for somebody that knows you personally, joe, i can vouch that you did a pretty good job. maybe by a differance of -7, but that's chicken feed. xD
This message was last edited by the player at 22:18, Sat 30 July 2016.

In reply to Chye Isuel (msg # 41):

Thank you. :)

no problemo.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:59, Sat 30 July 2016.

In reply to Chye Isuel (msg # 43):

Had to updare mine, as wife reminded me I am a klutz.

haha. i've been editing mine like crazy, mostly sprucing it up, making it more organized looking.

I spent several days painstakingly 'perfecting' mine... maybe I should add a mild OCD on there...


GAAAAAAAH!
This message was last edited by the player at 19:45, Sun 31 July 2016.

Talent may be part of it -- I got into tool repair because I'd been fixing 50-80 year old camera shutters (for which, then, there were no readily available service documents and were and are generally no parts).  I gave myself Talent (Artisan), which fits almost perfectly, though I should probably temper that with Incompetence (Electronics) given my discomfort with anything component level involving transistors or microchips.

I'm also very good at fixing stuff I've never seen before (for example, I fixed the hammer spring in a Saiga shotgun -- essentially a 12 gauge AK -- having never seen any AK up close, never mind seeing one disassembled, and using only a Leatherman multi-tool).  I have a running joke at work that you can fix anything with a hammer, if you know where to hit it.  I have no idea what to call that, in game terms, but for now, I've got it on as Wild Talent (Mental) with Retention (seems like too many points, but I don't know anything else that fits).  As a result of that, if something comes in for repair and we have to look it up on Google to find out what it does, I get to fix it.  Hydraulic torque wrenches, water system pressure testers, banding tools, capstan hoists, power feed magnetic base drills, and so forth.

Beyond that, I don't know if the other techs where I work have Incompetence, Laziness (Learning), or Self-Conscious -- I just wish my boss wouldn't make it my fault when I "waste time" by answering their requests.

Talent gives a bonus on default and shortens learning time.

yeah, i warrant the quirk "perfectionist", but i think i'm gonna leave mine be, as i already have my most prominent quirks..

Ah.  Didn't read closely enough.  Talent (Artisan) combined with Incompetence (electronics) would completely cover it, then, no need for Wild Talent.  My default on Mental/Easy skills is pretty high with the Talent bonus...

You could still take Delusion (I have Wild Talent) or something.

odious personal habit: (refers to real life, situations in gurps terms) *trips, falls, scrapes knee* "auugggh! that was at least two HT points of damage!" xD or would that be a delusion....

Well...

...then there's what I call "the touch."  Frequently, things that don't work (correctly, or at all) will start working if I just touch them.  Example: at a writer's meeting a year or so ago, someone's laptop backlight stopped working.  Reboot didn't fix it.  I held the machine for a moment, gave it a flick with a fingertip near one lid hinge, and handed it back -- and it worked perfectly, and continued to work for at least several months.  Makes tool repair a little tricky; it's hard to figure out what the customer means by "broken" when the tool works fine for me, but it's sure handy for actually getting use out of stuff.

Also, my "portable parking spot" -- when I lived in Seattle, I used to be able to reliably find a parking space within a half block of my destination in no more than one orbit around the block.

The latter might reasonably be a delusion; the former (I tell myself) is probably pareidolia -- except that pareidolia doesn't actually fix stuff.

Or it's a combination of normal cognitive bias and delusions.

han solo had that, with the falcon. xD *touch*
This message was last edited by the player at 17:52, Mon 01 Aug 2016.

In reply to Chye Isuel (msg # 55):

A recent Pyramid had a bit on a character who was a mystical tech, had some degree of ritual path that gave an empathic relationship with tech. Let me look that up, as it went well for describing a knack like that.

"technomancy"

In reply to Chye Isuel (msg # 57):

Technomysticism. From the Thaumatology IV issue.
Base items are Machine empathy 10 and technomystic talent at 5 per level, and 18 points for repairing touch. That version works on all tech, so your non elelectronic version is probably worth 9-12 points.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:30, Tue 02 Aug 2016.

Oh, my repairing touch works just as well on things I probably couldn't fix in the mundane way (like a loose ribbon cable -- if the ribbon comes loose from the connector, they're almost impossible to reseat).  It's only my Talent that excludes electronics, and then only at the component level.  I can troubleshoot and replace the correct modular boards (like those in a classic desktop PC, as well as the ones in many electric power tools) about as well as anyone around.

Yes, Oren, it might well be a combination of cognitive bias and wish fulfillment delusion -- but it sure gave me a lot of trouble on my first tool repair job, when I often had to get the end user to come into my shop and demonstrate how the tool was malfunctioning, after completely failing to get it to misbehave in my hands.

In reply to Narrator (msg # 62):

New players are invited to give a go at statting themselves here.

Thanks for the reminder -- I've never gotten around to actually doing this, just chatted about it.  I'll have to scroll back up the thread and look for the discussion...

Before I start, I have a question about language that I don't think I've seen or heard asked before.

I'm a beginner in a large number of languages. I'm fluent or accented in French and Dutch but I'm borderline broken/accented or broken/unable in: German (including three non-standard dialects); Italian (probably accented in Standard Italian and broken in Neapolitan); plus varying levels in Arabic, Croatian, Danish, Greek, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Latin, Malay, Mandarin, Norwegian (Bokmal and Landsmal), Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian and Welsh.

Unlike Che, I don't have a talent for language. What I do have is a talent for codebreaking and cryptography which gives an immense advantage in the beginning phase but it's a spectrum and at varying levels depending on the language, that stops being helpful because I'm relying on my ability to speak a language rather than an ability to break codes.

My question is if course, how do I reflect all this? Language learning is a spectrum - at what point do I become a broken speaker, when do I become accented, when fluent and when at Native standard?
This message was last edited by the player at 07:04, Yesterday.

Which book has character creation in it? I think I have them all now, except Dungeon Fantasy: Magic Items.

character creation for this game is DF1 unless you are going for non human, in which case you buy a racial template from DF3 out of advantages.
Statting yourself would likely require Basic Characters at the least.


Being a polyglot at your level would be indicative of language talent.
Gurps currently uses only 3 levels of fluency, at 1 pt each written and spoken, broken, accented and native.
I kinda preferred 3e with its half points and dialectical defaults but this is where we are.

In fact, the best game languages system I've seen is the one in Hero System 5th Edition (superseded by 6th edition a couple years ago).  It has support for "similar" languages and a pretty large example chart of the languages of real Earth, showing how knowing (for instance) Spanish makes Latin easier to learn or understand, or knowing Portuguese effectively includes understanding Spanish.

I'd have to agree, knowing so many languages at even Broken level, unless you're an actual academic linguist, would seem to imply some level of Language Talent.  Don't forget talents are leveled and like any other Trait can include limitations such as "Only useful up to Accented level: -50%".

For what constitutes Broken vs. Accented for GURPS 4e and derived systems (like DFRPG), I'd go with a vocabulary definition: if your vocabulary is such that you seldom misunderstand or are misunderstood due to not knowing the correct word, you're Accented.  If misunderstanding due to vocabulary limits is common, you're Broken.  My high school Spanish never quite got to Broken; I had (almost fifty years ago) a vocabulary of a few hundred words, not quite enough to carry on a simple conversation without artificial subject matter limits.  My best friend at the time, by contrast, had studied Spanish all four years he'd attended that high school, and would then have been considered Native in written Spanish, and Accented in spoken (even I could hear his western American accent in his spoken Spanish), despite a very fluent vocabulary.  His Spanish was better, aside from accent, than the Spanish teacher we had during my one year there.