Trust the Process
In a previous post here I first introduced “The Process.” A simple description would be “How players character creation is done in a GURPS campaign I am running.” A simple outline would be:
Caveat: Regardless of the Player’s experience with the system or even playing at a table I run, we will use “the process.”
- The player and I discuss a character concept, using a voice conversation.
- I send a blank word Bio Sheet template I have made for the Campaign, designed for that setting.
- The Player fills that out to the best of their ability and sends it back.
- I make appropriate Templates and Lenses based on what we have discussed and what the player has written. Those may have been created already.
- We make an appointment to make the character together virtually via voice on Discord and I stream my screen as necessary. The Player gives me any final details or answers questions I may have about the Bio Sheet. Then we make the character together with GURPS Character Sheet (GCS). The Player makes the choices, I am there to advise, offer suggestions, provide Genre/Setting enforcement and just bear witness to the choices.
- Usually the player finishes off a lot of stuff independently when we hit a certain point.
- OPTIONAL – The Player wants more help or clarification , we make an appointment and I help the Player.
- Player sends me the final version of the GCS Character Sheet.
This process has only really ever failed to deliver once. I had a player for a sandbox 1600-ish technology inspired Fantasy Sandbox Campaign. The Player really wanted to play in an Anime Campaign. That was not this Campaign, but the Player really wanted to play and worked with me hard. I will work with anyone, usually, as long as they are working with me. The Player ended up in a Campaign that wasn’t their cup of tea. I learned that if I have to work that hard, the Campaign isn’t for the Player. Two other failures not worth talking about have occurred in the last five years because I disobeyed the process.
The process works. GURPS ain’t D&D. There ain’t no, “Tiefling Paladin? Sure, just roll one up and don’t use X and Y. See you on Wednesday.” I’d argue that is a surefire way to have a bad D&D Campaign, but that is a post on another blog. Both of you need to have investment in the process of making the Player’s character and enabling their vision but still ensuring that vision fits into the campaign and will work. End State? Player makes a character they enjoy that works in the Setting/Campaign and you completely grok all the salient information needed to handle whatever Allies, Enemies, Rivals, Factions or whatever else the Player Character brings to the Campaign. So now, lets practically see how the process works.
Session Zero
So above we have the two Session Zero slides. On the first we have discussion of the Party Construction which everyone agreed to. The only change on that slide made before staring “The Process” is that the “Trained”, “Experienced” and “Veteran Categories were reduced to 20 Points, 40 Points and 60 Points respectively and it was agreed that those totals would also apply to any Advantages justified by prior combat experience. Frankly, they were too high as point totals to start, given the overall point total limits.
Bio Sheets
So we have two Bio Sheet examples below and we’ll walk through both these characters in terms of character creation. The first is Staff Sergeant Robert “Bob” Beck (Player: Scott).
Ignore the “Confidential” above, that’s fake. I created a mock up of a pretend local unit “Basic Data Form” for color and to get the players into the vibe, to include using “Courier New” font (ahh, love ya Army) and the 341 MI BN (WA NG) crest.
You will see that Scott has made SSG Beck a Long Haul Truck Driver in his civilian job (Driving and Mechanical Skills…). He was a Vietnam Vet who was drafted in late 1970 and did a tour in Vietnam in 1971. He decided that he was an 11B RTO (Backpack Radio guy) then. His Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) in 1998 (when the unit was activated) is a 26C Satellite Communications Operator (I used period MOS codes from 1998, because why not?). He likes tinkering with all sorts of communication devices, ran a Ham Radio as a kid. You’ll see he has volunteered multiple times for various deployments overseas in a support role. When Beck gets bored or fed up with real life, he volunteers to go somewhere and do something else, a little dangerous, overseas. Beck is definitely a “Veteran”. When he chafes at the military structure while deployed, he comes home and wants to drive a truck again and the freedom of the road. He wants to be a writer. Neat character concept. We can implement this.
Now lets look at Second Lieutenant Kathryn “Kate” Twarowski (Gordon):
So Gordon wants Kate to come from a Polish Immigrant family where the extended family (her parents and her father’s brother and their families and other family members) all escaped Communist Poland after the Second World War. They’re from outside of Spokane, WA. Cool, Polish Language ability at native and cultural familiarity with Eastern European cultures completely baked in here. She’s a Veterinarian in her civilian job. Great opportunity for some “mob doctor” medical skills and proficiencies. She was an active duty Army interrogator for four years before joining the guard; time in Germany and deployed to Desert Storm, but didn’t do much. Then when she was getting her B.S. at Washington State University (Go Cougs!) she simultaneously did Officer’s Candidate School in the summer and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant when she graduated. She is now a 35A All Source Intelligence Officer. We all agree she is “Trained.” Another great character concept that can absolutely be implemented.
