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Hypnobeard posted:I've got it and have skimmed through it. Anything you're particularly interested in? Overall feel, takeaways, new insights etc. I enjoyed the first one quite a lot and helped me to understand a bit more about how to structure and run GURPS.
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Aug 22, 2021 23:44
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aldantefax posted:Overall feel, takeaways, new insights etc. I enjoyed the first one quite a lot and helped me to understand a bit more about how to structure and run GURPS. It's got a good discussion on ways to "balance" combats, and pretty up-front with the idea that it's pretty hard to do in GURPS in any kind of absolute way. There's a short section on making sure there's a reason to fight (and some discussion on various reasons), a mention of the Pyramid combat effectiveness score (and a bit on the shortcomings of that). It then dives into a reasonably nuanced discussion of ways to eyeball a fight's balance. It IDs some key areas to look at:
Then you think about the fight and decide how hard it's supposed to be. Based on that, you adjust the various key areas--an easy fight, for example, may have the enemy be worse than the players in most categories. Usually just attack skill and defense are the easiest things to adjust, but others can have knock-on effects--headcount, for example, can be disproportionately influential because of the action economy. It then talks about advantages--does the battlefield/environment favor one side or the other? That's a balancing factor. There's also game-changers--things that one side has that the other can't counter (e.g., one side can fly and the other has no ranged attacks). Gear is given a special call-out, with the advice to pick NPC gear first and then look at balance. There's a good discussion of the battlefield and environment and how it affects combat, including a nice discussion about how the scale (i.e., how much space you have to fight in) affects things. There's some quick rules for surprise and ambush (both of which are pretty nasty), and a lengthy sidebar on "wandering monsters." There's not much on actual combat per se--just some references to other GURPS books--but there is a nice section that discusses what to do if you discover you've hosed up the balancing stuff. I'm kinda disappointed that they end the section with "just fudge the poo poo out of it if you have to, but this might piss the players off!"--it seems a bit old-school. I'd have preferred something like "stop and talk to your players about things" but I guess it is what it is. Next, there's an interesting discussion about post-combat stuff: what did people around the fight see? were there innocent bystanders who might have gotten hit by a scattering fireball? etc, and an interesting bit about treating combat as a "black box"--don't sweat the round to round or action-specific stuff, just focus on the change in status between start and end of the fight. There's a sidebar with pointers to rules for specific things (like chases in Action 2, Spaceships for spaceship/vehicle combat, Mass Combat for army stuff, etc). And that's about it. As a relatively new GURPS GM I found it pretty helpful, particularly the parts about balancing GURPS combat--since that's one of the hardest GM tasks, I find. The environment and surprise and ambush sections are also handy, even if the concepts aren't particularly new ("keep the battlefields interesting! no one likes an endless flat plain"), because it's a good intro to handling that stuff in GURPS terms. Hypnobeard fucked around with this message at 15:02 on Aug 23, 2021 |
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Aug 23, 2021 15:00
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Arise! Powered by GURPS, Dungeon Fantasy stuff has got a new book out. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamingballistic/nordlond-bestiary-and-enemies-book It's good stuff, been reading and playing with the DF and the nordlond setting. Quality.
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Nov 18, 2021 16:44
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El Spamo posted:Arise! This campaign has 48 hours to go--they've funded, and are working on the stretch goals! Come support the Gaming Ballistic dudes!
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Dec 6, 2021 04:46
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Has anyone worked out the conversion for $ from 3e Old West to 4e? Puzzling through what ratio to use for conversion, it's naturally not a clean conversion so even the same items in 4e books have different prices proportionally. Nobody's posted a confirmed ratio that I've found, but figures anywhere from 1:22 to 1:50 show up in various places...
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Dec 6, 2021 06:15
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If the player characters are all from the same socio-economic background, is it even worth bothering with Status, Wealth, Rank, Social Stigma, etc. on their character sheets?
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Dec 6, 2021 22:16
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BattleMaster posted:If the player characters are all from the same socio-economic background, is it even worth bothering with Status, Wealth, Rank, Social Stigma, etc. on their character sheets? I guess the question is, will that stuff end up coming up on your campaign? I don't worry about it if it's default, but if it's not going to come up, it's probably not something that you ought to be having players get points on disadvantages for.
