GURPS General /gurpsgen/

>cheapest way to be able to communicate
share a language

>Precognition
Red flag ability. More GM prepwork, but as a GM, I make sure to always consider it, especially how its powered (deities, magic, esp, etc)

Alright so I want to make pic related.
I tried using Pyramids 3/34 and 3/86 as well as Spaceships 1 and Spaceships 7 - Divergent and Paranormal Tech.

However I ran into some problems with all of the above.

1. I want to include BOTH building and spaceship statistics. As in, I want the whole thing to be able to move and such, but I also want to have statistics from 3/86 like how many staff does it take to care for it and what rooms are there to help with skills.

2. I couldn't find an engine in spaceships to allow just PURE magical movement. I realize with Spaceships 7 you can get a magical power plant, but I can't find any engine that would represent the thing moving without a jet stream trailing behind it or some kind of mechanical process....

Also, I don't know whether to include the islands as part of the spaceship, but I do know I want only the Castle if I'm using the "What's in a Lair" rules from 3/86

Dawg you sound like youre trying a bit too hard
1. make a concession somewhere. The rules wont satisfy you 100%. allow for wiggle room
2. Write your own engine then that does what you want

99% of what we do as GM's is arbitrary or doesnt matter in the long run, so make a deciscion that matters just to you, and go with it

Oh, I should mention I found the dimensions for it.
I expect the Castle to be about 100 yards from the bottom of the spire to the top floor's ceiling.

It should be about 547 or so yards, length and width at the longest/widest area (about same level as the islands' surfaces)

The islands are most likely 200 yards from the edge to the castle each (meaning that the long spire that pokes into both islands is about 947 yards long)
Islands are then maybe 100(?) yards wide from front to back.

Away form my books at the moment, so no clue if this is 100% accurate.

1. Would making it a two-stage ship work, treating the building as a secondary ship? If not, maybe you can squint at it hard enough and treat the castle as a separate ship permanently in its specialized "hangar."
2. Contragravity *should* cover this. If not, would attaching magical ether sails be out of the question?

I guess but I'd rather go by the rules as best I can.

1. That... could work. Maybe. But the islands aren't exactly part of the ship. I figure the way this was built was making the castle first, and then lifting these two pieces of land out of the ground like they did the castle. Basically, they do use engines to float but they aren't ships themselves.....
And I just realized making them asseperate spaceships actually can work but I'm still unsure about it...

2. I did not see those and I feel stupid. Thanks a ton for pointing them out.

A traditional TL8 two-stage rocket is basically making the actual ship and then lifting it into space with a huge fucking rocket.

And not everything treated as a ship under the system is a full-fledged ship; hell, I remember a Pyramid article where skywhales were statted out as bio-organic spaceships. In your case, the rocks would be nothing but tons of Stone Armor, Contragravity Engine(s; not sure if they can be stacked) and a magical powerplant to represent the spell, and possibly other things like Habitats and Cargo if they're partially hollowed out. The Control Room would probably be located in the castle (the throne room is classic), which is the norm for a two-stage rocket.

We discovered that they are poisonous in a relatively safe way, with Gray the giant bastard with HT 12 + Fit getting hit and (apparently) suffering no ill effects of the posion.

The group left the crazy old elf in her room with tea and books while they explored. I'm pretty sure she is a dangerous one but this group is surprisingly willing to give just about anyone a chance.

Sounds like I can make that happen. Thanks man.

Doc pointed out tonight that the entirety of the last dozen sessions or so have been the same in game day.
Since opening the gates with dwarf blood...
..and dealing with miss vamp...
..and clearing out all the Derugar...
...and the mind flaters...
AND STEALING THE GIANT SKY FORTRESS

one day.

goddamn

That's it. Move over, crazy elf lady. We are stealing your bed and getting some rack time.

How many levels of Compartmentalized Mind do you need to achieve FTL thought?

Giving just the familiar Telesend with One Person Only is cheaper then buying off Cannot Speak disadvantage. This means that the communication is one way unless you can speak to the familiar (whom gets, for zero points, a native language, even with Cannot Speak.

This sounds good, so I talk to my cat normally but only I can hear the response. So I look a bit weird and may get burned as a witch, sweet, I like it!

Telesend with only one person is 6 points?

