Need Help Rigorously Stat-ing Myself

[Kuba]

I’d like to stat myself in GURPS 4e but it’s unclear how I’d even go about measuring anything other than ST (and even that’s unclear how to measure in terms of the standard lifts). Anyone have ideas on how to measure stuff like DX, Will, or skills, without resorting to the usual “I got good at juggling pretty fast, so I’m DX 13”?

[Kelly Pedersen]

This is going to be a... contentious issue, I fear. There's quite a lot of debate in the general GURPS fandom as to what the best way to convert real-world abilities into game mechanics is, and on top of that, it's very easy to get emotionally invested in people's interpretations of your own abilities.

That said, you can help us help you by answering one critical question - what sort of game is this for? It makes a big difference in approach to character building if the game is supposed to be a fairly cinematic "real world person gets magically transported to a fantasy realm, becomes a hero" thing, as opposed to a gritty realistic "five minutes into the future, you have become a survivor of a terrible apocalypse" setup.

[Plane]

I'd probably start with calculating your final scores in DX-based skills and then from there determining "how much did I improve in this compared to when I hadn't tried it before" (default) to determine how much is points directly in the skill and how much is inherent talent.

Also you might have some Manual DX which only applies to hands, I think a lot of people would. Good typists/knitters but not so good dancers/fighters for example.

[Culture20]

If you’re naturally athletic and also good with manual dexterity, then you probably have a good DX. If it’s just juggling, you happened to learn the skill quickly, so you have the skill.

Also keep in mind the same for IQ: unless you’re an all-around genius in every field even in college, including social graces, then you’re probably a more modest IQ with talents (still smart, but more focused, which is more common).

Don’t forget dabbler perks; they’re useful for skills you once knew well but have let atrophe. My physics and chemistry are dabbles now; none since college.

Things you do a lot, and with a breadth of knowledge or experience are probably at high points (level based off your stat). e.g. I know how to run reasonably well, but my HT and FT are both low. Hiking is more my style, and I’ve also invested more time in it. Driving is something that I have at least two points sunk into; I don’t subscribe to the “everyone defaults driving” train of thought because I know people who default driving, and there’s no comparison between someone who has never or rarely sat behind the wheel and someone who has driven all over a big city at least two hours every day for nearly thirty years.

We sedentary types tend to have a better support system than adventuring types; don’t forget your contacts, allies, patrons, dependents, etc.

I have plenty of low point disads which would be difficult to keep track of in gameplay, but are valid. Don’t give yourself a quirk limit for this build; roleplaying nerds tend to be quirky. ;)

After you stat yourself up, look at the point total and consider whether it matches how you and others view you. If your points seem too high or way too low, and you don’t think you’re better or worse than average, reconsider your thoughts about average point totals for this game we call life. Stat up a few celebrities, historical figures, etc. and see what high points should be.

Edit: This will not produce an efficient build. You’ll have a lot of fraction point skills in your dabbler perks, and probably enough skills elsewhere that if you were designing the character to fit within a budget, you’d just raise the attributes instead. You might also go above traditional disad limits. Neither of these are bad since the goal is to stat yourself insted of create a playable PC within a budget.

[Tenex]

If you have skill in guns you can see what size target you can hit 100% of the time and then add in all the pluses and minuses for weapons, aiming, etc. to get a fairly close approximation of your skill. Then you can use the rules on skill development through study (Basic p. 292) to see how many points you've put into learning the skill. You can kind of back into your DX that way.

Be forewarned, even with something as crisp, distinct and non-amorphous as shooting, it doesn't always line up well. I clearly don't have any cinematic type advantages. But my provable, on-demand accuracy with a gun was out of whack with the amount of skill points I have spent learning to use one, unless you believed I have a higher DX than I deserve. And that's with one of the more specifically scored skills in the game. How is anyone ever going to reasonably assess their skill in Savoir-Faire, or even if they have it at all?

