Points

While scouring all my character sheets for their guns, I noticed that I had darn few of the traditional 3e GURPS starting point level of 100/40/5.

That's 100 character points total with a limit of -40 in disadvantages and -5 in quirks.

There are lot of 150/50/5 characters in that pile.

I'm pretty sure that's because the player's complained that they couldn't get the characters they wanted at 100 points.

Because of the changes to how the basic stats (ST, DX, IQ and HT) are priced; a 3e 100/40/5 character is close to being a 150/40/5 in 4e.

This is making me want to convert a couple of the 3e 150 pointers to see how well the translate to 4e.

Among the old characters are a bunch with 42 starting points.

This is from one of Standing Bear's first GURPS worlds where FuzzyGeff and I were the rules referees but not the Game Masters.

There was no limit on disads but your willingness to play them and suffer the penalties of having them.

There was a bit of resentment at our willingness to enforce the disadvantages on the players while we tag-teamed being the GM's keeper of the rules.

An interesting bit from this world was, despite it being a standard TL3 fantasy world, there were no restrictions on technology.  Starting wealth was the limit on technology.

Modern worlds started with $10 to $15 thousand to start, fantasy worlds start with $1,000.  Hard to buy much high tech stuff without the standard wealth assumptions.

So I experimented with several character concepts to cheat the wealth to get what I wanted.

$1,000 starting in TL3 is one thousand dime sized silver pieces, or a pound of silver.

If the assumption was we started with a pound of silver, make the character from a place where silver is unusually valuable in notional dollars and buy the expensive high tech stuff with the notional dollar.

If the assumption was a $1,000 in local currency, then have the character buy their stuff where they can leverage arbitrage.

It turned out that silver was the basis and my Traveller Imperial Marine from metals poor world passed Bear's sniff test.

That Marine became his sword of righteous vengeance!

First was Vint.  He'd made a dragon and FuzzyGeff and I had made some rules mistakes in the racial package.  We caught our mistake after he'd played the character, told Bear and it was ruled that, "what's done is done," but anyone running a dragon from then on would be subject to the correct rules.

Vint played the dragon in such a way as to lord that he'd gotten over to Bear.  Bad plan.

Anthrophagism is not permitted in The Third Imperium and Vint's dragon had a habit of munching down on the bodies of the defeated.  The other players didn't care, because Orcs.  But my Marine would have cared a lot.  He did care a lot.

Me, the player, didn't want to notice; but Bear very pointedly told me I did notice and wouldn't let me out of it.

So the dragon took an FGMP-14 to the face.  Vint never forgave me that and stopped playing altogether.

The second instance was Angela.

Bear loathed psionics and ignored our advice to simply put an extortionate "unusual background" charge on anything he didn't want to deal with.

Imperial Marines don't like psi.  Mother ruttin' turbine-headed Zhodani scum are all psi and evil and all need to be wiped off the face of the universe... ahem.  None too fond.

Built into my helmet was a psi-shield and I was protected.  FuzzyGeff's character had me talked down from murdering her on the spot.  He made a rational argument, cited compelling data, and I accepted that her character didn't need destroying.

She, on the other hand, didn't like how my character had treated hers (and we didn't get along outside of the game either) so eventually she got hold of a very powerful item and wished my psi-shield away.

The system fail tell-tales go off in the HUD and I work out if my character can work out who it was.

It is agreed that even if she didn't do it, she's the obvious suspect.

Angela gets several important lessons all at once.

Psi is line of sight only.  Hiding behind a 4' thick oak tree's trunk means she cannot see me, therefore cannot use her psi attacks on me.

Psi doesn't have the same kind of range that even primitive firearms have, let alone ultra-tech items like a fusion gun.

4' of oak is not concealment, advanced sensors can 'see' her back there.

4' of oak is not cover.  FGMP-14 punches through that like it's not there.

Vint had more of a chance.

She hated me personally for that.

I'm fine with that, she's a liberal harridan judging from her Facebook page.