This old (2010?) article was placed under the “Rules Bit” umbrella of minor rules tweaks for GURPS. But mucking with ST-based damage scores involves a number of considerations; it’s not really a “hey, gang, new rule tonight” kind of thing. So, this 2023 rewrite places the article under the “Game design musing” header, complete with “CAUTION” graphic noting that this is stuff for system hackers. 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 decades, and so far no one’s gotten hurt. (Except all those on the target end of ST 14, 2d swings, of course.)…
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Rules Bit (GURPS): Revised Toughness
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 very 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. That sort of mismatch can be mighty realistic, but…
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Anouncing MERC: Make Every Roll Count
Make Every Roll Count (MERC) by Ben Finney is a set of gaming guidelines for placing story first and making the most of gamers’ time at the table. More narrowly, it homes in on a key question at the heart of all RPGs: When should the dice be used at all, and toward what end? The answer involves a change from the too-common focus on resolving tasks, to a focus on resolving players’ intent. While MERC includes specific guidelines for use with GURPS, it’s applicable to RPGs in general. I think it offers good advice to GMs both new and experienced, and am pleased to see it here at the Diner. What do you think? MERC: Make…
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MERC: Make Every Roll Count
Intro: Keep it interesting! RPGs evolve. New games don’t just invent snazzy new mechanics; they poke deep into questions of what game-table play is about. MERC stems from author Ben Finney’s interest in the innovations of recent games, and ways to strengthen those concepts in the now-classic RPG GURPS. Broadly speaking, MERC is a set of guidelines for placing story first and making the most of gamers’ time at the table. More narrowly, it homes in on a key question at the heart of all RPGs: When should the dice be used at all, and toward what end? From the GURPS perspective, that often equates to “When should we make success checks?” The general answer…
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RPG science: Character tails
Got a game character with a nice fluffy tail? Those things can be good for more than just Furry decor, you know. At a recent TED conference, biologist Robert Full presented research into the wonders of the wall-crawling gecko. (The video, embedded below, is worth a view; you’ll see both people and robots mimicking the gecko’s Spidey-like climbs.) But while uncovering the secrets of the lizard’s famous feet, scientists found the creature’s tail enabled some amazing acrobatic feats of its own, all with nice character-design potential. As the biologists point out, a passive tail – a simple dead weight – hampers maneuverability. But an active tail does quite the opposite. Here what’s…
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Game design musing: Pricing breadth in skills
If fluency in a foreign tongue costs your character 5 points, how much should fluency in ten languages cost? In the midst of recent email correspondence about ESCARGO, I’ve dredged up a game design topic long of interest to me: a decreasing cost scale for multiple instances of traits. Wait – is there some reason why ten 5-point languages should cost the PC less than 50 points? And isn’t ESCARGO all about increasing the cost for more stuff? Let me explain: Depth vs breadth Many a game designer (or just dedicated hacker) has pondered the topic of breadth vs depth in character skills. (Some of the below could be adapted…
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Mail about mail (and other armor and EP topics)
In this earlier post, I mentioned that I’d been answering email questions about my Edge Protection (EP) rules for armor in GURPS. For those with an interest in EP, here’s a paraphrasing of my correspondent’s questions (in quotes) and my replies: In the table converting classic DR to DR+EP, mail still has reduced efficiency vs. impaling. This is surely a 3rd ed leftover, no? After re-checking, yes, it is a 3e holdover. In 4e, mail has no special vulnerability vs impaling (or piercing, for that matter). I should change the the article’s stats for mail to match: Mail: GURPS 4/2*; new DR 2; EP 5; Notes: DR 2, EP 3 vs impaling…
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GURPS Banestorm idea: Enclaves
In my review of GURPS Banestorm, I briefly mention one of the points that intrigues me about its gameworld: Unexplored pockets of diverse Earth cultures tucked among Yrth’s dominant European-, Middle Eastern-, and Asian-descended cultures. From page 9: … African, Chinese, German, Indian, and Slavic groups popped up across the continent. Dominant local cultures quickly absorbed most of these smaller ones, but even today travelers can find isolated villages where almost all the inhabitants have black skin, worship Krishna and Vishnu, or speak undiluted German. This is an opportunity for the GM to create any sort of interesting micro-culture that he can envision, as long as it is well off…
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Game rules aren’t protected by law
Jeff Dee, RPG author and awesome gaming artist (T Bone makes Will roll, squelches further fan gushing), is also a host of The Non Prophets podcast (together with none other than fellow gaming art god Denis Loubet!) and a past semi-regular host of The Atheist Experience broadcast and podcast. Episode #616 of the latter (embedded below), titled nothing less than “The Argument from Game Design”, let Jeff put his game-design cred to work in discussing certain arcane religious arguments that compare existence to “a game”. Straying a bit from that purely religious discussion, he also made some comments of broader relevance to gaming itself, including thoughts on what makes for a…
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Dice pools vs dice plus mods
Following up on my post about The Riddle of Steel RPG, here’s a broad question for readers at large, touching on many games: What, exactly, is the appeal of the “dice pool” method of generating outcomes? I know it has a two-dimensional aspect to it, in that you can modify checks in two ways: you can both modify the “target number” that determines whether a die counts as a success, and you can modify the number of dice rolled. That sounds like it offers something richer than the classic one-dimensional, dice-roll-plus-summed-modifiers method, and I don’t yet see anything wrong with the dice pool method. But I’m curious: Do dice-pool systems establish a clear, easily-followed…
