GURPS General /GURPSGen/

Know the rules, prepare some rituals ahead of time (I wouldn't even let your players create rituals unless they really know the rules), and use the quick & dirty ritual rules. Roll & shout. It'll be fine.

I'm pretty sure I want most of the default stuff, I'm just not entirely sure that I want it distributed as it is. Which is why I wanted to see if anyone's had experience with consolidating or expanding the number of paths.

Specific feats I'm going to need include magic lasers, force-field jackets, flight, force fields, dimensional travel, forcibly shapeshifting people into tiny forms, throwing around elemental damage, etc.

I /don't/ want stuff like divining the future with any regularity (it only shows up in the source material as a specific Rare Skill that only works twice a year) and casual healing. I do, however want scrying... but by conjuring Mage Eye effects. So I was thinking of dropping the Path of Augery and replacing it with the Path of Dimensionalism, and then throwing ranged scrying under the path of Arcanum.

Other thing I was wondering about was simply collapsing each type of effect into one of the local styles instead, like MidChildean or Belkan, in which case I'd end up with only 2 paths, which felt like it might be too little. Which is why I asked for advice about how many there should be.

I've found that requiring your players to have 2-3 "mastered" spells that they'll use commonly is nice for getting them to speed up a bit. Using the incantation system from Dungeon Fantasy also worked out a bit better for me, if only because 1 roll feels a lot better than the dozens you need for the standard RPM system.

>I /don't/ want stuff like divining the future
Then it's should be written in your magic system as core: "Magic can't se the futere, many try, but nothing happens. Still here many gypsy fortunetellers, who can tell you about your futere, or just something you want to hear"
>I do, however want scrying... but by conjuring Mage Eye effects.
Then you can make path for that. Something like "Rulers in every time want to know what their people or enemies said about them, So they hire many spyes, but as time goes on that spyes asks mages to help them. And somewhere here was born Path of Eavesdropping"
Path of Eavesdropping, "Wizard Eyes" "Basic models" -- eye, ear. range of transmitting = path skill, looks like as eye or ear of wizard who create it, - lbs, require ready to intstall on surface/object.
Sense -- for finding consealed "Wizard Eyes" QC ritual vs ritual as spell ward.
Strengthen -- for adding "extra capabilities to your Wizard Eyes" as increasing range of transmitter or adding extra senses.
Restore -- heal your damaged "Wizard Eyes" and idk what else.
Control -- wiretap on someone's "Wizard Eyes" QC ritual vs ritual as spell ward.
Destroy -- for destroing or disabling enemy "Wizard Eyes".
Create -- for creating new "Wizard Eyes".
Transform -- givin to object "Wizard Eyes" capability.

That's... Tough. One of the reasons that RPM is so good is that it can leverage SO MUCH of GURPS, so if you know a lot of GURPS you can use all that knowledge in RPM, which is great. But if you don't know it, I hope you're a fast learner user.

Oh. I hate gurps with such challenges.
Like if i as GM said we have game about wilderness exploration, so "hey-hey navigation-20, survival-18!", if i sad we play some detective action, so "detective-20, clues fuck yeah", and when they meet something where they need to think as players, or i GM something for what they don't have related skills these bitches cry and whine as bitches "mah points i creating that character so hard but you gmish pig abused me and raped my character with your gm priveleges".
With [other system reference] such problem wasn't so Problem. So i think it's more like not about players, but more about system dependency in psychology of players.

>Oh. I hate gurps with such challenges.
>Like if i as GM said we have game about wilderness exploration, so "hey-hey navigation-20, survival-18!", if i sad we play some detective action, so "detective-20, clues fuck yeah", and when they meet something where they need to think as players, or i GM something for what they don't have related skills these bitches cry and whine as bitches "mah points i creating that character so hard but you gmish pig abused me and raped my character with your gm priveleges".

D&D 5E is even worse though. If you have a ranger, you RAW cannot do any wilderness exploration and get lost or run out of food.

The idea of posting it in GURPS thread was more about navigating through all the issues with GURPS, including things listed by you. You know, the same situation where you don't allow magic user pick Flight spell or anything similar while walking through a maze made out of 15 meters tall walls.

