The Very Butcher Of A Silk Button

Cirilo di Faenza has the highest skill I've ever given a character with a sword.

A skill of 17 with a rapier gives a 14 or less to hit the vitals.

He then delivers 1d+1 imp.  On average that's 4 points, and typically without DR so that becomes a 12 and his opponent is looking to make a consciousness roll to keep fighting.

It's -9 to hit the eye, but you get x4 damage to hit there.  That wouldn't change if they die in one shot or not, but 16 is closer to dead than 12.  Even if they live, they're down an eye.

All out attack (determined) would give a +4 to hit that eye so 12 or less net.

All out attack (strong) would give a +2 to damage.  That'd be 6 points on average to the vitals and 18 delivered.

All out attack robs you of your defense and he's not stupid enough to do that.

What is the best course, with his skill is the seldom used feint.

That might even get a good roll at that eye without needing to all out attack. 

 

Coincidence

When making my TL5 character for the little TL Project I looked up names common to Hesse-Kassel and picked Meylin.

Kasper Meylin.

A possible inventor of the Pennsylvania long rifle he owns is Martin Meylin of Prussia (Rhineland-Palatinate).

Pure coincidence, but a neat one.

TL 8

Carrol O'Brien is a detective sergeant.

He's a bit of a throw-back, he'd fit right in a department from before everyone got their feelings hurt over having their participation trophy taken away.

Despite this, he's smart enough to navigate how things work today.

Finally this project is done!  It only took six years to make nine characters.

TL 0 is here.
TL 1 is here.
TL 2 is here.
TL 3 is here.
TL 4 is here.
TL 5 is here.
TL 6 is here.
TL 7 is here.

One More Character And I'm Done With The Project

I mentioned when I started this, I'd be making a TL8 character too.

TL8 is modern day.

TL8 is where the TL Project will stop because TL9 needs world building before you can start character generation.

Definitely need to make a Transhuman Space character though.  Not sure what TL that ends up being because it's originally 3e and the tech levels are all slightly different for 4e.

Doing The TL Project

None of my TL Project characters has been made with a template.

Old fashioned character generation.

Come up with the concept, define the person, allocate the points.

It's GURPS, so it's time consuming.

Templates speed up the character generation process and make the game a bit more accessible.

A problem arises when a new player uses the templates from day one and then begins to think that you have to use a template to create a character.

It's amplified when you bring a self-generated character to fill a role where there's a template and this player has advanced to being the GM.

There will be fights about the aspects of the character which are missing from the template.

That said, I like templates as guidelines.

They're very handy for the player whom has no idea about what a character for a given role should have and they help establish what the GM expects to see on their character sheet.

But they're not a good long-term substitute for learning the details of character creation and knowing when to depart from the template.

TL 7

Andrew Hendricks is a pilot.

It's all he ever wanted to be, but he wasn't wealthy or willing to join the military.

But it's the early 1970's and how can one feed the need to fly without a college education, good job, rich parents or Uncle Sam footing the bills?

Turns out that there's an emerging demand for people who know how to stick and rudder and don't care what's riding in the back.

Andrew was put with George Jung and the rest is gaming history!

Andrew is good with people despite being a loner, and he adapts to where he finds himself.

He's ingratiated himself with the budding cartels in Columbia and works through George to deliver in Miami.

The good times, of course, will never end!

TL 0 is here.
TL 1 is here.
TL 2 is here.
TL 3 is here.
TL 4 is here.
TL 5 is here.
TL 6 is here.
TL 8 is here. 

Not Even Related

The Madsen M/50 and the Swedish K just look similar.

They are not even related to each other.

I discovered this when picking out a gun for my TL7 character for my TL project.

Madsen M/50:

Swedish K or Carl-Gustav M/45

They're close enough for GURPS to treat with the same stats.

My drug smuggling pilot has a Madsen, which was aptly enough an official gun of the Colombian Army.

It took forever for me to finish my TL zero through seven and TL7 was the hang up.  I'd had this character in mind from the very beginning and just never put pencil to paper until today.

Historic Prices

In 1974 what was the average price of a used Cessna 310?

There's gaps in what the internet will provide when making a period GURPS character.

TL 6

TL 6 is a retread of an earlier idea, but scrubbed to be historical instead of being world specific.

George Hurst was born on February 28, 1891 in Los Angeles.  His mother was a the daughter of a miner from the 1849 gold rush so she named her only son George so that he'd be named after a successful miner (George Hearst), unlike his grandfather.

George took to the idea of mining, but did so in a scientific manner, going to college back east to learn geology in college and graduating cum laude from Johns Hopkins University.

His latin studies morphed into learning Portuguese and Spanish and geology took him to South America in search of the ever elusive blue jade.

He is equally at home in the US and Brazil, but prefers São Paulo to "home".

