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Old 06-01-2021, 12:49 PM   #41
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Default Re: [DF] A Portal Fantasy within a Dungeon Fantasy: Where's Alice?

Most artwork I've seen of Alice seemed to have her in the 12 to 15 year old age group, by my estimate, with an older sister who is probably 16 to 20 herself (the sister never visits Wonderland, near as I can tell). Alice being a "spare" or even a "third" in a noble or other well-to-do family may let her pursue skills that wouldn't normally be typical, but this is DF-Land. Maybe spares and thirds are encouraged to be adventurers to help supplement the family fortune?
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Old 06-01-2021, 01:30 PM   #42
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Default Re: [DF] A Portal Fantasy within a Dungeon Fantasy: Where's Alice?

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Most artwork I've seen of Alice seemed to have her in the 12 to 15 year old age group, by my estimate, with an older sister who is probably 16 to 20 herself (the sister never visits Wonderland, near as I can tell). Alice being a "spare" or even a "third" in a noble or other well-to-do family may let her pursue skills that wouldn't normally be typical, but this is DF-Land. Maybe spares and thirds are encouraged to be adventurers to help supplement the family fortune?
She was canonically right around seven years old (from the Wikipedia entry, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland took place on May 4 - maybe the Vorpal Sword is a lightsaber? - and she stated her age as seven-and-a-half in Through the Looking Glass, which took place November 4, putting her birthday close to when the first book took place). ST 8 (and DX and IQ 13) is pretty ridiculous for a 7-year-old, however, so your range is probably more appropriate.
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Old 06-01-2021, 02:34 PM   #43
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Default Re: [DF] A Portal Fantasy within a Dungeon Fantasy: Where's Alice?

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She was canonically right around seven years old (from the Wikipedia entry, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland took place on May 4 - maybe the Vorpal Sword is a lightsaber? - and she stated her age as seven-and-a-half in Through the Looking Glass, which took place November 4, putting her birthday close to when the first book took place). ST 8 (and DX and IQ 13) is pretty ridiculous for a 7-year-old, however, so your range is probably more appropriate.
In the process of dungeon-fantasifiying young Alice, I took into account that besides the incredibly exceptional degree of luck she would need to survive Dungeonland she would also need to be fantastically capable for her age.

From GURPS Characters:

Quote:
Originally Posted by GURPS Characters, pg. 20
In many game worlds, especially those based on cartoons and fairytales, children are just small adults. By real-world standards, such children would be exceptional. However, even in a realistic campaign, those who wish to roleplay “heroic” children do not have to play less-capable characters – they can create their characters normally.
So I just ran with this logic. I also was generous with the guidelines for child stats.

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A 5-year-old has 60% of his adult ST, 70% of his adult DX and IQ, and SM -2. A 10-year-old has 80% of his adult ST, 90% of his adult DX and IQ, and SM -1.
She's about seven years old, so I rounded her to the higher age bracket. Even for her age she's often described as "clever", so IQ 13 is the minimum GURPS would attribute that description to. The only form of media with a depiction of a graceful Alice I can think of is from American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns. Well, that Alice is quite combat savvy, swinging the Vorpal Blade with such finesse and speed that might even make anime characters blush... I pin that adult Alice's DX at probably 15, so DX 13 is probably about right for young Alice. I don't mind drawing from multiple depictions of Alice for inspiration and not just from Lewis Carroll's original imagining of her.
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Old 06-01-2021, 03:42 PM   #44
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Default Re: [DF] A Portal Fantasy within a Dungeon Fantasy: Where's Alice?

For the Vorpal Blade, might I recommend making it a DF variant of a UT Superfine blade?
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Old 06-01-2021, 05:19 PM   #45
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Default Re: [DF] A Portal Fantasy within a Dungeon Fantasy: Where's Alice?

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In the process of dungeon-fantasifiying young Alice, I took into account that besides the incredibly exceptional degree of luck she would need to survive Dungeonland she would also need to be fantastically capable for her age.

