Shiny RPG fun
Feb. 5th, 2010 03:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI'm having fun with GURPS rulebooks, making up a character I doubt I'll ever play.
... it's weird and partially maths based fun, but, I like it when things have rules and order and neat little boxes, so I like turning things into GURPS sheets.
Today I am playing with magic users, because I finally got GURPS Thaumatology and it's full of all sorts of fun, but I haven't read the basic rules in a while and I haven't followed the maths through lately, so I wasn't real clear on what it was they were modifying. Working out a character sheet can fix that.
I concentrate on the roleplay aspects, the characters that the numbers could imply. or the numbers that a character could imply, depending. It's more fun to think of who you're making than to have a bunch of numbers and a chance of success. Stats optimisation is all very well but it's meant to be personal. And if you've got a character you say isn't very fit or strong or healthy, what does that mean? If I'm reading the table under skills correctly, basic attributes with average numbers succeed on unmodified rolls half the time, but it can go right down to 'are you joking' success. Knocking a couple of points off so you can boost something else can leave you with a 25% chance. That's a pretty big chance of, say, passing out or staying unconscious. And if a character has spectacular IQ but buys down their Will and Perception to pay for it that's a different guy than someone who is above average in IQ and both sub attributes. Which is fun. Specialised fun, but fun.
So then you can start playing with the basic rules sets, tweak the magic systems, figure out what's available. One set of rules lends itself to flash bang warriors wading into battle, another to quiet studious types guarding places of power. And which makes for better stories? Or better television? There's a new children's TV series called Spirit Warriors (I'm watching cause the writersroom site mentioned it.) In that everyone seems to need to do martial arts moves to activate their flashier powers. That could be magery with the Dance limitation, which makes it cheaper, so you can buy up more of it and be more powerful. Boom! And, also, martial arts skills, so to be any good at it you need to be smart and have decent dexterity. Which is expensive, so the limitations work out useful. Plus these are kids so they have to make the best of attributes that aren't fully grown yet and very limited sets of skills from basic education and whatever hobbies or hidden knowledge the story can justify. Add one limited Power, like this series has, and there's something they can do, but only the one thing, so they need a team really a lot, and it's easy to put them in danger.
... The Doctor is kind of difficult because he can in fact destroy or quite possibly create universes without much cooperation at all. His skill set is vast and requiring points costs unattainable by mere mortals, because he's not just more than 900 years old with about 150 years formal education at the start of it, he's been adventuring for quite possibly 900 years (he said 900 years of phone box travel, which plain makes more sense than his age rolling backwards). The number of character points you can rack up in centuries of adventuring boggles the mind. Add in the biological advantages and powers unavailable to humans, the gadgeteering and the special equipment, and anything that can reasonably threaten him can demolish everyone else... until you remember he's only a Time Lord shaped squishy biological entity, and he can walk into a poisoned nest as easily as the next guy. Grand cosmic powers, but still vulnerable in the living space. Plus there's the Dependents and Allies and Patrons complicating up the demands on him and the things that can threaten his position. That's one thing about taking Gallifrey away, no more Patrons, no more people who could remove his TARDIS or his knowledge of Time. Less to threaten. But nobody to call on even if things get really large scale and complicated. In War Games he needed the Time Lords to send everyone home; not so much lately. Is interesting.
(Companions are there to make sure he remembers he's still people and everyone else is too, to keep him connected and stop him steamrollering history. Travel alone is the only way to get him to the place he was at in his head before the end of the specials. How to model that in disadvantages? Tendency to go all Time Lord in a bad way, megalomania with a set of mitigations?)
I love the super science stuff because you have to apply brain and systematic rules to a problem to get a solution. Except quite often they don't use it that way. Science is like a detective story when the who what dunnit could be a black hole. Is the Doctor much like Sherlock Holmes? Without the drugs. And with a tendency to find the dark side hiding in, not so much individuals, but societies. Large scale. Not always, though, he's got a lot of range.
Magic is fun for lots of different reasons depending on how you set it up. Maybe it's an inborn power you don't have to study... but I don't so much like that kind. Differences that make some people born more powerful look like the kind of model that supports aristocracy. You'd have to spend the whole time with people who weren't born powerful running rings around them to prove studying is worth it and people are all equal, and you'd have to be real clear that the morals and decision making stuff isn't best handed over to the fireball merchants... which actually should be clear almost immediately, with some fireball merchants I have known...
If magic is a set of rules, a science that just doesn't depend on current understanding of chemistry et al but can be studied and systematised, then that's one kind of fun. If it's always improvisational, if it's making up poems on the fly or feeling your way through the forces before weaving them together, that's a whole other. And I keep looking at the ideological force the rules could lend themselves too. And it's never simple.
I'll go poke character sheets again. So far I have a character who can master any spell with 2 character points, and most of them with just the 1. In the process I found I really don't like building characters unless I can max out the IQ. So, shows where my ego's at...
