From: dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com (Dennis Heffernan)
Subject: Re: GURPS: Alien races -- Too powerful?
Keywords: GURPS Aliens Space
Organization: Xanadu Enterprises Inc.
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 1992 05:44:20 GMT

In article <15936aINNqd8@early-bird.think.com> laird@think.com (Laird Popkin) writes:
|I disagree.  A Dwarf should be strong.  It's easier for a Dwarf to be
|strong than for a human to be strong.  It just happens that for humans,
|strength 10 is "average", so it's in the middle of the curve for costs,
|whereas for a Dwarf an 11 (if I recall correctly) is in the middle.
|Remember, GURPS character points don't measure utility -- they reflect the
|effort involved, and also serve to control the frequency of things.  For

	No, character points in GURPS DO measure utility, except in the skill
system.  We went all through that with the Longevity nonsense.

|The point of having all players build characters with the same number of
|points isn't that they're all the same power -- it's so that they all start
|out with the same opportunities.

	This is only true if everyone pays the same price for the same thing.
If different character types pay less for some stuff, then everyone is NOT
starting with "equal opportunity".

|Horrendous?!  I've had several players play characters of races in Fantasy
|Folk, and they've all worked out fine.  No Giants, admittedly...

	And I've played AD&D and it "worked out fine".  That was in SPITE of
the game's shortcomings, and it does not justify them.

|I can sympathize with your position, but at the same time I think that
|"everything costs the same for everyone" would lead to a lack of
|differentiation between PC's.  When Dwarves get a bit of a point break on

	I've played it this way since Man To Man came out.  It doesn't do any
such thing.  People who are going to roleplay do so.  The rest won't.

|strength, and an aptitude for certain skills, then that encourages players
|to build appropriate Dwarves.  It certainly doesn't force them to (unless
|they are complete slaves to min/maxing, in which case you have bigger
|problems).  One of the things that I like about GURPS is that it uses
|character points to encourage min/maxers to engage in a degree of
|roleplaying, and this is another example of that.

	This is not roleplaying.  This is a crude substitute for roleplaying.
Giving a munchkin access to the standard GURPS racial rules is like handing
a flamethrower to a pyromaniac.  The system BEGS for abuse, especially if
you use the racial generation rules to make your own races.  Most of the
ones in FF/AL have been deliberately hamstrung with inefficient design in a
vain attempt to make the system look balanced.  Take the FF Ogre, remove the
Passive Defense and DX penalty...his point cost goes DOWN, and his
effectivenes goes WAY up.  These rules are utterly dependent upon the GM
playing Rules Cop to work, and I quite frankly do not need the headache.
RPG rules are supposed to be a tool that SOLVES problems for me, not MAKES
new ones.


dfrancis@tronsbox.xei.com    Dennis Francis Heffernan	GEnie: D.HEFFERNAN1
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Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc