/GURPSgen/ GURPS general; get thrown out the airlock ediiton

Anyone that has Back the School, can you explain how "Points as an Accelerator" is supposed to work? Am I reading it correctly that every bonus point invested gives half of the hours required to actually gain a point in the skill? Like, if you invest one point, you go from 200 to 100, investing two halves it again to 50, three to 25, and so on? If someone has already studied for 20 hours, does investing the first point drop the remaining hours from 180 to 90?

Dude, if I could edit the thing, I would. I screwed the hell out of the OP, and I sure as hell didn't mean to. I've seen GURPS LITE and GURPS Lite used interchangeably. In that context it is meant to call attention to one word, anyway. Doesn't mean I'm right.

The "edition" spiel this time was a reference to The spoiler in the that post was about those recommending GURPS be thrown out an airlock. Naturally, 90% of the responses were GURPS.

Take a chill pill, get comfy, and let people have fun.

GURPS

Dungeon Fantasy, yeah! I want to run an open West Marches-esque game at my flgs. Almost as an excuse to buy the box set. Part of my thinking is that the box set should make things more accessible. Between that, and the open hexcrawl style, I'm hoping to lure more neophytes into the cult.

Also, , why shelve the idea? Not enough players? I'd happily brainstorm about it you, as time permits.

I like class trees/life paths a lot, so I started putzing around with a graph tool to try to make a tree for giggles... I think when I make a decent tree, I'll try to make like 50 point menus of abilities/skills for all of the nodes. Maybe rule that if you get 20 points worth of abilities from one node, provided you have all the pre-reqs, you can go onto the next nodes.
It's super gamey I guess, but I think it could be neat.

I think that the life path/tree things are some of the neatest darn things about Traveler and Burning Wheel. I haven't seen any articles about them in pyramid, or elsewhere, really.

...What kind of software did you use to make that? Now that I think about it, I want to putz around with one. Maybe a DOT graph file would do it.

>Dot Graph file
That is literally what it is.

Oh. Well, cool. What are you using to render it, then?

graphviz.org/
dot -Tpng "class tree.dot" -o classTree.png

I'd share the file, but I made the blunder of the century and gave the nodes really dumb names, thinking that my weird system would be helpful, but... it's not.

I think if I get beyond the "for grins" phase (Which by my estimation, would be a satisfyingly large tree and a few of the templates for the nodes done,) I might think of a better way to organize the entire tree... maybe some kinda database or something, and a small script to automatically generate the dot file from the database.

Looking at the character point breakdown, if I wanted to run a Cowboy Bebop/Firefly style near-future game, with the players starting out as "reasonable professionals", would 75/-25 be okay?

I'll be playing with people who've never played GURPS before, and to be honest, I've only ever been a player, not a GM.

What would templates for that point value look like?

No. No way. You'll want closer to 150-175 /-25 for reasonable professionals.

100 point total would be something like apprentices or high school grads piling into a ship.

I'm playing in a Fallout campaign, actually. This one stars a group of vault dwellers and their pet ghoul.

Why do the rules lie then? Book says 75-100 points is a star athlete, seasoned cop, etc.

I'm worldbuilding the area the game is set. I shelved it until I had more background content developed. I could cobble together a game, but I want it to be good. Brainstorming with someone wouldn't be a bad idea.

Because is wrong. 25-50 points is normal average humans, with most of their points dedicated to single points in skills and very minor advantages.

Because Star Athletes and Seasoned Cops are good at narrow specialties.

If you're running a Bebop or Firefly kind of game, not only are your guys going to need to be athletic, they're also gonna need to shoot as well as a cop, be observant, maintain and repair the ship, and also haggle. You can lower the point value a bit if you have a lot of crew members that can specialize.

Forgets that most movie and show protagonists easily top 300 points, so feel free to disregard me, but don't complain if your players fail often and hard at similar situations you saw in the shows.

Realistically, star athletes and seasoned cops would not survive as well as the Serenity or Bebop crew. They're the heroes of the story, so their capability are a little... above what theor histories say they should be. Similarly, John McClane is not a 75-point seasoned cop despite what the script says; going by what he does and what he overcomes, he's at least a 250-point character.