Optional Mindlink would be 3 more and Special Rapport would be 5, though it is the only one both would have to pay for.

This correct?

That question is incoherent. Minds are not spacial entities, and neither are thoughts. Therefore they can not be FTL, because speed is a property that only exists within space.

They do exist within space - your brain. You stop thinking if your brain dies.

Arbitrary amount. You mostly just need ETS and Intuitive Mathematician.

Another familiar question:

If I want him capable of teaching me spells, he would have to know the spells already, just doesn't need Magery, correct?

Does he need them at a certain level?

Instead of buying individual skills, could he just have a 'spells only' Modular slot, that way he could teach me any spell the GM will give?

Do skills need to be a certain level to teach?

Well, I don't quite agree there, as obviously they have a spatial component - but it's certainly an incoherent question, and the pattern is somewhat more important than the physical construction.

What do you mean by this? If you mean a mind that can receive a answer before it begins the question, then any kind of precognition will do. If you want a mind that moves so fast time appears to be stopped, then that's quite cheap because much of it is only useful in the metagame - ETS.

Adding Visualisation with Reliable and making it reflexive or just very fast, could also represent having all the time in the world to consider a problem.

Any cosmically instantaneous teleportation or scrying will give you an FTL mind, though you'd need a space opera game to really get the most out of it.

He needs to know the spells to teach them and can't teach you more than he knows.

I would allow a perk to know and teach spells with out being able to cast them.

I need some help with a concept, both fluff and crunch. I know pretty much anything is possible with GURPS, just not managing to get it to work.

The idea is a young apprentice to an old wizard. He had other ones before and they all turned into power hungry, amoral assholes to varying degrees. He thought little of it until, as an old man, he tried to get them together for a charity work and they all turned him down. He blamed himself so decided to have one more apprentice that wasn't a shit (the PC).

To make it more interesting, in death the old wizard bequeathed *something* to the young apprentice, something the other former apprentice desire (Enemies).

Originally I wanted this thing to be like a magic book of secrets I could use to learn spells from later, but have no idea how to work that mechanically.

Could be a smart crystal ball or medallion (Ally?) that can teach stuff.

Finally it could just be a dumb item with like +IQ (only for spells) or something (Gadget). But would the Enemies then be the medallion's and not the PC's? Not sure how to do that

At the end of the day, the book is a justification for how you spend your points. If your GM doesn't super care about training speed or cost (and many don't) and generally lets people buy what they want if they've got the points, the book is worth, at most, 5 points as an Unusual Background (Can learn certain spells without a tutor), and is probably worth no more than a perk. Even if training and tutorship is a big deal and you actually plan on using the book to learn in the GURPS sense (200 hours = 1 extra character point), mechanically it's no different from picking up a mundane textbook and using the self-study rules to learn a mundane skill, so really it's still a UB, albeit probably a more expensive one (~15?).

That is an interesting interpretation of it, one I never considered. My GM is very RAW-abiding, so will have to double check if I go that route.

We're playing a kamen rider/super hero campaign and I was wondering what sort of advantages would allow me to do something in particular.

In Kamen Rider, it's typical for the main character to slip out of a group when a monster attacks, so that he can hide and change into his superhero alter ego. When he comes back, nobody realizes that he was gone exactly the same amount of time when the hero appeared to fight the monster. So, my question is, what advantage would allow me to slip out of combat and make people be cartoonishly oblivious of my disappearance?

>We're playing a kamen rider/super hero campaign
So it's campaign feature, not individual advantage.
And most it worth a perk.

>Dawg you sound like youre trying a bit too hard
That should be the point of gurps, allow people to try a bit too hard..
if gurps fail at this it fail at its core thing

You could mix these two ideas together.

A familiar that has a summonable ally in the form of a book with barely enough DX and ST to turn it's own pages, but with Signature Gear enough to pay for a comprehensive spellbook for the setting.

One way sympathy, so that damaging the familiar damages the book. Now your magic friend can summon/unsummon your spellbook that lets you learn new magic and becomes a target for your foes for kidnapping.

Should we change gurpsgen to /gg/

No.

Technically to know spells you need to be able to cast them under some circumstances, but that can include High Manna zones that allow people without Margery to cast.

I love vanilla Magic!

>immigrants go home
You haven't lived here long enough to change the name of the gurps general.

Speaking of that..

