Gurps general

Some of my most memorable players and NPCs have been built with a simple philosophy of "what else could go wrong?"

1. Start with disadvantages: pick a couple that interact, and essentially build off each other.
>Pyromania and loner and impulsive.
>Post combat shakes with pacifism; reluctant killer and chummy
>Curious, weirdness magnet and xenophilia

2.Then, build up a story around that failure of their lives, and shoe how they struggled against it. (Bonus points if they rolled with it, and now have a big gaping blind spot/target on their backs)

3.???
4. Profit!

Stargate 1888 game
Players submit
>Florence nightengale crossed with catwoman
>British greedy shotgunny mcSoldier
>Daniel, give or take, from the TV show

:D

True, there's no magic formula.
I think it helps to plot out an idea before you even whip out the books and the character sheets. GURPS is flexible enough that you can write up your character in the abstract first, then usually find discrete abilities and flaws with a good correlation to the character you have in mind.

I usually start with the really broad concept of the character, which is the starting point for both fluff and crunch -- academic spellcaster, streetwise rogue, rustic warrior, etc. -- and I build from there. As far as crunch goes, I start by picking up the skills and advantages I know the character needs to fill his game purpose. Then I consider disadvantages from the character standpoint. Then I finish off with flavorful advantages, skills, and perks and detailing the character fluff.

Fluff, I guess? I try to think of what could help with the group and tell interesting stories. I aim for a sweet spot of conflict where they might strike sparks with people but would not lead to being unable to work together.

That often gives ideas for advantages and disadvantages. I try to buy up the lowest level of Attributes I'd like next, then do the lowest level of skills I see the character having (a lot of stuff at 1 here) .

After this I go back and spend the rest of the points, keeping an eye on my idea for the character and what else the group might need.

I start with a concept. Then I flesh out the concept with a personality and history. Finally I go for the crunch.

gurpscharactersheet.com/
The new version with KYOS has been released.

Hah, yeah, mine forced me to update

I missed the changelog so far; any good news?

I've never really looked in to KYOS, sell me it.

gurpscharactersheet.com/release_notes.php
Three big reasons you might like KYOS
1) Stat normalization, if it matters to you, this tries to tie ST 16 to "realistic peak human strength" in the same way that 16 is supposed to be superlative for HT, DX, or IQ. In the regular rules, tons of olympic lifters have Lifting ST in the 20s.
2) It makes Thrust weapons a lot less garbage.
3) It makes Basic Lift a lot better.

If you don't care about those things, you won't want or need KYOS.

>gurpscharactersheet.com/release_notes.php
Features Added
>GCS-1: Non-humanoid body type support. You can now choose what body type your character has and the hit location table will update appropriately. Standard armor doesn't necessarily make sense for many of the other body types, so custom armor will need to be created for them.
>GCS-20: A piece of equipment can now have a feature added to it that reduces the effective weight of its contained items by either an absolute quantity or a percentage...
>GCS-113: Initialize new character sheets with the last used page settings.
>GCS-114: Spells can now have the attribute they are based upon set (was fixed as IQ previously).
>The Rule of 20 from B344 is now enforced.
>The Quantity and Carried State columns for equipment are now displayed before the Description column.
>The current encumbrance background gets a reddish tint when overloaded.

Fuck yes, what a tool!

I may be able to help you with this, what fluff do you have so far?

I feel like we could still use one more, but it's a great group so far.

Here is the revised "Dual Wielding" guide.

>no info on Main-Gauches
Revise again. Don't forget clarifying stuff from MA.

Nice. I've always liked the idea but it seemed too complicated for me.

Seconded. I'm checking if Fiss wants to join or if I should be following up more with folks.

I tend to go back and forth between the two a lot. Start with a concept, eyeball if it's viable and not too strong/weak and whether it'd be fun to play long-term, apply central characteristics like attributes, core skills and defining disadvantages, gauge what I have left and see whether I can e.g. afford a cybernetic arm or have to settle for a cybernetic hand, etc. Working my way all the way down to determining things like birth location as I place my last quirk and put the last remaining points into useless background skills.

In fact, it doesn't even have to start with a fluff concept, more than once I've made characters that started as an idea for crunch. "I bet it'd be fun to dualwield shields"

>not using a custom excel sheet that does all the calculations automatically but still requires some manual data entry for names, descriptions, etc.

It alternates.

Sometimes I think of a character I want to play, like a celestial raised in the slums or a high elf that used to be a merchant.
Other times I think of a person that's skilled in social interaction but has Callous or Bully.

Whichever comes first, I build off of that.

PPA JUST USE THE DAMN PROGRAM ALREADY

A little more specificity would help me finish much quicker.