GURPS tends towards heroic realism; a seasoned cop is a badass to be sure, but he's not frequently-takes-on-five-guys-at-once badass. To simulate cinematic feats and scenarios, you need cinematic rules and cinematic point values. Either up player competency, tone down threats to a realistic level, or prepare for a bloodbath as your realistic commando gets roflstomped by a horde of nameless thugs that any tv show or movie protag would mop the floors with.

My suggestion is to use Action 4. Use the basic action template, then tell people they can take 50~75 points worth of lenses on top of that. That will give you a motley crew that can fend for themselves and take down challenges together while still wanting to get the hell out of dodge when gunmen show up.

Navy SEALS are real life examples of 400 point characters. Just saying that you may want to keep that in mind if you want to do an incredible cinematic campaign where characters generally approach that level of competency.

>brainstorming
I'm planning on playing around the Great Lakes area. There is some content there, insofar as Fallout Tactics, I think, but not so much that I can't work around or with it. As such, there's a precedent for enclave and BoS chapters and tech being around. Part of the motivation for it is that all of us live within the broad region, so there's going to be some amount of fun in exploring familiar but alien territory.

I have a few things I am specifically planning around. I want to introduce domain play early with raider gangs/tribes and pseudo feudalism. Visiting, or at least making available, Detroit, Flint, Chicago, Toledo, and other big cities. Also, playing with the strategic resources they have for the domain play, if they become big boss men. Cults or gangs that would crop up out of the ashes of the rust belt and industrial parks. Irradiated rednecks from the agricultural rural areas. Actual bloody border skirmishes between Michigan and Ohio amuses me.

With the Great Lakes, I think it'd be interesting to explore the social and resource ramifications in the Fallout post-apoc. For example, what if they are tainted? What if they are dried up, or the water level is down? What kind of weather would there be, including the possibility of acid rain or heavy nuclear rains? Fucking post-apoc literal pirates and shit!

Also, irradiated animals. Moose and deer, bear, mountain lion, wolves/coyotes, various marine life. I really want to make FEV-enhanced planet of the apes shit happen in the woods, via escaped zoo animals or a vault or something.

Here's some advice I heard, that in hindsight, is a "no duh" thing, but was kinda eye opening for me.

If you want to figure out how many points is right for your campaign or setting, make 2 or 3 characters that fit your vision with no regards to points, and see how much it cost to make them. If you could build Cowboy Bebop at his computer for 75 points, then that's probably enough. If it takes you 200 points, that's probably enough.

The small trick after that though is if you want the party to build characters that are already experts at what they are doing, or if you want them to grow into it. If the later, I'd say dock about 25% for a 10ish session campaign, or 50% for a real long campaign.

Well bugger, guess I'll have to up the points.

Will give this a try, thanks.

I'm not after a super-cinematic experience, but if
GURPS assumes cinematic realism, that's what I'll work towards.

Then you'll end up with a total between 125 and 175 depending on how much you want your group to grow into their roles. Cheers.

Interesting.

As far as my Fallout idea goes: it's set in Arizona post Fallout: New Vegas. It assumes the NCR has won control of the dam. The NCR has started a war campaign and has successfully kicked the Legion out of their capital city of Flagstaff.

The players are going to start in a small village on the border of the Painted Desert called Sun Rise, notable for it housing a relic of the old world: a Highwayman.

This of course gets stolen by raiders in the first session and the players are promised large amounts of money if they get it back.

As far as background stuff is concerned: The main focus of the NCR in Arizona is to bring civilization to Phoenix, which hasn't had the best 200 years - a series of fires and battles have torn the city apart and turned into a den of degeneracy, crime, and disease among other things. NCR wants to use their newfound wealth and turn Phoenix into a megacity of sorts: the rubble and infrastructure can be worked with to do such a task.

