Modifiers for campaign relevance

[downer]

Another thread just reminded me that there is, as far as I can tell, no easy way to grade advantages and disadvantages by relevance to a given campaign. The problem is basically this:
What (except GM fiat) is to keep a player from picking a disadvantage that is possible, but from a campaign standpoint mostly or completely irrelevant? Say, a character has Thalassophobia. Sure, the world has oceans, but the player knows that the campaign is set in the middle of a major continent and centers around a landlocked kingdom. He knows that the GM has pages and pages of background on that kingdom, and won't let the characters leave it, unless they have a real good reason. So, Thalassophobia is essentially free points and does little to provide characterization.
By contrast, what to do if a player comes up with a nice background story, which includes a Social Regard, or some such. But that advantage is for a far away land. Technically, it still costs points, but won't help him much.

How do you deal with that? I can see some options:
1. Simply reduce the point cost of everything you consider irrelevant to 0. No bonus points for your Thalassophobia, no cost for your Social Regard. That seems a bit harsh and arbitrary, and leaves a large middle ground open.
2. Forbid all such things. Require that the players make characters who are tailor made to the setting, have a local history and local habits. Like 1., a little harsh and also leaves out the middle ground.
3. Add a percentage modifier. If so, how high should it be?
4. Use the Frequency of Appearance guidelines (maybe actually roll).

[Mailanka]

I usually write up a list of pertinent advantages and disadvantages, based not just on setting assumptions, but campaign assumptions too. You can find examples of this in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and GURPS Action. You're generally not supposed to take disadvantages off that list ("If it's not a disadvantage, it's not worth points.")

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by downer

By contrast, what to do if a player comes up with a nice background story, which includes a Social Regard, or some such. But that advantage is for a far away land. Technically, it still costs points, but won't help him much.

If I were GM i would modify it much like reputation...the size of the group who will recognize the Regard and the Chance that they will Recognize you as such...

So Prince of Wales....everybody, all the time full cost.

Prince of Anddora....Europeans, 12- all others 6-....cost much less...

YMMV.

[Genesis]

Originally Posted by downer

Another thread just reminded me that there is, as far as I can tell, no easy way to grade advantages and disadvantages by relevance to a given campaign. The problem is basically this:
What (except GM fiat) is to keep a player from picking a disadvantage that is possible, but from a campaign standpoint mostly or completely irrelevant? Say, a character has Thalassophobia. Sure, the world has oceans, but the player knows that the campaign is set in the middle of a major continent and centers around a landlocked kingdom. He knows that the GM has pages and pages of background on that kingdom, and won't let the characters leave it, unless they have a real good reason. So, Thalassophobia is essentially free points and does little to provide characterization.
By contrast, what to do if a player comes up with a nice background story, which includes a Social Regard, or some such. But that advantage is for a far away land. Technically, it still costs points, but won't help him much.

As a GM, it's my job to make sure that the players in my games "get their points worth" - both positive and negative. If I feel that I'm unable to do this, I'm not above outlawing certain things. If I had planned an adventure in the wilderness, and a player takes a bunch of points in Contacts which are likely to be worthless out in the middle of no-where I'll tell him not to take those points, or I'll alter the adventure to make them helpful. Likewise, if a disadvantage isn't disadvantageous, it's not worth any points.

In the case of the thalassophobia/land-locked campaign example, that seems like a blatant point crock from a player who knew the GM's plans ahead of time. I'd have no trouble disallowing the phobia (or reducing it to quirk level). If I felt the player was being particularly naughty, I'd let him take the disadvantage and then immediately rule that carriage travel over rolling fields of wheat provoked the same psychological response. Serves him right for trying to game me! GURPS, more than most RPG systems, has to be a collaboration between the players and the GM.

Now, to be fair and as un-restrictive as possible, if I'd ruled that thalassophobia was only worth [-1] in the middle of the landlocked country, I might give that player some bonus points if the campaign eventually did end up by the sea. I don't usually give points to disadvantages acquired during play, but in this case the disadvantage wasn't acquired during play - it simply became relevant during play. I'd give the player a boost for that, sure. Likewise, I often allow players to buy things during play as if they were still in character creation, for things that wouldn't have been relevant before. For example, the player who wanted a bevy of contacts for what would have been a wilderness adventure: If, having not purchased them at character creation (on my adviso that the game would be mostly played in the wilderness), the player wanted them upon return to civilization after the planned adventure ended, I'd let him spend unused/earned CP to buy Contacts that "he always had."

Essentially, this boils down to "GM Fiat," it's true. I think in a certain sense these things likely always have to be house-ruled for specific circumstances, if they come up at all, because the interactions get very complex. More complex, even, than appearance numbers can model.

Originally Posted by Witchking

If I were GM i would modify it much like reputation...the size of the group who will recognize the Regard and the Chance that they will Recognize you as such...

So Prince of Wales....everybody, all the time full cost.

Prince of Anddora....Europeans, 12- all others 6-....cost much less...

YMMV.

