GURPS General - /gurpsgen/

+1 Defense vs a repeated Targeted Attack, unless you switch to a different mode (butt of a spear, hilt of a sword, slash vs thrust)

This is acutey pretty close to an optional rule in MA

-1 SL to repeated identical elaborate attacks. (IE: Spear Thrust(Vitals)) to reflect the challenge of getting back into stance to do the same thing, second after second.

Introduce a new Technique of Defense (one area) that is pretty much the +Defense advantage, but only applies vs attacks to one part of the body.

Same as above, but one attack type (CR Swing defense?)

>Why would someone with a very useful and very effective stabby-sword vitals impale switch to a cut?
When it's the ideal mode of attack.

>Similarly what would make a spearman want to strike with the blunt end or shaft on occasion?
Ditto.

>come up with a mechanical bonus to using less ideal attack modes.
Martial Arts has rules for penalizing repetitive tactics.

Why do you want your players to choose sub-optimal strategies?

>+1 Defense vs a repeated
And I'm aware of it. In fact, I called it out in the post I asked the question.

I will take a look at creating a new technique though, thanks. Maybe that will spark something.

Currently I'm looking at giving something like a free Deceptive Attack without the skill reduction when using a new, different, maybe non-ideal attack mode. Maybe I can combine it with A Matter of Inches somehow.

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions. I hope to see many more pour in. If I don't respond for a few hours it isn't out of lack of interest, tonight's session is starting soon. I'll be back after. If it isn't complete shit and there are mountains of awesome posts I'll post a summary.

>Why do you want your players to choose sub-optimal strategies
I want them to switch things up for the same reason sword fights in movies aren't just stab-stab-stab. They are falling into the "I hit, does he defend? No? I do x damage x3 after DR." It's boring. It's boring them. It's boring me.

I've tried the narrative approach and showing by example. It didn't work. Now I want to try a mechanical incentive. More carrot than stick which is why the existing rules I'm familiar with aren't suitable.

Have foes grapple them, or attack with long reach weapons, and have fights take place in areas where weapons aren't easy to use.

Since this was mentioned in last thread, I decided to see how using a main-gauche compares to dual-wielding two weapons from same skill in GURPS. I'm not gonna go into shields or two-handed weapons, just this.

Pros of dual-wielding similar weapons:
1. You will get two attacks per turn with no penalty, just for 6 points. This is it - a biggest advantage. I don't need to explain to you why having two attacks is a very, very good thing. Having this advantage with Main-Gauche will cost you 10 points, but your maximum damage will be worse and you are likely to be limited to range 1. Do note, however, that Dual-Weapon Attack is a cinematic technique - without it you need Weapon Master and Rapid Strike to have two attacks per round. That's why you see so many dual-wielders in fiction, but not in reality.
2. You can save 5 points on Weapon Master. However, it is not that big of an advantage. Do you really need Weapon Master for main-gauche? On one hand, penalty of just -1 on multiple parries is useful, especially if your main weapon has shit Parry. On other hand, you are most likely aren't going to use main-gauche for anything but parries and non-damaging techniques, so damage bonus and Rapid Strikes aren't that important for it. However, those two bonuses also apply to throwing knives, but then again, throwing knives aren't that good either.
3. Twin weapons are heavier, and therefore they are better at parrying heavy weapons. Small advantage, but it can potentially save you money or life.

(cont.)

Pros of main-gauche:
1. It is somewhat more economical. You save one style perk, which can be used for something better, and you can also use this skill as your backup skill if you get stripped of your weapons and will have to improvise.
2. Main-gauche has Parry 0F. It is good to have access to fencing weapon, and even if your main weapon is also fencing, then main-gauche will still give you advantage of cross-parry. You can also use it for techniques that require fencing weapons, such as Bind Weapon.
3. Main-gauche has Reach C, 1. This means that you have some defense if enemy got all up in your business, or you can use it to fuck up a polearm-wielding opponent.
3. Main-gauche is lighter. Encumbrance management is always a pain in the ass, especially for low-ST fighters. It is also easier to conceal and faster to draw.
4. Main-gauche is cheaper. This means it is easier to obtain when your budget is tight, it is easier to replace, and if you have money to spare, then you will be able to stack more qualities onto it.

tl;dr - same weapons have one big advantage, main-gauche has many smaller ones.

