![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethIanto Jones: Honours English Literature and History; Skypoint Chapter 8 p69
I just spent a bunch of time tracking that down so I write it down with a tag on it this time.
... come to think I may have done already, because I didn't search my own LJ...
If that's his exact degree title then it's not every university will have that available.
UCAS search for 2009 had 64 courses when I searched for those words but not all with that title. However searching the Cardiff University website gets "English Literature and History" where the UCAS website has a / instead of the and, so they don't match precisely enough. They also list 'with' courses, but 'and' is joint honors with equal weighting and 'with' is a major/minor combination, far as I know. Also I'd have to decide if he meant BA or MA. Probably BA.
I was figuring out how many GURPS character points my degree will be worth, because I am trying to figure out the GURPS RPG system character sheets for Team Torchwood. As you do. And I started with Ianto because he's so vaguely defined. To get Owen I can just slap a Medic template on a genius, same with Tosh and tech. Gwen is an average police template. No problems. But Ianto? I have to get creative to figure what skills he has at all. So I decided to start with his degree.
GURPS has rules about how many hours study converts to how many character points.
200 hours with a teacher is 1 point in a skill.
400 hours independent study is 1 point in a skill.
So how many of each in a degree?
At City College there are 360 credits in a BA(Hons) degree.
10 credits works out at 100 hours. 30 hours taught and 70 independent.
From that I work out one degree is 11.7 skill points, rounded up or down depending on how much independent study you put in to the nearest .5 points.
Also, I have 4 CP in English with Cultural Studies already.
But! I got 10 credits on a course where there were only 2 hours teaching per week over 10 weeks. Assuming equal hours (because they're all validated by the same institution so I might as well assume that) a 20/80 split makes for a different number of skill points.
Also there was a 20 credit Study Skills unit, but all those assumed 200 hours were independent. Plus they'd have to go into Research or Computer Use or Typing or something general like that rather than specifically into English. Plus I don't know anyone who was actually that diligent about a pass/fail module. Which isn't really the point, but demonstrates how variable the thing is.
Which leads me to realise that in GURPS terms not all degrees are equal, and I'd need to know where he was studying and what their taught/independent split was.
Hence the long list of universities below.
Narrowing it further needs either canon I'm forgetting or a bit of deciding.
The difference between a great degree grade and a not so good one is probably, in GURPS terms, a combination of IQ differences and the hours you actually put in. (GURPS IQ isn't ability to pass an IQ test, it takes a lot of stuff into account.) A high IQ character could put in less hours, have lower skill point investment, and get a great grade of degree at the end, translating to a great chance of success in a particular skill roll. A low IQ character could put in all the hours and get less chance of success. That sounds about right for reality too so GURPS rules are being reasonable.
Since Skypoint also calls him 'intelligent' I can give him a nice high IQ, but since Jack says "Able student but not exceptional" probably not in the supergenius range of Tosh or Owen. Also I'd round down on the hours Ianto put in, and up for Tosh and Owen, simply because they seem to really love their work with their whole brain so their 'fun' and 'study' would overlap. I'd make Gwen near average and concentrate on skills.
I'd also give Ianto either Eidetic Memory (an advantage that can be learnt, can recall the general sense of anything they concentrate on) or Photographic Memory (a stronger and probably inborn advantage, can recall the details of whatever they've seen). That would account for a lot of his random win. He's read it, he knows it. PM is way cinematic, but is Ianto? EM is more realistic, and clearly something he's got.
If I was really seriously obsessive I could look up the requirements on the degree courses, combine it with 'able but not exceptional' to guesstimate his A levels (no A grades? one? no ungraded like I got...), and narrow down where he would be more likely to have studied.
But clearly I have better things to do.
*nods*
... who am I kidding?
... okay, so I looked up a lot of places and discovered I really don't know much about getting in to university, which you'd think odd considering I study there, but I went sideways and could only ever get to UEA or CCN anyway.