Yeah, this is a good example... No one will recognize the Prince of Andorra on sight, so a reputation is probably inappropriate. But if he introduced himself as a European prince he'd probably get the benefits of the social regard most places in Europe. I'd even go so far as to say that he'd get the social regard more often than at 6- elsewhere, but that's a matter for tweaking. So appearance modifiers are a potentially good way to do this, but they're still pretty general - they don't distinguish between Adventure 1, where the advantage is next-to-useless, and Adventure 2, where the same advantage is powerful. If the first adventure is on the insect hive-colony world Xykk'lik the Prince of Andorra's social regard will be worth about nothing. If, at the end of the adventure, the stranded space travellers manage to make it back home (and the players want to keep playing with the same characters...) now the Prince gets real benefit.

It seems a little unfair to me to force players to pay for things that won't matter during the planned adventure. If the campaign eventually exceeds the scope of that first adventure (which doesn't always happen!)... well it's a pickle.

Genesis

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by downer

Another thread just reminded me that there is, as far as I can tell, no easy way to grade advantages and disadvantages by relevance to a given campaign. The problem is basically this:
What (except GM fiat) is to keep a player from picking a disadvantage that is possible, but from a campaign standpoint mostly or completely irrelevant? Say, a character has Thalassophobia. Sure, the world has oceans, but the player knows that the campaign is set in the middle of a major continent and centers around a landlocked kingdom. He knows that the GM has pages and pages of background on that kingdom, and won't let the characters leave it, unless they have a real good reason. So, Thalassophobia is essentially free points and does little to provide characterization.

Stuff like this is one of the reasons that GM vetting of character design is important. There's also the issue of a player's code of honor: if you know already what the answer is, don't waste the GM's time with a build involving the bogus concept. If you're not sure, then ask first.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by downer

How do you deal with that? I can see some options:
1. Simply reduce the point cost of everything you consider irrelevant to 0. No bonus points for your Thalassophobia, no cost for your Social Regard. That seems a bit harsh and arbitrary, and leaves a large middle ground open.
2. Forbid all such things. Require that the players make characters who are tailor made to the setting, have a local history and local habits. Like 1., a little harsh and also leaves out the middle ground.
3. Add a percentage modifier. If so, how high should it be?
4. Use the Frequency of Appearance guidelines (maybe actually roll).

I use a mix of Option 1 and Option 2. A disadvantage that does not disadvantage you is a quirk (if you're under the campaign's quirk limit; if any) or gives no points back. A disadvantage that will never come up in the campaign does not disadvantage the character and so is either a feature or a quirk (at most).

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by downer

Another thread just reminded me that there is, as far as I can tell, no easy way to grade advantages and disadvantages by relevance to a given campaign. The problem is basically this:
What (except GM fiat) is to keep a player from picking a disadvantage that is possible, but from a campaign standpoint mostly or completely irrelevant?

It's the GM's job to review the character sheet and forbid traits that are not possible in the campaign setting, or that are contrary to the campaign premise. Why should it be otherwise?

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by downer

By contrast, what to do if a player comes up with a nice background story, which includes a Social Regard, or some such. But that advantage is for a far away land. Technically, it still costs points, but won't help him much.

There will be detailed examination of this point in GURPS Social Engineering, and a couple of different game mechanical approaches.

Bill Stoddard

[downer]

Originally Posted by whswhs

There will be detailed examination of this point in GURPS Social Engineering, and a couple of different game mechanical approaches.

Bill Stoddard

Glad to hear that, social stuff tends to be the most complicated, like the example with the Prince of Andorra above.

As for your other input: that's pretty much what I expected, and how I handle it so far. It only seems a little all-or-nothing at times. Sometimes a trait may convey more tangential benefits or hindrances than the book accounts for. Take the Thalassophobia for example. Earth is 70% ocean, so the sea is a reasonably common trigger for a phobia. If a planet is only 40% ocean, should it still be worth full points? I can't totally rule it out or call it a quirk. There is, after all, a genuine chance for the ocean to be encountered. Only not quite as big a chance as on Earth. Works for a number of things, I believe: something is rarer in a campaign than RAW expects, but not all absent. Some traits allow me to fiddle with that freely, like Dependency or Dread - I simply put the item in a different category. A more universal approach to that might have been helpful.

[Jacob Marley]

Take the Thalassophobia for example. Earth is 70% ocean, so the sea is a reasonably common trigger for a phobia. If a planet is only 40% ocean, should it still be worth full points? I can't totally rule it out or call it a quirk. There is, after all, a genuine chance for the ocean to be encountered. Only not quite as big a chance as on Earth.

Depends, I'd expect a world that is 40% ocean to be much more arid than Earth, so likely a very large percentage would be desert inhabited by only a handful of Nomads, and 90+ percent of the population might live quite close to the shore, so the thalassophobia is worth full points (or more)

Back to your landlocked kingdom example, another approach is to assume that most characters are locals who have never seen the ocean, so could not reasonably take thalassophobia, where as one character is an ex sailor who acquired the phobia after his ship foundered in a severe storm (or sea serpent attack), so he headed as far inland as he could, which is counted as an unusual background, for which the player must pay points.

Also, if the kingdom has some large lakes that come into play, the phobia might be triggered to a lesser degree on or around those lakes.