GrimWyrd Session today; The party delved into an ancient gateway using dwarven blood, and parleyed/fought with a vampire.

Note to self, when you make a badass kung fu vampire. Play her smarter. She took a headshot (DR'd away) and got stunned due to her bell getting rung (-10 roll vs stun on zero damage is still a -10 roll).

She went into stunlock, they dumped muskets and lightning arrows into her, she turned into char.

Sad sad day

AWESOME FIGHT THOUGH

Confess your sins /gurpsgen/

1) Have you ever played a character who wasn't a murderhobo?
2) Have you ever played a character with status above 1 ?
3) Have you ever finished a campaign in which your characters killed 3 or less people?
4) Are your characters skilled at non-practical hobbies like chess or calligraphy or pottery?
5) When you travel to some exotic place, do you ask about or try the local pastimes, sports, foods etc?
Bonus question: How many notches have you added to your belt, you old dog?

>1) Have you ever played a character
Nope

1) yes
2) no
3) no
4) yes
5) sometimes

In GURPS it is my experience that if you can focus fire on someone you can bring them down fast. A bad motherfucker needs some disposable assholes to spread the fire around and give them some time to do badass motherfucker things.

>Are your characters skilled at non-practical hobbies like chess or calligraphy or pottery?
Reminds me of one time when I was making a gadgeteer and thinking for a background skill for him. At first I thought about making him play guitar, then I realized that he became TF2 Engineer. In the end, I took Artist skill, so he would be able to draw all kinds of shit such as pin-up on his creations. Too bad campaign got cancelled early, but I will definitely do that again if I'll ever get the chance.

>stun on zero damage
She shouldn't have "struck in the head for enough injury to cause a shock penalty." 0 damage is 0 injury is 0 shock is no knockdown or stun check.

That reminds me.

How would you stat this advantage, gurpsgen?: youtube.com/watch?v=PY6wZRcYev0

Too late for it now, but I THINK a head wound just calls for a standard roll; it's only penalized if it's ALSO a major wound. Also, I didn't think 0-injury attacks counted, but I probably just missed that.

Enough levels of Super Luck that you can call on it every second, then slap on Aspected, Defensive.

Question, how would you go about sussing out a quick and dirty "Time stop" style effect, that's not too expensive? So far, the best thing I've found is to use Altered Time Rate 4 or 5, with a limitation to make it only last 1 second at a time, but that carries the rather heavy flaw of still being visible and such, just moving super fast. I don't mind that people can still dodge during it(Since otherwise would be just kind of silly for balance), but I'd like to retain the ability to use it for sleight of hand, picking pockets, etc, without being seen as a blur.

That's not luck, the bullets straight up curve around her. It's also involuntary. Maybe some kind of force field?

'A DUD!' is probably some sort of enhanced Serendipity. High levels of luck are expected. Super-DR in a force field or a new form of injury tolerance (metal projectiles) for the bullet-bending effect.

Oh, and of course Delusion (actually believes she has those advantages), with a gadget limitation and a powerful Patron

Fuck me he's right.
Guess there shouldn't have been a roll unless there was at least a point of wounding. Then again, it was a call on the fly. I'm confident things worked out withing a standard deviation of what should have happened.

Assuming the flying magical silver DR she had was treated as flexible, it was still a big enough blow to allow a point of wounding as plain injury, which would then call for a headblow stun roll. I rolled outside of normal HT to start with, so even without a -10 the vamp would have hit the ground.

Still, good times

Linked Invisible that only applies when you're ATRing.

1) My first GURPs character was a poor knight and avoided killing when he could.

2) First character had Status 2 (Baron's Son)

3) No? Depends on what you call a "people" and how you divide responsibility. Beat down people, but most of the people we fought had to be burned to kill them, so it was the witch's job.

4) Art. This was somewhat useful, as charcoal sketches of people and places were used in investgations, so I can't say it was non-pratical. That said, I've also had Erotic Art on a character that never rolled it.

5) I try to learn about world building. Some GMs do an amazing job at that sort of thing.

Bonus: I don't keep track. But it's a lot. Literally scores.

The effect is the same: you force bullets to miss. Maybe a -5% Nuisance limitation to represent how blatant it is? The dud part is definitely Luck/Super Luck, as she changed the attack roll to the grenade's Malf.

