good things about GURPS
learn...@my-dejanews.com
experience, to work out why I was initially attracted to GURPS and what its
limitations are.
As I see it, I was initially drawn by the following:
(i) point-based character creation, though the more basic attraction was
(ii) deterministic character creation, which was absolutely crucial.
(iii) a system which works in a variety of genre settings, and
(iv) fairly accurately depicts, and meets reality checks for, ordinary and
modestly heroic human beings.
(v) a reasonably comprehensive skill system, and
(vi) integration of various kinds of personal characteristics into chargen.
(vii) a combat mechanic which is a specification of the overall mechanic, and
(viii) a universal mechanic which is widely applicable outside of combat.
(ix) a robust and fairly flexible tech level system, and
(x) a 3d6-based mechanic which I find more flexible and intuitive than d10s.
While buying GURPS products, I came to appreciate two additional strengths:
(xi) the system was well-supported through books applying it to various
genres; (xii) I enjoyed the plot structure of adventures written for GURPS,
such as Creede and Sharleen Lambard's "Caravan to Ein Arris" in the Basic Set
3rd Ed., Aaron Allston and David George's "Harkwood", and Greg Porter's
"Demonstar", and later adventures in the genre collections e.g. by David
Pulver.
Now I know that several of these features were also present in the HERO
system, which had been developed sooner, but I was initially put off from
HERO by my disinterest in the superhero genre and my preference for a more
human scale. Most of these features were present in CORPS, but it came out
later and has not been especially well-supported.
In a follow-up, I will point out the concerns which are leading me to seek out
other systems to use in the future, and also problems others seem to have with
GURPS which are not problems for me.
learned, impartial, and very relaxed
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learn...@my-dejanews.com
current conceptions in other systems, are as follows. (I don't think most of
them are among the major problems other people have with GURPS.)
(i) GURPS is unavoidably quantitative, and I have been contemplating settings
for which a qualitative system would be less jarring. (While I find GURPS
quantitative, I do not however find it mechanically difficult or awkward.)
(ii) New players seem to have a fairly steep learning curve, encountering
GURPS; I didn't find it complicated to learn, myself--I may be less
preoccupied with rules than some GMs, and I don't have any abusive players in
this regard. (Then again, I don't gather together neophite players to
generate characters; most new players receive from me a template which they
can then personalize, or else the character is negotiated with the player
before the first session.)
(iii) GURPS isn't easily or comfortably adaptable at a fundamental level,
e.g. changing attributes; this doesn't bother me with most genres, but with
some... (I find GURPS ideal for most SF or Historical settings, acceptable
for Fantasy and Horror, and not well suited to Supers or other very
high-powered settings.)
(iv) Easy use of mechanics in a wide range of situations encourages a more
simulationist or gamist style of play; seamless narrative requires more
concentration or more judicious application of rules than in some other
systems.
(v) Probably for similar reasons, the community of GURPS players tends toward
simulationist or gamist preferences; the balance appears very different e.g.
compared to the pool of Everway players or FUDGE players. (Presumably SJG
stopped producing books of scenarios because GURPS attracted "world-building"
players who didn't need or want pregenerated plots; of course the number of
players interested in a given setting must also have been a factor.)
Many other people, though, seem to dislike GURPS viscerally, for at least one
of the following reasons:
(i) some are philosophically biased against "universal" systems, compared to
dedicated systems where mechanics can be integrated to the setting; (ii)
others will only play one setting, and find GURPS inelegant to do this (iii)
OR are frustrated by the lack of support in GURPS for any given setting; (iv)
some are completists who are frustrated at the expense of keeping up with the
whole GURPS system or at the fact that there are "rules" in books they lack;
(v) others find the GURPS system or character generation overly complex; (vi)
some are diceless descriptives who find such a mechanical system useless;
(vii) some are heroic players who resent the creeping realism of GURPS, even
played with some cinematic options.
Does this do some justice to the issues other people have encountered?
Mary K. Kuhner
<learn...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
[reasons not to like GURPS]
>Does this do some justice to the issues other people have encountered?
Well, it missed every one of mine....
We own a pile of GURPS books, and they're useful idea sources, but a
couple of things drive me buggy if I try to actually run in or play
the system.
(i) Mix of point-costs based on rarity or difficulty and point costs
based on usefulness, so that total point-cost isn't predictive of
either rarity *or* utility.
(ii) Dependencies among different parts of the system which lead to
weird inconsistencies in the costs (i.e. two identical characters
except that one has higher DX and is much cheaper).
(iii) Not enough discussion of the design metalaws, so that it's
hard to consistently rate or price new additions to the system.
(iv) Monsterously overblown psych lims, so that you have to cut
them way down before they make sense in a realistic setting--this
is weird in an otherwise reasonably realistic game.
(v) Writing tone. I can't really describe what bugs me here, except
to say that it somehow trivializes the topics under discussion. Too
many exclamation points and deliberately silly examples.
I'm not saying it's a bad system. Generic systems are horrendously
hard to write, and there's a lot of good stuff in this one. But
these are the things that keep me from using it.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Brett Evill
>My own concerns about GURPS, which are leading me toward running some of my
>current conceptions in other systems, are as follows. (I don't think most of
>them are among the major problems other people have with GURPS.)
>
>(ii) New players seem to have a fairly steep learning curve, encountering
>GURPS; I didn't find it complicated to learn, myself--I may be less
>preoccupied with rules than some GMs, and I don't have any abusive players in
>this regard. (Then again, I don't gather together neophite players to
>generate characters; most new players receive from me a template which they
>can then personalize, or else the character is negotiated with the player
>before the first session.)
<quibble> The learning curves I am familiar with from psychology are
graphs of amount learned as a function of time. So a steep learning curve
reflects quick learning. </quibble>
>Many other people, though, seem to dislike GURPS viscerally, for at least one
>of the following reasons:
>
<snip>
>
>Does this do some justice to the issues other people have encountered?
I converted from AD&D to TFT (of which I was a big fan). So I bought 'Man
to Man' when it came out. I read through it on the train on the way home,
and was disgusted by the fact that the armour rules work backwards, and
the designers don't even realise it. Armour is supposed to be more
effective against crushing than piercing damage, with cutting
intermediate. That's what the text says. But apply the rules and armour is
more effective against crushing weapons than piercing ones. I'm not buying
GURPS until they work this out and fix it.
EXAMPLE
Suppose my swing damage is one die plus one. On a typical sort of roll I
might roll a four.
With a crushing thrusting weapon that does four points, but if the target
has two points of armour he only takes two. Two points of armour
protection stops two points of crushing damage.
With a cutting weapon what gets through armour is increased by fifty
percent. An unarmoured target takes six points and that guy with two
points of armour protection takes three points. 6 - 3 = 3. Two points of
armour stops three points of cutting damage.
With a piercing weapon what gets through armour is doubled. The naked foe
takes eight points and the guy with two points of armour takes only four.
8 - 4 = 4. Two points of armour stops four points of piercing damage.
Sure, GURPS makes piercing weapons effective against people in armour. But
it does so by making them grossly effective against the unarmoured. And
the designers made armour more effective against piercing than crushing
weapons, apparently by accident. And fifteen years have gone by without
them working it out.
--
Brett Evill
To reply by e-mail, remove 'spamblocker.' from <b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au>
Martin Mertens
silly to me.
Example: IQ.
According to GURPS, the difference between Joe Average and Einstein
(IQs 10 and 19*) is the same as that between a plant and Joe Average
(IQs 1 and 10).
[*or IQ 16 (which is still 'genius', though not 'nobel prize winner'),
because that's worth +80 points, just as IQ 1 is worth -80 points]
Greetings, Martin
William H. Stoddard
> simulationist or gamist preferences; the balance appears very different e.g.
> compared to the pool of Everway players or FUDGE players. (Presumably SJG
> stopped producing books of scenarios because GURPS attracted "world-building"
> players who didn't need or want pregenerated plots; of course the number of
> players interested in a given setting must also have been a factor.)
>
and at least two of them seem to be roleplaying intensive, which I think
would be "dramatist"; my players get very involved in defining interesting
character motivations and histories, acting out intense encounters, and
the like. My GURPS Uplift campaign a few years ago had mixed drama and
comedy (well, there were two tymbrimi on the ship!), with only two combats
in two years of play--one of which involved restraining a character who
had had a seizure. (The ship's uplift psychologist ended up with a broken
nose from being kicked by a tymbrimi in gheer reaction strength.) So my
experience has been that GURPS is at least capable of supporting a
dramatist style.
--
William H. Stoddard whs...@primenet.net
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.
(T. S. Eliot, "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats")
William H. Stoddard
b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au (Brett Evill) wrote:
> EXAMPLE
>
> Suppose my swing damage is one die plus one. On a typical sort of roll I
> might roll a four.
>
> With a crushing thrusting weapon that does four points, but if the target
> has two points of armour he only takes two. Two points of armour
> protection stops two points of crushing damage.
>
> With a cutting weapon what gets through armour is increased by fifty
> percent. An unarmoured target takes six points and that guy with two
> points of armour protection takes three points. 6 - 3 = 3. Two points of
> armour stops three points of cutting damage.
>
> With a piercing weapon what gets through armour is doubled. The naked foe
> takes eight points and the guy with two points of armour takes only four.
> 8 - 4 = 4. Two points of armour stops four points of piercing damage.
>
I don't think this comparison is quite valid as it stands. The way I
would work it is as follows:
Here is a crushing weapon. I roll a 4 and do 4 points of damage. Against
an unarmored adversary those 4 points of damage will cause 4 points of
final result.
Here is an impaling weapon. I roll a 2 and do 2 points of damage.
Against an unarmored adversary those 2 points of damage will cause 4
points of final result. (A smaller, lighter impaling weapon is as deadly
as a larger, heavier crushing weapon.)
Here is a target in DR 2 armor. The crushing weapon does 4 points of
damage, of which 2 points get through and cause 2 points of injury. The
impaling weapon does 2 points of damage, of which 0 points get through and
cause 0 points of injury. (For DR 1 armor, the final results would be
crushing 3, impaling 2.) Clearly the armor confers more benefit against
the impaling weapon--when you measure the value of the weapon by final
damage inflicted.
tgf...@zianet.com
b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au (Brett Evill) wrote:
> >current conceptions in other systems, are as follows. (I don't think most of
> >them are among the major problems other people have with GURPS.)
> >
> >(ii) New players seem to have a fairly steep learning curve, encountering
> >GURPS; I didn't find it complicated to learn, myself--I may be less
> >preoccupied with rules than some GMs, and I don't have any abusive players in
> >this regard. (Then again, I don't gather together neophite players to
> >generate characters; most new players receive from me a template which they
> >can then personalize, or else the character is negotiated with the player
> >before the first session.)
>
> <quibble> The learning curves I am familiar with from psychology are
> graphs of amount learned as a function of time. So a steep learning curve
> reflects quick learning. </quibble>
>
PC software world, the term "steep learning curve" is used to refer to
slow and/or difficult learning.
> I converted from AD&D to TFT (of which I was a big fan). So I bought 'Man
> to Man' when it came out. I read through it on the train on the way home,
> and was disgusted by the fact that the armour rules work backwards, and
> the designers don't even realise it. Armour is supposed to be more
> effective against crushing than piercing damage, with cutting
> intermediate. That's what the text says. But apply the rules and armour is
> more effective against crushing weapons than piercing ones. I'm not buying
> GURPS until they work this out and fix it.
I hadn't noticed that; thanks for another reason to favor CORPS or Timelords
over GURPS. Thrusting attacks could be considered as armor piercing against
some kinds of armor. there was a game which used a "penetration factor" for
each weapon to determine effectiveness in penetrating armor (I think it was
space Opera, and that a roll for penetration was made).
I recently decided not to use GURPS because of the 3d6 bell curve. Why do
people prefer that to a linear distribution with multiplicative modifiers?
As in Timelords, for example?
Tom merring
delph...@geocities.com
>
> In article <b.evill-1209...@tynslip2.apana.org.au>,
> b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au (Brett Evill) wrote:
> > I converted from AD&D to TFT (of which I was a big fan). So I bought 'Man
> > to Man' when it came out. I read through it on the train on the way home,
> > and was disgusted by the fact that the armour rules work backwards, and
> > the designers don't even realise it. Armour is supposed to be more
> > effective against crushing than piercing damage, with cutting
> > intermediate. That's what the text says. But apply the rules and armour is
> > more effective against crushing weapons than piercing ones. I'm not buying
> > GURPS until they work this out and fix it.
>
> I hadn't noticed that; thanks for another reason to favor CORPS or Timelords
> over GURPS. Thrusting attacks could be considered as armor piercing against
> some kinds of armor.
Or you could just apply DR after damage type modifiers...
> I recently decided not to use GURPS because of the 3d6 bell curve. Why do
> people prefer that to a linear distribution with multiplicative modifiers?
> As in Timelords, for example?
I suppose because adding is simpler than multiplying. But how do you
have multiplicative modifers without either wildly variant results,
granularity problems, or the use of fractions(which would be even more
complex)?
- Dare "Just grin and Dare it!"
* All typos in the previous message are to be considered edicts of Eris.
Please update your dictionaries accordingly.
* Check 47 USC( http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/227.shtml ). You
spam, you pay up to 500$ US.
* Hi! I'm a replicating .sig virus! Join the fun and copy me into yours!
:)
* http://members.xoom.com/Darekun/GURPScombat.txt
delph...@geocities.com
>
> My own concerns about GURPS, which are leading me toward running some of my
> current conceptions in other systems, are as follows. (I don't think most of
> them are among the major problems other people have with GURPS.)
<snip>
> (iii) GURPS isn't easily or comfortably adaptable at a fundamental level,
> e.g. changing attributes; this doesn't bother me with most genres, but with
> some... (I find GURPS ideal for most SF or Historical settings, acceptable
> for Fantasy and Horror, and not well suited to Supers or other very
> high-powered settings.)
I haven't found this to be the case(IMC every attribute but DX has been
altered, and I've changed the entire pricing scheme for attributes),
though I have a very strong bent for tinkering with systems.
> [...] Many other people, though, seem to dislike GURPS viscerally, for at least one
> of the following reasons:
> [...] (vii) some are heroic players who resent the creeping realism of GURPS, even
> played with some cinematic options.
I've seen people post to r.g.f.gurps that they're trying to create some
more cinematic subsystems, and looking for tips on how to do it; they
get a plethora of posts about how you "can't do that in GURPS". Despite
this, I find it very easy to create rules that impose a strong cinematic
feel on it. (For instance: GURPS combat is highly lethal. Someone posts
that they're tired of the characters getting killed by minor thugs, and
they want to tone it down. They get posts saying "you can't, you're
supposed to keep them out of combat". I ended up posting a system that
prevented characters from regularly doing heavy damage unless they're
exceptionally skilled.)
This is a problem with the community, not with GURPS itself.
Jeremy Reaban
1) Has too few character attributes (4). I don't think this adequately
describes a person.
2) People with high attributes are much better at skills than people with
medium skills, especially when created..
3) I don't like the advantage/disadvantage system. It encourages players to
have freak characters - one legged stuttering albinos that are afraid of
the dark and being hunted by a secret government agency.
