Unusual Background as a balancing mechanic

[Almaz]

So, frankly, I like characters with unusual backgrounds! I actually have no problem with them. But what do people think of using GURPS' "unusual background" as a method of soft-restricting the amount of craziness that can go on in a system which has lots of combinations open?

e.g. Characters in the setting come from particular Origins, let's say there are 8, and there are 2 major Roles associated with each Origin, and another 4 Roles that come from anywhere (maybe they're the "multiclasses" like in KSF). Origins and Roles are both associated with power-lists. To take an unusual Role with a given Origin, you have to pay up for an Unusual Background off of some other set of powers.

Numbers are totally randomly pulled out of a hat. Thoughts? Terrible idea? etc?

[Ancient History]

Unusual Background as GURPS has it is a speed bump to help curb certain inner-twelver-year-old tendencies in gamers. As such it can be seen as a kinder and gentler version of steering PCs away from certain Rifts-esque or "special snowflake" character concepts without banning them absolutely or making them so horrible no one would want to play them.

If you had to draw a comparison with another game, look at World of Darkness Vampire games and the various "unique" clan-only disciplines they had - after the initial clansplats were out, subsequent books through in a bunch of bloodlines or variations which "stole" some of the uniqueness of the other clans by borrowing their signature disciplines. Blood Magic was the main offender here - in early-era V:tM, Thaumaturgy was THE blood magic discipline and if there was any blood magic going on, then the assholes doing it knew Thaumaturgy whether they were Tremere or not. Later on this extended to the Giovanni losing sole mastery of Necromancy (Nagaraja, Samedi, those fairy-obtenebration fucks from the Lasombra whose name I forget, etc.) Eventually WoD tried to "fix" the situation with a bunch of retcons (Necromancy? Fuck you, you get Thanatosis) and specialization (Okay, you can have Necromancy, but you get this funky specialized path of Necromancy and that's it) and plain-old discipline bloat (Blood Magic, Blood Sacrifice, &c.)

See, that was all a big to-do in Vampire because the game designers wanted to keep the various clans/bloodlines distinct and each their own flavor of special. That was the entire point of having clans to begin with. Now, if you were a suitably munchkinny player you could still whip up a vampire that started the game with three "unique" disciplines that would make Mark Rein*Hagen cry, but the idea of just having a single "meh, what the fuck ever floats your boat dude" mechanic like Unusual Background never really crossed their minds.

Speed bumps like Unusual Background generally don't have a lot to do with balance. I maen, you could argue that the XP penalty for multiclassing in D&D3 was similar in a way, but Unusual Background is a one-time cost where that was an ongoing penalty presumably to "balance" the fact you're getting a broader range of abilities and options... I mean, it patently was not just a legacy from the old demihuman multiclassing days where you split the XP evenly between your classes and each class had a different level-up schedule, but the general idea was the versatility (or, if you prefer, violating the character guidelines laid down from on high) should come with some mechanical penalty.

GURPS...has no character guidelines descending from on high, not really. There are suggestions, but that's it, and they're usually setting-specific. So that might be why Unusual Background is just a speed bump instead of a harder limitation, because GURPS is ultimately a more flexible system meant to serve the players instead of the setting. Might have to meditate on that a bit more.

[Almaz]

Comparison with White Wolf is interesting because I was also thinking of the ongoing EXP bump on buying out of Clan Disciplines as a comparison. While I initially intended to start another thread to see if people had different thoughts, sure, we can discuss that here too.

I'm fiddling with a game idea that popped into my head, and basically what I wanted was a way to subtly encourage players to take certain associations between power lists. But I also don't want to hard-lock these power lists. I'm thinking the pool of points that will be used to pay for the surcharge will also come out of the pile that you use to buy Generic Neat Stuff (a la WoD backgrounds/merits - connections with the setting, basically) and thus having an unusual background will cost.

But I could have it come out of the pool of points you use for buying powers, but then that would result in the acquisition of less powers. By having it be unrelated and reflect a cultural/environmental thing, you don't have a power drop for choosing a more "unusual" combination. On the other hand, if the reason those prices exist is to prevent maximizing power gains from certain combinations by using things that synergize with less overlap in unrelated power lists, then continually penalizing their purchases is a good idea.

Hmm.

Since we're not WW, let's not have whining about how Chargen and Advancement don't really work together, k? K. Anyone writing their RPG nowadays should know better than to handle things like that.

[Username17]

I don't really think Unusual Background worked. If a player wanted to be an Inuit Vampire Cyborg, that was either going to annoy other players or it wasn't. And if it was going to annoy other players, they weren't going to stop being annoyed just because the guy had to pay a 15 point penalty. Meanwhile, the player who wanted to play an Inuit Vampire Cyborg would feel picked on by the MC if they didn't get a green light. Being allowed to go forward with the character but charged a "having a stupid character concept" tax didn't stop the player from feeling picked on.