>same situation where you don't allow magic user pick Flight spell or anything similar while walking through a maze made out of 15 meters tall walls
You there only two ways
>We playa game about hunting cows and someone gets Hunting (Cows)-20 and Solving Puzzles-20, so after start cow is caught, puzzles solved and game is over.
or
>We playa game about hunting cows and when someone gets Hunting (Cows) or Solving Puzzles GM screeches FUCK YOU and rip down all charsheets
But both ways have much less fun than
>We playa game about hunting cows and someone gets Hunting (Cows)-11 or Solving Puzzles-10 and everyone had very satisfying game about hunting down that one fuckin cow and solving her puzzles
And main problem of having third way is "mah points i creating that character so hard but you gmish pig abused me and raped my character with your gm priveleges"
"If you have a hammer everything looks like a nail" is big problem in GMing games where players can freepick any option at character creation and have Global Problem like navigation, foraging, finding clues, weather, driving and etc as defining part of gameplay.
As speking of that Fly thing afair in [other system reference] you can learn it at 5th level and to reach 5th level you need around 3-5 months of weekly games. But, well, easy access to spells is really skeleton key, not only in [other system reference].

How do I only assign DR to certain body parts in GCS? I want DR only on my right arm, but I have no clue how to do it.

The real answer to the issue at hand is flat-out stating to the players they are going into an adventure into the wild, where they will meet hostile environment, hostile animals, hostile natives, unknown cultures, unknown places, will need a lot of different gear to fight against both other beings and the land itself, the extra reward for finding resources and suitable places for settlements and military outposts, testing navigability of rivers...
... can you see the steadily inflating number of skills needed to pull that exploration scenario?

So it's very easy to end up with your party preparing either too broad or too much or just right, but either way nobody has any single skill that can solve everything with one roll. At worst, you will end up with group of characters that come with backgrounds trying to cover each other or everyone making the same character, so they will quickly alternate their skills and stats to gain bigger variety.
Either way, it's a matter of presenting the game and goals for the party, so they feel the need to spread their skills, rather than keeping all eggs in the same basket.

After all, what good Hiking-18 is, when you have no fucking clue about Drawing (Maps). And nobody in the party does. How are you going to chart that region then? And who is going to do the hunting? Assuming there IS something to hunt for in the first place.

Well, I always recommend a session zero, so people actually make characters together and you, as the DM, can remind them of shit like this.

>GURPSGEN
>DM

...

Can someone give me a rundown on the different magic paths? Not sure what I'm looking for.

It's funny but I like people that have those kinds of skills in those situations. Being able to reliably pass checks makes them feel like the points they put in are useful and means that any clues or encounters I put out aren't at the mercy of them passing a dice roll to show up.

There's no detective skill, but let's say you mean all the skills you'd expect for a detective. I don't mind providing a list of small clues a person with Search 20 finds on a body and around a crime scene, or a list of suspects with normally hidden traits revealed by clever use of Research, Interrogation, Streetwise and Observation.

Yes, this means the player is going to win at test involving the skill, even ones with hefty penalties, but they still have to put together the data they have.

I like magic less for this, as often a player doesn't use it to gather clues and survive in the wilderness, but instead to bypass the wilderness, and to lazily ask magic to solve a crime for them. It's not an interesting use of magic, so I'll rarely run games where divination is real or reliable enough for anything but cryptic clues.

Well, it's kind of important for everyone to know what you are looking for. Do you have any idea already what kind of magic user you want to play? Or how is the magic of the setting run by your GM?

I'm a GM looking to get into GURPS. I'm looking for magic that is primarily slow and ritualistic, but powerful. Maybe allow one or two "rapid" firing spells for combat, but very weak and generally not as good as just firing a gun.

Open the advantage, click to "Features", change or add a feature "Gives a DR bonus of" X to "The right arm".

To edit an advantage, just double click on it.

Ritual Path Magic is all you need then, going by your description.

There is no right arm, there is only arms.

I have a /r/equest of anyone that owns New/Like New copies of the GURPS Basic Characters and Campaigns books. I'd like a tightly cropped high-resolution scan of each book's front cover (as clean as possible...that is to say, free of any glare/background lighting reflecting off of them). You see, i'm going to do a series of "Powered by GURPS" miniature scenarios mostly consisting of battles from books/movies/television shows/etc and i'd like to superimpose the media in question over the covers of the main GURPS books. If you able to scan other major books, such as High-Tech Martial Arts, I would appreciate the gesture even further :-).

