What's my counterpoint for this observation about advantages/disadvantages?

[Lord Dynel]

I'll start off by saying that if this has been addressed in the past, please accept my apologies. I've looked for similar topics but came up empty handed.

First, a little bit of context: I was running a character creation session not too long ago for a 150/-50 modern game. I had this (paraphrased, but pretty accurate) exchange with a player.

Player: So, are the wealth advantages available?

Me: Yes, but you only have 10 points left, so you can take "Comfortable." Or you can take disadvantages.

A couple of minutes go by - the player is looking thoughtful and flipping pages)

Player: So, at this point, the only way I can be "Filthy Rich" is to be a jealous paraplegic?

Me: Well, that's not the only way. You can dial back some of your points to fit "Filthy Rich" into your build.

Player: My point is that just because I'm filthy rich, I can't be as capable as the random guy down the street, or the other PCs, or I have to have things wrong with me?

Me: ...

I didn't know how to address this. The player understood the rules and was okay continuing character creation, but he stresses that he has a valid point. In a way, I think he does, too.

My only counterpoint was that wealth is a sort-of "power" and that to have a more believable or rational use of that power (like his vision of being rich, charming, educated, etc.) would necessitate a higher point-level game. We are playing nosy reporters and overworked civil servants, not playboys and power mongers. Of course, I didn't say it so succinctly to the player weeks ago. I said that in the confines of the point level that we're using, that type of character isn't possible.

What do you all think?

[Emerald Cat]

I think your friend's unrealistic result was due to trying to minimize the number of disadvantages on their character sheet.

You can get -50 points by taking Bully* [-10], Greed* [-15], Low Pain Threshold [-10], Pacifism (Reluctant Killer) [-5], Selfish* [-5], and Stubbornness [-5]. In my opinion, a Filthy Rich person possessing all of these disadvantages would be quite plausible.

For your game about nosy reporters, Trickster* [-15] may be a good replacement for Bully and Stubbornness. This will make it easier for the rest of the party to get along with the character. Trickster would also explain why this Filthy Rich individual is investigating dangerous criminals with his nosy reporter friends.

[Lord Dynel]

Originally Posted by Emerald Cat

I think your friend's unrealistic results was due to trying to minimize the number of disadvantages on their character sheet.

You can get -50 points by taking Bully* [-10], Greed* [-15], Low Pain Threshold [-10], and Pacifism (Reluctant Killer) [-5], Selfish* [-5], and Stubbornness [-5]. In my opinion, a Filthy Rich person possessing all of these disadvantages would be quite plausible.

Yeah, I think that was his point, actually. He was musing that he couldn't be kind, well-educated, capable, and rich due to the constraints of his character points. The only way he this would be achieved, without a boatload of disadvantages, would be a higher point total game.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Yeah, his "point" smells badly of "But I want MORE BETTER stuff than everyone else". It's like complaining about how you got DX 14 IQ 14 like everyone else and now you can't afford ST 18 too (instead of the ST 10 everyone else settled for). Well, no, of course not. You spent the points on IQ and DX instead. Feel free to shuffle things around to get whatever you prioritize.

Unless he's proposing that everyone should be wealthy, at which point that's asking the campaign limit to be raised for that mandatory advantage. Which is legit if you want to do that, of course.

Truthfully, Bruno, I don't believe his intent was that he wanted more stuff than everyone else. I talk up GURPS on its ability to have, more-or-less, pretty realistic characters when you really want to. I think his intent was to dispute that claim instead of wanting more "stuff" for his character. He did mention at one point that being rich should afford him better education, the ability to have people train him skills and abilities, and not necessarily have to be a cripple or an a**hole in exchange for that. I think closer to his exact words were "why should I be less educated or less trained just because I'm rich? Or why do I have to be a cripple or an a-hole in exchange for it?"

And I'm of two minds, to be honest. One hand, I can see his point. Sometimes you have to be stubborn or have one eye to get those much needed points for the options you really want. But the other part of me knows that the points are a balancing factor. And disads give a good opportunity to flesh out your character, too, just like advantages do.

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Pretty much nailed it. Wealth is really powerful in modern games. The player can (and usually will) bankroll the other characters, have easy and high end transport, can pay to access things others can't even dream of getting, get th best guns, cars, electronics, armor, etc.

And for really high levels of wealth, they won't even tax their ability to buy stuff.

At a constant point value, the high cost of Filthy Rich does mean making sacrifices. If he wants it all, he wants to be a higher point value character than the group agreed on.

So yeah, he can be Filthy Rich, have great stats, be very skilled, and have only a few character-defining disadvantages.

That person is vaguely called a well-adjusted Batman. Or Tony Stark.

(though yes, both have pretty epic disads)

But the point (ahem) is that to as good as everyone else AND Filthy Rich means you're higher points than everyone else. That's how GURPS and point-buy works.

My thoughts exactly, sir!

[Anaraxes]

CP are a completely meta game construct, and have nothing to do with realism or the internal logic of the setting. It has to do with players, fairness, and trying for interesting tradeoffs in character design, rather than just throwing in a bunch of Mary Sues that can do everything and have no flaws.

The statement "just because I'm filthy rich, I can't be as capable as the random guy down the street" is half right. The half that's wrong is that "the random guy down the street" doesn't have 150 CP in the first place. (Normal people are more like 25 by RAW.) The PC already has 125 extra CP just because they're a PC -- which also has nothing to do with realism.

But that aside, there's still a tradeoff because making choices in the face of limited resources is what games are all about.

