GURPS general /gurpsgen/

Can someone explain to me how malediction exacly works?

It's a bit complicated, but it basically turns something from an attack (where you take an attack roll, and the opponent can defend), to a spell (where it's a quick contest to see if they resist). This also has an effect on the modifiers for distance- long range spells have less harsh penalties.

Gonna ask here since I haven't had any luck elsewhere; what's a good points total for character creation a fantasy setting with common magic and monstrous races available to play alongside 'normal' ones? I'm thinking 150 probably, but I tend to be terrible at guessing this sort of thing.

Malediction 1 is quick contest of attribute vs attribute, a penalty equal to distance applies.
Malediction 2 uses the speed/range table for penalties instead.

The roll is a "resistance roll" meaning unlike regular quick contests, you must succeed and have a better margin than the opponent.

In all but a few special cases, use the rule of 16 (attacker's effective target number, after range penalties and similar is limited to 16 or the defender's attribute, whichever is higher.)

Malediction is good because it (besides some very rare cases) ignores DR, and because it means high skill can overcome high defenses (like super high DR and HT or Will.) It's good for emulating supernatural effects where the ability tries to overcomes someone's will or ht because of maybe attacking their mind directly or overcoming their immune system, whereas an innate attack without malediction is more like flinging something really hard at someone, and an affliction without malediction is like squirting some toxic oils at them.

Grimwyld has had a few interesting reoccurring NPCs, from a overweight, drug addled Lord Marshall that ended up crossing us one too many times to an elven warlock that has had the misfortune to be the servant to several powerful people we've kicked the shit out of.

My favorate may be the elf outlander commander that has had a real arc, going from being the NPC leader early in the game to a disgraced member of a outlaw group, trying to help us navigate the complex web of alliances when we got back and found nobody in authority could be trusted.

150 is good if you're going for "starting" adventurers who are going to be killing goblins and skeletons and not much more powerful. 250 is the standard for dungeon fantasy, but you'll be much more powerful comparatively. You will be fighting strong beasts.

I'd say 200 points with a max of 45 points of drawbacks is good. This gives them room to take a race that might cost 100 points while still haveing lots to spend on other areas.

This assumes you want to let them play powerful beast with dramatic, expensive powers. If you instead see most monsterous races being around the 50 or less mark then 150 points would be just fine.

I tend to err on the side of giving the players a few too many points. I have only really had one game with problems because I went too high, but I've had several players frustrated when things were low.

It's a very "that depends" question.
150, in my opinion, is generally fine for a long campaign with several players being specialized to accommodate each other's weaknesses.
Recommends also thinking about 250 point characters or Dungeon Fantasy. Which is a good place to start if you are completely new to GURPS and you need something to get some barometric readings so you can start to grasp what is strong or weak. (250 point characters are going to be doing awesome things, but can still find themselves in a pinch every now and then, but they only get stronger from there)

The one big piece of advice I have for you is to make two or three characters yourself according to your expectations of your setting and see about how many points they come out to be. If you find that 150 points suits your concept fine, then it is probably fine.

No renowned heroes, probably. 200 with limited drawbacks sounds like a good compromise. I hadn't thought of making practice characters. Probably should have.

Lord Marshall Geofferson had such an anticlimactic fate; crit failing a malfunction check on a dark magic device. God's only know what happened to him...

Deloth-Ainur was certainly my favorite recurring npc. You guys spent easily half of last year dealing with her ~dark powers~ in the Derugar keep. Good job rescuing her in the end there (even if she turned back to the dark side after...)

I'm still waiting for Aachen to take another randomly determined hit to the left arm. Maybe if it finally gets severed we can stop rolling to hit him there.

Anons, what is the best way to learn GURPS?

Read the Basic Set, join a game and play. GURPS is pretty front-loaded, the only real obstacle is making a cheatsheet for your skills and defaults.

>2017
>Falling for the Apple botnet.

Guys, have you ever been in a game where blunt trauma was anything more than a nuisance? I wonder if it depends on the setting played in, but it seems like the conditions that trigger it are so rare in low tech, it's not worth thinking about it. Does it trigger more easily in High/Ultra Tech or some kinda Supers campaign?

Not to bother you, but what kind of monster races are you offering your players? I'm curious to see what sort of race templates they have to pick from.

The only game where it came up very often for me was a TL 3 crusader game with Edge Protection rules in force and most characters wearing fine or heavy mail.

The 1 damage from blunt trauma when the armor would stop 5 damage came up relatively often, we'd end most fights battered and bused under chain and aketon. Bandits, pagans and cultist armored in fabric and faith in their blasphemous gods typically didn't need to worry about it.