4) The skill/task resolution system isn't very good, nor is combat
5) I don't like point based character generation systems...
learn...@my-dejanews.com wrote in article
<6tcepu$jlk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
<snip>
> Does this do some justice to the issues other people have encountered?
<snip>
Russell Wallace
> I converted from AD&D to TFT (of which I was a big fan). So I bought 'Man
> to Man' when it came out. I read through it on the train on the way home,
> and was disgusted by the fact that the armour rules work backwards, and
> the designers don't even realise it. Armour is supposed to be more
> effective against crushing than piercing damage, with cutting
> intermediate. That's what the text says. But apply the rules and armour is
> more effective against crushing weapons than piercing ones. I'm not buying
> GURPS until they work this out and fix it.
Uh... realistically, seems to me that blunt weapons should be more
effective against armor than sharp weapons, compared to their
effectiveness against unarmored targets, and the GURPS rules get that
right. That's also why they list bullets as "crushing" damage, so
they'll be highly effective against armor. I was pretty sure the text
was consistent with this, but if it says somewhere that armor should be
better at stopping crushing weapons, I'd treat it as a typo.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mano...@iol.ie
Irina Rempt
> In article <6tcepu$jlk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, learn...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> >
> > simulationist or gamist preferences; the balance appears very different e.g.
> > compared to the pool of Everway players or FUDGE players. (Presumably SJG
> > stopped producing books of scenarios because GURPS attracted "world-building"
> > players who didn't need or want pregenerated plots; of course the number of
> > players interested in a given setting must also have been a factor.)
> >
> Do you really find it so? I'm currently running three GURPS campaigns,
> and at least two of them seem to be roleplaying intensive, which I think
> would be "dramatist"; my players get very involved in defining interesting
> character motivations and histories, acting out intense encounters, and
> the like.
This could equally well be "simulationist", depending on whether the
motivations and histories are interesting to the *players* (dramatist
or perhaps even gamist) or to the *characters* (simulationist, because
everything depends on in-game factors). I'm a simulationist GM (I
think; not very strict, it just needs to *feel* right, not to be
provably right) and my campaigns are very roleplaying intensive as
well. I more or less expect immersion, or at least Actor mode
indistinguishable from it, which seems to be a simulationist feature.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
-------------------- Lingua Latina Occasionibus Omnibus --------------------
XIV. "Purgamentum init, exit purgamentum."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMANDE
heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
Rick Cordes
>In article <b.evill-1209...@tynslip2.apana.org.au>,
>
>> effective against crushing than piercing damage, with cutting
>> intermediate. That's what the text says. But apply the rules and armour is
>> more effective against crushing weapons than piercing ones.
I'll take your word for it in general but I thought crossbow bolts
were effective against plate armour. I remember a conversation twenty years
ago over the plus and minuses appearing in original D&D weapon-versus-armour
type to hit modication (not to damage) chart. Whether the weapon was two
handed or not seemed to be key in their thinking it would or would not
be effective versus armour in general. Distinguishing between these
differences vis-a-vis how combatants would adapt their style to the
weaponry and armour of their opponent and distinguishing between the
effects of a direct or glancing, the speed weapons can be wielded has
always been a can of fish, and has boiled down for us to what gives the
greatest satisfaction to be handle explicitly. Since we play in rounds
long enough for some weapons to have made multiple attacks, we think
rather in terms of how much a damage a weapon can deliver in a round;
we're likewise sloppy with armour: the rational being faster weapons
being less effective versus armour will compensate by making more attacks
per round and the syle of fighting using any weapon versus anykind of
armour will adapt. We end up distinguishing between the effect of the
different weapon damage, and the damage pared by any armour is randomized.
>
> I hadn't noticed that; thanks for another reason to favor CORPS or Timelords
>over GURPS. Thrusting attacks could be considered as armor piercing against
>some kinds of armor. there was a game which used a "penetration factor" for
>each weapon to determine effectiveness in penetrating armor (I think it was
>space Opera, and that a roll for penetration was made).
I suppose next you'll be comparing WarpWorld favorably to GURPS?
> I recently decided not to use GURPS because of the 3d6 bell curve. Why do
>people prefer that to a linear distribution with multiplicative modifiers?
>As in Timelords, for example?
I think because 3d6 people use mechanics where rolls are made
independently of other rolls and they want to achieve a distribution
of results only possible if they use larger dice or if they use multiple
dice. Multiplicative fractional modifiers I think are a bit of a burden
to the extent anytime you have to do a calculation or consult
a table is a bit of a drag, also, I think players are not equally
happy using them. I appreciate multiplying an attempt by .6 or .8 makes
more sense than modifying it by -1 or -2 but they are easier to compound
than multiple multiples and they don't produce fractions. In either case
one needs to ask how often do they really make a difference compared to
the trouble used to do the accounting.
-Rick
William H. Stoddard
>
> This could equally well be "simulationist", depending on whether the
> motivations and histories are interesting to the *players* (dramatist
> or perhaps even gamist) or to the *characters* (simulationist, because
> everything depends on in-game factors). I'm a simulationist GM (I
> think; not very strict, it just needs to *feel* right, not to be
> provably right) and my campaigns are very roleplaying intensive as
> well. I more or less expect immersion, or at least Actor mode
> indistinguishable from it, which seems to be a simulationist feature.
>
hard to tell; from what I've read about the concept, it seems so
profoundly alien to the way I roleplay that I don't know if I can even
recognize it when other people do it. I had a great time in a recent
campaign playing a character who was really dense (I modelled him on
Bertie Wooster)--I could have him say profoundly outrageous things that
got a laugh from the other players without having a clue as to what he had
just said. I was NEVER unaware of what he had said.
Carl D. Cravens
> stopped producing books of scenarios because GURPS attracted "world-building"
> players who didn't need or want pregenerated plots; of course the number of
> players interested in a given setting must also have been a factor.)
SJ Games "quit" producing books of scenarios because nobody is writing
scenario books that meet Steve's requirements for high quality and
usefulness. Or so I recall him saying in one forum or another sometime
back.
--
Carl D. Cravens (rave...@southwind.net)
* Phoenyx Roleplaying Listserver --- http://www.phoenyx.net/
No sense being pessimistic. It wouldn't work anyway.
Jay Molstad
> Hello I'm running A WWII Normandy Campagin and would be interested to
> heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
The British TV comedy Black Adder did a set of season or so set in the
trenches of WWI (called Black Adder Goes Forth). It's available on video.
If your local rental places have it in stock, it might make a good source
of ideas.
--
Jay Molstad
jc...@cornell.edu
Doug Berry
COMMANDE <n...@way.com> said:
>Hello I'm running A WWII Normandy Campagin and would be interested to
>heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
The unit is rotated to the rear, and learns that a Command-level
inspection is coming.. headed by none other than General Patton!
The PC's must deal with the following:
1> Close up holes in the TO&E.. every unit loses items, but
"Blood&Guts" won't listen to excuses. For fun, have the company
property book damaged and one entry is partially unreadable.
2> Dispose of unauthorized equipment.. American units were
notorious for accumilating piles of captured/borrowed/stolen
gear. One infantry company ended up with four Sherman tanks! If
the PC's unit has a rare piece of equipment, they have to find a
safe place to hid it until the General blows through.
3> Dispose of contraband, similar to 2, but these are things like
captured flags and uniforms, "liberated" liquor supplies, etc.
4> Anybody remember how to march? The PC's unit hasn't stood in
formation for quite a while, and needs to learn how to drill
again.
5> Deal with the sad sacks.. every unit has it's goldbricks,
goof-offs and ne'er-do-wells who happen to be combat gold.
Trying to shape up these guys for a paradeground ceremony could
be fun.
6> Maybe Patton is coming to pin a medal on a soldier.. if
anyone is playing a meek, mild type of soldier, set him up to win
a Silver Star. Patton had definate ideas about what a "real"
soldier looked and acted like.
This is mainly a humorous set of ideas, but the Normandy campaign
was little more than a series of slug-fests through the bocage.
--
+--------------------------------------------+
| Douglas E. Berry dbe...@nospam.hooked.net |
| http://www.hooked.net/~dberry/index.html |
| (remove "nospam" to reply by mail) |
|--------------------------------------------|
| "History is the vast and tangled web |
| of Conspiracy." -Anon. |
+--------------------------------------------+
Gregory Loren Hansen
>Hello I'm running A WWII Normandy Campagin and would be interested to
>heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
I think that would be hard. The grunts pretty much go where they're told
to go and shoot who they're told to shoot. The soldiers have more room
for creative action when they're promoted, but that's more like a tactical
game than a role-playing game.
Role-playing can happen between battles. The grunts can get into wacky
misadventures with the natives or something. Commando units have more
options for player-directed gaming, spies might have even more. The war
can create a backdrop for mercenaries and adventurers. But in general, I
think a conventional war makes a lousy role-playing experience. The
grunts just don't have many game-moving decisions to make besides "Should
I follow orders or refuse? Should I dive into that shell crater or try to
go for the stone wall? Should I shoot the guy on the left or the guy on
the right?"
--
"It doesn't matter if you have a beard on the outside. It's the beard on
the inside that counts." -- Action Hank
David Crowe
: Hello I'm running A WWII Normandy Campagin and would be interested to
: heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
How about stealing, er, being inspired by the plot from Saving Private
Ryan. The PCs are basically on their own.
--
David "No Nickname" Crowe http://www.primenet.com/~jetman
Your personality is ruled by the lumps on your head.
Maybe some new bumps would improve your personality, eh?
-"Corrective Phrenologists" INWO SubGenius card
Jay Molstad
<fran...@stlnet.com> wrote:
> Well, I don't like it because
Heck, I'll stick up for it.
> 1) Has too few character attributes (4). I don't think this adequately
> describes a person.
How many do you want? Four attributes are, of course, an extemely
minimal basis for a character concept. But bu the time you get around to
advantages, disads, skills, and quirks the character should be reasonably
fleshed out.
To put a more constructive slant on it, what attributes do you think it
needs before it can make a three-dimensional character?
> 2) People with high attributes are much better at skills than people with
> medium skills, especially when created..
This is questionable for simulating reality, but it simulates fiction
very well. A typical 100 pt. starting character is a nobody with lots of
potential. After a relatively short time, they become competent and even
expert. It's the Skywalker Effect (or Daniel-san or whatever), main
characters develop much more rapidly than scrubs.
> 3) I don't like the advantage/disadvantage system. It encourages players to
> have freak characters - one legged stuttering albinos that are afraid of
> the dark and being hunted by a secret government agency.
Lots of players try something like that early on. If the GM is good
about enforcing disads, they won't try with their next character. It
shouldn't take long for natural selection to do its job on the maladapted
freaks.
> 4) The skill/task resolution system isn't very good, nor is combat
Could you be more specific?
> 5) I don't like point based character generation systems...
Any reasons? As it stands, you're not so much critiquing the game as
describing a minor neurosis.
Many of the above complaints are a bit vague. They might be
enlightening, however, if you can state them more precisely.
--
Jay Molstad
jc...@cornell.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
William H. Stoddard <whs...@primenet.com> wrote:
>Isn't immersive play more associated with the dramatist mode? I find it
>hard to tell; from what I've read about the concept, it seems so
>profoundly alien to the way I roleplay that I don't know if I can even
>recognize it when other people do it.
My experience of Immersive players (I've known a couple, not
enough for a really good sample though) is that they tend to impose
fairly simulationist restrictions on *themselves*, but their
preferences as to the major techniques used by the GM can range
anywhere from strict simulationist to middling dramatist.
Very strongly dramatist games usually require some use of
drama techniques from the players, and Immersion is a bad place
from which to be trying that.
One cost of Immersion is that you can't usually firewall away
information like "Boy, aren't there a lot of strange coincidences
here?" John Morrow has told some stories about Immersive PCs
in too-contrived settings who went insane, unable to maintain
a coherent model of their world. But one can certainly run a
dramatist game that doesn't overstep this line.
Speaking only for myself here, I'm probably most likely to
get an Immersive PC to click in a game which is mostly simulationist
in event resolution, but with small amounts of GM intervention
to maintain both game and story values. I get too emotionally
involved with my PCs to feel entirely comfortable in a strict
simulationist game, but it needs to be fairly simulationist in
order not to dilute my engagement with the world and NPCs. Of
the two campaigns I usually write about on this newsgroup,
_Paradisio_ (the Shadowrun campaign) was at the simulationist
end of my range and _Radiant_ (the space opera) is at the
dramatist end. Both showed some stresses. _Paradisio_ just
got too hard, both in the gamist tactical sense and the emotional
one, and nearly collapsed a couple of times for this reason.
_Radiant_, with its script immunity, skates now and then on
the thin edge of "That happened for story reasons; it's not
real." I'm not sure a happy medium exists. I don't think I'm
a very easy player to run for; it's a wonder Jon puts up with
me.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Nightshade
>> I hadn't noticed that; thanks for another reason to favor CORPS or Timelords
>>over GURPS. Thrusting attacks could be considered as armor piercing against
>>some kinds of armor. there was a game which used a "penetration factor" for
>>each weapon to determine effectiveness in penetrating armor (I think it was
>>space Opera, and that a roll for penetration was made).
>
> I suppose next you'll be comparing WarpWorld favorably to GURPS?
I don't know if he would, but I'd be happy to.
Boudewijn Rempt
: I think that would be hard. The grunts pretty much go where they're told
: to go and shoot who they're told to shoot. The soldiers have more room
: for creative action when they're promoted, but that's more like a tactical
: game than a role-playing game.
: Role-playing can happen between battles. The grunts can get into wacky
: misadventures with the natives or something. Commando units have more
: options for player-directed gaming, spies might have even more. The war
: can create a backdrop for mercenaries and adventurers. But in general, I
: think a conventional war makes a lousy role-playing experience. The
: grunts just don't have many game-moving decisions to make besides "Should
: I follow orders or refuse? Should I dive into that shell crater or try to
: go for the stone wall? Should I shoot the guy on the left or the guy on
: the right?"
I think that for a short campaign (say about ten sessions, perhaps
more), it could work out very well. After all, a soldiers' life
consists mainly of waiting, trekking around and sometimes a fight. Not
really different from a classic dungeon crawl.
It should be easy to find published soldiers' diaries, full of ideas.
And when the players have had enough of fighting, exploring villages,
meeting French girls, taking prisoners, gathering the loot a previous
poster mentioned, losing contact with their superiors, losing their
way and finding them in the British sector, they can always be taken
prisoner of war and transported to a Stalag. And then they can try to
escape, travel trough Poland and Germany.
I wouldn't see the need to give the players the chance to affect the
outcome of the war or even the battles. Having them save themselves
could be interesting enough.
--
Boudewijn Rempt
Clemens Meier
Hello!