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Dec 6, 2021 22:22
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Panzeh posted:I guess the question is, will that stuff end up coming up on your campaign? I don't worry about it if it's default, but if it's not going to come up, it's probably not something that you ought to be having players get points on disadvantages for. So for more context, I'm working on a one-shot where the characters are in a sci-fi military and it takes place in a military setting where the rank will likely matter. But if all player characters have the same rank, like let's say they're all going to be Ensigns or Spacemen or whatever, does it matter enough to bother taking that into account in the character point cost?
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Dec 6, 2021 22:32
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BattleMaster posted:So for more context, I'm working on a one-shot where the characters are in a sci-fi military and it takes place in a military setting where the rank will likely matter. But if all player characters have the same rank, like let's say they're all going to be Ensigns or Spacemen or whatever, does it matter enough to bother taking that into account in the character point cost? Nah, ignore it, in that context, then, none of those things are going to come up so they shouldn't move the needle on character sheets in that campaign. If they're the same rank, especially not. Especially in a one-shot, i imagine just about everything background will be about as impactful as a quirk. Probably be up front with reminding players not to buy rank, status, wealth, etc as advantages or disadvantages because this is a one-shot and you're all in a military. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Dec 6, 2021 |
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Dec 6, 2021 22:35
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In general, if something costs points then it'll provide some direct worth to the PC and is something that other characters around them may or may not have. So in this one-shot, where everyone has a rank of some kind or another then you could certainly put it into the background as a simple setting color trait. With social focused advantages, their value is relative to the game setting that they exist in so Wealth is useless in a haunted-house, and Rank is meaningless if you're shipwrecked on an island of dinosaurs. If it's possible that it could change at some point, or adjusted a bit at character creation, then putting it into the character point cost may be worthwhile because it might vary. But if it's just something that's going to be static and only relevant to give context to how the setting works then I would just let it be a zero-point-value descriptor.
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Dec 6, 2021 22:40
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It'll only be relevant if someone is pulling rank and they're using that status that other characters may not have, otherwise as above
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Dec 6, 2021 22:57
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A thought: how would GURPS model Godbound's Effort system in existing rules? For those who haven't read it, Effort is a resource pool used to fuel divine powers; you start out with 2 points, and each power uses those in different ways. Some of this is easy to model with an Energy Reserve, like any of the "commit effort for the day" abilities; single expenditures in general are fine. What's complicated is that some abilities allow you to commit and then reclaim Effort; I invest a point of effort to gain an "invincible defense against ranged attacks", but when I drop that defense I get that point back. I can figure several ways to handle lowering the cap, but the specific interactions of "lower the cap and consume resources only from what resources I have left, then return the cap and the points when the ability is deactivated" are eluding me. I did receive the suggestion of Backlash (from Power-Ups Limitations) combined with GM fiat, but is there a clean way to do this with the system as it stands, or am I better off just... writing in an Effort system alongside existing rules? Please tell me if this doesn't make sense. Illustration of the order of operations I'm trying to model:
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Dec 19, 2021 01:09
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Isn't that just modular abilities?
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Dec 20, 2021 00:50
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cultureulterior posted:Isn't that just modular abilities? Yeah, you should be able to do that with modular abilities and an energy storage ability.
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Dec 20, 2021 02:46
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SkyeAuroline posted:A thought: how would GURPS model Godbound's Effort system in existing rules? For those who haven't read it, Effort is a resource pool used to fuel divine powers; you start out with 2 points, and each power uses those in different ways. Some of this is easy to model with an Energy Reserve, like any of the "commit effort for the day" abilities; single expenditures in general are fine. What's complicated is that some abilities allow you to commit and then reclaim Effort; I invest a point of effort to gain an "invincible defense against ranged attacks", but when I drop that defense I get that point back. This is a difficult thing to model in GURPS because it really, really, really dislikes anything that meddles with the fundamental properties of the Fatigue system. One option is Modular Abilities with single-expenditure abilities having Limited Use. When you run out of Limited Uses on something inside a Modular Ability container, you're not allowed to move those points around anymore or use the slot until the ability refreshes. So you'd have something like: Effort: Modular Abilities (5 slots, instant switching; abilities from a list), Instant Effect Attack: Innate Attack (Burning; Limited Use, once daily, -40%), Sustained Armour: Damage Resistance. You have five slots. Put Sustained Armour in a slot and you'll have four remaining slots. Put Instant Effect Attack in the remaining slots; for each attack you'll lock that slot for 24 hours. Once all slots are locked you can switch Sustained Armour out for a fifth Instant Effect Attack, which you may now fire off once. Drawbacks:
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Dec 20, 2021 03:17
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How do you all approach quickly creating characters for people that die in session? Character creation is the most time consuming part for players so I don't want them to sit out for a session because they died in the first 30 minutes. In games like OSE or Delta Green getting a new PC is easy.