Just got these in the mail. Any advice before I get started?

Yeah, I was thinking that might make it come up more often. I do have a player that is close to the threshold of "it might matter" though with a high Tough Skin DR, some mail, and plate on top of that. (Dungeon Fantasy Minotaur Knight)

What kinda game do you want to play or run?
And are you intending to play or be a GM?

Be gentle with the spines
Enjoy the read!
Get used to the numbering and page references crossing two books

Have FUN

You might want to put some reference tags in pages you will need a lot. Post it flags are great for that, but you can also just use any old bit of paper.

I plan on DMing a low fantasy medieval game (a la game of thrones).

Yeah, I noticed that numbering system when I flipped through the campaigns book. Thanks for the encouragement!

Ooh, good advice. Any passages I should look for and mark preemptively? Or will the passages I need become apparent pretty quick?

Recommended reading from the basic set-characters book, I'd recommend very quickly scanning the advantages/disadvantages/skills/equipment lists, but pay attention to the mechanics that are explained at the beginning of the chapter, eg, learn what those things are, but don't read and memorize the huge lists of traits and stuff. Skip most of the details about Tech level, but decide if you are going to be something like TL 3 (Medieval) or TL 4 (Age of exploration through colonialism) and let that guide what kinda gear on the lists players should have access to.

>DMing low fantasy.

Don't. Players are never as clever as they think they are in a political intrigue campaign, and low magic means they're gonna be killed by wounds or disease very easily. You really really want magical or cinematic alchemical healing to be available at low TLs.

Chapter 11 you might want to scan through if you want to use grids, in which case, focus attention on chapter 12 instead. Chapter 14 is interesting to breeze through for ideas, and chapter 16 has a few really simple animals, but chapter 17 is mostly irrelevant.

>Don't stress the details. There is as much as you could possibly want and more than you can possibly handle. It's tempting to try to use it all. Don't.

After more than 10 years I repeat that to myself before session 0 of each new game. Sometimes before each session.

>Don't be afraid to ask for clarification or advice (which you already aren't! Awesome!). The clarification can get really complex. When that happens summarize/simplify afterwards or just toss out that bit as unnecessary to your game.

GURPS is front-loaded. Do the pre-figuring and heavy lifting between sessions. Make sure not to let mindset leak into session time. In other words, go down the rabbit hole but see Suggestion #1 before the session starts.

I had a lot of luck with requiring warriors to take (Very) Rapid Healing and giving them realistic amounts of downtime rather than the traditional adventure pacing where a new village/kingdom/world/multiverse-destroying threat show up every 1d-2 days.

It also had a nice side effect of making them really worried about their survival. Lost a PC to an unlucky wild swing, and the next session they were all scrambling for extra armor.

Chapter 18 and 19 are helpful for planning, but the rest is mostly irrelevant.
This is also good advice, don't bite off more than you can chew, or you'll get a bad taste in your mouth with your first experience. GURPS mechanics are good at "telescoping" so you can make things as simple or complex as they need to be, but starting as simple as possible, and then digging deeper when it becomes apparent that your players really want to do "castle estate management simulator," or you feel like having the "agonizing life threatening weeks to months long recovery from infection episode."
Until then, roll and shout, the castle has "enough guards," and the infection lasts "let's see 1d-3 days. and lowers your HT by... 2 and knocks off a HP a day."

Yeah that's something else to keep in mind. GURPS is, in general, more rewarding of downtime than D&D.

Read the introduction of Characters.

Are there any good GURPS podcasts or recordings of sessions? I listened to all of filmreroll already and now I thirst for more.

550. Speed/Range table, postures and maneuver summaries. It also puts you right next to things like the critical table that you will need sometimes. The whole book 2 appendix is damn useful.

370. Grappleing, rapid strike, Salm. Unusual shit going on in combat? check there, it's got most of the rules for it.

I don't have the templates yet, I was gonna put them together. Basically- Normal Folks, Demon-like folks, Angel-like folks, Shapeshifters, Weird mutant types (extra limbs or heads etc) and Undead. All of the above with the potential to use magic but some having it by default.

I can't wait to get the physicals soon too. Hoping by next week. Now if I can just convince my friends to stop playing 3rd and give it a chance.......

How would I go about making several sentient weapons as Allies? I want to make an Enchantment-based Mage who specializes in weaponry, and thought it would be neat if he could summon swords and whatnot out of the air.

By making them sentient, he would also have "assistants" to aid in the magic to enchant items, if he needs it.

>Mostly I'm just looking for how to make (roughly) 100-point characters who are just sentient weapons

Seconding and thanks for mentioning Film Reroll.