***
The University of Birmingham (B32) qualification A level grades
English Literature and History (QV3C) 3FT Hon BA ABB
Cardiff University (C15) qualification
English Literature/History (VQ13) 3FT Hon BA AAB
Durham University (D86) qualification
English Literature and History (QV21) 3FT Hon BA AAA
University of Glamorgan, Cardiff and Pontypridd (G14) qualification
English Literature and History (QV3C) 3FT Hon BA
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2 Number preferred: 2
Tariff score Points accepted: 220 - 260
English grade B
I had to look up Tariff points but it looks like a B at A level is worth 100 and a D 60 so BDD would do it, or AB, or clearly a lot of other combinations.
The University of Gloucestershire
English Literature and History
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2
Number preferred: 3
Tariff score Points accepted: 200 - 280
University of Hertfordshire (H36) qualification
English Literature and History (QV31) 3FT Hon BA
260 UCAS tariff points from 3 A Levels or an equivalent qualification is needed
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2 Number preferred: 3.5
Lancaster University (L14) qualification
English Literature and History (QV31) 3FT Hon BA ABB
London Metropolitan University (L68) qualification
English Literature and History (QV3C) 3FT Hon BA
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2
Tariff score Points accepted: 200 - 240
Roehampton University (R48) qualification
English Literature and History (QV31) 3FT Hon BA
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2
Number preferred: 2
Tariff score Points accepted: 280 - 340
University of Westminster (W50) qualification
English Literature and History (QV31) 3FT Hon BA BCC
York St John University (Y75) qualification
English Literature and History (QV31) 3FT Hon BA
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2 Number preferred: 2
Tariff score Points accepted: 200 - 220
UEA has Literature & History with BBB required. It doesn't say English literature so he probably didn't study there.
Course codes and course titles don't seem to match precisely.
The course I'm on right now has Points accepted: 160 - 240 Relevant subject preferred at grade C
Since I know that's Not Very Shiny I can assume Ianto wouldn't go there.
... students that are Very Shiny go to UEA. I didn't because I'm part time and... that's not all relevant now at all.
I'm tempted to narrow it down to Welsh places. But I'm about equally tempted to send him to London to study. Trace Memory has Ianto in London to work before joining Torchwood but it doesn't say if he was there to study. Unless it says later in the chapter.
London would be London Metropolitan University (L68), Roehampton University (R48), University of Westminster (W50).
Wales would be Cardiff University (C15), University of Glamorgan, Cardiff and Pontypridd (G14).
I couldn't figure out from their website if the one with the long name would lead to him actually living in Cardiff while he studied. They probably have a map. I didn't find it.
He has some local knowledge of Cardiff, and we know he worked in London. Anywhere else he has no known connections to.
Obviously he isn't studying in 2009, so all that I looked up isn't useful to him anyway.
***
Okay, clearly I am mad, detail oriented, and far too fascinated by little web searchy things.
I think we knew this.
Next I shall go figure out how many skill points he acquired while working at Torchwood 1. He was there 2 years according to fragments. GURPS rules allow you to claim 8 hours a day and it takes 800 hours to get 1 skill point, because mostly you're doing the same things over and over again. GURPS book reckons this works out at 2 or 3 skill points a year. This doesn't take into account any particular training courses Torchwood might send him on.
After he got to Torchwood 3 he probably got the Jack Harkness special on gun use.
But even under the rules for intensive study, that's 100 hours for 1 point.
Do we think anyone at Torchwood has spent 100 hours with Jack teaching them to shoot? Or 50 even? How about 400 hours self taught? 200?
If not, they're probably using guns at default levels, as in, unskilled.
... this could explain a lot.
Of course the quickest way to get points is to do adventures, otherwise known as Torchwood episodes. But even then they'd only apply to skills actually practiced.
Does practicing with arcade games count? Count at a familiarity penalty?
This could be key for figuring Owen's skill levels...
But arcade game laser guns could be Beam Weapons, and it reckons those default to Guns at -4.
Guns default to DX-4. So you could default it off Beam Weapons soon as you improve that.
So serious hours invested would improve your default, but you'd still never be as good with an actual boom stick as you are with an arcade game. And that's without the extra -2 for specialties (pistol to rifle to SMG) and familiarity penalities.
... rules are really picky about weapon skills, cause you use them a lot.
ETA: for people linked in from the newsletter, try the Ianto tag for my later added bits. If you like random maths or GURPS or rpg rules or Ianto. Well, mostly GURPS and maths.