I adjusted the value of NCR Dollars. Caps to NCR dollars are 4:1. Legion currency has dropped in value too, but some people accept it by weight since some coins are made from gold. The NCR has minted some new coins and notes: the nickle, dime, and quarter are the new coins, and there's now $50, $500, and $1000 notes.

And watch out kids! There's a new, hip soda to replace Nuka Cola! Try the Official Drink of the NCR: New California Cola! NC Cola has a better, more refined taste than Nuka Cola and it's yours for only a quarter, and every quarter funds the battle to destroy tyranny! Try it today!

That's pretty much all I got.

Sounds like fun. Maybe make the raider boss they are tracking to begin with the "ROAD KING" who is riding in their car like he's king of the road. He's got it running again with huge, off road tires and a lifed suspension?

For the NCR, I've always thought of the railroad as emblematic of their true reach and power. if they've got a rail line running the old I40 rout to Flagstaff it would represent the last bit of civilization before it turns into the wild, fucked up frontier. Past the railroad transport is done by caravan companies supplying the general stores in small towns.

You could have some fun with NCR trying to hire/recruit some Indian/local guides and auxiliaries in their efforts to bring civilization to the old rez.

If the players are longtime fans of the series, the Highwayman hook is great! Very fallout-esque, with a seemingly simple, open objective.

Phoenix has only minimal mention in canon, so you could almost certainly get away with it. The players may question the NCR's decision, though. I'm curious about it, at the least. Phoenix is, realistically, one of the hottest cities in the states. The river would need to be viable. It's a tributary to the Colorado river, but downstream of the Dam. That could be a pretty good adventure hook, also very fallout-esque. Water is a precious resource in the wasteland.

I like the NCR Cola. The propaganda mixed with commercialized support of their government is a neat idea.

Since you're doing things around the wasteland proper, I have a couple ideas about that. There is historical precedent for folks to make homes out of the cliff-faces. Desert folk tend to wear layers of linen or material which is similar to linen, which is made with flax. Flaxseed (linseed) oil is also a viable quenching material for blacksmithing, and for weather treating a lot of things. It's a pretty small detail, but it'd be neat to see flax farms used as a strategic resource in the NCR v Legion conflict. Especially since farms not specifically and only for food are likely a rarity.

don't be me and create a massive modular class system using 20 base archetypes with weird and manyfold hybrid options and FFT style shitwizardry

I'm not familiar with flaxseed oil in the blacksmithing process. Tell me more, if you can.

Quenching is the process of rapidly cooling a hot metal to increase its hardness. If you allow metal to slowly cool, the resulting metal is soft and malleable. If you quickly cool it down it becomes hard and brittle. A key component of metallurgy is being able to control the temperature to reach an ideal hardness for what ever you're doing. Armor plate should be exceptionally hard as it will sustain repeated hard impacts and surface damage does not affect the usefulness. Blades should have a hard spine to prevent breaking, but a softer blade to allow it to be sharpened. The body of the blade should also be soft enough to flex and return to shape rather than shatter. Oil is used because water will allow oxygen to enter the metal. You can also quench in "used" oil that has been partially burnt to case harden the metal, depositing a layer of extra carbon on the surface of the object to protect it from corrosion.

Linseed oil is also used to treat wood so that it doesn't rot or warp in harsh conditions.

I'm somewhere in between an amateur and an apprentice, particularly in medieval and renaissance technologies. linseed oil has properties that make it suitable to prevent weather damage and rust to many surfaces. That's why it was, and in some cases still is, an ingredient in paint. If you take hot iron or steel and quench it in linseed oil, it kind of sears it into the surface. It helps if you put it back in the fire briefly to take off the excess and bake it into the material. It works very much like how you season a cast-iron pan. Even if you don't quench it in the oil, warming up metal before applying linseed oil or similar wax is very common practice.

But you don't have to take my word for it. This is the first reference I found online (fullchisel.com/blog/?p=1157). There are a number of other sources which corroborate this.

Steel is a crystalline alloy of iron and carbon. When you cool it really fast the carbon doesn't get out of the iron crystals and instead is trapped within them, forming a really, really hard structure of iron wrapped around carbon.