I'm thinking of allowing unrestricted Magery 0, but after that up to Magery 4 you have to take One Collage Only in order to encourage mages to be specialist, and to have a more broad set of skills.

Is there any school I should watch out for?

How does your GM award character points at the end of the session? I'd like some sort of objective system, that rewards positive player interaction and participation. Using a system like Dungeon World/Torchbearer, where there is a set of conditions that grant rewards at the end of the session for each player who met them, I'm tossing around this:

"Each player may earn up to 5 character points per session. Ask these questions at the end of the session. For each question, each player who answers 'Yes' and justify their answer to the table gains one character point:
Did you (as a player) participate and make this session a positive experience for everyone at the table?
Did one of your advantages or perks benefit an ally in a particularly interesting or unexpected way?
Did one of your disadvantages or quirks force your character to make a non-optimal choice or put the party in a tight spot?
Did you learn something new and interesting about the world?
Did you make a noticeable change or impression on the world?"

Thoughts?

I just dump whatever points on them that feels right. Could be none, one, or twenty-five. I found questionairres too cumbersome, personally, but they might work for you. It really depends on the game and the power level you're working with.

As an example, one time I awarded players 25 points for a session after an end of an adventure, which was in addition to the small amount of points I gave them each session. They had plenty of downtime, so it was reasonable for them to make a big purchase, or invest in a lot of smaller things. Another time, I gave players 20~40 points when they had their second trigger events, and barely any in-between unless they were getting critical successes or failures, or dedicated enough time to learning skills.

I do it like this.

One point to all players involved in doing something Big and Important. If it is REALLLY big and important, like the end of a big mission, quest, or task, they might get two.
One point for showing up.
One point for good roleplay individually for the good roleplayers.
One point if something happens that is especially cool, to the player or players who did that cool thing of their own volition.

That's usually it.

Tbh that seems like you're trying to make it like a school assignment or something which can really turn off players.

Just award points as you see fit. 5 being the norm, 2 for low participation, and 7 for very good participation. Something like that.

So I'm a relatively new GURPS GM and I have a player who I just can't seem to kill. He has 14 HT and 20 max HP along with the High Pain Threshold advantage. So this makes it so that he doesn't incur shock and when he does have to make a HT roll say to avoid falling unconscious when he's in negative HP or to avoid death, he has a very slim chance of failure (95% chance of success even when he is at a full negative HP multiple, it would seem). So basically if I want to do anything to his character I have to full on kill him by getting him to a full -100 HP (120 damage total). KO'ing him is pretty much impossible.

So are we doing something wrong? I always hear how lethal GURPS is supposed to be, but this is a ~50 point combo that apparently made him indestructible.

I should also note that he has Fit, which gives a +1 to the rolls to avoid falling unconscious or dying

HP is supposed to be constrained to ± 30% ST in a realistic campaign, which would means his ST would have to be 16. That bumps the combo up from ~50 points to ~110 points.
I'm a new GURPS GM myself, so I don't know if your missing anything else, but this is just something I noticed.

It's not indestructible, but that's extremely tough and not just a 50 point combo, given he's at 45 points just for 14 HT and Fit.

Then 20HP. This means, if you are using the normal rules, that he has at least 15 ST and +5 HP, or another 60 points invested. Up to 105, though if he took Giantism that could be down to 99 points.

For that many points sunk into toughness a person should be hard to stop.

Keep in mind that, unless he regenerates, he's going to need to spend a long, long time recovering after a fight, getting back 2 HP per day can mean he needs to spend a month healing after a hard brawl.

Even if they can't make him pass out his foes might be able to disable a limb, effectively taking him out of the fight with a disabled leg or simply avoid him and defeat or capture people he's trying to protect. If he can be grappled down and pinned he can also be forcefully restrained with handcuffs.

have something do locational damage to either his hands or his head. The locational damage if high enough should sever his hands or do x4 damage to his skull. Even with high pain threshold, he'd be useless without hands, which would make killing him a little easier.

What tech level is the game? 120 HP sounds like a lot, Your average TL 7 rifle does between 5d and 7d (17.5-24.5 damage on average), and you can get multiple hits per attack.

A TL 2 18" scorpion (a ballista that fires bolts instead of stone) does 2d+1 impaling damage. After wounding modifiers are applied, assuming an unarmed target, that is 4d+2 damage, or an average of 16 damage per hit. A few of those would take him out as well.

