Page 169: The most messed up!

[SaintofM]

I do dimly remember that Arioch implied somewhere that Alex might be a rather powerful "telepath/psionic/whatever". I also havn't yet seen any GURPS sheet of him, which is suspicious.

But maybe I also simply misinterpreted his comment.

Are you perhabs thinking of Arioch stating that Alex sensing Fireblade says more about Fireblades psionic strength than about humanities immunity?

Reading the comment (For Science [134]) again, Arioch likened Alex more to Holdo (It was a star wars joke) and not to Luke Skywalker. So, he did not really imply that Alex/humans had any greater powers.

Great, now I am imagining Fireblade to tell Alex to Hold the Door as the Umiakes invade the station.

[SVlad]

I also havn't yet seen any GURPS sheet of him, which is suspicious.

There was one. But it's a rough draft.

SpoilerShow

[Werra]

Oh? Where is that from?

I find it interesting that Alex psionic resistance is at 10, while Tempo for example has a telepathic power of 20. Does that mean that under the rules of GURPS, Tempo has a shot of overcoming Alex resistance?

Edit:
Also, comparing the strength scores of Tempo (10), Beryl (9), Fblade (12) and Alex is funny. How large is a one point difference in GURPS?

[Arent]

I also havn't yet seen any GURPS sheet of him, which is suspicious.

There was one. But it's a rough draft.

SpoilerShow

That looks a bit like there is a part missing:

SpoilerShow

[boldilocks]

Oh? Where is that from?

I find it interesting that Alex psionic resistance is at 10, while Tempo for example has a telepathic power of 20. Does that mean that under the rules of GURPS, Tempo has a shot of overcoming Alex resistance?

Edit:
Also, comparing the strength scores of Tempo (10), Beryl (9), Fblade (12) and Alex is funny. How large is a one point difference in GURPS?

Strength scores in gurps are set as 10 being the baseline for the species, apparently. So Alex' 10 could mean he's physically stronger than Fblade's 12 if we assume that the loroi species is physically weaker than humans on average.

Reference:
https://gurps.fandom.com/wiki/Attribute ... attributes

Based on that, it means Beryl is below average strength, fitting for a techie, while Fblade is 20% stronger than the average Loroi.
Also: turns out Alex is basically aristotle.

[Werra]

Wait, how does GURPS deal mechanically with something like arm wrestling between two species?

[Arioch]

ST is absolute in GURPS, it's not relative. A species may have a higher than normal ST (so, for example, a species with a +2 ST would be 12 baseline, which is figured into the cost of the species), but two individuals of whatever species that have the same ST value have the same strength.

Here's a PDF of the "Lite" version of GURPS if you're curious: https://well-of-souls.com/temp/gurpslite.pdf The section regarding feats of strength is on page 23. (Note that this is from an older edition of GURPS; the current version sucks.)

The character sheet for Alex isn't posted because it's incomplete and inaccurate. I wouldn't recommend drawing a lot of conclusions from it.

[Arent]

The character sheet for Alex isn't posted because it's incomplete and inaccurate. I wouldn't recommend drawing a lot of conclusions from it.

One conclusion one might immediately draw is that psionic resistance is a trait of humans in general, not specifically of Alex.

[orion1836]

One missing stat...

Attractiveness: Kirkian

[Arioch]

One missing stat...

Attractiveness: Kirkian

That would be like a 500 point advantage...

[Krulle]

It's what I stumbled over too.
So, is Alex attractive even for a Loroi according to this GuRPS sheet?

[StarCruiser]

Somehow appropriate:

[orion1836]

Somehow appropriate:

Beat me to the punch, lol.

[Arent]

I think it's really funny how in the 1960s you had these tough guys, Kirk, Bond, Old Shatterhand etc., who shot first, asked questions later, got every girl, were damn good looking, had no issues whatsoever. There was no problem a well placed bullet couldn't solve & if that was not enough, you could always have a date with the daughter of the supervillain, who immediately switched sides to support the hero

And then came Captain "let's talk about it" Picard

[StarCruiser]

Thing is - that image of Kirk as a shoot-first, ask questions later, always gets the girl type isn't entirely correct...

