Star Patrol wants YOU! Got a Star Frontiers game you’d like to bring over to GURPS? (Okay, so that proposition made more sense in 1997. But do please play along.) Here are some notes to help those characters make the jump. First, a bit of intro It’s hard for me to say what I liked so much about Star Frontiers when I picked it up way back when. Part of it was production value: the books weren’t anything fancy (pretty primitive by today’s standards), but there was so much packed into the box: multiple books, maps, colored counters, more. A lot of components for a simple game. The game’s play…
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Game design musing: It’s about time (Part I)
Gear up, spelunkers! It’s time for a dizzied descent into the dankest depths of game-design geekdom. In a very old blog post I briefly pondered the topic of action pacing – especially combat pacing – in RPGs. Below are some thoughts on how three major game systems tackle the topic. A caution in advance: while I know my GURPS, please accept my apologies where I mangle HERO; it’s been a long time since I last played. And I really risk disservice to D&D, as my only familiarity with 3e rules is from perusing the books, not actual play. Corrections to my text are greatly welcomed. Timing Basics In the three game…
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GURPS house rules best left homeless
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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European martial arts in role-playing: Where are they?
Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in historic European martial arts. Although the active traditions of European hand-to-hand masters largely broke down during the age of gunpowder, centuries of trainers, tacticians, duelists, and other “Masters of Defence” left behind over 100 written works detailing techniques of fighting with sword, dagger, hand, foot, and other weapons. Modern-day enthusiasts studying these tomes and actual period weapons, aided by an Internet that brings together practitioners, translators, historians, and other experts, are re-discovering facts that should have been obvious all along, yet are directly contradicted by mistaken popular notions that are filtered by Hollywood (while reaching back to Victorian times). They’re re-discovering facts…
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Recycled content: Defaults and other tips for COSH
I won’t be able to post things next week, so here’s some recycled material for approaching visitors. While searching through old email, I found the following post I’d made to the Gurpsnet mailing list. The response below to an inquiry may be of interest to fans of COSH, a fun tool for modifying and creating combat skills. How does COSH handle defaults? Nothing special included, or needed, in COSH’s handling of defaults — other than the question, how do you set defaults for new skills? Just as existing GURPS defaults were set (AFAIK) by SJG writers’ sense of what works, and not by formulae, I can only say that you’d…
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Recycled content: the cannibal fork
An idea for a horror artifact: the iculanibokola. I won’t be able to post things next week, so here’s some recycled material for approaching visitors. While searching through old email, I found the following post I’d made to the Gurpsnet mailing list, which may be of interest to someone: …I’ll forward a bit of fun from the latest National Geographic: a nasty artifact for a horror game. According the last page of the March 2003 NG, the iculanibokola was a special fork used for centuries by tribal officials in the Fiji islands when serving special guests — serving them as dinner, that is. Apparently, some individuals of the culture…
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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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Recycled content: Gaming giants in combat
In a Gurpsnet thread on how to deal with giant foes in combat, I commented on a GM’s concern about overwhelming the PCs. The discussion is for 3e GURPS; as 4e has pretty much solved 3e‘s problem with what ST to give a giant, it’s not too interesting a discussion any more. Still, there may be some fodder there for giant-slayer PCs or their evil GMs. My comments in that thread are as follows: Lots of people have offered good advice on how PCs should (and shouldn’t!) tackle a huge giant in 3e. There are some very useful lessons in there for the PCs in any game. I think one…
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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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GLAIVE weapon design system for the d20 System
d20 version and article by Tail Kinker ( http://tailkinker.batcave.net ) Based on GLAIVE, by Tbone. Call me a traitor. I don’t care. I’ve grown to really like the d20 system. Doesn’t mean I’ve given up on GURPS. Far from it; my GURPS library remains central to my gaming needs. Not just for running, but as a bridge to other systems – like d20. But the weapon system for Dungeons and Dragons is just plain dreadful. So here I go, trying to update it. This system will not faithfully reproduce the weapons from Dungeons and Dragons, but if used consistently, will give a good play-balance while fixing some of the more…
