GURPS general /gurpsgen/

GURPS

Today's random question: Would you do a game that focuses less on violence and more on non-combat things?
How would you do such a thing?

Other urls found in this thread:

sites.google.com/site/chandleyprime/gurps/gurps-tmnt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Arabia#Aelius_Gallus_expedition
bira.github.io/octopus-carnival/gurps/2016/12/06/enemies-overview.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Have the players run a business. Anything from a mom and pop pizza joint, up to a division of a megacorp. Between foiling hostile takeovers, keeping the pizza running, hiring effective subordinates, and advertising, there are plenty of roles to fill.

Put in challenges where non-violent resolutions can produce better results and give the players resources to do things without violence results.

As another option, and a slightly odd one..

Make the characters really, really good at violence. When combat can end in a single, bloody round and victory is very likely it's much easier to focus on other things. Violence is likely still going to be part of the story, but it's not the focus when it's over in moments, instead the focus shifts more to the consequences effects of violence then on the violence itself.

It also makes for an interesting meditation on the use of force, intimidation and the resolve needed to carry out threats.

Is fighting enemies with high defenses, like enemies with large shields, fun or frustrating? I'm trying to balance some encounters.

Are your players aware of the options available to them? Then yes. Feints, flanking, baiting, and the old classic "I'll hold him while you hit him" can be pretty fun to game out if your group likes combat to begin with. Do they not know, not care, or not have the in-game skill to use them? Then no. It'll be people trading blows until someone gets lucky, like D&D but worse because the numbers don't even go down.

Pro-Tip: it's fine if your enemy is overpowered if you give your PCs an opportunity to be clever and work around it. Don't put your players in featureless 21'x21' rooms with no way in or out end mindless killing-machine enemies. Give them pitfalls to lure the baddie into. Let them negotiate. Have the sneak find another way around. Put a ballista in three rooms back so they can wheel it in.

Players can be clever (often too clever). As long as the baddie isn't so broken that it's a one-turn TPK, they can retreat, lick their wounds, and channel that spite into a terrifyingly circular plan of vengeance and overkill.

Hey, /gurpsgen/, can you help me name two evil TL 11 megacorps?

MonoTech Ind. and Tsubashi-Ivanovich LLC.

Good ones, thanks!

I hope he has no slav players because that would be hilarious.

I've wanted to run a magical school campaign, like Harry Potter but more coherent (I suppose the more recent comparison would be like LWA, but I've been kicking this idea around for a while before then). Focus would be on tests, inter-student relationships, and of course a mystery about the school itself that players investigate on weekends. Fights would be limited to brawls between schoolboys, and their consequences would be more along the lines of broken glasses and detention rather than death or crippling injuries.

Really, though, you need the right group. One of the reasons this never got off the ground is that only one person in my group is into games that are so roleplay-heavy. Murderhobos gonna murderhobo, even if you force them to play 50-point accountants.

I'm running one right now about 2 newcomers to a magical city full of politics, backstabbing and factions. It's a new genre for me to run but I'm hopeful. Last thread an user mentioned Stars Without Number's faction system which seems pretty cool; a GURPS version shouldn't be that hard to do.

How would you price an advantage that gives enemies -1 to hit you? (Like being a lower SM, but without any of the other effects)

20 points, since it's like Enhanced Dodge except it's all the time, so +5 seems fair.

A form of Obscure from Pyramid 3-99.

Obscure with Anti-Targeting from Psionic Powers
Wrong. Enhanced Dodge gives bonus to defense roll, not penalty to hit. This is not a contest, you cannot claim that these effects are identical.

I am less worried about overpowered (they aren't strong enough to kill anyone in one turn without a blind luck crit.

It's more like.. I'm worried they will pound away at someone with a 74.1% chance to defend. and get frustrated.

How much would it change combat if at the start of each round I got everyone to announce what manouver they were going for? They could change target (within reason), but not change manouver.

The order that people declared their action would be important, and a very valid tactic if target by an attack would be to just move away or perform another action to preempt/negate the ability to perform the attack.