A score of 14 is listed as exceptional for a reason. He should be hard to kill.

Do you have his full sheet? It would help a lot to see what he is doing and where he spent his points.
The other option is put him in situations where being a living brick is not useful. Such as a social setting, as long as you keep periods where his flaws actually come out it will go a long ways to making him more 'balanced' in terms of play.

I forgot, that is the damage for one of the scorpions from Low Tech. THe scorpion from the basic set does 5d impaling damage. A hit on an unarmored target does 10d damage, or an average of 35. A shot to the vitals does 15d (52.5 average), while a shot to the skull does 20d (70 damage average).

Armor would reduce that, however. You get a big, tough target you use a big, strong weapon.

Ok so here's the scoop. Neither of us knew about the ST constraints, so he's technically illegal there considering his ST is only 12, but I'm going to let it slide since there is only one session left in the game and he's supposed to be an action hero anyway.
I know about the limb thing and its something i discussed with him. In the last fight (which is where I discovered his durability), he fought a guy with two swords who got 4 attacks every round and crit A LOT. he asked why i didnt target his arms after because i would have had them both dismembered within 2 rounds and the answer is simply that his character is the hero of the story and cutting off his limbs would have ruined the vibe.
social situations do hurt him when he gets into them. there have been numerous situations where he's had to just bumble his way into the next plot point because his character is an autist who can't extract information from people or a situation if his life depends on it (and it has).
Also, the TL is TL7-8. The setting is that of a blaxploitation/kung fu movie in post vietnam !LA. Its ostensibly the 70's but there are some 80s era anachronisms thrown in here and there.

Oh also, it was a 90-something point investment, not 50. When I originally asked him what was going on with his durability, he made it sound like it was just because of his HT and High Pain Threshold (which totaled to ~50 points).
Now that I know that, it seems more reasonable that he's this hard to kill (though his level of HP is apparently still illegal).

Keep in mind to take a limb off someone would have to hit him for 21 damage, so short of true monsters with huge blades that simply isn't going to happen.

11 damage can disable a limb, but it's going to be temporary.

For a heroic game, this isn't too huge a problem. He's got about thirty seconds of activity before he is likely to pass out at negative HP.

HP over 30% of ST isn't illegal, so to speak, it's simply not realistic. This is completely inconsequential to an action hero, since cinematic assumptions are in play, so don't sweat it.

>his character is the hero of the story and cutting off his limbs would have ruined the vibe.
This is true and not an awful way to handle character fragility, but paradoxically it's one of the easiest ways to endanger the unstoppable man. Since you're into this action hero vibe, introduce a few campaign options, like so:
>Reintroduce limb hazards and general bodily harm that isn't straight Cr damage to the Torso, but damage that is enough to destroy or sever a body part is ignored, simply ruling that it is crippled. The immediate effect is very similar, but not permanent. A similar option can be employed to make crippled limbs heal significantly faster so as to get your action hero back in the game quicker.
Personally, some action movies I've liked don't ignore crippled limbs and play them as a way for the main character to fight through or think outside the box, but it is my taste.
>Give his character Luck, or employ options from Impulse Buys, then turn up the difficulty up, way up. Power-Ups: Quirks has an interesting quirk that has a character that needs glasses to only be affected by their loss or breakage for one (significant) action, then they carry on as if they didn't need them. You can extrapolate this into a pool of 'meat points' or permanent/temporary point-value reduction that work similarly on crippled limbs.

Generally speaking, make consequences more immediate and dire, but with no/little permanent effect. It will put the fear of harm back into the player's mind, with the assurance that what doesn't kill him, won't necessarily make him lamer

Well like I said the adversary got 4 attacks every round so he could have easily targeted an arm for each of those an done 21 damage in a turn which i would rule is good enough to call it hacked off.

For this particular campaign I've been largely ignoring the idea of taking the character out of commission. It is a short (4 session) story heavy number and having the main character (it is a 1 player game, there isn't a whole party) have to sit out a week because his arms are broken would ruin it. Bad guys would have to inexplicably pause their schemes or other wise keep them going in which case the hero would fail to stop them.
I'm mainly worried about the implications of this moving forward as this was just a test for GURPS. I plan to run some future games in homebrew setting in GURPS but if lethality is as much of an issue as it seemed to be (which im now convinced it isnt), I would have to find a new system.

