up Sovereignty, one of the initial players could not cut his character down to 1600 points to save his life, even with a month extension of the start time, and one got stuck at 800 and couldn't bring himself to go higher.

I've worked in a much narrower range of point totals: 100-200 points 3e and 150-300 points 4e. My players have managed to form their concepts within the right kind of range to date. It was odd how much trouble an experienced Shadowrun player had when new to GURPS, though. He couldn't grasp the skill progression with the table in front of him, and kept trying to fit wrong ideas to it.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It was odd how much trouble an experienced Shadowrun player had when new to GURPS, though. He couldn't grasp the skill progression with the table in front of him, and kept trying to fit wrong ideas to it.

I know it's kinda wrong to laugh at newbies, but I'm curious regarding this event. As in, in details. (Beside, I'm pretty sure he figured it out by now.)

[Figleaf23]

I generally only run open-ended campaigns that generally continue until the forces of RW chaos put them to an end.

Generally, I describe a small handful of campaigns I could run to the potential players and see which grabs their interest. I will then specify the scope of character types needed and let the players select among them. I set the point limit (based on what I think will be needed for the style of campaign I imagine) and give the players any limitations on character traits then let them build them themselves. I review the draft characters, make rulings, suggest changes and then they take it back for another round of building if they wish.

After the character is 'Final', I usually apply a few more points to fill in things the players left out, and generally I give a 5 point bonus for making or finding a picture of the character.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I know it's kinda wrong to laugh at newbies, but I'm curious regarding this event. As in, in details. (Beside, I'm pretty sure he figured it out by now.)

It didn't really make sense to me. He seemed to be having trouble with the idea that skills are directly based on stats, which isn't a concept in any game he plays, and with the simplicity of the table. He was looking for the costs in each row to be incremental costs, or something. We just did it for him.

[RogerBW]

Originally Posted by johndallman

How do you handle the concept stage?

Most of my players are either GURPS experts or unfamiliar enough to do what I tell them; I don't generally have players who know enough to get into trouble but not enough to get out. So what I usually end up doing is putting together a loose campaign-PC template: X points, must have traits Y and Z, should be someone who'd be employed by agency A. Here's an example.

This is part of a longer process, though:

• Face-to-face, decide on the campaign setting
• On my own, choose more specific campaign parameters
• On my own, set up the rough template as described, distribute it to players.
• Face to face and by email (usually we have a few weeks' warning while a previous game is winding down), the players and I talk about what roles they'd like to take, so that we don't have too much overlap or roles that don't fit.
• On their own, players generate characters and email them to me for tweaking.

None of us is a rules-lawyer, so the campaign template isn't considered binding...

[Mehmet]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It didn't really make sense to me. He seemed to be having trouble with the idea that skills are directly based on stats, which isn't a concept in any game he plays, and with the simplicity of the table. He was looking for the costs in each row to be incremental costs, or something. We just did it for him.

Oh, embarrassing story, I had trouble understanding skills for a second just because it was too simple - the idea was "I'm definitely missing something."

This was after years of playing 3E mind you so tells a lot about me...

Cheers

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It didn't really make sense to me. He seemed to be having trouble with the idea that skills are directly based on stats, which isn't a concept in any game he plays, and with the simplicity of the table. He was looking for the costs in each row to be incremental costs, or something. We just did it for him.

In Shadow Run, skills were totally unaffected by your characteristic values. They only affected your default ability to do things. And yes, this did lead to profoundly weird situations where your ability would go down once you learned something.

Originally Posted by johndallman

The other wanted for some time to be a vampire. However, in a world-hopping game when you often have no idea of the time of day on the target world, this isn't very practical on 300 points.

He should have been the kind of vampire who doesn't burn in sunlight but doesn't get his kewl power either.

[Flyndaran]

Shadowrun was like World Of Darkness in that the writers knew nothing about statistics and made high skill more dangerous than low. I liked the worlds, but the systems were messed up.