GURPS general /gurpsgen/

:O

:(.

So, citizens of /GURPSGEN/, what are your favorite books?
I'll start.

I want to run a campaign based on "Welcome to Leith", but instead of racists it's cultists. There's one odd dude who just moved in town, he seems alright enough, but he's always wandering off in the woods by himself, and doesn't talk much

The cultists probably moved to the town cuz of leylines or something. First dude was just scouting to make sure that it's A: Rural enough that they can take the town over safely B: Test out the ley lines

Would GURPS be a good system for a game like that? What books should I use? The players will probably either be A: Residents of the town or B: Someone already on the trail of the Cult, I want them to have some sort of stake in the story, whether that be I really want to take down this cult, or I'm doing this for my family and friends

I'm feeling very intimidated at the prospect of running a GURPS game for the first time. I'm learning the system for the first time, and the purpose of learning it is specifically to run a game.

Are there any guides or some kind of tip box for how to proceed? Something like a list of mistakes to avoid, best practices, etc?

Do you think my GM would allow me to play as Asparagus?

GURPS is great for this; you can have them make 'mundane' PC's, and then slowly dial up the crazy as you go

Robin's guide to good game mastery
GURPS for dummies

Both linked in the OP

Yes, there's specifically a book called "How to be a GURPS GM", written for peeps like you and veterans alike

Anyways, for some more personal tips

- START WITH GURPS LITE. It's in the thread near the top, someone made a shitty cover for it. GURPS lite is basically all the essentials for GURPS, that's technically all you would ever need to run a GURPS game, every other rule is optional. Read through the book, if there's a rule that you want that's not in the book, then you can start looking at the Basic set, but until then, don't bother

- When building enemies / NPC's, don't worry about point costs or anything, just give them whatever seems appropriate, no need to go flipping back and forth checking if that one skill is hard or very hard

- If you want your character creating life to be much easier, check out the GURPS Character Assistant, available in the trove (Hint for getting into the trove: Those top two pictures are PDF's). It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do making a character will take you 10 minutes, tops

If you ever have any other questions, feel free to ask here.

How many points would a "mundane" PC be?

50/-25
At most 100/-59

...

Gurpsday!

Fuck yeah

Punched out a second chat log recap for you bastards today

wp.me/p3tZqv-nc

Why is the katana the best sword in the game?

Is there a way to describe fatigue use to people?

I have a mage in a group of normies and they are happy for him to be in a near constant state of FP spending on spells and then meditation to recover it just to do it again. I'm having a hard time making it clear that this is something that takes a lot of effort on the part of my character, or does it not and I'm the one who doesn't understand?

Man, you gotta get deep in your descriptions; how the firebolts you throw draw from the fire of your soul! How healing the party takes some serious lifting! The sweat of your brow! The lethargy of exertion! THE HIP DRAHVE OF YOUR PERFECT FORM

Does it really take like half an hour to build a character? What if I just want to make quick NPC's or some shit?

>When building enemies / NPC's, don't worry about point costs or anything, just give them whatever seems appropriate, no need to go flipping back and forth checking if that one skill is hard or very hard

I've collapsed twice keeping them alive in combat, in spite of having no proper combat spells. They think me spending 12 hours a day doing wind magic to move our ship faster is just peachy fine. While they have time to practice skills and such, I'm unable to study more spells, even with taking 1 FP each from them in a ceremony.

They paying you a share? An extra stipend because you're so reasonably fucked and put out?

You've TOLD THEM all this, right? Posed it at least to the gm?

>Does it really take like half an hour to build a character?

Your first time? Yeah, probably

Your second time? No

I get the same as everyone, including the guy who's only skill seems to be "sword", I mean he's good at it and all, but... it does feel a bit insulting.

I do get given spell books to learn new spells though, though now I think on it, the only ones they paid for was to learn the wind spells to move the ship faster.

Slings seem to be useless, why would you ever use one?

In fact, why were they used in real life warfare? I can understand using it to hunt small game or for pests, but it seems useless at warfare, throwing a rock isn't going to do much

I'm an armature at best, but I don't think I've ever heard of slings being used by any military force ever.

