The problem with GURPS-style advantage/disadvantage character creation systems is that the actual impact of a given advantage or disadvantage is highly dependent on the circumstances of actual play: “Immune to psionic attacks” is totally amazing if your campaign is The War Against the Illithids; it’s completely wasted if your character never encounters a psion. Similarly, “Horrifically Claustrophobic” is a crippling disadvantage in a megadungeon campaign; it’s basically a non-factor if you’re playing Lawrence of Arabia.

So in order for these systems to work, the advantages and disadvantages need to be made equally relevant in actual play.

IME, however, there are two typical actual play dynamics in RPGs:

First, the players are given a free rein. Players will naturally seek to play to their advantages and play away from their disadvantages. This isn’t even really abusive play: It’s just a logical way of interacting with the world. (If I had no legs, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time buying ladders.)

Second, the GM is railroading the players. You might initially expect this to reverse the dynamic, but it typically doesn’t because (again, IME) most railroading GMs are more focused on achieving a predetermined goal: Their focus is an internal one. It might inadvertently force players into confronting their disadvantages, but often will not. (While the players will still be able to tactically exploit their advantages.)

In order for an advantage/disadvantage system to really work, IMO, you need a GM who’s willing to advocate as strongly for the inclusion of a PC’s disadvantage as the player is to advocate for the inclusion of the PC’s advantage.

The GMs most willing to do this are (in terms of the Threefold) dramatists and gamists. Simulationists are much less likely to put their thumb on the scale and “force” the inclusion of disadvantages.

This becomes a particular problem for GURPS because most the features in that system are heavily focused on supporting simulationists: So the people most likely to be running GURPS are the ones least likely to adopt the GMing techniques necessary to keep the advantage/disadvantage system balanced.

This was originally posted as a response to a comment by Pasquale, but I thought it might interest a larger audience.

Transhuman Space has earned a reputation as a rich and magnificent setting… which is also almost completely impenetrable to players and incredibly difficult for GMs to run. Pasquale asks whether or nor the Between the Stars campaign structure could be used to crack open Transhuman Space.

The primary problem with Transhuman Space is that the complexity, depth, and density of the setting requires a heavy upfront investment from the players.

To give a basis of comparison:

My open table OD&D campaign relies almost entirely on common knowledge. If a player knows what an elf, dwarf, halfling, and wizard are, I can provide a functional basis for understanding the game world in about 60 seconds.

My dedicated 3.5 campaigns set in the Western Lands are a bit more involved: I have an 8 page handout (half of which consists of practical lists like “gods you can choose”, “languages you can choose”, etc.). It probably requires about 5-10 minutes from the players, with another 30 minutes or so dedicated to character creation.

Transhuman Space, on the other hand, doesn’t have a lingua franca of common genre tropes to fall back on. It is a very specific, very complex, and very deep setting. In order for most characters to function coherently in such a setting, the players need to have a specific, complex, and deep understanding of the setting.

Basically, a setting like that often requires that the players read most of the setting book for themselves. That requires hours of investment, and I’ve found that most players won’t commit it.

To make things worse, Transhuman Space was primarily designed to be an interesting setting for the sake of having an interesting setting, without any real consideration or focus given to the types of stories/games that can be told in that setting.

So, to answer Pasquale’s question at long last: Yes. I think you could use a structure similar to “Between the Stars” as a solution to both problems.

It’s been about 10 years since I read Transhuman Space, so take any specifics with a grain of salt, but the general approach I would take would look something like this:

(1) Set the PCs up as the crew of a tramp freighter. These vessels, due to their relative isolation and the difficulty of maintaining network connections and advanced tech on a mobile platform, end up being a lot more culturally conservative than the rest of the solar system. (In other words, their crews cleave a lot closer to early-21st century norms, so the players don’t have to “reach” as far to understand their characters.)

(2) The scenario structure needs to be tweaked somewhat to accommodate interplanetary travel instead of interstellar travel, but the basic principle of “key to the voyage” should still work.

(3) I would key each voyage to reveal some specific facet of the Transhuman Space setting. (Over time, therefore, the campaign would slowly introduce your players to its intricacies one chunk at a time.)

In terms of keying, this can actually be quite liberating. Flipping through the setting book randomly and just grabbing stuff off the page, for example, gives me:

A large group of executives from Nanodynamics is travelling to a base in the outer system to inspect the installation of zero-gee nanofabrication tools. But they’re being targeted by pro-union terrorists from the recently acquired Exogenesis Systems Technologies. (see page 95)

A poorly secured microbot swarm breaks loose in the ship’s cargo hold.