That's good. The bad part is those structures don't stick together so well, so you get a very hard steel, but one that will break relatively easily.

Water cools a metal the fastest, and gives you the hardest. Oil cools more slowly, and gives you a more desirable result for many tools.

Even then, you are going to want to take your quench-hardened stuff and heat it up again, but not as much, then let it cool in the air. This lets a bit of that really hard stuff instead form a structure that is happy to stick to itself and hold the item together called cementite.

To be fair, several people on the Serenity crew are legitimately killing machines, even without Main Character status to back them up. Mal's a old gunslinger, Jane's an amoral killing machine and Zoe is a six foot tall woman that not only had to survive the war of the alliance, she also had to deal with some really fucked up roles on Hercules. Shepard, of course, is something special too.

Doc, Inara and Kallie don't kick much ass outside of a few places where they absoloutly have to use cleverness and training to their advantage.

Most normal adults run 50 points or so, it's just not much in things that a person would consider useful for adventuring. Doing a stint in the armed forces bloats your point total for the rest of your life, for example.

mediafire.com/file/idihdcwz2td/Metallurgy_of_Steel_for_Bladesmiths_&_Others_who_Heat_Treat_and_Forge_Steel_-_By_John_D._Verhoeven_(2005).pdf

>Armor plate should be exceptionally hard as it will sustain repeated hard impacts and surface damage does not affect the usefulness. Blades should have a hard spine to prevent breaking, but a softer blade to allow it to be sharpened. The body of the blade should also be soft enough to flex and return to shape rather than shatter.

Armour needs a high impact toughness to prevent penetration. While a high hardness is good so that edges and points won't "bite in" as easily, excessive hardness makes brittleness unavoidable.

Sharp blades have their greatest need of hardness in the edge, for edge retention. This will likely be harder than you want your armour, but here too excessive brittleness must be avoided.

Overall a blade needs to be strong. The yield strength is how much force it takes to bend a blade to the point where you start seeing permanent deformation. The ultimate strength is when the blade snaps off entirely. There is generally a correlation between strength and hardness, a harder blade is a stronger one, but as we get to really hard stuff the brittleness weakens the blade. Ideal strength is found be balancing hardness and toughness. As such, a soft blade is also a weak one, and will bend easily.

>This lets a bit of that really hard stuff instead form a structure that is happy to stick to itself and hold the item together called cementite.

Cementite doesn't cement steel together, it merely sits there as small bits of hard, ceramic material. Hardened steel is (relatively) hard and brittle because all the carbon being caught where it should be strains the crystalline structure. Tempering relieves this by letting some of the carbon slip out, reducing the strain, and thus putting the material further from the breaking point again.

Fascinating stuff, thanks dude. Do you happen to know much about tanning?

Use sunscreen, and don't tan during 10 am and 3 pm.

I appreciate the gesture but just so you know I have Killjoy under disads.

NEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRDS.

Now fix LTC's smithing rules.

What is the best melee weapon skill, and why is it Axe/Mace?

>sw imp for massive damage
>break flimsy fencing weapons
>Hook stuff

What's wrong with 'em?

You're obviously wrong. It's two-handed sword/two-handed axe/mace combo.

>thr imp for precision damage.
>cutting so it cuts through shitty wooden hafts.
>swords can be flipped about and held by the blade (using two-handed axe/mace) to use crossguard as hook and can do sw imp depending on crossguard shape.

sw imp is generally a bad idea. It's nice bonus damage but Gets Stuck kind of sucks and you run into a real lack of versatility.

Axe/Mace is a very good skill because it offers a wide choice of cheap, high damage items. It's bad because you often need different weapons to perform different damage types and attacks. At best you might have a combination axe with a spike on the reverse that you can switch to swing/imp with a Ready action.

Sweeps, too. Big swords are nice, and muderstrokes being Axe/Mace is something you could certainly use Adaption perks from Martial Arts to change (Two handed sword held by blade defaults to Two handed sword seems pretty reasonable).