It's basically a bad compromise that makes no one happy. The people who don't want Inuit Vampire Cyborgs in their 17th century pirates swashbuckling adventure feel betrayed because there is a fucking Inuit Vampire Cyborg in their game, and the people who want Inuit Vampire Cyborgs in the game feel picked on because they are literally being picked on. Far better to just allow or not allow a weird character concept, at least that only pisses off half the people at the table.

-Username17

[kzt]

Our answer in HERO to special snowflakes with possibly gamebreaking stuff was typically something like: Write me a convincing story about why your character has this, explain how it all fits together, what it means for the game, and then give me a bunch of hooks on which I can hang plot stuff.

They often worked out fine. If someone can't/won't do that then no. If they can then some negotiation might take place.

[Drolyt]

I don't really think Unusual Background worked. If a player wanted to be an Inuit Vampire Cyborg, that was either going to annoy other players or it wasn't. And if it was going to annoy other players, they weren't going to stop being annoyed just because the guy had to pay a 15 point penalty. Meanwhile, the player who wanted to play an Inuit Vampire Cyborg would feel picked on by the MC if they didn't get a green light. Being allowed to go forward with the character but charged a "having a stupid character concept" tax didn't stop the player from feeling picked on.

It's basically a bad compromise that makes no one happy. The people who don't want Inuit Vampire Cyborgs in their 17th century pirates swashbuckling adventure feel betrayed because there is a fucking Inuit Vampire Cyborg in their game, and the people who want Inuit Vampire Cyborgs in the game feel picked on because they are literally being picked on. Far better to just allow or not allow a weird character concept, at least that only pisses off half the people at the table.

-Username17

I might have imagined this, but I thought the justification for Unusual Background was that having powers not appropriate to the setting (like magic in a setting where magic doesn't otherwise exist) was worth more. It still doesn't make much sense, but I swear I thought that was the reason for it.

[Almaz]

Unusual Background included "having Magic in a Low Fantasy setting," yes. As a note, I'm more interested in THAT implementation of UB (to encourage rare characters to remain rare, but still including them in the setting), not the "inuit vampire cyborg" one.

Or, to be more precise, to not have everyone on the same team be one, I guess, is my thought. Or not. I'm actually not entirely lucid right now, come to think of it, so I should stop posting until I get more sleep.

[RadiantPhoenix]

The way you make rare character types stay rare is...

You don't make a bunch of NPCs of that type.

Seriously.

[Username17]

I might have imagined this, but I thought the justification for Unusual Background was that having powers not appropriate to the setting (like magic in a setting where magic doesn't otherwise exist) was worth more. It still doesn't make much sense, but I swear I thought that was the reason for it.

You're not exactly wrong. That justification is invoked in some GURPS books. It is not mentioned at all in GURPS CYBERPUNK, the book Ancient and I are doing an OSSR of at the moment, but there are a non-zero number of GURPS books that make that argument. GURPS CYBERPUNK simply makes the argument that if the game master wants something to be rarer, they can charge a flat fee to people who want it, with that flat fee being larger the more rare they want it to be (10 points for uncommonness, 25 points for very raritude).

Of course, both arguments are completely fucked. An attack is more valuable if the defenses against it are rare, but a defense is less valuable if the attacks it defends against are rare. In D&D, Sonic Damage is better than Fire Damage, because Fire Resistance is more common than Sonic Resistance. But also in D&D, Fire Resistance is worth a lot more than Sonic Resistance is - because there is a lot more Fire Damage than Sonic Damage out there.

And of course, many abilities are not simple attacks or defenses, but rather the interaction with a minigame. These are useful to the extent that their minigame occurs. Sailing and gardening useless in a desert campaign, hacking and stunt driving are useless in a low tech world.

Whether your "magic" is particularly impressive in a low- or no- magic world depends entirely on what it can do. Your voodoo curses are pretty good in a world where no one has any counterspells. But your counterspells are a waste of everything in a world with no voodoo curses to defend against. And while your magical ability to raise the dead is world changing, your magical message sending is likely interesting but ultimately worthless in a world where everyone has iPhones.

-Username17

[hyzmarca]

I'm going to say no. And also hell no.

At the end of the day, penilizing unusual choices only serves to separate the roleplayers from the rollplayers and not in a good way.

[Vebyast]

a defense is less valuable if the attacks it defends against are rare.

Sailing and gardening useless in a desert campaign, hacking and stunt driving are useless in a low tech world.

your magical message sending is likely interesting but ultimately worthless in a world where everyone has iPhones.

