Character Creation: GURPS Cabal

I own three GURPS books (plus the Basic Set, 3rd Ed, which tells you how much use I have for GURPS). I've done characters for two of those books, and since I have some time this afternoon, I figure I may as well get the last one out of the way.

The Game: GURPS Cabal
The Publisher: Steve Jackson Games
Degree of Familiarity: Some. I play GURPS about once a year when Karafa playtests his Origins games, though we seem to have skipped it this year.
Books Required: The Cabal book and the GURPS book.

So, GURPS Cabal is a book by Ken Hite about a shadowy conspiracy of supernaturally inclined folks who are divided up into lodges, a la Masons, Illuminati, Rosicrucians and any other such group you'd care to name. The book is really well done, pretty Eurocentric, but that's addressed and you get several options as to why that is. There's a lot of good stuff in the book, including a section on what kinds of characters would be fun to play. And the idea that jumped out at me was "Collector."

My character is wealthy, and started collected odd trinkets when he was young. He learned to detect magical stuff when he was a teenager; it gives him a buzz to hold it, though he has no other magical talent himself. He devoted his wealth to finding stuff that made him feel good to hold, and while he was on such a hunt, a Cabal member found him and nearly killed him to prevent him from grabbing a particular artifact. They made friends, though, and my guy joined the Cabal.

Good start. Now I get 100 points to build him. Oh, his name is Joost Visser, native of South Africa.

Attributes: Four Attributes, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Health. Average is 10 (and free) and just goes up. Let's see. I picture Joost as being in pretty good shape overall. Let's keep his Intelligence average, and up his physical stats:

Strength 12
Dexterity 14
Intelligence 10
Health 13

For a total of...95 points. Jesus. Well, let's roll Intelligence back to 9, that gives me 85 to spend. My basic Speed is (Health + Dexterity)/4, or 6 (round fractions off).

Physical Appearance. Joost is blond, blue eyes, in good health if a little on a slim side, and well groomed. I'll spend 5 points and make him Attractive.

Wealth and Status. I know I want Joost to be rich, so I take Very Wealthy. That sets me back 30 points, but my wealth is 20 times the average, which sounds about right. I've spent 120 points.

Reputation. I don't know that I need one, really, unless I want to take a reputation amongst the Cabal. I think I'll skip it; Joost isn't a political animal. If you know him, you know him, but he's not made a name for himself.

Advantages. Well, hell, I'm already 20 points in the hole. Fuckit. I'll take Intuition (15 points) and Magical Aptitude (15 points). I'll buy Cabal Membership for 5 points (Initiate).

Disadvantages. Hell, I need a bunch. I need 55 points just to bring me even and I haven't done Skills yet. I want Public True Name (Joost Visser isn't famous, but he's wealthy and that makes him easy to research). I'll take Skinny and get five points back for that. I'll take an Addiction to handling magical items. Those are legal, but Joost is totally addictive, and he has to spend time and money acquiring said items, so this addiction is worth 15. Going along with that, I'll give him a Compulsion - he has to follow leads about magical or weird items, even if they're flimsy or obviously a trap. Sounds like 10 points.

OK, I'm at 40 points back, so I need at least 15 more. Impulsiveness is 10, and that's fun to play. Overconfident is another 10. I need the points, so I'll take a 30-point enemy. Let's say Exodus 22 tried to recruit Joost to help them hunt down and destroy "cursed objects," but Joost refused. They figure he's not with them, he's against them (which he is) and the anti-magic group has a "kill on sight" order for Joost Visser.

That puts me to 35 points on the positive. Let's keep it under control, yeah?

Quirks. I like these. Joost's quirks, each worth a point:

• Habit: pops his collar when he's about to do something risky.
  
