What Does A 0-Point GURPS Character Look Like?

In all the time that I played GURPS, which I did with considerable intensity, I never once wondered what a 0-point character would look like.  (And if I ever did, I must not have spent a long time wondering.)

Tonight, I was looking through GURPS IOU and came upon the section that discusses appropriate point levels for characters in that milieu.  Local Citizenry, the book states, would rate 0-100 points.  I began to wonder...then, I popped open GURPS Character Builder and started, uh, buildin'.

So!  Meet Jerry Raymond:

Jerry Raymond
(0 Points)
Age 22; 5'8", 145 lbs; Dude's so average-looking, he may as well be invisible.

ST: 9 [-10]	IQ: 11 [10]	Speed: 5.00
DX: 10 [0]	HT: 10 [0]	Move: 5
Dodge: 5

Advantages

Charisma +2 [10] (Reaction: +2); Common Sense [10]; Voice [10] (Reaction: +2).

Disadvantages

Chummy [-5]; Struggling [-10] (Starting Wealth: $7,500); Duty (Minimum Wage Job at a grocery store) (9 or less) [-5]; Weirdness Magnet [-15].

Quirks

Never wears turtlenecks; Chess player; Quiet; Likes redheads; Sleepy Drinker. [-5]

Skills

Musical Instrument (Keyboard)-10 [2]; Carousing-9 [1]; Driving/TL7-10 [2]; Detect Lies-10 [2]; Chess-11 [1]; Writing-11 [2].

Description

Jerry's an average guy. He likes sports, he's kind of quiet, he's a bit of an artist and likes to hang out with his friends.

But the talking broccoli in his fridge, the time that a Martian princess rear-ended him at the grocery store, and the regular wrong-number calls from Steven Hawking and Eleanor Roosevelt's ghost? THOSE things are obviously NOT normal, and they WEREN'T his idea, and he kinda wishes they wouldn't happen.

But they do.

So...he deals with it...just like everyone else.

So I guess he lives in whatever town IOU is in, and maybe his life and the University intersect a lot.

Hmmm.

How D&D Sounds To Me

kuh-ZAPP!  WHOA!  It's 1989.  Summer.  Hot.  You're Young Doc Rotwang!, aged not-yet-fifteen.  Girls don't seem to like you, and you don't expect that to change, ever.  You've been a gamer for a year but you've not yet played D&D.

On your way to spend the Summer with your Dad in Kansas City, your old family friend Jason Gucinski gives you his own old copy of the D&D Red Box.  Yours, now.

This is it.  You've been in the room a while but you came in from the side.  Now, you have THE KEY THAT OPENS THE FRONT DOOR.

It's Summer 1989!  You're 14!  You got D&D!  WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO?  HEAVY METAL, LIKE ALL THE OTHER D&D GUYS, RIGHT?!

Phasic Knights of the Blade and Blaster

Our motto: "To Have Adventures!"

...because it was time.

"Halfling Stew" After-Dinner Mint

Renault, Smartest and Wisest Halfling, got a knife which (functioned as a crappy shortsword), killed a bug, fell in 3" of water, put out a fire at the worst time possible, and then got eaten 'cause I had to take a shower and go to work.

Next time I do some Google Hangouts gaming, I'm hooking up my camcorder to function as a web cam.  That was some stuff, I tell ya.

This Is My Character for Jeff's "Halfling Stew" Game

Hohn-hohn-HO! Bon Temps, mes amis! Jay-Sweeze Mee-sewer Renault Poisson-Fromage le Coq-Petit, from Cul d'un Chien! I like, eh, how-you-say, to be smart-air than you -- non? Wee-wee!

I have l'strongth du 8, l'dex-stair-ee-tee du twell-ve (12), Cohn-stee-too-shown l'9, Intelli-SHAWNCE l'15, oh-hohn-hohn! Et Widdome du 16, et l' char-EEESM-uh d'8! Obviously.

Ah have-uh les deux hit p-waaaints. Aaaaaaaaand everyone hates me already.

 

How I Spent My Saturday Afternoon

With a hex grid, a copy of TSR's World Builder's Guidebook, a portable drawing board, Troll Lord Games' Book of Extraordinary Names, a set of Prismacolor pens, an Ames lettering guide, a T-square, some dice, a drafting triangle, pencils and some masking tape.  Oh, and five hours.

All of which I used to make this:

Of course I'm not satisfied with it!!