David Crowe <jet...@primenet.com> writes:
> COMMANDE <n...@way.com> wrote:
> : Hello I'm running A WWII Normandy Campagin and would be interested to
> : heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
>
> How about stealing, er, being inspired by the plot from Saving Private
> Ryan. The PCs are basically on their own.
s,Saving Private Ryan,Kelly's Heroes,
Well, it's not actually Normandy, but it might work as well ;-)
CU
Clemens
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
When there is useful information which [your] clm...@lili.uni-bielefeld.de
program can send to the terminal but not get Clemens Meier
at itself, your customers start to say very GO C++ 3$ UL L+>+++ E++>+++ P-
unkindly things about you. R.A.O'Keefe N++ R+>+++ G'''' b++ TWERPS+++
Bryan Bankhead
whs...@primenet.com (William H. Stoddard) wrote:
> So my
> experience has been that GURPS is at least capable of supporting a
> dramatist style.
>
GURPS. Which removes the necessity of learning or using FURPS in such a
capacity.
Bryan Bankhead
> I recently decided not to use GURPS because of the 3d6 bell curve. Why do
> people prefer that to a linear distribution with multiplicative modifiers?
> As in Timelords, for example?
>
Because with linear distributions modifiers have consistent effects at
all points on the line. With a bell curve a +1 modifier has a much greater
effect on a 10 than it does on an 17. It's easier to understand the
statistical effect of your modifiers with a straight distribution.
Bryan Bankhead
>
> I'll take your word for it in general but I thought crossbow bolts
> were effective against plate armour. I remember a conversation twenty years
> ago over the plus and minuses appearing in original D&D weapon-versus-armour
> type to hit modication (not to damage) chart.
Well that's what you get for debating things like this with the D&D
crowd. I gave up on those people some years ago when I watched (open
mouthed with amazement) a DM give a convoluted argument on why it would
take a man in plate armor a FULL MINUTE to walk 30 feet.
Tom Vallejos
>
> Hello I'm running A WWII Normandy Campagin and would be interested to
> heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
Here are three:
1) The Battalion has been cut off by a German attack. The PCs have been
placed in a position to act as artillery spotters for a counterattack
that will start in a few hours. The problems: the locals want to
celebrate that the Allies are here and keep coming up to your position
to offer the PCs win and cheese etc. And the Germans are patrolling the
area with a Tiger Tank.
2) A VIP from back home has been assigned to the squad along with his
agent/flunky. The VIP is a good guy and wants to do his duty, but teh
flunky doesn't want his meal ticket to take unnecessary risks and tries
to get NPCs in the Squad and platoon to do the work for him.
3) A brother of one of the PCs is in the Air Corps and gets shot down
just behind enemy lines. The PC in question knows this because he knows
the markings on bro's P-51, and they saw a chute.
--
Tom Vallejos
to email me remove "nospam" from address
email: flying...@nospamearthlink.net
"On a brighter note Ray, 18% of all (plane) crash survivors crawl
away with at least 3 out of 4 limbs."
(Fraser to Ray as their plane falls out of the sky)
Tom Vallejos
>
> If memory serves, on Sat, 12 Sep 1998 15:13:29 -0700, Iron Chef
> COMMANDE <n...@way.com> said:
>
> >heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
>
> inspection is coming.. headed by none other than General Patton!
>
snip
Real good idea.
tgf...@zianet.com
> >
>
> I'll take your word for it in general but I thought crossbow bolts
> were effective against plate armour.
I saw a PBS show once in which it was demonstrated that a long bow arrow can
penetrate plate twoor three inches. Seems likely to me that a crosbow bolt
would penetrate plate very well.
Were not war hammers devised for the purpose of punching through plate
armor?
>
> I suppose next you'll be comparing WarpWorld favorably to GURPS?
>
GURPS may be easier to run.
> > I recently decided not to use GURPS because of the 3d6 bell curve. Why do
> >people prefer that to a linear distribution with multiplicative modifiers?
> >As in Timelords, for example?
>
> I think because 3d6 people use mechanics where rolls are made
> independently of other rolls and they want to achieve a distribution
> of results only possible if they use larger dice or if they use multiple
> dice. Multiplicative fractional modifiers I think are a bit of a burden
> to the extent anytime you have to do a calculation or consult
> a table is a bit of a drag, also, I think players are not equally
> happy using them.
do you not think that most players can easily multiply a whole number from 1
to 20 by 0.6 or 0.8 and round the result "to the nearest" in their heads? I
appreciate multiplying an attempt by .6 or .8 makes
> more sense than modifying it by -1 or -2 but they are easier to compound
> than multiple multiples and they don't produce fractions. In either case
> one needs to ask how often do they really make a difference compared to
> the trouble used to do the accounting.
>
> -Rick
>
Tom Merring
tgf...@zianet.com
BB...@megsinet.net (Bryan Bankhead) wrote:
> In article <6teb5d$ulg$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tgf...@zianet.com wrote:
>
> > I recently decided not to use GURPS because of the 3d6 bell curve. Why do
> > people prefer that to a linear distribution with multiplicative modifiers?
> > As in Timelords, for example?
> >
> all points on the line.
With a bell curve a +1 modifier has a much greater
> effect on a 10 than it does on an 17.
It's easier to understand the
> statistical effect of your modifiers with a straight distribution.
>
tgf...@zianet.com
delph...@geocities.com wrote:
> tgf...@zianet.com wrote:
> >
> > In article <b.evill-1209...@tynslip2.apana.org.au>,
> > > I converted from AD&D to TFT (of which I was a big fan). So I bought 'Man
> > > to Man' when it came out. I read through it on the train on the way home,
> > > and was disgusted by the fact that the armour rules work backwards, and
> > > effective against crushing than piercing damage, with cutting
> > > intermediate. That's what the text says. But apply the rules and armour is
> > > GURPS until they work this out and fix it.
> >
Timelords
> > over GURPS. Thrusting attacks could be considered as armor piercing against
> > some kinds of armor.
>
>
> > people prefer that to a linear distribution with multiplicative modifiers?
> > As in Timelords, for example?
>
> have multiplicative modifers without either wildly variant results,
> granularity problems, or the use of fractions(which would be even more
> complex)?
>
results" and "granularity problems"?
tgf...@zianet.com
Night...@nightdark.com (Nightshade) wrote:
> cor...@Hawaii.Edu (Rick Cordes) wrote:
>
> >> I hadn't noticed that; thanks for another reason to favor CORPS or
Timelords
> >>over GURPS. Thrusting attacks could be considered as armor piercing against
> >>each weapon to determine effectiveness in penetrating armor (I think it was
> >>space Opera, and that a roll for penetration was made).
> >
>
>
combat, and damage systems that are the best I have seen for their levels of
complexity. I'm not sure I want to run them, ecept for CORPS.
John S. Novak
<b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au> wrote:
>Armour is supposed to be more
>effective against crushing than piercing damage, with cutting
>intermediate. That's what the text says. But apply the rules and armour is
>more effective against crushing weapons than piercing ones. I'm not buying
>GURPS until they work this out and fix it.
??
>EXAMPLE
[Snipped]
>Sure, GURPS makes piercing weapons effective against people in armour. But
>it does so by making them grossly effective against the unarmoured. And
>the designers made armour more effective against piercing than crushing
>weapons, apparently by accident.
I don't buy your objection and I don't buy your conclusion.
First, I think that in the normal course of life, piercing weapons
_are_ grossly effective against unarmoured human beings as compared to
crushing weapons. Given your choice, would you rather be hit in the
gut with the end of a quarterstaff, slashed across the stomach with a
scimitar, or run through with a gladius?
I know what _my_ answer is.
And the answer is the same if we move this from the gut to the thigh,
the knee, the arm, the chest, the back, etc.
And in terms of results, I don't think there's any quibble at all--
piercing weapons are more effective against an armored foe than
non-piercing. That's what the system is designed to do, that's what
maps well to reality after a first order approximation, and that's
what the system delivers.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cris.com
The Humblest Man on the Net
delph...@geocities.com
Well, your numbers have to be either close together or far apart. If
they range from, say, 3 to 6, you get a fairly coarse distribution.
With, say, 3 to 12, you get a *very* strong influence from the
modifiers. (You could also do, say, 10 to 20, but that's as complex as
using fractions - actually, for the same reason s using fractions. If
you use 3 to 6 in steps of .25, you get the same effect, with the same
difficulty of rapid computation.)
- Dare "Just grin and Dare it!"
* All typos in the previous message are to be considered edicts of Eris.
Please update your dictionaries accordingly.
* Check 47 USC( http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/227.shtml ). You
spam, you pay up to 500$ US.
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delph...@geocities.com
>
> In article <6teb5d$ulg$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tgf...@zianet.com wrote:
>
> >In article <b.evill-1209...@tynslip2.apana.org.au>,
> > b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au (Brett Evill) wrote:
>
> >> graphs of amount learned as a function of time. So a steep learning curve
> >> reflects quick learning. </quibble>
> >>
> > I recall those (is Hull still studied?). However, in the business and/of
> >PC software world, the term "steep learning curve" is used to refer to
> >slow and/or difficult learning.
>
> This common error makes the term meaningless. If someone says 'steep
> learning curve' he or she means that learning is either easy or difficult,
> and either quick of slow. But you can't tell which without asking. Result:
> total failure to communicate.
Except that the easy and fast meaning exists only in jargon, while the
hard and slow meaning has passed into common usage.
William H. Stoddard
BB...@megsinet.net (Bryan Bankhead) wrote:
> >
> GURPS. Which removes the necessity of learning or using FURPS in such a
> capacity.
I can't agree with the claim that GURPS rules are intricate. Character
construction is a straightforward point-build system, with a simple scale
of costs for attributes and a simple scale of costs for skills. Play
mechanics basically uses the skill roll, the damage roll, and the reaction
roll. Probabilities behave in a fairly straightforward and predictable
way--much more so than probabilities in, say, Mage, where you need a
spreadsheet to figure out how probability of a botch shifts with dice pool
and difficulty level.
What IS intricate in GURPS is the number of advantages, disadvantages,
skills, and maneuvers that can be used in designing and playing a
character. But then, take a look at the long lists of virtues, flaws,
secondary skills, and other options for a Mage character--in a system
generally considered to be strongly dramatist oriented.
Also, in my case, I had previously run one GURPS campaign and played in
two or three and I owned a lot of the books. So I didn't need to learn
GURPS in order to run a dramatist campaign; I already knew it, and so did
most of my players. The cost/benefit ratio admittedly might be different
for someone without that background. I'm certainly not saying GURPS is
the ideal dramatist system; I'm just saying it doesn't preclude such a
playstyle.
Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh
(Jay Molstad) wrote:
>> 2) People with high attributes are much better at skills than people with
>> medium skills, especially when created..
>
> This is questionable for simulating reality, but it simulates fiction
>very well. A typical 100 pt. starting character is a nobody with lots of
>potential. After a relatively short time, they become competent and even
>expert. It's the Skywalker Effect (or Daniel-san or whatever), main
>characters develop much more rapidly than scrubs.
This *is* a problem, because not only does "Skywalker" or "Daniel-san"
advance quicker, he can also *start* with higher skill levels than
another character with *more* points in skills, but lower attributes.
I use a base skill level of 12 rather than DX or IQ. Characters with
higher stats start with lower skills but develop quicker. Characters
who spend less points in stats can have higher skill levels to begin
with. This better models the "Skywalker Effect" IMHO.
Stumpy.
--
Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh
rma...@xtra.co.nz
<http://members.xoom.com/StumpyNZ/>
Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh
>do you not think that most players can easily multiply a whole number from 1
>to 20 by 0.6 or 0.8 and round the result "to the nearest" in their heads?
I certainly wouldn't want to bet 'most' could do it quickly. I'm smart
and somewhat maths oriented, but I wouldn't want to have to do that
sort of calculation several times per combat. Then you've got the
problem of stacked modifiers...
Brett Evill
whs...@primenet.com (William H. Stoddard) wrote:
>In article <b.evill-1209...@tynslip2.apana.org.au>,
>b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au (Brett Evill) wrote:
>
>> EXAMPLE
>>
>> Suppose my swing damage is one die plus one. On a typical sort of roll I
>> might roll a four.
>>
>> With a crushing thrusting weapon that does four points, but if the target
>> has two points of armour he only takes two. Two points of armour
>> protection stops two points of crushing damage.
>>
>> With a cutting weapon what gets through armour is increased by fifty
>> percent. An unarmoured target takes six points and that guy with two
>> points of armour protection takes three points. 6 - 3 = 3. Two points of
>> armour stops three points of cutting damage.
>>
>> With a piercing weapon what gets through armour is doubled. The naked foe
>> takes eight points and the guy with two points of armour takes only four.
>> 8 - 4 = 4. Two points of armour stops four points of piercing damage.
>>
>I don't think this comparison is quite valid as it stands. The way I
>would work it is as follows:
>
>Here is a crushing weapon. I roll a 4 and do 4 points of damage. Against
>an unarmored adversary those 4 points of damage will cause 4 points of
>final result.
>
>Here is an impaling weapon. I roll a 2 and do 2 points of damage.
>Against an unarmored adversary those 2 points of damage will cause 4
>points of final result. (A smaller, lighter impaling weapon is as deadly
>as a larger, heavier crushing weapon.)
>
>Here is a target in DR 2 armor. The crushing weapon does 4 points of
>damage, of which 2 points get through and cause 2 points of injury. The
>impaling weapon does 2 points of damage, of which 0 points get through and
>cause 0 points of injury. (For DR 1 armor, the final results would be
>crushing 3, impaling 2.) Clearly the armor confers more benefit against
>the impaling weapon--when you measure the value of the weapon by final
>damage inflicted.
The unarmoured target takes four points crushing or four points impaling.
The armoured target take two points crushing or none impaling. Crush
protection of DR 2 armour = 4 - 2 = 2; Pierce protection of DR2 armour = 4
- 0 = 4.
We agree that GURPS armour gives better protection against piercing than
crushing damage.
But it is not supposed to.
(a) In reality, concentrating the impact of an attack on a strong but
small point was a tactic often used to punch through armour. Vis the
estoc, the war hammer, and armour-piercing arrows. This does not work in
GURPS.
(b) The text of GURPS plainly states (or at least it did in 'Man To Man')
that piercing weapons are supposed to be better at penetrating armour than
others in GURPS too. But they aren't.
--
Brett Evill
To reply by e-mail, remove 'spamblocker.' from <b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au>
Brett Evill
>In article <b.evill-1209...@tynslip2.apana.org.au>,
> b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au (Brett Evill) wrote:
>> <quibble> The learning curves I am familiar with from psychology are
>> graphs of amount learned as a function of time. So a steep learning curve
>> reflects quick learning. </quibble>
>>
> I recall those (is Hull still studied?). However, in the business and/of
>PC software world, the term "steep learning curve" is used to refer to
>slow and/or difficult learning.
This common error makes the term meaningless. If someone says 'steep
learning curve' he or she means that learning is either easy or difficult,
and either quick of slow. But you can't tell which without asking. Result:
total failure to communicate.
--
Brett Evill
>Brett Evill wrote:
>> I converted from AD&D to TFT (of which I was a big fan). So I bought 'Man
>> to Man' when it came out. I read through it on the train on the way home,
>> and was disgusted by the fact that the armour rules work backwards, and
>> the designers don't even realise it. Armour is supposed to be more
>> effective against crushing than piercing damage, with cutting
>> intermediate. That's what the text says. But apply the rules and armour is
>> more effective against crushing weapons than piercing ones. I'm not buying
>> GURPS until they work this out and fix it.