That's not the RAW though. You would need to deal that damage in a single attack, not a single round, in order to cut off the limb. An optional rule would have limbs disabled by accumulated damage, but lopping off takes one big hit.

I know; it would be a houserule. The way i figure, if 21 damage in 1 attack will do it then 21+ damage over the course of 4 quick attacks in less than 1 second in the same spot should do the trick too.

GURPS is highly lethal, but characters that put 100+ points into 'tank damage' are very hard to kill.

Even then, at TL 8 two men might wrestle him to the ground, handcuff his wrist behind him then empty a handgun into his head or throw him in a river. Either would almost certainly kill him.

Instead of a single clean cut lopping it off, it would be several chops hacking it off sloppily.

Are there rules for two dudes manhandling one person at the same time, like an aid another type deal on a wrestling roll? Or would it just be one roll for each guy with no bonuses

The latter, but keep in mind that having one guy grappling your left arm, one guy grappling your right and a third grabbing your torso for a take-down maneuver puts you in Fucked Land.

>but if lethality is as much of an issue as it seemed to be (which im now convinced it isnt)
GURPS has a few default assumptions, and it's good that you've realized that it's easy to subvert them (or reinforce them for a grittier feel), the game encourages this, what with modular rules, campaign options and the division between 'cinematic' and 'realistic'. The 'Generic' in the game's name should encourage it's players to make it fit their narrative or genre and not have to be locked into some default narrative that stifles their creativity.

yeah i think if i were going for a more realistic setting i would definitely lower the chargen point allotment and maybe disallow a build like this if someone tried it (though theyd have to spend so many of their points i doubt theyd want to). i do think it is appropriate for this particular campaign though.

GURPS's genericism and modularity are what have attracted me to it lately. I've always felt that more specialized games are better- for example if i wanted to run a Conan game i'd want to run it in a system build to run Conan games- but I think I've changed my mind for some cases. In any case where the setting is homebrewed (which is all I run), i think that a system that allows and even encourages heavy modding and hacking is good because it lets you do (close to) exactly what you want.

Is it okay to shill my blog here if I write campaign reports and mechanical/character analyses?

If you can't free your dominate arm to fight back you are in a pretty bad place. You need to throw off everyone grappling you before you can stand up* if you get taken down, and the guy grappling your torso is going to spend every turn trying to Take Down, then to Pin if he manages to put you on the floor.

Trying to free yourself with one hand sucks. Trying to throw someone off with no hands sucks more.

*Exception: If you have twice someone's ST you can stand up while they grapple you.

Please do.

I've tried lots of specialized games, and I've got to say NOTHING does sword and sorcery better then GURPS. There's no place better to do a Hybroian adventure.

Its not even a house rule its right in B. 420 under "Optional Rules for Injury" rtfm

grimaldicascade.blogspot.com/2016/12/titans-of-tabletop-building-titanfall.html?m=1

Just wrote a long post about adapting Titanfall pilots into GURPS; I've got a campaign running for 1980s mecha to occasionally post about as well. Plus continuing the Titanfall ports, plus whatever strikes my fancy to do, plus any campaigns I run down the line. No schedule, just when I want to write/have time.

Friend, who are you and why do you post these?

I like your writing style, thank you for sharing.

4 attacks in one round is a lot. All Out Rapid + Extra Attack + Extra Attack (Multiattack?)

No problem. Another reader caught a few phrasing errors I'll fix tomorrow. Numbers are valid, just wording in some of my explanations.

Thanks.

This is most solid advice that has helped me GM.

This is what I did and many many potential campaigns died because of this.

What are some good ways of making attack rolls a little less guaranteed?
A PC with 16 in a melee weapon skill will roll successes 98% of the time on a basic torso attack. Sure, a good chunk of those will be blocked, dodged, or parried; but having only a 2% shot of failing the roll makes it pretty dull.

Is there a table somewhere of common situational modifiers I could use to make combat a little more varied?

I am a personal fan of more restricted magic, the "generalist wizard" from D&D being one of my least favorite things and why I don't care for basic GURPS magic.

Limiting it to a school seems like a good compromise but so many spells have prerequisites from other schools... I guess it's OK, but never sat well with me, so I always balked at it from a GM perspective.

