In my occasional quest to try and enjoy GURPS, I picked up the book again and started making a character. I have one serious question: how the fuck did Steve Jackson decide on the point values for advantages?  They're all over the place.  Not needing to sleep is 20 points, but being able to dominate other characters with your mind powers is also 20 points. Altered Time rate is 100 points, but just buy up Extra Attacks to 100 points and you can attack 5 times in a round.  

Tell me there's some kind of logic to these point values, because on the surface it looks like a bunch of legacy rulings without any cohesive thought behind them.

First of all, you really should post this question on SJ forum. Sean Punch, one of the rulebook authors and Gurps line director, is one of the moderators and surely can explain this better than me.

As a rule of thumb, I would say that roughly 5 points advantages buys you a +1 in determinated area (for example: Charisma) and so on so forth, but I never bothered on the math behind the advantages point cost.

Consider, though, that they did clean a lot Gurps when they pushed out the fourth edition. Before a lot of advantages' cost was tailored to the setting rather being generic, so the same advantage could have two values depending on which book you used.

Every game with advantages and disadvantages that you buy with points has set arbitrary values for them. Some, like Hero System, assume that your game is 95% about combat effectiveness and set costs accordingly for not just advantages but everything in the game. Others I'll be damned if I can guess how they arrived at the point costs. I'd either change the costs to reflect the play style or abandon the game as unusable as-is.

By the by, I like GURPS (3rd edition, at least).

I suspect the rationale behind GURPS points has shifted a bit over they years but it's based on a larger picture than combat.  Utility in play.  Altered time rate is good for lots of other things while attacks are attacks.

Like any additive points system GURPS has a sweet spot.  It makes the most sense at around 200 points, you start to get weird artifacts like it being cheaper to mind control the entire country than it is to lift a bus.

But yeah, I hear you.

Quote from: JonWake;836349In my occasional quest to try and enjoy GURPS, I picked up the book again and started making a character. I have one serious question: how the fuck did Steve Jackson decide on the point values for advantages?  They're all over the place.  Not needing to sleep is 20 points, but being able to dominate other characters with your mind powers is also 20 points. Altered Time rate is 100 points, but just buy up Extra Attacks to 100 points and you can attack 5 times in a round.  

Tell me there's some kind of logic to these point values, because on the surface it looks like a bunch of legacy rulings without any cohesive thought behind them.

Obviously you shouldn't be comparing all advantages together. What brilliant GM is letting their players have access to all of them during chargen? They need to pick the ones suited for their game, so things don't go Mojo Jojo.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;836490Obviously you shouldn't be comparing all advantages together. What brilliant GM is letting their players have access to all of them during chargen? They need to pick the ones suited for their game, so things don't go Mojo Jojo.

Absolutely.  My GM-hat answer would be "You're creating a fantasy character, and you've got 125 points to do it.  Counting in the Unusual Background surcharge for any one of those abilities, how exactly are you affording them?"

As far as Jon's specific examples?  Well, first off, Extra Attack can be only taken ONCE by a non-super, costs 25/attack (not 20), and all it does is give you an extra Attack maneuver in combat.  Altered Time Rate gives you an extra TURN in combat, never mind its huge advantages for any task involving a duration.  The costs are unbalanced only if you're one of those players who believes that RPG = melee combat, and everything else is ignorable.

The Mind Control advantage is 50 points, not 20.

This is a common problem for all point buy games. The only good option I have discovered is to find THE ONE whose good parts are most enjoyable for you and whose bad parts are least bothersome. For me, TriStat was that game.

I began my point buy journey with HERO, but I don't even recognize the game anymore. For me, GURPS has always been WTF biscuit bacon, but it clearly works great for many people.

Weirdos.



I did find this lite point buy a few years ago which was quite fun:
http://www.stargazergames.eu/games/warrior-rogue-mage/

Quote from: JonWake;836349In my occasional quest to try and enjoy GURPS, I picked up the book again and started making a character. I have one serious question: how the fuck did Steve Jackson decide on the point values for advantages?  They're all over the place.  Not needing to sleep is 20 points, but being able to dominate other characters with your mind powers is also 20 points. Altered Time rate is 100 points, but just buy up Extra Attacks to 100 points and you can attack 5 times in a round.  

Tell me there's some kind of logic to these point values, because on the surface it looks like a bunch of legacy rulings without any cohesive thought behind them.

From Sean Punch

QuoteTo be fair, I know as a fact that in GURPS, First Edition, advantages were indeed priced for desired rarity in the game, not for their utility. I know this because the designer told me! Combat Reflexes is far more useful than most 15-point traits and many traits worth quite a bit more, but it's priced cheaply because it's common in adventure fiction and not meant to be rare. Warp costs more mostly because it's an outré superpower, and just about always rare when it's innate rather than technological.