Werewolf shapeshifters or doppleganger shapeshifters?

Doppleganger shapeshifters.

Guise, I remember that somebody made a pdf 'adapting' every GURPS Magic spell to Sorcery. Anyone seen it?

>pdf
Dunno about that. But this guy made conversion enragedeggplant.blogspot.com/2017/03/sorcery-spell-index.html

Oooh, thanks mate!

What is the difference between 3rd and 4th Edition? We have 3rd in our club, so why not play with a hardcover book we have?

Unlike DnD, GURPS editions are just a refinement of what came before. You'll find it's all mostly the same but streamlined/improved. There's a 3-4 conversion PDF too.

Also, some content in splatbooks got incorporated into the basic set i think (i haven't played third but it says this in the foreword).

That's a lot of races to consider. Might be hard to give everyone an exactly distinct nich, but could be interesting.

Let us know when you get 'em done.

There's Fantasy Shorts. feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:286288274/sounds.rss
High fantasy, with a lesbian sharklady, an androgynous elf necromancer, and an archeologist that go to investigate a weird island corrupted by abyssal magic.

Hey, gurpsgen
We starting larger-than-life scale [wuxia] game, about surfboard-swords, 30 ft demons and killing mobs of 30 mooks per round under neon lights.
Is there way to handle such surfboard-swords? I mean drop 80 points in Huge ST/SM and Lift ST is not a big deal, but basic lift measured in tons is kinda not what we want, while dropping weight of swords breaks "big weapons only for badass guys"-rule. Maybe just UB?

Big Ass Monsters. Don't they too much fragile and easy to kill because wound modifier from hit locations is easier to get?

Skill Ratings 22+. What to do with such skill levels? 97% of any type of problems are solved. Im know how on average game SL12 is works fine for many no-hurry situations and SL14 means you probably fine in when-shit-gets-real situations.

>Skill Ratings 22+. What to do with such skill levels? 97% of any type of problems are solved. Im know how on average game SL12 is works fine for many no-hurry situations and SL14 means you probably fine in when-shit-gets-real situations.
At high SLs you actually get to play with some options without much worry. At the bare minimum, a Deceptive attack at a -8 to an opponent's defence, that is simply invaluable. You can go for hit locations, you can try some of the crazier techniques like Grand Disarm and such, read through Martial Arts. MA also includes rules for Chambara fighting, armed and unarmed styles, and of course, the technique catalog.

GURPS may not be the best option for this. You could try to use BESM for this. It's a system for anime shit but works well for this kind of bigger than live stuff.

You can have a look at the huge weapons rule in the Dungeon Fantasy barbarians. It may not quite be "surfboard", but it's close enough. It's called "oversized weapons" or something like that.

>Surfboard swords
Considering how physics breaking they already are, why not go full abstract on the swords? They represent a big damn heroes ability yeah? So make them a special talent/levelled advantage. 5/level. Then that grants a reaction bonus by itself, and allows for purchase of innate attacks tooled to mechanically be "big damn swords" but with alternative abilities, perks, and other small buys that let your mythic heroes pull the sword from a pocketspace, or hurl them impossible distances(ranged innate attacks) or even go Gilgamesh and have a storm of swords summoned from across time and etc.etc.

It's close to JoJo game levels of weird ,but it might be easier bookkeeping than massive strength and massive skills

Newfag here.
Are defensive rolls different from contests? Can you fail a dodge because the other had a roll with more positive?

newfriend* (This is a Christian general)
For all intents and purposes yes.
Two special exceptions:
Critical hits automatically beat defense, so rolling is pointless.
If you are using an automatic gun, the amount of bullets that hit depend on your (margin/Recoil)+1, and the maximum that can hit depends on your RoF (Rate of Fire) stat. In this case, for the active defense roll, you dodge 1 + Margin bullets; eg if someone with a rcl 1 gun with skill 15 rolls a 10, they might hit with 6 bullets, and to dodge that, a hero with a dodge of 12, making a dodge and drop for effective dodge of 15, dodges one bullet if they roll 15, two if they roll 14 [...] and need to roll 10 to dodge all 6.
There are of course a few other cases where RoF and recoil come up, but it (almost) always represents spraying projectiles and finding out how much that hit.

You don't fail a dodge in this case. Margin of Success applies only on Quick Contests, no regular Contests (such as a Defence Roll).

But what the above dude said, Crits and RoF change how it works, kinda.

This is most certainly NOT a Christian general. I'll thank you not to shove your religion down my throat.

Everything else you said was spot on.

