Welcome to GURPS General! /gurpsgen/

Is it okay, as a GM, to require my players to buy a certain level of Status if they want to buy a certain level of Wealth? As in, in this particular society, you can't really amass Wealth without having the corresponding Status, or in this particular society Wealth automatically confers Status.

Yes. In general, what the GM says goes, but that is double true for stuff like Rank/Status/Wealth seeing as how those three interact is 100% setting-dependent. If the culture of your setting ties income to social standing and it's impossible to be rich but not upper-crust, you need to make sure that is reflected on the PCs' character sheets.

It's up to the GM to enforce logical characters; if the setting requires you to have Trait X to also have Trait Y, it is completely within your authority to demand the players follow that. It doesn't matter if it's a hard requirement (e.g. in a theocracy, Religious Rank is a prerequisite for many social advantage and/or removing a Social Stigma) or soft requirement (e.g. in a not-quite theocracy, priests are paid well and widely respected; if you buy Religious Rank, you HAVE to also buy corresponding levels of Wealth and Status because poor priests not part of the upper crust don't exists and simply aren't a thing that happens in-universe).

Sorry.

Rank works fine, but it's not Status or Wealth. You are always going to need Rank (IN WHAT?) at X.

And that "IN WHAT?" makes all the difference. Rank (Military) is a very different beast from Rank (Land Use Commission)

Wealth already gives a +1 to +3 to status depending on the level (see Chapter 1's section on the subject). So take that in account if you require a certain level of Status to be purchased (or omit the rule entirely).

I avoid hard and fast rules but I do want an explanation of a character's Wealth, Status, ect. I don't like high Wealth without Status in many games, as it's hard to justify a huge income without some kind of good family backing you up.

In a TL5 low-magic fantasy setting, what would an entire race with Perfect Balance be like? What would its effects be on their tactics, strategy, architecture, and defenses?

Pic related. Keep in mind that Perfect Balance doesn't affect bad footing penalties (I think?) or HT rolls for knockdown.

Could someone explain the Visual Signals section of Low-Tech on pp. 48-49?

So, how do you gurpsfriends feel about the controversy on sandboxes in the latest Pyramid thread?

What controversy? Link?

Explain?

It's the official thread for the #104 Pyramid, here: forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=150625

Basically, Christopher Rice/Ghostdancer used "Sandbox is a lie!" as a subtitle in one of the articles in the issue, and overall structured it in a biased way against sandboxes as a viable style (which is based on his heated discussions with other forumites who play sandboxes):

> When the campaign is a “sandbox,” the GM quickly finds out he has to do more than broad strokes. He needs multiple possibilities prepped, which means an increase in prep time for the game itself, which can lead to GM burnout, and then nobody is happy.

Some say it's a stupid meme joke, some got offended because Ghostdancer rather actively opposed this style of play on forums before and just contributes to spreading prejudices around the style.

Sounds like a non-issue really. It's a result of having a publication like Pyramid having different authors - you're going to have to deal with differing viewpoints on how to GM. As long as said author can provide logical points for his opinions, no matter how biased, I suppose. I have to give it a read to see what the article is like.

I prefer sandbox style games and he isn't wrong. It requires a metric fuckton of work compared to any other type of game if you want to make it fun or compelling.

My current game isn't and it's actually the first time GURPS has clicked for my group. Which is a beautiful experience.

I'd have to agree with him on the fact that sandboxes take a shitload of GM work, but if I was afraid of that, I wouldn't be playing GURPS in the first place. I find that GURPS actually helps me in setting up sandbox games, since the supplements and Pyramid articles are very good.

Also, sandbox games require a certain kind of group to be enjoyable, one that can self-motivate and enjoys exploring and getting immersed in a world.

In the end, I feel like sandboxes are an all or nothing proposition. If the GM puts in the effort, and the group enjoys sandboxes and likes exploring, and the GM's setting clicks with the group and they become invested, then a sandbox game can be an amazing experience. On the other hand if even one of those elements is not present, if the setting is shit or if the players can't get invested or are unwilling to take stuff seriously (as happens often: "It's just a game, bro") or the GM gets lazy and doesn't prepare and can't improvise, then the game will be a shitshow for everyone.

That's why, automatic sandbox games are my favorite games to run and play, but I don't do get to play them often because a lot of stars have to align for the game to be enjoyable.

I'm okay running sandbox games if the players are okay with and understand that they aren't going to get a bespoke story-line, encounters and challenges when they pick where to go on a map.

You get away from my prepared materials and story, it's going to be random encounters and on the fly creation that is, by necessity, lower quality then stuff I can put a few hours into preparing during the week.

