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Old 11-22-2021, 08:42 PM   #25
Infornific
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Default Re: Professional skill seem cheap

Quote:
Originally Posted by Steev View Post
My general principle in games is to have character generation take no more than a few minutes and involve as little stress as possible for the player.

So I would, in this military style game, like the players to essentially pick a soldier, a specialty and a couple of customisations and be ready to play.

Hence my desire to employ templates etc.

Am I unusually in wanting this? If character generation takes ages and involves a lot of my time I essentially cannot kill PCs off in the game as everything would grind to a halt as I helped them generate a new character.

Do others not find this? Bear in mine my group do not know the gurps system so I would need to help them.
You might take a look at Action 4: Specialists. It has a number of 25 point lenses covering basic infantry as well as various military specialties. So for a 150 point campaign:

100 point base for Attributes, Advantages and incidental skills.

One 25 point lens covering military training everyone has.

One 25 point lens covering a specialty - paramedic, helicopter pilot, sharpshooter etc.

Delvers to Grow has interesting ideas but is for TL 3 fantasy and would take some effort to convert the concepts. One concept to simplify character creation would be the idea of -25 point modules of Disadvantages with a theme, so a character might take Mercenary with a Checkered Past, each including -25 in Disadvantages.

Wild cards are another way to keep things simple but you'd need to work out a few distinctive ones for a military campaign. The Power Ups: Wildcard Skill supplement might be useful if you want to go that route. For TL 8 Wildcard skills, you might also look at the "Pointless Monster Hunting" article in Pyramid 3/83. Different genre but some appropriate modern skills.

Hope some of this is useful.
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