As for involuntary, add in Always On?

Missile shield is in the protection and warning spell book.

warehouse23.com/products/gurps-sorcery-protection-and-warning-spells

Does the character's shield fail against sufficiently high-power rounds? If so, then year, DR X (All or Nothing) would be the best option. If she can redirect railgun shots as well as M-16 rounds, then Super Luck is the best option.

Also, if the dud grenade actually was part of her power, Super Luck is basically the only option as far as I know of (I admit I'd never seen All-or-Nothing before; that's a limitation with a lot of cool potential, so thanks for showing it to me).

It could be a "Luck Power" and those would be two different abilities of the same power. The weird thing with Luck though is it only lets you reroll your own rolls, you can't use luck to see if you can make an enemy miss. The only thing that I think could force a grenade not to go off is an advanced version of Serendipity using the Impulse Buy mechanics to get like at least a 4 pointer usage. That's bullshit levels of narrative impact.

Note to self... I want to make a mary sue power build now and see how it goes... nothing but destiny points, serendipity points, super luck, luck, and wild talent out the wazoo.

Just posted my GURPS Setting here. Thoughts?

Is there any way to make Mental Illusion a bit more dynamic, as a power? One of my PCs wants it, but it honestly feels very troublesome, as it's "All or Nothing". There is only two outcomes to it.
1: They succeed the check, and then that enemy is totally and completely beaten. 100% helpless.
2: They fail the check, and they may as well not have the power at all.

Mostly posting to tell you I've read it.
It seems like a nice alternative to TH/EP settings and I imagine it will be more engrossing when the details are fleshed out.
Main quibble is the timeline, I'd say the periods from the discovery of the Mi-Go records to the current year are way too long for a civilization that has reached Transhumanity, you can easily halve the durations or more. The war probably lasts too long as well, you'd expect it to end in 10 years rather than drag on for decades. Many people would also be more interested in the first few years of the invasion rather than the stalemate, and since technology ought to evolve at crazy speeds, warfare at the beginning and the end of the war would be totally different even without the... geopolitical changes. But as I said, that's really quibbling, since changing the dates is trivial.

Thanks. Changed current date to 2131, have begun Fluffing the various factions and cults.

Balls to the wall insanity.
A little slow paced, maybe crank up the events to 1/10th the time?
Otherwise? Holy shut that sounds like NG E on meth!

Well, Cthulhutech was one of my primary inspirations, and Evangelion was one of Cthulhutech's primary influences.

Great session. Vampire might have smoked out faster if our resident mage hadn't gotten told his wife is fucking doomed by the vampire right before that. IDK if she's dead. I'm very suspicious it won't be that easy to get rid of the vamp.

>Useful rules for invention and gadgeteering right out of the box.
Did rules actually get prinited for that or is it still "GM handwaivium?"

Is there any penalty for dodging multiple times in a row like how parry has a stacking penalty?

There's no multi-dodge penalty, it's just likely to be your weakest defense, especially if you put on enough armor to hope to survive a hit (remember, dodge gets fucked by encumbrance and wound penalties).

There is optional rule in Martial Arts for cumulative -1 penalty same way as parry and block have.

There's some useful rules in After the End for "inventors" making existing tech in a cave with a box of scraps. GURPS does tend to be bad at providing guidelines for reasonable new equipment, though. I think that's its main weakness when it comes to being the all-encompassing thing it wants to be.

Parry and block are normally limited to 1 attack per tool per turn. (IE, once you've blocked/parried with a given shield, hand or weapon it's used up until next turn).

Um, what? Parry is at -4 per each attempt after first (-2 for fencing weapons).
I don't recall if rule for multiple blocks is in core or in martial arts, though.

where can i find the rules for combining strength on takedowns?

Where the hell do I start?

Let's say I want to run a modern paramilitary game. Okay, so I use Basic, High-Tech, Action, and probably Tactical Shooting. (If anyone has other book suggestions for that, please.)

Now how the hell do I narrow it down to only the rules that are actually useful, like it's always advertised as needing?

Skim through the books, read in detail things you find interesting, ignore things you think are boring or don't understand, or have no bearing on your game (skip the chapters on magic and psionics, for example).

