Gurps Gen

Tons of DR and Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction), possibly with Cosmic yo let you round down. There's also a Perk that means you don't *show* any damage until you die.

Injury Tolerance (Damage Divisor) at high levels with Cosmic (Rounds Down) plus a modest amount of DR. You aren't really indestructible, but it's unlikely in any normal game you'd find enough damage to cause you any injury.

GURPS isn't big on absolutes, so it's hard to get there.

Goddamn I feel like I'm losing my mind. I could have SWORN that the new issue of Pyramid included in "It's A Quest!" a table for general quest creation like "It's a kill mission" or "It's a rescue mission." However, all I'm finding are general things--this quest centers around THING or PERSON or EXTREME EVENT or whatever--which isn't what I'm remembering.

Did I dream it up? Am I really such a boring fa/tg/uy that I dream about Pyramid articles?

K I'm just going to get unkillible 2 and regen.

My statue can't actually move or do anything, should I get warp or telekinesis to move myself around?

What CAN'T Gurps do? What's it bad at or what sort of characters are hard to build with it?

Warp (Only when not directly observed, -20%) is suitably creepy.

Probably something with a bunch of arbitrary abstract stats wouldn't work. Like Maid RPG has stats for "Affection" and other weaboo nonsense that a more simulationist system like GURPS really doesn't take into account.

Ultra-high power games are often more trouble than they're worth if you're actually spending them (if you're playing a demigod game with 2250-point characters, but everyone has to take the same 2000-point template, they only have to actually spend 250 points).

Really abstract or really weird games struggle in GURPS because the system is so heavily based in realism. Fantasy or weird still works fine in GURPS, mind you; the issue is when you go really far. Basically, if you're familiar with Exalted, GURPS can do Solars quite well (including the odder castes) but is out of its depth when doing Sidereals.

To be fair, Exalted doesn't do sidereal exalted very well either. They are calvinball.

Yeah, Sidereals was a bit excessive of an example. The only real system I can think of that handles them effectively is really really abstract games like Dread (every weird kung-fu ass-pull means you pull a brick; a collapsing tower means you fuck up) or DRYH (replace Exhaustion and Madness with motes and something else relevant). On that note, those are my two favorite non-GURPS games for that reason: they excel where GURPS doesn't.

Never played GURPS, what's its deal other than being practically universal?

the dice system is 3d6, meaning you get more average rolls than other systems,

See
It's a legitimately good system with lots of good material made for it. I quite Pathfinder in favor of GURPS because it plays faster and has rules that actually encourage roleplaying.

Not sure about other people, but the reason I play GURPS is that it encourages character building, as opposed to build erm... building.

Example: you want to play a sword dude
in D&D
>alright, I'll be a fighter
>I'll be a halforc because it gives a bonus to strength and constitution
forevermore, that character will be known as [name], the half orc fighter

In GURPS:
>alright, I'll bump up DX and ST to hit more reliably and take damage better
> let's see, I need more points for my sword skill, I'll take the callous and bad tempered disadvantages
>herb lore sounds fucking dope, I'll put a couple points in that, guess I have a background in magic
As you make your character, you create a person with a background without even trying.

even better, in play there's never any ambiguity about how your character should feel or react: it's right there on your character sheet. It eliminates stupid arguments about alignment, and gets people right to the fucking point.

Imo it's THE absolute best system out there to get new people into roleplaying and help them actually roleplay

A little more explanation of this post: this is desirable because it makes modifiers mean more depending on your skill level

On a D20 a +1 barely matters. on 3d6, a +1 can be very important indeed

Bell curved probability versus flat probability son

With the wealth of pdfs available im finding it hard to just read on my desktop or phone. As it stands i do not had a tablet so im limited to either reading on those devices or printing them out (which as it turns out is costly).

Now i do have a kindle, i notice with a lot of the splat contents are all text based and black and white. Has anyone been able to have GURPS pdf converted for the kindle? And if they have has the experience reading it on the kindle been good?

My friend recently got something to work. He wrote a shell program that runs the PDF through the pdftotext unix package and properly parses it; the main issue with other converters is that the columns REALLY throws everything off. The script even maintains tables.

