Bunnies and Burrows
CX6L
>CX6L <CX...@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA> wrote:
>> Heh? GURPS has an excellent, detailed and realistic combat system
<my stuff deleted to conserve bandwidth>
>>and other denizens of the high-tech battlefield.
> The melee combat, OTOH, just has too many damn rules and places to
>break down, _especially_ if you use lots of options from Martial Arts,
>Swashbucklers, and Magic. There are rules scattered all over the place,
>and tons of special case rulings - for close combat, and facing, and so
>forth.
What, exactly, is wrong with this? All the basic rules are in one place,
all the advanced rules for dealing with tactical movement and facing are
together in another place, the rules for close-combat are collected in a
third spot, the rules for ranged attacks are grouped togther in a fourth
location, and the rules for superheroic, swashbuckling and martial arts
combat - which are not so commonly used as to merit the name "generic" -
get their own books. This seems like a logical and reasonable division
of the information. I have never encountered the problems of which you
speak. I have yet to have trouble finding a rule.
> The primary problem for me is defense rolls - it's too damn easy
>to get those annoying 14+ active defense rolls, which make combat annoying
>and/or _forces_ people to use all these strange options. (i.e. I can't
>hit his hand because he defends too well, but I can disarm him easily).
This is all IYO, of course. Some of us like the fact that not every blow
is a telling blow, and that the combat system reflects the give-and-take
of realistic battle, with attacks, parries and maneuvering taking place.
If you subscribe to the "every blow should slay a foe and combat should
be quick and simple" school of thought, OK - I can see your criticisms.
However, attacking and defending are pretty much equally guaranteed to
succeed in a real life fight, and the system reflects this.
As for strange options, well, that is usually what decides things
between well-matched foes. One of the first lessons you learn in hand-
to-hand combat training is that feinting isn't merely *faking* (which is
what the Feint *maneuver* in GURPS seems to represent) but also breaking
rhythm -- ie, trying something unexpected. If you have a rapier and your
foe's hand is protected by a swept hilt *and* a steel glove, then it
will be a *lot* easier to try and disarm him then to poke him in the
hand. This is reality - and the game reflects that. The stand-off-and-
trade-telling-blows school of thought is found mainly in fantasy games
because it is just that: fantasy. GURPS combat is meant to be realistic.
> Many other melee systems are much more intuitive and easier to
>understand without much loss of realism. etic
I must disagree. If a system relegates both a rapier thrust to the heart
and a broadsword cut to the neck to the category of "telling blow - big
damage"; if it cannot distinguish between disarming by striking for the
hand, disarming by grabbing the foe's weapon and disarming by fancy
bladework; if it limits you to "kick" or "punch" in close-combat; if it
reduces all battle to just "attack" and "defend" . . . then it is dull
and flavourless, and does not merit use. Combat is a premium opportunity
for quality roleplay, and should offer dozens of options and room for a
character to customize his or her fighting style. "Intuitive" does not
outrank "flavourful" in importance, and there are those of us who hold
realism up as the highest honour for a combat system.
> I would not recommend GURPS for fantasy melee combat.
I would heartily recommend it for those who wish to get away from the
endless "biff-bam-biff-bam..." of simplistic combat systems.
-Kromm
______________________________________________________________________
| cx...@musica.mcgill.ca <- Peasant Mail
Dr Manfred Dieter Kromm |pu...@hep.physics.mcgill.ca <-
(aka Sean M. Punch) |pu...@chopin.physics.mcgill.ca <- NeXT Mail
McGill University |--------------------------------------------
High Energy Physics | "Why did you bore a hole in your head?"
Montreal, Quebec, Canada|"To let the people out." "You mean voices?"
| "No. People. Arms, legs - everything."
Charles Frederick Goodin
>In article <2eldhm$l...@apakabar.cc.columbia.edu> jh...@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu (John H Kim) writes:
>>CX6L <CX...@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA> wrote:
>>> Heh? GURPS has an excellent, detailed and realistic combat system
><my stuff deleted to conserve bandwidth>
>>>and other denizens of the high-tech battlefield.