I just spent a bunch of time tracking that down so I write it down with a tag on it this time.
... come to think I may have done already, because I didn't search my own LJ...
If that's his exact degree title then it's not every university will have that available.
UCAS search for 2009 had 64 courses when I searched for those words but not all with that title. However searching the Cardiff University website gets "English Literature and History" where the UCAS website has a / instead of the and, so they don't match precisely enough. They also list 'with' courses, but 'and' is joint honors with equal weighting and 'with' is a major/minor combination, far as I know. Also I'd have to decide if he meant BA or MA. Probably BA.
I was figuring out how many GURPS character points my degree will be worth, because I am trying to figure out the GURPS RPG system character sheets for Team Torchwood. As you do. And I started with Ianto because he's so vaguely defined. To get Owen I can just slap a Medic template on a genius, same with Tosh and tech. Gwen is an average police template. No problems. But Ianto? I have to get creative to figure what skills he has at all. So I decided to start with his degree.
GURPS has rules about how many hours study converts to how many character points.
200 hours with a teacher is 1 point in a skill.
400 hours independent study is 1 point in a skill.
So how many of each in a degree?
At City College there are 360 credits in a BA(Hons) degree.
10 credits works out at 100 hours. 30 hours taught and 70 independent.
From that I work out one degree is 11.7 skill points, rounded up or down depending on how much independent study you put in to the nearest .5 points.
Also, I have 4 CP in English with Cultural Studies already.
But! I got 10 credits on a course where there were only 2 hours teaching per week over 10 weeks. Assuming equal hours (because they're all validated by the same institution so I might as well assume that) a 20/80 split makes for a different number of skill points.
Also there was a 20 credit Study Skills unit, but all those assumed 200 hours were independent. Plus they'd have to go into Research or Computer Use or Typing or something general like that rather than specifically into English. Plus I don't know anyone who was actually that diligent about a pass/fail module. Which isn't really the point, but demonstrates how variable the thing is.
Which leads me to realise that in GURPS terms not all degrees are equal, and I'd need to know where he was studying and what their taught/independent split was.
Hence the long list of universities below.
Narrowing it further needs either canon I'm forgetting or a bit of deciding.
The difference between a great degree grade and a not so good one is probably, in GURPS terms, a combination of IQ differences and the hours you actually put in. (GURPS IQ isn't ability to pass an IQ test, it takes a lot of stuff into account.) A high IQ character could put in less hours, have lower skill point investment, and get a great grade of degree at the end, translating to a great chance of success in a particular skill roll. A low IQ character could put in all the hours and get less chance of success. That sounds about right for reality too so GURPS rules are being reasonable.
Since Skypoint also calls him 'intelligent' I can give him a nice high IQ, but since Jack says "Able student but not exceptional" probably not in the supergenius range of Tosh or Owen. Also I'd round down on the hours Ianto put in, and up for Tosh and Owen, simply because they seem to really love their work with their whole brain so their 'fun' and 'study' would overlap. I'd make Gwen near average and concentrate on skills.
I'd also give Ianto either Eidetic Memory (an advantage that can be learnt, can recall the general sense of anything they concentrate on) or Photographic Memory (a stronger and probably inborn advantage, can recall the details of whatever they've seen). That would account for a lot of his random win. He's read it, he knows it. PM is way cinematic, but is Ianto? EM is more realistic, and clearly something he's got.
If I was really seriously obsessive I could look up the requirements on the degree courses, combine it with 'able but not exceptional' to guesstimate his A levels (no A grades? one? no ungraded like I got...), and narrow down where he would be more likely to have studied.
But clearly I have better things to do.
*nods*
... who am I kidding?
... okay, so I looked up a lot of places and discovered I really don't know much about getting in to university, which you'd think odd considering I study there, but I went sideways and could only ever get to UEA or CCN anyway.
***
The University of Birmingham (B32) qualification A level grades
English Literature and History (QV3C) 3FT Hon BA ABB
Cardiff University (C15) qualification
English Literature/History (VQ13) 3FT Hon BA AAB
Durham University (D86) qualification
English Literature and History (QV21) 3FT Hon BA AAA
University of Glamorgan, Cardiff and Pontypridd (G14) qualification
English Literature and History (QV3C) 3FT Hon BA
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2 Number preferred: 2
Tariff score Points accepted: 220 - 260
English grade B
I had to look up Tariff points but it looks like a B at A level is worth 100 and a D 60 so BDD would do it, or AB, or clearly a lot of other combinations.