One important facet of GURPS though is reading rules for inspiration. You can slice down rules they give you, or use them to inspire situational rulings, without sticking to the letter of them. For example, the expanded aiming rules might be too complicated for your game, but noting the vague size of some modifiers means that you might recall them later and be able to apply them without the rest of the junk.

Using Action and Tactical Shooting together is a bit strange, though. Action supports Ocean's Eleven style cinematic play, whereas Tactical Shooting is more for people who want to play Saving Private Ryan or 9 April in GURPS. They're by no means irreconcilable but if it's your first time I'd discourage you from trying to use both at once.

Treat an unusual attack as a 'dirty trick' (Basic Set, p. 405). This basically lets you add whatever benefit you like to the attack. -1 to defences the first time you use it in a fight seems appropriate for something like striking with the blunt end or going for the legs with an impaling weapon while really odd stuff like swords in reversed grips, throwing your shield at the enemy or kicking when you have a weapon would justify -2 or more.

>mfw making special opponents for my high points fantasy setting

It's motherfucking rocket tag and they usually don't have a chance to do much before they are taken out of by disabling spells, but I still love the hint of fear they cause in my players when they think about "what happens if we fuck up our rolls?"

Next week my players get to meet a bunch of cultist with Chameleon and Silence potions in a dark building that are going to grapple, then try cut the throats of anyone they can catch.

Oh, and they've got vest full of high quality black powder and nails they will light the fuse on if they get badly wounded.

The Wishing (+0%) enhancement allows you to affect any die roll made in your presence instead of your own.

And for the record, I'm talking about Super Luck, which is separate from various levels of Luck and allows you to straight-up dictate the results of a roll rather than reroll and choose the best result.

The ability would be hella expensive, though. If I throw on as many limitations as I can, I can only get it down to Super Luck 12 (Wishing, +0%; Alway On, -10%; Aspected, Combat, -20%; Defensive, -20%; Limited, Very Common, Ranged Attacks, -20%; Visible, -10%) [240]. That advantage makes you dictate the result of any ranged attack made against you and can be done once every second.

1) How is the enemy helpless from a single use of the Illusion power?
2) Illusion can still block line of sight and obscure/misdirect even if no one believes the illusion.
3) Illusion by default is a very broad power that rewards player creativity, so I'd wait to see how it functions in play before tweaking it too much.

So, random setting idea: Transhuman Superheroes. You're a bunch of people that have used publicly-available tech like nanofactories, enhanced learning technologies, genetic engineering, et cetera, to boost themselves up to superhuman capabilities, and they're fighting other people that have done the same, and decided to use their capabilities for evil.

No magic, no psychic powers, just people with the stuff in Biotech, High Tech, the THS books, and the like, abusing the crap out of them to get something like GURPS Supers. Playing such a high-point-cost game might also help with balancing the point costs between the high-cost robots and the humans, as well.

Partly inspired by Overwatch, admittedly. Thoughts?

Action + Tactical Shooting = Operators Operating Operationally while on Operational Operations.

>blackpowder bombvest
THE REAL ONE also i'm totally stealing it

Might be cool. The only thing I'm thinking may be a problem is that the coolest stuff comes with a high price tag, making any pseudosuper (or team or pseudosupers) reliant on whatever organizations funds them. This may quickly turn the game from a twist on the supers genre -- which has almost always been about powerful individuals, because even when they form a team a'la the Justice League, they still operate semi-independently -- to something more organized and with all the hierarchy, internal politics, and drama that comes with it. Superman takes Batman's advice in the JL because he trusts Batman, not because Batman is his boss handing down orders, and neither have to answer to a bureaucrat or are beholden to any specific group.

1: I'm talking about with the Mental illusion, which gives the complete control over a targets senses if you succeed. You can just completely alter what they see to not react to real life, so even if they realize it's not real(Because it's unbelievable, but they failed the check, so they still see it), they get -10 to everything.

I agree with the others that it the timeline may be a bit drawn out but I see you've already worked on that.

Other than that though the whole thing sounds like one hell of a wild ride, one which I don't want to get off. Hope you keep us up to date!

If a PC wants to spend 50 points on Illusion (Mental) so they can do a poor imitation of Affliction (Blindness) at three times the cost, that's there prerogative.

Illusion is infinitely more useful when doing less extreme things, so this is basically a self-solving problem. If you're still worried about the PC spamming total sensory deprivation, play up the huge bonuses the targets get to seeing through that illusion *and* that overusing the power so blatantly will net them a reputation; if most people know you're an illusionist, your illusions get a lot less impressive and no one will fall for them.