P.S. I did include the entry on Main-Gauche, in the bottom-left corner. What other pertinent information on that Skill is missing?

Still need Victorian science heroes for Stargate 1888! Contact me asap about making a PC for game day on the night of the 18th!

How would you stat a weapon that channels a nuclear detonation into a beam using forcefields/uber strong magnetic fields? Both as an infantry support weapon (TL12), a vehicular (also TL12), and a spaceship weapon (TL11).

How well are the modular mecha creation rules present in Pyramid 3-51 able to handle multi-crew walkers? Or should I just use the standard spaceship creation rules?

For Ship weapon: As Plasma weapons, but extend range to R1 and sAcc -3 rather then -6.

TL 11 Ultralight Hellbore
Damage 6dx4(5) burn, sur, rad
Acc 15
Range 2,800/8,400
Weight 50/2C
ROF 1
Shots 50(5)
ST 18M
Bulk -8
Recoil 6
Cost $240,000
LC ?

Power cells provide energy only to initiate fusion in the deuterium pellet ammunition and to energize the containment fields, the vast majority of power from the weapon is provided by deuterium fusion.

Powered combat armor is suggested. The use of the weapon exposes everything nearby to .5 rads

Is that in a pyramid, or did you make that up on the spot?

Made up on the spot, loosely basing it on the TL 11 light blaster cannon.

So I've been toying around with an idea for magic in GURPS and I am having difficulty figuring out how to pull it off.

How would you model a magic system based on creating charms, talismans, and other objects, instead of casting spells?
Enchanting seems to make that prohibitive, but I've been kind of into the idea of magic being a sort of artisan like craft lately.
Charms in ritual path magic seems like a good place to start, but I am a bit stumped as to how to expand it all.

How exactly does Ritual Path Magic require expansion? You can put a limitation on the magery so it can only be used to make charms.

I'm having trouble articulating the sort of thing I want, but yeah, that's probably the best way to go about it.

Charms work very well, but what about for more long term stuff, rather than the one time use items that charms are. Is there a way to make very these more feasible to make? Though, perhaps they already are feasible to make, and my particular group just never wants to mess around with enchanting when they play wizards

So how about making a character who's power is entirely focused in one arm? Arm ST and DX, as well as DR limited to the arm are good starts, of course.

How about parrying bullets but only with that arm? Any other good ideas to add to the arm.

youtube.com/watch?v=ct9fs3ULVIo

Well you can make a charm which casts a spell with a long duration. Permanent stuff like enchanted rings and the like are difficult and time consuming to make, and they should be.

Why would you make potentially permanent character upgrades easy, that has so much potential to be broken.

There are rules for making enchanted items in RPM, and basically you are supposed to buy them with points.
Dunno if there are any houserules for charms with multiple charges, which would be interesting, I think.

Thanks! I love these! Keep them coming!

Well, the idea is that low level magic is, generally speaking, stupid common in the setting I am trying to put together. Common enough that maybe about one in every ten people has magical training, and that the number of magic users is going up (For a variety of in universe reasons that are not super important to this)

Mmm, I will give it another look over and see if i can figure out how to make that work

All the more reason not to hand out rings of strength or whatever out like candies. Make that sort of permanent stuff difficult to produce, let the players mess around with charms.

I was thinking more of enchantments like "If you pass water through this hoop, it becomes safe to drink"
Now, that will irreversibly change society if its cheap, but that's the point.

But now that i have been talking about it, I think I might just try and see if I can get the feeling I want out of charms alone

You could use rituals for that sort of thing. Cast a matter spell on a barrel so that it absorbs all impurities in water, it'll continue to do this as long as the spell lasts, which might be months. You can do a ton of stuff with RPM, you just need to be creative.

Give the DR the Absorption enhancement. That way, the more you punch with it, the stronger you get.

If the arm is a monster arm, you have a TON of options like Claws, the Natural Weapons article from Pyramid (Alt. GURPS III, I think), and the options under Extra Arm, just to name a few.

