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The Oldest Man posted:The best trick for this is to just quietly file the serial numbers off whatever you had planned, paste in whatever he was looking for, and then sub it in as if it was the original plan. All choice is an illusion in Tairn World. The Matrix has you, poster.
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Jun 20, 2011 06:06
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Sam. posted:Picked up the Basic Set and some other stuff cheap at a used book store. This seems like a really nice system. One question (I'll probably have more later): Why is HP so low compared to weapon damage, even with DR from armor added? It seems like people will die from a few shots from most guns at TL 5 or above. Is there something important I'm missing? You're supposed to die from a few shots from guns! GURPS is a pretty realistic combat system, as such things go, and things tend towards being very lethal, especially at higher TLs. If you use the limb damage rules (which you should, like a real gangster) even at low TLs a blow from a club can easily cripple a hand or an arm, at least temporarily!
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Jun 24, 2011 01:09
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I am reminded of EABA, kind of - for those not familiar, it is another Generic RPG, with a heavy focus on homebrewing and kitbashing your way to victory. In it, they recommended having another stat for like, Magic/Edge/Psy whatever is appropriate for your Campaign world - of course, in EABA, it doubles up as a luck resource in addition to being what you base your powers off of. I miss EABA. 
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Jun 26, 2011 23:03
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So Characters are defined based on being the healer or the thief, is what you're saying.
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Jun 27, 2011 07:42
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NovemberMike posted:Where did I poo poo on you? You went off on some bit about how "real people solve real problems" and then your example was a character who would reasonably have a niche (your mormon Space Force dude is likely a Pilot or some kind of Soldier, given his military background, and would approach problems differently than a Hacker/Techie, Con Man or Martial Artist). Gau's point is you are designing characters the wrong way around - you seem to be starting with 'Well there is already a Wizard and a Cleric, so obviously I have to play the Fighter or the Thief' instead of 'here is a concept, and a background, and a personality - how do I translate this into rules.' Also, Action and MH really are not good examples for niche protection, considering how much overlap the vast majority of the templates have. And DF is a bad example because the book is explicitly like 'this is not how regular games are played or regular characters are designed, this is just for dungeon crawling and punching goblins in the face.'
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Jun 27, 2011 21:50
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NovemberMike posted:It's a game. You generally have to make some concessions to that fact. If we're doing a wild west game and we have a fast talker with a Derringer, a law man and a cow boy, then I don't want to step on their toes. I can make a Civil War veteran sharpshooter turned prospector who managed to find a rich vein and claim it for himself, making a wealthy sum. This character is designed to not step on anyone elses toes (he's not a fast talker, he doesn't have the authority of the law and he doesn't have the gunfighting skills of the cowboy) but the constraint of working with the group allows me to still create a unique character. I don't really understand how like, a game cannot support two characters who are police officers or two characters who have social skills or something. Like, many successful games have been run making things like an Investigator or Soldier or ICOP template required, that uses like pretty much all of your points - PCs are effectively the same, mechanics wise. In fact, despite your claims that SJG supports niche protection, if you look at GURPS WW2, GURPS Mysteries, GURPS Infinite Worlds, GURPS Cops, or like, any number of other GURPS books, they advise requiring templates for players. Expensive templates, where players end up having the same skills!
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Jun 27, 2011 22:10
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MadScientistWorking posted:Because if you are trying to make a claim that something is based upon real life scenarios it really is antithesis to your argument when you say that a far less diverse skill set isn't a hinderence. Did you just ignore the rest of my post where I cited like, five different examples of game types where PCs have the same effective skill set, or what? Also, you're right - I mean, all those homicide detectives have such different skill sets. There's good cop and bad cop! I think the problem here is that like, you are not getting that GURPS characters can be good at more than one thing. You don't need like, Guns - 18 or Fast Talk - 20 to be able to, you know, be mechanically useful in a firefight or a conversation.