Yeah, but Batman was the one who paid for the Watchtower to get built, and at TL 10, most PCs should have enough money to give themselves some nice gear. If you want something really expensive like power armor, you could either buy it as Signature Gear, or play the billionaire genius philanthropist type of character like Batman or Iron Man.

I just finished making one such character at 500 points using the Alpha Upgrade racial template, and the Space Knight template from GURPS Space and the Executive template from GURPS Biotech, along with some cybertech and biotech implants, and he's got more than enough money to buy a suit of Commando Armor and a Superfine Vibroblade Zweihander, and he's really lethal with it. 2 attacks a turn, at skill 16, doing 6d+17 damage with an armor divisor of (5) - not enough to damage full-blown tanks, but it'll probably wreck anything short of that.

Hot damn.

>making any pseudosuper (or team or pseudosupers) reliant on whatever organizations funds them

Surprisingly appropriate for an Overwatch inspired game.

Are you having the implants cost points or cash? I was assuming any genemodding/gene therapy or chrome would come out of the bank, which would severely reduce the cash available for other traits if they didn't eat up the starting budget by themselves.

How do I play GURPS?

Its scary and confusing and I want to play it.

you roll 3d6 and if you get a number lower than your stat value for it (so if your gun skill is 15 then you have to roll under 15) you succeed. competitive rolls are determined by margin of success, so if you roll 12, but dipfuck mcgunboy has 8 gun skill and rolls a 4, he beats you by nothing short of a miracle.

the real nightmare of gurps is setting up stats, not playing the game.

You need to build a character. That is a bit of a challenge, depending on what kind of game you want to play. Talk to your GM and ask for help here about confusion.

To make it simpler, I'd suggest getting Gurps Character Assistant (also called GURPS Character Sheet because that's the website), it's a free open source utility for building a character.

Playing the game isn't so hard. The basic system is 3d6 roll under, with skills based on the level of an attribute. Combat lite in the back of GURPS basic set 1 (Characters) gives you the basics.

It's like anal, you have to start small and by yourself, and then you end up on toypics with a horse-sized dildo in your butt distorting your tummy, and you like it.

Read GURPS lite.
Then gets GURPS dungeon fantasy 1 and pick a template.

Then google some GURPS monsters, find some orcs someone on the SJ forums have statted out. Try clubbing it to death using what you learned from GURPS lite.

Then use your climbing skill to climb a wall.

There. You've done the essential C:s of GURPS:
>Creating a Character
>Combat
>Climbing stuff

Thanks, especially for those 3 C's.

I mean I understand the basic part of how the rules function, I guess Im having trouble wrapping my head around how to run a game of it, like how do I narrow down what parts of the book I should use, how do I convey that to my players. With most games I dont need to know every single feat, advantage, edge, aspect ect ect before play but do I with GURPS so I know what to allow and what to not? Is there easy ways to start and prep games?

Stick with the Basic Set. On page 42 it describes Supernatural and Exotic advantages, which are marked by an icon. Telling players to avoid these is a good way. You can also just tell them what kind of setting/characters you expect-- cinematic, realistic, if magic is allowed, you name it. Your players should skim the advantage, disadvantage, and skill sections when making their characters. Then you can bookmark what they take so you can learn its own rules.

As far as other rules go, like for combat, just peruse the Basic Set and opt into the rules you like. Don't feel obligated to include everything at once. You can add new rules like the different combat moves as you go along in the campaign as you see fit. Just think about what kind of game you want to run-- do you want realistic bleeding and wounds? Or realistic throw tables? Or would you rather keep it more abstract and without crunch? It's all your choice. Don't feel obligated to use a rule just because it's there.

>Supernatural and Exotic advantages, which are marked by an icon. Telling players to avoid these is a good way.
I mean, if you don't want them I mean. Like if it's a realistic or a low-magic setting. I do enjoy having at least one wild card in the group though.

If you plan on GM:ing, I suggest a simple dungeon fantasy campaign (since it got ready made templates for the players.

If you GM, you want to read GURPS lite, and then probably basic set as well. Finally GURPS dungeon fantasy 1 (check the titles of the series though, in case someone wants to play an elf or some other popular fantasy shit).

