Life by Dice Episode 1: Truth, Honor, Basic Lift

Have you ever played and RPG? Not like Skyrim or Pokemon. I mean tabletop! Dungeons and
Dragons, GURPS, and so on. I just got done a whole GURPS campaign. Let me tell you, what fun it was to control the destinies of my friends by the roll of some dice. But I wanted more of a real thrill. I wanted something where more was at stake than a meaningless character.

So, friend, I thought of a great idea. What if life was like GURPS and D&D? What if my real world decisions and actions were governed by dots on a cube? Well, I decided to find out. So, I chose to make my own character sheet of myself. Each one of my decisions are based on a number on three dice.

You can do this too! This first episode calculates basic attributes so you can follow along. It's not super hard!

Now, I chose to do the GURPS format because that is what I'm most familiar with. For those of you new to the whole RPG format, a character is created using points. The player creates a character using these points to buy their strength (what they can lift), dexterity (basically athleticism), IQ (Intelligence), and HT (Health as in your healthiness, not health points.)

Then, there's HP (Health Points), Will (Will to get out of bed and what not), Per (Perception) and FP (Fatigue Points).

Finally, there's Advantages, Disadvantages, and Skills. These three modify the character by giving them personality quirks and traits as well as skills like lock picking and brawling.

But all this is hard to calculate on an actual human being but I did my best. Today, we'll be discussing my basic attributes. Strengh-FP.

First, there's Strength. In the 'GURPS Basic Set,' Strength governs lifting, throwing and so on. But the easiest way to calculate the ST value is to figure out your basic lift. Basic lift is what you can lift with one hand in one second. It is calculated by this formula where S= Strength.

S^2 /5

So if my strength were 10, it would be 10x10/5 which comes out to 20lbs. So I went to the gym.

Josiah, trying to figure out how to work a
specific workout machine to no avail.

This is me, at a machine doing athletic things. But since I realize this wasn't the best way to do it, I just walked over to where the weights were and started at 5 lbs and went up. I measured my strength and, incidentally, my strength is, indeed, 10. The GURPS book says that most average humans have a strength of ten and I suppose that worked out pretty well for me.

Now, strength governs many aspects of your character. Specifically, basic move, basic lift, and basic damage. With a 10 strength, my basic move is 5 and my basic lift is, as said before, 20 lbs.


Now, I don't plan on getting in any fights or kerfuffles but in the rare event that I am thrust into one to save some sort of maiden, I will, indeed, calculate my basic damage. Basic damage is just a table that tells you how much damage you do based on strength. It's dangerous to calculate alone, take this.

Welcome, friends, to the damage table. It's fairly easy to use. My strength is 10, so my basic damage with a thrust attack is 1d-2. So I'd roll a die and if I get a 6 then I subtract 2 and 4 will be the amount of damage I inflict. My swing will be just 1d. Pretty straight forward. If you're wondering what Thrust and Swing mean, it's also pretty self-explanatory. Thrust is an attack like a punch, kick, bite, or use of a thrusting weapon like a spear. Swing damage is an attack with a weapon like and axe or a sword where your arm is used as a lever of a sort.

Moving on! Don't worry, Strength governs way more than Dexterity does, however, for me, it was significantly harder to quantify into a number. The only way I could think was to play a sport that requires agility, coordination, and quick reflexes. And, as it happens, I'm taking a Badminton class right now. So I played doubles badminton against my professor a few times to get a general sense of my movement and quickness. I should say that this isn't your backyard badminton, it's competitive. So here we are playing!

Notice my graceful form as I leap through the air and strike with pinpoint accuracy. Long story short, my two friends and I lost against our professor and his partner. I did, however, play on my professor's team and I must say, I surprised myself.

Anywho, with these limitations in mind and after a but or analysis of the game, I concluded my dexterity averaged out to 10. Once again, that's the average for a human so that's convenient.

Dexterity comes into play with basic speed and basic move. Basic speed is calculated by adding HT (Health which defaults to 10) to DX and then divide by four. 10+10=20/4= 5. Basic move is equal to basic speed sans fractions but since my speed is a whole number, my move is also 5. So by this, I move 5 yards per second which is accurate. I've got long legs.

So, the final thing we need to measure (since everything else is based on ST, DX, IQ, and HT) is my IQ. This was the hardest to measure. Intelligence is subjective so I went with the best justifiable way of measuring that I could think.

I went to a popular quiz app and played twenty general knowledge quizzes. I told myself that my score would equal the amount of quizzes I win. Why does this make sense? Well there are 7 questions in each quiz and they are timed. The faster you answer correctly, the more points you get. I thought the speed factor would also help because of it's processing and response testing.

No, I do not have pictures of me sitting with my phone. But I won 13 quizzes. 10 is average intelligence and 13-14 is exceptional and apparent to others. After asking a few people, my ego got a boost when they agreed with that score. 15 is freakin' amazing and guides career choices. I'm studying art so...no.

So my character sheet looks like this:

So that's what we've got so far. I'll clear up a few things.HP is Hit Points which is equal to ST. Will and Perception weren't editable for some reason but they equal IQ so they'd be 13. FP is also equal to ST. I don't forsee any need for parry or block. In a real life situation, I won't have the time to roll dice if I do, indeed, have to parry or block. Reaction modifiers just mean that people react to me better than they would anyone else and that's not necessarily true. DR is Damage Resistance. I don't wear armor so...

So that's about it for the first episode of Life by Dice! My next post will be about advantages, disadvantages and skills. So that'll be fun and humbling. 

Anyway, remember, when life gives you lemons, make life take its lemons back! You don't want it's damn lemons!

I love you, 

Josiah and Cyber Mammoth out.