• Dislikes fried food, can't stand the smell
  
• Proud of his country and won't suffer people talking smack about it
  
• Always carries a bad with three random, jewel-sized enchanted things (no effect)
  
• Dislikes sweets (they make his teeth hurt)

Skills. Here we go. I have 40 points. I figure Joost is in his 30s, so there's no problem spending the rest of my points on Skills. I'll buy the Detect Magic spell, since that's really the only one I want for Joost. I want him to be good at this, so I'll burn 12 points and buy it at 15.

I'll take Jumping at 14 (1 point), Swimming at 14 (1 point), Brawling at 14 (1 point), Language (English) at 9 (2 points), Climbing at 14 (2 points), Occultism at 11 (6 points), Gambling at 9 (2 points), Savoir-Faire at 12 (6 points), Sex Appeal at 13 (2 points), Holdout at 9 (2 points), Lockpicking at 9 (2 points) and Stealth at 13 (1 point).

And, of course, normally I'd buy equipment, but eh. Looks to me like Joost is about done and ready to collect more shit. It occurs to me that I didn't take anything to represent the magical value of his collection, and I think that's because he locks all of it away once he's gotten high off it. Somewhere that collection is just collecting dust, and that'd be a fun plot hook right there.

Character Creation: BUNNIES!

Go ahead and sing it, I know you're thinking it. The song that's been in my head is this one:

The Game: GURPS 3rd. Edition, using the Bunnies and Burrows book
The Publisher: Steve Jackson Games.
Degree of Familiarity: Not a hell of a lot. I've played GURPS on occasion, usually with Karafa, but never run it and this is the only character I've made.
Books Required: The GURPS core book and Bunnies and Burrows.

OK, so, I love Watership Down. One of my favorite books. And playing an RPG that's based on it just sounds like all kinds of fun. I read through the Bunnies and Burrows book, and my initial idea was to make a storyteller character much like Dandelion in the novel, but putting the OK Go song together with the idea of bunny-hoppers makes me happy.

I like the idea of a bunny that makes intricate Rube Goldberg kind of devices, just because he understands, on a deeper level than a lot of bunnies, that things can be triggered by other things, which can then have their own effects. He got that notion from watching a rain shower collapse a mud bank into a pond. The raindrops made ripples, the mud made ripples, the rain fell but also made the mud fall. Since then, he's tried to use that understanding of cause-and-cause-and-effect to benefit his warren. The other bunnies call him Ripples.

Basic Attributes. I start with 10 in all of them, it's just that 10 here means "bunny average" rather than "human average." No worries. I want my bunny to be smart as heck, so I bump IQ to 15 (60 of my 100 points, holy crap...wait, shit, I started the same way with my other GURPS guy!). I'll keep Strength and Health at 10, and bump Dexterity to 12, meaning I've spent 80 points.

Physical Appearance. Well...I'm a bunny. I figure he's brown. With fur. OK, I'll stop. Ripples is a brown-furred bunny with a white tail. One of his eyes is missing the fur around it (he got into a scrape with a raccoon once), but that's about his only distinctive feature. Average appearance nets me no bonus or anything.

Wealth and Status. I have no particular Wealth. Average, no points. I figure Ripples might be known for his "outside-the-box" ideas, and honestly, I like the notion that he can get a bunch of rabbits together to put together his latest weird contraption. I'll take a level 3 reputation, and figure it applies to a limited class of bunnies (just the ones in my warren), so that costs me 5 points.

Advantages. A bunch of them are prohibited. I want Composed (I get +2 to Fright Checks), and I want Eidetic Sense of Smell (I can remember a particular creature or situation by scent - mostly bunnies just live in the moment, but what I do takes some planning). Together those cost 15. I'm at 100 points, so everything I buy from here I have to take Disadvantages to make up.