He is now 30 and in search of the fortune he knows is buried in the mountains and jungles of the Amazon basin.

TL 0 is here.

TL 1 is here.

TL 2 is here.

TL 3 is here.

TL 4 is here.

TL 5 is here.
TL 7 is here. 
TL 8 is here.

TL 5

Kasper Meylin is originally from Hesse-Kassel and was abducted when he was 14 and shipped off to Virginia for seven back breaking years as an indentured farm-hand.

He spent the next two years trapping to earn enough money to stake a homestead in western Virginia for himself and his wife, Gretchen.

His time as a trapper has made him known and welcome among the nearby Tutelo tribes.

His prized possessions are a trade tomahawk and a Pennsylvania rifle.

His hopes and dreams are very high in 1753 America.

Update:

$450 and 8.3 lb. for buckskins.  Yikes!  He's not carrying much more than the weapons thanks to the cost of that.  $4,000 of his starting wealth is tied up in his household, including the land, house and livestock.  There are things that he reasonable could take with him from home that exceed the $1,000 normally allowed; an understanding GM will allow it.

TL 0 is here.

TL 1 is here.

TL 2 is here.

TL 3 is here.

TL 4 is here.
TL 6 is here.
TL 7 is here. 
TL 8 is here.

TL Project

TL5 and TL6 are 99% done.

Got to finalize the character sheets and make write ups.

I might even get that done later today.

TL5 was a road block.  The Patriot being in high rotation helped a lot with breaking the character creation block.

TL 4

Hitting a brick wall with TL2 and TL3, but TL4 is conceptualizing well.

Cirilo di Faenza.

Master swordsman.  Sometime soldier.  Fancies himself a philosopher, but he's not very original OR well read.

But he can fence.

He has zero sense of humor and is incredibly thin skinned.

The kind of person whom you would have expected to die quickly in a dueling society.

Did I mention he can fence?

Others have tried to end him outside of duels but he never seems to be in the right place at the right time for some other fate to befall him.  His mysterious luck at avoiding lethal encounters from beyond sword range have earned him the nickname Cirilo il Gatto.

He is a barely competent teacher of fencing and that is where is meager income derives.

TL 0 is here.

TL 1 is here.

TL 2 is here.

TL 3 is here.
TL 5 is here.
TL 6 is here.
TL 7 is here. 
TL 8 is here.

The fencing weapons made me look up how they work.  Here's where I spot another major difference between 3e and 4e.

In 3e parry was 1/2 your weapon skill, fencing weapons 2/3.  And there was a passive defense (PD) bonus.

In 4e all weapons are 3+(1/2 skill).  Where fencing weapons come into their own is they are -2 instead of -4 for successive parries per hand per turn.

The next big change is the retreat maneuver.  In 3e it was a +3 to any defense roll.  In 4e it's +3 to dodge and +1 to block or parry.  Fencing weapons are still +3 though.

With Cirilo's 17 skill with a rapier and combat reflexes he has a normal parry of 12!  Plus he fights main-gauche so he's got a 12 with the dagger too.  If he retreats he gets two parries at 15, then two at 13 then two at 11 assuming he's got six opponents...

Don't catch il Gatto in a bad mood (and he's always in a bad mood).

TL Project

Something that is being reinforced by my little project is how things get cheaper the longer they are around.

The Viking is just barely better equipped than the Parthian yet the G$2,000 for comfortable TL3 start works out to nearly the same stuff as G$3,750 wealthy buys (and for half as many points).

TL 3

Thorvald Bjarndyrson

A Viking.  His father's name was actually Ragnar, but he's been the son of the bear since his first fight.

He's a sailor and a merchant, but also a raider.  A slaver.

He's not down on his luck, he's just getting started in what he hopes will be a long successful career.  He's managed to augment his strangely tough skin with a jacket of mail and a helm; soon he hopes to buy a sword horse.

It seems like the price of a sword horse always eludes him, there's always something needing bought or fixed that depletes his savings.  Not to mention he loves to gamble and he's a generous soul to his friends.

His generosity and charitable nature may seem to fly in the face of his profession, but it means his captures are well cared for and healthy when they arrive at market.  To that end he's also learned the chiurgen's skills.

TL 0 is here.

TL 1 is here.

TL 2 is here.

TL 4 is here.
TL 5 is here.
TL 6 is here.
TL 7 is here. 
TL 8 is here.

On the sword front I screwed up on buying wealth anticipating the armor to cost a lot more than it did and had money enough left over for a sword, but not so much I could drop the wealth from comfortable to average.

TL Project

Making these characters is kind of a drag for TL1-3.

The differences between the tech is essentially just a matter of materials.  Bronze to iron to steel.  The basic character types are the same.

GURPS: Low Tech provides really detailed armor rules and it's discouraging as to the "better" types of armor.

