Player Paranoia and Character Surprise: How to GM

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by quarkstomper

So, the Black Panther had to make the standard 8 or less default roll for "Everyman" skills, and blew it.

Relying on defaults -- whatever the game system calls them -- is rarely fun. In GURPS, I hint that certain skills are necessary for adventurers, true action heroes or not, to keep the story flowing without annoying breaks caused by PCs being incompetent at tasks that adventure fiction commonly treats as "everyman" skills:

• Carousing, Diplomacy, Fast-Talk, or Interrogation -- Eventually, everybody wants to interrogate NPCs. I'm generous about what skills work, but some skill is required.
  
  
• Climbing, Hiking, and Stealth -- The party is only as good at these things as its worst party member, and nearly every party has to move around as a unit at some point.
  
  
• Driving or Riding -- Travel is vital to adventure, and while "every hero can drive/ride a horse" is often assumed, it isn't automatic in games that have skills for these things.
  
  
• First Aid -- Effective bandaging isn't an unskilled activity, AD&D notwithstanding. Non-action heroes often want to do this to "contribute" to party combat effectiveness, so they especially need this skill.
  
  
• Gesture -- Sooner or later, communication without making a sound will be vital to almost any party's survival.
  
  
• Observation, Scrounging, or Search -- Noticing interesting things takes training, and finding clues and useful items is so central to adventures that no PC should lack at least basic training here.
  
  
• Savoir-Faire or Streetwise -- Everybody came from somewhere. It's passing annoying when a player just assumes that her PC would "get on with folks in her element" without having any practical social skills to back up the assumption.

I further suggest -- strongly -- that action heroes have this list as well:

• Axe/Mace, Broadsword, Knife, Shortsword, or Staff -- Wielding a stick, knife, or heavy tool to any real effect requires practice. These common improvised weapons are not idiot-proof, trivial, or safe to use without training.
  
  
• Beam Weapons, Bow, Crossbow, or Guns -- However easy "point and shoot" looks, it's quite tough in reality. No credible action hero lacks competency at all ranged combat.
  
  
• Boxing, Brawling, or Karate -- Fisticuffs are the worst place to be untrained. Your fists are the only weapons you always have, so learn to use them.
  
  
• Forced Entry -- No, it isn't easy to kick in a door. Actually, unless you know how, you'll hurt yourself.
  
  
• Holdout -- "Concealable" equipment only works if you have skill at concealment, and frustratingly few players realize this.
  
  
• Judo, Sumo Wrestling, or Wrestling -- The number of people who think they should be able to grab others automatically is astounding. In fact, this is a difficult feat, trickier than hitting people, and absolutely requires training.
  
  
• Throwing -- Whether you're tossing spare magazines to friends or grenades at enemies, this is a trained skill, so it pays to know it.

I think that players would be far less unhappy about surprises if more GMs made lists like this and did everything possible to get players to take them seriously. A PC with Brawling, Fast-Talk, Forced Entry, Holdout, Knife, Scrounging, Stealth, and Wrestling should be able to make and conceal a shiv, overpower a guard, steal his clothes, sneak away from the scene, talk his way past the other guards, and leave through an inadequately bolted back door.

[Kyle Aaron]

This is one of the rare cases where I agree with Kromm's approach to things, more or less. If you want to be the all-round hero - spend the points on it! And the GM, for their part, should cut some slack. "But I would have -" "Would you? Okay, make an IQ roll."

There's also a degree of trust involved. I've sometimes found that players new to my GMing take a while to settle in, and realise that I'm there to present an interesting game world - I'm not there to screw them up for giggles. I'm not an adversary, I'm just a guy who has a whole heap of NPCs to play. That's a GM - a player who has many characters instead of one, and who makes judgments about rules. There is no malice at my game table. Once they realise that, most settle down and relax.

But it's true there are different player responses to character failure, loss, imprisonment, maiming and so on. Just the other day I was saying to a gamer buddy, "I have these two players... for one, a failed dice roll is just a failure, and something to swear at. For the other, a failure is something to laugh at, or something which is going to make the game more interesting." And then last night at the first session of a new campaign, they confirmed this view for me. One was creating a character, and gave him "bad knee" and "law-abiding" as traits. The other player said, "why do always create flawed characters?" The player looked puzzled and surprised, and said, "Because they're fun, of course. Being flawless is boring!" Guess which of the two players consistently has more fun... ;)

[dscheidt]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Relying on defaults -- whatever the game system calls them -- is rarely fun.

It is, however, often funny! I once played a bookworm socialite, whose only combat skill was fencing. As this was pre-WWI London, it was a less than useful skill. The rest of the party got themselves captured while I was looking for a contact at a party. I went to rescue them, armed with evening dress and an (unloaded!) revolver. The butler didn't notice the gun was unloaded, but the first goon I ran into did. That was the end of that.

Originally Posted by Kromm

I think that players would be far less unhappy about surprises if more GMs made lists like this and did everything possible to get players to take them seriously. A PC with Brawling, Fast-Talk, Forced Entry, Holdout, Knife, Scrounging, Stealth, and Wrestling should be able to make and conceal a shiv, overpower a guard, steal his clothes, sneak away from the scene, talk his way past the other guards, and leave through an inadequately bolted back door.

I have a list for most the campaigns I've run. It overlaps quite a lot with yours, though I don't have quite so many categories of combat skills as you do. I have Computer Operations at TL7+ and Area Knowledge, and Research in most settings. I'll also point out things like swimming.