The University of Gloucestershire
English Literature and History
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2
Number preferred: 3
Tariff score Points accepted: 200 - 280
University of Hertfordshire (H36) qualification
English Literature and History (QV31) 3FT Hon BA
260 UCAS tariff points from 3 A Levels or an equivalent qualification is needed
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2 Number preferred: 3.5
Lancaster University (L14) qualification
English Literature and History (QV31) 3FT Hon BA ABB
London Metropolitan University (L68) qualification
English Literature and History (QV3C) 3FT Hon BA
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2
Tariff score Points accepted: 200 - 240
Roehampton University (R48) qualification
English Literature and History (QV31) 3FT Hon BA
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2
Number preferred: 2
Tariff score Points accepted: 280 - 340
University of Westminster (W50) qualification
English Literature and History (QV31) 3FT Hon BA BCC
York St John University (Y75) qualification
English Literature and History (QV31) 3FT Hon BA
(GCE A level or equivalent) Minimum number required: 2 Number preferred: 2
Tariff score Points accepted: 200 - 220
UEA has Literature & History with BBB required. It doesn't say English literature so he probably didn't study there.
Course codes and course titles don't seem to match precisely.
The course I'm on right now has Points accepted: 160 - 240 Relevant subject preferred at grade C
Since I know that's Not Very Shiny I can assume Ianto wouldn't go there.
... students that are Very Shiny go to UEA. I didn't because I'm part time and... that's not all relevant now at all.
I'm tempted to narrow it down to Welsh places. But I'm about equally tempted to send him to London to study. Trace Memory has Ianto in London to work before joining Torchwood but it doesn't say if he was there to study. Unless it says later in the chapter.
London would be London Metropolitan University (L68), Roehampton University (R48), University of Westminster (W50).
Wales would be Cardiff University (C15), University of Glamorgan, Cardiff and Pontypridd (G14).
I couldn't figure out from their website if the one with the long name would lead to him actually living in Cardiff while he studied. They probably have a map. I didn't find it.
He has some local knowledge of Cardiff, and we know he worked in London. Anywhere else he has no known connections to.
Obviously he isn't studying in 2009, so all that I looked up isn't useful to him anyway.
***
Okay, clearly I am mad, detail oriented, and far too fascinated by little web searchy things.
I think we knew this.
Next I shall go figure out how many skill points he acquired while working at Torchwood 1. He was there 2 years according to fragments. GURPS rules allow you to claim 8 hours a day and it takes 800 hours to get 1 skill point, because mostly you're doing the same things over and over again. GURPS book reckons this works out at 2 or 3 skill points a year. This doesn't take into account any particular training courses Torchwood might send him on.
After he got to Torchwood 3 he probably got the Jack Harkness special on gun use.
But even under the rules for intensive study, that's 100 hours for 1 point.
Do we think anyone at Torchwood has spent 100 hours with Jack teaching them to shoot? Or 50 even? How about 400 hours self taught? 200?
If not, they're probably using guns at default levels, as in, unskilled.
... this could explain a lot.
Of course the quickest way to get points is to do adventures, otherwise known as Torchwood episodes. But even then they'd only apply to skills actually practiced.
Does practicing with arcade games count? Count at a familiarity penalty?
This could be key for figuring Owen's skill levels...
But arcade game laser guns could be Beam Weapons, and it reckons those default to Guns at -4.
Guns default to DX-4. So you could default it off Beam Weapons soon as you improve that.
So serious hours invested would improve your default, but you'd still never be as good with an actual boom stick as you are with an arcade game. And that's without the extra -2 for specialties (pistol to rifle to SMG) and familiarity penalities.
... rules are really picky about weapon skills, cause you use them a lot.
ETA: for people linked in from the newsletter, try the Ianto tag for my later added bits. If you like random maths or GURPS or rpg rules or Ianto. Well, mostly GURPS and maths.