(Pictures of the book covers *were* posted in the previous GURPS thread, but they are ones that I have already seen on Google Images and, for my projects, they are too low in resolution.)

I'm really confused as to what you mean by superimposing media over the covers, and by what exactly it is you are making.

Why not just buy the books and scan them yourself? Do you not own any of them?

Yeah I agree with you 100%. If the game hinges only on a player's ability to pass a die roll all the time, then the campaign isn't intrinsically interesting.

Is it not better to just use a capture of the pdf covers? Much better quality, I believe.

A mystery should still be fun even if they find all the clues in a given location. I find it's harder to make one fun with random rolls. The chance that a critical clue might be missed can make the story hard to keep on track.

Maybe you should tell us what resolution you need? There was a 1323x1723 image up.

Maybe I'm just dumb but is Druid a bad class in dungeon fantasy? I just cant' see any way to get the druid to a place where you aren't strictly worse then other options.

It's pretty shit, yeah. I gave it access to healing spells, and changed its power modifier to be more forgiving and to include a vow to protect nature.

I think you have to seriously modify the spell list for them to be good, though.

is the new dungoen fantasy pdf out?

Buy it.

No, seriously, buy it. Things that go to the pdf storage are decade or so old on principle and often are only sold as pdf format at this point, with no physical copies.
At least support the company a bit, so they can see the sales of GURPS, rather than making n-th edition of Munchkin.

In any case: The new stuff doesn't seem to have hit the trove yet. It's pretty good, but most if it is covered in Dungeon Fantasy PDFs in the trove already.

Maybe free up their attributes a little or at least focus them more? As it stands they are too scattered to be very good at anything, sort of a 3rd place wizard or warrior. Lightning is a neat enough spell, but they gas out fast in combat and end up standing around with a sling, doing not very much at all to help.

A while back, some user posted a pdf that one of their players had created about sounds and hearing distances and decibels including things like how far away you would hear gunshots and hearing modifiers.

Anyway, like the user I am, I laughed internally at the autism involved in such a project.

And now, sheepishly, I ask if anyone has that PDF and could they post it here and I promise never to internally laugh at anyones hard work again...

Thank-you!

There are a couple changes that came in later splats and Pyramid articles that help the Druid out a bit. One of the easiest ones was sliding their mana-equivalent in their favor; instead of always operating at a penalty in a dungeon and at +0 in nature, have them operate normally in a dungeon and at a bonus when I'm the wilderness. Another thing (which also helps the Barbarian, and to a much lesser extent, the Scout) is to not gloss over overland travel--give the survivalists something to do--and DF: Wilderness Adventures is perfect for that.

Overland hiking.

How do you deal with being knocked off a ledge? DX roll to hang on? I can't find specific rules except for the clinging advantage.

By being creative? You can make a DX roll to hang. You can use Jump to, you know, jump over the guy pushing you out. You can use any of the hand-combat skill to drop the guy instead. You can Climb. Use Clinging advantage. Hell, fucking Hiking roll might prevent you from slipping down.
Sky is the limit.

ST is much better for holding on, as it simulates grip strength, though you could do DX.

>he knocked you off the ledge
>nuh-uh, I jump over him

I think you get a DX roll to catch yourself unless knockback was enough to send you yards past the ledge. At least, Dungeon Fantasy lists DX roll as a save vs pitfalls.

Yeah, jumping over a charging foe is a dodge, not a save after the fact.

DODGE&RETREAT!

>simulates grip strength
"Grip strength chack vs TN 14"
Srsly. ST in gurps isnt something that can be easy used in checks like Str in d&d.
Its always looks like "You need to check against your mass to see can you lift that golden boulder or not".

I actually think HT would be the best attribute for such a check as it's endurance related (or even "you can hang from a ledge for seconds equal to your current FP; every turn thereafter, succeed at an HT roll or fall); maybe allowing a ST roll as a complementary skill (in this case, complimentary attribute check which was covered in Pyramid).

>Covered in Pyramid
Sorry, I misspoke. It's not in a pyramid, but in ghostdancer's blog (which means at some point it could be in a pyramid article).