I feel like this might be more fun as a disadvantage for some slow enemies/beast. Sort of like video game bosses that roar and hold up their weapon before a big attack, giving everyone a chance to run out of reach or get behind cover if they are going to start shooting off a bunch of projectiles.

Low Basic Speed for the monster, but before anyone goes they get to hear what it will be doing when it's turn comes up.

That's a good point, I suppose it's a bit like giving EVERYONE decreased time rate with the 'half turns'.

How would you deal w/ a mexican standoff style situation?

That is - two groups of people looking at each other preparing to fight. When a person takes the first move, how would you rule it. I wouldn't class it as Partial Surprise.

But it doesn't really make sense for the people with a higher Basic Speed to act before the person who pulls the trigger first. Would you treat everyone before that guy (ie higher basic speed) as having taken the Aim maneuver?

Check out Martial Arts, specifically the "Cascading Waits" entry.

Cascading "wait" actions are covered by martial arts. You pretty much do a quick contest of skill when two people's wait are triggered at once and the winner acts first, with ties resulting in acting at the same time.

So Bob and Dan point guns at each other and each are taking a Wait action on the condition "I shoot the other guy if he shoots"

Each turn they can act or keep waiting. When one acts they each roll Guns. The higher roll goes first (he spots the other guy tensing/starting to draw and gets the shot off first, ect).

You can talk while taking Wait actions.

Thank you! I am still quite new to GURPS so I've not read MA, but I'll check it out.

Is there a way to do warcraft style magic ie. A seperate magical pool of points for your abilities?

Yes. Give players at start pool of character points that can be used only to buy Advanatges As Magic Abilities.

I think he means like Mana (right?). In that case, Powers got ya covered, just take Energy Reserves which gives you FP you can only use on spells/abilities.

>and get frustrated.

When that happens remind them about Deceptive Attack and Feint (especially if they can do multiples attacks per turn). They can't complain if they Know their enemies can defend and know they can do something about it but refuse to. So just help them remember until it becomes natural.

>Mana
Shieeeet
This should be the most weirdest definition of Mana/Mana Points/MP/Blue Numers/Magic Health i've see

I meant Mana in the Warcraft sense, which maps quite easily onto Energy Reserves (or even FP if you accept that if you're low "mana" you're also tired).

Yeah. Just make a new stat. Magic Points, based on your Will score, like HP is on ST, and just map it like a separate FP. Have shit like Sword Techs or whatever? Ok, map 'Tech Points' to a DX score or something as its own FP-style pool. Easy peasy.

How many advantages & disadvantages is too many if I want to play as a magic goose?

>Flight (Wings)
>Absolute Direction
>No Fine Manipulators
>Short Lifespan
>Peripheral Vision
>etc...

I feel like the longer I dig, the longer my list gets, and that's just for being a bird, not even including personality traits.

There isn't a hard and fast answer for this. The basic rule of thumb is you can go for every advantage and disadvantage that might apply and make an exhaustive list, but it's just as valid to pick only the minimum to reflect your basic concept and ideas of what defines a creature.

Don't forget meta-traits. They let you get most of the "it's a fucking goose" stuff out of the way with one line.

I'm going to be running my first GURPS campaign soon, inspired by System Shock II. I want to keep the horror/thriller aspect of it, so resources/ammo/weapons will be hard to come by and enemies will be tough, so the players will die often. However, the game has resurrection booths, which I will include, since new PCs won't be arriving on a stranded ship.

How to balance it, so the horror isn't cheapened? So far, I've thought of:
>your clone only has memories up to the last time you saved
>enemies can shut down booths
>your equipment doesn't get copied

Having to reclaim your equipment is a good one, as is memories/point totals being limited to the last time you saved. Only problem I see with it is the extra book keeping of remembering who had points in what several sessions ago.

If you're not running online or using a computer to keep track, just stick with equipment loss.

Quantium-Bio reconstruction requires Nanites, small, "safe" devices that consist of a microscopic robot, reserve of raw resources, expendable power and coolant cell.

Nanties are also used to replicate valuable items. Being reconstructed consumes (100x difficulty modifier between .5 and 3) nanties.

