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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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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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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T Bone’s rules of dilettante game design, Part I
Friendly site visitor KC sends some all-too-kind words about Games Diner content, and asks an interesting question – that’s hard to answer, too, as the good questions always are. “In your opinion, what aspects of a roleplaying system require special attention in order to avoid major conflicts?” Hmm. KC adds a bit more: “I know this is a broad question, and a lot of the answer requires knowing what the intent of the game engine is. Striving to find the balance between playability and realism is the most difficult part of a game, and I’m certain you are familiar with this. Which is why I ask the question.” Tough one!…
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GLAIVE conversion notes
Simple first steps toward 4e compatibility Here are some comments made in the SJG GURPS forums, on updates required to bring the GLAIVE weapon creation system up to 4e speed: Treat any reference to “Load ST” as “BL/2”. The “unbalance modifier” should probably be changed, in light of the way 4e unbalanced weapons have become faster. Change from x1/x2/x3, to x1/x1.5/x2. Some missile weapons rules may need tweaking, if 4e weapon stats vary much from 3e. The bow rules state that they’d work better under “quad ST” — which 4e now provides. No, no plans yet to actually rewrite GLAIVE.
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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…