Don't drown, gurps-guys, i want to hear your suggestions and help on how to model Exalted Essence and Charms in GURPS or I will be ashamed of myself and must drop GURPS and learn how to GM stupid storytelling system instead.
Essence is like fuel from gods for activating charms and artifacts. Characters have inner pool of essence (small) and peripheral pool (bigger), and using peripheral means you fabulously fuckbright gloving as christmas tree at moonles night.
Using FP and ER for that too much costly. Really costly as inner size is around 13 points and peripheral 33 points.
Charms is imbue-like schticks and techniques tied to skill, and representing supernatural capabilities of mastering that skill. Like Mastering archery/weapon/musical instrument allows you summon phantom arrows at lower tiers, and summoning phantom weapon or instrument at higher. Or with Athletics he easily balancing while running on wires, run on a par with racing horses, jumping over large distances/ojects.
For them it seems buy advantages related to mastered skill for recreating charms from book is obvious way, but it is sink for too much points on something useless, for one wow-effect trick, such as summoning phantom steed to ride.

Honestly I don't see the difficulty. There are several ways to do this, the most straight forward being standard Powers stuff with a customized power modifier and a nuisance effect (you give away your nature and become very obvious) attached to the bigger external ER pool. Use Sorcery guidelines for per-ability FP cost, or use a limitation as a part of the power modifier that requires a skill roll and one for the FP being based on the MoS.

The ER isn't that expensive for a solar or whomever; in GURPS, an exalt is gonna be worth a lot of points no matter which way you slice it.

DX roll to catch yourself. Generally assume most people will have enough ST to support their weight with a hand on a ledge, if they have to hang there for more then a couple seconds an HT roll to resist pain and fatigue.

Gurps lite for babby's first gurps xcom campaign, with a potentially long lifespan.

What would you suggest adding to that, hypothetically, with a preference for brevity of rules.

How well does GURPS do theatre-of-the-mind combat?

Not terribly well. Many of the combats have specific ranges and speeds that can get confusing fast if your players stop paying attention for a split-second. Strongly recommend a hexmap.

I've been doing fine, but most of our combat is 4 rounds of everyone panicking until someone gets accidentally shot.

You should probably stick to lite and basic until you find yourself lacking something, but:
High tech, Ultra tech for equipment and alien stuff
Powers for weird alien abilities
Psionic Powers for weird alien psi stuff

It's okay, but you have to make some concessions for the lack of a map and it can be harder for the GM. In single combat it's easy, 4 vs 4 is quite a bit more challenging.

Me, I keep it simple. Front line, back line. Close Combat can hit the front line only unless there's nobody left in the front line or you pass a acrobatics check. Stepping from front to back line takes an action.

Sorry for the miscommunication:

What would i be missing from *lite* that i would need for a campaign, which i would need to grab from basic set?

Really depends on what you want. I guess xcom sounds like it could call for some of the gritty combat realism options, like hit locations, bleeding and such.

Oh, Gadgeteering/Inventing, if you want to game the negroengineering of alien tech and development of your own.

Easily. I've played GURPS for about 15 years, GMed for about 10, and have never once used mapped/gridded combat. The most detailed I get for range/positioning is using Range Bands from Action 2 and loose "zones" + points of interest.

Theatre of the mind is the default GURPS assumption. Note that Tactical Combat (the grid rules) is completely segregated to its own chapter and explicitly listed as entirely optional. It's a plug in, not an assumption.

That pic is another poor adventurer that fell for the "it's a 10-foot pole" line.

A question for you guys:
I'm currently running a GURPS alt-history alchemypunk game (a world where newton discovered and formalized the study of magic, alchemy's a term for both the wizardly magic and the apothecary kind).

Do any of you know any good sourcebooks for alchemical practices? I have the GURPS magic sourcebook, but that only has one section on alchemy.

I'm looking at making a Brutal Legend style game with heavy metal being the magic system in the game. Any tips on how to make this work?

Start with RPM, ritual adept, and ban conditional spells.

crib ceremonial magic.

Some kinda series of quick contests or one regular contest that has a battle of the bands style mechanic where getting the crowd to like your music more than the other performer's/magician's will counter any magic they are trying to cast.

I've never played Brutal Legend.

What do you mean by RPM?

Ritual Path Magic.

>Do any of you know any good sourcebooks for alchemical practices
Thaumatology, Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic, Fantasy, Steampunk 1: Setting and Style, alchemy-related articles in Pyramid (there are lots), Weird Science; I'm sure there are more but those are the most pertinent off the top of my head.

It's good. I don't do maps except for dungeon crawl games, and that's like only 10% of my GURPS games.