Basic, page 547 gives several modifiers. Penalties for light level, bad footing, being distracted, and so on.

Sure, Page 547 of the Basic Set has a set of modfiers to be aware of. Big ones include..

Bad Footing (-2 or more, GM's option)

Holding a Large Shield (-2, Everyone forgets about this)

Shock (- damage taken last round)

Shield in Close Combat (- Shield's DB if someone is in your hex)

Striking into Close Combat (-2, includes if two people are grappling and you want to hit one)

Visibility (-1 to -9)

Other then that? If you have SL 16 after mods it's often a good idea to use Deceptive Attack to give yourself -2 to Hit and the target -1 to Defend.

IMHO, you guys aren't doing anything "wrong". He's paid the points to be that tough, so let him. And if he's hopeless in social encounters, and you (and he) play into that downside, then that's good play.
Are you both having fun with the character? If you are, then you're playing the game right. That's really all there is to it.

Honestly I think that's a pretty unpleasant way of doing it, that encourages checking off specific actions and being semi-lolrandom with your traits in order to get points.

Particularly the non-optimal choice part. You already got the points for the disadvantage, so directly rewarding players who choose to fuck things up rather than play their character appropriately just looks like it's asking for irritation. It would also cast doubt on the player's reasons for doing anything.

As said, it's not a homework assignment, and it will *never* be objective.

Nets, tasers and drugs will still fuck him up.

Beyond modifiers, you can also improve the opposition's defenses. Someone with Dodge 13 is literally as unhittable if they retreat, making use of deceptive attacks, runaround attacks, side/backhexes, positional modifiers, multiple attacks, etc, etc, etc, mandatory to even have a chance of getting a hit in. If your players have reached the 'impossible to miss' territory, I think it's the best way to make combat interesting again by forcing them to make use of all the options available.

Are there GURPS books or resources where they basically spend the majority of your character points already to make character classes? Me and my player do not like point buy.

Those are called Templates, and yeah they're fairly common. If you're looking for a bunch of templates of the same point value, check the various series. Dungeon Fantasy has D&D class templates, Action has movie archetype templates, Monster Hunters has some high-power templates so they can hunt vampires and survive, and After the End has low-power ones as appropriate for PCs struggling to survive post-apoc scenarios.

There's also a thread on the official forum that lists the location of every published template.

Will do. Thanks user

Do I get both campaigns and characters books to start off home brewing my own stuff, or should I just get the pdf's?

The PDFs for the basic set (Characters and Campaigns) are all you should need.

>HT 14
>Tasers as drugs being reliable
Pick one and only one.

I'm trying to reward players by making their disadvantages impact the game.

I don't memorize every single character sheet nor do I have the entire list of disadvantages memorized. If someone in game is win favor with a local nobility by putting on their smooth moves, I won't stop them and ask "Wait, isn't your character a Killjoy? Wouldn't he have trouble charming Princess Buttercup? And isn't your character Hideous, wouldn't the nobles be revolted at the sight of you?"

I'd prefer if the player brings that up themselves, either through role-playing, altering their character's course of action, or attempting a roll with a penalty. All three of those, in my mind, could satisfy the condition of "non-optimal choice or putting the party in a tight spot," though the wording on that is a little clumsy.

>Tasers
It's HT-3(0.5) user.
If he's in a tshirt, hes getting fucked over at rolls vs 12. Especially if you KEEP TAZING HIM

>I'd prefer if the player brings that up themselves
Oh if we were only all so blessed.

I try to play my flaws , and make them part of the character.

How would you handle a disadvantage coming into effect only after you've done an action, like a curse after breaking a taboo? I was thinking Mitigator, but that requires you to do something to stave off the disadvantage, not avoid doing something. Accessibility seemed right, except that Accessibility is reversible; the disadvantage goes away after the condition is one again met.

I have a feeling this has an exceedingly obvious solution, but I'm away from my books at the moment.

Hey everyone,

I've been into playing rpgs for a few years now, but I've only been able to play various editions of D&d with my friends, family and colleagues. I really want to try another system, but don't know where to get started. GURPS seems interesting.

Which edition of GURPS should I start with? Is there a "best" edition?

I know that GURPS was designed with ubiquity in mind, but does it work better in a particular type of setting?