>
>Uh... realistically, seems to me that blunt weapons should be more
>effective against armor than sharp weapons, compared to their
>effectiveness against unarmored targets, and the GURPS rules get that
>right. That's also why they list bullets as "crushing" damage, so
>they'll be highly effective against armor. I was pretty sure the text
>was consistent with this, but if it says somewhere that armor should be
>better at stopping crushing weapons, I'd treat it as a typo.
Well, in reality piercing weapons are favoured against armour, though
fairly wide-angle points are favoured because they don't break. The
ultimate developments in Europe before the decline of armour were the
estoc (a crowbar with a hardened point) and the warhammer (a pick with a
small hardened point). The idea is to concentrate the power of the blow
onto as small as possible a location, so as to overwhelm the local
strength of the armour.
Compare a war arrow (with its small pyramidal head) to a hunting broadhead
(with its long razor edges). The hunting arrow makes a much larger wound,
is much more likely to sever an artery. But the war arrow can punch
through armour.
Brett Evill
>In article <6teb5d$ulg$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <tgf...@zianet.com> wrote:
>>In article <b.evill-1209...@tynslip2.apana.org.au>,
>>
>>> ...Armour is supposed to be more
>>> effective against crushing than piercing damage, with cutting
>>> intermediate. That's what the text says. But apply the rules and armour is
>>> more effective against crushing weapons than piercing ones.
>
> I'll take your word for it in general but I thought crossbow bolts
> were effective against plate armour.
They are. In reality anyway. And military quarrels for crossbows have
small, pyramidal, piercing heads to concentrate impact, not big flat ones
to spread it out.
Crossbows are effective against armour. Crossbows quarrels are piercing
weapons. Armour is ineffective against crossbows. Armour should be
ineffective against piercing damage.
Quarterstaves are almost totally ineffective against armour. Quarterstaves
are notoriously blunt and crushing. Armour is highly effective against
quarterstaves. Armour should be effective against crushing damage.
GURPS is backwards.
Brett Evill
whs...@primenet.com (William H. Stoddard) wrote:
>In article <Ez6y...@lamarkis.uucp>, ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl wrote:
>>
>> This could equally well be "simulationist", depending on whether the
>> motivations and histories are interesting to the *players* (dramatist
>> or perhaps even gamist) or to the *characters* (simulationist, because
>> everything depends on in-game factors). I'm a simulationist GM (I
>> think; not very strict, it just needs to *feel* right, not to be
>> provably right) and my campaigns are very roleplaying intensive as
>> well. I more or less expect immersion, or at least Actor mode
>> indistinguishable from it, which seems to be a simulationist feature.
>>
>Isn't immersive play more associated with the dramatist mode?
I would have said that the modes corresponded to the orientations like this:
Author: Dramatist
Actor: Dramatist/Simulationist
Character: Simulationist
Audience: Gamist
Note: I am not saying that these matchups of player stance and GM
adjudication mode are the most suitable for play. I am saying that the
considerations affecting the players in these stances are most like the
considerations affecting the GM in the corresponding adjudication mode.
"What makes good story" = "what makes good story"
"What would this character really do" = "what would really happen"
Brett Evill
>In article <6tesfc$s...@news.Hawaii.Edu>,
> cor...@Hawaii.Edu (Rick Cordes) wrote:
>> In article <6teb5d$ulg$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <tgf...@zianet.com> wrote:
<snip: misleading attribution of context not quoted>
>> I'll take your word for it in general but I thought crossbow bolts
>> were effective against plate armour.
>
>I saw a PBS show once in which it was demonstrated that a long bow arrow can
>penetrate plate twoor three inches. Seems likely to me that a crosbow bolt
>would penetrate plate very well.
>Were not war hammers devised for the purpose of punching through plate
>armor?
Just so. And all three are weapons with piercing points that concentrate
impact on a point.
Brett Evill
>In message <6th3cc$kl9$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tgf...@zianet.com wrote:
>
>>do you not think that most players can easily multiply a whole number from 1
>>to 20 by 0.6 or 0.8 and round the result "to the nearest" in their heads?
>
>I certainly wouldn't want to bet 'most' could do it quickly. I'm smart
>and somewhat maths oriented, but I wouldn't want to have to do that
>sort of calculation several times per combat.
Until I was twenty-one I was very poor at mental arithmetic. This fact had
its roots in a personality with one of my primary school teachers and a
battle of wills with my mother. Then ForeSight gave me a need to perform
single-digit multiplications of integers up to 34, and division of
three-digit numbers by 2, 5, and 10.
Now I add up bills in restaurants, reading upside down, and divide the
result by the number of people sharing: and finish before the waiters have
added up the bills with their calculators and tills.
Who says these games aren't educational?
JP Sutherland
> Hello I'm running A WWII Normandy Campagin and would be interested to
> heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
By far the best resorce I can think of for this is the old QM production
"Combat" I dont know if you have access to the show but it is absolutely
perfect. The show's focus is on one squad as they move through France and
Germany. There are four or five main charecters (and naturaly an unlimited
supply of redshirts). There realy got into a huge varity of interesting
situations that would be perfect meat for roleplay. If you cant find the
episodes anywhere perhaps some fan has put together a web page with plot
synopises or something.
I have thought about trying the same thing and would be very interested to
hear how it goes.
Good luck
Jesse Sutherland
Russell Wallace
> >Uh... realistically, seems to me that blunt weapons should be more
> >effective against armor than sharp weapons, compared to their
> >effectiveness against unarmored targets, and the GURPS rules get that
> >right. That's also why they list bullets as "crushing" damage, so
> >they'll be highly effective against armor. I was pretty sure the text
> >was consistent with this, but if it says somewhere that armor should be
> >better at stopping crushing weapons, I'd treat it as a typo.
>
> Well, in reality piercing weapons are favoured against armour, though
> fairly wide-angle points are favoured because they don't break. The
> ultimate developments in Europe before the decline of armour were the
> estoc (a crowbar with a hardened point) and the warhammer (a pick with a
> small hardened point). The idea is to concentrate the power of the blow
> onto as small as possible a location, so as to overwhelm the local
> strength of the armour.
I haven't heard of the estoc - could you give some detail about exactly
how it was used? In the case of the warhammer, you're looking at a
weapon that relies on having a lot of kinetic energy to go through the
armor, rather than a sharp point or edge to cut through tissue. Compare
to, say, a knife, rapier or shortsword. Even within the category of
swords, the ones that are designed to go through armor tend to be heavy,
with relatively blunt edges compared to those designed for use on
unarmored targets.
That said, the issue is probably more complex than a simple "crushing",
"piercing" and "cutting" damage system would imply. Greater realism
would probably be achieved by looking separately at issues of kinetic
energy and cross-sectional impact area, with the best effectiveness
against armor given by having the latter neither too large nor too small
(assuming you're talking melee weapons versus plate armor of course, if
you start looking at bullets, chain mail or kevlar, there are yet more
issues). This sort of thing reminds me why I don't like complex combat
systems :)
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mano...@iol.ie
Nightshade
>In article <35fc9160.50086876@news>,
> Night...@nightdark.com (Nightshade) wrote:
>> cor...@Hawaii.Edu (Rick Cordes) wrote:
>>
>> >> I hadn't noticed that; thanks for another reason to favor CORPS or
>Timelords
>> >>over GURPS. Thrusting attacks could be considered as armor piercing against
>> >>some kinds of armor. there was a game which used a "penetration factor" for
>> >>each weapon to determine effectiveness in penetrating armor (I think it was
>> >>space Opera, and that a roll for penetration was made).
>> >
>> > I suppose next you'll be comparing WarpWorld favorably to GURPS?
>>
>> I don't know if he would, but I'd be happy to.
>>
>Thanks. The BTRC games (TimeLordsWarpWorld/SpaceTime/CORPS) provide armor,
>combat, and damage systems that are the best I have seen for their levels of
>complexity. I'm not sure I want to run them, ecept for CORPS.
I ran Timelords for quite some time. Though initially intimidating,
the only thing in the long run I found a pain was the phasing system,
which took all the worst features of Hero's phasing, and made them
even more complicated. I'd like to find a way to simplify that, but
other than that, for what level of detail and authenticiity you get, I
found the system quite manageable.
I admire the concept of CORPS, but to be honest, I'm not really a fan
of the system; it threw out too many of what I considered Timelords
and it's kin's virtues on the altar of simplicity.
Joshua Macy
>
> I don't think this comparison is quite valid as it stands. The way I
> would work it is as follows:
>
... snip example of comparing the effectiveness of piercing v.
crushing weapons where the piercing weapon rolled 2 points of damage and
the crushing weapon rolled 4...
That way of looking at it might make sense, if on the whole imparing
weapons did half as many dice of damage, but I don't recall that being
the case in GURPS. I think Brett's example of a 1d6+1 crushing weapon
v. a 1d6+1 piercing weapon is much more typical, and much more
revealing.
Joshua
Joshua Macy
> Use rounding to get rid to the fractions. What do you mean by"wildly variant
> results" and "granularity problems"?
>
At a guess: "Wildly variant" describes how in a flat-distribution
(e.g. d10, d20, d100) the extremes are just as likely as any other
roll. If you roll a d10 for initiative, say, 10% of the time you're
going to move as fast as you possibly can, and 10% of the time as slow
as you possibly can. 1 in 5 rolls is at the extreme. A bell curve
distribution (e.g. 3d6 ) makes the extremes much less likely--you only
are as good/bad as you can possibly be 2/316th of the time.
"Granularity problems" refers to when the difference between
successive values is too high to represent the level of detail that you
want. E.g. if each point of ST is twice as effective as the last point,
it's harder to have a "street-level" human game--almost all characters
will have the same ST, or at most within 1 point of eachother. Some
games compound this problem by making each level successively much more
difficult to get, but mechanically not much more useful, so that if you
want your fencer to be 20% more effective than average you have to be
four times as skilled (according to the description/cost of the skill
rankings).
Joshua
John Kim
weapons in GURPS... I feel that the examples used are too
hypothetical, and would prefer to look at actual weapons.
Joshua Macy <ne...@webamused.com> wrote:
> That way of looking at it might make sense, if on the whole imparing
> weapons did half as many dice of damage, but I don't recall that being
> the case in GURPS. I think Brett's example of a 1d6+1 crushing weapon
> vs. a 1d6+1 piercing weapon is much more typical,
Well, let's try looking at some actual weapons in GURPS. Let's
say that you are a reasonably strong person (ST14, thrust 1d, swing 2d).
Which is a better weapon to use against a person in armor, a longbow
or a staff sling? The longbow will do 1d+2 impaling, the staff sling
will to 2d+1 crushing. So taking into account the piercing damage and
the DR of armor, the average total damage against a target will be:
- against an unarmored target (DR0), the longbow does 11 hits,
the sling does 8 hits.
- against a target in scale armor (DR4), the longbow does 5 hits,
the sling does 4 hits.
- against a target in plate armor (DR6), the longbow does 1 hit,
the sling does 2.2 hits.
So against armored knights, say, the sling is definitely
the better weapon to use -- while the longbow is definitely better
on unarmored targets.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
On the other hand, we can look at the pick versus the mace.
The pick will do 2d+1 impaling, the maul does 2d+3.
- against unarmored, the pick does 16 hits average (!) while
the mace does 10.
- against scale armor, the pick does 8 hits; the mace 6.
- against plate armor, the pick does 4.5 hits; the mace 4.
So if we ignore for a moment the problem of getting stuck,
the pick is generally a better weapon. However, against plate
armor they are roughly equivalent with the pick only being marginally
better. For someone of average strength (ST10), the mace would be
better against plate armor.
Bryce Nakagawa
Bryan Bankhead wrote:
> In article <6teb5d$ulg$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, tgf...@zianet.com wrote:
>
> > I recently decided not to use GURPS because of the 3d6 bell curve. Why do
> > people prefer that to a linear distribution with multiplicative modifiers?
> > As in Timelords, for example?
> >
> Because with linear distributions modifiers have consistent effects at
> all points on the line. With a bell curve a +1 modifier has a much greater
> effect on a 10 than it does on an 17. It's easier to understand the
> statistical effect of your modifiers with a straight distribution.
Easier to understand, perhaps. Realistic? Questionable.
Hand a manual on auto repair to a Dogon tribesman who has never seen a car and
ask him to replace your spark plugs and your results will not be very different
from not handing him the book and asking the same question.
Ditto to an expert mechanic. The book doesn't seem to change the results much.
But the book makes a great deal of difference to someone like me who knows only a
little about cars.
Relevance: A +1 modifier (the repair manual) adds a lot in the middle of a bell
curve and very little to either extreme.
$0.02
jos...@webamused.com
jh...@cosmic.ps.uci.edu (John Kim) wrote:
>
... snip GURPS actual numbers comparing staff slings versus longbows against
targets with varying amounts of armor ...
> So against armored knights, say, the sling is definitely
> the better weapon to use -- while the longbow is definitely better
> on unarmored targets.
>
Ah, yes, the famous slings of Agincourt...I remember them well....
... snip similar thought experiment regarding picks versus maces ...
> So if we ignore for a moment the problem of getting stuck,
> the pick is generally a better weapon. However, against plate
> armor they are roughly equivalent with the pick only being marginally
> better. For someone of average strength (ST10), the mace would be
> better against plate armor.
>
I think I agree with Brett. GURPS is backwards.
Joshua
John Kim
distributions in games, in reply to Bryce Nakagawa. Bryce suggests
that the effect of modifiers on the bell-curve are somehow inheerent
(i.e. the same effect will alter probabilities by small amounts on
the edges and large amounts in the center). I don't really see
this...
Bryce Nakagawa <BNak...@truenorth.com> wrote:
>Bryan Bankhead wrote:
>> With a bell curve a +1 modifier has a much greater effect on a 10
>> than it does on an 17. It's easier to understand the statistical
>> effect of your modifiers with a straight distribution.
>
>Easier to understand, perhaps. Realistic? Questionable.
>
>Hand a manual on auto repair to a Dogon tribesman who has never seen a
>car and ask him to replace your spark plugs and your results will not
>be very different from not handing him the book and asking the same
>question. Ditto to an expert mechanic. The book doesn't seem to change
>the results much. But the book makes a great deal of difference to
>someone like me who knows only a little about cars.
>
>Relevance: A +1 modifier (the repair manual) adds a lot in the middle
>of a bell curve and very little to either extreme.
I'm not sure I see how this is particularly relevant. Here
are two alternate examples:
1) Hand each mechanic a picture book showing in simple cartoons the
way to use basic tools and explaining the very basics of a car.
This is pretty much useless to the expert and even the amateur,
but it makes an enormous difference to the tribesman.
2) Give each mechanic a specialized computer which plugs into the
car's electronics and gives a coded readout which shows the status
of different parts. This is a tool that only the expert can use
which to him may be extremely handy, but the amateur and certainly
the tribesman find it too confusing.
jos...@webamused.com
> _are_ grossly effective against unarmoured human beings as compared to
> crushing weapons. Given your choice, would you rather be hit in the
> gut with the end of a quarterstaff, slashed across the stomach with a
> scimitar, or run through with a gladius?