You also need to put QBRC devices back online. The AI has reconfigured them to turn humans into hideous cyborg puppet soliders, a fate worse then death.

I played the game, and I'm aware that the process takes nanites. However, it was so relatively cheap, and I was rolling in so much cash due to being a Navy hacker, that death never seemed like a big deal.

>You also need to put QBRC devices back online. The AI has reconfigured them to turn humans into hideous cyborg puppet soliders, a fate worse then death.

That is a good idea, thanks.

The idea's shamelessly stolen from System Shock 1.

You can always adjust how much money they find. Playing Navy Hacker means missing out on some other things (mostly being no-psi, at least early on) so it's a tradeoff for being well supplied.*

If they only get $100-300 per deck and reconstruction cost $100 it could keep things tense, especially if they spot an upgrade they really want that cost $150.

*Kind of. The truth is that Navy Hacker path is flat better then the other navy or any Marine path, starting the game with +1 ST, +3 Standard Weapons, +1 Hack and +2 Endurance or Agility (Endurance is likely the better choice, but Agility makes dancing with wrench-hybrids easier).

The only reason to go Marine is if you REALLY want to start with a grenade launcher or laser pistol.

>The idea's shamelessly stolen from System Shock 1.

Never played the original, is it fun?

>If they only get $100-300 per deck and reconstruction cost $100 it could keep things tense, especially if they spot an upgrade they really want that cost $150.

I could do that. The problem is that I'm planning to have sections where one of the characters is practically guaranteed to die (one of the earlier encounters is a slow, heavily armored cyborg with a BFG, and some of my players are DnD murderhobos), and charging a high price on top of it may seem a bit antagonistic. Although I could just have extra loot hidden away in those sections to compensate.

Again, thanks, my creativity has been a little subpar recently.

You forgot:
Berserk, bully, craven

>They enter the room with the cyborg with the BFG.

>Com-implant beeps: 0001 hours, Friday Oct 23, 2099
>Electronic Funds Transfer: +$550 from Tran-star Engineering LTD
>Next Pay Period: Friday, Oct 30, 2099

What kind of disadvantages would you model the following as :

If she evers step in a sanctified property or touches a religious item, she will instantly feel all the pain she felt when she was locked in a barn and burned alive.

Is this just a textbook Divine Curse?

Divine curse and/or weakness (High Sanctity)

Agonizing pain, or seizures triggered on a -40 to -60% limitation

Are there good published GURPS one shots out there?

Here you go.

sites.google.com/site/chandleyprime/gurps/gurps-tmnt

Look under "Birds" and you will find "Water Fowl". I hope the contents on the above web page help.

Not so much. It's surprisingly hard to find.

I got the Dungeon Fantasy box set today. It looks really nice and is organized very well from what I can see.

Even the art looks great for the most part. There is no fucking way pic related is an accident though. Apologies for the sideways picture.

The rat has Clinging. That could be fuckin' useful in a familiar.

Quote from my GM today that sums up GURPS: "I'd forgotten how unhelpful this table was."

What if each copy "degraded" the existing clone sample, resulting in defects?
Basically the buying an Extra Life option in Impulse Buys for 30 points (but letting players take disadvantages to make up the cost).
Let them start with like 3 "free" extra lives each, though.
Simple, interesting and not too much bookkeeping.

I believe that I understand what your interpretation of the picture is, but could you explain it in full so that we *are* all on the same page?

(No pun intended.)

It's the le happy merchant meme

hownew.ru

could you post the pdf?

To further elaborate on the degraded clone sample, there was an older Xbox game (Brute Force) that I feel does this well. Your clone won't degrade or lose experience as long as you pick up the bio-chip from your dead body, which kept all your memories and bio-data in the right order. The chips are expensive, so you only get one. Don't lose it.

Neat, I'm the first one you linked. I like it.

Clue me in, because I just rolled a 17 on my Current Events (Internet) check.

NEVERMIND.

I knew of the disgusting image, but not the actual name of it.

Im suffering from withdrawl here without the new DFRPG series.

