A Question of Strength.

[PaladinV]

I'm afraid this is probably been gone over exhaustively but I'll ask and as soon as I understand I'll let the thread die.

I'm thinking about how to use the four basic attributes to model/stat normal people, like an athlete vs a mathlete and I'm looking at basic lift which states that it's the amount of weight you can lift with one hand in one second.

So I'm thinking dumbbell clean and press. So I personally can clean and press a 65lb dumbbell. The thing is I'm not that strong.

So I'm thinking, maybe setting up the way you do for a lift, walking to the dumbbell, setting your feet, gripping the dumbbell ect constitutes doubling the time. If that's the case I wouldn't need an 18 strength to clean and press 65lb, I could do it with a 12.

So I found a skill, Lifting. So, a person with a good bit of experience performing the dumbbell clean and jerk might do the 65lb lift with how much strength? Is that really what lifting means?

Also, has anyone worked out a comparison between the vertical jump test and ST or DX, like, how would you compare someone's stats in the NFL combine to GURPS skills and stats?

Is this idea even of interest to other people or am I just being a dweeb?

[Boge]

Other factors come into play, like Lifting ST, Arm ST, even Extra Effort. So even though Gurps does a decent job of emulating realism, you have to remember that it's still a game and many of those rules are in place for gameplay and balancing purposes rather than realism.

You're not going to emulate realism perfectly.

[PaladinV]

I'm not so much trying to emulate real life as working toward a conceptual process by which I can stat out quantities which exist in real life. So my game has a feel of continuity to me. Unfortunately my gaming life is spent a lot more time statting and world building than i do playing because I'm usually hard up with scheduling. Thanks for replying.

I found a neat related thread.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=61037&page=3

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by PaladinV

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Also, has anyone worked out a comparison between the vertical jump test and ST or DX, like, how would you compare someone's stats in the NFL combine to GURPS skills and stats?

Mess around with ST for a while if you want to but do not go into the Gurps Move rules. They do not model athletic data well at all.

For example, let's say we want to do a champion sprinter. That means we want a sub 10 second 100 meters. The first step is to convert 100 meters to 110 yards because Gurps uses yards.

Let's try a Ground move of 10. In his first second of movement the sprinter covers 10 yards. On the second one his sprint bonus kicks in and he's going at 12 yards per second. If he continues thusly he'll do 110 yards in 9.33 seconds.

Google says the current World's Record is Usain Bolt at 9.58 so you've broken his record by 0.15 seconds.

How about 200 meters? Just keep sprinting at 12 yards a second and you'll break 220 yards at 18.50. The World's Record is again Bolt at 19.19.

Yet if you run a 40 yard dash as seen in the NFL combine your Move 10 guy should be able to do it in 3.5 seconds. I'm not sure I've ever even heard of a sub-4 second 40. 4.2 is usually considered wicked fast.

You can keep going at different distances but I've never found one where Gurps Move model matched the Real World at all well.

Oh, and it gets even worse at distance running.

[Anthony]

GURPS move on the one second timescale is particularly terrible. Going from still to five yards forward, then back to still, in a 1 second timeframe, isn't even physically possible unless you jump or aren't in one gravity, it requires an average horizontal acceleration of 1.8 Gs. It works better if you change a turn to 2 seconds and sprint to x2 move.

[PaladinV]

Wow, I haven't gotten as far as to look at the move rules beyond figuring basic movement. That's crazy. I guess within the confines of the system they work okay, for chases and what not?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by PaladinV

Wow, I haven't gotten as far as to look at the move rules beyond figuring basic movement. That's crazy. I guess within the confines of the system they work okay, for chases and what not?

The movement rules are internally consistant. They will just sometimes produce odd results by Real World standards. They will produce those results consistantly and predictably once you know what to expext though.

A particularly odd result is related to running at full speed. An average Gurps character is Move 5 and has 10 FP but he will have to slow to half speed after he's lost more than 2/3rds his FP or on the 7th one gone in his case.

Moving at full speed requires a HT roll every 15 seconds and with HT 10 he'll fail half of those rolls on average. 3 minutes means 12 rolls and an average of 6 failures. so whatever "sprinting" means in Gurps it's something an average man can do for more than 3 minutes.

If that average man got his Move up to 6.25 and his FP up to 12 he could run a sub 4 minute mile.

[AlexanderHowl]

Sprinting is a bit odd in GURPS. Even a realistic character with DX 10 and HT 10 can purchase Basic Speed 7.00 and Basic Move 10 for only 55 CP. The individual is capable of sprinting at 12 yards per second, meaning that they can run a 100-meter in 9.2 seconds or run a mile in less than two and a half minutes.

[Black Leviathan]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

For example, let's say we want to do a champion sprinter. That means we want a sub 10 second 100 meters. The first step is to convert 100 meters to 110 yards because Gurps uses yards.
Let's try a Ground move of 10. In his first second of movement the sprinter covers 10 yards. On the second one his sprint bonus kicks in and he's going at 12 yards per second. If he continues thusly he'll do 110 yards in 9.33 seconds.
Google says the current World's Record is Usain Bolt at 9.58 so you've broken his record by 0.15 seconds.

How about 200 meters? Just keep sprinting at 12 yards a second and you'll break 220 yards at 18.50. The World's Record is again Bolt at 19.19.
Yet if you run a 40 yard dash as seen in the NFL combine your Move 10 guy should be able to do it in 3.5 seconds. I'm not sure I've ever even heard of a sub-4 second 40. 4.2 is usually considered wicked fast.
You can keep going at different distances but I've never found one where Gurps Move model matched the Real World at all well.

Oh, and it gets even worse at distance running.

The 40 Yard dash is probably the better measure of speed, at more than 10x your speed in yards you're probably looking more at the running skill than movement. Usain Bolt's speed is approximately a Move of 9 at a Sprint, because of his build and notable musculature he likely has one or two extra levels of Move, one of them could even be a whole additional level of Basic Speed to represent his ability to be fast off the line. So that would put his stats at DX/HT balance of about 14, or maybe 16.

[Flyndaran]

I thought one of Usain's "issues" was that he wasn't as fast off the block as other Olympic sprinters. I also remember reading that he doesn't have the optimal proportions for sprinting. So that a future perfectly optimized and trained but still natural human could noticeably beat his records.
Of course I don't know if such improvements would rise to a full or even half level of Move or not.