It converts them to plain text files, which are EZPZ to put on a kindle. You'll obviously still have some issues (no totally automated action comes out perfect) and no pictures, but it's been working ok for me.

How do I make a grapple monster gurps gen?

I'd avoid a mecha game or anything heavily involving vehicles other than spaceships. GURPS has 3rd edition rules for them but nothing I'd be very happy with.

I'm writing something now to change that, but for now it's true

Extra arms
Constriction attack
Strength

SM too, which also make ST cheaper.

Increase size modifier, injury tolerance homogenous, extra arms. 360* vision, constriction attack, stretching, and a few levels of slippery.

That's the big thing. Universal means that you can run any game. You can also run your own custom setting. And you can get two games that don't normally cross over to cross over successfully (swords and sorcery characters suddenly end up in a cyberpunk world, and you have rules ready for everything including the interactions and everything is still balanced).

So it can be anything (any genre) and everything (multiple genres interoperating).

Some other strengths

3d6 does give you more average rolls, but the bigger advantage is that it reacts to bonuses and penalties more elegantly than a flat game like D&D. In d20, having to roll at 1 or 20 means that you "fall off" the end of the die and further modifiers are meaningless. In GURPS, as you get closer to the extremes, a bonus's impact on your chance of succeeding/failing goes down, but its impact on your chances of a critical success/failure go way up.

There's also 10^(1/6), also called the SSR or Size/Speed/Range table. That's a core of GURPS as well, though most people only use the table. The progression is 1, 1.5, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15... etc into infinity. That logarithmic progression means that stuff operating in wildly different scales (say a leprechaun punching a Star Destroyer) can be handled within the system and give good easy results without resorting to kluges. That progression appears all over the place, so once you know those five numbers (multiplying by 10, 100, 1000, whatever) you can handle nearly any scale, and any interactions between scales.

That's nice if you have a special operations trooper climbing over a BattleMech to disable it with a satchel pack.

The other big tool in your toolkit is Power Modifiers. Basically, you can make any kind of effect or condition and turn it into an Advantage in GURPS. Or quickly change a sorcery spell into a cybernetic implant, psi power, or divinely granted miracle.

i have gurps 4th on pdf. im trying to get my head around it but ive never actually ran any RPG type thing and it seems really dense. can you spare any advice for a friendly neighborhood user?

Read GURPS Lite first (in the Lite folder in the mega). Read that, run a game with it, get comfortable before moving on to Basic Set.

Play GURPS Lite. Keep it simple. Add (sparingly!) from other books once you're used to the system. Read "How to be a GURPS GM".

Use the Abstract Range rule from the Action series instead of the SSR table for combat.

Prep for your games. GURPS can handle you running something by the seat of your pants... but only once you're experienced.

Don't add too many options at once. One at a time and only if you need them. Kitchen-sinking it early is a leading cause of GURPS failure. Just because you can do anything doesn't mean you should try to do everything. At least not while you're learning.

Finally, enforce options on players. They could do anything, but again don't let them. In your campaign you have to define the limits. Otherwise your modern horror game will be taken over by psionic nanobotic AI wizards from the future.

Apart from the need for preparation, the key weakness of GURPS is that it works in such a range of situations that people get mad when it starts breaking down under conditions where any other game would long since have fallen apart entirely.

Keep
it
simple
Stupid

Only consider what you need, don't get bogged down in possibilities, and don't plan more than one session ahead

Thanks for the response. This seems interesting but screwing with the tables seems like a downside, i dont mind the columns things as much.
Looks like its high time one must invest in a tablet

About ten years or so ago they moved from three columns to two in order to be more tablet friendly.

thanks a bunch.

Everything this guy says it's true.

Fuck D&D building with a rake.

With ultra high power; do you mean it still works fine and its just a pain to build the characters?

I'm still new to the system but it looks like it should do extremely high power (in the general sense, not GURPS PL) games fine. That's what all the cinematic options are for right? You don't just make characters with huge point values to do high power is my understanding. Is that correct?