Shot in the dark, but does GURPS have any resources for slice of life / school life shenanigans aside from social engineering - back to school?

Basic Set has most of what you need. It's perfectly valid to play a low point total game with lots of use of fun disadvantages mundane characters.

You could play with low point totals and time management at a premium. Trying to get in enough school and study time to get the 1 point in Applied Mathematics or History so you aren't defaulting when you roll to take your exams and all.

That table isn't that useless, though it manages to avoid having the things that matter on it, like gunshots, suppressed gunshots, people fighting, ect.

And I think everyone cringes at the Metalica reference. Christ. Way to date the book.

why is gurps so sexy and why are my buddies too retarded to appreciate it?

>why is gurps so sexy and why are my buddies too retarded to appreciate it?

Because people assume that D&D is a generic system that can run any and all games so don't need to learn anything else(or confuse D&D with TTRPGs themselves).

El oh el.

>why is gurps so sexy?
The bell curve is good for representing how middling results are more likely than outlandish ones.

>why are my buddies too retarded to appreciate it?
The bell curve is bad because it forces the players to memorize a table of probabilities.

Try easing them into it with 1d10+5 instead of 3d6.

>why is gurps so sexy
Because of mister Pulver, God bless his soul.
>why are my buddies too retarded to appreciate it?
Because they are closeted faggots.

>Try easing them into it with 1d10+5 instead of 3d6.
If you're going to go that route, why not just cut five from each stat and roll a straight 1d10 instead? 1d10+5 is a bit excessively complicated for a core mechanic, isn't it?

And then, if you move over to 3d6, you just add 5 to all the stats.

Guys, i have a problem.

How could a bunch of city states survive against a empire (weird mix of Rome and egypt)?

The only thing for the cities is the large distance. (From the heartlands of the empire to the cities is it 2000 miles)

1d10? Heresy

Players aren't forced to memorize shit, once you finish your character you're just rolling shit.

Confederated and coalitioned against the empire, pay tributes and allow safe passage to the empire. If the logistic, political and economical cost of the annexation of the citystates would outweight the benefit of keeping them around they'd probably elect to keep the cities around until circumstances change. If the citystates play nice, they will probably keep their autonomy for a long time.

Consider that in the future they might be forced to yield to the empire politically, become de facto part of the empire if they depend on it for protection from third parties and their tribute becomes akin to taxes. It wouldn't be sudden and traumatic like an annexation, might take a while (sort of a frog in a boiling pot scenario), but unless the citystates manage to expand their influences at a rate proportional to the empire's, it's a given that this will happen, the alternative is getting annexed by whatever third party does expand alongside the empire. If they do succeed at expansion, then the confederation would probably become an entity unto it's own. Grow too large and the empire might once again consider you a threat. But the likelyhood is that the empire will face periods of instability, and this growing entity could take advantage of this to expand even more (convince some cities inside the empire to join the 'federation', for example, or attempt to seize them by force). If the citystates are to survive, it is crucial that they don't antagonize the empire while they are weak, and to seize their opportunities when they are strong.

What kind of logistics does the empire have? In truth, distance is likely to be a perfect protection here. 2000 miles is like trying to invade Paris from a base in Syria. Making good time time overland it's 4 months. Even with 200 caravans able to deliver 2000 pounds 10 miles per day you'd have a transportation throughput of one ton per day, enough to keep about 400 men in the field.

Ayup. From Rome to Scotland is a thousand miles, and while it also stretched out to two thousand miles in southern Egypt, well, that territory kind of just came as a package deal when they took over the rest of Egypt. Most of the important bits being relatively close (Cairo is 1,200 miles, as the crow flies, but also by the ocean).

Also, of course, that's just measuring from Rome rather than any of the other big cities. The three largest, after all, were Rome, Alexandria and Antioch.

Two thousand miles is really fucking far in an ancient society. That's sending an army from Madrid to Moscow, from Cairo to Lake Victoria, from Ireland to Newfoundland.

To ancient Rome, two thousand miles was literally two-thirds of the known world. Like, from Hadrian's Wall to southernmost Egypt was a bit more than three thousand miles.

