Unusual Background Pricing

[ThomasSmith]

How does one figure out the appropriate cost of an unusual background?

I'll give some examples that struck me in the past. I had a setting I tried to run once that had a confusing multidimensional structure. Knowledge of that structure was something really rare and surprising - it'd be an unusual background. Ties to things on the other side would be even more rare and surprising - it'd be a more expensive unusual background. But how expensive is expensive?

I think I went with 5 points (and required skills) for the first, and 25 points (and required allies/contacts) for the second. Those are prices before the requirements, which could add a lot (especially for the second, where you have pre-existing relationships with extradimensional bizarrities).

I was pricing blind and arbitrary, though. Vaguely I was angling to get "how surprising is this" in point cost. Looking at the books, it seems I priced "my friends are invisible aliens" just under "my sensei is a martial arts legend". Was this appropriate? How do you determine how much a UB is worth?

[Ragitsu]

I would typically make "Super Soldier" or "Experiment" versions of Unusual Background cost 5 or 10 points.

[Wood Golem]

I'd say think of it as a Talent for advantages. The more unusual / restricted advantages that you're able (or want) to buy, the more costly UB is.

[munin]

GURPS Powers discusses Unusual Background costs on p. 185 -- it can depend on the power level of the game. 10 points for minor occasional benefits, 20-30% of starting points for substantial benefits, 50% for "killer" benefits.

GURPS Supers has some good examples of Unusual Backgrounds and estimates for pricing them (presumably based on typically greater starting points for a supers game). If you are part of a group that numbers fewer than 100 in the whole world, that's worth 50 points. If your group has about one or two members per major city, that's worth 10 (pp. 29, 75). There's also a template which is somewhat similar to your concept, a background of having explored other dimensions justifying various skills, which has a UB worth 10 points (Where No One Has Gone Before, p. 61). For scale, GURPS Supers also has Unusual Backgrounds going up to 300 points for M-scale abilities (p. 19) -- and I think I remember a 500-point UB somewhere...

GURPS Thaumatology recommends a 15-point UB to start play with knowledge of a nonstandard Path (p. 236), which is also similar to your concept.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by ThomasSmith

How does one figure out the appropriate cost of an unusual background?

This is going to be one of those annoying "it depends" answers, because Unusual Background is enormously setting-dependent. Unusual Background basically exists to fill in the gaps between GURPS' point-cost assumptions for advantages, and the actual balance of those advantages in any given world.

A couple of the key assumptions in GURPS advantage pricing is that a) knowledge of them is available in the setting, and that b), similar advantages and/or countermeasures to them are available to the player characters' opponents. For example, Warp is priced under the assumption that people know you can teleport into or out of their stronghold and plan accordingly, and that you will potentially face foes who can make it more difficult for you to teleport about, and possibly even follow you when you are teleporting.

In a world where these assumptions don't hold up, advantages become much more powerful. If no one knows about the existence of Warp, then no one will be able to line their bank vaults with anti-teleporting fields, or even credit the idea of someone teleporting in to rob them - they'll waste a lot of time searching for the "trick" or the secret tunnel, or whatever, while the person with Warp is living the high life in Venezuela. And even if the ability to Warp is known about, if no one else can take Warp, and doesn't have enough information on it to know how to prevent you from using it, you're still in very good shape.
Unusual Backgrounds exist to fill this sort of gap. The cost will depend on exactly how much advantage you have over people without the traits you have, which is heavily dependent on both the advantage and the setting. That said, some guidelines are possible.

First of all, it's important to remember that not all unusual backgrounds are Unusual Backgrounds in game terms. Take, for example, the Golden Age comic character, the Black Condor. As an infant, his parents were killed in Mongolia and he was adopted by a condor. He learned to fly (!) from the condors, and went on to have a career as a superhero. As a background, that's pretty unusual, certainly. However, in game terms, it doesn't deserve an Unusual Background. Flight in superhero comics is an incredibly common power, to the point where its probably more unusual for a hero to not possess it. So having the ability to fly won't surprise anyone particularly. Black Condor's foes will know to watch the rooftop entries as well as the ground-level ones, and when he's fighting super-villains, he must be prepared for them to follow him into the air in a fight or chase. Thus, Black Condor would only pay the base cost of Flight, rather than shelling out for an Unusual Background.

