From: Laird Popkin <laird@think.com>
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Bass Ackwards GURPS Attribute Modifier Method
Date: 28 Aug 1992 23:08:24 GMT
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation
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Subject: Re: Bass Ackwards GURPS Attribute Modifier Method
From: Trip, trip@cco.caltech.edu
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 21:31:23 GMT
In article <1992Aug18.213123.3588@cco.caltech.edu> Trip,
trip@cco.caltech.edu writes:
>laird@think.com (Laird Popkin) writes:
>
>[A very long article with many levels of >>>>>>> and >>>>>>>>>>>>>,
>which seems to boil down to:]
>
>Laird: Utility point systems are impossible because utility is
>       situational. Point values have to be recalculated every session
>       because different skills will be useful in each session.
>
>What a fine straw man argument you have there. Try considering more
>than fifteen seconds at a time, why don't you? In, eg, a cyberpunk
>campaign, you can reasonably expect Surveillance to be useful at least
>one session out of two, while Identify Obscure Asian Beetles might come
>up once during the campaign. I don't know about you, but I have no
>trouble telling which is going to be more useful to the possessor.
>Sure, they may end up stuck in an obscure part of Asia, and have their
>lives saved by the entomologist, but this hardly means that the
>entomologist is the most useful character because of it.
>
>Admittedly, if the GM has no clue where the campaign is going, he won't
>be able to make more than very coarse distinctions, but if that's the
>case you have much worse problems. Besides, you don't *need* more than
>very coarse assessments, unless you're one of those hardcore types who
>always uses Phoenix Command because no other system handles a called
>shot to the middle phalange on the left hand with a .17/.44 round from
>31 degress elevation in medium fog quite properly.

That's a drastic oversimplification of my article.  What I *really* said
was that it's a waste of time trying to assign things poing values for
utility because utility is completely situational, and can vary widely,
not only every session, but over a campaign if the campaign changes
settings or styles.

For example, if a GM runs a 'mystery' adventure, detective type skills
are useful, and combat isn't.  Then when the GM runs an
'action/adventure' scenario, detective skills aren't useful, but combat
skills are very useful.

If points are supposed to measure utility, then they need to address this
issue.  Sure, things that only happen rarely can be ignored, but any
campaign I've been in long-term has had major shifts over time which made
different sorts of characters useful.  And for such long-term issues, if
points measure utility, then the points would need to be refigured.

Aside from the hassle of recalculating characters whenever there is a
major shift in the campaign, it completely invalidates the goal of
assigning point values as measurements of utility in order to have all of
the PC's equal in power, because the character which all had the same
point value before the shift now have different point values.

Basically, I feel that the goal of making all PC's "equal power" is
impossible, and I think that GURPS settles for a more reasonable goal --
that all PC's are built "fairly".  There are a very few advantages which
change cost in different settings, but even then they're minimal --
modern day characters are literate by default, while medieval characters
need to go out of their way to learn to read, and bad eyesight isn't much
of a handicap when glasses or contact lenses (or magic) can easily
compensate.

>Laird: GURPS measures development, so GURPS characters are equally
>       developed, so it's fair.
>
>Development of *what*? If you mean experience & training, that's fine,
>but how do you fit stats, advantages, disadvantages, superpowers, and
>gifts from above into it?

If everyone has the same number of character points, and has the same
options as everyone else, then the characters are 'fair', since the
players made all the choices.  Nobody said that they were equally
powerful, even in an abstract sense, just that they started out on an
equal footing.

From a philosophical point of view, you can think of character points as
reflecting the effort that it takes to develop something, the effort
saved or lost by that thing (which is a lot like usefulness), the
frequency of it's appearance, and game balance issues.  For an example of
how "frequency of appearance" comes into play, in GURPS some things are
"good deals" because they appear frequently in the genre, while other
things are "bad deals" because they appear rarely.  This guides "point
mongers" to create appropriate characters, while "roleplayers" who don't
care about point efficiency are free to create whatever sort of character
they like.  As to the point values of advantages and disadvantages,
advantages which are "useful" save a character a lot of effort, so they
spend a lot of character points for it.  Disadvantages which don't take
much effort to overcome don't give many character points in return.

>And how is this 'fair'? I can't see any other measure of 'fairness' than
>everyone's character having equally much to do.

This is fair in that everyone starts out with the same amount of "effort"
with which to develop a character.  They can expend that effort more or
less effectively at various things, but they all start out with the same
"budget".

If players don't care whether the characters are "fair", then they can
ignore starting character points, and only use them for character
development, or even dispense with character points alltogether.  There
are GURPS players that do either -- the points are only a means to an
end, not a goal in themselves.

>
>Trip				|   Everybody's playing the game
>President, ECNG			|   But nobody's rules are the same
>(trip@cobalt.cco.caltech.edu)	|   Nobody's on nobody's side
>				|			-_Chess_