This isn't Rome attacking the Gauls, this is Rome invading Uzbekistan.

>This isn't Rome attacking the Gauls, this is Rome invading Uzbekistan.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Arabia#Aelius_Gallus_expedition

Wrong direction - Yemen's in the southernmost bit of Arabia, hence why he conquered Mecca.

Also note how it was a complete failure due to overextending his line of supplies, forcing him to abandon his conquests.

So, yeah, trying to invade shit that's really far away is a bad idea unless you've got some really solid supplies network.

For an easy rule of thumb assume that a ship can move 10 tons of cargo 40 miles a day over water, while a caravan can move 1 ton 10 miles per day over land, either with about the same cost and number of people (yes, this means it's 40 times cheaper to ship by water then land).

Each man takes about 5 pounds of food, clothing, iron, leather, booze, silver and oil per day to keep him in the field. This doubles at TL 4, and at TL 5 triples. Given improving logistics across that time and the fact that you really don't want your TL 5 infantry acting as TL 3 for want of bullets and powder, it's hard to say it isn't worth it.

Foraging with a serious army is sustainable about a week in farmland without causing serious damage, or a month while totally depleting local stocks. They will need more money to pay for what they take unless you aren't interested in controlling the land or people later. The longer the army forages the more land it will have to cover, either moving constantly or dispersing into forage parties that travel father and father from the main army. This makes a foraging army very vulnerable to attack.

Source?

Low-Tech Companion 3, p. 42:
>As a general rule, hauling goods over land costs five times as much as moving them on a river, which costs five times as much as shipping them by sea. This ratio applied from the empires of the ancient world until the end of the 18th century, just before the invention of railroads and steamships.

So, that's a ratio of only 25 to 1.

Also, Low-Tech Companion 1, p. 8:
>Caravan: 10 miles/day. Use this for large groups of lightly disciplined travelers moving overland by foot, wagons, or beasts of burden, making a continuous trip rather than relaying information via fresh runners or animals.
>Riverboat: 40 miles/day.
>Seagoing Ship: 40 miles/day through TL2; 80 miles/day thereafter. Prior to the development of dead reckoning (see GURPS Low-Tech), sailors typically hugged the coast for 10-12 hours during the day in order not to lose their way, beaching at night to avoid hazards in the dark. Later sailors, who traveled the open seas, could stand watches and sail around the clock.
>A very slow journey could take eight to 10 times as long as a very fast one, and any speed between twice and 1/5 the average is entirely plausible.

Does Dungeon Fantasy FINALLY address how to make a battle against a classic fantasy dragon (full-sized, fire breathing and at least reasonably intelligent) possible and challenging yet fun rather than outright impossible? As is, fighting such a beast is an act of insanity...even if your party is comprised of characters each 300+ Character Points strong.

It's a pure ratio between the crew and material requirements between a green/ brown water barge and a horse wagon that ignores on either side the cost of using improved canals/rivers/roads/bridges.

The ratios in LTC 3 are good for a game, but historically river transport was much more then 5 times cheaper (and higher capacity) then road transport, while ocean going transport was incomparable, performing task (like the Alexandra/Rome grain trade) that simply would be unthinkable for a land trade rout.

That said, again, LTC's ratios are fine for a game, and no rule of thumb will cover the realities of a specific siutaton. To get into the grit, you'd have to study the rout itself.

Isn't part of the fun of fighting a fucking BUILDING SIZED dragon supposed to be that it's a nearly unthinkable heroic feat?

Nearly unthinkable, not totally unthinkable.

>Historically river transport was much more than 5 times cheaper (and higher-capacity) than road transport.

Pyramid #3/95 provides some corroborating examples:
>A farmer and four oxen: 1.5 lb/$, 1.6 mph
>Four sailors on a river barge: 47 lb/$ (1/30 of land cost), 7.25 mph
>18 sailors on a 60-ft hulk: 212 lb/$ (1/4.5 of river cost), 4 mph

bira.github.io/octopus-carnival/gurps/2016/12/06/enemies-overview.html

This is a very good bestiary for anyone planning to run a Dungeon Fantasy game. It's based off Dragon's Dogma, and is the sort of standard, off the shelf bestiary SJG should have published a long time ago.