[lots of good point-counterpoints deleted]
>I must disagree. If a system relegates both a rapier thrust to the heart
>and a broadsword cut to the neck to the category of "telling blow - big
>damage"; if it cannot distinguish between disarming by striking for the
>hand, disarming by grabbing the foe's weapon and disarming by fancy
>bladework; if it limits you to "kick" or "punch" in close-combat; if it
>reduces all battle to just "attack" and "defend" . . . then it is dull
>and flavourless, and does not merit use. Combat is a premium opportunity
>for quality roleplay, and should offer dozens of options and room for a
>character to customize his or her fighting style. "Intuitive" does not
>outrank "flavourful" in importance, and there are those of us who hold
>realism up as the highest honour for a combat system.
>> I would not recommend GURPS for fantasy melee combat.
>I would heartily recommend it for those who wish to get away from the
>endless "biff-bam-biff-bam..." of simplistic combat systems.
>-Kromm
And I would heartily second Kromm's recommendation. I've always been
more into roleplaying than finding the combat rules, but there is
something to be said for a system which treats different types of
combat manuever differently. I love all the different close combat
manuevers, and GURPS shares with Hero the diversity that allows you to
quickly and easily (with a little system familiarity) translate any
"real-life" action into game terms, with less guesswork and more
detail than in the vague "Okay, I attack. Then I attack again." types
of systems.
--
______________________________________________________
Chuk Goodin (goo...@sfu.ca)
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC
Help me start up alt.fan.jeopardy! Alex Trebek is God!
______________________________________________________
Ray Trent
>>Swashbucklers, and Magic. There are rules scattered all over the place,
>>and tons of special case rulings - for close combat, and facing, and so
Of course, they aren't organized this way. You also have to count the
extra rules for skills such as "Net" (god, what a game unbalancing
skill that is...we have a strategic arms limitation treaty preventing
its use). And all the others (each of the various basic set martial
arts skills behave differently, for example). Not to mention the
side-bar issue.
>If you subscribe to the "every blow should slay a foe and combat should
>be quick and simple" school of thought, OK - I can see your criticisms.
I don't subscribe to this school of thought. However, I also don't
like any game aspect to take more than, say, an order of magnitude
more play time than it takes in "real" gametime. Combat included.
GURPs combat (or most systems, even the homegrown one I normally use
and am thus not completely happy with), has a tendency to do this.
There's got to be a middle ground somewhere.
If you make a rule about blocking with your vambraces that is
different than the rule for blocking with a sword, someone somewhere
will figure out which one is "optimal", because one of them almost
always will be. Then you're just back to the
"hit-block(vambraces)-repeat" loop. Unless, of course, you make up a
new rule making them have different effectivenesses in different
situations, etc. Ack. Besides, it's not likely to really work if your
players have any brains at all.
Once you get up to a certain point in GURPS (26 combat skill, easy to
do with even only 100 point+30 disads characters), combat turns
basically into:
if fighting an inferior opponent
if there aren't too many minuses above and beyond the normal -10
roll 16- to hit eyeslits
else
feint/attack
else
all-out attack, run away, or gang up (or pray like hell...because
you're dead unless you get lucky)
>foe's hand is protected by a swept hilt *and* a steel glove, then it
>will be a *lot* easier to try and disarm him then to poke him in the
>hand. This is reality - and the game reflects that. The stand-off-and-
>trade-telling-blows school of thought is found mainly in fantasy games
>because it is just that: fantasy. GURPS combat is meant to be realistic.
That's all nice and good, but I'd rather not use the Arm sLaw combat
system and GURPS certainly doesn't get anywhere near this realistic.
What it does do is provide just enough rules to hang yourself with.
This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't hang the rest of the group too.
Ok, so I don't have a better suggestion than GURPS (certainly rolling
47,000,000d6 to resolve 10 seconds of combat in Hero isn't a win) in
the mass market arena.
