Guidelines for Points Total, etc. for my campaign

[scorpion]

Thanks! I'm going to take one of the character concepts, and whip them up at 200/50 and 250/50 and see what I think.

If I can accomplish what I want at 200/50, I'm thinking doing that with a Character Point award of 5-10/session.

I'm thinking that it might be:
3-5 Points for Character Play
5 Point bonus for mission completion

Only thing I'm concerned with is tapering that off. But I can do things like Patrons and other things to soak up the excess points.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

People will argue about disadvantage limits all day long. I worry less about the limit and more about what sorts of disadvantages are being taken.

This is a good point. There is a vast difference to me between "75 points in three disads" and "50 points in 10 disads", and I'd rather see the former on a sheet. When I sit down with Players to make Characters, I strongly try to deter them from nickel and dimeing theiur way to a large pile of Disad points, I try to steer them to a few larger point disads (10-15) rather than a whole bucket of 5 pointers.

Originally Posted by scorpion

Only thing I'm concerned with is tapering that off. But I can do things like Patrons and other things to soak up the excess points.

I like to do Patrons, Allies, etc as "mission" or Chapter end rewards. They still get their regular points for sessions, but big items like that (especially group Advantages) come all at once, and I rarely give them a point otal, just a "Okay, mark down you have a Patron'So-and-So' and ..."

On one hand it helps stem the "Players metagaming what they can get from their Patrons, Allies, etc" and because I'm not inflating their points with it (not that point totals really matter, but there is a bit of a difference between losing an important Patron of unknown value and an important Patron worth 100 points - Players complain a lot more about the later).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

T, I strongly try to deter them from nickel and dimeing theiur way to a large pile of Disad points, I try to steer them to a few larger point disads (10-15) rather than a whole bucket of 5 pointers.

r).

Ideally, my players choose Disads first, concentrating on the ones that define their personality. Then this sets their budget and they stick to it.

When they come to the end of the chargen process and want more stuff they start to pare down weaker choices in Ads and Skills rather than keeping weak choices and running back to the Disad pile to get more pts (over and over too).

[DeadParrot]

Start with 150pt chars. 1st mission as candidate members of Monster Hunters LLC. involves something simple. Assuming success, award 50pts. Now as freshly approved members, the next mission is more difficult. Award 25pts. Rinse and repeat. It shouldn't take too many missions until you find the happy point you are looking for. Once the happy point is found, really slow down the point awards and just have fun running the missions.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Ideally, my players choose Disads first, concentrating on the ones that define their personality. Then this sets their budget and they stick to it.

I have different Players who do different things. Some do Disads first, some right in the middle, some (like me) last.

I already know the budget (including how many Disad points are allowable) so I start by splitting the points effectively into two piles, one-half buys Attributes, the other half buys Advantages, then Disad points are used for Skills. Then I write down the Disads (which I pretty much knew from jump, I mean, I've been GURPSing for almost 40 years).

Sometimes (most times actually) the piles end up eating into each other a bit, like I might want slightly more Attributes than Ads, or Ads than Attributes, or some things might be limited in ways that mean I (can't actually spend half the point budget in that category.

Occasional I get an odd GM who'll give out "buckets of points" already split in ways they prefer or they'll say "no Disads" or whatever and I have to build differently.