Your players will only need GURPS lite and Dungeon Fantasy.

As for monsters, well, some of the dungeon fantasy supplements got that. You can also google the SJ forums.

Finally you can make your own with a simplified process. See picture.

Oh, GURPS How to GM is another good starter GM supplement.

Also, for friendly NPC:s, you can literally just stat them out as [Profession or other term that describes what I do]! 12 (or another number).

They seldom need more than that (if they get attacked, just assume they instantly drop to the floor in panic or whatever).

I agree with most of this. I'd have Sorcery and Psi as available power modifiers. Those core mechanics and a few examples won't take up much page count, especially if they're used together. That leaves room for RPM. I agree that default magic should be moved to a supplement and/or revamped. Move the Bard and Ninja skills to their own chapter.

Know Your Own Strength is fantastic, but I think that kind of core change should wait for 5th ed. It affects too many other things. Ditto for other core changes like separating Will and Perception from IQ, or adding a Charisma core attribute. Mechanically simple, but too far-reaching to belong in a point release.

Rewrite GURPS Lite as GURPS Core so it goes from an easy and tight introduction to being the core of the setting that everyone starts from, with character and setting options in the Basic Set. That means changing a few things to match the Basic Set.

Styles (from Martial Arts) as a core system. Make all Techniques into average.

The additional influence and reaction charts from Social Engineering. Consolidate the various Rank/Status/Patron and Ally rules into something simpler and more clear.

Use the Impulse Points system from Powerups: Impulse Buys as the default for Serendipity and a few others.

Consolidate the skills list-- it's currently a mess.

Pick an armor hit location system and stick with it. Right now we've got several conflicting systems.

Abstract range chart as the default, with the SSR table as an optional rule.

Make Skinny, Fat/Very Fat, Dwarfism, Gigantism, etc into templates. Several other advantages are like that: essentially templates that add page count to no real benefit.

>Pick an armor hit location system . . . several conflicting
Care to elaborate or give references? I never noticed that.

Gotta say; played 5e dnd today.

Glad I gm a weekly gurps game.

Not a very good contribution, shitting on D&D. I'd rather hear a story from your GURPS game. However, what exactly about the 5E session was so bad?

The ones in Ultra Tech and Low Tech, for example.

You mean hit locations and partially covered hit locations?

Yeah and look up the armor design rules. It's been a while since I read them but they're there.

Yeah, it was to allow more customization of armor pieces. Nothing in Low-Tech or Martial Arts or Basic Set disagree with each other -- they're all the same system, just at different degrees of detail. Saying they conflict is like saying Martial Art's expansion on combat conflicts with the basic version by adding in Committed and Defensive Attacks, Defensive Grip, etc.

Classes
Level based everything
Not being able to mechanically contribute because my character was a 'sub optimal' build (melee warlock)

I'm just relieved I can take a little refresher from my regular game, shut off my brain for a bit, do some beer and pretzels dnd, but come right back to gurps refreshed and renewed.

Guys, I'm in a weird quagmire.
I asked my players to choose between my idea for a new campaign, and their ideas for a new campaign.
I saw their ideas and they seemed pretty mediocre, so I in my infinite hubris assumed that it was a no-brainer to me that the idea I presented would be the far above and beyond winner...
I was wrong.
So now the campaign is "high magic 1800s, magic creatures and those with magic powers are pariahs in a dystopian empire" And I have no inspiration and I can't think of any way to make this interesting.
The next big winch is that out of all the players, only one has more self motivation to create fun than a $5 footlong, and he loves fighting heavy campaigns. The other players are interested in a more social and slow campaign. By pure inertia, this machine is hardwired out of the gates to go off the rails and into "kill as many monsters as we can wide open and completely empty sandbox" from the get-go.
What are some good plots to run with this "campaign idea" that would be fun in GURPS?

Hard mode: Assume I have already tried talking to them about the problem, and the response was "look at this whiner going all, 'waah, I'm going home and taking my ball too.'"

Let one of them run the game. Or tell them the game is in their hands, you'll be referee and judge but not storyteller. They came up with the premise and idea. Character agency and personal motivation should drive their story.

Or find a new group. There's a That Guy aura behind this somewhere.

Go home, and take your ball too. Then find a better group and play with them.