I guess that's why I don't choose either of the above when I'm running
a campaign. I'd much rather have the person explain what they're going
to do and decide: "ok, cool, that sounds like it will work in this
situation, I'll figure it into your opponents defense", or "that trick
never works". Doesn't matter if it's "really" realistic, because I and
the people I play with aren't pedantic enough as a rule to care...and
in those cases where we are, we just come to an agreement about it.
Much better role playing, too, even combat role playing.
Eventually you get to the point where the *player* really has to know
as much about combat as the *character* does, which doesn't suit my
style of "roleplaying" at all. It should be quite possible for a
player to play a warrior without becoming a warrior. The only way I
can see to do this is abstraction. An abstract "attack" can be
metatranslated into "feint, parry, counter, recover, slam, stab,
stab". Or, if the player so desires, they should feel free to specify
the exact mechanism and take the consequences (which in "reality" will
always depend more on the exact circumstances of a game event than any
fixed rule and thus "should" be determined at run-time).
The system, IMNSHO, should work at the abstract lowest common
denominator level while still allowing the players to easily modify it
ad hoc in a balanced way if warranted and desired.
>and flavourless, and does not merit use. Combat is a premium opportunity
>for quality roleplay, and should offer dozens of options and room for a
>character to customize his or her fighting style. "Intuitive" does not
>outrank "flavourful" in importance, and there are those of us who hold
>realism up as the highest honour for a combat system.
Doesn't sound like it to me. "Realistic" combat has so many different
meanings in different cultures and different situations that I can't
imagine *any* fixed generic set of rules that would cover it. In
cultures where tripping your opponent was "uncouth", for example,
tripping will be much more *effective* (due to expectations and
training) than in a culture where hand-to-hand is expected to be a
free-for-all. Tripping might be frowned upon in the extreme; there
might even be severe penalties for using these tactics; but it will be
more *effective* in combat terms than it would otherwise be. Same's
true for poison. Etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum.
--
"When you're down, it's a long way up
When you're up, it's a long way down
It's all the same thing
And it's no new tale to tell" ../ray\..
Bill Seurer
|> I don't subscribe to this school of thought. However, I also don't
|> like any game aspect to take more than, say, an order of magnitude
|> more play time than it takes in "real" gametime. Combat included.
|> GURPs combat (or most systems, even the homegrown one I normally use
|> and am thus not completely happy with), has a tendency to do this.
|>
|> There's got to be a middle ground somewhere.
There is. Use the basic combat system (i.e., no board) with whatever
you can comfortably run quickly tossed in from the advanced system. I
use a whiteboard (made myself for < $20.00) to keep track of who is
where if that is important. Combat is over within a few minutes IF
you force everyone to say what they are doing when you call on them.
If they dither their character dithers and does nothing. After one
session this way they learn to decide what they are doing when the
other players are telling me what they are doing. 99% of the problems
people have with combat being too slow is they allow the players 5 or
10 minutes to decide what they are doing in 1 second of combat time.
|> If you make a rule about blocking with your vambraces that is
|> different than the rule for blocking with a sword, someone somewhere
|> will figure out which one is "optimal", because one of them almost
|> always will be. Then you're just back to the
|> "hit-block(vambraces)-repeat" loop. Unless, of course, you make up a
|> new rule making them have different effectivenesses in different
|> situations, etc. Ack. Besides, it's not likely to really work if your
|> players have any brains at all.
This is a problem in EVERY game if there is any differentiation between
various sorts of equipment. Remeber xD&D? Everyone uses the Longsword
(if their class allows it) 'cause that's the best.
Fortunately in my group there is only one
guy who actually does this. This is a problem with the players, not
the game. For instance, in my current campaign all the players have an
agrarian background. The one guy was quite upset he couldn't start off
knowing the sword and crossbow skills but everyone else jumped right in
and I have a fine selection of spear, axe, sling, and staff wielders.
Compared to someone with similar points spent on Sword and Crossbow
they are poor fighters, but that's the breaks.
