Making the Player Characters – That’s A Wrap on Beck!

Continuing the Process

In the last post on Making the Player Characters, I described “The Process” as: “How players character creation is done in a GURPS campaign I am running” and provided a simple outline. What we have left are:

5. 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.

6. Usually the player finishes off a lot of stuff independently when we hit a certain point.

7. OPTIONAL – The Player wants more help or clarification , we make an appointment and I help the Player.

8. Player sends me the final version of the GCS Character Sheet.

Finishing Up Staff Sergeant Beck (Player: Scott)

So in today’s article we are going to finish up SSG Beck. We’ll do 2LT Twarowski tomorrow and then we’ll talk a bit about gearing up the PCs. So to refresh everyone here is Scott’s Bio Sheet enunciating SSG Beck.

And here are the Templates we will begin with:

So we’ll start with SSG Beck’s Advantages and Disadvantages. This is where I usually begin. If a Player is very GURPS-familiar then generally I can just have a convo about the rest of the Player Character and then let them go ahead an implement. Scott is kinda GURPS-familiar, but still new to playing the system so we talked about various skills and permutations of things that I will get into here in a bit. But right now let’s start with Advantages and Disadvantages.

Traits

So regarding the Advantages, we see that Beck has some Acute Hearing and Lifting Strength 2. The first lets him hear stuff a little better with a +1 on hearing rolls. The second gives a +2 to Strength when lifting or carrying stuff only (not combat damage, essentially). These are standard Advantages. All the rest have been altered due to the setting or player preference. So Security Clearance reflects specific information he can access or systems he can use as a Military Intelligence guy. But the cost is cut in half due to “Actual Access physically is limited” because we are in a post-nuclear exchange setting where society is collapsing and the internet, satellites and cell towers, etc. don’t work. So an Advantage that would normally cost 20 points costs 10. Morse Code is basically considered a Language you can only write in my interpretation and its limit is “accented” because many things involving tone or nuance are very hard to get across using it. So it has been bought at maximum possible. Individual Combat Reflexes is something Beck can buy specifically because he is a “veteran” in this Setting and Campaign. Many, many combat or combat-adjacent deployments. It is a severely altered version of the standard “Combat Reflexes” Advantage that I have serious heartburn with and will be discussed quite in-depth in a later article.

Regarding Disadvantages, the Addiction is a bog-standard GURPS Disadvantage. So is the Dependent, but in this setting those people are far, far away. As well, Beck has no idea what has become of them. Hence the 6 or less roll for the GM to see if it comes up (frequency up to the GM, again Setting dependent). So this then becomes either something that involves news regarding them or the area they are in in the US or a situation that pulls on Beck’s heart strings because it reminds him of those loved ones. Guilt Complex means that if something bad happens to someone Beck cares about he will fell responsible, and may slide into a depression. Something bad happened once that he still blames himself for…

A quick word on Sense of Duty up there. Beck, as part of his Junior NCO Traits has a Dependent Roll for Junior Enlisted that may come into play. That’s like his Duty to the Army that we saw in the last post. Its something the Character has to deal with. Sense of Duty, on the other hand, means Beck cares about his subordinates. He’ll do what he can to really help them. Maybe risk his neck.

Now lets talk about the other three Disadvantages. “Bad Grouch” is essentially “Bad Temper” (-10 Points) with the Control Roll (CR) changed from 12 or less to 15 or less on 3d6. Beck has began the process of “buying off” Bad Temper. “Hates Dithering” is “Impulsiveness” (-10 Points) again bought off from CR 12 to 15. Beck has been trying to mend his ways over the years. But “Bad Beck” is still in there sometimes.

Skills

Beck has a lotta skills. They are organized in GCS using those categorizers, called “Containers” (The Traits are too, btw). As a “Veteran” per the Session Zero discussion, Beck could put 60 total points in any of his Military skills. His “Individual Combat Reflexes” came out of that total and frankly allowed him to even buy it. He also was able to spend from that point limit on those “Deployment Skills.” Beck was “in the s***“. As a “veteran” he could also spend any of that overall group of skills up to “Rank 4” (8 Points) maximum per skill. “Experienced” Characters are limited in this Campaign to 40 Points and 3 skill ranks (4 points). “Trained” 20 Points and 2 skill ranks (2 points). Again talking purely about “Military related” skill categories or deployment skills or advantages about combat.

Final Beck at Start

Here we see Beck’s sheet which is REALLY long with the containers all spread out.

So Scott’s Character is a really good example of why “The Process” is so valuable. For a player who is really well-versed in GURPS, I may have stopped after advantages and disadvantages were done. Those are important for Genre/Setting/Tone enforcement and I may have to chime in. As well, just knowing that stuff helps the players add to “world-building.” However Scott is familiar with the system but a lot of the finer points on skill selection he needed advice on. For example, GURPS has a default system for trying to roll skills you may not have (if appropriate). So Animal Handling is IQ/Average and defaults to !Q -5. So a player could roll their IQ (Beck has an 11) and have a target of 6 or less to round up some cattle (Good Luck, Beck!). But there are some nuances there. Guns generally default to one another at -2. So Scott took Guns (Light Machinegun) purposefully to be better than a net default of 10 (Guns Rifle -2) because we discussed it. Many Mechanic skills default o one another at -2. So Scott could have Beck be really well versed in Mechanics of all sorts without buying a bevy of specialized skills. This is enabling the player. Again, Trust the Process.

I planned to do Kate here, but I think we’ve gone in-depth long enough for one article. I plan to finish her up tomorrow and then talk about gear. And maybe discuss “Combat Reflexes” and the surprise rules in GURPS and how they are a bit problematic. And how I solved those problems for this Setting and this Campaign.