Resolved,There is no point to statting up anything that is not a PC

[Johnny Angel]

I support the idea of a 'nowing' tag as has been mentioned or something similar. The tag can be added to the thread title in [brackets] to indicate that a more crunchy and detailed answer is desired. Alternatively, [nowing] could be typed into a post to indicate that more details than what have been given are desired.

[Ragitsu]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

so if we can help someone pull their head out of their ass

Right? *grin*

Wrong. I think you've taken things way way WAY out of context and exaggerated the amount of folks who truly believe EVERYTHING needs a stat (yeah, it's not as widespread as you think and please, give their common sense some credit).

Also, "unnecessary" is subjective to begin with.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Ragitsu

Wrong. I think you've taken things way way WAY out of context and exaggerated the amount of folks who truly believe EVERYTHING needs a stat (yeah, it's not as widespread as you think and please, give their common sense some credit).

Also, "unnecessary" is subjective to begin with.

Most of us have been gaming for a while, I've personally been around this stuff for over 20 years, you cannot underestimate how many GMs we lose to the hobby due to their being overwhelmed by unnecessary minutiae and wasting time on overstatting instead of actually getting ready to run a game.

People tend to get caught up in overstatting and call off game sessions, campaigns, even call off the whole hobby, and we lose another GM/game because they feel themselves unprepared to run due to lack of statted "things".

So, in all seriousness, getting people to not overstat is one of the ways which we can keep our hobby alive and prospering.

Someone who spends hours upon hours statting up stuff is playing a game, but it's a lonely statting game, not the social roleplaying game which involves multiple people that most of us are playing.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

I don't have a problem with this sort of streamlined, shorthand statting, because you are re-using small numbers of simple traits that are already well established and worked out, so that anything not detailed can be expected to be at default value with little or no loss of accuracy. The same thing couldn't be said of more varied and capable adversaries like Anita Blake's monster parade or Lords of the Sith.

All of the big players in the larger arc of the same campaign had full character sheets.

these days, I'd be most likely to get major stats, key Ads and disads, possibly five or so major skills, and something that tells me a primary and secondary motivation for the NPC.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

I support the idea of a 'nowing' tag as has been mentioned or something similar. The tag can be added to the thread title in [brackets] to indicate that a more crunchy and detailed answer is desired. Alternatively, [nowing] could be typed into a post to indicate that more details than what have been given are desired.

For that matter, a "CRUNCHY!" tag could work as well. :-)

[Stone Dog]

To throw in my "vote..."

If a player doesn't have to pay for something in points for his character or if his character doesn't get points back for having something, I will not track points.

That doesn't mean it doesn't deserve to be given stats. It only means that I will right down whatever I think is accurate without care to how many points it costs.

[Johnny Angel]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

For that matter, a "CRUNCHY!" tag could work as well. :-)

I like that. The concept of [nowing] is something I support, but [crunchy] sounds better IMO; it also references a term which is already used in the rpg community.

[pyratejohn]

OTOH, when people come to these forums with specific "how do I stat this?" requests, I think we can assume that they're not looking for a list of "you don't need specific stats for that" replies.

In my own defense, my reading of the initial post led me to believe it was a more of a "what is your opinion about this statement" type of situation. My apologies if I have contributed to any confusion.

[SuedodeuS]

If making important NPCs or NPC templates, I generally get crunchy with it. This is simply to insure that I have internal consistency between what the enemies can do and what the players can do - I'm not going to have the zombie trying to break a pinned survivor's neck use different rules than a survivor attempting to do the same to a zombie! Of course, some behavioral stats are things I don't bother with. My zombies don't have any "animal behavior" traits other than Berserk - I simply note how they behave and will run them accordingly.

On the other hand, if creating a new trait that I have no intention of letting the players ever have access to in that campaign, I won't get quite so crunchy. I'll stick with normal rules up to the point that I'd prefer this trait work differently, then have it do so without any regard for modifiers, points, etc. For example, in my zombie game, some of the zombies have the Electrical Disadvantage. I don't like the fact that this normally only comes into play on a critical hit, so I've revamped it to take effect as a result of any electrical damage. Rather than determining what modifiers to use, or seeing if there might be another Disadvantage I can base it off of, I simply note how it works now and get on with it.

In all cases, I outright ignore points when making NPCs and NPC templates. Points only matter for PCs, after all. If a player ever takes an Ally or Enemy (or Patron, or Dependent), of course, I'll actually pay attention to the point total.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

I don't have a problem with this sort of streamlined, shorthand statting, because you are re-using small numbers of simple traits that are already well established and worked out, so that anything not detailed can be expected to be at default value with little or no loss of accuracy. The same thing couldn't be said of more varied and capable adversaries like Anita Blake's monster parade or Lords of the Sith.

It's true, Darth Vader needs more than "Lightsaber-18, Force Choke-20, Bad Temper (12)". A more complete list of advantages, disadvantages, and skills are necessary for a fleshed-out NPC. But I think the important distinction is that, if he's not someone where relative point value matters (i.e, an Ally, Patron, Dependent, or Enemy), then the actually point value of his traits don't matter. For example, for Vader's Force Choke, I'm just going to write down that it's an opposed roll of Vader's Force Choke skill vs. the target's HT, and every turn the target loses, they suffer Suffocation. I don't need to sit down and work out how to do that with Innate Attack or Affliction or whatever, because I'm playing a game where Vader's points don't matter, and no PC will be buying the ability.

Trying to use the character creation rules to fully stat out NPCs is a trap that newbie GMs fall into a lot in GURPS - lord knows I certainly did! So I think, in circumstances like the original thread, where we've got a relatively unknown poster coming in and asking how to build something with points, the standard advice is absolutely useful to trot out, to save another person the enormous headache of trying to build everything by the book.

Now, admittedly, the advice can be given out a little too liberally at times - if a long term poster comes in asking for a precise build, we should probably assume they already know to minimize their workload, and are asking for a good reason.
But if we can save a new GM's sanity, I say go for it! :-)