GURPS gamers are a rules-tweaking, happy lot of home-brewers, Hastur bless ’em. But among the crunchy’n’nutty house rule suggestions that come up in forums, websites, and actual games, there are always a few that should be shown the door back out of the house. Below are a few such. I was hoping to make it a Top 10 list, but I’m stopping far short of that for now. Actually, I’m glad I can only think of far fewer than 10 offhand! (Needless to say, the below is opinion; if one of the items already fits into your game to much acclaim, good on you. Witless opining is what blogs are…
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Game design musing: Can “too high” defenses be a good thing?
In a Gurpsnet thread on armored GURPS 3e fighters having much-too-high defenses, I responded to one poster below. 4e greatly alleviates the problem by eliminating PD, but high scores may still be an issue for some players. Yet the below does summarize what is to me an important point: the game should accommodate “too high” defenses when those are warranted! Imagine, if you will, a warrior with Plate Armour (PD 4) with Deflect +3, a skill of 22 with a broadsword, and Combat Reflexes. His total defense? A parry of 19. Now, the rules as written state that Sir Unhittable will be struck only if he rolls a 17 or…
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“Anti-talents” in GURPS
Below is a recent post to the GURPSnet mailing list, on the topic of “Anti-talents” that reverse the effects of Talents. I have home-brewed “group competences” that are pretty much the same as the Talents that 4e later brought. (4e picks a much better name; I’ll steal “Talent” for the rest of this discussion.) They all have accompanying “Group Incompetences”, that reverse the bonuses into penalties. The latter make for amusing character concepts (and sometimes amusing trait names), and work as you suggest, but with one big difference: I only award -1 per Group Incompetence, far less than the advantage value of the reverse Talent! http://www.gamesdiner.com/gurps/GULLIVER/BXouttakes.htm#SkillBonusTraits For what it’s worth,…
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Further clarifying DECIDE!
What’s the basic “unit” of RPG play? I’d call it this little exchange or interaction: 1. Something – some event, stimulus, something – happens.2. Players weigh the likely consequences of that something, and state how they respond.3. Based on the that interaction, the holy trio (GM, Players, and Game Rules) determine the outcome. And from that little procedure, you build a scene, a session, even a campaign – it just depends on how many times you rinse and repeat. There is in GURPS one small, wacky, but mostly harmless exception to this core unit. Defense rolls. That’s right. Defense rolls, by curious rule fiat, twist that 1-2-3 order to 1-3-2.…
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Notes on natural encumbrance (GULLIVER)
Forum poster P, in reference to GULLIVER’s natural encumbrance rules, included the word “messy” among other (much nicer!) comments. Of course, I had to ask what’s “messy” with them, and P was kind enough to oblige with a response. The below may or may not change anyone’s mind about the rules, but it did lead to the introspection below that natural encumbrance fans may find of interest. (And it’s a shame not to recycle such a long post into all-too-scarce blog content…) Here’s the forum text: Thank you for the kind words, P. Permit me an initial clarification: And, as I said above, I agree that your general approach was…
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Scaling of Move
A visitor writes by email: T.Bone: Cool new site! Now on to the irritating part… 🙂 Once again, I’ve forgotten (or maybe never even learned) part of the power-to-mass argument. Please tell me which of the following is right: ( { power – weight } / mass ) ^ 0.5 ( { power – weight } / mass ) ^ 0.5 * stride_length ( { power – weight } / mass ) ^ 0.5 * stride_length ^ 0.5 Everything here but stride length is based on E=mv^2, so at least that should be correct. I can see how stride length might play a role, but I can’t quite picture the…
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The new GURPS delivers… Or does it?
The 2005 GURPS Diner article, brought into the new Games Diner site. One gamer geek’s look at the new GURPS 4e and how well it satisfied his GURPSy wishes. This is a pretty straightforward HTML paste into the new site. Sorry, don’t expect much of the copious internal links… If you want to see the original article with its links intact, head here. Special thanks to David Nichols for proofreading and commenting on the first draft. You’ve been spared at least a couple of embarassing errors thanks to his attentiveness. 2007.08.23 edits: I added links to a few GURPS Diner articles that have since addressed topics in the article below.…
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Rambling about ST
A recent ramble on rec.games.frp.gurps, responding to this post and referencing this post: infornific@aol.com (DW) wrote: lwcamp@landau.chem.rochester.edu (Luke) wrote: (Rest of message deleted for brevity – please see original message) Excellent points. Your division of strength into grappling/lifting/carrying vs combat/speed sounds a lot like GURPS Gulliver’s Combat ST and Load ST. That might be a simpler way to simulate the differences in ST. So a weightlifter might have Combat ST 12 and Load ST 16 – he doesn’t punch that hard, but he’s formidable in grappling and can fence with a broad sword. Interesting, it sounds like a plausible rationale for split ST. Does anyone know of good scientific evidence on how that kind of strength varies…
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An FAQ: your own original RPG?
A common question: “With so much stuff on your site, have you considered making your own RPG?” The simple answer is contained on pages like these: https://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/freerpgs/ There are hundreds of home-made RPGs out there! I wonder how many ever get read, let alone played. (Incidentally, that classic page was last updated in 2003, so don’t expect a lot of the links to work. But click around and just let the sheer volume of home-made games wash over you. And imagine how many more have been made in the 20+ years since that list!) Any RPG I “invented” would look like… well, GURPS with some changes. I think GURPS makes…
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From the newsgroup files: Doing collisions right
A recent online post gave me the chance to blather on and on about how to handle collisions in a RPG. Regarding the huge damage that GURPS Vehicles would dish out for a 5 mph collision with a car: Erm, am I missing something here? Because 5MPH is slower than walking pace and should NOT take you to death’s door! Me to said poster: You are correct to sense something funny here. The Vehicles rule does have a big flaw. Others have made helpful suggestions, but if I can wax pedantic here, allow me to dig to the heart of the problem and set things right. You can quickly check…