Respite via Microscope

To you, O brethren and cistern, who came to me with words of commiseration and hope in my day of pain -- thank you one and all, you princes and princessesses of the blogomosphere.  You guys rock.

So last Tuesday (last week) my buddy Art brought over Microscope again, along with his 7-year-old daughter.  We unleashed his kid and my kid unto the wilderlands of her bedroom; while those two played, Art, my wife, Art's buddy Russel and I set about an exercise I've long yearned to do:

Re-writing the Star Wars prequel-era history, and cleaning up George's mess.

So how'd we do?  You tell me.  I tried typing up a summary but screw that, here are the notes.

Click for jaw-dropping abreaction.

 Man, this was some fun.  It was cathartic in a variety of ways -- it gave me the gamer interaction that I craved, it let me mix it up creatively, and I got to slap the prequels right in their ugly mouth and say, "THIS is how you do it, ya dumb bastards!"

...

...

...aaaaahh.  MORE GAME!!!!!!!!

Rotwang! Is An Angry, Embittered Man (WARNING: INCLUDES PATHOS)

Yesterday while washing dishes, I listened to an episode of The D6 Generation Podcast (which is not about the D6 System, as it turns out).  It was interesting enough, and kind of informative too.

Mostly, I found it depressing.

It's not because of anything that's wrong about the podcast itself, but rather because of what I heard in it -- and the questions it made me ask myself.

I heard these guys talking about all the games they've been playing --tabletop RPGs, minis games, board games...talkin' about the minis they're painting, the games going on at their FLGS, the cons they've been to or are going to, the terrain they're building...

...and first, I thought:   Where do they find the time?  Don't they have jobs, families?  Of COURSE they have jobs and families.  So where do they find the time?!

That was not what bugged me.  What bugged me was the very next thought that followed it:


Why don't I have that?!  Why can't I have that luxury? 

Yes, a luxury. To me, such a thing is a luxury.  I don't have a fancy car; I don't care.  I don't have a huge paycheck every week; I'd like it if it were bigger, so I could pay off some bills and have some walking-around money, but I'm doing OK.  I don't have a yacht, a mistress, a race horse,  a big HDTV, a...freaking...I dunno, a solid gold burro.  I don't want those things.  Those aren't things that would make me happy (not even the mistress OR the burro).  I actually want very little in life -- I'm remarkably easy to keep happy, and at that, with very few and comparatively small things.

I can't find the time or opportunity for gaming.  Oh, I have some friends coming over on Tuesday to play Microscope, but that's a rarity.  It's hard to get my friends together for gaming, what with people's schedules and such.  I'm about 15 minutes away from the games store, but I don't feel comfortable there -- and gas is expensive.  I live in a fairly populous area; I'm not in the middle of nowhere, in fact I live in a golf resort/condominium kind of place, with about 33,600 people living in it -- but I'll be damned if I have any way of finding any gamers in the place.  Life is commute, work, commute, come home.  

If I get to game for more than a few hours every two months or so, it's a bonanza.

I try to vent this stuff by making it kinda funny, like this.  But the truth is that it's seriously dragging down my quality of life.

Is this adulthood?  Really?

I Got A New Scanner Today.

Actually it's a printer/scanner/copier.  I installed it and started checking it out -- you know, how do ya load paper for printing a double-sided character sheet, like that.

Then, of course, I had to check its scanner interface, so I grabbed something to scan.  Dig it:

They're eating her shirt.

I don't think I've ever read this comic.  I'm not even sure how I got it!  Anyway, there ya go.  Bit o' history.

Dungeon as Diagram

Hats off to Flynn, who wrote this and got me thinking about doing stuff like this:

CLICK FOR BIG

Have fun!

Adventure Diagram, Yaay!

I like this idea of mapping out an adventure as a diagram.  Each of your major scenes goes in a box, and connecting lines lead from scene to scene based on decisions and success or failure, with notes along the way.

So I made this one with OpenOffice Draw, 'cause it's set right the zip up for such stuff.  This plot here is fairly linear, and it requires a few more notes (which one would append maybe as a second sheet), but it's enough to get you through.

CLICK IT

I have no idea how it ends, though...

I Made Some Paper Minis.

They're tiny but you can have 'em.  Used Junior General's masters as a start.  Fun.  You can too.

