Continuing the Process
So with Second Lieutenant Kathryn Twarowski (aka Kate, aka “2LT”) we are in the same place we left off in Making the Player Characters- “The Process” & Templates and will complete the steps in “The Process” that we did with SSG Beck in the last article.
Finishing Up Second Lieutenant Twarowski (Player: Gordon)
So to refresh everyone here is Gordon’s Bio Sheet enunciating 2LT Twarowski.
And here are the Templates we will begin with:
And we will start again we’ll start with Kate’s Advantages and Disadvantages just like we did with SSG Beck.
Traits
So looking at he Advantages, we see Gordon decided to purchase an Ally for Kate, Sergeant First Class Maria Diaz. It costs 6 points. Gordon discussed this in his character concept discussions and it was on her Bio sheet. They knew each other on active duty in Germany when Kate was a Junior Enlisted Interrogator and Diaz was an E-5 Sergeant. They bonded and Diaz ended up in Seattle, WA and in the 341 MI BN (WA NG). Cool background. Diaz will be a companion NPC in the campaign. Her “availability” number will be 12 or less (situationally at GM discretion for rolling, always, again, setting dependent). Diaz will be made at 75% of Kate’s point total of 140 points (so, 105 Points). “The Process” allows for hashing things like this out. Deepens the character and the Campaign. Invaluable.
Kate speaks and writes Polish at a native-level fluency (background). This costs 6 points (she already has English at Native proficiency for free). Kate also has Cultural Familiarity (Eastern Europe) for 1 point. She is inherently aware of Polish attitudes, customs and “ways of doing things.” GURPS recommends keeping this broader than any pure nationality (Western Europe rather than French or Belgian, as examples) to prevent pigeon-holing this advantage in a tiny country as its effect (Lichtenstein?). Kate has the standard lifting strength advantage (we’ll talk gear soon…) and Security Clearance with the same 50% savings for practical physical lack of access due to the setting, both like we saw with Beck.
Regarding Disadvantages, Kate has a fear of heights that she’s spent years working to overcome. Its normally -10 points with a control roll of 12 or less, here bought down to 15 or less. High enough where she’s been able to “fake it” when it has come up in military service. As I frequently do with more customized advantages or disadvantages, I have renamed it, here to emphasize that it just isn’t a phobia anymore. More of an Anxiety. Most of the rest are fairly self-explanatory. The mitigator in “Bad Sight” negates the effects unless they are removed. The Intolerance of Russians is a deeply ingrained thing based on her family background and experiences before leaving Poland (something to overcome!). I discussed the Sense of Duty aspect of things as being separate from a Duty or a Dependent.
Before I get into the other Disads, its worth discussing that many Disads in GURPS are what I like to call “Nuanced Alignments.” Instead of being “Chaotic Good” or whatnot, GURPS Disadvantages allows for nuanced, complicated moral guideposts for characters. Is a Sense of Duty to your subordinates really a bad thing? Most of us would probably say that it is a morally laudable trait. But a real strength of the toolkit that is GURPS allows for someone to have a laudable Sense of Duty and a distasteful Intolerance to Russians, with in-game mechanical effects that aid in guiding roleplaying. What if Kate ended up having a subordinate who was Russian? Cool stuff.
So the last two disads are the Dependent and Pacifism: Reluctant Killer. Very frequently her Ally, SFC Diaz, can become someone she needs to aid. If you have someone valuable that you care about, sometimes the flip side of that is you get dragged into their problems (currently, SFC Diaz is part of a missing cohort trying to evade death/capture on Łask Air Base and the Party’s number one goal is to go rescue them (See the Session Recaps!).
Pacifism: Reluctant Killer is worth some discussion. GURPS defines it and mechanically expresses it as, You are psychologically unprepared to kill people. Whenever you make a deadly attack (e.g., with a knife or a gun) against an obvious person whose face is visible to you, you are at -4 to hit and may not Aim. If you cannot see the foe’s face (due to a mask, darkness, or distance, or because you attacked from behind), the penalty is only -2, save in close combat. You have no penalty to attack a vehicle (even an occupied one), an opponent you do not believe is a person (including things with Horrific or Monstrous appearance), or a target you can’t actually see (e.g., a set of map coordinates or a blip on a radar screen). If you kill a recognizable person, the effect on you is the same as for Cannot Kill (see below – Pat Note: Bad Psychological Reaction). You have no problem with your allies killing; you may even supply ammo, loaded weapons, and encouragement! You just can’t do the killing yourself. -5 points (GURPS Basic Characters, p. 148). The section on the different Pacifism Disadvantages on the same page goes on to say, In a high-realism campaign, the GM might require all PCs to start out with Reluctant Killer or even Cannot Kill, giving them extra points but putting them at a disadvantage when facing hardened foes.