There's a magical food/alchemy variant of Sorcery in one of the latter issues of Pyramid, and RPM has an alchemy subsection.

In your setting, is alchemy a complex science that builds on the experiments of the past to produce stable reliable components, or is alchemy more of an art where practitioners throw stuff together in the field and get FUN results? The list approach works best for the former; you need to combine specific components in specific ways or you end up with junk. The free form approach works better with "alchemy as art" or when its power comes from symbolism and throwing a feather and aqua vitae in a mortar and pestle gets you a Potion of Flight.

...

High point totals. Heavy metal is heavy power.

Limit the players to TL 5-6 weapons, but encourage them to use close combat weapons. Guns should be there, but mostly useful for blasting minions and weak people. Dark magical amulets or tattoos to provide Deflect Missiles fit for heroes.

If you want Ritual Path Magic then interments can serve as casting implements to give bonuses to some spells.

Im a fairly experienced GM who has never run GURPS before. On recommendation from Veeky Forums anons, I plan on using GURPS for my upcoming space opera game. What splatbooks should I use? I'm getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of material in the MEGA.

General rule is to stick to basic, until you need something.
The rest depends on what you want from your space opera. If you want space fencing, GURPS Martial Arts is good. If you want some fancy space tech, GURPS Ultratech. If you want your aliens to have weird abilities, GURPS Powers and GURPS psionic powers are good books. If you want to autistically generate space systems and aliens, you might want GURPS Space. If you want detailed space ships and dogfighting etc, GURPS Space Ships 1 to 8 or whatever number they're at by now.

I like to be prepared, and I've got a lot of time before the game starts. I'll take a look at GURPS Space and Space Ships

I'd even run a one shot with just the rules from GURPS Lite, and skim other books if you're interested. Start adding rules as and when you think you'll need them - not before. It will make the whole thing run smoother.

Well, alright. I'll take your advice.

He said he was an experienced GM, so it shouldn't be a problem.

I'd still definitely read Basic, and pull in stuff that you like from there. Lite just has all the rules you need for your first session in one place. Basic can be a bit confusing and information you need can be all over the place.

The key thing about GURPS is you don't need all the rules. You probably won't need magic for example. So just skip that section and come back later if it DOES come up.

Also, I'd read How To Be A GURPS GM after you've finished reading at least Lite. It's quite short and has a lot of advice which is very good. It also has some slightly outdated advice on which books are good to use for different genres.

What skill would I use to heal a dragon?

Vetinary? First Aid? I have hidden lore (dragons) which I suppose would at least let me try.

Veterinary, generally. Intelligent dragons may instead be treated with physician, though at a penalty if you aren't a specialist in dragon medicine.

You can First Aid anything, generally without penalty. You need Physician or Vet that matches you are trying to treat.

Broadsword

Can someone please point out the best melee weapon for an ST 10 character in TL3 game?

Shield.

It really depends on the DR you're facing and whether you're 1h or 2h and whether you can fight in a formation with allies or not.

Out of the Basic set:

For 1h the numbers say a Broadsword + Shield if you can afford it or a Hatchet + Shield if you can't. Do this if you don't have allies you can get behind.

For 2h you want a Halberd. Stand behind someone with a shield and attack over or around them. Do this if you do have allies you can get behind.

With 1h anything with more than about 2 DR is going to be pretty immune to you. That becomes about 4 DR with the halberd.

A large buckler (roman scutum for instance) and a rapier

Is it even possible without a shield or shield is a "must have" regardless of anything?

If you are really good fencer, your parry might be good enough to go without shield.
I find open hand (preferably with chainmail glove) to be a really cool gimmick, but still a gimmick.
Shields is just the most practical choice before you go into buts and ifs.

Not that user - but can you explain the gimmick?
Open hand for parrying with offhand?

For grabbing things, be it opponent's weapon or opponent himself.

It is certainly possible without a shield but not having one tanks your defenses (that DB adds to all defenses even if you don't use the shield to Block).

If your Dodge and Parry are high enough that a +1 or +2 (or +3 with a large shield but that hurts your attacks) to each isn't a help then skip the shield. Even a fencer should have a buckler IMO.

If you have Dr on your hand, you can unarmed parry with it.
If you have certain unarmed skills trained, you can use it to parry-> disarm or other tricks.

Either way pits your hand in the way of heavy sharp pieces of metal....so...

What's a good self defense weapon for TL 10^?