Crazily enough, I'm leaning towards what Tortuga is talking about - sure, he's an obsessive weirdo that thinks magic solves *everything*. Let him have his fantasy, but chip away at the fact that in everything else, he plain and simply sucks. He's likely to be considered little more than a FUBAR when it comes to the simple stuff, but he'll be a magic god...

Personally, I'd find out where he's weak and subtly remind him (as others have mentioned) about those weaknesses. Not all the time, but depending on what this guy chooses to do, it'll have an impact. I can see the word getting around after a while about some of his mistakes, and some of the NPC's will snicker/point & laugh/etc.  Don't always do that; some positive reinforcement on the magical side is warranted, but I'd make him realise that he should have balanced the character better. (Seriously? 100 pts into 1 stat?)

And if things don't go well, then he pays for it, however, you want to do it. Don't kill the character - he'll never learn the lesson if he just keeps making OP characters. (He sounds like a 'glass cannon' to be honest) Hopefully, he'll get the hint before any sort of ragequit happens. And if he ragequits, problem solved.  :)

I feel like the current conversation highlights why Raistlin from Dragonlance was an interesting character.  Sure, he was (literally in some parts of the story) like a god when it came to magic, but he was physically frail and vulnerable.  He needed his meathead  twin brother more than he'd ever care to admit.

And could he even order a coffee without offending everyone? Could he keep his quarters clean? Did he know how to cook even simple meals? Could he balance a checkbook or hold his end up in a conversation that wasn't about magic?

*IF* this is a new guy, you might steer him gently toward a more balanced character by pointing some of this out... if he is a GURPS Player, just advise him that there won't be any slack granted for those un-purchased life skills. I then would assume he had just wandered out of some chantery after decades of study and treat him as such. He obviously can't be young. But it might be fun to have the group trying to keep the MAGE safe and fed for those times when they need his Magic.

I think Raistlin's a good example of this, too. Could he make coffee? Probably. That's not exactly rocket science. Balance a check book? Again, probably - in this case because he's so naturally intelligent (he'd have a high IQ in order to be so good with magic). Cook simple meals? Depends on what you mean, but I don't see why not (as long as you're not expecting world-class chef material... we're talking bacon here, not Cuisinart). But could he open a pickle jar? Doubt it.

As for a conversation, that's a bit more difficult. Raistlin could, but not always terribly well. And he certainly wasn't very likeable.

Don't think Raistlin. Think Radagast.

In reply to Big Brother (msg # 905):

Oh Please ;-) .. I've seen engineers who couldn't make a drinkable cup of coffee... if this is a mage who has spent decades studying magic while the staff did the mundane stuff ... he will be pretty clueless on almost every day to day chore/task.

But if you min/max for IQ, you get the mage who just happens to be good at all IQ. The argument is that the min/max character isn't a helpless naive ivory tower mage. He's a min/maxed Gurps mage, which is somewhat different.

Which would seem to be a flaw in the system, which is being abused. Perhaps best if the GM simply disallows the character as built then.

BTW, I am not knocking the system ... everything has limits and when they are exceeded bad things can happen.

Something that's often overlooked is Relative Skill Levels. GURPS makes a distinction between talent and training in two respects:



And



I find that GURPS GMs don't make enough use of these rules. Again, it's not to punish the player, but to recognize the fact that they're playing a talented character with very little actual training and practical experience.

In reply to Tortuga (msg # 910):

Nice thinking...I never thought of it that way.  Well done, Tortuga.

Cheers!

There's an option presented in Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen that allows players to control multiple PCs in a single game, and I think that this rule might work well on RPoL where each character gets its own name/pic/etc. Essentially each PC gets a 250 point budget, from which they can build

- 1 250 point character (using the core DF templates)
- 2 125 point characters (with the DF 15 templates)
- 1 125 point character and 2 62 point characters (with the DF 15 "budget" template
- or 4 62 point characters

This way, players who just want the one PC can run the 250-pointer, and players who think they can handle 4 can run the 62-pointers.