They're in Low-Tech Companion 3. The quality of the final product is determined by margin of success on the Armoury roll to make the weapon/armour; Good on 0-11, Fine on 12-17, Very Fine on 18+. The problems are that you can't set out to make a Fine sword, you just go normally and hope you roll well, and also that those margins are fucking insane.

You also get a pretty absurd ROI if you get a set up that can turn out Very Fine swords because the time and materials cost don't rise with the quality of the final product.

It's not a very good rule module.

Aren't there perks that affect that, though? I mean, I don't know why they went with insane margins and bandaid perks in the first place, but do they help?

You can set out to make a fine sword by electing to take extra time and use better materials/equipment.

Isn't there that "crucible steel" perk that basically makes iron more expensive for a bonus to skill?

Naive fix for forging fine/very fine swords.
Find the value of the sword you want to make.
Find the daily salary of a smith in LTC-3.
A smith takes (cost of sword/daily salary) days to make.

Now, if you want to go variable. The weird default Margin of Success for fixed duration is 3 minutes, so assume that 100% of a day's worth of work is done on a smith/armory roll that has a mos of 3... so multiply days to make something by by 3, and that's the cumulative MoS you need to make a sword.

EG: if it takes 7 days to make a sword, that requires a cumulative mos of 21. If you have skill 15, and roll 10, for MoS 5 every day you will be finished in 5 days instead of 7.

The one piece of this formula that I am not sure about is how much should good quality materials help... I'm thinking something like you need metal in value equal to half of the finished product... but that complicates the salary calculation a little bit if we assume that salary is net, not gross.

So... coming up with some numbers, a TL 4 smith makes $900/month, and I'll say that's worth $30 a day, or $10 per MoS "Progress point."
A fine greatsword is $3,600, so, a smith needs to accumulate 360 "Progress Points" to create $3,600 worth of work.
But... they need to buy the materials for the sword and still make $900/month profit. And my ballpark "I have no idea what I'm doing" guess is that this requires $1,800 worth of quality metal.
So, $1,800 is the expense over 4 months, or $450/month.

So really they need to be making $1,350/month to cover $450/month in expenses, which really means they are doing 1.5x the work per Mos...
so the grand unified formula is:

V/(/3) = Progress Points
V is value of the item crafted ($3,600)
C is the absolute cost of the raw materials ($1,800)
S is daily salary ($30/day)
And with all the values plugged in:
3600 / [ / 3] = $3600/$15 = 240 points.

Same person... after stepping back and realizing the average MoS = 3 thing assumes that you are succeeding every single roll with a skill of 13, I have decided, the formula should be modified from:
>V/(/3)
to
>V/(/2.5)
To accommodate the approximately 84% success rate of skill level 13.

Quick thoughts:

Per page 515 of the Basic Set materials/parts are generally 20% the cost of a finished item.

A common smith for Wealth 0, but a Master Blacksmith could be a Status +1, Wealth +1 character and would be paid, and produce, twice as much ($1800 per month instead of $900 at TL 4).

Maybe allow an assistant/apprentice to provide 1/2 the normal progress working under the direction of a master? This would reflect that very few good craftsmen work alone.

So ideally, a TL 4 Master would provide $60 per day, or $75 per day with an apprentice.

To work on a Fine Greatsword, they'd buy $720 in materials, then need to work for 39 days to finish the blade.

The good part about this is that you don't need to worry too much about rolls. As long as the master and apprentice make their monthly Job roll and meet the prerequisites for their employment. Their work in money per day factors in good and bad days and the occasional failed roll.

I think that makes sense. I mean, I imagine if smiths want to put food on the table, they can't put all their eggs in the "sword worth several months wages" basket, so they gotta be doing stuff like shoeing horses and extruding nails and probably working together in some corral with a master and a few journeymen.
I think the formula taking into account the salary also accommodates for the different pay levels. A "comfortable" smith is making twice as much money, because they are providing maybe roughly double the value (gross oversimplification, sure)

I think one of the small holes in the formula is, as you mention, the percent cost of the item, so really, if the raw materials are about 20% of the cost, labor only needs to produce 0.8 * Value of the item.
And in hindsight, yeah, daily rolls might be a bit tedious, the formula could be easily adjusted though to account for monthly rolls instead... by simply using salary per month (which means the number of points in the end are divided by 30) or rolling once, and multiplying MoS by 30.

