Banestorm for GURPS 4e, by Phil Masters and Jonathan Woodward How do you milk a fish? A milkfish, that is, the semi-aquatic Yrth mammal that offers meat, oil, and milk to its medieval domesticators. The brief description in GURPS Banestorm suggests a cross between a seal and a manatee. Plausible enough… but how do you get under a walrus-like beast? I get ahead of myself. Let’s dip into the Banestorm book itself first. (I’ve got the PDF version from e23; sorry, I can’t comment on the build of the hardback book. No pages have come loose in my digital version. : ) Involuntary relocation Banestorm is the “default” fantasy setting…
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Rules Bit (GURPS): A better cost for ST and HP
Intro: Repricing ST and its parts Some GURPS players have wished for a different pricing scheme for ST – specifically, one that lowers the high cost of building superheroes or other hyper-strength beings. This article offers one such scheme that vastly lowers the points required to build a battleship-smashing super. As a bonus, its cost progression can make building supers and giant creatures easier, not just cheaper. The scheme and its clever cost progression come courtesy of D. Weber. While the original idea is his, the accompanying text and expanded ideas are mine; anything screwy is my fault. The content below goes way back to the GURPS 3e days, was updated for 4e around 2013,…
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Quick quibbles with SM in GURPS 4e
I’m glad that 4e now incorporates something as simple and basic as a size for characters! SM, what took you so long? My friendly little quibbles with SM as s/he stands (Basic Set p 19) are as follows: 1) The official rule is to round a creature’s SM up – unless it’s a humanoid over 2 yards tall, in which case leave it at SM 0. I’d change that to “round to the nearest SM”. That neatly keeps humanoids, especially the countless hero PCs that top 6 feet, at SM 0 without special exceptions. (However, it does place 5’2″-or-shorter people at SM -1, for better or worse.) By that same…
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Gaming notes: Playing giants in any game system
Introduction Ogres. Hulking Trolls. Tree-sized giants. Mountain-sized Jotun. If they’re defined by a size bigger than us, then for this article, they’re all giants. Because whatever the specifics, they all share one thing in common: “TARG SMASH PUNY HUMAN!” I’m liberating the Big Games notes on gaming giants from my old GULLIVER rules for GURPS, to give them a proper new home within the Diner (with a little freshening-up too, including a pinch or two of content from other sections). Although I’ve got some GURPS 4e-specific notes at the end, the general overview is useful with any game system. Yet it’s all pretty brief; sorry, I haven’t witten The Complete…
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Rules Bit (GURPS): Die, monster, die!
Intro: “Whaddya mean, the Colossal Amoeba passed out?” A fierce dragon finally meets its match: Conrad the Bavarian, who takes the dragon down from 120 to 0 HP and goes to administer final rites. Good job, but one question: how long will it take to deliver another 120 points to kill the unconscious wyrm? Or 240 points if the beast makes its HT roll? Up to 600 more points if those HT rolls keep succeeding? (Dragon HT can be pretty high!) Won’t the magic-user, the thief, and the cleric have nabbed all the gold pieces by the time Conrad finishes hacking away? Well, if your character managed to chalk up 120…
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Rules Bit (GURPS): Distance, time, and speed in falls
Intro: Easy as falling off a log BS 431 offers a nice table for putting falling distance together with velocity. But did you know you’ve already got a tool for generating those numbers? You guessed it: that ever-handy Size and Speed/Range Table. It’ll even tell you how long it takes your PC to plummet off a cliff. The below is a fine example of the tricks you can do with such a spiffy logarithmic tool. Turn to BS 550 and follow along: Distance, Time, or Speed: Pick one Given just one of those three values, you can quickly estimate the other two. The procedure: 1. Take the Linear Measurement column,…
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Rules Bit (GURPS): What’s a miss?
Intro: “Missed me by that much!” There are two ways in GURPS to “miss” a target with your attack: either fail your TH roll, or have your successful TH roll thwarted by the target’s successful defense roll. The latter case is easy to understand: the attack was “on target”, but the target avoided it. This article will look at only the former case, the failed TH roll. I’ve always played this as an off-target attack, plain and simple: the bullet whizzed past the target, the sword thrust stopped short, and so on. But other interpretations float about: namely, the idea that a “miss” might actually represent the attacker hesitating –…
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Rules Bit (D&D): Real Hit Points for real people
Intro: “Can I have some real hit points, please?” As we all know, D&D has that “hit point thing” going on. I’m not here to put it down or even debate it. In fact, I’m fine with D&D hit points as some opaque, totally unrealistic luck-plus-heroics-plus-partial-defense cinematic furball, as long as the game presents it as such, and players accept it as such. I wouldn’t design a new game, even a cinematic fantasy one, using hit points in the same way, true – but still, where’s the harm? It’s hard, though, to like the tremendous disparity in hit points, especially at first or second Level. Any “normal” human, even a…
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DECIDE implementation notes
DECIDE has racked up many comments on this site, as well as in a related SJG forum thread. http://www.gamesdiner.com/decidehttp://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?p=458795 While the idea behind DECIDE is solid, any specific implementation is a throwaway item: there are plenty of possible implementations, and you can easily drop one you don’t like and replace with another, all without tossing out the core idea. So I’m not too interested in debating implementations; any will generally fall under “yeah, whatever works for you”. But in the spirit of designer’s notes, here are thoughts on why I use the implementation I do, with commentary on objections to it: On melee My implementation allows any defender a choice:…
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What is a roleplaying game?
“What’s a roleplaying game?” Who among us hasn’t responded to that question posed by the uninitiated, or enjoyed a good reply put forth by other gamers? Actually, I don’t know how many versions of the latter I’ve heard or read. “An RPG is a form of collaborative storytelling…” “It’s a kind of play-acting…” “Remember back when you played Cowboys and Indians…” And so on – a hundred ways to start out explaining. RPG gaming is nothing overly complex, as we know, yet it’s one of those things that’s easy to demonstrate in person, hard to describe otherwise. (My gaming group started its RPG career playing D&D profoundly wrong, as the text’s…