She's about seven years old, so I rounded her to the higher age bracket. Even for her age she's often described as "clever", so IQ 13 is the minimum GURPS would attribute that description to. The only form of media with a depiction of a graceful Alice I can think of is from American McGee's Alice: Madness Returns. Well, that Alice is quite combat savvy, swinging the Vorpal Blade with such finesse and speed that might even make anime characters blush... I pin that adult Alice's DX at probably 15, so DX 13 is probably about right for young Alice. I don't mind drawing from multiple depictions of Alice for inspiration and not just from Lewis Carroll's original imagining of her.
This all makes sense to me, yeah. I'd be more inclined to go with around 60% for age 7 (if 5 is 50% and 10 is 80%, that's +6% per year if roughly linear). If you see adult DF Alice as ST 10 and DX 15, that implies ST 6 and DX 9 at age 7. As for IQ, I'd imagine Alice being "clever" is more likely "clever for her age;" if adult DF Alice would be IQ 13 ("clever"), that implies IQ 8 at age 7. You stats imply adult DF Alice would be around ST 13 (noticeably strong), DX 21 (otherworldly grace), and IQ 21 (some sort of super-genius). That said, you could easily say she's simply matured more quickly than most children her age, being closer in development to age 10 than age 7 (mother should have been more careful what enchantments she wore while pregnant)... or just make her age 10 to start with.
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Old 06-01-2021, 05:55 PM   #46
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Default Re: [DF] A Portal Fantasy within a Dungeon Fantasy: Where's Alice?

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(...) within a DF dungeon crawling setting it is quite plausible that the education system for youth involves teaching them adventuring relevant skills (...)
To strengthen the conception of your character: Your statement about "luck is necessary for her survival" would be more agreeable if your 7-year-old Alice had the skills and stats of a kid. But, most of her skills and stats are at the level of a Navy Seal.

It is not that she can't have such levels of skill or stats being a kid, the genre could allow it.

However, stretching her luck to 48 lucky breaks an in-game day (by taking the highest of possible multipliers) under the assumption she wouldn’t make it otherwise, does not make much sense; her skills and stats (akin to a Navy Seal’s) offset the argument, especially when the 62 CP players are expected to survive while she has 4 times the budget.

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Well, now that it appears we can cease the discussion of the use of the Game Time modifier on her Ridiculous Luck (it began with understanding it ought to be +0%... and has now ended back at that +0%. We've come full circle!) There's a great deal of ad infinitum amounts of variables involved in concerns of time usage. Should we be opening this can of worms? (...)
You could say so, but remember that using in-game time or managing time as a whole was not the problem with luck; the problem was the advantage did not have a clear in-game time value and that it was very discretional. The uncertain usage of the advantage called for a cosmic modifier.

After the changes you made, the advantage is clear.
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Old 06-02-2021, 12:37 AM   #47
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Default Re: [DF] A Portal Fantasy within a Dungeon Fantasy: Where's Alice?

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It is sad. At some point as a player you have to be willing to believe that the GM has your best interests in mind within the scope of running a fair game.
IMHO a lot of the GM vs players mentality can be laid at the feet of one module: Tomb of Horrors. Some people try to claim it is "thinking players" dungeon but those who have gone through the module as written regard it as a kill fest with many false trails.

It even inspired the ultimate GM vs players series: the Grimtooth Trap which effectively had Grimtooth's Dungeon of Doom as its capstone. As bad as Tomb of Horrors was it looked like a Sunday school picnic by comparison to Dungeon of Doom.

Today you could say it wasn't D&D but SCP and everyone was D class. ;-)
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Old 06-02-2021, 11:48 AM   #48
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Default Re: [DF] A Portal Fantasy within a Dungeon Fantasy: Where's Alice?

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This all makes sense to me, yeah. I'd be more inclined to go with around 60% for age 7 (if 5 is 50% and 10 is 80%, that's +0.6% per year if roughly linear). If you see adult DF Alice as ST 10 and DX 15, that implies ST 6 and DX 9 at age 7. As for IQ, I'd imagine Alice being "clever" is more likely "clever for her age;" if adult DF Alice would be IQ 13 ("clever"), that implies IQ 8 at age 7. You stats imply adult DF Alice would be around ST 13 (noticeably strong), DX 21 (otherworldly grace), and IQ 21 (some sort of super-genius). That said, you could easily say she's simply matured more quickly than most children her age, being closer in development to age 10 than age 7 (mother should have been more careful what enchantments she wore while pregnant)... or just make her age 10 to start with.
Oh, given the previous quote from Characters I gave I'm not so keen on sticking too closely to the guidelines for realistic stats. The point is that she have usable primary attributes for a DF campaign, which she has. She's some sort of prodigy child perhaps, but even if she ages her adult stats could possibly cap off at lower numbers than the suggestions provided in the book.