I found this to be an absolutely appropriate Disadvantage for this Campaign to reinforce its tone. I didn’t mandate it, but certainly discussed it with all the Players as an option. Being a Soldier is one thing. Shooting someone in the face is quite another. Other Player Characters and Companion NPCs have this Disadvantage. Others do not. If you read between the lines of the recap of the group’s first firefight, you can see some of the effects there as well as some reactions to the aftermath in the next session. This gets back to the tone discussed before we started at the Session Zero.
Skills
Kate has a lotta Skills. She was limited to 20 points maximum in anything in the Military Templates with a maximum of Skill Rank 2 (2 Points). For all players I allowed this to be broken to an appropriate level if their background justified it (someone was a big time gun person or an outdoorsman, an electronics tinkerer). Notice Kate’s Veterinary skills may prove valuable in a setting regressing to farming and animal power, let alone the usefulness of some in being a “mob doctor” (Physician defaults to Veterinary -5 for example).
Final Twarowski at Start
Here we see 2Lt Twarowski’s sheet which is REALLY long with the containers all spread out.
Not much to add here. Gordon is very well versed in GURPS. He selected skills independently after we finished Advantages and Disadvantages. He knows the ins and outs of various skill defaults and where/when to look at them. He then sent me back the sheet. I had no questions or advice to help enable his concept so we left it there. As a side note, for every Player Character, when we were completely finished, I asked every player to select one completely frivolous skill to spend one point on. This was to reinforce the “Real People are Soldiers too” aspect of the Campaign. Gordon had already selected plenty so I gave him an extra point to use somewhere. So we have a fully fleshed out three dimensional character with good motivations that will enable immersion. Now here’s a bonus, starting gear!
Starting Gear
Here is the starting gear for each Player Character, generally; this is Kate’s gear.
You can’t kind of can’t do this kind of setting and create the dilemmas of this setting without scarcity. And that means resources and gear. GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) takes a LOT of crunch out of this. GURPS uses the Imperial system of weights, measures and distances (let’s fight and argue about this some other day…) rather than Metric. But as you see, GCS does all the work for you. “Carried Equipment” is what Kate has on her right now. So near the top of her sheet we see this:
GCS knows that because Kate is wandering around carrying 50.41 lbs. on her person that, based on her Strength (and Lifting Strength +3 advantage) she is above 34 lbs so she is going to suffer “Light” Encumbrance Penalties, reducing her Basic Move 5 (5 Yards) Secondary Characteristic to 4. Her Dodge (Basic Speed Secondary Characteristic + 3, dropping all fractions, so in her case 5 +3 =8) is -1. Also if you look at her skills her Swimming is down to “8” from what it should be, “10”, because she is -2. May the Gods forever smile upon GCS! Go to my Feedback and Friends page and give those guys money! You see that pack she has? If she puts it on she’ll be at an additional 43.35 lbs. and at 93.76 lbs. total. Barely at Medium Encumbrance. You see the potential effects above. Her Swimming would be at “6.” I am going to make a sacrifice and light a candle to GCS now…
So Gear hasn’t proven to be a big deal. A lot has to do with GM preparation and I will discuss other things in the campaign regarding that later, but to start, everyone had the gear they were issued when activated and after deployment to Europe. Standard stuff, really. So preparing that saved a lot of time and mental energy for the players in this setting pondering and grabbing gear. The player characters would be starting out at the 5th Infantry Division HQ, so no opportunity to obtain special or other wonky gear. And I let them choose little special things if they desired. Gordon was most concerned with Kate’s prescription eyeglasses and case (and the spare!).
Anyway, I think that’s enough for this article. In the next and final article of this “Making The Player Characters” mini series of articles I will anger 50% to 66.66666% of the current segment of GURPS players and GMs by skewering a sacred cow.