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Jun 9, 2023 09:17
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leekster posted:How do you all approach quickly creating characters for people that die in session? Character creation is the most time consuming part for players so I don't want them to sit out for a session because they died in the first 30 minutes. In games like OSE or Delta Green getting a new PC is easy. I usually try to use some other technique, like having NPCs rolling with the players that they can take over for the session if their guy does. But if that's not viable, it's probably good to have a pregen in your back pocket. There's not a huge amount of ways to make creating GURPS player characters quickly out of whole cloth, even with something like Delvers to Grow, which does work pretty quickly, but there's still a lot of admin to take these packages and put them into a character sheet.
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Jun 9, 2023 13:14
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leekster posted:How do you all approach quickly creating characters for people that die in session? Character creation is the most time consuming part for players so I don't want them to sit out for a session because they died in the first 30 minutes. In games like OSE or Delta Green getting a new PC is easy. If that’s a possibility in the game, backups and premades are good, yeah. I’d want to make sure that folks are well briefed generally that death is on the table and to prepare some next of kin, though you could also have the character die at a dramatically appropriate point during that session as well.
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Jun 9, 2023 18:24
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It seems like a lot of later GURPS stuff includes templates, like Dungeon Fantasy and Monster Hunters. I think it's a pretty big help.
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Jun 9, 2023 21:31
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Templates help, but it's still a lot of bookkeeping to go and type up or write down a package of ten to thirty advantages and as many skills before you're ready to resume play again, which is where pregens come in handy. That way you also don't have to do any math or customization, you can just take Action Hero #1 out of the folder and play him as is, maybe give him a new name and a background if he survives the session.
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Jun 9, 2023 22:10
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Depending on how much of the session is left, I’d be okay with just winging the PC’s rolls based off of a best guess of stats and then officially fleshing out the character afterward
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Jun 9, 2023 23:55
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GURPS IST is one of my most favorite supers environments, but it was written in 1991, so trying to figure out how to update. https://breadthofpopsanity.blogspot.com/2023/12/gurps-ist-operation-blue-capes-2023.html This is more a stewing blog for updating GURPS IST that will be updated as I keep musing, but I think it's solid enough to start getting feedback and doing editing. Open to any and all ideas as we refine it. #GURPS #Supers #UnitedNations I am opened to any and all suggestions.
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Dec 17, 2023 16:14
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shades of eternity posted:GURPS IST is one of my most favorite supers environments, but it was written in 1991, so trying to figure out how to update. What is your plan for what the PCs will do and how will they feel super? The thing that stood out to me in IST is that there are a LOT of UN super teams throughout the world and specialist heroes on call to assemble and address a crisis, like the weather controllers who’ll deal with hurricanes. They can have a lot of backup fast and bank jobs and high tech thefts aren’t going to take advantage of the setting.
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Dec 26, 2023 05:44
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Wheeljack posted:What is your plan for what the PCs will do and how will they feel super? The thing that stood out to me in IST is that there are a LOT of UN super teams throughout the world and specialist heroes on call to assemble and address a crisis, like the weather controllers who’ll deal with hurricanes. e: Reading the blog seems like a good summation and potential point. Having fusion and battery power suggests that this world might have, like Watchmen (due to Dr. Manhattan synthesizing up a billion tons of lithium or whatever) gone to electric power for vehicles. One point that comes to mind here is that the mid-80s to the 2020s is probably enough time for them to have, in fact, largely given up fossil fuels as a power source. This could have led to various other impacts. Here's a quirk on weather controllers contra climate change: Arguing over weather controllers as a human development resource (help the crops - who cares about the disruptions, we got people to feed) vs. possible geoengineers (induced snowfall on Greenland and Antarctica to slow sea level rise). Probably everyone can agree that using weather controllers to redirect or dampen hurricanes and typhoons is OK, but even that has its long term impacts... Nessus fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Dec 26, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2023 05:49
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