>
> I know what _my_ answer is.
If your answer is that you would rather be slashed with a scimitar than run
through with a gladius, I think your answer is wrong. As I understand it in
the real world, barring peritonitis (which is *not* what the damage in GURPS
is simulating), a stab wound is less dangerous than a cut. I think this is
borne out by such things the design of arrow-heads for use against unarmored
targets vs. those designed for use against armored targets (broad and flat v.
sharp and narrow), and the relative commonness of slashing swords versus
thrusting swords in cultures where they are military (rather than dueling)
equipment.
Jeff Stehman
> In article <01bdde88$46a3cb60$700560d1@jer>, "Jeremy Reaban"
> <fran...@stlnet.com> wrote:
> > 1) Has too few character attributes (4). I don't think this adequately
> > describes a person.
> How many do you want? Four attributes are, of course, an extemely
> minimal basis for a character concept. But bu the time you get around to
> advantages, disads, skills, and quirks the character should be reasonably
> fleshed out.
I agree with the "has too few character attributes," but for a different
reason than Jeremy. Skill levels are based off of attributes, giving
the attributes-- dex and int in particular --far too much impact on the
game for me to stomach. Distributing skills over more attributes would
go a long way towards easing that. Considering how detailed other parts
of the system can be, having only four attributes has always seemed a
gross generalization to me.
--
Jeff Stehman Senior Systems Administrator
ste...@southwind.net SouthWind Internet Access, Inc.
voice: (316)263-7963 Wichita, KS
Mike Harvey
> b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au (Brett Evill) wrote:
> I recall those (is Hull still studied?). However, in the business and/of
> PC software world, the term "steep learning curve" is used to refer to
> slow and/or difficult learning.
Time is often not a variable in software or business when you have a
deadline to meet, so a "steep curve" means you have much (or very
difficult) material to cover in a limited time. Brett is correct that a
slow learner will fall behind a steep curve, and may miss a deadline.
Steepness is becoming synonymous with difficulty, and the time aspect is
being lost. The fact that a steep curve may be intuitively compared
with climbing a steep hill may be amplifying this change in emphasis.
Mike
Aaron Pound
>
> A reply concerning the question of piercing versus crushing
> weapons in GURPS... I feel that the examples used are too
> hypothetical, and would prefer to look at actual weapons.
>
> Joshua Macy <ne...@webamused.com> wrote:
> > That way of looking at it might make sense, if on the whole imparing
> > weapons did half as many dice of damage, but I don't recall that being
> > the case in GURPS. I think Brett's example of a 1d6+1 crushing weapon
> > vs. a 1d6+1 piercing weapon is much more typical,
>
> Well, let's try looking at some actual weapons in GURPS. Let's
> say that you are a reasonably strong person (ST14, thrust 1d, swing 2d).
> Which is a better weapon to use against a person in armor, a longbow
> or a staff sling? The longbow will do 1d+2 impaling, the staff sling
> will to 2d+1 crushing. So taking into account the piercing damage and
> the DR of armor, the average total damage against a target will be:
>
> - against an unarmored target (DR0), the longbow does 11 hits,
> the sling does 8 hits.
How did you calculate these. You seem to be slightly off in a few
places. I think the way to do it would be:
Average Longbow: (3.5+2)x2 = 11 Maximum Longbow: (6+2)x2 = 16
Average Sling: (3.5+3.5+1) = 8 Maximum Sling: (6+6+1) = 13
> - against a target in scale armor (DR4), the longbow does 5 hits,
> the sling does 4 hits.
Average Longbow: ((3.5+2)-4)x2 = 3 Maximum Longbow: ((6+2)-4)x2 = 8
Average Sling: (3.5+3.5+1)-4 = 4 Maximum Sling: (6+6+1)-4 = 9
> - against a target in plate armor (DR6), the longbow does 1 hit,
> the sling does 2.2 hits.
Average Longbow: ((3.5+2)-6)x2 = 0 Maximum Longbow: ((6+2)-6)x2 = 4
Average Sling: (3.5+3.5+1)-6 = 2 Maximum Sling: (6+6+1)-6 = 7
>
> So against armored knights, say, the sling is definitely
> the better weapon to use -- while the longbow is definitely better
> on unarmored targets.
This does ignore the half damage range factor though. A Longbow has 1/2
Dam STx15 (210) Max STx20 (280). A Staff Sling has 1/2 Dam STx10 (140)
Max STx15 (210). Between 140 and 210 halve all of the damage effects
for the Satff Sling. Since you halve damage before applying DR the
Staff Sling does:
Against unarmored opponents: Avg (3.5+3.5+1)/2 = 4 Max (6+6+1)/2
= 6.5
Against scale armor: Avg ((3.5+3.5+1)/2)-4 = 0 Max
((6+6+1)/2)-4 = 2.5
Against plate armor: Avg ((3.5+3.5+1/2)-6 = 0 Max
((6+6+1)/2)-6 = 1 (rounded up from .5).
At medium to long range you are clearly better off using the Longbow
which does not halve damage until the Staff Sling maxes out. Since the
main advantage the Longbow has is being able to nail mounted knights
from very far away, this seems consistent with reality.
>
> -*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
> On the other hand, we can look at the pick versus the mace.
> The pick will do 2d+1 impaling, the maul does 2d+3.
Note that you are not using a maul, which is a specific two handed
weapon that does sw+4 and has a Min ST of 14 as opposed to a mace which
does sw+3 and has a Min ST of 12.
>
> - against unarmored, the pick does 16 hits average (!) while
> the mace does 10.
Average Pick: (3.5+3.5+1)x2 = 16 Maximum Pick: (6+6+1)x2 = 26
Average Mace: (3.5+3.5+3) = 10 Maximum Mace: (6+6+3) = 15
> - against scale armor, the pick does 8 hits; the mace 6.
Average Pick: ((3.5+3.5+1)-4)x2 = 8 Maximum Pick: ((6+6+1)-4)x2 = 18
Average Mace: (3.5+3.5+3)-4 = 6 Maximum Mace: (6+6+3)-4 = 11
> - against plate armor, the pick does 4.5 hits; the mace 4.
Average Pick: ((3.5+3.5+1)-6)x2 = 4 Maximum Pick: ((6+6+1)-6)x2 = 14
Average Mace: (3.5+3.5+3)-6 = 4 Maxmimum Mace: (6+6+3)-6 = 9
>
> So if we ignore for a moment the problem of getting stuck,
> the pick is generally a better weapon. However, against plate
> armor they are roughly equivalent with the pick only being marginally
> better. For someone of average strength (ST10), the mace would be
> better against plate armor.
Using only the average damage amounts that would be correct, except that
the pick has much greater damage potential. Using a pick allows you to
potentially take out even an Ogre sized opponent in plate armor with a
single good blow, whereas with a mace it would probably take two whacks.
In addition, you left out that the mace has a min ST of 12, so for a
person of ST 10 it would be an unwieldy weapon giving a -2 to skill,
wheras the pick with a min ST of 11 would be slightly less cumbersome
with only a -1 skill penalty.
If you had used a more normal ST than 14 (Athlete level), say about 12
(since that is the minimum necessary to skillfully use all of the
weapons used as examples), the results would have been a little
different. Thrust damages for ST 12 is 1d-1 and Swing damage is 1d+2.
Therefore the Longbow (thr+2 or 1d+1), Staff Sling (sw+1 or 1d+3), Pick
(sw+1 or 1d+3), and Mace (sw+3 or 1d+5) calculations would be:
Against Unarmored Targets:
Average Longbow: (3.5+1)x2 = 9 Maximum Longbow: (6+1)x2 = 14
Average Staff Sling: (3.5+3) = 6.5 Maximum Staff Sling: (6+3) = 9
Average Pick: (3.5+3)x2 = 13 Maximum Pick: (6+3)x2 = 18
Average Mace: (3.5+5) = 8.5 Maximum Mace: (6+5) = 11
Against Scale Armored Opponents:
Average Longbow: ((3.5+1)-4)x2 = 1 Maximum Longbow: ((6+1)-4)x2 = 6
Average Staff Sling: (3.5+3)-4 = 2.5 Maximum Staff Sling: (6+3)-4 = 5
Average Pick: ((3.5+3)-4)x2 = 5 Maximum Pick: ((6+3)-4)x2 = 10
Average Mace: (3.5+5)-4 = 4.5 Maximum Mace: (6+5)-4 = 7
Against Plate Armored Opponents:
Average Longbow: ((3.5+1)-6)x2 = 0 Maximum Longbow: ((6+1)-6)x2 = 2
Average Staff Sling: (3.5+3)-6 = .5 Maximum Staff Sling: (6+3)-6 = 3
Average Pick: ((3.5+3)-6)x2 = 1 Maximum Pick: ((6+3)-6)x2 = 6
Average Mace: (3.5+5)-6 = 2.5 Maximum Mace: (6+5)-6 = 5
So, Longbow vs. Staff Sling for the ST 12 person. The Longbow is better
against unarmored and medium armored people and very slightly worse
against heavily armored people. Added to that is the much longer range
of the Longbow and I'd say that I'd prefer to use the bow over the
sling. (Longbow 1/2 Dam 180 Max 240, Staff Sling 1/2 Dam 120 Max 180).
Between 120 and 180 yards the Staff Sling looks like:
Against Unarmored: Average ((3.5+3)/2) = 3.25 Maximum: ((6+3)/2) = 4.5
Against Scale Armor: Average ((3.5+3)/2)-4 = 0 Maximum: ((6+3)/2)-4 =
.5
Against Plate Armor: Average ((3.5+3)/2)-6 + 0 Maximum: ((6+3)/2)-6 =
0
Whereas the Longbow is still doing normal damage.
Next, in the the Pick vs. Mace competition, the Pick has better average
and maximum damage at all times except for the average damage verses a
plate armored oppnent, which makes some sense, since the Pick does its
best damage if it can really sink in, and it won't do that unless the
user gets a really good hit. Where is shines is in the case of maxing
out, where the Pick is clearly superior to the Mace at all points.
Overall, the impaling weapons seem to deal out slightly less damage than
would be expected on average, but show their real damage potential at
the high end of the scale.
Aaron J. Pound, Esq.
Aaron Pound
Against Unarmored Targets:
Against Scale Armored Opponents:
Against Plate Armored Opponents:
Against Plate Armor: Average ((3.5+3)/2)-6 = 0 Maximum: ((6+3)/2)-6 =
0
Whereas the Longbow is still doing normal damage (i.e. 14, 6, 2).
Steffan O'Sullivan
>Bryce Nakagawa <BNak...@truenorth.com> wrote:
>>
>>Relevance: A +1 modifier (the repair manual) adds a lot in the middle
>>of a bell curve and very little to either extreme.
>
> I'm not sure I see how this is particularly relevant. Here
>are two alternate examples:
>
> 1) Hand each mechanic a picture book showing in simple cartoons the
> way to use basic tools and explaining the very basics of a car.
> This is pretty much useless to the expert and even the amateur,
> but it makes an enormous difference to the tribesman.
>
> 2) Give each mechanic a specialized computer which plugs into the
> car's electronics and gives a coded readout which shows the status
> of different parts. This is a tool that only the expert can use
> which to him may be extremely handy, but the amateur and certainly
> the tribesman find it too confusing.
Two points about the above counter examples::
A) They don't work for linear distributions, either, so fail to show
that a bell curve is inferior to a linear distribution. But then,
this may not have really been John's point, as he doesn't really
come out and say this.
B) Both can be fudged to work - but since the fudging is the same for
bell curve systems and linear distributions, there's not much point
in spending too much time on it. So briefly: the GM could simply
grant the relevant bonuses to the low or high end only, using the
logic inherent in the paragraphs above to justify the limitations on
the bonus.
Instead, I will simply say that Bryce's assessment makes the most sense
to me for most (but obviously not all) situations. That is, I usually
prefer bell curves of some sort to flat distribution systems. The only
exception being when a bell curve is inelegant to apply, such as in
Sherpa - which uses a flat distribution.
--
-Steffan O'Sullivan | "Very few things happen at the right time, and
s...@vnet.net | the rest do not happen at all: the conscien-
Chapel Hill, NC | tious historian will correct these defects."
www.io.com/~sos | -Herodotus (as quoted by Mark Twain)
Andrew Priestley
COMMANDE wrote:
> Hello I'm running A WWII Normandy Campagin and would be interested to
> heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
The battle of the Bulge involved any number of units getting cut off and
having to fight for it or escape and evade.
Also, consider that a large number of airborne troops got scattered
across the Normandy countryside during the assault and had to fight in
order to regroup. Gliders crashed, boats ended up on the wrong beaches,
amphibious tanks sank on the surf, etc. All these things could put the
PCs in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The PCs could also be UDTs working in to scout the beaches prior to the
landing and clearing obstacles. These boys were brave as hell and good
with explosives, but, at that time, were essentially divers and had not
really evolved into the special operators they eventually became before
being transitioned into the SEAL Teams and becoming exceptional
operators.
Another thought is to have them be Airborne scouts sent in prior to the
attack or in advance of it, meeting up with french maquis resistance
fighters to gather intelligence about German positions. Scouting is a
nasty, uncertain job, especially when there are no nightvision devices,
good radios, etc.
Special operations are seldom the campaign swinging missions that the
movies portray them as, usually, they are smaller in scope and merely
provide the military with necessary intelligence that gives them an
advantage in a battle, or prevents the enemy from getting a jump on
them. Scouting missions are probably perfect for a PC group.
Iceman
Robert 'Stumpy' Marsh
b.e...@spamblocker.tyndale.apana.org.au (Brett Evill) wrote:
>In article <35fd3ec4...@news.ihug.co.nz>, rma...@xtra.co.nz wrote:
>
>>I certainly wouldn't want to bet 'most' could do it quickly. I'm smart
>>and somewhat maths oriented, but I wouldn't want to have to do that
>>sort of calculation several times per combat.
>
>Now I add up bills in restaurants, reading upside down, and divide the
>result by the number of people sharing: and finish before the waiters have
>added up the bills with their calculators and tills.
<grin> Me too, but then some waiters are pretty slow with those
calculators and I still wouldn't want to be doing it several times per
combat scene.
learn...@my-dejanews.com
rave...@southwind.net (Carl D. Cravens) wrote:
> > (Presumably SJG
> > stopped producing books of scenarios because GURPS attracted"world-building"
> > players who didn't need or want pregenerated plots; of course the number of
> > players interested in a given setting must also have been a factor.)
>
> SJ Games "quit" producing books of scenarios because nobody is writing
> scenario books that meet Steve's requirements for high quality and
> usefulness. Or so I recall him saying in one forum or another sometime
> back.
Well, Evil Stevie may have said that, but I find it hard to believe that in
the first 6 years of GURPS, SJG was presented with 10 manuscripts for short,
individually-published scenarios (not counting solo adventures) and enough
material for 6 volumes of genre anthologies (Space Adventures, etc.; not
counting campaign-oriented material like Aces Abroad) that met a certain
test of quality, and in the next 6 years of GURPS they were presented with
_nothing_at_all_ that met the same test. And I still tend to think that
estimated demand must have been decisive, rather than just rising standards.