Disadvantages. Well, let's have a look. The Bunnies and Burrows book mentions that bunnies can take the Alcoholism Disadvantage, because it's not like alcohol doesn't occur in nature (berries ferment). I like the notion that my bunnies is a bit of lush; it makes sense that he'd like to alter his perceptions a little. So I'll take 15 points for that Disadvantage. I'll take Curious (duh), for 5 points and...oh, hells yeah. Trickster means I like to outwit my foes. Ripples likes to lead predators away from the warren by arranging elaborate "rabbit chains" - one rabbit runs long enough to duck into a bush, where another is waiting to run off, leading the predator further away, and then another bunny zips off in another direction, leading the predator through a garbage heap (to confuse his senses), and so on. That gives me a further 15, so now I'm up 35 points. I can only take 40, so I'll take an Enemy. That raccoon that messed up my eye is still looking for me.

See, it went down like this. The raccoon (known amongst the warren as "Render the Mask") had been known to make off with baby bunnies. That pissed everybody off, but we weren't a big warren. So then Ripples, after watching the mudslide, gets this idea. He gets the bunnies working, and then sets up a few baby bunnies in this little makeshift nest under a blackberry bush. Render climbs in across the tree limbs, as usual, and starts to shimmy down the tree...but when he gets down to the last few feet, the bark gives and he flops onto a pile of slimy, rotting vegetation, covered with rabbit fur and gnawed sticks.

Render, annoyed but not hurt, goes charging in to get the bunnies...but they've already been pulled down a hole and away into a second tunnel. Render goes digging after, but he's much heavier, and he starts to lose his grip, whereupon Ripples and LOTS of other bunnies pop out and start kicking at him. He falls into a hole, and the rabbits all pile dirt on him.

Well, he lived, but he's pretty mad and humiliated. And unlike Ripples, who has forgotten the particulars, he remembers the whole thing. But he's a busy guy (he's paying off a debt to a bear or something) and he only shows up on a roll of 6 or less on three dice. He's a 100-point character, but he's worth 5 points as an enemy.

Whew. OK. Quirks.

Ripples believes that all rabbits are basically good and that they should all work together to make the world a better place for bunnies everywhere (1). He doesn't like to thump; it makes his paws feel funny (2). He's constantly looking up and is afraid of things that climb trees (3); you can blame Render for that. He thinks human beings are lucky (as in, bring good luck), and so if he sees one he thinks it'll be a good day (4). Finally, he espouses the health benefits of fermented berries - they make you smarter! (5)

I've got 45 points. On to Skills!

I get Camouflage, Common Lagomorph, Lapine, Running, Stealth and Survival at 15 for free. I want Botany, but it's a Very Hard skill for bunnies. I'll take it at 15, for 8 points. I'll take Common Carnivore at 15 (2 points) and Ursine at 14 (2 points), so I can talk with Render (that is, beg for my life). I'll take Fiber Crafts at 15 (4 points), letting me weave stuff out of reeds and so on, and I'll take Hedgewise (kind of like Streetwise) at 15 (2 points).

Hell, better take Engineer. I'll specialize in Traps (meaning I have to take the Traps Skill, but I was going to anyway). I'll take it at 15, so I pay 4. I'll take Strategy at 15 (4 points), Tactics at 15 (4 points) and Traps at 17 (6 points). That means I've spent 36, leaving me with 9. Damn, that's one less than I need to bump an Attribute up. OK, I'll bump Traps down to 16, saving me 2 points, and then I'll take Common Avian at 14. And then I'll use the remaining 10 to bump up Health to 11.

And that's me done, I believe. Yay! 

Character Creation: GURPS 3rd Ed

"GURPS" is a fun word. Sounds like a noise a bullfrog would make.

The Game: GURPS 3rd. Edition, using the Creatures of the Night book
The Publisher: Steve Jackson Games.
Degree of Familiarity: Not a hell of a lot. I've played GURPS on occasion, usually with Karafa, but never run it and never made my own character.
Books Required: Just the GURPS book, but like I said, I'm using a sourcebook as flavor for the stew.

 

OK, GURPS, as probably everyone still reading these posts (anybody?) knows, is Generic Universal Roleplaying System. It's just...a system, and TMK was the first one using this setup; publishing the system as its own book and then a bunch of sourcebooks for any damn thing you want. Seriously, d20 talks a good game, but GURPS, at last count, has approximately eleventy-twice billionty sourcebooks available.

