Here is yet another example of me using my free time wisely. (I believe that I get bonus points for doing this on a Friday night.)
Caltech's bookstore had a paperback book (that came out in 2005) which was basically one long geek purity test. (As Lemming pointed out, if you buy it instead of doing it online, you clearly have to lose points.)
I looked through it for a few minutes and it seemed to have a couple marginally amusing things. It also had some inexplicable things. For example, there was a bar graph showing hobbies in the order of increasing geekiness. That's not so unusual, but the big wtf here is that according to the author, "re-enacting historical battles" is a less geeky hobby than "reading sci-fi novels," which is in turn less geeky than "watching sci-fi television shows." Right. The only three above this last one were all various sorts of fanfiction and the top two involved some sort of eroticism. WTF?
In my brief glance through the book, I noticed one idea that is particularly fantastic: the geek character sheet. Unfortunately, the implementation was exceedingly poor. I'll endeavor to correct that here by offering up an abbreviated version of my character sheet. (I'll make judgement calls on my stats. Obviously, I can't expect full agreement from everyone.)
In thinking about my stats, it occurred to me a couple days ago that charisma is actually my third highest stat. Shit. If anybody says that min-maxing is not realistic, I hereby defy you! (Actually, my charisma is not as low as is popularly believed, though it's not great either. Kender tend to be fairly charismatic for fairly similar reasons. My problem is that I have to get over a major shyness potential energy barrier with new people before this can show.)
With further ado, here is my abbreviated character sheet:
Str: 6
Dex: 8
Con: 6
Int: 17
Wis: 14 (however, I have very special negative modifiers on sense motive and spot that apply only to me)
Cha: 10 (but with special negative modifers on diplomacy)
Alignment: NN (with lawful anal tendencies)
Diety: None
Armor type: sweat pants + ironic t-shirt (I have to be able to cast spells)
Character class: 6 math + 3 physics + 2 writer + 5 applied math (prestige class)
Fortitude: N/A ("Braiiiiiiiiiins...")
Will: contains a major positive stubbornness bonus
Reflex: Duran Duran
Favored weapons: pencils, Matlab
Magical items: +5 iPod, decanter of infinite latte, Phylactery (my back-up harddrive)
Special attacks: "full-frontal assault from behind", chaos shaping, attack darkness, Tarzan Boy
Special qualities: I'm adorable.
Spells: confusion, sleep, protection against students 15 ft radius, Bigby's interposing boot to the head, wallflower
Feats: publish article, iron will, weapon focus [Matlab], weapon specialization [Matlab], 80's child (specialty: music)
Main skills: lots of knowledge-based skills (nonlinear dynamics, etc.), journalism
Notable weaknesses (abridged): shy, tactless, unaware of surroundings, Caltech alum (but I repeat myself)
Money: none (see: character class)
OK, so I fudged a few items on my character sheet. It's my blog, damnit.
2 days ago
8 comments:
The bar chart you mention sounds like a variation on Lore Sjoberg's classic Geek Hierarchy. (Be sure to look at the unabridged version, and note he is apparently using an unusual definition of "geeky".)
Actually, video games were on the low end of the spectrum among those listed in that chart. It was very simplistic and most likely developed independently from this chart (which I had never seen before, so thanks for passing along the link).
I agree that the definition of geeky on this site is rather weird.
Alright, I had to chip in, so I wrote up my character sheet, posted it over @ my /. page.
Hey AG, any chance we could get you to chime in with this self-indulgent nonsense?
Also, Lore kicks ass--Brunching was great in its heyday, and now Bad Gods and Alt Text are both pretty entertaining (I follow Slumbering Lungfish for news/updates on those).
For people who want to minimize number of links, here is Lemming's character sheet.
As Techers, aren't we supposed to specialize in mindless self-indulgence? (Hell, I am tempted to add that to my list of feats.)
And AG definitely needs to join in on this one.
Mason, how do you figure only int 17? The most restrictive definition would be the old 1st ed. roll 3d6 method, in which case an 18 is a 1/216 chance. You always say you're a ten sigma deviant, which is rather a lot better than merely 99.5 percentile... There's also the reasoning that except for strength and high level casting, only even numbers matter in 3.x, i.e. do you have a +4 int bonus or +3?
16th level? Wow. Wouldn't most of your class levels just be expert levels, with the skill points going in slightly different places? Though expert gets a d6 HD instead of d4, but the con penalty should make up for that (no offense, but I don't think you have a lot of hit points - nor do I for that matter).
Maybe I assume a lower powered world, but were I to do this I'd figure maybe 8ish levels of expert for myself, no PrC. Even Loremaster is too combat effective... :-D
Justin: I think it's fair to assume that all my character classes have small hit dice. (I could have used the 'expert' character class, but I could also just say that mathematicians and their ilk generally get d4s.) I needed the number of levels to get the right balance in my various specialties, so another way to do this would be to be specific about skill points. However, I decided to ramp up my levels and not look at skills in detail. That was one of my fudges.
In terms of int, I was trying to be modest. I tried to look up the equivalents in my 3rd edition sources but I didn't find them, so I decided not to bother. My choice of 17 was a vague memory of 2nd edition indicating that 18 was considered "genius." I know several geniuses personally, and I am most definitely not a genius so if there's going to be an equation of 18 with genius in my mind, then I felt it was necessary to pick something below 18. My comments about '10 std dev' have far more to do with personality and lifestyle than any actual ability scores. I think I could have perfectly average ability scores across the board and still be 8-9 standard deviations from the norm! :)
I chose my scores without reference to whether even or odd numbers matter. I just tried to assess roughly what they are.
Now, one question I have for the rest of you is if you can find the other fudges. :)
I'm not sure about this rank-ordering approach to stats. Just within my own class, that would put me at int 15 at best (and this only counts physics/astro people) - the two smartest guys I knew at 18, another just behind at 17, then a bit of a gap before people like me show up. With a more comprehensive sample (other years, other fields) one could easily end up with very smart people having int 12 or so by this system... Put another way, I don't think most RPG systems to a good job at very fine grained distinctions between people's stats. Such distinctions can be made with skills, though.
Also, you forgot the every four levels skill bump. So if your birth stat was int 17, you'd be at int 21 now... :-) One could try to argue around the "genius" position this way, but I know the kind of people you're talking about and their nature is obvious even when they are quite low level.
I think the moral of this exercise is "don't think too hard about translating reality into game stats". :-D
Oh, don't worry. I didn't think too hard about it. :)
Post a Comment