This is one of the places I miss half point skills. There are lots of places where IQ-1 or -2 is enough.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by dscheidt

It is, however, often funny!

If you can laugh at your failures, then it's likely that you've already made it past the point where you see your GM as an adversary and insist on being on top of every situation. At that stage, you don't need a big list of skills or a powerful PC. You can revel in mediocrity. Note that I love to play fallible PCs who get captured, in over their head, etc. :) However, lots of players -- especially those coming from computer games and war games -- do not. :(

Originally Posted by dscheidt

I don't have quite so many categories of combat skills as you do.

My list is complete so that nobody will complain, "But ANYBODY could hit an enemy with a stick!", or, "What do you MEAN, my attempt to grab him fails?" Things like "Why is it so hard to hit somebody on the head with a stick?" are practically FAQs . . . the answer being, "Well, the game assumes that you do so swiftly and return to a guard position, second after second." Few players seem to have the patience to take an Evaluate maneuver for three seconds to get +3, or the will to take the risk of an All-Out Attack for another +4. I see nearly all real-world combat as having this +7, with blows thrown more like every four seconds with little thought to defense than every second with much thought to defense. If your players also see things this way, you can omit melee skills in many cases.

Originally Posted by dscheidt

I have Computer Operations at TL7+ and Area Knowledge, and Research in most settings. I'll also point out things like swimming.

Computer Operation would go on the list at TL8+, but I think that Research is a more specialized skill for the group "brain." Area Knowledge is nice in theory, but so few campaigns start out, stay, and/or end up in a given PC's stompin' grounds that, in practice, it isn't very useful. I'd hate to make every PC take Area Knowledge (Montréal) and then send them off to Cabul on their first adventure. Swimming was a deliberate omission -- I don't think it comes up often enough to matter, and usually, there's a boat.

[RevBob]

Originally Posted by Kromm

In GURPS, I hint that certain skills are necessary for adventurers, true action heroes or not, to keep the story flowing without annoying breaks caused by PCs being incompetent at tasks that adventure fiction commonly treats as "everyman" skills:

[list snipped]

I further suggest -- strongly -- that action heroes have this list as well:

[second list snipped]

A PC with Brawling, Fast-Talk, Forced Entry, Holdout, Knife, Scrounging, Stealth, and Wrestling should be able to make and conceal a shiv, overpower a guard, steal his clothes, sneak away from the scene, talk his way past the other guards, and leave through an inadequately bolted back door.

Kromm, you just made my night. This is exactly the sort of cheat sheet I've been looking for!

[Blood Legend]

Originally Posted by RevBob

Kromm, you just made my night. This is exactly the sort of cheat sheet I've been looking for!

Seconded. This will save me a lot of time.

Do you have recommendations for a good old fantasy game or Space opera?

[JoelSammallahti]

It's a cool list, but I disagree about the unarmed combat skills. With most skills, 1 point buys you +4 to your skill. With action hero PCs, that' usually a jump from a default 6-8 to a semi-respectable 10-12. That's a good investment; you'll certainly do better if you spend one point each on Diplomacy, First Aid, Stealth, and Streetwise, than if you just increase your main skill by one level.

But with hitting and grabbing, you get that 1-point level for free, since you can use DX at no penalty. And I'm not convinced it's a better idea to spend 4 points on Wrestling to get that +1 than to spend the points on whatever skill you're focusing on and get an equal +1.

[Kyle Aaron]

I think perhaps Kromm's assuming 200+CP characters, which he's previously stated is about minimum to be "action heroes". With 200 CP to spend, you're not going to be needing to save 1 or 2 here or there. There are 16 skills as a minimum in Kromm's list. 4CP in each would be 64CP in all, giving an average of Attribute+1, or a "professional minimum" level of 11 in each, even with entirely average attributes - and I'm sure Kromm would argue that "action heroes" should not have average attributes ;)

I go for lower-powered campaigns, myself... 30-75CP.

[JoelSammallahti]

Originally Posted by Jim Bob

With 200 CP to spend, you're not going to be needing to save 1 or 2 here or there. There are 16 skills as a minimum in Kromm's list. 4CP in each would be 64CP in all,

Thought experiment:

For 16 points, you get all those skills at the 1-point level. Compared to your suggestion, that saves you 48 points. Assuming you have two primary skills* from outside the list, each at 12+ points, you can drop those down two levels as well. That saves you another 16 points, for 64 points total.

Now, for 60 points, you could get +2 to DX, IQ, and HT, buying down Will, Per, and Basic Speed. All the skills you bought stay at the same level** and almost all of your defaults go up by two. Plus you just saved 4 points. A better deal, yes?

In GURPS, it's simply not reasonable to spend more than one point on nonessential skills. You should put the minimum investment in each of your backup and emergency skills, and spend the savings on attributes. This has been the case for twenty years, though the exact numbers have changed. check it out


*Obviously, most characters have 3+ primary skills, which makes it even more profitable to redirect points from backup skills to attributes.
**Unless you took Observation or Scrounging - but remember those 4 points you saved?

[The Colonel]

How about if the 'you're at the corner shop hung over' is an excuse for some red herring or positive outcome RP based stuff - say helping an NPC who's locked herself out of her car.
She may be a one episode extra, or she may be the spouse, girlfriend, daughter or indeed the persona of a significant NPC...
If every 'interrupt time' encounter features the Glasgow Triads leaping out from behind a post box your players are probably right to be paranoid.