Well, I only own three. Creatures of the Night is one I've owned for a long time, I sing its praises frequently because it's a goddamn awesome buy if you run any kind of horror. I've never run GURPS, but of the 67 (!) creatures in this book (hang on) at least 30 and probably more have found their way into the games I've run.

But that's the thing: I'm using this book primarily as inspiration, because the creatures in it aren't really playable. Well, a few of them might be. But let's do this: Each creature has several adventure seeds. So I'll randomly pick a creature, pick one of those seeds, and then make a character appropriate to that scenario.

Hang on, gonna need some entropy.

My result creature is the Fabricant. These are living creatures who are slowly turning into robots. I can't remember if I've used these guys or not; seems like I might have in an old game of Mage: The Ascension (where they'd have fit in nicely), but I don't know anymore. In any event, GURPS measures Tech Level; we're at approximately Tech Level 7 right now (amusingly, the years listed for TL8 start at 2001, so where the hell are the fusion powered spacecraft, huh?). Fabricants always turn into beings two TL above their surroundings, so one made in the modern day would be TL 9, and have access to awesome stuff accordingly.

Oh, further coolness: Fabricants grow a lair of flesh over themselves, which they can peel off at will and scare the crap out of people. If living beings eat this flesh, they change into fabricants, too. Indeed, that's how fabricants can repair themselves - feed their flesh to animals, then cannibalize the animals for parts.

Let's have a look at the adventure seeds. One of them ("Discarded Miracles") doesn't do much for me; it's about a fabricant hanging out in a junkyard full of weird science. It's OK, but eh. But then the other one, "Fermina", is kind of interesting. Fermina is a vampire/fabricant. She's TL9, so she has bionic limbs and retractable fangs, as well as whatever other TL9 stuff the GM might like. She likes to rip off her skin and go skiving around the city's rooftops "nude," but still acts like a vampire. But an interesting point: Can she still drink blood? I think if I were the GM, I might introduce some kind of reactor in her innards that converts the energy of living blood into an efficient fuel. Then, after we take this bitch down, we have to decide what to do about that engine. It'd be damned useful, and it's not like it's hard to get blood, right?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's see. My character is a modern-day person who's going to wind up hunting down a robotic vampire. The temptation to take the same backstory I used for the Gremlin and apply it here is great, but I'll refrain. Instead, I think I'll play someone who knows vampires, but not robots.

Actually, if you'll pardon a really weird inspiration, did you happen to catch the movie Turbulence? Ray Liotta as a serial killer, some...blond woman as the star (Lauren Holly, now that I've looked). But what I remember about the movie, apart from being pretty unimpressed, was that in the opening scene where Liotta's character is captured, Hector Elizondo plays a cop who thinks he knows Liotta front and back, and is pretty arrogant about it (and is wrong on some key points). So my character will be a self-styled vampire expert, and in the game would get to see the vampire "tells"...and then get totally rocked when it turns out that she's a robot vampire.

Step One: Basic Attributes. I picture this person as being mostly mental, rather than physical. That means putting Intelligence high at a sacrifice to the other attributes. I'll put INT at 15; that eats 60 of my 100 points. I'll put STR at 10 (Average, costs nothing) and DEX at 9 ("costs" -10). I'll put Health at 10, Average, as well. Overall, I've spent 50.

My Speed score is (HT + DEX)/4, or 4.75.

Step Two: Physical Appearance. I can picture this guy. Black hair, balding, bad comb-back job, pasty skin, glasses, with a predilection for poofy shirts and other weird affectations of clothing. You've met him at cons, I'm sure. I think that's "Unattractive Appearance," so I get 5 points back.

Step Three: Wealth and Status. In the real world, having a lot of knowledge in some esoteric area of lore (like, say, vampires) doesn't pay unless you write novels that sell. It'd be an interesting twist to make this guy a novelist and give him money and status in that area. Actually, hell, that'd be fun to play. I'll take "Wealthy," which means I start with about $75K and work only 20 hours a week. I figure he actually works a lot more than that when he works, but his "work" is mostly research and when he writes, he goes on benders and burns out a book in a couple of months.