In short Advantages and Disadvantages are arbitrary values based on Steve Jackson's judgment on how common they should be in a game.

My personal observation is that while the above is true there are two loose classes of advantage/disadvantage, the mundane and the powers.

The Mundane advantages (Combat Reflexes, etc) appear to be priced with the above logic. While the powers are priced relative to each other. I.e. a power that is twice as effective will be priced twice as much. This is especially true in fourth edition.

Also, it's a toolkit AND it's YOUR game. :-)

There is absolutely no reason you can't increase or decrease costs based on your setting/campaign.  Also the aforementioned Unusual Background puts a nice premium on a list of "possible but not common" advantages that may exist.

Secondly, you can build templates that are required in the campaign. Everyone gets them. You can limit points or add more points if desired. Required disadvantages do not count towards the DA limit.

Finally, you can build Powers and restrict Advantages to those builds. This could involve an investment in Talent, one or more Powers and and one or more Skills. It also gives certain Advantages a theme that may better fit your setting.

Personally, I have never had a successful start to a game where I handed the books to players and said "make Space Heroes". It's painful. There is a PDF for GURPS that talks about making templates. I would highly encourage anyone starting a GURPS game to first invest the time to make templates.

I like GURPs well enough, but this sort of issue is what makes me enjoy the crusty grognard approach of '3d6, in order' character creation. As my daughter's preschool class teacher said: "you get what you get, and you don't get upset". I suspect the entire genre of point-buy games was created to satisfy the needs of people who can't stomach that rule.

Quote from: trechriron;836577Personally, I have never had a successful start to a game where I handed the books to players and said "make Space Heroes". It's painful. There is a PDF for GURPS that talks about making templates. I would highly encourage anyone starting a GURPS game to first invest the time to make templates.

This.

Templates are key when using these kind of chargen RPGs.

After literally years of looking at GURPS, I'm finally starting to Grok it. I still think having some unified point value would work better than Steve Jackson Fiat, and super strength is still stupid, but I've gotten to where I can bodge together a character in about 30 minutes to an hour, provided there aren't superpowers involved. You just have to do a LOT of homework before you drop it in a players lap. I've had three of my five regular players have terrible GURPS experiences with GMs that handed them the book and said "make a character".

Quote from: estar;836553From Sean Punch



In short Advantages and Disadvantages are arbitrary values based on Steve Jackson's judgment on how common they should be in a game.

My personal observation is that while the above is true there are two loose classes of advantage/disadvantage, the mundane and the powers.

The Mundane advantages (Combat Reflexes, etc) appear to be priced with the above logic. While the powers are priced relative to each other. I.e. a power that is twice as effective will be priced twice as much. This is especially true in fourth edition.

Wow, that thread is so full of cognitive dissonance it makes my head spin.
Person A: Hey, these costs don't make any sense.
Designer: Yup. Legacy shit.
The Mob: They make sense if you aren't a big doo doo head, doo doo head.

Quote from: JonWake;836620Wow, that thread is so full of cognitive dissonance it makes my head spin.
Person A: Hey, these costs don't make any sense.
Designer: Yup. Legacy shit.
The Mob: They make sense if you aren't a big doo doo head, doo doo head.

That's not exactly right, and kind of an assinine way of putting it.

However: I'm sympathetic. GURPS costs for super powers are, an issue and something I really don't enjoy about the game.

I know a guy who's response was to rewrite GURPS to address the issue, which is, I think, I viable option if you have the time.

Cheers,
-E.

Quote from: JonWake;836615After literally years of looking at GURPS, I'm finally starting to Grok it. I still think having some unified point value would work better than Steve Jackson Fiat, and super strength is still stupid, but I've gotten to where I can bodge together a character in about 30 minutes to an hour, provided there aren't superpowers involved. You just have to do a LOT of homework before you drop it in a players lap. I've had three of my five regular players have terrible GURPS experiences with GMs that handed them the book and said "make a character".

I don't doubt it.  I've taught the system to over a hundred players, and I've only had a handful of players who were familiar with the system before joining my campaign.  In each and every case, I want them making their first characters while I'm in the room, so I can make suggestions, comments and "Nice try, but no."

While, fundamentally, GURPS has simple mechanics, I don't feel it's a beginner's system.  It takes time to learn and time to master.  I'm okay with that; the RPG world ought to have scope for systems beyond Lowest Common Denominator.  

It also works best at low entropy -- despite all the attempts, and even though I contributed a few things to GURPS Supers, I don't think the system ever has handled supers well.  I likewise don't think it handles Star Trek/Lensman-level space opera SF well -- skills and brains solve ten times less than your widgets do.