He just as often talked, or otherwise figured his way out of a bad situation - i.e. used his wits. Yes, that means he occasionally talked a computer into suicide with a quick course in logic that even Spock was impressed by.

[Arioch]

Thing is - that image of Kirk as a shoot-first, ask questions later, always gets the girl type isn't entirely correct...

Yeah, it's a false premise. I think if you cataloged all the episodes and logged how many times force was used versus how many times problems were solved diplomatically, I think Kirk and Picard would probably come out pretty much the same.

And yeah, Kirk got more girls, but it's hard to get girls when you're not on the away team.

[Arent]

Thing is - that image of Kirk as a shoot-first, ask questions later, always gets the girl type isn't entirely correct...

He just as often talked, or otherwise figured his way out of a bad situation - i.e. used his wits. Yes, that means he occasionally talked a computer into suicide with a quick course in logic that even Spock was impressed by.

A better comparison would be to count how many people Kirk killed and how many girls he got, and compare this to Picard.

But I get what you want to say.

[SaintofM]

SHatner and Picard had two different ideologies on romance. Riker in the first few seasons was more like kirk in that regard. Its technically a female of the species, it technically has hole. As long as its mutually fun for both parties, have fun.

Picard is more of a romantic, thus I think he's only had the hots for three women in the Next Generation series: Crusher, who the two never really worked out as she married his best friend and felt it would be a betrayal to his memory if he did the comforting the widow cliche. There was one who was a thief/archaeologist who was basically opposites attract. The last one was in the third live action next gen movie who made him feel young.

That and his private life is his private life and he likes it that way.

[Murph]

I think it's really funny how in the 1960s you had these tough guys, Kirk, Bond, Old Shatterhand etc., who shot first, asked questions later, got every girl, were damn good looking, had no issues whatsoever. There was no problem a well placed bullet couldn't solve & if that was not enough, you could always have a date with the daughter of the supervillain, who immediately switched sides to support the hero

And then came Captain "let's talk about it" Picard

Yes, they were what Robert Heinlein called "Competent Men", they did not worry if their half-caf, soy mocha latte frappachino was served properly, they went out and did things, and did not worry if they might offend someone. They saw the job that needed doing, and went ahead and did it. They were not "in touch" with their feelings, concerned with "privilege", or overly worried about anything other than the price of failure. Also they were like H. Beam Piper's characters (the best Science Fiction author ever....). They understood that sometimes problems were handled with fists, a bullet, a phaser, or a thermonuclear weapon if diplomacy was failing. My favorite H. Beam Piper quote: "Diplomacy operates on credit, and at some point you realize that you have to pay up".

[Arent]

I think it's really funny how in the 1960s you had these tough guys, Kirk, Bond, Old Shatterhand etc., who shot first, asked questions later, got every girl, were damn good looking, had no issues whatsoever. There was no problem a well placed bullet couldn't solve & if that was not enough, you could always have a date with the daughter of the supervillain, who immediately switched sides to support the hero

And then came Captain "let's talk about it" Picard

Yes, they were what Robert Heinlein called "Competent Men", they did not worry if their half-caf, soy mocha latte frappachino was served properly, they went out and did things, and did not worry if they might offend someone. They saw the job that needed doing, and went ahead and did it. They were not "in touch" with their feelings, concerned with "privilege", or overly worried about anything other than the price of failure. Also they were like H. Beam Piper's characters (the best Science Fiction author ever....). They understood that sometimes problems were handled with fists, a bullet, a phaser, or a thermonuclear weapon if diplomacy was failing. My favorite H. Beam Piper quote: "Diplomacy operates on credit, and at some point you realize that you have to pay up".

Well, I just wanted to point out that there has been a rather obvious shift in the depiction of heroes. To a certain extent, you could argue that the classical, strong, good looking, always confident, always winning, always getting the girl staple heroes became 'boring' after some time. However, the constant 'let's talk about it' attitude of 'modern heroes' aka 'Wesley Crusher' gets boring as well.