Games at higher point totals are harder to run because it's harder for GMs to get in the right mindset/scale and create appropriate threats, and also because the sheer amount of points means you have ridiculous latitude with your spending. If you focus on a concept and stop spending when you stop needing it (read: don't use point totals, build to concept instead), then all that's left is for the GM to come up with appropriate scenarios and adventures for the PCs.

GURPS works great at all power levels. It's up to the GM to run it well.

Exactly. Unless the majority of your points are going into an established templates (e.g. "all demigods need Ridiculous Luck (Aspected), ST 40, HT 16, DX and IQ 14, Unkillable 2, etc. etc. etc.) or dumped into one attribute or advantage (e.g. "I'm playing a brick of a super, so I'm buying ST 100!"), it's such a pain in the ass to divvy them up into individual skills, advantages, attributes, etc.

As for values, it's a bit of both. Campaign switches totally help--with the campaign options in Action, even 250 heroes can be nigh-unstoppable badasses--but point value also plays a large part.

I ask because I am planning a campaign that will start at about 125/-25 pl no magic type deal and later on ramp up to a higher power level when I give the players a template on top and a package of character themed unique special abilities. So that's good to hear.

Telepathy and inhumanly high IQ/social skills

That sounds like ideal pacing actually

So can I make people fanatical to me? how would I do that?

Domination Advantage, Basic Set.

...Well, you can read the book so you at least know where to start asking instead of trying to get others to do the work for you.

I have read the book. It says that you can get a good or very good reaction on a roll. Nothing about it says fanatical

Read Social Engineering. It has a large section on building trust and relationships as well as an expanded reaction table.

Try reading through the advantages then. Gave you the spoonfeeding you'll find most useful

I know about domination, it didn't feel right, I'm not hurting anyone, nor am I changing their race. Its a corruption thing.

Then you'll want Brainwashing as a skill.

Horror might have something for inflicting Corruption. Beyond that, I'll samefag about Affliction that inflicts one of Fanaticism, Delusion, or similar disadvantages.

You see that's temporary, making it go against my plan, really good suggestion though

Terror with option from GURPS Powers that makes it causing Awe instead.
With high enough roll you can turn people into fanatics.

I like GURPS because the community behind it is pretty robust. Pyramid continues to put out useful articles, which help preserve the longevity of the system, and people in this general and in the GURPS Discord are pretty helpful overall.

GURPS has a lot of quality content, as well. The tech books (Low-Tech, High-Tech, and Ultra-Tech) are easily some of the best supplements ever written for a game system. Low-Tech is easily my favorite because it has great manufacturing rules, awesome armor hit location rules, and provides a lot of insight into how to play a "low-tech" game. Plus, the rules can easily be used in a higher tech setting, such as in a post-apocalyptic game where players will have to make their own armor and use older survival techniques.

>playing GURPS
lol

>that's temporary,
BUT not if you buy up to permanency. Re-read afflictions, maledictions, and all that fun stuff. Its a few pages long for a reason dawg

>GURPS """"""""""""""""art""""""""""""""

>"Can't post the OP cause I'm a dirty phone poster"

what the hell kind of shitty phone are you using where you can't copy an old OP into a note document, edit it, and then copy paste the new version into your OP post?

I've got an old iPhone 5C and I can do that!

Related to this, what do y'all use to view the pdfs on (android) tablets? I have yet to find a pdf reader that really lets me flip around like I want to. So far I haven't even found one that lets me set bookmarks or pull up the table of contents in a sidebar.

In general how much of gunpowder in cartridge?
Possible maximum or just fraction of it -- 90%, 75%, etc?

There is no in general when talking about something as variable as a cartridge. You should ask about a specific caliber or weapon.

Begone heathen!

Yes, those two are mutually exclusive terms.

surely there must be SOME counterexample?

counterexample to what? There wasn't really a claim made that I could refute.

You can make mecha as spaceships. There is options for that in Spaceships 4.

I'd suggest to allow combining legs with drives and to count two-handed weapons as fixed mounts with possibility of using most weapons in two hands to get that sweet +2 to attack at the cost of smaller firing arc (not like mecha care about this that much).

