Vehicle Creation

[Kent Allard]

How useful is GURPS Vehicles, or more importantly, how critical is it to game
play in a game where vehicle creation my become an important factor.

I have been content with the basics in the main rule books up until now, since
vehicle in my games are pretty much objects to hide behind that require little
attention (other than driving skill rolls, occasionally).

If I were to get into some weirder territory, like having the players construct
Steampunk zeppelins or custom pod racers, would it be worth getting GURPS
Vehicles and the two expansion books or will it just add an extra level of
complexity to my game that no one needs?

Thanks for any input.
--
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts and minds of men? The Shadow do!
--Flip Wilson

[Ben Finney]

Kent Allard <evil@hearts_of_men.net> writes:

> If I were to get into some weirder territory, like having the players
> construct Steampunk zeppelins or custom pod racers, would it be worth
> getting GURPS Vehicles and the two expansion books or will it just add
> an extra level of complexity to my game that no one needs?

Only you can answer the questions about what you need.

As far as I know, there's no GURPS Fourth Edition equivalent of the
GURPS Vehicles books. Do you need compatibility with Fourth Edition? If
so, Vehicles doesn't come with that, and will be even more work to use.

If the vehicles rules in the Basic Set seem ineffective for the kinds of
tweaking you want to do, definitely consider GURPS Vehicles.

But make sure your group wants a very fine level of construction-kit,
gearhead, number-crunching detail in their vehicles, because that's what
GURPS Vehicles (for GURPS Third Edition) contains.

--
\ “Never use a long word when there's a commensurate diminutive |
`\ available.” —Stan Kelly-Bootle |
_o__) |
Ben Finney

[Michele]

"Kent Allard" <evil@hearts_of_men.net> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:evil-600190.2...@news.supernews.com...

>
> If I were to get into some weirder territory, like having the players
> construct
> Steampunk zeppelins or custom pod racers, would it be worth getting GURPS
> Vehicles and the two expansion books or will it just add an extra level of
> complexity to my game that no one needs?

GURPS Vehicles is a 3e book. It will require some tweaking if you are using
4e rules for everything else.

That said, the main usefulness of GURPS Vehicles is exactly in building
non-existing vehicles, like the ones you mentioned above. For anything that
was actually built in real life, you can do your own research, use real life
stats, assess the few 4e stats that are needed, and you can use the 4e rules
for vehicle combat. But you can't do that for something that was never built
in real life.

If you really want science-fiction starships or zeppelin steamships or Star
Wars vehicles, AND you are using 4e rules, you have two choices:

a) make up things like their weight, speed etc. as they sound good to you,
the GM,
b) use GURPS Vehicles 3e to do the math so that you get the main stats that
way. This will make you reasonably sure you don't end up with a ridiculously
wrong (and, therefore, hardly believable by your players) performance figure
or such. Then convert the data to 4e and use 4e rules.

That's for vehicle design. GURPS Vehicles 3e will also provide you with some
realistic, optional rules for vehicle combat that aren't available in GURPS
Basic, starting with detection at range, and continuing with special
maneuvers.

Michele Armellini
http://e23.sjgames.com/search.html?keywords=&author=Michele+Armellini

[Kent Allard]

Thanks guys. Sounds like a lot of work with not so much pay-off in terms of game
play. I'll hold off on getting the books since the vehicle builder software is
PC only.