The weakest form of Unusual Background is one that gives a character access to an advantage that's known in the setting, but can only be acquired from a limited source. I'd typically put these at 1 point perks for each distinct ability. GURPS already has examples of this sort of thing, sometimes explicitly labelled as Unusual Backgrounds. Power Ups 2: Perks has a selection of these sorts of Unusual Background perks, including Unusual Training, which lets you take a cinematic skill that would normally require a prerequisite advantage such as Trained By A Master. Spell prerequisites are another good example - a single point in a spell qualifies you to take other spells that have the first as a prerequisite. A single point in a spell can be not very useful in and of itself, depending on your attributes, but it always grants the ability to learn spells further up the chain.
The 1-point level is a good guideline for Unusual Backgrounds that grant a one-time "surprise!" ability. For example, if dwarves in your setting are non-magical, and usually completely incapable of casting spells, but magic is otherwise known and countermeasures exist, then a player could take "Dwarf Mage" as a 1-point perk, and have the ability to cast spells. The player can reasonably expect opponents who haven't heard of their character to be surprised by magic coming from a dwarf, since "everyone knows dwarves can't cast spells". However, once the surprise wears off, opponents will adapt to the dwarf's magic just as readily as to any other mage.

5-point Unusual Backgrounds are good for advantages that fit into a few categories.
First, single advantages that aren't easily duplicated by others, but countermeasures are possible. Once such an advantage becomes known to the character's opponents, they will be able to come up with ways to oppose it, but the character will probably not be dealing with similarly-powered opponents for a long time, if ever. Most movement powers (Flight, Enhanced Move, Permeation, etc.) fall into this category. They're useful, but once people know you have them, they'll start putting things in your way that block your movement.
Second, this is the level that provides access to advantages or a range of advantages that is extremely broad or flexible, but which are known about and countermeasures exist. Magery 0 is a good example in this range. It provides access to a broad range of spells and magic items which someone without Magery 0 cannot access at all, but opponents don't need Magery to know magical countermeasures. Highly-flexible Modular Abilities, such as Green Lantern's ring, are another good example. The Power Rings are capable of a very wide variety of tasks (anything that the user can imagine and fuel with their willpower, basically), but the weaknesses of the ring (can't affect yellow objects, ring's power is limited) are also well known.
Third, a 5-point Unusual Background can give access to advantages or a range of advantages that are mostly unknown in the campaign setting, but which could spread once they were known. The first level of High Tech Level is an example of this. It provides access to skills and equipment beyond what the campaign setting can normally produce, which is a useful advantage against lower-tech opponents. However, the limitations on technology will become obvious to observers, allowing countermeasures, and captured examples of technology can lead to locals reverse-engineering them and boosting the local TL up to yours.

The 10-25 point range of Unusual Backgrounds is for advantages that fall into two or more of these categories:
1) Unduplicatable. If the character is the only, or one of a very small group, who has the powers, and the powers are impossible for anyone else to reproduce.
2) Easily concealed. If the powers are unknown to the world, and it's easy to keep it that way. For example, a Mind Control advantage that made the target think it was their idea, and erased any memory of the controller, would qualify - it would be enormously difficult for outsiders to even identify what was happening, let alone get a sense of how to prevent it.
3) Unstoppable. If no effective countermeasures exist, this condition applies. For example, if you're the only character with Cosmic attacks, and nobody has access to Cosmic defenses, you're very difficult to stop.

Charge more points if the advantages the character gets from the Unusual Background fall into more than one categories, or are particularly strong in one category (for example, two levels of High Tech Level is a good example of something that's reasonably unduplicatable, since -10 to rolls for two TLs difference means that very, very few engineers will be able to make heads or tails of it. Three levels of High TL, on the other hand, puts duplicating your technology out of the range of all characters who are three or more TLs below you, thus its worth more points.