Of course it could be YOUR problem too. If the only way to survive or
do well in your game is to be a combat monster well then the players
will create combat monsters.
|> Once you get up to a certain point in GURPS (26 combat skill, easy to
|> do with even only 100 point+30 disads characters), combat turns
|> basically into:
|>
|> if fighting an inferior opponent
|> if there aren't too many minuses above and beyond the normal -10
|> roll 16- to hit eyeslits
|> else
|> feint/attack
|> else
|> all-out attack, run away, or gang up (or pray like hell...because
|> you're dead unless you get lucky)
This is your problem as the referee. If one of my players handed me a
character like that I would laugh in their face as I tore it up. How
can they justify such a "thing"? And even if they can ("I was kidnapped
at birth by a sect of sword wielding monks who made me spend all my time
until I was 18 practicing with the sword") you can always just say no.
In fact, that's a good motto for a GM in any game where PCs are built
from points. "Just say NO!"
--
- Bill Seurer Language and Compiler Development IBM Rochester, MN
Business: BillS...@vnet.ibm.com Home: BillS...@aol.com
David Seal
writes:
>I guess that's why I don't choose either of the above when I'm running
>a campaign. I'd much rather have the person explain what they're going
>to do and decide: "ok, cool, that sounds like it will work in this
>situation, I'll figure it into your opponents defense", or "that trick
>never works". Doesn't matter if it's "really" realistic, because I and
>the people I play with aren't pedantic enough as a rule to care...and
>in those cases where we are, we just come to an agreement about it.
>Much better role playing, too, even combat role playing.
Given this preference, I would suggest playing out GURPS combat with the
*basic* combat system. Allow the players to say what they're doing and
allocate bonuses and penalties as seems fit to you. If you like some
particular aspects of the advanced combat system, add them in - but make it
clear that e.g. the fact that you've added in the movement rules or the
ranged combat rules *doesn't* mean that you're allowing all the advanced
combat rules.
Much of the point of the system having both basic and advanced combat rules
is to allow GMs to select whether they want this sort of free & easy combat
resolution, or a more mechanical "rule for every situation" system.
David Seal
ds...@armltd.co.uk
All opinions are mine only...
CX6L
>Of course, they aren't organized this way. You also have to count the
>extra rules for skills such as "Net" (god, what a game unbalancing
>skill that is...we have a strategic arms limitation treaty preventing
>its use)
Net? Game unbalancing? It works like any other hurled weapon - you
throw it by taking the Attack maneuver and rolling vs. skill, you
get an Active Defense against it as per usual - except that it has
the effect of immobilizing the foe instead of injuring the foe. As
this is what a net is *designed* to do, I cannot see why you would
have a problem with it. Are you using some house rules that make a
net more effective than most other weapons? Do you consider this
kind of all-or-nothing immobilization to be worse than injury? I
should point out that an immobilized foe *cannot* be "killed in 1
turn" like an immobilized foe can in, say, AD&D! She still gets her
PD and DR against any attack . . . Usually, being caught in a net
in GURPS means 3 seconds of hasty knife work to get out, unless
the foe is so numerous that they can devote some of their number
to the rather wasteful task of dispatching a harmless foe - in
which case you are in a lot of trouble even if they are armed with
toothpicks.
BTW, in my game, once some guy has hurled a net, he is now just
standing there without a shield or - unless he had a small one-handed
net - a weapon. His usual fate is a quick death.
>And all the others (each of the various basic set martial
>arts skills behave differently, for example)
And? So? A real-life arm lock is different from a real-life leg grapple.
A real-life spin kick is a different thing from a drop kick. Generally,
the solution presented by Aikido will differ from the solution presented
by Tae Kwon Do. This is the way it works, and the rules reflect this.
Where's the problem?
>I don't subscribe to this school of thought. However, I also don't
>like any game aspect to take more than, say, an order of magnitude
>more play time than it takes in "real" gametime.