>Swing damage with a ranged weapon
>Piercing, so swing damage to the vitals
>Free, plentiful ammo
>Useless

Are you the same guy that was shittalking quarterstaves a few threads ago? I’m getting the same “missing the forest for the trees” vibe from this post.

The third time, though... This is where the real game begins.

Why "works only 50% of the time" is only worth -20%? Shouldn't it be -50%?

>Are you the same guy that was shittalking quarterstaves a few threads ago?

No

I'm not saying it can't do anything, I'm saying anything it can do a bow can do better

I have no sources and don't feel like fetching any, but I'm 100% sure that slings were used historically in warfare, by the Romans and by certain medieval armies (though they mostly used staff slings AFAIK)

Stay away from GURPS for Dummies.

It's completely unrealistic then

How can you kill a man by throwing a pebble?

Because it still works 100% of the time in situations where you can try multiple times.

Don't keep giving them the downtime to recover from fatigue loss. If they keep taking a lunch break after every fight you aren't making things urgent enough.

Welp, this means only one thing; hold their breath for ransom and take over the ship

Many disadvantages and limitations are priced under the assumption that a player won’t willingly cripple themselves and will take reasonable measures to work around them.

For example, say you had some ability that only worked from 6pm to 6am, so 50% of the time. While only available 50% of the time, it’s easy to avoid this as a player—just run missions at night. GMs should throw daytime encounters at you, but the drawback does not apply 50% of the ACTUAL GAME time. Thus, a -50% discount is overkill.

Whaaaaaa? Why?

Because it's shit tier. It's advice given by someone who only understands half the material they're giving advice about so you have to know more than they do to know what advice of theirs is blatantly wrong. Kind of defeats the purpose. Use How to be a GURPS GM instead.

Vehicles, of course.

Slings don’t just toss things. Those sling bullets can go stupidly fast.

I read it cover to cover; I did not get that impression at all

You already posted mine, so I'll post my second.

Fuck year, that ancient guns section

It would be hard to pick between this or Would be a pretty close third if you don't count the Low-Tech companions.

This makes sense, thanks.

They suggest taking the Do Nothing maneuver in combat and advertise Colorblindness from a purely muchkiny standpoint. It’s organization is somehow worse than the Basic Set too, at least in my opinion.

They've were used as a military weapon for a long time, Ancient Egypt used them, Homo and Xenophon talk about them, Julius Caesar comments on them, other Romans comment on slings being better than hun bows, and Spaniards even used than against invading Moors. It has a long military history, even without mentioning the new world.

Why in the world would you take a Do Nothing maneuver in combat?

Still don't see how it can go fast enough to kill a man

There’s no reason; that’s why it makes the book so bad. I think GfD reccommebds it as a “if you have nothing better to do” option, and even then, AOD (Dodge) is better.

According to some quick Googling, a blunt projectile (like a sling stone) needs a velocity of 45mps to break skin and 65mps to shatter bone. Some amateurs on a forum were posting speeds of 40-50mps. I also found a video were a guy managed to pierce a car hood, so there’s SOME speed there.

Don't forget the recommendation to lower HT (just don't lower it too much -- this given without any guidelines) and buy FP directly. Or that blatant house rules or complete misunderstandings are printed as RAW (karate giving two attacks). There are several things like this throughout.

It is the only GURPS related book I have ever bought that I regret.

What's wrong with buying FP directly?

Question about an Affliction that afflicts the (Total) Klutz disadvantage. How would it interact with a target that has more than 13 DX? Basic Set says you can select (Total) Klutz with a DX up to 13.
- Does this make the target immune to the affliction, such that it bounces off with no effect?
- Or is the target afflicted, but unaffected by the klutz effect, such that lowering the target's DX while afflicted would make the klutz effect kick in?

In general, does anyone know any examples of how prerequisites on afflicted advantages/disadvantages work?

As a gm, I'd rule the latter

Could I please hear your reasoning?

Anyone doing any kind of adventuring, like a PC, seems poorly served by a low HT, less than an 11 seems asking for trouble.

I mean, I agree, you need those HT rolls for when you're about to get knocked out, take a swig of that poisoned potion by mistake or get caught in a Stinking Cloud, but sometimes you just want the FP, either for spellcasting or extra manuevers, and 10 points is just too much

GfD’s recommendation was buying HT down specifically while buying FP up. That’s what we’re mocking.

Oh, sorry didn't realize

Yeah, that's utter bullshit.

Seems like it was a cash grab by someone who skimmed through lite

Is there a good guide on how to play a Berserk character? My usual go-to's failed (gaming ballistic, dungeon fantastic, no school grognard, let's gurps).

As in the Berserk disadvantage?

Yup, and anything related to it like the Berserkergang.
Apparently Daredevil is almost a must for these kind of characters and the disadvantage is underpriced at -10 points.

Nothing at all. The implication that FP is the most important aspect of HT and that buying down HT is somehow an optimization and generally useful is wrong.

GURPS for Dummies says this (in the Being the fitness nut section no less):
>But even with all of that, in many campaigns, HT is the attribute that you are most likely to lower for your typical character.
This is after pointing out all that HT does and without mentioning that doing so is buying a disadvantage.

In contrast, How to be a GURPS GM says this:
>Thus, while it makes little sense for a warrior to have less-than-average DX or HT, it makes almost no sense for him to have below-average ST.

The For Dummies book wasn't written for new players or GMs, it was written for playing in the authors' personal game. It takes more than 5x as many pages as the GURPS GM book and doesn't provide nearly as much useful information even if the blatantly wrong parts are ignored completely. It should be completely avoided, especially as better alternatives exist.

We're going to start a new campaign soon, and we're still not 100% set on a game

How do I convince a bunch of D&D fags to play GURPS?

High HT, Rapid Healing or Regeneration, 20+ HPs, and high self-control number. Remember that you have to roll self-control once all enemies are down to avoid attacking your friends. Without house rules you cannot Change Posture so if you get knocked down you flail around like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Beyond that, just follow the bullet points in the disadvantage description.

Let them pick templates then you build the optional parts and hand them back the completed character sheets (at least the first time). Keep the options to a minimum until they ask to do something specific (like hit locations). Familiarize yourself with the stuff that emulates the version of D&D you're used to (Attack of Opportunity for example). Drive home the fact that combat turns are one second long so lots of the tactical stuff D&D abstracts is explicit. Give out packets of character points so they get a big "level up" like boost in ability rather than a trickle of slow improvement.

Finally, if they get all they want out of D&D and aren't having to house rule stuff left and right to make things reasonable then maybe just stick with D&D.

>Let them pick templates

From where?

Not him, but Dungeon Fantasy if you're trying to ease the transition with a D&D-like game. If not, there are a bunch of options, but the lead contender IMO is Action.

Depends on how much work you want to do or how different your campaign is from existing material. If it is very different then you do all the work to create the templates (Template Toolkit 1 can help). If you're playing something similar to an existing series (Action, After the End, Dungeon Fantasy, Monster Hunters) then use the provided templates like said.

If you run into trouble ask here or on the forums.

Character of the day!
I like barbarians, high ST is fun, and I wanted to use the Organic Perfection from Weird Powers so I put both together.
It features a convenient variation of Outdoorsman that contains no Fishing or Mimicry but reduced the cost per level to 5, giving me some more points to work with.
There were no "jojo's pose" perk so I sued fearsome stare instead.

Shit, I just noticed by taking a level off sumo wrestling to buy deep sleeper I ended up with less than 20 points in combat skills. Well, never mind, just ignore the deep sleeper perk and consider sumo wrestling as DX [2]-13.

>There were no "jojo's pose" perk

I remember there specifically being something like that, but I can't remember

You could always just reflavour fearsome stare into a pose

But more importantly: is this barbarian fabulous?

Does anyone have a link to video of Steve Jackson roleplaying?

Well you've never had stones thrown at you if you think that, and a sling makes it even more dangerous. There's reasons why a bow is better than a sling, but that does not, in any way, make a sling less of a dangerous weapon.

Sling bullets are typically about an ounce and at 200 feet per second (strong man with a long sling and very good technique) have a 'launch' energy 53 joules. Their coefficent of friction sucks and that energy is held for only a short distance. An effective range of roughly 50' vs small game, while parabolic trajectories can deliver projectiles to an area target at considerable distance they do so with minimal energy, and were considered useful mostly for harassment.

TL/DR = Slings are mostly useful to drive off predatory animals and to harass people, not to try and kill.

It's an interesting twist. Sanitized metabolism and physical perfection are not things I instantly think of when I think Barbarian, but I get it with the Jojo reference.

>Sanitized metabolism and physical perfection
They do fit the Frazetta and 80s pinup style of Pulp Barbarian quite well though; oiled bodies, idealised physiques, loin cloths for the guys and metal bikinis for the gals. The most biological muck they produce is just enough sweat to get an attactive glean during a big action scene.

I'm loving these logs man, keep them coming

2:09 Gandalf G.: the minotaur swings at the horse’s torso !

the severed part flies off in an arc !

2:09 Ulm: (the horse has been struck down)

2:09 Gandalf G.: it was inevitable

2:09 Horsa: Horse panic

2:09 P.P. A.: Suðri: It was inevitable.

2:09 Ulm: (it is terrifying)

Holdover from 80s/90s orientalism and the good fortune to be just long enough to qualify as reach-2, traditionally wielded one-handed and blatantly intended for cutting swings all of which combine to put it in the optimal sword sweet-spot. It's real-life disadvantages (cuts being a little slower and harder to do, thrusts actually being awesome, a reach which is a little short for its weight, shitty guard, only able to deliver good cuts with the mid-blade) don't translate well into GURPS.

Slings are really cheap and really easy to carry. That makes them a favourite weapon for herdsmen and others who have to wander around a lot and sometimes want to kill wild animals. That translates into a tradition of sling use which means it's easy to find people who know how to use slings well in certain areas. The motions involved also translate well to (and from) handling javelins with thongs. Slingers were often armed with a javelin or two in addition to their slings.

By contrast, bows are fairly expensive, need a lot of care, have bigger logistics requirements, are awkward to carry and the people who tend to be good at them are huntsmen who are pretty rare in settled societies. In order to keep a decent number of archers trained, you need to put a lot of effort into making sure they practise with their bows well above the level which would deplete all the game in your forests. Hence why medieval rulers sponsored archery tournaments and had compulsory training days, when other sports were banned.

Incidentally, the pre-medieval Celts (especially in Britain) and the ancient Greeks were much more enthusiastic about slings than the Romans or Medieval Europeans and I don't think staff slings were widely used at any time.

Didn't you ask this in the last thread? If you don't meet the prerequisites of a trait, you can't be afflicted with it.

Gotcha, makes sense. It's a classic aesthetic.

It is cool to see how some things are handled.

>It is cool to see how some things are handled.
I had nearly forgotten how much the original lore and meta for dwarves in Grimwyrd was advertised to the players as being Dorf Fortress

If I'm not mistaken, Bomrek and Suõri were both named from DF name generators...

Question for you folks; in my most recent session chat dump, I had no accompanying map for the descriptions in the post. We're you able to follow along well enough?

wp.me/p3tZqv-nc

I'm considering inserting some reproductions of the old maps, but I'd have to build them from memory, as I was a doofus and didn't archive them on roll20 after using them

Okay, but were slings good weapons for warfare? They seem incredibly inaccurate, and I doubt just slinging a stone could kill an unarmored man, forget an armored one

Well, we know that people were killed by slingers. I'm not sure why you think it's so unlikely. If a guy had a rock on the end of a stick, it's pretty obvious that would make a dangerous weapon. A sling gives you just as much leverage as a stick and the rock has at least as much force as a swung mace when it leaves the sling. Air resistance cuts that down a bit, but it's still considerable when it hits. Also, military slingers often used lead bullets instead of stone, in order to cut down on air resistance and hit a smaller surface area with the same force.

Their accuracy and range probably might not have been that good when compared to an archer with similar time invested, but you often didn't have the choice of just recruiting a bunch of well-trained archers instead of slingers. You needed a whole different culture to support a population of archers. You work with what you have, not what you want. Also, accuracy was often considered rather optional for battlefield weapons; even archers were often used to fire long range volleys at large bodies of men, not individually aimed shots.

Here's a video of using a Roman Lead Bullet vs. Ballistic Gel:
youtube.com/watch?v=IHP-aoQUhlY

While it wouldn't cut clean through metal armor, it for sure would embed in there and do some damage

And if the troops were more poor and only had hide armors? I don't have a source currently, but I remember reading somewhere that Roman Surgeons had tongs specifically for removing sling bullets that had gone so deep into the body they couldn't dig it out

>Their accuracy and range probably might not have been that good when compared to an archer with similar time invested,

Yeah, compared to bows slings were signficantlly harder to get good at (Which is why it's a hard skill!), but if you got good, you could get deadly accurate. Here's a guy who's pretty handy at a sling, using rocks he found on the ground. Imagine a militia trained slinger, with actual bullets and a longer sling

youtube.com/watch?v=VCM2PKlRcZw

What do you guys think of this?

youtube.com/watch?v=U94q1eHwlf0

So Im trying to brainstorm some stuff for skeletons. Im going to have the skeletons be my mid range undead with zombies being the bottom rung.

The idea is that the skeletons arent necessarily stronger but that they are able to grasp some tactics depending how much 'energy' you put into them. First encounter Im going to have some sheild guys and some spear guys loosely grouped up and when my players get close theyre going to form a sheild line in front and a spear line behind. Simple tactics like that mostly.

The main thing Im left with figuring out is an interesting way to kill them other than just crushing. What Im thinking is they have various magical runes carved into them that animate them and keep them together. The runes act as magical control boards communicating with the other runes on the body. If you smash these runes they do extra damage and can stop communication to the limb they cobtrol. Otherwise, because they keep it together, you break a bone and its still controllable because of the magic in the runes. At least up until a certain point of damage that they cant keep together anymore and the skeleton crumbles.

Is this an interesting idea or is this just autistic?

That guys a global warming denier
youtube.com/watch?v=_ZHnjDJpkVc

Wouldn't trust him

Seems kind of plausible, but the obvious objection is why did nobody actually do it? People have tried all kinds of ways to make weapons throughout history and it seems like the kind of thing which pretty much anyone could think of. On the other hand, apart from a detachable spearhead being a weak point, I'm not sure what would make it bad. Maybe that was enough of an issue.

You could add a sling to a small spear, I guess, but there seems to be a lot of potential for error; mount the sling below the spearhead and you risk cutting your sling or bending your spear tip. Mount it on the butt and you need to have the spear point towards you which makes accidents rather dangerous.

Or you could use the staff of a staff sling as a club. As far as I can tell, that was done. Just use the big stick to hit someone, not rocket science. It's problematic in GURPS because staffs are overpowered and staff sling staves are generally that kind of awkward length where it isn't clear if it should be a 'short staff' or a 'quarterstaff' (which is a really bad name, since that term would be more commonly used for what GURPS calls a 'long staff') and the general issues of stick weapons.

Seems kind of overkill on the detail for generic footsoldiers. Magic runes you need to target seems more 'boss monster' to me.

When did we start automatically calling 'establishing setting rules' as being autistic about things?

Looks cool actually; you're right that the implementation might be troublesome. I could see you using Independent Body Parts (from Powers) with the limitation of specifically destroying the runes as part of eliminating the threat. I could also see, my first inclination, of just adding the Wounded disadvantage as written, possibly with a Bane/Vulnerability baked in to represent the rune being a "obvious but not obvious" weak point. Once you learn it, BOP goes the skeleton.

The basic problem is that it doesn't seem to offer anything a spear doesn't already do apart from be able to make multiple ranged attacks. You can throw a spear, bash someone with it or use if to cut things easily enough.

Staff slings were never popular. I'm not sure how much extra power they offered, but I don't think it was enough that many people were willing to give up shields or spend the extra time learning how to use one (and if you have a population willing to learn how to use staff slings, why aren't they training to use bows instead?).