ESCARGO

ESCARGO, that quirky reworking of skill costs in GURPS, is now updated for GURPS 4e. That doesn't call for any big changes, but as always, an update provides chance to polish lots of little rough spots.

It's quite a geeky excursion into game design, but pretty interesting stuff in my humble view. As always, your comments are hugely welcome!

http://www.gamesdiner.com/escargo

QUICK UPDATE: I just added an update of the downloadable PDF file, adding attribute costs and weapon defaults. If you checked out the ESCARGO update within a couple hours of its posting, please revisit and get the new PDF!

ESCARGO question.

A message from a correspondent, re ESCARGO:

----------

Instead of Ease:-1, Ease:+2, why not invert the sign and call it Difficulty.

Excellent question! Very slow response! Sorry!

So, a simple Ease +2 skill would become a Difficulty -2 skill. A difficult Ease -2 skill would become Difficulty +2. It's much more understandable then!

Well, I believe that your usage was the initial plan; "Difficulty" is, I agree, more natural as a label.

But after some mental juggling, I thought the math was more intuitive with Ease. The reason: an easy skill will *raise* your final level, so "+2" is intuitive; "-2" is arguably counterintuitive. And since we're talking about an easy skill, "Difficulty +2" sounds all wrong.

The solution that worked here was "Ease +2" -- though again, I agree that "Ease" is somehow clumsier as a word.