This is just a bad "rule of thumb" for combat. Combat is a complex
operation with hundreds of variables involved, yet in real-life, a
deadly fight can be over in mere seconds. How do you simulate that
degree of complexity in merely *tens* of seconds? This is just not
possible. Furthermore, you later on mention how the *player* should
not have to be a warrior, or have to understand combat. Fine - but
this comes at the cost of the player being given the time to think
through all of her PC's options *carefully*, which is not compatible
with a combat system that asks you to operate in tens of seconds.
>If you make a rule about blocking with your vambraces that is
>different than the rule for blocking with a sword, someone somewhere
>will figure out which one is "optimal", because one of them almost
>always will be
Yes - but in real-life, some combat tricks are more useful than others,
you just do not always know them all. This is why each fighting style
in _Martial Arts_ has a different set of maneuvers, for example.
>Once you get up to a certain point in GURPS (26 combat skill, easy to
>do with even only 100 point+30 disads characters), combat turns
>basically into:
<boring loop deleted>
> you're dead unless you get lucky)
Not true. Only if the players are rather boring in their choices and
only if the GM presents boring, predictable foes and limits the players
to a small subset of simplified combat options. I have run *hundreds*
of GURPS combats using *all* the optional rules, and I have never seen
the predictability or sameness you claim. That is the beauty of having
so many options!
>system and GURPS certainly doesn't get anywhere near this realistic.
>What it does do is provide just enough rules to hang yourself with.
>This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't hang the rest of the group too.
IYNSHO, of course. I have yet to see a system that handles combat so
well in such a large variety of situations, and the GURPS rules work
just fine unless you have someone in your group who is actively out
to crock them - in which case *no* system is going to help you out.
>Doesn't matter if it's "really" realistic, because I and
>the people I play with aren't pedantic enough as a rule to care
"Caring about realism so that your character's fate is determined in
a believable way."
***is NOT equal to***
"Pedantic."
Players - at least reasonably intelligent ones - know that some
situations are more dangerous than others, even if they have no real-
life combat experience. People know, for example, that it is just
*dumb* to crouch down amongst foes in deadly combat (putting your
weapon out of action) and try to yank a carpet with a half-dozen
150 pound men standing on it. It may happen in the movies, but it is
*dumb*. Players expect that if they try this, they will get hurt, or
a hernia, or both - because that is what common sense dictates. They
*expect* the rules to support this analysis of the situation. If
you use a free-form system where the players never know where they
stand w.r.t. realism, then the players will become overly cautious,
and somewhat suspicious of the referee.
>Eventually you get to the point where the *player* really has to know
>as much about combat as the *character* does, which doesn't suit my
>style of "roleplaying" at all. It should be quite possible for a
>player to play a warrior without becoming a warrior.
In GURPS, a warrior has higher combat skills, and hence a greater chance
of success at most feats in combat. The player is still responsible for
roleplaying that character's actions in battle, however. If a warrior
and a non-warrior try the same trick in a fight, the warrior is far,
far more likely to succeed by virtue of her high skills. This is where
the system substitutes abstraction for real-life ability. I cannot
agree that the system should abstract combat to the point where a roll
against some skill, or some number on the character sheet, or whatever,
stands-in for the player's responsibility to be creative and act "in
character".
>Doesn't sound like it to me. "Realistic" combat has so many different
>meanings in different cultures and different situations that I can't
>imagine *any* fixed generic set of rules that would cover it.
"Realistic" means "obeys the laws of nature" - *not* - "obeys the rules
of your culture regarding fighting". It is *realistic* that a knife will
not usually penetrate plate armour, that it is a bad idea to try and
box with a guy with a sword, or that a flail is hard to block. It is
merely "historically accurate" that you do not bring a mace to a sabre
duel. A "realistic" system handles as many combat options and situations
as possible in accordance with what the likely physical results of those
situations would be in real-life. It is realistic that if you whip out
a 9mm in a knife fight and plug the foe between the eyes, he dies. This
may not be in accordance with Rules of Knife Fighting, p.101 - but
that is neither here nor there from the point of view of realism.
