[Broken Spokes] Character Creation Redux

Last week, I thought we were going to dive into kicking off Broken Spokes. In actuality, we spent most of the evening finishing off character creation, primarily equipment and the players tweaking the bits of their characters about which they’d had second thoughts between the first creation session and now.

As it turns out, they were both concerned about their characters’ gear. That’s a fair point, but one I tend to gloss over as a GM because equipment lists put me to sleep. I’d rather just assume they have everything they would reasonably have and leave it at that. Not so with these two guys.

In a lot of ways, it was helpful and educational to follow them through the gear load-out process, picking up tidbits like:

• GURPS Lite lacks automatic fire rules. We had to do some detective work with Basic Set: Characters, since I had neglected to bring Campaigns, thinking that the combat rules in Lite were all I needed for the evening. (This turns out to be a standing point of contention about the fourth edition of GURPS Lite, I found while browsing the discussion forum at Steve Jackson Games’ website.)
• Ammunition matters. This week I’m bringing GURPS High-Tech so Laban can have his choice of things to propel at qlippothic horrors at high velocities.
• For some folks, it’s not enough to say “You have everything a person like your character could reasonably be expected to have, on their person or back at home.” It’s enough for me, but I am learning to respect others’ desire for fully detailed inventories of pockets, backpacks, vehicle storage compartments and basements. I exaggerate for humor, but really, Wayne’s cat burglar has to keep all that stuff somewhere.