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Jun 27, 2011 22:23
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MadScientistWorking posted:Those were some pretty dam stupid examples. Cops defiantly don't all have the same skill sets. WWII soldiers really didn't all have the same skill sets. Mysteries are a toss up because the mysteries I have seen usually contain multiple skill sets to solve. I am not saying 'WW2 Soldiers' as a broad class. Obviously there are Combat Engineers, Pilots, Sailors, Marines, Medics, etc. And guess what - GURPS has templates for those, but they all did not serve in the same unit!! Also, yeah, uh, most cops do have the same skillset. That's why they send them to an academy, and they train them there. So they are all trained in cop skills. You can make an argument that like, you could let PCs be forensics guys and such too, but those guys are not Cops! They are technical specialists. -- NovemberMike posted:There's no obsession with matching roles perfectly. There's just no reason to have two characters have the same skillset as long as one of the characters fills it out reasonably well. We're not talking about making weird selections based on what skills have already been selected, but saying that the lawman should only buy 1-2 ranks in diplomacy because the fast talking gambler already has it at 17. Ok, that paragraph just doesn't make any sense. 'There's no obsession with matching roles perfectly, but two characters shouldn't have the same skill at a high rank.' Pick one position, you can't have both. NovemberMike posted:
I think this gets to the heart of the argument. You can't seem to enjoy playing a character unless he has some extra special rules gimmick that no one else has. Not everyone has to play this way, and GURPS isn't really designed for that sort of play, which is why people are arguing with you in this thread. NovemberMike posted:
Well, in GURPS, with skills default, the long ranged gunfighter and the close range customer will probably only like, have a 1 or 2 point difference between their skills at most. Like a guy with Rifles - 18 is going to have Pistols - 16, both will probably have Fast-Draw (Ammo), etc. So no, I don't, even taking your hyper optimized mechanics viewpoint. ----- On second thought, I am pretty sure I am just bein trolled. Sorry people!
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Jun 27, 2011 22:59
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Uh, you realize that not every game is like, 250 Points, right? Most people - most Cops! - are like, probably not even as good as that template indicates. A skill of 12 or 13 is professional level.
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Jun 27, 2011 23:03
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NovemberMike posted:
Not all roleplaying games are like TV Shows? I'm not really sure what your point is here. Ambivalent adressed this above, so you can just respond to her point rather than me emptyquoting her, I guess. NovemberMike posted:Two characters can be good at fighting, or talking, or whatever, but find a way of differentiating them. You don't have to fill out slots A, B, C, D and E but make sure you don't have 7 A's. Except that in a system like GURPS, talking really comes down to three or four key skills - and most characters can reasonably have some level of these, even high levels. You seem to seriously be advocating that its ok to have two gladiators in your GURPS Rome game, as long as one uses the trident and net and one uses a shortsword or something. It is loving weird. NovemberMike posted:I've played all kinds of characters, but it's easiest to GM a group when everyone has a decent idea of when they should jump into the action and what they should do. "NovemberMike posted:The close range gunfighter cares about a few things. He needs a high Basic Move so he can act first and dodge well (both very important when you're shooting guns at close range with no armor). He cares about Fast Draw (Pistol) and Fast Draw (Ammo), both at high levels. He cares about Jump, Running and other skills that help him cover ground quickly. He also cares about HT because he's putting his body out there in front of the flying lead. Ok, first of all like, this demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of the rules. Buying up HT is going to help you like, not bleed out or pass out, but with no body armor at even like, TL5, one or two levels of HT may keep you from dying but will not keep you combat effective. HP would do that slightly better, but it is still pretty limited! And poo poo like striking ST and lifting ST are not really appropriate for normal characters in an old west game - hence why they are marked 'Exotic' in the book.
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Jun 27, 2011 23:36
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I like how you just ignored like the other half of UJ's Post. Also, how can you just like, claim that having a character who does hacking stuff while other characters don't is bad design when you were advocating it for a page and a half before? And you claim Action! as a good example of Niche Protection, when one of Action's templates is loving Hacker.
