Character Creation Questions

[Llyarden]

GURPS being what it is, while I've tried to cover as much as possible I've almost certainly missed something. Feel free to ask questions/clarifications here.

Edited October 2, 2023 by Llyarden (see edit history)

[Galedeep]

Hmm...with the focus being on the combat and containment, would building a face be useful, for the 'corral the locals and evacuate' side of things?

 With the point total, it shouldn't be hard to throw together someone with a specialty, AND the ability to shred some z's.

Also, with the 'supernatural' characters, I get you aren't looking for a spell-slinging mage on a flying carpet, but even for flavor purposes, does the occult exist? For instance, if a character was going to be an incorporated conspiracist, who caught on to what was happening and ended up being recruited, could they have an interest in, say, Hermetic Magic, or Psychics/Mediums, or Bigfoot, and have those things be real?

With mechanical abilities (like a magic or psionic flavored advantage or two), would having something like that and explaining it as a sort of "My mother always had the gift, and now I sometimes get these premonitions..." work, or would that also trigger the necessity to be amazing to get in?

 

[Llyarden]

Social skills won't be as important as combat skills, but they'll have their moment.

The occult/supernatural do exist, and yeah, minor supernatural aspects like that were more what I was looking for if someone wanted to make a supernatural character. I will still probably only take one such supernatural character at best, though.

[Caffeine11]

The game looks very interesting. A couple of questions.

1. Are we all going to be assigned to the same ZF base? Can you give us a hint where?

 

2. Does ZF have specific career specialties? Specific team sizes or makeups?

 

As for my character, I was thinking of wheelman/mechanic or maybe a technician guy (computers/security/comms)

Edited October 4, 2023 by Caffeine11 (see edit history)

[Llyarden]

Career specialities yes, as for team makeups they will generally try to have a mix of skills but if push comes to shove will prioritise having enough people for a mission over strictly ensuring people don't step on each others' toes. With regards to numbers, the minimum is two and the average number is 4-5; officially there's no upper limit but in practice it's around a dozen (and that would only be for a major zombie incident in a large city, which has never happened).

Given the way Zeta Force works there isn't really much of a concept of being assigned to the same base. Field agents, by dint of being more likely to be identified on account of going around with false identities, are generally kept away from the main headquarters except when being brought in for missions/debriefed and other things that can't really be done elsewhere, but even the majority of training is done away from headquarters.

As for where your mission is going to be, that is something your characters don't know; it could be anywhere in the world.

[Caffeine11]

So we aren't assigned to a base, per se. Is it more regional or can a team be scattered around the globe? It seems like they would like to keep team members fairly close to speed up a team deployment. Maybe within a 3 to 5 hour radius of a meeting point. I'm just assuming, I'm not sure exactly how a team recall would actually go down.

Back to character builds, is it possible to give us a list of ZF career specialties? Just to give people an idea of what they want in a field agent? Also, what source books are you using for character generation?

Edited October 4, 2023 by Caffeine11 (see edit history)

[Morphling]

Is anyone familiar with uploading files to Mythweavers and/or the latest release of GCS? I'm trying to upload a PDF of my character sheet, but all that I get is a dead link. Help would be appreciated, and thanks in advance.

[Michael Silverbane]

34 minutes ago, Morphling said:

Is anyone familiar with uploading files to Mythweavers and/or the latest release of GCS? I'm trying to upload a PDF of my character sheet, but all that I get is a dead link. Help would be appreciated, and thanks in advance.

I had the same issue with the PDF. As a work-around, you can export the GCS sheet as an image (png) and insert that into the post.

[Morphling]

That'll have to do for now I suppose. Thanks!

[Caffeine11]

I have always exported them as a .txt and then pasted that the character sheet as a private text for the GM.

[Llyarden]

10 hours ago, Caffeine11 said:

So we aren't assigned to a base, per se. Is it more regional or can a team be scattered around the globe? It seems like they would like to keep team members fairly close to speed up a team deployment. Maybe within a 3 to 5 hour radius of a meeting point. I'm just assuming, I'm not sure exactly how a team recall would actually go down.

Back to character builds, is it possible to give us a list of ZF career specialties? Just to give people an idea of what they want in a field agent? Also, what source books are you using for character generation?

There aren't defined teams per se, it's more that you're well-trained enough that you can near-seamlessly work with other ZF agents even if you've never met them before. Generally speaking, yeah, ZF will try to use agents nearest to the ZF HQ responsible for the continent the incident is happening in to speed up response times, but if there aren't enough people then they'll pull more widely. For our purposes you can be from anywhere in the globe and it will just so happen that you get called up for handwave-y plot reasons.

If you have the Action 1 book, there's a list of templates in each of those; while Zeta Force probably wouldn't use exactly those names, they'd roughly speaking divide people by those specialities. So that gives us Assassin, Cleaner, Demolition Man, Face Man, Hacker, Infiltrator, Investigator, Medic, Shooter, Wheel Man and Wire Rat. One thing that list is lacking, though, is a melee-focused combatant, which would also exist.