Mongoose Traveller + Prime Directive = Sorry About Your Dog

Earmuffs?  For the dog, maybe, I mean?  'Cause I just found out that Mongoose and Amarillo Design Bureau are collaborating on a Traveller-based Prime Directive game, and I SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Sorry; sorry, that's -- this, uh...this is just cool.  To me.  It's -- I like it.  It sounds good.

It's unusual for me, these days, to be excited about a new game release.  I haven't been for a very long time now -- not since StarSIEGE, really, and that was -- whoa, three years ago?  Wow, yeah.  That's crazy.

Anyway.  Trav rules feel like a good fit for Shirtless-Kirk-Era Treknanigans, especially with the career tables and all ("Okay, so...Security branch.  First term served.  Survival throw: 14-plus.  Wait,what the f--?!"), plus the --

PICTURED: Proper use of Carousing-1.

-- I'm just diggin' it.

Revisting Tri-Stat dX

This'll be a brief post 'cause I gotta go take a shower and go out for chinese for Father's Day here pretty soon, but -- hey, remember this guy?

Pinched from the Retrospective Caveman blog, but saved locally.

 I pulled it off the shelf last night and made a character this morning.  It ain't half bad!

The whole Magnum Opus thing kinda didn't fly...too bad, really.  'Least I still have a copy or three.

Okay, shower.  Can't take me to Golden China if I'm all stinky!

Wherein I Pass Judgement Upon "Microscope"

A buddy of mine, who is a World-Famous Comic-Book Artist, brought over his copy, and some other dudes came over, and my kid busied herself playing on the Monster High website, and we had a go at it.

My impression:

Microscope : Aria - Canticle of the Monomyth ::  Aspirin  : Trepanation

OSR Emperor, you say...?

Over at The Grand Tapestry, Timeshadows asks:

When Will the OSR Emperor Arise, Bringing Peace to the Warring Provences?

To my dear and esteemed fellow blogger, and to all others who have functional circulatory systems, I offer this answer:

I am he, here I am, and YOU KIDS KNOCK IT OFF AND JUST PLAY HOWEVER YOU'RE GONNA PLAY GODDAMMIT!

Once again, Dr Rotwang! strides in, valiant of purpose and tired of your bitching, and brings peace and prosperity with the edge of his shrill, annoying voice.

StarSIEGE: An Unnamed Campaign Setting (That Still Needs Work)

Following the 9-Minute Campaign Design notes from The Mule Abides, I managed to stretch this out into a...uh...4?  5? -hour long project.

Man, I'm gettin' old.

CLICK YOU SOME JUMP!

Wherein I Reply To Lord Blacksteel

Dude.  You weren't kidding.

It Serves You Right For Picking That Pocket

You got that player who likes to pick NPCs' pockets at random past the point where it ceases to be funny?  Yeah, you know the one.  Next time he gets on your nerves, let him pick a pocket, then roll a d20 and tell him that he finds --

1	A dead, stinky mouse. Who keeps a dead, stinky mouse in his pocket? Probably a wizard...or a necromancer. Right?
2	A half-eaten chicken leg.
3	A half-eaten raw chicken leg.
4	A small scrap of paper with the words "Red door on Bath Street – 'Ullmo'". Bath Street is somewhere in the city, and there is indeed on that street a house with a red door. If the PC goes there and knocks, he will be asked for the password (Ullmo). Upon giving it, the PC is allowed entry to the house...which hosts a halfling quilting circle. The PC will be expected to participate.
5	A dirty handkerchief. Save vs. Poison at a -4 penalty or contract a nasty flu (½ HP and -2 to-hit for 1d4+1 days).
6	A human finger, freshly severed. But whose? And why was it in somebody's pocket?
7	3 gold coins struck with an unusual symbol. No merchant will take them, and all are nervous when the coins are presented to them. The coins are "shadow coin" – they are used exclusively by a criminal network, and having them makes you noteworthy in all the worst ways.
8	A walnut. It can be eaten, but it's not very tasty.
9	The mark's pocket suddenly (and magically) constricts, trapping the pick-pocket's hand – no save! Needless to say, the owner notices...
10	A small, unsheathed razor blade. 1d4 damage and saving throw vs. Spells to avoid crying out in surprise.
11	3 silver pieces and a small ruby. Exciting! Closer inspection reveals them to be 3 pewter pieces and a chunk of glass.
12	A small pouch containing about 5 grams of a dark, pungent tobacco. It is of value (3d6 sp) only to a tobacconist who recognizes it as Matarkian Blackshank – and that is a rare tobacconist indeed! Who dares smoke it soon has his mouth taste like he just stuffed it with ashes and sauerkraut and lit the whole thing with a burning cow turd.
13	A key, grubby and blackened with age. It opens a chest in the basement of a tavern called The Shackled Priestess. The chest contains a soul jar within which is imprisoned the tavern's eponymous priestess, placed there sixty years ago by a jealous lover (the owner of the tavern). Finding and releasing her spirit, and matching it back to her body (turned to stone and hidden as a statue in a local temple) would be a great adventure with a great reward...if the pickpocket can only figure out where to start.
14	A finger-length wooden carving of a mastiff.  1d4 rounds after it is taken from the mark's pocket, it transforms into a real mastiff -- which, finding itself before someone other than its master, attacks.
15	A sticky wad of pine tar. It's hard to remove, and leaves the pickpocket with a strong, noticeable aroma for a day or two, making it hard not to draw attention.
16	The mark's coin purse will not budge – it is as though it weighed hundreds of pounds, yet its owner carries it with ease! It is obviously magical, but – how to acquire it...?
17	A scrap of paper listing five names. Four are crossed out. The fifth is that of the pickpocket.  75% chance that it is but a trick to fool would-be pickpockets; 10% that it's someone else with the same name.  Otherwise, the mark is an assassin with the PC's name on his list.
18	3d12 live caterpillars.
19	3d12 dead caterpillars.
20	The exact contents of the thief's own pocket, taken from his own pocket and pulled through the aetherial plane and onto his mark's pocket.