>On a D20 a +1 barely matters. on 3d6, a +1 can be very important indeed
The standard deviation on 3d6 is 2.96, which is closest to what you get with 1d10 (which is 2.87). The standard deviation on 1d20, by contrast, is 5.77, roughly twice as large (1.95 times as large, to be more precise). So on average, a +1 on a d20 is worth only half a point on 3d6.

You can generalize a bit. With smokeless powder most full power rifle rounds are loaded with about 3 grams and you wouldn't want to go more then 10% above that.

Note that each weapon and powder does vary. If you want to load your own, you'd be best served being careful to observe the pressure rating of your weapon.

In GURPS terms, hot loaded bullets are covered in high tech. Typically you get +10% to range and damage, increased ST requirement and are likely to suffer from worse malf.

Wow really?
I've been using the google.drive native one, and lumin. No issues with either

The 4th edition GURPS Magic book has tragic art but they aren't using poser art anymore.

dice barely matter

It's cliche to the point of borderline meme status, but I've found surprisingly little online about how to best properly balance a game so melee and guns are equally viable options.
Anyone here have any suggestions/opinions on the matter? I would love to run a game where picking between shooting and getting in close is an actual tactical choice.

How can I master the powers of massed fire?

How can I make a character who has tons of allies to mass fire with?

Close combat environment, endless halls force people to use melee as much as ranged

But isn't it still best to stay in place and fire away that to try and get in close?
Any handgun should do more damage with less bulk than any melee weapon so closing the gap there is only feasible with rifles...
I feel like the only way to make it work is to remove handguns entirely or change the damage values.

Melee weapons can get better armor divisors without giving up damage. Boarding actions in particular are good for giving axes and swords a leg up on guns.

El oh el.

Gun=/=Sword.
Like being 80-points in Guns! makes you more combat capable then 80-points in Broadsword!
You don't need much ST to make real damage [and wear toughest armor], you just need some to don't get penalty for gradfathers heavy gun [plastics caseless rounds and other moder shit in gunsmithing makes weapons lighter, but still capable to handle same attaking power or even larger].
If swordsman useless without his Weapon Master shit [no damage and 3rd+ rapid strikes, lol], you still combat capable without Gunslinger [now need extra one second to aim].
TL;DR BUT IF I CAUGHT GUNNER NAKED IN HIS FATHER BED WITHOUT GUN OR IN OTHER CLOSE COMBAT CONDITIONS GUNNER WILL SUCK MY SWROD HARD ILL SKEWER HIM LIKE SHESHKAB ALL HAIL SWROD SUPREME RACE

The only real way to force player to make choice between gun and sword is to give him choice between pre-generated character frames, and make sure in game 1/3 to 2/3 of enemies there will be totally immunne to gunshots and similar shit. In other situations players will drop most of his points in guns, and like 1/5 of that to swords, just for sidearm

Are their horde rules?

Depends on a setting. Just look how Dune does it. Or some space opera settings.

Let's say standard armor for a soldier is some kind of power armor that needs to be hit with a weapon wreathed in some exotic energy to deal significant damage. Now you can have your missiles (or high caliber rounds) with same effect but they would be bulky, one shot, and with long reload. Basically at best an analogue to a flintlock against an unarmored person - powerful but one-shot. If you miss you better have a side-arm for CC. (Significant hardening on armor that is removed only by special weapons).

Reactive kinetic shields that steal energy from the shots - it not only lowers damage but becomes more powerful as more shots hit it. So lets say first shot will deal around 1/2 damage and each next will be a step worse. Spraying targets with bullets becomes worthless. You need precision and power in a single shot. (Shield that acts as armor improving its hardening the more shots hit during round or even bleeding into following rounds).

Cinematic skills while disallowing ranged feints ("Bullets are dumb and can't turn!"). Characters can parry/block/dodge shots. Use range/speed table applied to margin of success of defence to determine number of deflected shots.

It's not point distribution that I'm worried about so much as what I'm looking for combat to be.
I would like something that is tactical so movement and positioning is important.
Without any mechanical changes, I feel that the best way to win any combat encounter with GURPS is to go dick-in-the-dirt and open fire.
Makes sense as that's the best way to win a combat in real life. I'm basically asking the system to do something completely counter-intuitive.
Still, the system is meant to be general so if I wanted to do something Star Wars esque where a man with a glowing stick can challenge a guy with a gun, there theoretically should be some way of making this a reality.