It is my personal opinion that a lot of gamers are still under the
influence of the spectres of "balance" and "cinema". They either want
the combat abilities of characters to be balanced - regardless of how
unbalanced the situation would be in real-life; or else they want the
combat abilities of characters to work like things work in the movies -
regardless of how unlikely it is that this kind of stuff would work in
real-life. After a while, you tire of balanced games and cinematic ones,
and want to play in a system where getting your head cut off is actually
a Bad Thing (not just "Ooh - 10 hit points.") or where the guy who tries
a flying jump kick is ducked and killed by the more reserved guy who
boots his head when he crash-lands. IMHO, GURPS is such a system.
John H Kim
Do to extensive length, I am going to try to paraphrase Kromm's
objections, to some degree. I would point out that Kromm has gone on at
length on the realism of the rules - which I did not contest.
My primary objection is that the rules are that people don't
understand them. The vast array of options is not a bonus if people don't
know how to use them, for example. Hero also has alot of options - but they
are listed in the Maneuvers chart or are simply assigning Combat Levels.
Kromm's characterization seems to be "If you don't play GURPS, then
the combat system is unrealistic, simplistic, and boring - your only option
is which foe to hit".
Have a look around: Hero, CORPS, Harnmaster, and many others have
much more than just these choices - and have comparable realism, as well.
They tend to have less detail, but this does not mean that they are boring
or unflavorful.
I am numbering what seemed to me the basic points Kromm suggested:
______
1) The Melee rules are well organized into separate sections.
CX6L <CX...@MUSICA.MCGILL.CA> wrote:
>This seems like a logical and reasonable division of the information. I
>have never encountered the problems of which you speak. I have yet to
>have trouble finding a rule.
Kromm, I hate to tell you this, but you are not representative of
the majority of gamers.
My statements here are *not* just idle sideline talk - but motivated
by the fact that in five GURPS campaigns that I have been in (to greater and
lesser degrees) there has been confusion and rules-checking in combat.
_____
2) Greater detail = better
>
>I must disagree. If a system relegates both a rapier thrust to the heart
>and a broadsword cut to the neck to the category of "telling blow - big
>damage"; if it cannot distinguish between disarming by striking for the
>hand, disarming by grabbing the foe's weapon and disarming by fancy
>bladework; if it limits you to "kick" or "punch" in close-combat; if it
>reduces all battle to just "attack" and "defend" . . . then it is dull
>and flavourless, and does not merit use.
Urrh? So if you don't use the Martial Arts division of `Vitals'
into neck, heart, etc. - then you are being dull and flavorless? Might I
recommend _Ysgarth_ which distinguishes important locations like the liver
and spleen in hit location.
You seem to equate detail universally with `flavor', when in fact
there is a balance which everyone reaches.
The problem with a complicated, non-intuitive system is that people
don't understand it. Rather than enhancing role-play, it forces people to
often think about the _system_ rather than about the _game world_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John Kim | "Cut off one of his fingers - the little one; then tell
jh...@columbia.edu | him his thumb is next. After that he'll tell you if he
Columbia University | wears ladies underwear...I'm hungry - let's get a taco."
Anders Gabrielsson
that has lots of options and rules and stuff as long as the players don't need
to know the rules. If the system has enough options (which I think GURPS has)
that you can just ask the players to describe what they try to do in terms of
the 'real world' instead of in game terms, then it's enough if the GM knows the
rules. He decides which rules are important and what modifiers to use, asks the
player to roll (or does it himself) and then describes the result. The problem
is that the GM has to be *very* familiar with the system, in terms of knowing
what rules there are, where they are etc.
-Anders
John Cooper
>This is reality - and the game reflects that. The stand-off-and-
>trade-telling-blows school of thought is found mainly in fantasy games
>because it is just that: fantasy. GURPS combat is meant to be realistic.
GURPS' devotion to "realism" is not necessarily an attractive feature. It
is one reason I dislike the system. You ought to know that every time
someone argues a point based on how realistically GURPS portrays something,
they are simply reminding me of why I don't like GURPS all that much. The
kind of mundane realism found in GURPS is touted as some sort of virtue,
when it is, in fact, a serious drawback to gamers like me.