Had to explain this slowly to a player that, in an After The End game, he insisted on ignoring the plot hooks and going north for no reason. After revealing hex after ten-mile across hex of desert wasteland he complained because he was out of water, out of ammo and all he'd found was mutated animals and scavenging areas he lacked the skills/carrying capacity to use, like a few old cars and a two hundred yard spool of barbed wire.

My favorite way to run sandbox games is to have stuff happening independent of player actions, all over the world. I usually have a rough outline of what's happening where at the time and why, and the players can choose to get involved or not.

Although I usually start sandbox games with a bit of a railroad to introduce the players to the world and hope that they jump off as soon as they're comfortable. Going straight into sandbox mode has never worked for me.

Personally I just give the players plot hooks and reasons to go to any direction they like, even while there's usually a greater plot going on along the way that they usually get involved in.

Anybody? I wanted to ask here instead of the Discord so there would be some conversation.

An SM+0 human can see out to three miles, so two humans can see each other within six miles. Make a vision roll at relevant modifiers (+10 for deliberate signal, Size Modifier, modifiers from signal types, darkness, etc). Is that what you needed explained?

Give them Brachiator and make them a sentient race of orangutans that swing around on trees and rope bridges. They can favor ambush tactics and skirmishing and probably in terms of grand strategy employ the Fabian doctrine. Give them big ol' stone temples on mountains in jungles and treetop houses, and for defense they can have scouts and the fact that it's hard to invade a jungle.

If that's their only difference, we wouldn't see too much of a difference in battlefield tactics as they can't really capitalize on their gift in an open area. They may be able to eke out an edge if attacking structures or built-up urban areas, but it won't be the norm.

Architecture would be bonkers though, or at least military architecture would be bonkers (civilian buildings would probably be more human-like for those with physical disabilities and/or the elderly that may have difficulty crossing narrow planks). To a human, a lot of it would look like someone installed handrails but forgot to build the floor. Tall buildings and towers may be a latticework of rails and scaffolds with no floor between the ground floor and the roof. Buildings' footprints may be smaller as well as the need for wide stairs is removed.

I want to keep other advantages out of the discussion and just focus on Perfect Balance, as cool as sentient orangutans may be. Fabian strategy makes sense, though. The advantage is definitely more suited to defenses over offense.

That's the kind of stuff I'm looking for. Describing it as having installed handrails but forgetting the floor is a nice way to describe it. Shame it can't be capitalized offensively on typical battlefields.

Thanks for the replies. What sparked the question was looking at the Elf template on B316. They have Perfect Balance, which piqued my curiosity since I hardly ever see the advantage.

I'd always imagined this led to the whole "living in massive trees thing" where they can kick around in the branches as if it were nothing, and since it's innate at birth, they can raise families up there safely.

Also, this might lead to taller spire like structures, sharp angled floors and other such things a normal man couldn't walk across without concentration.

One thing that I always have trouble remembering is that Perfect Balance is not Light Walk; you can keep your balance on anything basically regardless of how thin it is... but it still has to be able to support your weight.

Does anyone have Cthulhu mythos monster stats?

Truly; but I've raised children, and now I have this terrifying mental image of them doing their learning to walk upright stage a hundred feet up in a treehouse...

Is the Warrior book any good?

i'm a little new to /gurpsgen/, is there a link to the discord? Didn't see it in the OP PDF.

The discord is separate from /GURPSGEN/. No piracy, no bad words, etc. allowed on there. You can find a link on the GURPS reddit.

I still can't believe they banned swearing because it's "semi-official". GURPS has adult content, not in the forefront and it's not the point, but the base set has like four purely sexual skills in it.

...

Apparently some of the dads in the server (of which there are a surprising amount) have their kids in there, or something like that. I have no idea why you would let kids onto an internet forum when you don't want them to hear words like shit and fuck. It's stupid.

From my experience, everyone wants to play sandboxes, but no one knows how to GM them - or how to play them, for that matter. It's always ends up like this:
>players: ugh what do we do we are lost
>GM: ugh what do you do goddamit I had something okay go kill some goblins and there's a dungeon for you

Are RPG dads basically soccer moms?

What is the most unconventional build you have ever seen?

A sentient cat that operated a M2 Browning.

Oh

What the wat

Does "lazy piece of shit throws everything into one skill/advantage" count as unconventional?

A sentient ad that became psychic, went viral, and basically became a contagious meme spreading the virtues of Morgan Motors©, The Smoothest Ride This Side of the Belt®

I mean I've got nothing on , but a pulp era wonderdog ace pilot that claims to have shot down the Red Baron despite his feet not even reaching the pedals. A shell-shocked sadistic psychopath hiding under an outwardly adorable shell.

He had to have me reload it for him, and he had to aim with a small joystick, and it was a stationary weapon he had me set up beforehand, but he fired it.

that's adorable

Why did you have a machine gun cat? Why was he a better shot than you?