... it's weird and partially maths based fun, but, I like it when things have rules and order and neat little boxes, so I like turning things into GURPS sheets.
Today I am playing with magic users, because I finally got GURPS Thaumatology and it's full of all sorts of fun, but I haven't read the basic rules in a while and I haven't followed the maths through lately, so I wasn't real clear on what it was they were modifying. Working out a character sheet can fix that.
I concentrate on the roleplay aspects, the characters that the numbers could imply. or the numbers that a character could imply, depending. It's more fun to think of who you're making than to have a bunch of numbers and a chance of success. Stats optimisation is all very well but it's meant to be personal. And if you've got a character you say isn't very fit or strong or healthy, what does that mean? If I'm reading the table under skills correctly, basic attributes with average numbers succeed on unmodified rolls half the time, but it can go right down to 'are you joking' success. Knocking a couple of points off so you can boost something else can leave you with a 25% chance. That's a pretty big chance of, say, passing out or staying unconscious. And if a character has spectacular IQ but buys down their Will and Perception to pay for it that's a different guy than someone who is above average in IQ and both sub attributes. Which is fun. Specialised fun, but fun.
So then you can start playing with the basic rules sets, tweak the magic systems, figure out what's available. One set of rules lends itself to flash bang warriors wading into battle, another to quiet studious types guarding places of power. And which makes for better stories? Or better television? There's a new children's TV series called Spirit Warriors (I'm watching cause the writersroom site mentioned it.) In that everyone seems to need to do martial arts moves to activate their flashier powers. That could be magery with the Dance limitation, which makes it cheaper, so you can buy up more of it and be more powerful. Boom! And, also, martial arts skills, so to be any good at it you need to be smart and have decent dexterity. Which is expensive, so the limitations work out useful. Plus these are kids so they have to make the best of attributes that aren't fully grown yet and very limited sets of skills from basic education and whatever hobbies or hidden knowledge the story can justify. Add one limited Power, like this series has, and there's something they can do, but only the one thing, so they need a team really a lot, and it's easy to put them in danger.
... The Doctor is kind of difficult because he can in fact destroy or quite possibly create universes without much cooperation at all. His skill set is vast and requiring points costs unattainable by mere mortals, because he's not just more than 900 years old with about 150 years formal education at the start of it, he's been adventuring for quite possibly 900 years (he said 900 years of phone box travel, which plain makes more sense than his age rolling backwards). The number of character points you can rack up in centuries of adventuring boggles the mind. Add in the biological advantages and powers unavailable to humans, the gadgeteering and the special equipment, and anything that can reasonably threaten him can demolish everyone else... until you remember he's only a Time Lord shaped squishy biological entity, and he can walk into a poisoned nest as easily as the next guy. Grand cosmic powers, but still vulnerable in the living space. Plus there's the Dependents and Allies and Patrons complicating up the demands on him and the things that can threaten his position. That's one thing about taking Gallifrey away, no more Patrons, no more people who could remove his TARDIS or his knowledge of Time. Less to threaten. But nobody to call on even if things get really large scale and complicated. In War Games he needed the Time Lords to send everyone home; not so much lately. Is interesting.
(Companions are there to make sure he remembers he's still people and everyone else is too, to keep him connected and stop him steamrollering history. Travel alone is the only way to get him to the place he was at in his head before the end of the specials. How to model that in disadvantages? Tendency to go all Time Lord in a bad way, megalomania with a set of mitigations?)
I love the super science stuff because you have to apply brain and systematic rules to a problem to get a solution. Except quite often they don't use it that way. Science is like a detective story when the who what dunnit could be a black hole. Is the Doctor much like Sherlock Holmes? Without the drugs. And with a tendency to find the dark side hiding in, not so much individuals, but societies. Large scale. Not always, though, he's got a lot of range.
Magic is fun for lots of different reasons depending on how you set it up. Maybe it's an inborn power you don't have to study... but I don't so much like that kind. Differences that make some people born more powerful look like the kind of model that supports aristocracy. You'd have to spend the whole time with people who weren't born powerful running rings around them to prove studying is worth it and people are all equal, and you'd have to be real clear that the morals and decision making stuff isn't best handed over to the fireball merchants... which actually should be clear almost immediately, with some fireball merchants I have known...
If magic is a set of rules, a science that just doesn't depend on current understanding of chemistry et al but can be studied and systematised, then that's one kind of fun. If it's always improvisational, if it's making up poems on the fly or feeling your way through the forces before weaving them together, that's a whole other. And I keep looking at the ideological force the rules could lend themselves too. And it's never simple.
I'll go poke character sheets again. So far I have a character who can master any spell with 2 character points, and most of them with just the 1. In the process I found I really don't like building characters unless I can max out the IQ. So, shows where my ego's at...