Templates
GURPS defines a Template as a partially completed character sheet that contains only those traits required for a character to fill a certain role believably. It lists the point costs of those traits, and gives the sum as the template’s cost” (GUPRS Basic Characters, p. 258).
So practically what we are talking about is a group of pre-spent points on certain Attributes, Advantages, Disadvantages, Skills and whatever else as a baseline for the Player Character. And if the Gamemaster mandates Templates to all the Player Characters the Gamemaster may exempt any Disadvantages from the “overall limit for Disadvantages.” So there’s no min-maxing here. Its a guide to help players focus.
So my strategy was to make Templates for all things all players would have: An Everyman Template, which I’ll discuss below, US Army Basic Training for Enlisted, US Army Basic Officer Training for any Officer, some additional templates for higher ranking officers or NCOs. And I would make MOS Templates for every MOS someone picked. And then I’d make a few others, if needed, if something unusual came up.
So above we have the Everyman Template. Its Traits and Skills every PC in the Campaign and maybe everyone in the world would have. And they are free. So for this Campaign, everyone gets one Language with native proficiency level speaking and writing. GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) has a mechanism where if its truly native language, it just cancels out the points to zero (normally, that would cost six points). Then three free skills for 1998. Driving (Automobile) and two places where you have Area Knowledge like you lived there. Keeping the everyman skills simple here. If it was 2024 Computer Operation would be on that list. Than that “Everyman Reimbursal” for -3 is just an accounting way to give the Character 3 extra points and cancel out the three skills so the whole thing costs zero points. Bingo, Bango. Both Beck and Twarowski get this template. Both choose English as their Native Language. Beck takes Indiana and Western Washington State as his “lived there” Areas. Twarowski takes Spokane, WA area and Frankfurt, Germany area (where she was stationed in the Army when Enlisted).
SSG Beck’s Templates
So we see above, the Traits in a Template are kind of the “final status” and are done by rank group. So Beck has a Duty to the US Army almost all the time (15 or less, rolled by the Gamemaster at a Setting appropriate time). Because of his position he is going to have a smaller group of subordinates who may have problems or need correction/attention (9 or less, rolled by the Gamemaster at a Setting appropriate time). Those two Disadvantages reimburse him for 16 Points and do not count towards his overall Disadvantage limit. Then he has a Patron, the US Army who will help him out if he needs help but not as much as it demands with that Duty and it will provide Minimal Intervention. And he has Enlisted Rank 1 in the US Army. Rank has its privileges, so that costs 5 points. The traits end up giving Beck points towards the total cost for all the Templates.
On the Skills side, the skills stack. There are multiple skill boxes, mini-templates for Beck used a la carte. Its a total of 15 points worth of skills, but Beck will eliminate that “US Army Radio Operation” Technique. Its a Technique, not a skill and I won’t hash that out in this post. It’s keyed to his IQ and is like a very limited skill about just operating US Army radios in a very basic way. Beck’s MOS gives him a far superior skill that lets him operate ALL radios in a very deep way. So that one point for the “US Army Radio Operation” Technique will get pulled out. So Beck effectively will have 14 Points used up by his skill templates. He gets reimbursed 6 points by the net effect of his traits template. So Bob Beck starts off using 8 of his 140 points before he starts making the character. He’ll move to the next stage with 132 points to spend. A very light deduction from his total.
2LT Twarowski’s Templates
Kate has a bigger cost for her Traits. They are similar to Beck’s but she has a greater responsibility to subordinates that can eat at her time. As well, she’s an officer and has a higher rank (with more privileges). So Kate ends up spending a net 3 points on those Traits.
Kate has a lot of skills. Kate went to Basic Training. Then she was a trained Enlisted Army Interrogator. Kate didn’t learn a language (as would be normal for an Interrogator) because she speaks native level fluent Polish (we’ll get to that later). Kate then got off active duty and drilled in the National Guard while going to college. We’ll deal with that later. We are dealing with “Military Kate” right now. The Kate went to OCS where the skills from the Basic Officer Skills Template (not seen here) that are not present in Basic Training above are essentially added in. Then the Army gave her a new MOS, a supervisory analyst job to become a fully fledged Second Lieutenant in Military Intelligence. So her templates for skills cost 27 Points. The traits cost a net 3 points. So Kate is down 30 points from her 140 and is now at 110 as we move to the next stage.
That’s it for Templates. My practical process as a Gamemaster in preparation is to make what I need based on the concepts players enunciate for their characters. Then I create a logical series of them. I then may later add to them for friendly NPCs of various stripes and I use a similar process of small building block templates for other nationalities as needed. GCS makes this easy. I have by no means, for instance, create every single US Army MOS from 1998 in template form. But I have made many and later on I will share most of the Templates I have made for the Twilight: 2000 setting. But the next post will finish up an examination of “The Process” for Player Character Creation. We really have only just finished up Step 4 in my list above.