>> Many other melee systems are much more intuitive and easier to
>>understand without much loss of realism.
>
>I must disagree. If a system relegates both a rapier thrust to the heart
>and a broadsword cut to the neck to the category of "telling blow - big
>damage"; if it cannot distinguish between disarming by striking for the
>hand, disarming by grabbing the foe's weapon and disarming by fancy
>bladework; if it limits you to "kick" or "punch" in close-combat; if it
>reduces all battle to just "attack" and "defend" . . . then it is dull
>and flavourless, and does not merit use. Combat is a premium opportunity
>for quality roleplay, and should offer dozens of options and room for a
>character to customize his or her fighting style. "Intuitive" does not
>outrank "flavourful" in importance, and there are those of us who hold
>realism up as the highest honour for a combat system.
Not everyone wants to play a wargame when they sit down at the roleplaying
table. I'll agree that players like a great deal of control over what they
can do when in combat, but a detailed combat system isn't necessary for
that. If a player can say to me, "I want to try and knock his sword aside
and shield rush him," I don't need a rulebook to give me lengthy rules on
how to deflect weapons and conduct shield rushes. In Hero I would simply
let the player try with whatever OCV/DCV bonuses/penalties I felt were
fair and let him try what he wanted.
Attention to the kinds of details you describe is distracting and
unnecessarily complex as far as I'm concerned. I want plausible results,
not meticulously realistic results. If I wanted that, I'd have wounds
reopening under exertion, problems with tentanus and other complications
due to dirty wounds and generally unclean battlefield conditions, damage
to armor and weapons themselves, terrain issues that require players to
make DX rolls for every attack or parry/block when fighting on uneven
ground, etc. No one I know deals with any of this because it is overly
detailed, unnecessarily complicated, and generally irrelevent to the
larger issues of the adventure.
All of this is just MHO, of course.
-John
Terrence W Wright
: that. If a player can say to me, "I want to try and knock his sword aside
: and shield rush him," I don't need a rulebook to give me lengthy rules on
: how to deflect weapons and conduct shield rushes. In Hero I would simply
: let the player try with whatever OCV/DCV bonuses/penalties I felt were
: fair and let him try what he wanted.
Funny, I play both GURPS and Hero system, and the thing I like about BOTH
was the flexibility to attempt anything and just apply bonuses and penalties.
What is stopping you from doing exactly what you do in Hero in GURPS?
: Attention to the kinds of details you describe is distracting and
: unnecessarily complex as far as I'm concerned. I want plausible results,
: not meticulously realistic results. If I wanted that, I'd have wounds
: reopening under exertion, problems with tentanus and other complications
: due to dirty wounds and generally unclean battlefield conditions, damage
: to armor and weapons themselves, terrain issues that require players to
: make DX rolls for every attack or parry/block when fighting on uneven
: ground, etc. No one I know deals with any of this because it is overly
: detailed, unnecessarily complicated, and generally irrelevent to the
: larger issues of the adventure.
Again, I find this humorous. In a recent adventure, I decided to be more
realistic in the same areas you just mentioned (reopening wounds, unclean
battlefields, equipment damage and terrain problems) and the players LOVED it.
They mentioned how they liked the extra realism as it made roleplaying easier.
(Of course, I was doing all the paperwork and just letting the players know
when something noteworthy happened).
Terry Wright | "Canada is a wonderful country for men and dogs,
Tww...@cs.usask.ca | but it kills women and horses."
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan | -- anonymous
John Cooper
> Funny, I play both GURPS and Hero system, and the thing I like about BOTH
>was the flexibility to attempt anything and just apply bonuses and penalties.
>What is stopping you from doing exactly what you do in Hero in GURPS?
Nothing, really. But then I'm not exploiting GURPS' asserted greatest
strength: realism. Realism to most (from what I gather) seems to boil down
to detail, one way or the other. I can abstract combat in GURPS, but then
I'm losing all its potential for great detail, and therefore great realism.
