The thing about GURPS is that it's very front heavy, both on the GM and player.  Character creation is the heavy front end work for the player, and clearly defining what will or will not be allowed is the heavy front end work for the GM.  

As Koltar and others have pointed out, you have to be very explicit at character creation as to what type of advantages/disadvantage will be allowed or excluded in the game.  Just restricting cinematic choices, and reducing points gained for disadvantages (i.e. only 20 points back in disads), will go a long way to cutting down crazy characters.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;395467At my fitness instructor school there was a legally-blind albino martial artist of remarkable strength. He was of Egyptian heritage, and liked AC/DC and driving fast cars.

Albinism often leads to blindness, as the lack of pigmentation means the retina is unprotected from the harmful action of solar UV radiation.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;395467So people like this really do exist. But more commonly, some prick gets all the Advantages, and some poor sod gets all the Disadvantages. Real life is not point-buy, alas.

Sad but true.

Quote from: Cylonophile;395470To paraphrase the bard :"The fault lies not in out system but in out players."

 If the players are twinking out on combat monsters and min maxing to the point their characters look like some sort of comical parody of a good character in the same way some athletes steroid up until they look like mesomorphic parodies of human beings then it's not the systems fault and no system will change that.

 It's the players habits that need changing, not the system.

 Personal feelings towards SJG asides, G4e did a decent job of labeling advantages and disadvantages with various icons, some of them are warnings that the particular trait can unbalance a game if not supervised carefully.

 So don't pick out gurps or any  other system for the "Players can make monster characters with it!!!"  issue, it's endemic to any points buy system and the only cures are good, responsible players or a strict GM.

I prefer the former.

OK, but are these people actually a problem? If the players like playing steroid junkie Space Marine characters, that's a clear signal about what sort of game they want to play, at least.

As an aside, I knew a girl at uni a few years back who was an albino and somewhat blind -she was fairly shortsighted and wore glasses I think (not legally blind or anything AFAIK), and used a monocly type thingy to see close up. No compensatory super powers that I noticed.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;395587As an aside, I knew a girl at uni a few years back who was an albino and somewhat blind -she was fairly shortsighted and wore glasses I think (not legally blind or anything AFAIK), and used a monocly type thingy to see close up. No compensatory super powers that I noticed.

You didn't notice the moaning black sword at her side?

!i!

Quote from: The Butcher;395573Albinism often leads to blindness, as the lack of pigmentation means the retina is unprotected from the harmful action of solar UV radiation.

As I understood it, it was more that the lack of iris colour meant that the light coming onto the retina was not properly focused by the lens of the eye, so that the retina receptor cells never developed properly. Sort of like getting your camera and punching holes in the trunk of it around the lens - the image on the film would be washed out and blurred.

But of course health conditions are as individual as the rest of the person.

Really what a person can accomplish in their life has a lot more to do with their resolve and sociability than their particular health conditions or whatever. Just consider all the reasons people give for avoiding physical training. Matt Scott describes them here.

In GURPS terms, if it takes 200-800hr to develop 1 XP's worth of ability, but just a moment or accident of birth to have -40 (say) of Disadvantages, it's pretty easy to see that not many people will have the resolve and patience to work for the 8,000-32,000hr to develop enough Advantages or Skills to balance them.

It's been said that becoming a recognised expert in something takes around 10,000hr of training. Not just 10,000hr of doing that thing, but 10,000hr of challenging yourself. The gymnast must be willing to fall over, the runner to throw up or pull a muscle, the chef to produce a crap meal, the violinist to play pieces where they will have an off note or stumble, and so on. That's 3-4hr a day over 10 years.

For example, Damien Walters' 3-4hr a day (with at least a day off a week) of strength, flexibility, gymnastic and parkour training for 20 years has got him this. It's the result of around 20,000hr of training.

So the effort Damien Walters has put in to become such an impressive gymnast is in the same realm as the effort a person will need to overcome or balance around 40xp of Disadvantages. Thus the book tells us that any Disadvantage worth more than about 5xp is a very big deal.

When you describe things in terms like that, I find that most players understand it well, and you get less one-eyed epileptic dwarfs during character generation.

Quote from: Ian Absentia;395588You didn't notice the moaning black sword at her side?

!i!

Moaning black cane?
The idea of blind albino PCs armed with soul-eating weapons is seriously alarming, BTW. I'm staying away from GURPS Stormbringer.

This is a problem with MANY point-buy systems, and particularly with point-buy systems that have "Disadvantages" options that give players extra points. Players will always try to take combinations of disadvantages that let them have extra points to max into certain skills, while at the same time trying to strategically choose those disadvantages that they feel won't actually disadvantage THEM in terms of what they want the character to do.

The only really good way to make characters with something like GURPS is to start with the character concept FIRST, and then choose the skills attributes etc. that connect to that concept, and not filling up or rounding out the character to a fixed point value by taking lots of extra skills or powers or by loading up on strategic-disadvantages. Its a bitch.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;395901The only really good way to make characters with something like GURPS is to start with the character concept FIRST, and then choose the skills attributes etc. that connect to that concept, and not filling up or rounding out the character to a fixed point value by taking lots of extra skills or powers or by loading up on strategic-disadvantages. Its a bitch.

Templates help overcome this. Plus that one on one session technique I posted about on your blog. GURPS is a toolkit meant to implemented by the referee for a particular setting and genre. If you let players go hog wild even staying in a genre then you will run into this issue.

I attached a PDF of the Myrmidon of Set Template that I used several years ago.

Quote from: winkingbishop;395386So my one-handed, shell-shocked, sexually deviant, hemophiliac master swordsman is a no-go for your campaign then?



Indeed I do.  But GURPS isn't alone in this one.  If the guidance you get from this forum doesn't help enough, try this: Attempt to run a Big Eyes Small Mouth 2nd Edition campaign.  GURPS will feel like a breath of fresh air once the BESM one burns down for related (but much worse) reasons. :hatsoff:

Or better yet, try a SILVER AGE SENTINELS game or an AUTHORITY game, woe!