Unusual Backgrounds can be reduced in price if they only provide their benefit in some areas of the campaign setting. Mana Enhancer in an Infinite Worlds game is an excellent example of this effect. Infinite Worlds has a mixture of timelines, some with mana and some without. On those with mana, Mana Enhancer is handy, but not incredibly so - it lets you cast spells better, but other characters are aware of magic, and countermeasures exist. On no-mana timelines, however, Mana Enhancer allows the ability to cast spells at all, compared to being completely impossible, and opponents on such timelines will rarely have any effective countermeasures or even expect to face magic. In an Infinite Worlds game, I'd price an Unusual Background for Mana Enhancer at 20 points, for being relatively unduplicatable (since no-one else can learn spells), undetectable (if you use the right magic), and unstoppable (since no effective countermeasures exist), but I'd reduce the cost by half since those advantages only apply on a limited set of the timelines, for a final cost of 10 points.

When you're pricing Unusual Backgrounds, it's also important to remember to price them for rarity in the campaign, rather than the setting in general. Price things based on how often the characters will encounter them, not how often the average person in the setting will. For example, in most superhero universes, superheroes are a tiny fraction of the population, and the average person will almost never encounter them, outside seeing them on the news or something like that. However, a superhero campaign that sticks even somewhat close to comics as they are written will have superheroes showing up all the time, and probably shouldn't be charging Unusual Backgrounds for most abilities.

[Kelly Pedersen]

One more note:
The cost of an Unusual Background can also be increased if you feel that it will seriously break the feel of the game you are going for - the example in Basic, of "raised by wizards" in a horror game where too much supernatural knowledge will disrupt suspense, is an excellent example. In these cases, I'd at least double the cost of the Unusual Background, if not more. Really, though, when this sort of Unusual Background comes up, the GM is probably advised to say "Sorry, no." in the vast majority of cases. If you know it's going to wreck the game you want to run, just don't allow it.

[Ragitsu]

*claps*

Bravo, Kelly Pedersen!

[PK]

And if you don't mind a self-serving suggestion, GURPS Psionic Campaigns has a fairly detailed set of rules for determining a fair UB for psis -- rules which are pretty easily ported over to any unusual ability which can be defined in terms of, "How many people know it exists?" and, "How many people have this ability in the setting?"

[ThomasSmith]

Bravo! I think my question has been answered quite well. Thank you, Kelly Pederson!

Not that I won't be looking forward to GURPS Psionic Campaigns as well. I'll buy it even if only for that advice. It's good to have a reference on hand.

25 points may have been a little high for "my friends are aliens" in the setting, though it was in the right vicinity. After reading your post, I would have costed that one as 20 points. It granted access to allies with exotic advantages in a setting that had few countermeasures to them and, perhaps more importantly, little way to understand that they needed to deploy those countermeasures.

That said, it's interesting to consider that this is campaign dependent as much as it is setting dependent. In that setting, the military was figuring out extradimensional creatures pretty fast, namely because it was at war with one faction of them and had no good reason to trust the others. On those guidelines, I don't think I would right charge a UB at all if the military was going to be an important opponent for the group. Most military laboratories of the setting, being aware of ECs and having good reason to prevent ECs from getting in (namely, that they were studying and often dissecting them), were very well protected against the exotic EC-abilities.



This leaves me with one question. What happens if campaign events could meaningfully alter the value of a UB? Ie, in the example I'm using, the establishment of regular trade relations with one of the friendlier groups of ECs would make their abilities much more widely known, employed, and defended against. And though not a likely outcome (the PCs were military, see: doesn't trust ECs), this was a possible outcome. Do you tell the player and knock the point value of the UB down?

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by ThomasSmith

This leaves me with one question. What happens if campaign events could meaningfully alter the value of a UB? Ie, in the example I'm using, the establishment of regular trade relations with one of the friendlier groups of ECs would make their abilities much more widely known, employed, and defended against. And though not a likely outcome (the PCs were military, see: doesn't trust ECs), this was a possible outcome. Do you tell the player and knock the point value of the UB down?

I would only worry about it if it was a likely thing early on.
Once play began I can only see a very few times where I might raise the UB cost and more where I would lower or eliminate it.
But I would only make that price effect at the beginning if I knew it was going to change drastically in a few games. For example PCs are among the first to gain Super Powers but soon lots of Supers would be showing up then I would charge less. Or scale the UB later, say "Has Supers" changing to "First Generation Super" with commensurate if different benefits.