It's not quite finished, but the blog is still active, so I have a pretty good feeling that we'll see some progress later

"Nearly unthinkable, not totally unthinkable."

What he/she said ^.

Well for that kind of dragon you'll be wanting characters in the 500+ point range

I already do. Most of my campaigns are primarily focused on noncombat things, and imo GURPS is the perfect system for that.

The trick is to think of violence as another form of resolution, not the end goal. GURPS is great because unlike in a lot of other systems, getting into a fight to the death is actually a really bad idea.

I tend to run very roleplay heavy games, where the players dictate the flow of events. This is another area where GURPS shines. The RAW way of gaining experience in GURPS is by getting points at the end of the session. By RAW in D&D, you only gain exp. by fighting shit. Yes, if you're a reasonably competent DM then you'll stop doing that as the only form of exp. gain, but it's still the default.

You can run a roleplay heavy, combat-is-risky game pretty well in 5e up until a little after 5th or 6th level I find. In GURPS, that's the default assumption.

You've got to bring it down with a ballista or something, Hobbit style. It's doable, just hard, and you can't fight it like you would a more normal creature. If you can get close, it's best to take a shot at a weak point then run.

Big dragons are raid bosses. You can't fight them like normal enemies, you need to wear them down, slowly disable them, then finish them off with teamwork and lots of special resources.

>the point
>your head

If there's no chance of them actually beating them, then it's totally unthinkable, not nearly unthinkable.

So in other words, no, you can't fight them like the vast majority of dragon slayers in fantasy fiction.

Good genre emulation, GURPS.

>You have to fight them like LOTR
>Good genre emulation

It is. I'm sorry you can't just hit his toe with a warhammer and expect to win.

Smaug got shot out with a single arrow in LotR. But the genre has moved past LotR. (thank fucking God).

>In LotR

The Hobbit, damnit.

So much for the U in GURPS. It ought to be able to handle a toe-to-toe fight a la Dungeons and Dragons with the right options (Campaign Settings such as Flesh Wounds)/Character Point levels.

It can, totally. You will have to have some demigod level powers, but GURPS can handle demigod vs dragon just fine.

4 people at 300 points each trying to battle a 2000 point dragon without a really good plan are Gonna Have A Bad Time, but that isn't a flaw in the system.

>you just have to have demigod level powers

In other words, be in no way threatened by anything less than a dragon, which also isn't fitting to genre.

I think a dragon is not so impossible, but it depends on what kinda dragon.
A heroic archer that can aim for the eyes, or some kinda melee combatant that has an enchanted AD(Infinity) sword could do damage while easily dodging it because of the big sm penalty for relative size (as long as it isn't an SM+7ish dragon, which means any dragon under 150 feet tall approximately; at SM+7 normal attacks are unavoidable large area injury.)

And if we are considering magic, there's a million things that someone could do.

The biggest problem would be a huge AOE fireball with nowhere to dodge for cover; if the projectiles are kept to AOE 2, and using the Wu Xia rules, someone really good at dodging wouldn't have that much trouble taking dodge penalties for bigger hops.

I also think this is one of those "arguments for argument's sake" things though.

This just leaves free trample damage as an exercise for the reader.

>I also think this is one of those "arguments for argument's sake" things though.

It's really not. If the game is going to claim to be universal, it better be able to manage some basic genre emulation. Even D&D can manage dragon slaying without requiring the characters to be outright superheroes (and has been able to since 1974).

It's not as though this is exclusively a thing of low-lethality fantasy. Even Dark Souls has you slaying dragons while being quite vulnerable.

Oh, and not to mention... there is nothing stopping you from giving the gigantic dragon stats that a hero can overcome.
If it's in genre for a superheroic barbarian to fight toe and toe with a dragon, it's because the dragon is her equal. Lands out of time has a t-rex that a Dungeon Fantasy knight can dispatch quite easily.