robkelk Wrote:I'd still like Bob to rule on this... My preference is for how GURPS Infinite Worlds treats CFs, which falls between these two extremesActually, it's exactly what I'm saying. Per Infinite Worlds there would be precisely one IST CF, and that's "IST." Take a look at each of the Iconic characters and you'll see that they all have two CFs, and they're all extremely generic. One of them is, usually, world specific and the other is "Homeline." That means that all of Homeline is clumped into that CF. It's more obvious, with Infinite Worlds, that the goal was to keep CFs wide-ranging because otherwise, you'd have to have "Homeline: America" or "Homeline: Western" and we just have "Homeline."
Infinite Worlds, pg 173 Wrote:Apply a -1 unfamiliarity modifier for every two TLs away from your own era’s TL. A modern TL8 American with Culture Familiarity (Western) would only suffer mild “past shock” in TL7 WWII America, but someone brought forward from colonial times (TL5) is at -1 in that same setting. A modern American dropped into Shakespeare’s London (TL4) is at -2; one in medieval France (TL3, but still Western culture) might as well be in a whole different culture. However, that medieval Frenchman finds things the same for centuries on end from, say, 700 A.D. to 1500 A.D. – and in some parts of France, until 1800 A.D.!
An IST character in IW would have the IST CF and nothing more. Adding more CFs to IST does exactly what the Characters book warns against:
Character, pg 23 Wrote:To prevent point-cost inflation, the GM should use broad definitions of culture: East Asian, Muslim, Western, etc. A single nation would have to be very different to merit its own Cultural Familiarity. In fantasy worlds, the GM might wish to have one culture per race; in a futuristic setting, an entire planet or even a galactic empire might have a single, monolithic culture.
For CFs, less is more.