>Just look how Dune does it
I have been looking into some sort of personal bullet shield as a means of evening the field.
>Reactive kinetic shields that steal energy from the shots
I do like this idea. It takes a little bit of effort having to keep track of it but forcing precision shots instead of pray-and-spray would be nice.

things that are extremely larger than life like epic fantasy. gurps is heavily grounded in realism.

can you actually play a reasonable game with gurps ultra-lite or is it mostly just meant to be a demo of the system?

make grappling a big deal. if you grapple someone who has a gun it levels the playing field because you have more free hands and if they let go of the gun to wrestle you then you can take the gun from them.

I'm running a samurai/western game where six-shooters and katanas are both meant to be viable. I did a couple of things to make this possible.

1) Choose the right TL. Samurai + Wild West is a fun combination anyway, but I'm glad that it also made balancing firearms easier. Generally low RoF and shots closes the gap between guns and swords a bit.
2) Anemic firearms. I made light revolvers deal 1d, heavy revolvers and carbines deal 2d, and "sniper rifles" deal 3d. This puts them more in-line with human-scale muscle-powered weaponry.
3) Make sure swordsmen get something cool. Yes, there is a small inherent benefit to not relying on something that takes ammo, but range and RoF of firearms quickly outweighs that, so give your swordsmen something special. Since there are oodles of legends about katanas and samurai, I had an easy time with that; gunmen got range and RoF, but swordsmen got Flying Leap, Lizard Climb, DR, etc. etc. etc.
4) LET BULLETS BE PARRIED. Either let anyone do it, or make sure every martial artist PC has the advantage that lets them do it. This removes one of the main threats of guns.

Beyond that, there's also the advice that Action 3 gives; make mooks not use firearms effectively, have environments lacking in large open areas, etc.

>people actually giving my question some thought and reasonable answers
>no immediately telling me that I'm a terrible GM and a fucking idiot
Wow, this is so much better than the fucking d&d threads on this board.
Thanks guys.

Demo/drunk party version.

no problem, the best part about like gurps is posting on gurps gen

You can make it just to cut damage - 1/2, 1/3, 1/5, 1/10, 1/100, Ignore. No need for ablative DR.

Making guns more anemic to bolster swords seems kind of shitty. But to each their own.

Would have been better to give the samurai some chi or zanshin-based enhancements on swordplay

I did that too. 2d at range multiple times per round is still stupidly superior to a mundane swordman, which is why I gave swordsmen special features and a number of cinematic skills on top of the campaign switches in their favor.

Are there any kind of Fallout type of RPG's for GURPS?

There are a few fan converts, but it should be EZPZ to do fallout with GURPS: After the End, which is the (still fairly new) series centered around post-apoc campaigns.

Question: I'm trying to make Unison Devices from Nanoha for a setting that uses Ritual Path Magic (with some minor but irrelevant tweaks, stuff like "Base Skill is Computer Programming or Mathematics (applied) instead of thaumatology", in case it matters). So I need an AI that a) is stuck inside of a single body (Seems easy enough, AI meta-trait), but also:

* Can help their user cast spells, as well as cast spells independently in combat times: Current solution is that the Device has Ritual Adept and Compartmentalized Mind (Controls), not sure if that works since the Device isn't a vehicle, and I don't think it normally gives access to Ritual Adept anyway.
* Can "fuse" with the caster to provide a compartmentalized mind and better casting assistance: I have no idea how to do this part.
* Functions as a computer with full internet access and the like: ... Accessory: Computer, maybe?
* Has a secondary part of her "body" that can be used as a straight-up weapon by her user to stab/shoot people with: Also have no idea how to do this. Maybe give her a Striker/Claw/Innate Attack and say that the user can use it through Compartmentalized Mind (Controls)?

Normally I'd just handwave all that, but one of my players wants to actually play as the Unison Device, so... yeah. Gotta actually stat out the template.

And I forgot the relevant pic, because of course I did.