(TFT) Attribute ratings for real people

["Craig W. Barber" <craigwbar@comcast.net>]

You're right to be really cautious about those ratings!

Reminds me of a memory, I'm fuzzy on the details but here goes.  My friends
and I once used the system published long ago in TSG.  You guys probably all
laugh at that one, too.  The rule was something like, "do pull ups and add 8
to get your ST, for DX, suspend vertically and then drop a ruler between your
friend's fingers and add 8 to the number of inches left above their fingers
when they catch it".

My best buddy Derek was, oh, about 4' 11" back then and he weighed all of
maybe 80 pounds, so he could do pull- ups like mad, even on the door sill we
chose for the test.  I think his strength came to the max under the system,
something like ST16, and would've been about 20 or 24 if there wasn't some
kind of limit imposed.  In the real world, in our high school weight training
class he had to start with just the bar, no weights on it, because that was
all he could bench press: 40, maybe 50 pounds.

I was already 6 feet and burly and could pick up Derek with one hand (that was
then, he's grown and now owns a furniture moving business, does Karate and
Taekwondo and could pick ME up with one hand these days, I'm a fat lawyer) but
back then I did about 1 or 2 or maybe zero pull ups and my fingers slipped off
of the doorsill.

Then we did the "drop the ruler" test.  Derek, who could clobber any video
game on the market back in 1980, missed the ruler and got a DX8.  (This is not
uncommon.  If one person holds a dollar bill suspended vertically between
another one's fingers, the drops it unexpectedly, the catcher will probably
miss the bill entirely.)  And I demonstrated some bizarre genetics by catching
the ruler with ten and twelve inches left, which is supposed to be impossible.
The gang made me re-do it several times and I kept on doing it, but in the
real world I have the reflex speed of the common garden slug, I always LOSE
video games humiliatingly.  I mean, I just never never play those games, ever.

Results:

then 4' 11" Derek, high school video game addict:
ST16
DX8

6' Craig, football:
ST8
DX16

The other three guys in our group thought that we were howlingly funny, and
they let us cancel the plans to play based on our own attributes.
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