Now, Reputation. Enough people read my guy's books that he enjoys a +2 reaction bonus (10 points) with a fairly large group of people (folks who like lurid vampires novels), but he's not recognized all that often (sometimes). So that's 2 points it costs me.

I'm not changing his Status; while he's nominally a celebrity, he's also kind of a jerk, definitely arrogant, and doesn't really mix with other folks in his monetary class.

Step Four: Advantages. OK, let's see what's appropriate for my guy.

I think I'd like Eidetic Memory. I always wonder about this merit/advantage in RPGs, because it's so hard to simulate, but here, it gives you a double return on points into mental skills, and since I'm sure I'll be taking some of those, this seems like a good investment. That's 30 points.

Honestly, though, beyond that I don't see much else that grabs me. So I'll move on.

Step Five: Disadvantages. I'm currently at 97 points spent, so I'll need some disadvantages so I can buy skills.

OK, I'll take Odious Personal Habit. Yes, this will cancel my reputation bonus, but it is what it is. My character has a habit of getting too close to people, and it's off-putting.

I'll take Bad Sight (remember those thick glasses); that's another 10 points.

Hell, just to make my life hard, I'll take Hemophilia for 30 points. He likes to talk about how bleeding endlessly from tiny cuts first interested him in vampires. I'll take Combat Paralysis, because it's appropriate (did you notice I wrote rules for this into Armory Reloaded?). And I think that'll do. I have 58 points now.

Step Six: Quirks. Love these. Just weird little character bits, but you get a point each for them, up to five. Let's see. I'll take these five quirks:

- Calls attractive women "milady."
- Carries a pocket mirror and checks people he suspects of being vampires (with a laugh and a nudge; he doesn't really think that would work)
- Only wears black slacks, because they "go with anything"
- Dislikes guns and loud noises
- Spells using English spellings ("colour" and so on)

Step Seven: Skills. Right, here's the real meat-and-butter. I can only use points equal to twice my age, but I picture this guy as being at least 35, so that's not an issue. I get double the skill points on mental skills. The skills I want:

Writing 15 (1)
Breath Control 13 (1)
Fencing 10 (4)
Language (French) 15 (1)
Language (Spanish) 15 (1)
Computer Operation 16 (1)
Forensics 14 (1)
History 15 (2)
Literature 15 (2)
Occultism 16 (2)
Psychology 14 (1)
Research 15 (2)
Theology 15 (2)
Carousing 13 (16)
Savoir-Faire 16 (1)
Driving (car) 10 (4)

Wow, that still means I have 21 points left. Hell, are there other skills I should take? My skill totals are pretty damned impressive for average difficulties. I'll bump Occultism up to 20, which eats a further 4 points, and I'll specialize in Vampires. That means I have an effective 25 when dealing with vampires, but a 19 (still impressive) when dealing with anything else. 17 points left. I'll take the Night Vision Advantage (10 points); I figure he's mostly nocturnal anyway.

And, some more Skills:

Photography 15 (1)
Crossbow 11 (2) (for keeping up appearances)
Stealth 10 (4)

Step Eight: Equipment and Encumbrance. This won't take long. As long as I'm not carrying more than 20lbs of stuff on me, which I'm not, I don't take an encumbrance penalty. I figure the most this guy carries is a palm pilot, maybe a laptop. I don't wear armor or carry a weapon, normally.

Step Nine: Completing Your Character. Almost there! Really, all I need is:

Name: The book says I ought to know this by now. I am abased. Well, I figure his real name is something average and dull. We'll say he was born Ethan Williams. However, he writes novels under the name E. Lewis Paver.

And that's it! Lewis is ready to get out there and find that the real creatures of the night are a lot more techologically sophisticated than he is.