Seeking build advice: Modern conspiracy character creation

[DataPacRat]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Okay, that's a very different concept - and one that seems very incomplete. 'Bookworm' doesn't do anything to indicate how you access secured information.

Your 'netrunner' reference suggests you're thinking of computer intrusion. There are a number of rather different models for how that's done knocking around in GURPS, so the particular skills (and potentially Advantages, Techniques, and so on) you'd want for that may vary.

I've just spent a bit of time trying to sort out this character's priorities, so I'd have a better idea what to focus on in the charsheet; and halfway done, realized the pattern I'd come up with could be described in another way: how long it takes him to access any given piece of data. Which results in something like:

1. First priority: Stuff already in his memory. Mainly IQ and Skills, and direct bonuses to those.

2. Second: Things it takes a scant few seconds to grab: Mainly his personal library of ebooks, carefully sorted and search-indexed so it's about as easy to grab a text on 19th century goatherding as it is a paper published last week on a novel consequence of game theory. Also those parts of the web that are easily Google-searchable, that he can look up on his phone without interrupting a verbal conversation. In the original build, I tried to represent this with his Signature Gear of a personal library; but now I'm considering new approaches, such as IQ with a Preparation Required or Gadget.

3. Third, things that take a bit more effort to dig up: an hour-long study session, or a similar length of time trawling through the Deep and/or Dark Web. Here's where I've had things like the Book-Learned Wisdom and Oracle (Scholarly).

And 4, things that take serious effort to learn: Having to go out to a physical library (public or private), or personal details that require the Computer Hacking skill (or its non-cinematic equivalents) to access, or a Mythbusters-style experiment to test.

Does /that/ seem like a useful guide to building a full charsheet? And/or does it suggest any approaches that haven't been mentioned yet?