As for source books, the most immediate ones that come to mind are the Action books, Gun Fu, High Tech, Martial Arts, Tactical Shooting, Power-Ups, Ultra Tech and Zombies. I do have a bunch of other books though, so feel free to ask if there's something you particularly want from one.

Edited October 5, 2023 by Llyarden (see edit history)

[Visorian]

Just preemptively posting to state my interest in this game, although I've never interacted with GURPS in any way, so it's going to take me a while to get a character written up.

In terms of concept, I'll be going with the shooter mentioned above, while trying to focus on sniping and stealth where I can.

 

edit: Now that I think about it, where would you guys suggest I start in terms of building a character? Do y'all mind giving me a flowchart of a few books or chapters? like start here > then here> etc > etc

Edited October 5, 2023 by Visorian (see edit history)

[Llyarden]

51 minutes ago, Visorian said:

edit: Now that I think about it, where would you guys suggest I start in terms of building a character? Do y'all mind giving me a flowchart of a few books or chapters? like start here > then here> etc > etc

Well, the basic set is the core book and you will obviously need that (I didn't mention it above because, well, it's the core book), and it runs through the character creation process with an example character.

If you want a template to build off, the aforementioned Shooter (in Action 1: Heroes) is a 250-point template. Alternatively, Monster Hunters 1 has a 400-point 'commando' template which fits in basically with the same role.

[cbenny]

Would Zeta Force be amenable to recruiting someone with a criminal background if they happened to have the right skillset? Perhaps offering some form of amnesty or work-release type of situation?

Or are there enough potential recruits with clean records that they wouldn't even consider it?

[Visorian]

I'm having trouble understanding Signature gear and how Signature gear will be modified for this campaign, so I'm gonna post my entire thought process here, long post so feel free to ignore but corrections would be very much appreciated!

I don't really see what our TL is going to be explicitly stated anywhere, however this game takes place in the modern day so I'm gonna assume TL8, which means starting wealth is $20,000...i think.

HOWEVER we can't use this money for any actual gear, this 20k is just the default amount of money Zeta force gives us free reign to use as we wish while on mission. ALL gear we physically use needs to be purchased with the Signature gear advantage.

Signature gear states that "Each point in signature gear gives goods worth up to 50% of the average campaign starting wealth."

so for us that means spending 1 character creation point out of the 450 we get gives us $10,000 worth of stuff?

So far, this shotgun described in 'GURPS Tactical shooting' seems really cool, the TacOps Clandestine-12, I didn't even know shotguns could get this quiet!

According to GURPS tactical, it costs $2,700. INCLUDING the suppressor, a "speed loading stock", a flashlight, a 6-round side ammo carrier, and a special barrel attachment for jamming the suppressor into doorframes for blowing out hinges.

If I'm understanding what was laid out in the char creation rules section, "ammunition for weapons can be bought with the same point as the weapons they apply to". So let's say I wanted 10 rounds of buckshot, 10 breeching rounds, and 10 rounds of steel slugs. Let's take it a step further and say the shotgun is full of buckshot (5+1) and the side loops are too, so 42 rounds total of differing shot. according to gurps basic, ammo costs 20$ times however much weight is outlined for the firearms weight, for the Clandestine it says 13/0.55 so that's...11$, still not even close to $10k. wait I don't know how, if at all, the physical number of bullets factors into ammo costs...well we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

For side arm I was thinking the H&K MK 23 MOD 0, .45 ACP. It's an older model but it checks out. a little bulky for a pistol too. $2,000/$28...not sure what the 28$ is for. let's take the suppressor, extra $1,500. it says HP+P ammo is available for it which takes the damage from 2d pi+ to 2d+1(0.5) pi++. So I would like to take 120 rounds of the HP+P ammo but again, Idk how that factors into pricing. including the shotgun, if I'm allowed to include it. so far I'm at

Next is the most important bit, the sniper. This is hard because the base cartridge size for a "Sniper rifle" in the gurps basic rules is 338. but I'd rather not my character have to lug around a call of duty sniper. I was thinking something more like This. still 338. but subsonic and a more manageable size for the firearm itself. with a scope, suppressor, bipod, and 50 rounds of subsonic plus 50 rounds of armor piercing ammunition. should I just use the gun stats straight from gurps basic for a "sniper rifle" or should I change some stuff around? Also for all of these I'm not sure how much magazines should cost. Anyway if we use the gurps sniper rifle statistics it's $5,600 which brings the total so far to $11,800.

Again, assuming I can get multiple firearms with one point of 'Signature gear', 2 or 3 points of it should be able to get me a small armory, plus another 2 or 3 points for stuff like body armor, clothes, survival gear, etc.

So how far off base am I so far?