One more thing about Defense Rolls. You get to try them no matter what your Effective Skill is. Normally you can't roll a success roll if your effective sill is less than 3. Doesn't mean it's a good idea since any roll 10 greater than your effective skill is a critical failure. If you're trying to roll against, say, -5, rolling 5 or higher is a critical fail.

Put your fedora away, he was joking.

So it's a Muslim general then?

GURPS 1001 tales, yes no?

Do I get to fuck a djinn?

are 72 virgins okay?

How do you stat staged attacks? For example you do brain wizardry on somebody, giving him a massive headache. Next second you can make him nauseuous, but only if the previous attack succeeded, etc.

Yeah..I guess. I'll just have to get Teaching and instruct them on Erotic Art for a bit.

Follow-up effects.

?
Arent you aware of GURPS' christian themes?
This surely is a Christian general, you fedora lord. go be enlightened by your intellect somewhere else.

All this Christian love is just overwhelming. It warms the heart. Truly.

Hi.
Is there a way to change the settings for GCS?
I was reading Alternate GURPS, and I'd like to change Perception to being linked to HT instead of IQ

On this note, how do you guys build racial templates?
Part of me really wants to make racial templates neutral cost, but is there a good reason not to apart form clutter? As is I usually try to keep templates from costing more than 30 points.

>is there a good reason not to apart form clutter?
Well, there's the obvious example of races that might be a bit too powerful to be neutral cost.

To use a classic example, a dragon. You need a lot to balance out the size, dragonfire, claws and flight, but maybe you don't need to.

Although in the case of Dungeon Fantasy and other template-heavy games you'll want to keep the cost down to the point where you can reasonably fit it into the free points of a template.

On a side note, how do you guys handle racial template costs?
Part of me really wants to make racial templates neutral cost, but is there a good reason not to apart form clutter? As is I usually try to keep templates from costing more than 30 points.

I dunno, maybe it's just my liberal pussy side coming out but there's something that just bothers me about the idea of some races being objectively, quantifiably innately superior

If you are saying that for action 1, you inflict a headache, and for action 2, you can inflict nausea provided action 1 worked...
I'd say stat them as AA afflictions, with action 2 having something like "accessibility, target must have headache" which I think is somewhere from -10% to -20%.
If you want it to automatically progress and become worse, then

>I dunno, maybe it's just my liberal pussy side coming out but there's something that just bothers me about the idea of some races being objectively, quantifiably innately superior
Again, dragons.

"Race" in the fantasy sense is broad enough that you could have a template for the common earthworm and a template for a Balrog - and one of those is clearly much superior than the other, if only because it's literally an incarnate demigod while the other is barely sentient (if that)!
Appropriately enough, though, the demigod of fire with the customary flaming whip and Vorpal Sword costs way more points than the earthworm does. In a campaign where both are characters, somehow, the earthworm is going to have the same point total and have a bunch of other shit in addition to the racial template.

Some races may be "superior", but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're the superior choice for player characters. Because they cost a fuckload of points allocated in various dubiously-useful stuff and you just want to be able to spend a hundred to be able to warp reality or whatever that demiurgy power cost.
Or just want to grab Heroic Archer with Weapon Master and a bunch of skills rather than shelling out the 200+ points for the basic set's dragon template.

Also, well, "race"=/=race. We're talking about entirely different species, really, and more in the sense of "the human race" than "Caucasian". Elves and Dwarves aren't necessarily like two different breeds of dogs, but might be like... I dunno, hawks and kiwis. They're both birds and might have some superficial relationship, but that's kind of how far it goes.

I dunno, is a human inherently superior to a mayfly? Is a human inherently superior to an ape? Is a chimpanzee inherently superior to a lemur?

I don't like expensive races for other reason - they tend to eat so much points that race becomes defining feature of the character.
As for "objectively superior", higher attributes just mean high potential. Exotic advantage gives some edge but doesn't necessary closes niche for everyone else. Unless such race would autowin everything and conquer the world, I don't see a problem.

That's because you're coming at it from the wrong angle. More often than not, it's not 'race' it's 'species'. Does your liberal pussy side get upset when considering dogs are better than slugs? Trashpandas more adorable than molerats?

If it bothers you, just don't let players choose any race or species that's more than you're prepared to handle.

We know what to do with [80]-in-guns stuff in own sheets and other onetricks.
I ask about other side of skills, you probably heard about it, non-combat skills, things like Armorer-25, riding-22, diplomacy-24, intimidation-30 and etc.

How stoopid gurps-based product can help there, when we in gurps already have nice weapon scaler from LTC3?