Hell, I always wanted to write for GURPS CthuluPunk Adventures, if they would
just dangle before me the carrot of possible publication . . . :-)
learned, impartial, and very relaxed
learn...@my-dejanews.com
>
> 1) Has too few character attributes (4). I don't think this adequately
> describes a person.
> medium skills, especially when created..
> 3) I don't like the advantage/disadvantage system. It encourages players to
> have freak characters - one legged stuttering albinos that are afraid of
> the dark and being hunted by a secret government agency.
> 4) The skill/task resolution system isn't very good, nor is combat
> 5) I don't like point based character generation systems...
While I'm not going to try to defend GURPS point-by-point, that not being the
point of the thread :-), I'm curious what problems people have with the
skill/task resolution system -- does it just require too much GM
interpretation, or produce too many critical successes and failures, or do
people who dislike it dislike 3d6 systems in general, or what? Just curious
. . .
And I want to join those who point out that, in the hands of players and GMs
who take a balanced approach and observe the 40-point limit, there is no
reason why GURPS characters should be any more "freakish" than the general
population. :-). Some of the psych disads are rather overblown as written,
but I think this was an attempt to ensure that "disadvantages" have a real
impact on play from a quasi-gamist perspective (and SJ overcompensated), as
opposed to Hero System disads where you can collect major points for fairly
trivial personality issues.
Perhaps I should add to my original list that objections to point-based
chargen, attribute-based skill acquisition, the four-attribute structure, or
the accuracy (or usefulness) of GURPS combat, are all popular reasons to
reject GURPS.
learn...@my-dejanews.com
mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
[Deleted a good series of points dealing mostly with problems in the chargen
system. Mary correctly points out that the point costs vary between rarity/
difficulty and usefulness as axes of costs, so point values don't directly
reflect either. Some of us just think of this as a useable compromise :-)
especially since utility is not really something that can be predicated of the
whole range of worlds which can be played in GURPS. The absence of explicit
meta-laws for character design, and the inaccuracy of point value as a
measurement of anything in particular, are duly noted. I have elsewhere given
my explanation for the rather exaggerated psychological, or should I say
psychiatric disads. But I wanted to reply directly to the following:]
>
> (v) Writing tone. I can't really describe what bugs me here, except
> to say that it somehow trivializes the topics under discussion. Too
> many exclamation points and deliberately silly examples.
This is a completely valid point, at least for the Basic Set and the first
couple generations of worldbooks. I assume that Steve Jackson set the
original tone, and editors (Jeff Koke, come on down!) kept it alive after SJ
was no longer writing. All of those exclamation points can be extremely
annoying, and you're helpless to do anything about them! (I suppose you
could white them all out . . .) I haven't had this problem nearly so much
with recent publications.
However, it hadn't occurred to me that this would be one reason people would
decline to use GURPS, though really I should have thought of it, since
appropriate tone has been so important to the _success of other games . . .
(obviously GURPS has had some success, but no thanks to its usual tone IMO).
jos...@webamused.com
Bryce Nakagawa <BNak...@truenorth.com> wrote:
>
> Easier to understand, perhaps. Realistic? Questionable.
>
> Hand a manual on auto repair to a Dogon tribesman who has never seen a car and
> ask him to replace your spark plugs and your results will not be very different
> from not handing him the book and asking the same question.
> Ditto to an expert mechanic. The book doesn't seem to change the results much.
> But the book makes a great deal of difference to someone like me who knows only a
> little about cars.
> curve and very little to either extreme.
>
>
An interesting point, but I think you're stacking the deck with your
example by picking something as a modifier that in a sense substitutes for
what a rating in the skill is supposed to measure. Yes, the manual isn't
nearly as useful to the expert, but that's because it's never as useful to
the expert. If the expert were trying to change the sparkplugs while
dangling from a helicopter at night, in a thunderstorm, while wearing dark
glasses, (i.e. enough modifiers to get his skill down to the 10- to succeed
range), I don't think that having the manual would change his chances much,
let alone as much as it would change your skill under normal conditions. Nor
do I think that Karpov would be measurably more likely to beat Kasparov if he
were allowed to consult Chess for Dummies, despite the big improvements it
might make in my game.
Joshua
Brett Evill
>Brett Evill wrote:
>> >Uh... realistically, seems to me that blunt weapons should be more
>> >effective against armor than sharp weapons, compared to their
>> >effectiveness against unarmored targets, and the GURPS rules get that
>> >right. That's also why they list bullets as "crushing" damage, so
>> >they'll be highly effective against armor. I was pretty sure the text
>> >was consistent with this, but if it says somewhere that armor should be
>> >better at stopping crushing weapons, I'd treat it as a typo.
>>
>> Well, in reality piercing weapons are favoured against armour, though
>> fairly wide-angle points are favoured because they don't break. The
>> ultimate developments in Europe before the decline of armour were the
>> estoc (a crowbar with a hardened point) and the warhammer (a pick with a
>> small hardened point). The idea is to concentrate the power of the blow
>> onto as small as possible a location, so as to overwhelm the local
>> strength of the armour.
>
>I haven't heard of the estoc - could you give some detail about exactly
>how it was used?
The estoc was a late mediaeval sword, long and very heavy, and completely
lacking an edge. The point was hardened like a cold chisel, and came to a
point, albeit not a needle-sharp one. It wass a thrusting weapon,
obviously, and plainly designed to smash through something pretty hard.
Even so, I would use it two-handed and aim for joints and other weak
spots. [Records of mediaeval European combat technique are pretty thin on
the ground, let alone descriptions of how exactly weapons were used, but
we might get lucky. Does anyone know of contemporary descriptions of estoc
technique?]
The estoc is one of the blessed weapons under the DragonQuest rules.
> In the case of the warhammer, you're looking at a
>weapon that relies on having a lot of kinetic energy to go through the
>armor, rather than a sharp point or edge to cut through tissue. Compare
>to, say, a knife, rapier or shortsword. Even within the category of
>swords, the ones that are designed to go through armor tend to be heavy,
>with relatively blunt edges compared to those designed for use on
>unarmored targets.
War hammers do have points. You might not call them sharp (they are
typically the 80-82 degrees of a cold chisel rather than the 34 degrees of
a butcher's knife). But they are a piercing weapon.
>That said, the issue is probably more complex than a simple "crushing",
>"piercing" and "cutting" damage system would imply. Greater realism
>would probably be achieved by looking separately at issues of kinetic
>energy and cross-sectional impact area, with the best effectiveness
>against armor given by having the latter neither too large nor too small
Razor-sharp blades are not much use against armour, true. Their edges
break and notch.
Triad3204
>3) I don't like the advantage/disadvantage system. It encourages players to
>have freak characters - one legged stuttering albinos that are afraid of
>the dark and being hunted by a secret government agency.
This seems a bit silly. Such a character would be dead within minutes in a
standard RPG setting. Why would anyone create such a character to be a PC?
The ad/disad system is just one more way of quantifying and modeling
characters. If you can't trust your players with it, one wonders how you trust
your players to do anything.
>5) I don't like point based character generation systems...
For heavens sake why? Perhaps that belongs in the pertinent thread, though.
Out of curiousity, what other way is there besides a point system to create a
character? (Other than the randomization of AD&D, of course.) Is there some
secret set of games I have yet to discover which uses this third method of
generation?
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Triad3204
Molstad) writes:
>> 1) Has too few character attributes (4). I don't think this adequately
>> describes a person.
>
> How many do you want? Four attributes are, of course, an extemely
>minimal basis for a character concept. But bu the time you get around to
>advantages, disads, skills, and quirks the character should be reasonably
>fleshed out.
I want a character who can run a long distance without being winded, but who
can't lift weights worth shit.
I want a character who is very adept at thinking things through, but his
knowledge base is extremely limited.
I want a character who heals cuts quickly, but gets sick easily.
I want a character who can cover distance quickly, but is clumsy as an ox.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Steffan O'Sullivan
> This is a reply on the subject of bell curves versus linear
>distributions in games, in reply to Bryce Nakagawa. Bryce suggests
>that the effect of modifiers on the bell-curve are somehow inheerent
>(i.e. the same effect will alter probabilities by small amounts on
>the edges and large amounts in the center). I don't really see
>this...
[Example snipped]
I think John's missing the point here. The point is not that all
modifiers should grant a +1 (or -10 or whatever) equally to all
participants, but what effect such modifiers which *do* grant an equal
amount should have. At least, I think that's the point. If John is
saying that there shouldn't be *any* universal modifiers, then that's a
different thread that has nothing to do with flat distribution or bell
curves, since the issue would affect both systems equally: the GM could
never grant a universal +1 or -10 or whatever, no matter what system
was used, if that were true.
But if you can assume a bad lighting penalty is universally -1, this
affects the average-skilled person worse in a bell curve, but not so in
a flat distribution. In fact, I'm not really sure who it affects worse
in a flat distribution - but it's not the middle. That is, there are
two ways to look at a flat distribution: a bonus or penalty simply as
equally small or great amount, or as a varying amount relative to the
skill level. Thus if three characters have skill levels of 10, 50, and
80, you could say that a 10% bonus is just that: a 10% increased chance
to succeed for all characters. OR you could say that it's a double
chance to succeed for the poor character, just 1/5 additional chance
for the fair character, and only 1/8 additional chance for the great
character. (This latter view breaks down if the three characters are
10, 50, and 90 skill, though: the last character has an infinite
improvement, going to certainty ...)
Either way, I feel a flat distribution misses the mark. A bad lighting
penalty of -1 should affect the expert very little ("she's so good she
can do it with her eyes closed"), the average person a fair bit, and
the novice very little ("he's so bad he needs pure luck to succeed
whether his eyes are open or closed").
With that said, I must confess that of the three RPG systems I have
written (Fudge, Sherpa, and SLUG), one uses a bell curve, one a flat
distribution, and one leaves it up to the GM to decide which to use ...
Lee Gold
You can also have skewed curves. One of the most common
is the kind where if you get doubles or 6s, you reroll the dice.
Wes Ives long ago came up with the following two-roll skewed curve:
roll D6
1: roll d4
2: roll d6
3: roll d8
4: roll d12
5. roll d20
6: roll d100
Steffan, it should be possible to define Tyro (less than 25% chance
to hit), Expert (more than 75% chance to hit), and Average
(25-75%) and rule that hit modifications only affect Average
(or have lowered chance of doing so). My own rules already
add +1 to Charisma for each skill at 76%+ (and I'd consider
deducting 1 point from current Charisma for each skill of 25%-
recently used in public).
--Lee Gold
Mary K. Kuhner
<learn...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>And I want to join those who point out that, in the hands of players and GMs
>who take a balanced approach and observe the 40-point limit, there is no
>reason why GURPS characters should be any more "freakish" than the general
>population. :-). Some of the psych disads are rather overblown as written,
>but I think this was an attempt to ensure that "disadvantages" have a real
>impact on play from a quasi-gamist perspective (and SJ overcompensated), as
>opposed to Hero System disads where you can collect major points for fairly
>trivial personality issues.
I don't share that particular gamist priority (I'm a fan of the no-
points-for-disads optional rule in Compendium I), so I don't get any
advantage from this decision, and two disadvantages. Reading through
all of those overblown disads tends to communicate to players that
that's what you want (not at all true in my case): and they are less
useful as idea sparkers, because they're too extreme to suggest a
reasonable character.
The one GURPS group I've played with instituted a half-points-for-half-
intensity rule with a large group of the psych disads: that was better,
but personally I'd describe *that* level in the rules, and allow the
more extreme level as a price doubling.
I like the disad lists: I use them as idea generators even though I
don't play GURPS. But I would like them a lot more if they were
sensible.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
dco...@bellatlantic.net
n...@way.com wrote:
> Hello I'm running A WWII Normandy Campagin and would be interested to
> heae Grunt-level adventure ideas. thanx
>
The old war titles from DC Comics (most notably, SGT. ROCK and the anthology
G.I. COMBAT) would be a great source of ideas for role-playing games. Most
of the stories focus on a small, RPG-sized group of soldiers. They're also
(in general - let's leave out the "G.I. Robot" and "Creature Commandos"
stories for the moment, unless you're doing a "Weird War" campaign!) a lot
more realistic than you might think, and frequently darn good stories. You
can probably get a big stack of them for a quarter or less each without too
much difficulty from a comic shop or convention in the bargain bins.
The Mayfair Games "World At War" supplement for the DC Heroes RPG has some
excellent tips for running campaigns in this sort of setting (though about 75%
of the book is devoted to WWII superheroic campaigns).
John Kim
linear distributions, in reply to Steffan O'Sullivan. My previous
post had been offering alternate examples to the idea that it was
inherently more natural that modifiers should affect average skill
the most, and expert or novice skill the least.
If you are going to talk about "realistic" skill rolls in
general, I think the issue gets completely tied up in how the skill
roll is made and how the results are interpretted. For example,
let's say there is a jumping skill and the amount you succeed/fail
by is added to (or subtracted from) your base jumping distance. In
this case, even if you use a bell curve roll, a modifier affects
everyone equally regardless of whether they are Olympic caliber
or novice.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
Steffan O'Sullivan <s...@katie.vnet.net> wrote:
>John Kim <jh...@cosmic.ps.uci.edu> wrote:
>>Bryce Nakagawa <BNak...@truenorth.com> wrote:
>>>Relevance: A +1 modifier (the repair manual) adds a lot in the middle
>>>of a bell curve and very little to either extreme.
>>
>> I'm not sure I see how this is particularly relevant. Here
>> are two alternate examples:
>
>Two points about the above counter examples::
>
>A) They don't work for linear distributions, either, so fail to show
> that a bell curve is inferior to a linear distribution. But then,
> this may not have really been John's point, as he doesn't really
> come out and say this.
>B) Both can be fudged to work - but since the fudging is the same for
> bell curve systems and linear distributions, there's not much point
> in spending too much time on it.
This was pretty much my point... I was just saying that it
is not inherently true that modifiers affect experts/novices least.
Some modifiers will only help beginners, some may only help experts.
So on this point, bell-curve and linear distributions are equivalent.
The GM or system has to judge how the modifier affects things.
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>Instead, I will simply say that Bryce's assessment makes the most sense
>to me for most (but obviously not all) situations. That is, I usually
>prefer bell curves of some sort to flat distribution systems.
This is not really my experience. In my playing, I feel like
modifiers seem to come pretty evenly into the different categories
(beginners-only, experts-only, etc.). This can be pre-considered in
the system, but more usually has to be judged by the GM at the time.
A bell-curve is good for having rare outlying events (although
other distributions also have this property), but I don't think it
inherently handles modifiers any better. I lean more towards a
geometric distibution as my ideal, but it is hard to do with dice.
John Kim
specifically the idea of "universal" modifiers.
Steffan O'Sullivan <s...@katie.vnet.net> wrote:
>I think John's missing the point here. The point is not that all
>modifiers should grant a +1 (or -10 or whatever) equally to all
>participants, but what effect such modifiers which *do* grant an
>equal amount should have. At least, I think that's the point.
I was responding to the point that it was generally true
that modifiers should affect average skill the most, and experts
or novices the least. I don't feel that this is true. If we want
to talk about this in terms of realism, I would rather phrase it
like this: What effect should a simple, "default" modifier have
in the system?