The crew is hired to make the long haul out to Miranda with 3HE mining supplies. There’s a spy onboard trying to figure out what China’s real intentions are for the Miranda colony. (see page 48)

A Felician combat bioroid sneaks onboard in an effort to escape her contract. A corporate hunting team, however, is trying to track her down. And since the Felician killed their captain, they may be more interested in vigilante justice than fulfilling their contract. (see page 116)

And so forth.

It might also be useful to check out “Getting the Players to Care“, which is primarily about how to parcel and structure exposition so that it’s not boring or overwhelming.

This is the fourth in a series of biographical profiles from alternate histories.
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Thirty years before the Rise of Camelot there was born to the Duke of Tintagel and his wife, Igrayneh, twin daughters. One was named Morgan and the other was named Megan, the youngest of four sisters. Seven years later the Duke would be killed in battle while his nemesis, Uther Pendragon, came to his wife’s bed – mystically enchanted by the magician Merlin so as to assume the appearance of the Duke and so beguile the devoted Ingrayneh. In triumph Uther married Igrayneh and from their ignoble union was born Arthur.

Arthur’s youth is well known, but the fate of his half sisters is less so. Following Uther’s rise to power they were sent away from their mother and into marriage. Morgan was married to a northern lord. Megan was sent across the sea. Both, as if bound by the ties of birth, studied magic, earning for themselves the title of “Le Fey”. But where Morgan studied the black arts, Megan studied the white.

They would not cross paths again for forty years. Arthur, in triumph, had built the mighty walls of Camelot. The bitter, warped mind of Morgan had returned to him and conceived by her own half-brother a child. The child, called Mordred, manipulated and aided by his mother, would, in turn, return to Camelot intent upon its destruction. They would have succeeded, destroying mankind’s last best hope of escape from a dark age, had Megan Le Fey not returned from beyond the sea and joined her might with that of her brother Arthur to destroy the forces arrayed against Camelot.

In the years which followed, Arthur would lead the reunited Knights of the Round Table across much of the Known World. The world of today is one in which learned men have recaptured the ancient glories and the mystic arts have revealed to the common man the deeper mysteries of the world. Fey and man alike exist in mutual acknowledgment and brave new frontiers lying beyond the Mountains of the East, the Ocean of the West, and the Desert of the South lie yet to be explored.

This is the third in a series of biographical profiles from alternate histories.
Go to Part 1

William Boulle first ran for national office in 1956 as Adlai Stevenson’s running mate. Although they were handily defeated by the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket, Boulle distinguished himself as a strong campaigner – particularly in the early primary states. Boulle would run unsuccessfully in 1960 against John F. Kenendy and then retire from politics in 1964 when his senatorial term ran out. In 1968 Boulle emerged from retirement to once again attempt to capture the democratic nomination. His domestic and anti-war policies caught the imagination of the people and he proved immensely popular at the ballot box. Tragically, however, Boulle would be assassinated immediately after declaring victory in the California primary by Sirhan Sirhan. Bobby Kennedy would go on to win the nomination and, then, the general election against Richard Nixon.

Once in office Kennedy would bring the war in Vietnam to a quick, successful, diplomatic conclusion before the end of 1971. This course of action easily won him a second term of office in 1972. Historians agree, however, that Kennedy’s most important achievement was in embracing his brother’s vision and expanding the American space program. By 1976, when he had left office, man had stepped on Mars for the first time and the plans for orbital and lunar stations were well on their way to completion. Without his influence it is doubtful that mankind would have reached the stars as quickly as they did, or established the Outer Colonies by the end of the millennia.

Next: Megan Le Fey, Second Sister of King Arthur

This is the second in a series of biographical profiles from alternate histories.
Go to Part 1

By the time he was twenty-five Aurelieus had established himself as a philosophical genius, composing several important works which survive to the modern day. More importantly, however, was his ability as a military leader, because the year was 430 B.C. and the first skirmishes in the Peloponnesian War were just beginning. Under his adept leadership (using tactics which would later be immortalized in his Art of War) the Athenian forces quickly overwhelmed those of Sparta, cementing Athens preeminence in Greece for centuries to come.

Aurelieus died in 398 B.C., but he left behind him a unified Grecian state based around the power of Athenian rule. Within a hundred years Greece had come to dominate the eastern Mediterranean. In the third century, the Greek general Pyrrhus would invade the burgeoning Roman state. In reference to that campaign, the phrase “Pyrrhic Victory” has come to signify tremendous success, as Pyrrhus and his forces crushed any and all resistance. The only block to Athenian hegemony over the entirety of the known world was in the city-state of Carthage. Greece would eventually crush Carthagenian resistance during the Punic Wars, despite the tremendous success of Hannibal (who succeeded, through the use of his elephant-mounted troops, at coming to the very walls of Athens before being driven back).

Next: William Boulle, The Man Who Would Be President