Disads: the Second Best CP Deal in GURPS

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by martinl

Almost everyone buys disads up to the limit.

Or at least, close to it. Another contributing factor is that it's easy to start out meaning to have less disadvantages, and then feel tempted to take more so as to fit something into the character.

For me, designing a character's personality involves some dialogue with the disadvantage system, trying to describe the character without crippling them in play. I try to take "disadvantages I can live with" which doesn't merely mean ones that won't come up often, although I do try to avoid ones that will come up all the time. That's spotlight stealing and annoying for other players. It also includes an element of "No, I can't/won't do that, but why would I want to?/I'm happy enough about that."

For the character I most recently started playing, I can remember some of the thinking. He's a boatman in an urban fantasy noir version of 1930s New York, and the campaign started with a heist, which he ended up planning, being the only character with any leadership training, from a period in the Navy. He has:

• Greed (12 or less) [-15]. This is why he gets involved with crime.
• Social Stigma (Criminal Record) [-5] . . . with unfortunate results. He's not a face-man, he does transport and organisation.
• Sense of Duty (Partners in crime) (Small Group) [-5] to give him some motive to stick with the party, and behave reasonably towards them.
• Code of Honor (Pirate's) [-5] Likewise, but don't expect it to extend too far. That got his personality straight, but I needed some more points:
• Addiction (Pipe-smoker) (Cheap) (Highly addictive; Legal) [-5] Very thirties, fairly acceptable in the society, but a problem if we get cut off from it, by being dumped into the land of the Fae, or something like that.
• Skinny [-5] Characterisation, a problem if we get into fist-fights, but we do have a specialist for that.
• Hidebound [-5] Doesn't like totally new ideas, and doesn't come up with them. A small-c conservative, in a trade that doesn't change much. The plans he makes are simple, but that's a good idea when PCs are executing them.
• Hard of Hearing [-10] Too much time around big guns in the Navy, and didn't like wearing hearing protection.