GURPS GENERAL /gurpsgen/

Not in GURPS but yeah, postapoc settings tend to have them.

>Favorite Pyramid article
It's nothing sexy, but the article from the 10th Anniversary issue that listed ten or so rules the devs wish they included in the Basic Set. It's great for new players and GMs as, by and large, those rules are very very useful.

>10th Anniversary issue
What number it is?

70.

Why haven't you made a Lucha libre yet?

Are you going to post this in every /gurpsgen/?

It's the new "I love Sorcery!" I guess.

Question

How do YOU prepare for a session. Besides the character sheets, what stuff do you make sure is written down and in front of you before the session starts? Do you have any tips for preparing a session?

You should probably spell out all the crunch-relevant aspects of your setting if you can't instantly recall them and even if you can.

What are the different system of magic described in any GURPS book? Also what are their pros and cons ?

Man, we had a guy do a really good breakdown of this. I hope we can find that.

In the mean time..

Basic Set Magic: Found in Magic and the Basic Set, this has each spell as a distinct skill and powered by FP or powerstones that can hold extra energy.

Pro: Each spell is self contained and has clear, easy to adjudicate effects.

Relatively well balanced for TL 1-4 combat.

Easily re-balanced and altered by removing spells allowed from the list.

Magic item creation rules are robust.

Con: Relatively inflexible. If you can't find a spell for something, you can't do it.

Magic isn't a great book. Many spells are widly unbalanced and some are simply copied from 3rd edition without careful revision.

Neutral: Relatively low powered. Even relatively powerful mages aren't going to wipe out armies.

Ritual Path Magic. Found in Monster Hunters and expanded greatly in GURPS: Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic. Paths are skills like Life, Energy, ect. Spells are built by picking a matched area, then from Greater and Lesser effects.

More later, for now I've got to get lunch.

How hard is it to convert the vehicles that appear in the WW2 3e books into 4e. I'm planning on running a game for my group where they get to be tankers.

RPM Good:

Very flexible. Almost any effect can be generated out of robust formulas.

Scales neatly. How fast and powerful someone can use magic is limited by advantages and skill levels.

Invites and encourages careful preparation, with PC spellcasters designing their own spells and preparing them in Tokens ahead of time.

Cons:

No real way to make lasting magic items, though very long lasting ones can be made.

Every spell effect players create must be cleared by the GM to make sure that follow formulas properly. In some cases there will be disagreement over what counts as a Greater or Lesser effect.

It can be hard to come up with quirks for spells.

Can be somewhat hard to limit. Because the only limit to how powerful an effect you can make is how much energy you can gather you can perform very, very big effects that can seriously unbalance the game if you have enough time.

Syntactic Magic. Found in GURPS Thaumatology. Spells are built from a Verb and a Noun, with energy cost and time to cast calculated from that.

Pros: Flexible but not unlimited. Verbs and Nouns are skills, and the available ones can be used to control what sort of magic you allow in game.

Lots of options. Though this is partly from it being quite imperfectly defined there are tons of ways to modify this to suit a game.

Cons:

Lots of options II: Calculating how a given spell will work can require lots of GM intervention, and you have to pick how things like energy will work, how paramaters on a spell work, ect.

Check the OP, though the posts here are good overviews as well.

QUESTION: Have you ever used GURPS Ultra Lite?

No.

Short answer? No.

Pre-game I draw a directed graph (or multigraph) of the expected places of interest. I also draw up some dialog trees (more as memory aids than something to slavishly follow). Then I make a short document containing the rules changes from printed material and character creation guidelines which gets emailed to the players.

The graph nodes are annotated with memory aids for points of interest (usually clues or NPC names w/Reaction).

Pre-session I adjust the above graph to account for things that happened previously.

All of that lives in a 3-ring binder which is the only reference I use during the game (for session or rules). Each distinct adventure or chapter or season of a particular game gets a divider. Each different game gets a new binder.

No. It's worse than Lite, and even lite is lacking some of the necessary combat rules to not make combat a slog.

Building a sorceror who's also a mechanic in a tl8 world where sorcery is open knowledge. Any advice for spell building? 250/75 game.

How is Lite bad? It's a good introduction and playaid for new players.

