[gurps] Social Skills?

[Susan Koziel]

I'm also a 3rd Ed. GM - because my players don't want
to buy new sets of books (even if I have all the 4th
Ed stuff).

This isn't going to help for a convention game... but
I have a completely different approach to character
creation in my games...
<and now I shall quote from an old email of mine -
mwhahahahaha>

“I usually have my players run the first couple
sessions with out character sheets (if they feel
comfortable doing that) just to get a feel for a
character. They we go back & adapt a character sheet
to
what they’ve done. Usually they work out to ~150
points with 50 in disadvantages.”

The easiest way to do this is to run a game session
individually with each player before the start of the
game. First I get players to submit ideas. Then I get
the group together and have a board games night for
the players, and during it I take each player into a
different room and do about 2 hours of a one to one
session - about 15-30 minutes discussing the character
and then about an hour and a half with them playing
the events that led them up to the start of the
campaign. Then they go away and make up a character
sheet which I look at and consult them about any
changes.

There is less player collusion with this method (or I
pick my players well); and there is also less
unrealistically specialized characters (my pet peeve),
and it stops certain skills from becoming too
prevalent (like eidetic memory) .

If at cons players consort together and you really
dislike it, and can't live with the problem then be
sure to take the worst offenders and manipulate the
game so that the NPCs end up talking to the guys with
the poor social skills... have Mr./Mrs. social go deal
with NPC A, and then have NPC B need attention that
requires social skills right now while Mr./Mrs. social
is busy. Alternately have the wealthy person suddenly
get his assets frozen.... police investigation, tax
audit, angry parents. 

My players typically don't take certain disadvantages
because I will put the characters into situations
where the disadvantage comes out - if they take it and
don't play it. If they are playing it it's all good -
and I don't make changes to my game.

Hope you can find something in this to help.
-Sue



--- Bay Grabowski <bay at umail.ucsb.edu> wrote:

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> 
> Hey all! I've lurked on the listserve for a while,
> but I've got a
> question for ya'll. Firstly, I use 3rd ed. my lowly
> student budget
> doesn't have the scratch to buy a whole new edition.
> 
> Anyways, I tend to GM games of GURPS at conventions
> in the SoCal area a
> fair amount, and one think I've noticed that is
> unsurprising, but
> annoying, is that players consort together when
> creating characters. In
> particular, this shows up if one guy is willing to
> be the guy with
> absurd amounts of charisma and social skills, so
> whenever the group need
> to talk to someone they leave him to it and all take
> bad reps or the
> like. Anyone have any good ways to help balance this
> out? Same think
> happens on occasion with a rich character giving
> cash and items away,
> though not as much.
> 
> Thanks all!
> 
> Bay