Since this game seems to love conspiracy and the unraveling of such things, anybody have any ideas for the meat of and the motives behind the constituents of a conspiracy set in the ruins of a massive space launch complex in what used to be Kazakhstan (last used 1200 years in the future, like the size of California in terms of area), 600 years after the civilization that built it collapsed, with kind of a wild west/frontier, 10 years after the equivalent of WW1 or the Civil War? Involved parties include-but are not limited to- an AWOL super soldier turned bandit lord (Abaez Balji - Former Federal Rakniij of the Commonwealth and Bandit Lord), the equivalent of a Confederate colonel who refused to accept defeat (Ming Adal - Lord-Colonel of the Corps of Nova Hoxii), the Marshall (Abdul Cekic - High Marshall of Astaan, Chauraan, and Ghulkin), the corrupt local bishop (His Holiness Aadi12 of the Holy Synod of Ghulkin), a crime lord (Jon Hou - Pakhan of Astaan and Chauraan), a collective-mind consisting of three immensely powerful not!magic users (The Chauraan Union of Thaumaturges), a very well respected smuggler (Shin Fulkin - Head of the Astaan Smugglers Guild), and an autonomous war machine that achieved sentience and essentially became a walking tank with a genius intellect that is the “benevolent” dictator of a collection of other bootstrapped AI and a few uploaded humans (Unit 512 - Lord of War).
Feel free to give any constructive criticism on the various conspirators as well. Will also dump images corresponding with each conspirator.

Pic related is more or less what a Rakniij is

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I don't know.. RPM default is that it's very hard/impossible to make something that last forever. It's far easier and more economical to make water filter charms that last a few months/a year and change them out when they wear out then to make the OMEGA FILTER that last forever.

That's not really a bad way to go about things.

There is some appeal to blue-collar wizards who replaces all the failing municipal charms in a city

>"It's supposed to last forever."

>Roy had been staring at the new charm for a few minutes when he said that in a tight voice. It was the same four inch copper tube as the Purity six month charms we had installed all though the water purification tower that fed the fountains in the city.

>I don't dislike the Purity-6. They are easy to install, turn any dangerous material in the water stream into nice heavy sand that's easy to settle out and discard and they only rarely have annoying quirks. We had one last year that made all the water just a little strawberry flavored and made people think they were going crazy, but that's the worst I've heard from their quality control.

>"Do you have any idea how much juice it would take to make that? A bad day at Purity might make a little boom that wrecks a workshop."

>Roy kept starring at the new charm with the 8 on it's side with horror. "They fuck up making something like this it's going to blow up half the fucking city".

I made a character once with Ambidexterity, Extra Attack and Gunslinger.

Even though his main weapon was a Semi-Portable Blaster that he had modded to add an over-under style extra barrel, effectively doubling its RoF, he still had a tendency to run around with a pair of pistols.

Anyone have any experience using GURPS Low Tech for Sword and Sorcery campaigns?

I've been planning to use Runequest for a Glorantha campaign, but I read some combat examples online for GURPS and I liked how intricate and tactical they were.

themook.net/rpg/examples/melee/index.php?id=four

There are rules for multiple use charms in Pyramid 3/66: The Laws of Magic, in the Article "Alternative Ritual Path Magic."

That book is a MUST HAVE for anyone interested in doing things with RPM. It's so fucking good.

Now this is the content I am looking for

Furthermore, you could have 'rechargeable' charms. Here's how I'd do it, just off the cuff.
Use symbol drawing to carve, write, or otherwise embed the spell in symbols on the item. (multi-use charms are like wands and things, not so breakable or small).

Roll symbol drawing, and look up the Charm cost in "buying charms" on GURPS TH:RPM page 27-28.
This is how many GURPSbux worth of magic powder or whatever you need to recharge the item. Reduce this by 5% per MoS, or increase by 10% per margin of failure, maximum 5. Higher than 5 means failure.

Critical failure means the charm can't be recharged at all (make a new one), and may suddenly activate thanks to the failure, at the GM's discretion.

To actually recharge it, it's up to the GM whether this requires Thaumatology, Symbol drawing, Occultism, or any of those. If a skill is required, a small magic circle should be drawn with the item and the magic powder/fuel in it, taking 1 minute (reducible by taking more time, hence the value of high skill)

Good stuff, user.

Besides the SMAX book itself, which GURPS books should I get if I wanted to create a campaign set in the early, middle, and late game respectively?

Assuming you're familiar with the setting? Ultra tech for equipment lists and cyborg/robot/uplift racial guidelines. That's about it user.

Is it doable for someone who doesn't have any experience with GURPS, or should I first try doing/playing another campaign?

Yeah. Pretty sure everyone in this thread who has used GURPS and done a lower TL campaign has used Low-tech.

Low-tech has more of everything you need. Mostly what people complain about is the numbers the armor system is putting out (some people want lighter armors, or heavier armors, or more DR).

But overall low-tech is a good supplement.

You probably want to build armour sets and even individual components ahead of time.

Low Tech has incredibly detailed modular rules for creating all sorts of wargear, but not many complete off-the-shelf examples you gain just pick up and go.

It's not a huge amount of work, but it does take a few minutes to build wearable armour with correct cost and weight from the building blocks which may slow things down in play.