Irrelevant, because we have to price and balance things against how good they can be, not how bad they can be. In DND, we balance wizards assuming they prep Wish instead of Prestidigitation in their ninth-level slots, rogues assuming they throw flasks instead of rocks, and fighters assuming they charge with lances instead of hitting things with swords. Similarly, we have to balance Unusual Background assuming that people will use it to open up unblockable magic, out-of-context skills (if you make a machine shop in 4000BC, you win), and future equipment. It gives you the potential to be more powerful, therefore it costs points.

That's not to say that you have to spend points if you want an interesting character. You can role-play your wizard in New York all you want without spending these points. But the instant you want to roll-play that character - that is, as soon as your background starts giving you actual mechanical stuff - you drop into mechanics land and things start costing points. Same reason that, in DND, you can be angry all you want, but you can't get a +4 bonus to STR while angry unless you're a Barbarian.

[Username17]

Irrelevant, because we have to price and balance things against how good they can be, not how bad they can be.

But you're already charging people points separately for attacks and defenses. If you're going to make the argument "unusual powers are potentially more useful", then you should at the very least have an "unusual attack" surcharge and an "unusual defense" discount. Because defenses against unusual attacks are very obviously worth less than defenses against common attacks.

-Username17

[Vebyast]

Irrelevant, because we have to price and balance things against how good they can be, not how bad they can be.

But you're already charging people points separately for attacks and defenses. If you're going to make the argument "unusual powers are potentially more useful", then you should at the very least have an "unusual attack" surcharge and an "unusual defense" discount. Because defenses against unusual attacks are very obviously worth less than defenses against common attacks.

Agreed. Having those separate would definitely be better; I actually suspect that the unified "unusual everything" is just a limitation of GURPS' character-creation system, since the authors definitely recognize the issue. The actual text of the advantage specifically states that "the GM should only charge points when the character enjoys a tangible benefit". There are also a few instances where discounting is handled by individual advantages, such as the the "limited defenses" bit on page 46 of Characters. Some kind of blanket "this modifies the cost of everything by this amount" would be best balance-wise but would be incredibly difficult even compared to the usual accounting. I suppose you could get by with some kind of "you must also take and price out the Unusual Background disadvantage" legalese, but that would be incredibly weird.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Unusual Background has never been very coherent as to exactly what it meant.

I think it was the second GURPS Supers which had a scaling UB cost to determine how common superpowers were. That is, a standard superhero was 500 points, and in the absence of a specified setting, the players could decide amongst themselves how much 'being a super' cost, from 0 points (everyone on Earth has some super ability) to 250 points (the PCs are literally the only supers on the planet, but much less impressive).

Also, while an unusual attack is worth more than a defense against an unusual attack, an unusual defense may well be against a common thing. I mean, in Game of Thrones, poison and fire aren't exactly rare, but only a very few people have Immunity (Poison) or Damage Resistance (Fire). There's also the issue of using your defense proactively: fire resistance comes up a lot more often if you douse yourself in flaming oil before every fight.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you were just going to hack in an Unusual Background, what's the feasibility of having several (or dozens of) pages charts with the vertical tabs being the desired game effect, the horizontal tabs being the type of campaign, and the cells being the surcharge for the ability?

So you had something like: High Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Superhero, Apocalypse, Nautical, Cyberpunk, Stone Age, et al. for the horizontal tabs and stuff like Fire Magic, Super Strength, Teleportation, Resurrection, Water Magic, and-so on for the vertical.

If a campaign crosses multiple genres (like a Post-Apocalypse High Fantasy Campaign) then the surcharge is merely the highest value.

Would that work for a quick-and-dirty fix?

[fectin]

It sounds like the exact same problems, plus a chart.

[TheFlatline]

This doesn't address the idea that the more unique snowflake the character is compared to the rest of the party the more it tends to disrupt the game.

If everyone is kooky, with ninja cuttlefish and combat wombats like in TMNT the RPG, then that's one thing. All bets are off. But wanting to play a cyborg ninja commando in a pirate game can't end well. Because the player expects to get proportionally more spotlight time because they're SPECIAL! in my experience. Adding a game-breaker tax exasperates the problem, because now the player has paid a tangible, quantifiable amount of character power to be the center of attention.

[Lago PARANOIA]

It sounds like the exact same problems, plus a chart.

If I didn't just change my signature literally several minutes ago, this would be my new one.

[Cyberzombie]

I might have imagined this, but I thought the justification for Unusual Background was that having powers not appropriate to the setting (like magic in a setting where magic doesn't otherwise exist) was worth more. It still doesn't make much sense, but I swear I thought that was the reason for it.

Yes. This was generally the purpose for it, a way of charging people more for unusual powers. Being able to turn invisible in D&D isn't a big deal, because people are ready with invisibility counters on hand. Doing that in the real world is a lot more powerful since nobody expects an invisible enemy or has any means of detecting one (at least none as standard issue gear).