Could you do a one punch man campaign? How would you do it?

80 points in fist

We don't talk about it.

don't forget 80p in hand(the other one)

Well. I was playing an engineer/demolition type that used drones, so I stayed behind with him half the time and we got to be friends. He also walked into my room one day to demand, in the player's near perfect imitation of English RP, that I jerry rig a stolen M8 Greyhound so he could operate it solo.

So I'm trying to build a Planetary Awareness style power that would basically let me be aware of everything going on on the planet when I focus, barring countermeasures and such. I've tried to build this two ways:

A.) Shit tons of vision powers. 360 Vision with the Panoptic 2 Enhancement, tons of Telescopic, tons of Penetrating Vision, Hyperspectral Vision all that jazz. Relatively easy to figure out how many levels of each I'd need.

B.) Para-Radar with tons of Enhancements out to the range of the planet, with extra Penetrating at 50% per level along with a slew of other things.

Both of these should work but in slightly different ways, my concern and issue is now with comprehending it all. I'm assuming at baseline human mental faculties it'd be the equivalent of playing Where's Waldo the size of the planet whenever I want to find anything, something that could not be accomplished in any reasonable amount of time. However I really don't know where to start, all Sense rolls mention is you roll to see something "interesting", well fuck man there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in the world. I'm thinking multiple levels of Compartmentalized Mind with Massively Parallel would be the way to go, but I have no idea how many I'd need or what is a reasonable amount. How much area does a single Sense roll cover? Enhanced Tracking also seems to make sense but it only mentions Aim and Evaluate though I guess I'd be "aiming" at various objects? I'm not sure where to go from here.

Buy an Ally AI to do that shit for you. JARVIS it up user.

While I would like to keep this as part of my natural character, even if it was an AI I'd still need to know how to mechanize it to see how expensive it is.

Well A.) has the problem of not being able to see through the planet. They're curved, and it'd be cost prohibitive to buy enough penetrating vision to see through tens of thousands of kilometers of rock and metal.

The reason I suggest AI is so that you can slip into data nets via hacking fuckery and find the people who know what you're looking for instead of spending time looking yourself.

Penetrating Vision was a big issue with it however I looked around on the forums for quite a bit and found both PK and Kromm say that letting Penetrating Vision double at each level so, 6", 1', 2', 4', etc, would make it more in line with other vision abilities at it's current cost. With that allowed I think it's only 27 or 28 levels of Penetrating Vision necessary to see through the Earth.

It no doubt would be cheaper with AI but it doesn't fit the character.

Note that this just gives you line of sight on the whole world. You'd still be able to focus your attention on one object at a time. You'd be in the postion of a man standing in a stadium with 20,000 other people in his line of sight, seeing useful details about any one of them, or even understanding broad trends about what they are doing, could take some serious IQ rolls.

That's what I'm trying to figure out, given the ability to see all of Earth with no penalties, how do you comprehend it all? I don't necessarily want to literally know everything that's going on at all times, but I would want to be find/see something if I decide to focus on it. How do I filter how all the extra stuff and find Waldo out of 7,000,000,000 people in a reasonable amount of time?

forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=368042#post368042 This what you want?

Is there an advantage that allows me to touch insubstantial things? I need one for a RPM spell

There are rules in Power Ups 4, pp 9-10, for modifying unarmed attacks.
For most people it would be barely a 1 point advantage.

Thanks!

I'd say a trained searcher could look at 5 people a second or so and determine if it's the person they are looking for or not, with good line of sight on them.

In that case, you'd find who you were looking for in about 22 years on average, and 44 years if the guy you were looking for was the last one you checked (Doh!).

So would you model a spell that makes a guy's longsword at ST 14 as:

Ghostblade
Greater Destroy Spirit (5) + Altered Traits, Affects Insubstantial (4) + Duration, 1 hour (3) for a total energy cost of 36 points

I am having issues grasping str scores or generally stats.

How much str an average bear would have for example? Or dexterity a cat?

I always feel I over or under shoot it.

B456 has bears and cats.

What said. Also there's a website known as Animalia in GURPS which has TONS of stats for animals.

panoptesv.com/RPGs/animalia/animalia.html

What's a good general surface area I can use for various shield sizes? The only UT shield is the riot shield, and I want to let people strap slabs of UT steel on their forearm.

Shield dimensions for most shields are available on the internet. You should be able to use that for weight and cost.

What's the name of the remote viewing/scrying Advantage? Just use that, and use Limitations so that you can only see out of a camera on an electronic device. Bam, done.

Then use Low-Tech to determine which size category the shield falls in to?

Yup. IIRC low tech companion 2 deals with shields a bunch.