Simply put, I'm not always interested in great detail, and if a game's
most compelling feature is its attention to detail (in combat anyway), then
I'm just going to give it a big yawn.
> Again, I find this humorous. In a recent adventure, I decided to be more
>realistic in the same areas you just mentioned (reopening wounds, unclean
>battlefields, equipment damage and terrain problems) and the players LOVED it.
>They mentioned how they liked the extra realism as it made roleplaying easier.
>(Of course, I was doing all the paperwork and just letting the players know
>when something noteworthy happened).
Okay, this is obviously a YMMV issue. I don't doubt for a moment that you
and your players enjoyed that sort of thing immensely, but I would probably
find it a screaming bore (I can't say for sure until I play with your group
some time :) ).
-John
Ray Trent
>>in those cases where we are, we just come to an agreement about it.
>>Much better role playing, too, even combat role playing.
>
>Given this preference, I would suggest playing out GURPS combat with the
>*basic* combat system. Allow the players to say what they're doing and
>allocate bonuses and penalties as seems fit to you. If you like some
>particular aspects of the advanced combat system, add them in - but make it
>clear that e.g. the fact that you've added in the movement rules or the
>ranged combat rules *doesn't* mean that you're allowing all the advanced
>combat rules.
The problem with this is that the basic combat system in GURPS just
doesn't work. Really. Even perfectly reasonable characters have skill
levels such that it turns into a contest of "let's see who gets a
critical success first". You really need to have the advanced rules to
explain how a much better fighter wins a combat with anything like the
probability that would be obtained from "realistic" rules.
I.e., I feel there is a systemic problem with GURPS. When using enough
rules such that fighters are viable character archtypes, the *player*
has to understand combat quite well in order for the *character* to
succeed at combat, . Role playing doesn't survive these conditions
very long.
Of course, none of that does anything about the silly weapons skills
rules strewn throughout the rulebook. Or the silly weapons/skills to
match them.
Just for fun once, I created a Basic Rules 100+45disad+attr_mods
character once to fit the "ninja" archetype. Put most all the points
into DEX, resulting in an 18 DEX. Used several (12 or so) points
studying karate and judo. Used the last several points to buy about
20 16- combat skills kills (@ 1/2 point each) such as Bow, Net, Bola,
Lariet, X, Y, and Z weapons, Thrown X, Y, and Z, and a few silly
physical skills (again at ~16- for 1/2 point) to round out and balance
the character. Equip with chain mail vest, gauntlets, combat boots
(nothing in the rules prohibits wearing such while using Karate if you
have sufficient STR for the encumbrance to stay under limit) and your
set. You really don't want to know what his combat tactics were to be,
really...you don't want to know. The poisoned thrown weapons were only
a start.
The obvious answer is: The GM should just say no (and he did, in this
case, though I never actually serious proposed using this
character...it was more of a grotesque). But a system really should be
designed and playtested well enough that the GM doesn't need to say
no unless the character really just didn't fit the campaign (as
opposed to minimaxing for combat effectiveness). And people shouldn't
have to go through contortions just to get a combat effective (or
otherwise effective) character that fits their character conception.
One thing that would dramatically help this in GURPS would be to make
all point costs for skills exponential in skill level. There's
absolutely no justification for skill level costs to level out to
linear at any point.
Another thing that would help once this is done is to turn everything
into a contest of skills, where the effectiveness of the action is
based on how much "over" the winner's roll was compared to the loser
(or universe, for unopposed actions). For combat, this probably needs
to be resolved more than once per round, once for each attack.
Saves a hell of a lot of dice rolling (e.g., no damage roll),
abstracts nicely, allows easy modification for roleplaying, makes for
simple combat simulators if you're of a computer bent, and most
importantly, scales really well to higher or lower power levels of
characters. If you want to play in a genre where the PCs are
significantly higher/lower power than normal humans, but of similar
power to NPCs, there's simply no good way to model this in GURPS.