Control (Metal) or Telekinesis can net you a bonus to most mundane skill rolls relevant to your job as a mechanic as per p. P162. Your iconic spells might be to summon automatons (Ally w/Minion and the Automaton metatrait) or mechanical devices (Snatcher with Create and Accessibility), to buff machines (at the very least, Affliction with either Reduced Consumption or Does Not Eat/Drink would be quite useful), or to heal them directly (Anything from a heavily modified Healing to Affliction that grants Regeneration or simply removes Unhealing). Buying an Accessory perk to represent a summonable tool kit would be pretty cool too.

That does sound cool. Thanks annon. Any pifalls I should know about for sorcery?

It's very easy to get caught in the trap of taking too long to make improvised spells. Learn to eyeball values (especially Accessibility values) and remember that the GM's word is law; don't take up valuable time if he eyeballs your improvised spell a touch weaker than you would like.

Gentlemen, how do you stat the murdering robot (murderbot)?

It's chassis is nearly indestructible, and it has incredibly stable hyperspeed lightning fast movement legs, leaving it immune to tripping or slipping. And in the event it could be put on it's side, it would either turn the death blender into a floor-sweeper or a flying death blender. Not to mention that being prone makes it's legs even more combat-ready. Electrifying it only makes it more powerful. You simply cannot out-melee it, and forget about dodging, because it's body is cylindrical and by extension rotates with whoever it attacks.

Here's the monster's theme, for inspiration: youtube.com/watch?v=wmbnnsHwEPY

ST 15
DX 11
IQ ??
HT 14

Basic Speed 6
Basic Move 10

20 DR (Hardened)
Perfect Balance
Striker (2d6 cut)

No Arms

If I'm using tactical combat, and I turn 180 degrees and attack without taking a step, is it a Move and Attack?

How many movement points does that cost you (B386, B387)? How many do you receive for a Move and Attack (B385, B386)? Can you spend that amount of movement points and still attack using any other maneuvers (All-Out Attack maybe, the 'Step' part of an Attack perhaps; B385, B386)?

Still have any questions?

So let me get this straight: I have 5 movement points. If I want to stand still and turn 180 I spend 3 movement points, and All-Out-Attack allows me to move 3 movement points and attack. But if I didn't want to make an All-Out-Attack, I have to take a step - as "The 'Step' in Tactical Combat" says.

Huh yeah that is worded oddly. However, the entry for Step in the Combat Chapter on p. B368 clears this up: "You may always turn to face a different direction as part of any step (or as the step, if you just want to change your facing)." The textbox in the Tactical Combat chapter is just there to say that a Step always warrants at least one hex of movement; the standard rules for Steps should still apply.

Ah. I see. That clears it up. Thanks!

>Have you ever played a successful game over Roll20?
Yep. 1year anniversary this week of Grimwyrd
>How successful was it?
Random game I impulsively put together from Veeky Forums randoms. Pretty successful.
>Did you benefit from playing over a computer, or do you prefer sitting at a table?
Loaded question. IRL is always better
More fidelity. But the online mapping tool is cool.
>Would you consider using Roll20 as a tool, where you sit at a table and use Roll20's features?
Yep

Reading through the basic set, I got some questions about climbing (B349).

Do you count the height of the climb from the character's height or from the floor?

Say my character is 6 feet tall and wants to climb a 12 feet tree (1ft/sec as per the table) in combat. Would it take him 12 rounds, 6 rounds or even less because he can get a jumping start? Also, in combat, should I roll climb every round? Finally, the FP cost per climb or per round of climbing?

What's your favorite gurps memory?

>Do you count the height of the climb from the character's height or from the floor?
Depends entirely on the context. Are you climbing the tree to get at something at the very top like a rare bird egg? It takes less that six seconds as you can already reach up approximately 8 feet. Are you climbing the tree to get away from the Leaping Krag'thok? You're going to want to keep climbing to keep your boots away from the creature you desperately hope cannot climb as well. Having a jumping start always helps, though in a realistic game I may penalize the first climb roll (it's easier to get a solid grip then push/pull up than to fling yourself at a tree and get a handhold before your fall, though the bonus height may help).

Yes, I believe using the speeds under the Combat column cost 1 FP/second while the more moderate speeds under the Regular column cost FP as per hiking.

My group taking down the bandit chief that was high on Evil Mahou.

Thanks, measuring climb height as the distance you want your feet to be from the floor sounds like the right way to go about it.

Hacker takes a shot on an enemy, through a telepresence video system, through a wall, with an ETK anti materiel rifle with thermobaroc rounds, and rolls a 3 to hit the skull.