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Jun 28, 2011 01:18
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Ok, so you are just trolling, since you switched arguments completely in the span of three posts. Thanks for clearing that up! In other news, for people who are not Trolls, how do people feel about bonus points for Templates? The main question I ask is I was thinking of running a Colonial Mystery game, and essentially the way law enforcement worked in the Colonies, one player would have to be a magistrate. That entails quite a bit of Wealth, Status, Law Enforcement Powers, and Rank - which would cut heavily into their budget to actually be a good investigator. I pictured like, one player being a magistrate, since most colonies had very very few, and two or three other people being his assistants/household staff/friends/other public figures (militia leaders, tax collectors/sheriffs, etc.) who helped him out. Should I worry that one PC having to spend like, 40 points of a 100 point budget on social advantages is too much? I mean, he will get ingame effect out of them, obviously, but I could see how it could be a problem too. I am torn!
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Jun 28, 2011 01:39
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quote:It's hard to argue seriously with anyone that calls disagreeing with them "making GBS threads on them". He just seems like a petulant child, and it's honestly kind of funny. I promised myself I wouldn't respond to blatant trolling anymore, but it's kind of dishonest to quote me and Gau in the same post and act like we're the same person?? Gau doesn't live in New Jersey, so he is obviously built on WAY fewer points than I am. Anyway, I can see the point on the whole Status thing and not giving out bonus points. Honestly, making them pay for it was my initial thought, but I was worried about players reactions to it. Really, I suppose my main problem with the Magistrate role is that it leaves one PC with a heavy burden of Leadership - and I've found that it's really hard to get people to lead. I'd make it a NPC, but then it would be a NPC giving the PCs a whole bunch of orders, and I don't want to like, railroad people through a freakin' mystery.
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Jun 28, 2011 03:36
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NovemberMike posted:Not quite. If you're running a WWII game you should probably have at least 15-20 points to differentiate that farm boy who knows how to work on machinery from the hick from Alabama who's been shooting since he was 4 from the guy that people generally like. And SF are crosstrained, but the impression I've gotten from my brother is that one guy will be a trained medic who could walk into an ER and save someone from a bad gunshot wound (or do it with more risk in the middle of a battlefield) and the rest of the guys know how to apply a tourniquet, understand what all the chemicals in the kit are and can diagnose basic problems. It's the difference between having a 17 in First Aid and Physician and a 12 in First Aid and a 10 in Physician. You should read the Skills Chapter in GURPS again. A skill level of 17 in Physician would make you like, Christian Barnard or something. A skill level of 13 or 14 is considered an 'Expert'. Also, again, you only seem to be focusing on highly cinematic high points action movie style games. That five point difference in skills probably costs upwards of like, 30-40 points, and a lot of GURPS games don't have that to throw around, especially when you are already buying a highly expensive Special Forces template.
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Jun 28, 2011 03:41
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MadScientistWorking posted:I wasn't actually talking about forensics though. I was talking about the oddles of common specialties that it would be insane to train every single police officer in. Ironically, the most obvious counter is Special Weapons and Tactics. Ironically, you can't read posts, because I was talking about beat cops. We were discussing the beat cop and detective templates, like would be used in a mystery game. Spoiler alert: Despite what CSI tells you, SWAT Officers don't solve crimes. They just shoot poor brown people with surplus military hardware. Edit: I realized the wording in that post is a little unclear. It is the SWAT guys with the surplus military hardware, not the poor browns. They have wallets.
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Jun 28, 2011 16:34
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NovemberMike posted:Not if he doesn't have a gun. The point is that mixing TLs doesn't work unless you think about it pretty carefully and most of the random Infinite Worlds stuff people do isn't well thought out. If your PCs don't have guns and they try and fight someone at range who has guns, they probably deserve to get shot.
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Aug 2, 2011 05:36
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