I was assuming the work to craft the item is only 80% the final cost. So if you make a really nice sword you (or whoever commissioned it) has to pony up 20% up front so you can start, but your labor cost and time working only equals the remaining 80%.

I'd say a Master crafts-person has a mix of requirements to get there, including factors like pure Skill Level, but also a good relationship with suppliers that gets them goods on time, a good business place that lets them work harder and even odd things like a wife / partner that means they don't have to spend time preparing their own meals or washing their own clothes.

So a master might only have SL 15 in Smiting, but also has a bunch of advantages, Status, ect.

What the hell kind of characters do you get in a game like that?

Ride dragons, presumably.

>tfw downloaded the character generator
>tfw can make any character I want to
>tfw want to play GURPS now

Quick question, though, how much of a faggot am I if I want to role-play as an already existing character from a movie/show/etc.?

Dragonrider.
Pirate captain.
Navy Admiral commanding a dragoncarrier taskforce to hunt pirate captains.

It has...potential.

On par with those who wanna play as Naruto or Batman.

Be somewhat original at least...

Is it marginally better if it's a minor character?

>tfw want to play GURPS now
It's almost as if not having to adhere to a faggot class system is a good thing.

Fuck it. I based my character off Dr. Krieger. It's made the space opera really interesting.

Shame about the lack of hobos though.

The point is, in the subject field /gurpsgen/ should always be written in lower case because it uses the convention of a board title and those are always lower case.

With regard to GURPS Lite, it is officially GURPS Lite, the reason it is sometimes shown in all caps is because in those instances lite is in title case.

Oh. Well, now I feel foolish. I keep an eye out, and the next time I post the OP, I'll adhere to convention. Thanks for correcting me, user.

It's not uncommon to want to play an existing character. In a fresh campaign, you should probably try for something original. I don't think anyone is going to dismiss the utility of tropes and inspiration, though. If you can get someone to GM GURPS for you, though, you might be able to play as an existing character and have fun. That's what I did for my gal, used Lite to run a game based on a tv show. Did some intrigue and espionage, and had a lot of fun.

I think part of your taste for it can be fed by recreating characters in GURPS. I have fun with that on its own. The Mountain, from GoT, for example. To properly stat the actor in Basic Set rules, you need to give the man Gigantism and ST 21.

I feel you. Listening to filmreroll made me wanna play through movies with my friends.

Technically you could likely get to him with Giantism and a mix of other stats to get the ST/lifting ability in the right ballpark.

Are there rules for penetrating something so much with a bullet that it comes on the other side with still enough momentum to damage again?

Probably, but overpenetration isn't as cool as you think. Bullets that go through someone do less damage to them unless you're lucky to hit something vital. It's better if a bullet deforms or tumbles, or ricochets inside armor to do more internal damage.

yeah, i figured that much. was simply curious to see it.

Overpenetration is in basic set. I don't remember the page, though, so check index or ctrl+f.

It can be done, but unless you're using something like a heavy machinegun or minigun, overpenetrating like that means you should probably switch to different ammo.

pg 408 in Basic Set.

I think that was what I did. I didn't write down the sheet. If I did, I don't have it with me. Just a thought experiment. Fun, though!

Theank you. yes i decided to avoid it altogether as seen we are TL 4 to 6 for my super engineer

I awas thinking. is there an easy way to see what most skills are used to default or do i have to make my particular sheet?

Page 408 of the Basic Set. Cover DR is equal armor on either side of an object and HP. So you blast a guy with a DR 5 vest on and 10 HP then he reduces the damage of bullets passing though him by 20 points.

Anything/one directly behind the target or using it for cover gets hit automatically. Anything else behind it in the line of fire gets attacked at an SL 9, just a random shot like if you miss your target and there's something behind it.