BAH!
GURPS CAN DO EVERYTHING! DUDES FROM GURPSGEN TOLD ME!
And anyway learning new system, which definetely will be worse than gurps... I'd better go with boring tasteless of FATE.

I'm not sure how JJBA closer to surfboard-swords than bleach, berserk, bastard!! or monster hunter...
But full abstract too much abstract for us, we too much gurpsheaded so we have trouble to play without grid on abstract range bands...
Gettin' artifact which is cheap innate attack and bunch of MA-slots is very cool, but we think on something more material like six feet long sharpened chunk of finest steel and imbuements. But now i think second basic lift stat for Weapon is not a bad idea -- we try something like that for Stands (was not quite good).

Can't speak for the others, but Armor 25 is great for inventing new weapons or customizing them.

I get that, but I'm talking more about D&D style races where everyone is an adventurer of their species and their all considered pretty on par. I guess I feel like all the options open to player characters should be more or less equal.

>trashpandas
totally thought that said transpandas for a second

Agreed. It makes the races feel artificial and limited, and like they're something to pick for synergy rather than another organic species alongside humans.

Another idea I've toyed with: a human template that all human players have to take. Fantasy humans are pretty clearly different from irl humans, so maybe they get an extra point of ST, or they all get the luck advantage or something?

>handle racial template costs?
I don't hande, i just put all what described about race in template. It is not D&D where everyone should be balanced. If i made race of freakin' flamebreathing, acid drooling retarded niggers with poisoned skin, well you are freakin' flamebreathing, acid drooling retarded nigger with poisoned skin, if you can afford that template. Simple.

Why does it bother you? It is fiction. It says no things about reality.

>great for inventing new weapons or customizing them.
lolnope.
For inventing new you will need Engineer.
But well tweaking, repair and creating by blueprints will be fast as fuck or possible without instruments aside from couple of 9" nails. Something like remade pistol into smg, or make bigger choppa from smaller shoppas in middle of combat

Up to TL 5, lolyes. And beyond that, well, what's the point of inventing if you can't make that shit yourself?

Engineer about gettin concept, buiding prototype and cleaning bugs.
Armorer about building known things and reapir or upgrade them.
Ducttape tazer to stick -- armorer, make stick with built-in tazer -- engeneer.
Strap grenades with leater cords -- armorer, make grenade bolas -- engeneer.
And there is a fucking thin line here...

That's why it's important to have both Armorer and Engineer, possibly Machinist if you can swing it.

>How stoopid gurps-based product can help there, when we in gurps already have nice weapon scaler from LTC3?

Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Barbarians just reprints those rules from LTC3. It's just all in one place and easier to digest. Plus there is a perk for "oversized" weapons included, which sounds exactly what they are asking for.

The human template idea sounds really good. I think luck as a defining human characteristic is interesting.

The difference between D&D and GURPS is that in DnD you bolt a class onto a race, and if races are imbalanced then it is objectively better to take one over another. If you make an expensive race template, then the people adventuring alongside the newbies of this race will be hardened veterans. Everyone will be of the same power level, but maybe not of the same experience. I'd say just go with what feels right, and if the point costs are imbalances, so be it.

Also, Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Barbarians is not from the DF box set. It is an official GURPS book from the Dungeon Fantasy line.

Races in GURPS are an interesting thing.

A way to make a race distinct from others and keep point cost reasonable is to have the race have a Unusual Background inherent to it that allows a player to buy Exotic or Supernatural advantages later.

For example, here's an Orc knockoff I've used..

Orc (29 point racial template)

+1 ST (10), +1 HT (10)
Night Vision 5 (5)
Claws, Blunt (3)
Resistance to Disease +3 (5)
Appearance Ugly (-4)
Reputation, Marauder, -1 to almost everyone, all the time (-5)

Unusual Background (5)
Not all orcs possess Dark-vision (replaces Night Vision), Regeneration (Slow) or Magic Resistance, but any may develop these traits.

>29 points

Just increase Night Vision by 1 point so it's 30. 29 is twigging my autism.

How do reaction rolls work for a party of multiple people? If I have a very charismatic "face", but a really ugly smelly social outcast with him, do I do anything special? So far I am just using the "face's" mods but I feel it may be wrong.

Im going to feel like an idiot if the answer is simple but, when making vehicles how do you know the kW output of an engine? Is it just a pick one a go type of deal?

Depends on who speaks really. The charismatic, beautiful gnome with the ugly brutish body guard won't make a noble turn up their nose, they'll simply ignore the ugly one.

Anyone got any good examples of 300 to 350 point "realistic"/mundane characters you could find in real life or somewhere in history?