If you're determined to make this work, then there are a couple options.
1. Penal/Pariah Legion for said dystiopic empire's attempts at conquering their neighbors. The battle scenes will obviously give the fighter plenty to fight (esp when the enemy start fielding giant magical beasties as shock and awe units), and the day-to-day life of a soldier dealing with crappy base-camp conditions, incompetent aristocratic officers, the ambitions and dreams of fellow soldiers, and similar things will give your RPers something to latch on to.
2. Magi-Industrial Revolution. There's a lot you can do here. Would-be Captains of Industry jostling for superiority often turn to more underhanded and brutal tactics if they can't take down a rival legitimately; the players could very well be Shadowrunners 250 years early, engaging in industrial espionage, sabotage, and even assassination. The dying aristocratic class is trying to hold on to its final vestiges of honor, prestige, and wealth; the intellectual upper-crust will plot and manipulate for every scrap of an advantage against the rising industrialists and other aristocrats trying to do the same, and hot tempers are often quenched with bloody duels and/or back-alley beatings.
3. GRAND EXPLORATION. Dive into the heart of Darkest not!Africa for Queen and Country! Plenty of opportunities for magical monsters, and dealing with natives, fugitives, expatriates, rival explorers, and vile foreigners (as in foreign to both this land and your homeland -- if there's one thing a not!Englishman stuck dying of heat in a fort somewhere hates more than the weather and the natives, it's the stinking not!Italians that an encroaching on "your" territory) will give RP opportunities aplenty. This is also the most sandbox option.

>Giving players a choice between something you want and something they want
>Be surprised when they chose what they want
You asked for this boyo.

One of them actually does kinda want to GM, nervous about letting him do it because he is new and has been in one campaign so far, and although he isn't really flat out "bad" or anything of the sort, his gaming philosophy goes a bit against the grain for me. Then again, in a passive aggressive way... if I give him something to GM that I am afraid is a stinking ticking time bomb, at least it doesn't go off on me, and maybe he can enlighten me as to how this is an interesting idea.
I kinda like the first one, because I was kinda wanting to get my feet wet with possibly using the Mass Combat mechanics. The other two don't sound bad either.
Yeah, it's kind of an abstract sort of hell; I've realized that I have myself to blame for a good deal of the problem, which compounds the weird icky feeling further.

Heads up, Mass Combat is best if the PCs are leading the units. If the PCs are fighting, then MC is way too abstract to be satisfying. The one exception is going full Dynasty Warriors in a high-power game and using the rules for converting PCs to MC units; wiping out 1000 TS worth of enemy soldiers on your own is pretty dang cool. Alternatively, you can use MC to determine how battle that the PCs don't fight in turn out, giving the campaign a more open-ended/sandbox feel.

It's probably a much better idea to give the PCs a critical mission; if they succeed, the battle is won, and if they fail, the battle is lost. Even better, as part of a penal/pariah legion, they will be seen as expendable and sent on all sort of crazy/CUH-RAZY suicide missions ("There are four magi-tanks bombarding us from the other side of the river, go drown them in the bodies of your fellow legionaries!"), which will make it all the more terrifying when they later learn that, due to officer incompetence, everything was riding on their very unlikely success. Go full 40k with a side of Black Adder.

>Yeah, it's kind of an abstract sort of hell; I've realized that I have myself to blame for a good deal of the problem, which compounds the weird icky feeling further.
You have to be honest with your players about how you feel. It's better to own up to your mistake then get invested in a setting you aren't compatible with. You'll only make yourself miserable and your players will be worse off because of it.

*than get invested

I immediately think of magic powered people and monsters forced by the dystopian empire to hunt down and take out dangerous magical threats.

There's a lot of action, as they are sent on missions to fight brutal creatures and strange cultist, but there's room for role playing, especially as other magical beings think of them as traitors that work for the enemy and the empire thinks of them, at best, as dangerous tools and most people react to them with fear and contempt.

Have them forced to wear restraints when not on a mission and take strange medicines, and have their blood taken to be studied in a strange laboratory.

Lots of places you could go from there. Maybe reveal an evil conpericy in the empire, or just monster of the week missions

>ST impacts starting HP
>HT impacts starting Speed

shouldn't these be flipped?

I think that it works as is, given the ST as Size thing and HT as physical energy and vigor.

It's an odd division, though.