It was an awesome night

That sounds messy.

It was something like a hundred damage after ×4 wounding

Would anyone interested in a GURPS campaign podcast aimed at teaching the system to those intimidated by it? Something like starting with the basic set, but then utilizing aspects of different books in subsequent episodes.

Sounds cool! Ask around the GURPS discord, though, cuz im not sure what sort of legal stuff would be involved.

Where's the Discord?

discord.gg/kNguF

What is the difference between magic and thaumatology?

Magic is a long list of extra spells for the standard magic system as presented in the Basic Set. Thaumatology is a guidebook in creating and tweaking your own magic systems.

Might be the climax to the first big story arc in Grimwyld, where we reached a ruined fortress and had a HUGE battle with a swarm of gnolls and a dragon, culminating in the use of a huge gun to shoot a dragon in the head.

>What is your favorite Pyramid article? Have you used this in play? How did that go? Would you recommend it?
Bulding the low-tech Landscape, i've used it for every single lowtech and infinity world game i ran after reading it.

My players using improvised explosives to destroy a frigate in orbit of the planet they were defending, via a landing craft returning to base.

Pyramid #?

What's your favourite GURPS meme?

Asparagus

"No flavor," like it's the system's fault that your setting is dry and boring.

Now hold on, I do think there's a connection between the rules you are using and the flavour of your game.

>gurps math
>gurps can run anything
>df are not gurpsbaby whine I wanna play d&d

>What system should i use to roleplay X that isn't GURPS?

How is "d20+mod vs DC" more flavorful than "3d6 roll under"?
While yes there are quite a few systems out there that mesh mechanics and fluff in very fun ways (DRYH and Dread are my favorite systems outside of GURPS), the vast majority of systems don't; there's nothing innately fantastical about the d20 or class levels, inherently dramatic or angsty about d10 dice pools and dots, or instinctively sanity-blasting/heretical to d%.

Plus, the entire point of GURPS is to provide GMs with a shitton of options they can pick and choose from; if the rules you chose don't lead to the kind of flavor you want, that's on YOU. There's no reason to use bleeding rules or shock penalties in a lighthearted fantasy adventure; discrete skills can be removed in favor of wildcard skills, and Destiny/Wildcard points are available as metacurrency if you want players to be Big Damn Heroes that always have a heroic ace up their sleeves narrative-wise. If I picked the right cinematic rules and put in a lot of legwork writing up the abilities, I could make a GURPS clone of D&D 4e, and that's an incredibly gamist system that most people would put at the total opposite end of the spectrum from "standard" GURPS.

GURPS is 100% what you make it.

In GURPS it's the GM's job to pick rules that work with and enhance their setting.

>No flavor
No duh. Why are people trying to eat a book anyway?

D&D/PF players are weird

>No flavor
I don't understand how this meme still exists when we have

I've heard some savages simply boil asparagus and eat it. No garlic, no butter or olive oil, no salt or pepper, and not even steamed.
I can't imagine suffering through such a flavorless existence.

Holy shit. Shooting dragons? This some kind of shadowrun game?

Is ST15 and OHWT+akimbo perks are enough to dual wield TDI Kriss Super V SMG (ST7†)?

What book are they in? Searching the name doesn't bring up any results in High-Tech or Pulp Guns I/II. Still, I'd say yes after a cursory glance towards Google; at ST 15 you look like Rambo, so dual-wielding carbines is reasonable

In Tactical Shooting

TL 4 dark fantasy. Plate armor and large swords and flintlock, muzzle loading guns. There's magic, mostly a sort of sorcery variant, but it's dangerous and corruptive.

Could someone explain the Basic Set radiation rules for me? I've read through it and there are still some unanswered questions that I have. When do you roll against HT if you're getting a continuous dose of rads, what happens to the 10% of a dose that becomes permanent, and how do the TL7 chelating drugs work?

Sorry for the long wait, i was at work.

And, huh, i don't know, its a fucking hell finding a copy of it. Something about the author wife claiming copyright after he was dead forced the article out of sale;
sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.html?id=5953

Here, i uploaded it;
Part 1: dropbox.com/s/1tmp8txmchjt52s/Pyramid - building the low-tech landscape, part 1 - peasant economics (for gurps 4e).pdf?dl=0

Part 2: dropbox.com/s/712sd06x1oddnmj/Pyramid - building the low-tech landscape, part 2 - overlords & cities (for gurps 4e).pdf?dl=0

Huh, if you are getting into rad rules you might take a look at After The End, it got way better rules for it, but beware, thats only if radiation is going to be something significative

>Something about the author wife claiming copyright after he was dead forced the article out of sale

Nothing like that, the article was in Pyramid version 2 (the web magazine) so it doesn't exist anywhere anymore. Unless you happened to be a subscriber when it converted to version 3 and could download the archive.