Of course, this demands that players running multiple characters are able to keep them all distinct and entertaining at the same time.

Thoughts? Anybody want to try this?

Moving the convo here, what do you guys consider necessary for a golden age of piracy game? Is it about a specific historical era, or a certain mood or tone?

I'm gearing up for a campaign story arc involving a Kingdom of Pirates raiding the region. Now my story arc involves more modern-ish pirates but

I know that there are some GURPS books on Pirates.

GURPS Supporting Cast: Age of Sail Pirate Crew
GURPS Swashbucklers
GURPS Low-Tech
Pyramid #3/64: Pirates and Swashbucklers

I do have an Osprey book on Pirate ships and there are a few others on Pirates and those are great for quick historical references.

I think a lot of the basic ideas found in Sid Meier's Pirates! is what I imagine.

-Swashbuckling
-Trading cannon fire with opposing ships
-A little bit of logistics(not too much to overwhelm the game, but enough to give -a touch of reality)
-Some political intrigue between established nations to create scenarios of gray morality
-Trying to balance the shifting moral of a crew


I'd be okay with the setting being a fictional place if need be, but I'd prefer a very low (or at least rare) level of magic at most.  The occasional voodoo witch's curse or saber from the bottom of the sea is cool, but Dungeon Fantasy style wizards and magic item shops wouldn't be.

It's funny, I was picturing the old SNES Koei game "New Horizons."

I don't think I'm familiar with that one.


The pirate games I'm most familiar with are Sid Meier's games and Port Royal.

I do like Koei's games though.  I'm enjoyed Romance of The Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga's Ambition.

That's actually a pretty interesting question. For most of us the mental Imagee conjured when we hear the word "pirates" is the hollywood version: Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, and more recently Johnny Depp swashbuckling (or in the latters case swishbuckling) they're way across the silverscreen.

Now nominally these flicks are set in some vaguely defined age of sail period somewhere between the reign of Elizabeth I and the early 1800s, but they are pretty much all ragingly ahistorical, even the ones not based on a themepark ride. It's all about costumes and tropes, not dates and historic fidelity.

If you happen to be of a more literary bend and had you're idea of pirates shaped by Sabatini, Stevenson, O'Brian, and Forrester chances are it has a bit more fact than fantasy and you'd probably care for a setting at least roughly matching the timeperiod and locals during which piracy and it's most infamous practitioners flourished.

Lastly there are your history nerds. They'd care about realism, but somewhat ironically might be the most agnostic on the game being set in a specific time period or place so long as the details are historically accurate. Afterall pirate utopias bloomed in many places over the centuries, not just the 18th ct caribbean.

Personally i fall somwhere inbetween (the cracks?). My primary concern would be that the setting has internal logic insofar that it's economic and polital sitution would meet the neccessary criteria for pirates to exist. Beyond that it could be japanese wako riding the cbinese coast, english privateers sailing out of Port Royal to attack the spanish indies, or H.Beam Piper's space vikings nuking Amaterasu from orbit to loot their gadolinium stores.

Great now I am wanting to play my Cyberpunk Pirate....:)

Tales from the Floating Vagabond had Cyber Pirates.

I love Tales from the Floating Vagabond !

Raymunda the Pirate, her girlfriend Trudi and her rival for the affections of the fair trudi Harley are a trio of Cyberpunk Runners who travel the seas in search of coin and good times. Needless to say they are currently in need of a Ship and a cargo.

Cyberpunk pirates would be fun.

Okay, what's necessary for a cyberpirates game?

In reply to Tortuga (msg # 924):

GURPS Basic Set Characters
GURPS Basic Set Campaigns
GURPS Cyberpunk (3ed)
GURPS High Tech
GURPS Ultratech

The Unofficial "GURPS Vehicle Collection 23" is very handy as it actually has modern ship stats.


Plus as "Pirates" are we just a ship without a home port, Smugglers, or Sea-born Marauders?