Also, the levels in Tactical Shooting "Guns Skill Levels" sidebar on p. 42 give some out of whack levels when compared to reality. I know numerous cops, fed agents, SWAT guys who are skill 20+ in guns measured by their real world capabilities and converted to GURPS. In fact, I would go so far as to say it's common for many "ordinary" cops to be 15+ in guns. So clearly something is out of whack with the conversion, and that's with probably the most specific skill with regard to assessing skill levels. So I think this whole endeavor of converting real world people to GURPS is problematic at best.

By the way, there are numerous old threads on this.

[Kuba]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

This is going to be a... contentious issue, I fear. There's quite a lot of debate in the general GURPS fandom as to what the best way to convert real-world abilities into game mechanics is, and on top of that, it's very easy to get emotionally invested in people's interpretations of your own abilities.

That said, you can help us help you by answering one critical question - what sort of game is this for? It makes a big difference in approach to character building if the game is supposed to be a fairly cinematic "real world person gets magically transported to a fantasy realm, becomes a hero" thing, as opposed to a gritty realistic "five minutes into the future, you have become a survivor of a terrible apocalypse" setup.

I expect that we won’t come to a neat conclusion but I’m hoping get that the discussion will bring us closer or at least come up with a set of different evaluation techniques.

As for the use, it’s not for a game. Rather I was thinking about how to effectively measure and gamify self-improvement and what better way to do so then to use GURPS.

So far I’ve got a solid idea for ST, and some rough ideas

ST: take each of the compound lifts (bench press, shoulder press, squat, deadlift, row, lat pull down), assign weight numbers for each (ST, lift) pair, then figure out your effective ST for each lift. Your ST is the minimum of all of those.

[ericthered]

A few notes:


Different GM's and indeed different campaign settings have different mappings to reality. Rather than saying "How do I like in strict rules-lawyer GURPS", ask "What would I look like if I appeared in THIS campaign".



Stat-normalization is related to the first point. Ask yourself if ST 10 is the average soldier's strength, the average 25 year old male's strength, or the average adult human's strength. That changes things a lot. Ask yourself what skill with a pistol the average policeman has, and what skill level your average physician has. These answers are what you should really be comparing your numbers to.



People often make a big deal about skill points representing time spent. This is extrapolated from a gamable concept, and you shouldn't pay too much attention to it when trying to model real life. Gurps makes skills narrower (and thus more expensive) the more useful they are for adventuring. 4 points in the history skill take a lot more time and effort to acquire than 4 points in guns (shotgun).

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Kuba

As for the use, it’s not for a game. Rather I was thinking about how to effectively measure and gamify self-improvement and what better way to do so then to use GURPS.

I have to say, I think this is not a good idea. GURPS is a game, and only simulates reality insofar as that's useful as a game. In particular, a bunch of the main stats (DX, IQ, HT, etc.) don't really represent one single thing consistently. Rather, they're collective mechanics that represent some combination of natural ability and training. If you're looking for some kind of real-world measurement of how you're improving, I'd suggest that using a real-world scale is going to be more productive.

[Tenex]

Originally Posted by ericthered

People often make a big deal about skill points representing time spent. This is extrapolated from a gamable concept, and you shouldn't pay too much attention to it when trying to model real life. Gurps makes skills narrower (and thus more expensive) the more useful they are for adventuring. 4 points in the history skill take a lot more time and effort to acquire than 4 points in guns (shotgun).

If I'm reading this right, you're saying that a mental skill requires more effort to learn than a physical skill?

[Tenex]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

I have to say, I think this is not a good idea. GURPS is a game, and only simulates reality insofar as that's useful as a game. In particular, a bunch of the main stats (DX, IQ, HT, etc.) don't really represent one single thing consistently. Rather, they're collective mechanics that represent some combination of natural ability and training. If you're looking for some kind of real-world measurement of how you're improving, I'd suggest that using a real-world scale is going to be more productive.

But in a generic sense it's not bad. Just don't expect exact results. Sitting down and saying in 10-20 years I want xyz set of skills and then coming up with a gameplan to achieve it is valuable. I think it falls apart in the specifics for the reasons you stated, but as a generic template of where you want to go in life it isn't bad. Just a gamefish spin on all the career-matching online tests that are around.