One classic example would be a character that was some sort of super-race -- maybe an ogre warrior, because ogres are all naturally huge and tough, or an elven wizard, because elves are all smart and magical and have lived hundreds of years, giving them lots of time to study. If the characters pay for all those advantages, then among the PCs, the ogres are either very unskilled by comparison, or sell down their natural attributes making them really small and wimpy ogres. (This point can even be used as a reason why that character would waste his time hanging around with inferior humans. The real ogres laugh at his pathetic weakness, but at least the humans are still impressed.) If the GM ignores racial Advantages because having such makes that race look bad (in PC terms) rather than better, then it's free points, and no one would ever been the (presumably normal) human. (Then you wind up having to create exactly equal race packages, point-wise, which contradicts the initial assumpton that there's some super-race available as a PC. All races are equally super.)

But the notion that the PCs are a reflection of the average member of their species is the incorrect one. In most games, PCs are unusual heroes. They're already breaking the statistics -- in cinematic games, often by huge or impossible margins. There are occasionally games where the humans are supposed to be utterly normal (usually some sort of horror or stranger-in-a-strange-land scenario), but those are the exception in RPGs. (People get to be normal every day. They don't need to play an adventure game to be normal all over again.)

So the player's argument doesn't make sense because its assumptions are twice wrong. The tradeoff faced in character design isn't reflective of most inhabitants of the world, or an actual in-setting, visible, law of nature, and so can't be accused of conflicting with the in-setting laws of nature; and whatever laws of nature those are don't even apply to the PCs in the first place, which is one reason that they are PCs involved in the interesting and heroic stories rather than being one of the countless faceless mooks of the setting.

[ericbsmith]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

CP are a completely meta game construct, and have nothing to do with realism or the internal logic of the setting. It has to do with players, fairness, and trying for interesting tradeoffs in character design,

This. Right here. The key feature that having character point budgets gives you is that all the players have equal access to all of the abilities in the game. Everyone could be a Multimillionaire, or everybody could be ST 20, or everybody could be the most amazing acrobat in the world. But on a limited CP budget you have to make choices and decide which of those are more important to the character concept you want to play.

If your character is somehow going to be all three of those you are, quite simply, going to need more points. Which either means the GM has to give you more points than everybody else (which breaks the fairness part) or he needs to give everybody more points (which the GM may not want to do).

[ericthered]

And you seem to have sold your player on simulationism. That's fine, just let him know that sometimes you intentionally let go of simulationism for the sake of gameplay. Point values are an example of that. Kind of.

As an aside, I am currently running a game where I didn't charge players for their social position, and then told them to choose important people in a community. That's another approach. But its not the default approach, and I did it because I wanted the players to not angst over how much to pay for their social privileges. Its working fine, mostly because what they could choose from was constrained by the setting.

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by ericbsmith

This. Right here. The key feature that having character point budgets gives you is that all the players have equal access to all of the abilities in the game.

^ This. Character Points just balances players against each other and sets for the GM "This is about how much power/sway/skill/ability I wanted characters to have in this game."

Essentially, YOU told the player he can't be a rich AND skilled person. YOU set the balances. You set the costs. All the point values are guidelines. You can change them as you see fit. And it's not just balanced based on "Power" but based on accessibility and how well it fits for a character to take. For example, Combat Reflexes is cheap on purpose, because people should be taking it that are going into heavy combat and don't want to die.

The game, as mentioned earlier, values wealth as something that get so much done that it is worth lots of points compared to any other ability to get things done. If you decide wealth can't get things done at all, and it's just backstory fluff, then wealth is worth 0 points. "I came from a rich history and education... but I can't use that money in this campaign for whatever reason" is 0 points of wealth.

NPCs in the world might have point values, but there is no limit or balance necessary. They aren't beholden to any constraints or need to balance balanced against anything else, so in general they don't tend to have point values assessed. You might fill out an NPC record sheet or just cobble something on the fly that meets your needs, or challenges players.

So basically his argument "I can be jealous and paralyzed to be rich" is more "I have to have serious setbacks to do whatever I want with money" and as a GM you should say "Yes, because I don't want you being able to do more with money than other people can do with their wits... and still match their wits".

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Lord Dynel

Truthfully, Bruno, I don't believe his intent was that he wanted more stuff than everyone else. I talk up GURPS on its ability to have, more-or-less, pretty realistic characters when you really want to. I think his intent was to dispute that claim instead of wanting more "stuff" for his character. He did mention at one point that being rich should afford him better education, the ability to have people train him skills and abilities, and not necessarily have to be a cripple or an a**hole in exchange for that. I think closer to his exact words were "why should I be less educated or less trained just because I'm rich? Or why do I have to be a cripple or an a-hole in exchange for it?"

"Realistically" not everyone is built on the same point budget. Arnold Schwarzenegger is just worth more than you. Having everyone in a campaign start at the same point total is only a game balance concern.

[Andrew Hackard]

Yes, the question to ask is "Why is this Filthy Rich person just starting out as an adventurer? What has been holding her back?"

Filthy Rich can be a campaign derailer if the GM doesn't account for it - "Oh, our HQ just got firebombed? I can have a cleanup squad here in 20 minutes, and in the meantime I'm hiring armored trucks to transport us to my secret backup HQ." It's reasonable to put some brakes on it unless all the PCs are equally capable in other ways.

[mehrkat]

The balanced points is a feature of roleplaying games because people want to be generally as useful as their fellow players.

I only know of two games that doesn't balance PCs. Ars Magica that had people taking turns bring wizard and troops and Buffy the Vampire Slayer that gave the less powerful essentially occasional superluck to allow them to shine.

There is nothing inherently in the rules that prevents varying power level but fiction doesn't have a person behind the weaker characters. I'm pretty sure I don't want to play Bouncing Boy in a Legion of Superheroes game.