Thanks guys. I saw a companion on e23 that supposedly has a bunch of pre made armor sets. Might pick that up if I decide to go this route.

I guess part of what I'm wondering is whether or not GURPS Low Tech has more to offer than Runequest. I think it definitely has more detail and more tactical options for combat, but the big issue will be converting the Gloranthan magic from Runequest to GURPS. Could I port the tactical options (e.g., Feverish Defense, All Out Attack, etc.) over to Runequest or would it be easier to port the Gloranthan magic systems into GURPS?

GURPS has a lot of different magic systems (See the OP for a comparison, it is a PDF). I want to say that I know what I am talking about, but I am not familiar with Runequest's magic. I have recreated the magic systems from generic fantasy settings as disparate as Slayers and The Wheel of Time for my own amusement, so I am sure that whatever Runequest does can be recreated within the bounds of one of the existing magic systems, no homebrew required.

Which Glorantha magic are you talking about? The Folk Magic? That's really just the vanilla magic system.

For the create your own spells one, you can use Sorcery I guess.

Hey
can anyone charge my gurps folder?
This is the only one i have

Thaumatology has an insane number of building blocks to construct almost any magic system you can think of.

I kinda want to play a magical girl riding a tank-broom now.

>Don't think what I'm riding is just a broom

So GURPS Religion (3rd ed) mentions a "Lord Beneath The Ice" from GURPS Horror as an example of a malevolent deity. But reading through Horror, I can't seem to find what page it is on.

Am I just being stupid, or is this a faulty citation?

Bump
also

Do you have the right edition?

Grimwyld 11/12 game

>Elf Archer is getting the hang of using the teleport crystal and dais in the Evil Dwarven Ruins. Manages to send the beastmen slaves we saved from the mines last time and the party back up to Ground Floor, Lobby.

>Seeing people teleport on that thing is hard to watch, calls for a Will roll. I don't think anybody failed so I'm not sure about the potential consequences, but it's an interesting twist and a reminder that magic in Grimwyld is scary shit.

>Friends we'd left (ex-PC Falirk and on-a-long-sabatical-PC Bomrik) are gone. There's trails of blood and hints of a struggle. Everyone's horse except the new guy's is dead, with the brains eaten.

>Roderick's horse is fine. Protected by the awesome facial hair. Van Dyke beards FTW

>Beastmen slaves get freaked out but Gray gets absurdly lucky on Leadership, rolling 4 vs SL 8 and manageing to get them calm. They move out to uncertan dangers, but we've done what we can for them.

>Raven spirit guide appears to Gray, the beastman and provides them with advice. Mindflayer took Falkirk and Bomrick off into the teleporter.

>Grim reloading of guns, preparing weapons. Wall gun #2 loaded with shot when it seemed like un-squib-ing wall gun #1 would take too long. Captured grenade taken.

>Elf Ranger uses the Teleport crystal's ability to sense the other uses of the Dias to follow the mind flayer

>Pop into a lab with a giant mindflayer. 13 feet tall and moving on huge tentacles. There's also a woman thrall that warns it when we pop in.

>Open Fucking Fire. Syviss puts down the thrall and Bomrick blast the mindflayer's shield and Gray throws that bomb at it. Before Roderick can set the bomb off the flayer teleports across the room in a rush of shadows.

>It tries to grab Syviss with tentacles but Roderick sacrafice doges into the way and gets caught instead, dragged in close to the maw of the flayer..

>..Where Roderick blast it with ALL THE FIRE, turning the setting on his Flame Jet power up to 11. It catches fire and drops him and he manages to roll away and land on his feet after dropping eight feet to the ground.

>GM tells Gray to top that

>Fail roll vs Berserk (Battle rage)
>All Out Attack (Strong) targeting the Neck
>Hit for 14 CUT
>Giant brute runs forward and hacks off the head of the mindflyaer while yelling FUCKING DIE.

Left us with a cliffhanger. The Thrall may be free from control, the room is a bit on fire, and while there's a lot of creepy shit floating in Science Tubes of Mysterious Liquid, none of them look like our missing friends.

Isn't that simply a plasma gun?

More or less, yes. A plasma weapon might also be a particle beam or laser

Dude
Awesome

Ann, you know what would be awesome? A 'guns by year' table, with all those damn high tech variant guns. Seriously.

Do you have the file? There aren't any links in this OP, and the one in the archive doesn't have them either.

It would probably just be Folk and Rune Magic, at least for a while.

I'll take a look. Can you tell me what the difference is between Magic and Thaumatology books?

The "Image" in the OP is a PDF with links in it.

Thanks, user.

I don't have too many, but have a mini-dump regardless.

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Last one for now.