-*-*-*-*-*-*-
>
>But if you can assume a bad lighting penalty is universally -1, this
>affects the average-skilled person worse in a bell curve, but not so in
>a flat distribution.
[...]
>A bad lighting penalty of -1 should affect the expert very little
>("she's so good she can do it with her eyes closed"), the average
>person a fair bit, and the novice very little ("he's so bad he needs
>pure luck to succeed whether his eyes are open or closed").
First of all, I don't think that this is true in bell-curve
systems -- or at least the one's that I am familiar with. Consider
a 3d6 system like GURPS. Let's say that we are only concerned with
odds of shooting for an expert (skill 16), average (skill 11),
novice (skill 6). At base range (I think that 2-4 meters in GURPS):
- the expert hits with 53 out of 54, 21 out of 22 with bad lighting
- the average hits with 5 out of 8, 1 out of 2 with bad lighting
- the novice hits with 1 out of 11, 1 out of 22 with bad lighting
So here the bad lighting halves the novice's chance of
success while only moderately altering the other's chances. Moreover,
this is only how it works at base range. Let's say they are trying
to shoot at a very distant target (-5 modifier). Now the expert is
affected like the average skill (i.e. more affected by bad lighting),
and the average is like the novice.
The lesson I take from this is that one should carefully
consider how "universal" modifiers actually affect things. I don't
think that either linear or bell-curve modifiers are inherently
more natural in how modifiers work. Bell-curves are used if you
want rare extreme results, linear if you want more stable predictable
results.
Russell Wallace
>
> In article <01bdde88$46a3cb60$700560d1@jer>, "Jeremy Reaban"
> <fran...@stlnet.com> writes:
>
> >3) I don't like the advantage/disadvantage system. It encourages players to
> >have freak characters - one legged stuttering albinos that are afraid of
> >the dark and being hunted by a secret government agency.
>
> This seems a bit silly. Such a character would be dead within minutes in a
> standard RPG setting.
How, exactly? The only part of this that's likely to get the character
killed is the "hunted by a secret government agency" bit, and in
practice that generally becomes the whole party's problem not just the
individual PC's. (Indeed, one of my pet peeves is players who create
characters who are a serious liability to the rest of the PCs, without
consulting the other players on the matter first.)
> Why would anyone create such a character to be a PC?
Most players wouldn't, but this is a case of relying on players' common
sense to regulate the excesses of the game system, *not* of the system
being self-regulating as wsa claimed.
> >5) I don't like point based character generation systems...
>
> For heavens sake why? Perhaps that belongs in the pertinent thread, though.
>
> Out of curiousity, what other way is there besides a point system to create a
> character? (Other than the randomization of AD&D, of course.) Is there some
> secret set of games I have yet to discover which uses this third method of
> generation?
One which I've used to good effect is just letting players assign
whatever abilities they think appropriate for the character concept.
Obviously the GM needs to retain a veto over inappropriate characters,
but as far as I can remember I've never had to veto a proposed character
for being too powerful. Players generally behave the way you let them
know you expect them to behave. (That said, I'm also happy with using
point systems; it's only random generation that I'm not happy with.)
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mano...@iol.ie
Russell Wallace
> The estoc was a late mediaeval sword, long and very heavy, and completely
> lacking an edge. The point was hardened like a cold chisel, and came to a
> point, albeit not a needle-sharp one. It wass a thrusting weapon,
> obviously, and plainly designed to smash through something pretty hard.
Thrusting? Are you sure?? Heavy swords are usually swung rather than
thrust, because that way most of the impact comes from the kinetic
energy of the blade. Thrusts are backed up by nothing more than the
strength of the user's arm muscles (unless you're talking about charging
with lances) and that's very unlikely to go through decent armor,
regardless of the nature of the weapon.
> > In the case of the warhammer, you're looking at a
> >weapon that relies on having a lot of kinetic energy to go through the
> >armor, rather than a sharp point or edge to cut through tissue. Compare
> >to, say, a knife, rapier or shortsword. Even within the category of
> >swords, the ones that are designed to go through armor tend to be heavy,
> >with relatively blunt edges compared to those designed for use on
> >unarmored targets.
>
> War hammers do have points. You might not call them sharp (they are
> typically the 80-82 degrees of a cold chisel rather than the 34 degrees of
> a butcher's knife). But they are a piercing weapon.
I suppose it comes down to semantics then; I'd be inclined to call a
warhammer "crushing" rather than "piercing", since it seems to me to
rely mainly on kinetic energy and only slightly on having a sharp point
to do damage (as compared to, say, a knife which is the other way
round). Think of it this way: a flat warhammer would be nearly as
effective in its designed role, whereas a warhammer of the same shape
but with only a fraction of the weight would only have a fraction of the
effectiveness.
ed
Sep 1998 21:42:37 +0100:
>Brett Evill wrote:
>> The estoc was a late mediaeval sword, long and very heavy, and completely
>> lacking an edge. The point was hardened like a cold chisel, and came to a
>> point, albeit not a needle-sharp one. It wass a thrusting weapon,
>> obviously, and plainly designed to smash through something pretty hard.
>
>Thrusting? Are you sure?? Heavy swords are usually swung rather than
>thrust, because that way most of the impact comes from the kinetic
>energy of the blade. Thrusts are backed up by nothing more than the
>strength of the user's arm muscles (unless you're talking about charging
>with lances) and that's very unlikely to go through decent armor,
>regardless of the nature of the weapon.
The estoc is most definitely a thrusting sword. Noted for it in fact.
ed
--
edh...@equus.demon.co.uk _//// http://www.equus.demon.co.uk/
o_/o /// For devilbunnies, Diplomacy, RPGS,
<*> __\ ///__ Conspiring Rodents and other stuff!
Dan
>
> In article <slrn6vops...@voyager.cris.com>,
> J...@voyager.cris.com (John S. Novak) wrote:
> > On 12 Sep 1998 06:22:32 GMT, Brett Evill
> >
> > First, I think that in the normal course of life, piercing weapons
> > _are_ grossly effective against unarmoured human beings as compared to
> > crushing weapons. Given your choice, would you rather be hit in the
> > gut with the end of a quarterstaff, slashed across the stomach with a
> > scimitar, or run through with a gladius?
> >
> > I know what _my_ answer is.
>
> If your answer is that you would rather be slashed with a scimitar than run
> through with a gladius, I think your answer is wrong. As I understand it in
> the real world, barring peritonitis (which is *not* what the damage in GURPS
> is simulating), a stab wound is less dangerous than a cut. I think this is
> borne out by such things the design of arrow-heads for use against unarmored
> targets vs. those designed for use against armored targets (broad and flat v.
> sharp and narrow), and the relative commonness of slashing swords versus
> thrusting swords in cultures where they are military (rather than dueling)
> equipment.
So would you suggest no bonus for crush, 50% bonus for impale, and 100%
bonus for cut(switching impale and cut)?
- Dare "Just grin and Dare it!"
* All typos in the previous message are to be considered edicts of Eris.
Please update your dictionaries accordingly.
* Check 47 USC( http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/227.shtml ). You
spam, you pay up to 500$ US.
* Hi! I'm a replicating .sig virus! Join the fun and copy me into yours!
:)
* http://members.xoom.com/Darekun/GURPScombat.txt
Dan
>
> In article <6tcjvl$upo$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>,
> mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
> But I wanted to reply directly to the following:]
> >
> > (v) Writing tone. I can't really describe what bugs me here, except
> > to say that it somehow trivializes the topics under discussion. Too
> > many exclamation points and deliberately silly examples.
>
> This is a completely valid point, at least for the Basic Set and the first
> couple generations of worldbooks. I assume that Steve Jackson set the
> original tone, and editors (Jeff Koke, come on down!) kept it alive after SJ
> was no longer writing. All of those exclamation points can be extremely
> annoying, and you're helpless to do anything about them! (I suppose you
> could white them all out . . .) I haven't had this problem nearly so much
> with recent publications.
>
> However, it hadn't occurred to me that this would be one reason people would
> decline to use GURPS, though really I should have thought of it, since
> appropriate tone has been so important to the _success of other games . . .
> (obviously GURPS has had some success, but no thanks to its usual tone IMO).
One of the more common complaints about GURPS is the overpowering
"GURPS tone". Instead of using something appropriate to the book, they
use something appropriate to GURPS... and if you're not used to ignoring
the tone, that results in something inappropriate to the book(which is a
big problem with universal systems anyway). Even if you are used to it,
it detracts from immersion and SOD.
Dan
>
> Triad3204 wrote:
> >
> > In article <01bdde88$46a3cb60$700560d1@jer>, "Jeremy Reaban"
> > <fran...@stlnet.com> writes:
> >
> > >3) I don't like the advantage/disadvantage system. It encourages players to
> > >have freak characters - one legged stuttering albinos that are afraid of
> > >the dark and being hunted by a secret government agency.
> >
> > This seems a bit silly. Such a character would be dead within minutes in a
> > standard RPG setting.
>
> How, exactly? The only part of this that's likely to get the character
> killed is the "hunted by a secret government agency" bit,
Unless they try some adventures...
No, what I've found promotes this type of character is the *description
and choice* of the disads, which suggest that all disads are extreme and
unbalanced(for instance, Dyslexia is only listed at the extremity where
it makes you functionally illiterate).
> and in
> practice that generally becomes the whole party's problem not just the
> individual PC's.
Generally I don't let a PC have Enemies unless either only that player
is affected or all the PCs take the Enemy together.
> (Indeed, one of my pet peeves is players who create
> characters who are a serious liability to the rest of the PCs, without
> consulting the other players on the matter first.)
This is a problem anyway, regardless of the system(AFAIK).
Dan
>
> In article <jcm22-13099...@128.253.229.78>, jc...@cornell.edu (Jay
> Molstad) writes:
>
> >> 1) Has too few character attributes (4). I don't think this adequately
> >> describes a person.
> >
> > How many do you want? Four attributes are, of course, an extemely
> >minimal basis for a character concept. But bu the time you get around to
> >advantages, disads, skills, and quirks the character should be reasonably
> >fleshed out.
>
> I want a character who can run a long distance without being winded, but who
> can't lift weights worth shit.
High HT, low ST.
> I want a character who is very adept at thinking things through, but his
> knowledge base is extremely limited.
This would require some fiddling with the system(I'd probably create a
"No Skill Levels" Limitation on IT, which would be maybe -40% if you're
using the conflated IT and WL). The single mental attribute combined
with few (dis)ads to modify it is a problem in GURPS; most GURPSists
pull Will, Perception, or some other aspect out of IT.
> I want a character who heals cuts quickly, but gets sick easily.
High HT, Weak Immune System. (Or low HT and some variation on Rapid
Healing, but the only Rapid Healing I know of requires a high HT.)
> I want a character who can cover distance quickly, but is clumsy as an ox.
Increased Speed, Enhanced Move/Run, maybe even Super Running.
Basically, GURPS is designed to use (dis)ads to create these effects,
not attributes. The one thing I agree with is that IT should be split,
but three physical attributes is fine for me.
Matthew J Wilson
>Triad3204 wrote:
>>
>> In article <jcm22-13099...@128.253.229.78>, jc...@cornell.edu (Jay
>> Molstad) writes:
>>
>> >> 1) Has too few character attributes (4). I don't think this adequately
>> >> describes a person.
>> >
>> > How many do you want? Four attributes are, of course, an extemely
>> >minimal basis for a character concept. But bu the time you get around to
>> >advantages, disads, skills, and quirks the character should be reasonably
>> >fleshed out.
>>
>> I want a character who can run a long distance without being winded, but who
>> can't lift weights worth shit.
> High HT, low ST.
Perhaps even Fit or Very Fit, as well.
>> I want a character who is very adept at thinking things through, but his
>> knowledge base is extremely limited.
> This would require some fiddling with the system(I'd probably create a
>"No Skill Levels" Limitation on IT, which would be maybe -40% if you're
>using the conflated IT and WL). The single mental attribute combined
>with few (dis)ads to modify it is a problem in GURPS; most GURPSists
>pull Will, Perception, or some other aspect out of IT.
Perhaps Uneducated? I can't remember. The only examples of such a person
I can think of would have Low Tech Level.
>> I want a character who can cover distance quickly, but is clumsy as an ox.
> Increased Speed, Enhanced Move/Run, maybe even Super Running.
Reduced Manual Dexterity. Anyone who can run well will be agile, or
they'd trip over at high speeds. Thus it's only Man Dex that the clumsy
applies to. Or perhaps Running skill and Klutz - you can still be
reasonably fast there.
> Basically, GURPS is designed to use (dis)ads to create these effects,
>not attributes. The one thing I agree with is that IT should be split,
>but three physical attributes is fine for me.
Triad's not looking at the system as a whole, I think. If you look at
Gurps as just attributes, you'll miss a hell of a lot of detail. Because
there's a great deal more to a Gurps character than attributes.
--
Matt.
Joshua Macy
> I think that seeing a 10% bonus as a 10% increased chance to succeed is a
> pretty normal and useful way of looking at it, since that's what it is:
> everyone will succeed one more time in ten. You can insist on looking at it
> the other way, but that's not an artifact of the flat distribution; you can
> equally well regard a +1 on a 3d6 as a tripling of the chance to succeed for
> the poor character (skill 3), and just a 3/316th greater chance to succeed
> for the great character (16) or even an infinite improvement, going to
> certainty, for a character with a 17 skill. It may be a cliche that someone
> is so good that they can do a task with their eyes closed, but do you really
> want the game effect of having high skills to be hardly ever bothering to use
> good tools, perform in well-lighted conditions, rehearse in advance, and so
> on? That doesn't really jibe with my experience of the way experts behave.
>
Oops. That should read "and just a .009% greater chance to succeed
for a great character (skill 16)" From the point of view of ratio of
increase in the % chance to hit that Steffan was using, it goes from
312/316 to 315/316, or 98.73% chance to 99.68%, an increase of .95% but
a ratio of 1.009 to 1.
Oh, and as long as I'm correcting myself, it should be "gibe" (though
I notice my dictionary allows either).
Joshua
jos...@webamused.com
s...@katie.vnet.net (Steffan O'Sullivan) wrote:
... snip ...
> But if you can assume a bad lighting penalty is universally -1, this
> affects the average-skilled person worse in a bell curve, but not so in
> in a flat distribution - but it's not the middle. That is, there are
> two ways to look at a flat distribution: a bonus or penalty simply as
> equally small or great amount, or as a varying amount relative to the
> skill level. Thus if three characters have skill levels of 10, 50, and
> 80, you could say that a 10% bonus is just that: a 10% increased chance
> to succeed for all characters. OR you could say that it's a double
> chance to succeed for the poor character, just 1/5 additional chance
> for the fair character, and only 1/8 additional chance for the great
> character. (This latter view breaks down if the three characters are
> improvement, going to certainty ...)