I was looking at that, but I'd like to use something a little more realistic.

Well, someone told me the wife thing when i first asked about it, i was just retelling it. At least is good to know that it isn't for a reason that stupid, but, i dunno, loosing a article on a conversion sounds dumb too

>He hasn't heard tell of Gray the mighty beastman hewing enemies in half and abusing shield slams
It's like you don't even /gurpsgeneral/
>Laughing elf women.jpeg

I'm trying to make a character that's an AI that controls a computer system with some robot proxies, a bit of a headache though

>AI
Digital Mind is the only *necessary* ability for the mental aspect. Take physical traits to represent your current mainframe (No Legs, Unliving, no ST or DX, etc.)

>RoboProxies
Possession (Digital), then Ally with Minion, and then the Puppet advantages.

Treat it like a digital ghost possessing the most expensive (racial template wise) body it currently owns and inhabits

I think I was gonna go for duplication so that I could have a bunch of bodies that care for my main core. The Machine trait helps.

GURPS Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout. It's the "very realistic" treatment/expanded and more detailed rules for radiation, fallout, dealing with them, etc.
Also lots of helpful info and advice on using thermonuclear reactors, radiation hazards, etc. as campaign obstacles and features.

How would you represent Killer Queen's power in GURPS? I'm shit at statting stuff like this, and I think it would be a cool power to use for GURPS.

For those who don't know, he can turn anything he touches into a bomb(Doesn't look any different, is just "armed"), and then detonate it later on by making a motion like he's pressing a button with his thumb(Or set it to detonate on contact if he wishes instead). He can only have one item "armed" at a time, as well. I really have no way to begin to approach this, beyond maybe Crushing AoE innate attack, with some kind of limitations?

And I uploaded the wrong image, on accident. I feel so smart. Not that the picture really matters I suppose.

Reach C, explosion, delay (trigger), stand power modifier.
Only one bomb at time, I think just a nuisance effect, if old disappear when u place a new one.

The attack is an explosion. Easy to stay as cr ex with Inc
The delivery is the hard part.
Combining melee/touch, affliction(cosmic, no resistance) and delay

That's a lot simpler than I'd expected actually, I was over-complicating it in my head I guess.

I'm trying to peg down firefly tech
The engines are superscience, simple, requiring fuel and performing highly efficient sunlight acceleration

But the weapon and materials tech boggles me. I'm thinking there's wiggle room for stuff. Like including normal tech, then upgrading with "durasteel" which is a likely nano composite metal/plastic infused with nanotubes carbon fiber.

Is it a pessimistic TL9 ?

Always brake those down into Delivery/Effect. It helps to grok

The issue is that those attacks place a bomb on the target; they don't turn them INTO a bomb, and while the difference is subtle, its meaningful. That's why the last FOUR TIMES you asked, the thread consensus was Affliction (Fragile, Explosive) linked with Affliction (Heart Attack) plus Delay, Melee C, etc.

Also Cosmic (No Resistance Roll) is verboten. The only way to make it irresistible is to buy enough levels of Affliction that the penalty is effectively impossible to overcome.

>Heart attack
>Which kills in HT/3 minutes
That seems incredibly shitty, for the intended goal.

Also, after double checking a few things, there's still a couple flaws with this, namely that even if Heart Attack didn't take minutes to kill, it still has no way to trigger Fragile(Explosive), since it doesn't trigger HT rolls for Major Wounds or to save against death. On top of that, while it's not explicitly disallowed, I don't feel like "heart attack" should apply to objects right out of the box.

Though, I do *LOVE* that Fragile(Explosive) makes it so that the bomb is more powerful the more HT the target has, meaning bigger shit=bigger boom

Affliction (Heart Attack) is the de facto "instant death" ability and is treated as such in supplements like Powers and by devs in their own works; it's +300% price tag is used with similarly powerful afflictions.
Heart Attack calls for an HT roll to avoid death; Fragile Explosive causes you to explode when failing a HT roll vs death by 3+ which is very doable when you buy up Affliction.