At TL1 you have plate armor available, but it'd have to made from bronze; which costs 4x as much as steel.  A pair of greaves is G$2,200 made from bronze and the starting wealth for TL1 is a mere G$500!  You have to blow a lot of points on wealth to be able to afford a full panoply.  Never mind that such a character would really need even more wealth because it'd be unheard of for someone who owns such armor to have the unsettled lifestyle that allows to you to piss all your starting wealth on adventuring gear.

TL2 iron armor, except for mail, just isn't any better than bronze.  In fact, the best types for DR and weight will still be the ultra expensive bronze!  This is even historically accurate.  Bronze plate hung in there well into what GURPS calls TL4.

Heck TL3 is the supposed "high fantasy" tech level, but most of the technology that gamers associate with "medieval" is actually TL4 stuff.  You know, after guns were invented and became widely disseminated?

Once we hit TL4 we get all new weaponry so there's some variety there.

TL5 is yet more better weapons and materials.

TL6 through TL8 is a repeat of TL1-3 where it's just materials getting better for equipment.  With the exception of TL8 getting all sorts of lightweight communications and computers.

TL 2

Varasdates is a Parthian tin merchant currently a bit down on his luck.

He was robbed not too long ago and has been working as a sell-sword.  Luckily, he managed to escape the brigands with his weapons, armor and mount.

Ironically, he's a mounted archer more than a swordsman, in fact he uses a mace instead of a sword in hand to hand fighting.

He's pretty late period for Parthia and his route goes up into the Armenian Empire, where he has had some contact with Rome.  He speaks both Aramaic and Latin in addition to his native Parthian, but he always speaks through a translator.  It gives him more time to consider his reply.

TL 0 is here.
TL 1 is here.
TL 3 is here.
TL 4 is here.
TL 5 is here.
TL 6 is here.
TL 7 is here. 
TL 8 is here.

It's moving again!

TL 1

He's a dispossessed farmer!

Because crop failure and debt were so damn common in bronze age (archaic) Greece he's become a mercenary/thug for the Aristoi.

Gotta pick a good year for it, but this should serve.

Still owns his land and has a family back home to support.

Gotta concept, now off to character generation!

I've placed him right at the beginning of the Greek Dark Ages.  He's from Mycenae or thereabouts.  He was wealthy as things began to fall apart, but he's still managing to hold things together.

Because there's been some war going on he's become rather skilled at fighting, but longs for his fields and family.

TL 0 is here. 
TL 2 is here. 
TL 3 is here.  
TL 4 is here. 
TL 5 is here. 
TL 6 is here.
TL 7 is here. 
TL 8 is here.

TL 0

My TL 0 character is beginning to take form.

He's not an outcast, rather he's solitary.

He's a valuable member of the tribe, but not of any particular clan.

He's an expert tool-maker and knows what medicine there is to know at his tech level.

I'm picturing someone who travels between the clans of a tribe and keeps them informed of the goings on outside their immediate area.

Kinda like a wandering minstrel or postman with a traveling doctor component thrown in.

He tells tales, tends wounds, delivers messages and such.

There is absolutely no historical or anthropological basis for this character at all.

TL 1 is here.
TL 2 is here.
TL 3 is here.
TL 4 is here.
TL 5 is here. 
TL 6 is here.
TL 7 is here.
TL 8 is here.

Gaming Project

Since I don't have anything constructive to do of late, I've decided that I am going to make a 150 point GURPS 4e character for each TL from 0-8.

Should be interesting.

I also need to hit the copy place for more character sheets.

The TL break-down for the curious:

TL 0 Stone Age
TL 1 Bronze Age (3500 BC+)
TL 2 Iron Age (1200 BC+)
TL 3 Medieval (600 AD+)
TL 4 Age of Sail (1450 AD+)
TL 5 Industrial Revolution (1730 AD+)
TL 6 Mechanized Age (1880 AD+)
TL 7 Nuclear Age (1940 AD+)
TL 8 Digital Age (1980 AD+)

Some of these span a rather large historical timeframe.  TL5 in particular sits astride some gigantic changes in technology.

I am thinking of:

TL 0 an outcast shaman.  A traveling shaman
TL 1 something Greek.  Mycenaean in fact!
TL 2 Roman.  Parthian horse archer cum tin merchant.
TL 3 A Viking slaver.
TL 4 Romantic highwayman.  Italian duelist and master swordsman.
TL 5 American colonial.
TL 6 Jade prospector.
TL 7 Drug smuggling pilot.
TL 8 Police detective.

Got some thinking to do.  Coming up with something adventury is a challenge.  I also need to decide if magic or psi is appropriate and fun.

TL 0 is here.

TL 1 is here.
TL 2 is here.
TL 3 is here.
TL 4 is here.
TL 5 is here. 
TL 6 is here.
TL 7 is here.
TL 8 is here.