>
I think that seeing a 10% bonus as a 10% increased chance to succeed is a
pretty normal and useful way of looking at it, since that's what it is:
everyone will succeed one more time in ten. You can insist on looking at it
the other way, but that's not an artifact of the flat distribution; you can
equally well regard a +1 on a 3d6 as a tripling of the chance to succeed for
the poor character (skill 3), and just a 3/316th greater chance to succeed
for the great character (16) or even an infinite improvement, going to
certainty, for a character with a 17 skill. It may be a cliche that someone
is so good that they can do a task with their eyes closed, but do you really
want the game effect of having high skills to be hardly ever bothering to use
good tools, perform in well-lighted conditions, rehearse in advance, and so
on? That doesn't really jibe with my experience of the way experts behave.
Joshua
Nightshade
>I suppose it comes down to semantics then; I'd be inclined to call a
>warhammer "crushing" rather than "piercing", since it seems to me to
>rely mainly on kinetic energy and only slightly on having a sharp point
>to do damage (as compared to, say, a knife which is the other way
>round). Think of it this way: a flat warhammer would be nearly as
>effective in its designed role, whereas a warhammer of the same shape
>but with only a fraction of the weight would only have a fraction of the
>effectiveness.
Uhm, sorry, but that's not true; the whole point of the warhammer is
that it takes all the energy generated by moving that mass through the
air and focuses it on a small cross section.
Of course one thing this discussion has ignored (as does GURPS, far as
I know) is that there are at least two broad cases of armor, too:
flexible armors like mail and rigid armors. The weapons that work
best against one aren't the ones that work best against the other, and
vice versa.
Triad3204
writes:
>Well, Evil Stevie may have said that, but I find it hard to believe that in
>the first 6 years of GURPS, SJG was presented with 10 manuscripts for short,
>individually-published scenarios (not counting solo adventures) and enough
>material for 6 volumes of genre anthologies (Space Adventures, etc.; not
>counting campaign-oriented material like Aces Abroad) that met a certain
>test of quality, and in the next 6 years of GURPS they were presented with
>_nothing_at_all_ that met the same test. And I still tend to think that
>estimated demand must have been decisive, rather than just rising standards.
I've got to agree, and it makes perfect sense: It takes just as much (if not
more) work to prepare a book of adventures as it does to prepare a world,
genre, or a sourcebook. But the adventure book *automatically* has a smaller
audience than the uber-product (anyone buying Fantasy Adventures almost
certainly had GURPS Fantasy, so Fantasy Adventures would almost certainly have
fewer sales than the GURPS Fantasy book).
With a game like AD&D or Deadlands it's a one step thing from the system. With
GURPS you have Main Book minus a certain percentage of your audience who buys
the sourcebook minus another chunk of your audience who buys the adventure book
-- two steps.
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Justin Bacon
tr...@prairie.lakes.com
Michael C. Martin
Russell Wallace <mano...@iol.ie> wrote:
>Triad3204 wrote:
>>
>> In article <01bdde88$46a3cb60$700560d1@jer>, "Jeremy Reaban"
>> <fran...@stlnet.com> writes:
>>
>> >3) I don't like the advantage/disadvantage system. It encourages players to
>> >have freak characters - one legged stuttering albinos that are afraid of
>> >the dark and being hunted by a secret government agency.
>>
>> This seems a bit silly. Such a character would be dead within minutes in a
>> standard RPG setting.
>How, exactly? The only part of this that's likely to get the character
>killed is the "hunted by a secret government agency" bit, and in
>practice that generally becomes the whole party's problem not just the
>individual PC's. (Indeed, one of my pet peeves is players who create
>characters who are a serious liability to the rest of the PCs, without
>consulting the other players on the matter first.)
When I GM, assuming the players chargen at all (my group does a lot of
one-shots/mini-series with pre-generated characters), they have to
clear things with me. Disadvantages like Jinxed get red-penned.
>> Out of curiousity, what other way is there besides a point system to create a
>> character? (Other than the randomization of AD&D, of course.) Is there some
>> secret set of games I have yet to discover which uses this third method of
>> generation?
>One which I've used to good effect is just letting players assign
>whatever abilities they think appropriate for the character concept.
Yeah. I actually tell them to assign stuff and have a pt total
between about 75-125. Chargen goes a bit faster too.
>Obviously the GM needs to retain a veto over inappropriate characters,
>but as far as I can remember I've never had to veto a proposed character
>for being too powerful.
Eidetic Memory is abusable for producing the effect they talk about in
Compendium 1 (Excessive breadth of ability). Skill levels over about
16 also tend to drive things nuts, except in settings designed to
handle them (e.g. Black Ops), and those sections are practically
diceless anyway. (Most things are automatic successes, when you do
things with -15 penalties, well, then you have to roll, and good
luck!)
---
Michael Martin: mcma...@uclink4.berkeley.edu
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~mcmartin/
"Trouble is synonymous with being a metabolizing entity."
--The Niss Machine, "Infinity's Shore"
William H. Stoddard
asking what armor does in the real world, to give us something to compare
GURPS armor rules to. As I see it, armor has the following physical
properties:
(1) It turns a cutting or impaling attack into a crushing attack by
preventing the edge or point from touching the body directly.
(2) Rigid armor turns a crushing attack into a spread out attack like a
fall or shield blow.
(3) Armor with the right kind of design can deflect an incoming blow so
that its momentum isn't transferred fully to the target.
(4) Armor can withstand a certain amount of damage before being
penetrated. Exceed that damage and you've lost much of the benefit of the
armor.
(5) Armor has mass roughly proportionate to its effectiveness in
accomplishing some of the above functions and to the body surface area of
the wearer.
Now, in GURPS, the assumed model seems to be that armor must be penetrated
for the wearer to be injured, except in the case of falls and other large
area attacks. This is an oversimplification. There does not seem to be
any allowance for the superior ability of a pointed weapon to penetrate
armor by concentrating the stress it produces. This is an
oversimplification. Nearly all armor has PD as well as DR, which seems to
imply that function (3) is universal. This may be an oversimplification;
I'm not sure about that. The treatment of armor mass seems fairly
tolerable.
I'd like to invite comments on (a) how closely GURPS fits the model I've
proposed and (b) how closely the model fits reality.
--
William H. Stoddard whs...@primenet.net
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.
(T. S. Eliot, "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats")
Ken St-Cyr
> Thrusts are backed up by nothing more than the
> strength of the user's arm muscles (unless you're talking about charging
> with lances) and that's very unlikely to go through decent armor,
> regardless of the nature of the weapon.
Wrong. Thrusting is backed up by the wielder's body weight and leg
strength, and a whipping action that can penetrate armor. But that's
beside the point (no pun intended). I wouldn't call a warhammer a
thrusting weapon, but rather a piercing weapon. IIRC GURPS does
differentiate between lever-action pointy things and thrusted pointy
things, but I don't know off the top of my head if it's mechanics
account for the differences.
- Ken
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
kens...@cs.pdx.edu |?- Do|Die.
*bleat* Yes.
The World of the Carnelian Coast: http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~kenstcyr
Bryan J. Maloney
The TimeLords/WarpWorld system from BTRC had a way around this, but it was
somewhat clunky in application, since it required a table look-up to
apply.
In short, every +/- 1 was a change of 5% of the skill roll, within the
granularity limits of the dice.
That meant that a +4 to a skill of 10 (this was a d20 system) would give a
roll of 14 or less to make, but a +4 to a skill of 5 would make the roll a
7 or less. This meant that highly-skilled characters would go out of
their way to get even more bonuses via equipment, conditions, etc. But it
also meant that low-skill characters had less effect from penalties.
--
- "God created women equal with men" ... "There are many women who
are better than men."--St. Kosmas Aitolos
http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/bjm10/
Joshua Macy
>
> Time is often not a variable in software or business when you have a
> deadline to meet, so a "steep curve" means you have much (or very
> difficult) material to cover in a limited time. Brett is correct that a
> slow learner will fall behind a steep curve, and may miss a deadline.
> Steepness is becoming synonymous with difficulty, and the time aspect is
> being lost. The fact that a steep curve may be intuitively compared
> with climbing a steep hill may be amplifying this change in emphasis.
>
I've always just assumed that in the business world, time was being
used as the y-axis, with degree of mastery as the x-axis; while this is
the reverse of the way it's graphed in psychology, it does indeed
produce steep curves for difficult-to-master tasks.
Joshua
Joshua Macy
>
> I'd like to make the discussion of armor in GURPS a bit more general by
> asking what armor does in the real world, to give us something to compare
> GURPS armor rules to. As I see it, armor has the following physical
> properties:
>
> (1) It turns a cutting or impaling attack into a crushing attack by
> preventing the edge or point from touching the body directly.
>
> (2) Rigid armor turns a crushing attack into a spread out attack like a
> fall or shield blow.
>
> (3) Armor with the right kind of design can deflect an incoming blow so
> that its momentum isn't transferred fully to the target.
>
> (4) Armor can withstand a certain amount of damage before being
> penetrated. Exceed that damage and you've lost much of the benefit of the
> armor.
>
> (5) Armor has mass roughly proportionate to its effectiveness in
> accomplishing some of the above functions and to the body surface area of
> the wearer.
>
(4). Unless you're talking about a blow falling on a spot that has been
breached by a previous blow, the force of the attack has to have been
considerably lessened by having to breach the armor; that is to say, I
think you still ought to get the benefit of the armor against a blow
that will penetrate the armor, although some part of that blow (the
damage over the penetration needed) will be treated as against an
unarmored foe. (3) seems rather hard to simulate in the general case,
since it doesn't seem likely that any armor can be built that will
uniformly enjoy the advantage of deflecting the blow no matter where it
lands and what type of weapon was delivering it; it seems simplest to
either assume either that's part of the variability of the damage
(assuming you're rolling for damage), or that's an ability that only
certain armors have against certain kinds of attacks.
I don't have a copy of GURPS handy, but as I recall, armor was treated
as a straight subtraction from the damage rolled, and then the damage
that penetrates was modified by the type of the attack (which is what
led to the discussion of the actual effect of GURPS armor being the
reverse of the desired effect as described in the rules). If that's
true, it doesn't seem to handle (1), (2), at all, or (3) except by
interpreting that as part of the damage variation. The modification of
damage that gets by the armor (e.g. doubling of piercing damage that
penetrates) seems to simulate both clauses of (4) (although I don't
think it ought, for the reasons above), and probably the encumbrance
rules do (5) nicely.
I'm not that familiar with CORPS, but what I know of it makes it seem
that it fits your model much more closely. Armor is given a two-number
rating, such as 2/4. The first number is subtracted from any damage,
the second number converts that many points of lethal damage (actual cut
and stab wounds) to non-lethal damage (which impairs, but doesn't result
in fatal wounds or bleeding), and the rest simply penetrates. That
seems to simulate (1), (2), and the first clause of (4). Some weapons
are considered to do armor-piercing damage, but armor can be hardened
against it. That's more-or-less (3), and (5) is accomplished by setting
the weights of the various types of armor realistically.
Joshua
Ken St-Cyr
> William H. Stoddard wrote:
> > (3) Armor with the right kind of design can deflect an incoming blow so
> > that its momentum isn't transferred fully to the target.
> (3) seems rather hard to simulate in the general case,
> since it doesn't seem likely that any armor can be built that will
> uniformly enjoy the advantage of deflecting the blow no matter where it
> lands and what type of weapon was delivering it; it seems simplest to
> either assume either that's part of the variability of the damage
> (assuming you're rolling for damage), or that's an ability that only
> certain armors have against certain kinds of attacks.
That's because you're thinking of armor as a passive defense. If you
have skill wearing such armor, you essentially use its surfaces as a
shield; in other words the fighter influences where the blow lands. You
might simulate it by making the wearer harder to hit. Assuming that
it's part of damage variability puts the burden on the weapon rather
than on the armor where it belongs.
bdy...@network.boxmail.com
Ken St-Cyr <kens...@sirius.cs.pdx.edu> wrote:
>On Wed, 16 Sep 1998, Joshua Macy wrote:
>
>> William H. Stoddard wrote:
>> > (3) Armor with the right kind of design can deflect an incoming blow so
>> > that its momentum isn't transferred fully to the target.
>> (3) seems rather hard to simulate in the general case,
>> since it doesn't seem likely that any armor can be built that will
>> uniformly enjoy the advantage of deflecting the blow no matter where it
>> lands and what type of weapon was delivering it; it seems simplest to
>> either assume either that's part of the variability of the damage
>> (assuming you're rolling for damage), or that's an ability that only
>> certain armors have against certain kinds of attacks.
>
>That's because you're thinking of armor as a passive defense. If you
>have skill wearing such armor, you essentially use its surfaces as a
>shield; in other words the fighter influences where the blow lands. You
>might simulate it by making the wearer harder to hit. Assuming that
>it's part of damage variability puts the burden on the weapon rather
>than on the armor where it belongs.
To forestall the "armor makes you harder to hit" discussion, perhaps have
a skill that allows for this? That is, anyone can get the damage-reducing
benefit from wearing armor, but if a character trains for it, he/she will
be able to present more protected areas to incoming blows, turn the right
way, etc., meaning that they won't get hit as often (actually, they do get
hit, but the attack is harmlessly deflected). Treat it as a penalty
against the to-hit roll, which more skill in armor wearing giving a higher
penalty, up to some limit to prevent ridiculous results like a man in full
plate being unwoundable.
--
Brian Dysart | Ours is not to reason why...
bdy...@rahul.net | "...and eight for the fruit bat."
www.rahul.net/bdysart/ | <*> Code Code block: C---
Matthew J Wilson
>On Tue, 15 Sep 1998, Russell Wallace wrote:
>> Thrusts are backed up by nothing more than the
>> strength of the user's arm muscles (unless you're talking about charging
>> with lances) and that's very unlikely to go through decent armor,
>> regardless of the nature of the weapon.
>Wrong. Thrusting is backed up by the wielder's body weight and leg
>strength, and a whipping action that can penetrate armor. But that's
>beside the point (no pun intended). I wouldn't call a warhammer a
>thrusting weapon, but rather a piercing weapon. IIRC GURPS does
>differentiate between lever-action pointy things and thrusted pointy
>things, but I don't know off the top of my head if it's mechanics
>account for the differences.
Yup. Lever action weapons in general get to use "swing" damage, rather
than the "thrust" damage. Swing damage is generally a fair bit higher
than thrust.
--
Matt.
Bryce Nakagawa
Bryan J. Maloney wrote:
> The TimeLords/WarpWorld system from BTRC had a way around this, but it was
> somewhat clunky in application, since it required a table look-up to
> apply.
>
> In short, every +/- 1 was a change of 5% of the skill roll, within the
> granularity limits of the dice.
>
> That meant that a +4 to a skill of 10 (this was a d20 system) would give a
> roll of 14 or less to make, but a +4 to a skill of 5 would make the roll a
> 7 or less. This meant that highly-skilled characters would go out of
> their way to get even more bonuses via equipment, conditions, etc. But it
> also meant that low-skill characters had less effect from penalties.
An interesting approach, but it seems somehow counter-intuitive to me. I
imagine that it would be the highly skilled people who could achieve success
without sweating out all the details and the low skill people who need all
conditions to be optimal to avoid failure.
This presumes that success/failure is a purely binary affair with no attention
paid to the margin the roll was made by. (another thing I don't like about
linear systems)