Maybe my math was off? I thought 13 would be roughly ~90% of 15. So adult Alice would have IQ 15 and DX 15... DX 15, sure, but conceptually I'd cap adult Alice's IQ at 13. Young Alice is just a exceptional little girl. She'd have to be to get through Dungeonland in one piece.
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Old 06-02-2021, 12:17 PM   #49
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Default Re: [DF] A Portal Fantasy within a Dungeon Fantasy: Where's Alice?

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To strengthen the conception of your character: Your statement about "luck is necessary for her survival" would be more agreeable if your 7-year-old Alice had the skills and stats of a kid. But, most of her skills and stats are at the level of a Navy Seal.

It is not that she can't have such levels of skill or stats being a kid, the genre could allow it.

However, stretching her luck to 48 lucky breaks an in-game day (by taking the highest of possible multipliers) under the assumption she wouldn’t make it otherwise, does not make much sense; her skills and stats (akin to a Navy Seal’s) offset the argument, especially when the 62 CP players are expected to survive while she has 4 times the budget.
The "Dungeonland arc" will be taking place at the tail end of the campaign, with the PCs having reached a point total of roughly ~225. Up until the point that she meets up with the PCs, she'll have been surviving by herself, possibly facing challenges scaled to a difficulty suited for a 4 to 5 member party of ~225 point PCs... if they're even scaled to "power level" at all, because some of these encounters ought to encourage the adventurers to flee, or be quite ingenuous in their tactics to compensate for a lack of strength. With some combination of Ridiculous Luck and "Serendipity X [0]" that I have turned on for the campaign (see my Designer's Notes for details. The PCs have it too, that's why they arrive in the nick of time for Alice's trial at the palace... no guarantee this will be of any help at all once the queen screams "Off with her head!"), it's a bit more believable that she could accomplish getting through the first half of the Dungeonland arc mostly unscathed.

If nothing else, the players won't have too much time to feel humiliated that a little girl is just that much better than them. Ideally she departs from the party of PCs sometime after this arc of the campaign, one way or another if she isn't returned to her father.

I see your concerns, Hide, but it seems as if you're exaggerating the magnitude of the issues (that are not really present as far as I'm concerned).
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Old 06-02-2021, 12:20 PM   #50
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Oh, given the previous quote from Characters I gave I'm not so keen on sticking too closely to the guidelines for realistic stats. The point is that she have usable primary attributes for a DF campaign, which she has. She's some sort of prodigy child perhaps, but even if she ages her adult stats could possibly cap off at lower numbers than the suggestions provided in the book.
Yeah, that also works, and is kind of what I was getting at with the idea of her having matured early.

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Maybe my math was off? I thought 13 would be roughly ~90% of 15. So adult Alice would have IQ 15 and DX 15... DX 15, sure, but conceptually I'd cap adult Alice's IQ at 13. Young Alice is just a exceptional little girl. She'd have to be to get through Dungeonland in one piece.
No, your math was fine for a 10-year-old, mine was for a 7-year-old. Also, I made an error, thinking all of ST, DX, and IQ were at 80% at age 10, rather than the latter two being at 90%. That would change things for my suggestions - if 13 is 65% (where age 7 would fall roughly fall), the adult score would be 20, which is still enormous. Semi-realistically, if adult Alice is meant to be ST 10, DX 15, and IQ 13, 7-year-old Alice would likely be ST 6, DX 10 (rounded up from 9.75), and IQ 8 (rounded down from 8.45). Your stats should be fine, particularly for purposes of DF, but that should give you an idea of just how exceptional your Alice is for her age. Not being familiar with the module, I'll simply take your word for it that such would be necessary to survive, even with her incredible luck.

Of course, if you wanted to have the stats you gave her scale up as I described when she gets older (provided the party is successful in saving her), that can certainly also work. She may well end up a fairly legendary adventurer or similar.
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