Are their any advantages that are good in excess?

Like super jump and wealth, the more you take the more powerful they are

Could I spend 300 points to make a glass cannon dude.
100 points undying 2
100 points enchanced move 5
100 points super jump 10

And just slam people, would this work? Would it be stupid?

Is there a way to spawn shields? If I shield breaks while I am slamming with it do I take damage?

Yes, it's stupid, and for multiple reasons beyond it being a gimmick build that appears exceptionally difficult to justify in most settings. Mechanically, you're main issues are that you're inaccurate (rolling against DX 10) and you're likely going to need months of healing between attempts (rolling against HT 10 to recover 1 HP every day when you've got a TON of healing you'll need to do). Additionally, Enhanced Move only boosts jump distance if you have a running start, making it a situational booster; instead, just pump up Super Jump some more and/or spend them on Regeneration, possibly with an Accessibility limitation so it's only on when "dead" to let you cheaply recover for another "shot."

Got a new group startijng up made of people who have played RPGs in the past and want to get back into it. We're splitting of into subgroups as there's quite a few of us and multiple people could GM. I'd like to introduce them to GURPS (They're open to it) but I'm not sure what to run. A like of gritty fantasy is definitely a theme which is great because I love GMing gritty (I use The Last Gasp). But my head is full of TL9 at the moment. What gritty, D&D type fantasy type thing could I run, /gurpsgen/? I need inspiration. Not dungeon fantasy though, these people like some plot. is it time for iron gurps?

>not using alternate form to literally make your power be "I am a glass cannon"

What if I plan to bump jumping to 20?
Shouldn't I have good chances of hitting someone?
You are right if I boost super jump to 20 I go stupid fast(3,000,000) making me a flying death machine.

I should get Regen that triggers on death, as well as altered time rate, and better Vision to see the people I am jumping at

Any mind affecting thing that takes Area effect, with more area effect. It's not that costly to be able to use emotion control on the entire planet.

Can you use Jump to hit?

Flying tackle, b372

Take telescopic vision rather than just many levels of acute vision. A bit of acute will help too of course.

I should get enhanced time rate, to let me actually see things going way faster than the speed of sound

>Is there a way to spawn shields?
Snatcher
>If I shield breaks while I am slamming with it do I take damage?
Yes, you take the excess damage that overpenetrates.

Once you are his target there is no running from the JUMPMAN!!

With super jump 20, undying 2, regen(extreme) only when dead. He jumps miles, moves faster then the speed of sound, there is no material even theoretically possible to stop him.

Dun dun dun

I'm planning out a post-apocalyptic game, and I want ammo to be super scarce, with what few bullets the PCs have, basically being immensely valuable, both in a literal sense as currency, and in that a shot from a gun can basically just take an enemy out of a fight, especially if it's a shotgun or rifle.

What's a good way to allow them to actually *use* the bullets they find, without having to invest in a skill(Guns) they'll be using super rarely. I could probably just say they get to pick one Guns skill to get at level X for free, but I'm not sure if there's a more elegant solution, I might be missing.

Give them a campaign guns skill, or wrap it up in a Survival Talent for the post apoc.

What's actually in Bio Tech? Is it fantasy or is there any real stuff in there?

It's a collection of good bits on a closely related theme.
Some of it is current and past existing tech, like birth control, surgery, antibiotics, etc. are included and explained. There's even a section on lobotomy.
A lot of it is well-research sci-fi and deals with things like genetically engineered plants and how they might revolutionize the food industry, the reasoning behind why we might create genetically engineered "superhuman 2.0" or an intelligent slave-race, and the social, political and even religious implications, hybrid organic computers and how they might work, designed diseases and the threats they pose, genetic adaptations to the human genome in order to survive space, and so on.
Then there's more stuff that's a bit more out-there. "Wetware" for your cyberpunk campaigns and such. Some of it is valid, like cloned, vat-grown replacement organs, while some of it leans closer to fantasy with things like tentacle-arm grafts.
Then there's a short bit of outright fantasy. Alternative biotech, magical biotech, steampunk biotech, biotech horror and what have you. Frankenstein's monster, Herbert West - Reanimator and the like.

Magic biotech in particular is frightening, there's a spell that gives you a +10 to your genetic engineering rolls. Makes some really incredibly crazy stuff possible if you're using both tech and magic.

Alternate GURPS II or III has alternate weapon categories for guns that puts it down to like 3 skills.

Well, they ARE Easy skills, so one point gets them to the DX level and has every other specialty default to DX-2. I don't feel that that's a huge investment, but if you do, it shouldn't be too much of an issue to let everyone roll vs DX to shoot the same way they can roll DX to punch instead of having to invest in Brawling.