Character help? Experiment gone wrong? (Human Bard)
 

Okay....

If I'm going to try and run some DF game sessions then I should try to make some DF-style characters with my GCA - right? (Made sense to me)

So as an experiment I took Jag Fairchild the 247 Bard from the Delvers pack in the GM package and I tried to recreate him the GCA.

Something went wrong - instead of a 247 point character I got a 325 point, unspent points of -78 character.

Trying to figure out what I did wrong.

Also, shouldn't characters with spells have to grab Magery as an advantage? I didn't see that in his description.
Heck, I didn't see his age, height, or weight on that page in the Delvers book - and the GURPS Character Assistant usually always wants those spaces filled.

- Ed C.

Re: Character help? Experiment gone wrong? (Human Bard)
 

Dungeon Fantasy characters are so straightforward that you might have better luck with the old fashioned way, if GCA is challenging for you to use.
Well you are exactly 78 points over. I am guessing that some of that is GCA adding stuff that GURPS Magic has as spell prerequisites, but Dungeon Fantasy doesn't (Magery 3 would account for 35 of those points).

I guess if you want to email me the file, I can look at for you.

The other thing is since GCA does trading points for money incorrectly, he should be be a 250 point GCA character (unless you trick GCA into doing it correctly).
He is a bard, with Bardic Talent 3. See Bardic Talent, Adventurers p. 17.
Actually it doesn't care if you leave those fields blank.

However, if you want to fill them in, see Cosmetic Details, Adventurers p. 8.

Re: Character help? Experiment gone wrong? (Human Bard)
 

I think those details are intentionally left for the player to determine.

Re: Character help? Experiment gone wrong? (Human Bard)
 

'Challenging'? - Oh my goodness No.

I am or was Very comfortable with GCA from 2009 to 2013 when I was running my GURPS adaptation of Star Trek. The GCA was being used almost weekly to update both player characters and NPCs. The mildly ironic thing was that the Prime Directive updates data set to the GCA happened after I was running that campaign.

My copy of the GCA also was used pretty much weekly 2004 to 2008 when I was running GURPS Traveler campaign.

- Ed C.

Re: Character help? Experiment gone wrong? (Human Bard)
 

Since you're talking about Jag Fairchild, I'm assuming that by "DF" you mean the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game and not GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. At this time, GCA does not support the DFRPG, so it is very likely not the best tool for the job.

Characters with spells need one of Bardic Talent, Magery, Power Investiture, or Power Investiture (Druidic). Jag is a bard, so he has Bardic Talent.

Those things are considered cosmetic; see Cosmetic Details, Adventurers, p. 8. The only such detail I chose for the sample NPCs was sex, as it's annoying to avoid gendered pronouns in approachable writing.

—

My general advice is: "Don't think of the DFPRG as GURPS, but as its own game." The more GURPS assumptions (and software) you pull in, the more confusion you'll create for yourself.

Re: Character help? Experiment gone wrong? (Human Bard)
 

It doesn't not support it either, you just need to be willing to edit your own data files other just individually input or edit a lot of things (and the points for money thing, but that has always been wrong). Which is probably more work than the old fashioned way, but it isn't impossible.

I guess GCS does have better support, thanks to Pseudonym, so you could use that instead. I hesitate to recommend it, because I don't use it, and SJGames doesn't get any money from it.

Re: Character help? Experiment gone wrong? (Human Bard)
 

Officially, we won't say it supports anything until data files are being distributed for that thing. Unofficially, it doesn't prevent you from creating your own data files . . . but that isn't something we expect the average user to do, and it definitely isn't something we expect DFRPG customers to get into.

Re: Character help? Experiment gone wrong? (Human Bard)
 

To emphasize this point, both Dungeon Fantasy, and Dungeon Fantasy RPG, use different magic prerequisites from standard GURPS Magic, as well as Magery being replaced by various Power Investitures for Bards, Clerics, etc. makes GCA less than ideal at this time.

Re: Character help? Experiment gone wrong? (Human Bard)
 

Making a new gdf for the game would be the most complete solution. Manually entering individual traits, or editing the traits directly into compliance will also work though. If these aren't challenging to you, then you shouldn't have a problem, (except for the fact that you would be doing much more work that you would be just writing or typing the characters out the old fashioned way, although making a new gdf means you only have to do this once).

Re: Character help? Experiment gone wrong? (Human Bard)
 

Well you could manually enter each trait, or edit existing traits to fit for each character,you don't actually need datafiles for anything other than the Basic Set, but this is a lot of work for very little benefit.

Incidentally, and I don't want to sound like an armchair publisher, but maybe in the future advance copies can be sent to people who will make the datafiles?