Most rifle bullets pass though a human, especially one without armor. It's not a big deal unless there's something you don't want a bullet in beyond the target.

In GURPS Character Sheet (the program) you can add skills to your sheet and reduce them to zero points, giving you the value they have at default.

Mostly, anyway. I've run into some bugs doing that in the past but nothing I couldn't correct with a few fast edits.

If you're shooting at an unarmored human, you should be using hollowpoints, flechettes, or a shotgun.

That isn't how you spell "whatever is cheapest".

5.56mm ball does the job fine. Why fuck around?

5.56mm and 12 gauge buck cost the same. Are you unwell?

I've got a player who isn kind of occupied so he doesn't know when he could play. i'm kind of conflicted if just kick him out or make him play as a ghost who manifests only when the player is there. any suggestion for any 100 and 50 disadvantages ghost?

How well does gurps do fantasy games?
Also how broke is the magic system?

Pretty well if crunchy realism, more work but still good if Munchkin.

It depends. a lot. be careful with the manuals. also Thaumatology and Ritual path magic is a godsend but it requires work

>Ritual path magic is a godsend

>Pretty well if crunchy realism, more work but still good
>Thaumatology and Ritual path magic is a godsend but it requires work
How much work? Just removing the shit rules and adjusting numbers or drag out the shit necessary to calculate bullet trajectory bullshitinum? Also whats so good about the magic?

>be careful with the manuals.
Which and how do you mean?

well. Basic, Magic, Thaumatology
Also there are psis if you can consider those magics (Super, Powers)

I personally really like the realismi in gurps so i always apply all the rules i can remember. just use Combat Lite (At the end of the Characters manual) and it should work. you'd have to invent some mechanics to make cool things happen tho. otherwise i find it a little bit too limitng

>Implying Steve Jackson isn't actually an illuminati God

If you want to accommodate players with uncertain availability, I've heard that more episodic sessions work well for that. Not every actor is necessarily in every episode.

The classic 70's way to do this is the old "the session starts when you enter the dungeon, it ends when you exit" thing from way back in OD&D. There's definitely many other ways to do it, though, it's just reliant on "adventures" being somewhat resolved within a single session.

Beyond that, though, I think "the character only exists when the player is there to play them" sounds like a 0-point advantage?
You can toss on insubstantiality and whatnot if you want to make them properly a ghost, but that kind of feels like punishing the player for no good reason by forcing them to play a character they may not be interested in playing.

>otherwise i find it a little bit too limitng
I mean I'd think otherwise, more rules and rolls around what you CAN do would seem to limit your options than have an avarage skill that could be used in said time and place.

Not really answering the questions straightforwardly..

Like, what do you mean with
>well. Basic, Magic, Thaumatology
Also there are psis if you can consider those magics (Super, Powers)

I personally really like the realismi in gurps so i always apply all the rules i can remember. just use Combat Lite (At the end of the Characters manual) and it should work. you'd have to invent some mechanics to make cool things happen tho. otherwise i find it a little bit too limitng

Not really. Only the cheapest 12 gauge target loads match the price of 5.56x45mm ammo. It's around 27-35 cents per round vs 23-30 cents per round.

Even if you reload the shotgun still cost more to feed.

That said if you need to kill someone it pays to pay for the best. It's not exactly going to break the bank if you dropped $60 on a box of 20 instead of $50.

Nah. Thaumatology is just choosing which to apply--none of the options are shit but many are mutually exclusive, so decisions must be made--and RPM's versatility means you should expect to make the occasional judgment call.

Are there any good homebrewed magic?

'homebrewed' is a big trigger word here son

Check the books and pyramids we've linked. Between imbuments, sorcery, rpm, basic magic and the like, you should be able to find something to fit your gane

not user you were replying to, but are sorcery and RPM books self contained, or do i need thaumatology to make sense of them?

Sorcery benefits greatly from having powers, but it doesn't require it, and doesn't need Thaumatology at all.

Ritual Path Magic doesn't require Thaumatology, but one optional mechanic uses some lookup tables from it, and there is an alternative mechanic that doesn't even need those.