Redemption Zombies

It's a nice Sunday.  Enjoy it, won't you?

THIS IS A THING TO DO

GO DO IT NOW!

Wherein I Am Banned From RPG.Net

Dig this RPG Site post, where Sgt. Space Wizard has some nice words to say about me after Kyle Aaron reports that I was told don't come around RPG.Net no more.

HA HA HA HA GET IT?!

News to me.  I tried to log into The Big Purple and did so successfully.

So, no, I have not been banned from RPG.Net.  I did stop posting there, but that's because I got tired of the place.

Record's straight.

FOUND IT!

Okay.  It's cool.

"WTF" Is For "Has Anyone Seen My Copy Of The D&D World Builder's Guidebook?!"

Dammit!  I can't find it ! 

I know it's around my house somewhere -- I had it just the other day.  My house is small!  It's not like it could've gone far!  WHERE THE FROG IS MY FREAKING WORLD BUILDER'S GUIDEBOOK?!



Don't be OCD and disorganized, kids. 

As If I Needed Another Reason To Be Excited About RC D&D

...I have come across ken-do-nim's House Rules & Clarifications for Rules Cyclopedia Dungeons & Dragons.

Yessir!  It's amazinatin' what you might find if you spend a little while goofin' around on Dragonsfoot.org now and then.  You find stuff like this!  S'got some house rules, errata and clarifications (like it says on the tin) and some cool new sub-classes, some tweaked combat sequencing, revised weapon mastery charts for the rapier (culled from Voyage of the Princss Ark),  plus also there is stuff like this which I love very much:

 Go download it already.  I SAID GO DO THAT THING I JUST SAID TO DO.

Inkscape Is Hard!

...if you're a chump, which I is.  Work for an hour and what's a chump get?

  

...man, I gotta get better at this.

Inspiration. It...Strikes.

I'm in the habit of making a little PocketMod booklet and keeping it in my shirt pocket.  Why?  So I can write stuff on it when it occurs to me, you silly-head!

It's a good idea, too.  You should do it.  Then you, too, can come up with crazy fun dumb stupid stuff like this:

RRRRAAAAAAARRRRRGGHHH!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGHH!!!

I'VE HAD A ROUGH WEEK!

I REALLY  NEED TO GAME THIS WEEKEND!

ONLY IT PROBABLY WON'T HAPPEN ON SUCH SHORT NOTICE!

 

FURY!!!!!

I Want My D&D Game To Look Like A Cross Between...

...Fritz Lang's Siegfried and Ron Howard's Willow.

Oh, and plus also the stuff I posted yesterday.  That can be Castle Zagyg, or Greyhawk, right?

**EDITED** Fascination/Frustration

NOTE: I edited this post to include a word that was missing before.  Can you guess which one?

 Hmmmmmmm.

Got this new D&D campaign vibe in my head.  It looks like this:

BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START!

BONUS LADYHAWKE-NESS: