Dilettante Game Design and More: Role-playing game goodies including GURPS Gulliver, other GURPS add-ons, and even non-GURPS stuff.

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Distance and defense: Tiny tweak for GURPS combat

Posted Tue, 2010-02-02 15:56 by tbone
Combat at ranges

Here's a minor, yet-untested melee idea that came up during chatter over some GURPS combat scenarios:

Closing a distance gap to attack gives the defender more time to react than starting out close enough to strike. Game that with this simple rule:

  • If the attacker needs to Step or Move to get within striking Reach, the defender gains +2 on Active Defense.
  • If the attacker begins his turn within striking Reach (even if he chooses to Step or Move anyway), there is no mod to Active Defense.
  • If the attacker begins his turn and strikes in close combat, the defender takes -2 on Active Defense. 

The first case represents having to first move to get within striking distance, handing the defender extra time (as well as an extra, clearly visible indicator that the attack is coming). 

The second case above is the default combat norm: You're already within range to strike, and you do so. Nothing special going on.

The third case helps model the "roaring and punching" aspect of close-combat free-for-all. Attacks come from so close, and thus come so fast, that it's hard to defend against them (or even see them coming in the first place).

All extremely simple to play out when using a hex map. How will it change combat? I expect the following: Read more...

Games Diner posts in 2009

Posted Thu, 2009-12-31 11:52 by tbone
End of Year

Looking back on a year in which I didn't think I posted much, I see that my output actually wasn't that bad! A review for those who missed the excitement:

New GURPS rules articles

The "Rules Nugget" series of small, simple rules saw a good handful of additions, with articles for adding "just a flesh wound" grazes, shield cover, and shield size considerations to combat. Two other articles resurrected and renewed older rules for a new ST-based damage progression and a revised Toughness stat that's perfect for action heroes.

Old GURPS articles refreshed

The old GURPS Diner provided fodder for the wizards out there: freshly-polished and 4e-friendly articles on Magic skill and magical languages. This site's old ESCARGO and FEND articles also got the 4e treatment. A very old bunch of miscellaneous house rules also came over to this site, although still in 3e-centric format.  

Miscellaneous new goodies

The biggie for me in 2009 was the appearance of the GURPS Range Ruler, in collaboration with SJG, as an e23 freebie download. My thanks to the good folks at Steve Jackson Games for turning this into a real GURPS tool! 

Ben Finney contributed MERC, a fresh look at what is and isn't important in dice rolling and gameplay based on modern-day game design advances. Go take a look if you haven't!

Other fun bits include an idle idea for GURPS Banestorm releases, a look at noted game The Riddle of Steel and the use of dice pool mechanics, a system for pricing skill breadth in GURPS (including Talents and Wildcard skills), a reworking of specialized throwing skills using COSH, and notes on designing dinosaurs and designing characters with tails. 

See the year's whole list of articles, in alphabetical order, at the end.

What's next?

If you're a gamer-writer, I guarantee you've got a frighteningly-long list of topics and projects you want to tackle... someday. Same here: both new gaming articles, and more outtakes and updates from the old stuff (especially the old GULLIVER). 

But recently I've been revisited by something that was long absent: that obsession to work on my homebrew Project T. Years in the vapor-making, it's something I've only tackled it in bits and spurts over the years. Thanks to the discovery of some great helpful resources, I'm keen to scribble and test anew – and I've learned very well that when the urge to work visits, it's best to chain it down and milk it for all it's worth. So that'll be my focus for as long as it takes to release the project.

That plan aside, your suggestions for updates, additions, and new features are always very welcome. Please visit a whole lot in 2010! Read more...

Sports throwing skills in COSH

Posted Sat, 2009-11-07 15:33 by tbone
Discus throw

Peering inside the old GULLIVER for GURPS 3e, I was struck by a tidbit that should have made it into COSH, the system for modifying and building combat skills in 3e. The old GULLIVER nicely details some throwing skills for use in sports, not combat, generally handing them a hefty distance bonus in exchange for encumbrance penalties, a Ready requirement, and a big TH penalty. (Yes, a TH penalty. Track-and-field javelin, hammer, discus, and so on never require the thrower to actually hit something. What the heck? Let's get some man-sized targets out there, and go Spartan on the next Olympiad!)

If this sort of thing piques your rarified interests, break out the COSH page along with a copy of GULLIVER LITE for 3e (see links above), and read along: Read more...

GURPS Range Ruler launched on e23!

Posted Fri, 2009-11-06 16:42 by tbone
GURPS Range Ruler

It's here! Steve Jackson Games' e23 Store now offers the Range Ruler, a tool for finding battle map combat ranges without counting hexes. It's based on a design I submitted to SJG, and after a kind reworking by the pros there, maintains pretty much the same look, down to the the corny text and this site's URL.

(About the only thing not there is my requisite attempt at an abbreviation. The best I could do was GURPS Range Indicator Plank (GRIP), to which Dr Kromm sagely suggested the much better GURPS Range Increment Plotter, before someone apparently nixed abbreviations altogether. Probably for darn good reason!) 

Best of all for you, the GURPS Range Ruler (GRR?) is FREE! It won't cost you a shekel. (If you'd like to offer a kind word or other token in thanks, please do so!) So print some out, arm the table, and get down and tactical on any surface, with or without battle maps. Oh, and while you're on e23, buy GURPS stuff. It's fun!

GURPS Range Ruler

Very tiny GULLIVER LITE for 3e update

Posted Fri, 2009-11-06 15:34 by tbone
Crier

The old GULLIVER LITE distillation of my GULLIVER for GURPS 3e rules is still available for all the retro 3e players out there. I noticed an embarrassing boo-boo in the text, though: long-outdated URL and email info. I updated those, took the opportunity to improve wording in a few more spots, and, despite no changes even worth noting, upgraded the version number from 1.1 to 1.2 just for the cheap rush of power. It's downloadable now, should anyone actually need it.

(Unrelated tech tangent: I'm pleased to see that ol' AppleWorks 6 still chugs along in OS X.) 

Oh, and an added note for the masses playing GURPS 4e: Don't forget that GULLIVER Mini now exists as a nice, free one-page expansion for building and playing critters of any size in GURPS 4e. If you haven't downloaded it, go get it now; if you have a gaming website, please let your readers know about it!

"Magic" Skill for GURPS

Posted Sat, 2009-10-24 17:41 by tbone
wizard

GURPS was long funny in that it offered skills for each and every specific application of magic (i.e., hundreds of spells), but no skill to cover a mage's overall understanding of magic itself.

Such a skill – name it Magic for simplicity – both fills that gap and lets you fine-tune magic in your campaign, in at least 10 fun ways. This old article was written for GURPS 3e and its Magic skill is at least partially duplicated by the Thaumatology skill that later appeared in GURPS Grimoire and then 4e Basic Set, but the notes may hold a new idea or two for your 4e games. Read more...

T Bone's Miscellaneous Old House Rules (GURPS 3e)

Posted Sat, 2009-10-24 16:57 by tbone
old house

Most old house rules have been absorbed into other works on this site. On this page are a few miscellaneous 3e tweaks – some much used, others tasted and soon forgotten – that didn't fit elsewhere. (A few now have some sort of simulacrum in GURPS 4e.)

It's all ramshackle old stuff (1997 or earlier!), but might contain something of interest for your modern GURPS game. Read more...

Pricing breadth: Talents and Wildcard skills in GURPS

Posted Fri, 2009-10-16 15:41 by tbone
Warning

Here's a quick example of putting the ideas in Game design musing: Pricing breadth in skills to work:

GURPS' Wildcard skills (BS 175) allow purchase of multiple skills for the price of three; Talents (BS 89) allow a bonus to many skills (plus other minor benefits) for a fraction of the eventual cost of full levels in those skills. Both share fuzziness in common: There's no stated limit on on how many skills a Wildcard skill covers (so why stop at 10 if the GM will allow 20?), and you can freely choose the number of skills a Talent covers, within the limits of its group size (gee, should I take one skill or six for the same 5-point cost of a small group?). 

There's no big problem in all that, but what if you wanted more varied costs to reflect the number of skills covered? The "Zeno's method" suggestion in those breadth rules offer a solution: Read more...

Rules Nugget (GURPS): New Damage for ST

Posted Tue, 2009-10-13 19:13 by tbone
Thor for the win

Intro: Refinishing the table

What's wrong with GURPS' table linking ST scores to thrust and swing damage? Nothing! It's done its job for over 20 years, and so far no one's gotten hurt. (Except all those on the target end of ST 14, 2d swings, of course.)

But a little thing like "it works well enough" never thwarts the compulsive rules hacker! Nay, the tinkerer's quibbles must out.

First, wouldn't it be swell if damage followed ST in a neat, linear relationship? (Necessary, no; nice, yes.) That's certainly not the case now, where neither thrust nor swing damage follows any observable pattern connecting it to ST. 

Second, what's with the relationship (or lack thereof) between thrust and swing values? For a while, swing damage is roughly twice thrust damage (clearly so at ST 14 and ST 22), but then begins to increase more slowly, until it tops out at only thrust + 2d for very high ST scores. That means the higher the ST, the more that thrust and swing become effectively the same thing.

Below is an optional reworking of the damage table that addresses both of those quirks with clean, easy-to-remember damage values. The progression is so regular that you'll only need a small subset of the table on paper or in your head, with all other values computable on the fly! Read more...

Rules Nugget (GURPS): Revised Toughness

Posted Fri, 2009-10-09 02:47 by tbone
Cannonball in the gut

Intro: "Go ahead, runt, punch me in the gut."

Imagine that's the growl of a hulking bully with an Olympic wrestler's build. And imagine that your physique is more that of... er, a guy who once gamed a wrestler PC. (Did you have to imagine hard?)

It's easy to imagine that your best punch to his gut – or just about anywhere beefy – simply won't hurt the guy. At all. Oh, maybe a few dozen punches would start some bruising, sure, but you don't get that chance; his first punch has you coughing up the lunch money as soon as your limbs start working again.

Using GURPS' or most any RPG's combat system, the mismatch won't quite play out as described above. It will when the bully's high damage meets your puny Hit Points; no problem there. But as long as your punch is capable of dealing some damage, you will hurt the bully – at least a point of hurt, which in GURPS is not trivial. (If your punch can roll zero damage, then you might not hurt him, true – but that roll won't hurt a weakling, either.) Most RPGs have no mechanism that lets a strong fellow shrug off minor impacts without damage.

Below is a revised Toughness trait for GURPS that represents resilience from thick muscles. It's as good as DR against crushing damage, letting a hero laugh off weak punches. Yet Toughness isn't DR; a weak knife slash will still cut you, and a stab to the heart can kill. Read more...

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