02-18-2018, 11:42 AM | #31 |
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Noblesville, Indiana, USA
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Re: What sort of computer game suits GURPS best?
I was just thinking about survival type computer games and in many of these games they have the concept of a randomly generated character's backstory or profession they held before the game starts. I was thinking that this concept might mesh well with the rules for Who Gets a Default? on B173.
In games like this, a randomly generated character's skills are often randomly generated also, but it would be interesting if the character's backstory/profession played into which skills the character was even aware of. For instance, a chemistry professor would definitely have the skills Chemistry and Teaching, and would be aware of skills like Administration, Farming, Hazardous Materials, and Pharmacy which would allow rolling at default, but might know nothing about Computer Hacking, Engineer, or Urban Survival. This type of game would require quickly being able to gain at least a rudimentary skill level in the skills crucial to your character's survival, but I think it would be fun to have to cope with a character's knowledge and experience gaps based on their own personal history. It would add another layer to the challenge of surviving. |
02-18-2018, 12:10 PM | #32 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Saskatoon, SK
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Re: What sort of computer game suits GURPS best?
Umm, a post-apocalyptic game based on 1950s society and vision of the future?
What? Too soon?
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02-19-2018, 09:41 AM | #33 | |
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Noblesville, Indiana, USA
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Re: What sort of computer game suits GURPS best?
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The latest incarnation of the Fallout series isn't very GURPS-like, but I think it could be done well if re-imagined with GURPS rules. Now that the After the End line exists, GURPS Fallout could be even better. |
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02-19-2018, 10:45 AM | #34 |
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Noblesville, Indiana, USA
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Re: What sort of computer game suits GURPS best?
I think GURPS is one system that could serve as the core rule set for a variety of computer games. You could call it GURPS Engine, or something like that, and it could be a set of web services, DLLs, or whatever, that codify the GURPS rules into computer code that could be leveraged across multiple computer games. Unlike several popular series that re-imagine aspects of the core mechanics with each iteration, the GURPS rules could stay consistent across genres, tech levels, and sequels.
Bah, anyway, I know I have ridiculous pie-in-the-sky ideas, but I like to dream, and I enjoy these hypothetical thought experiments. :-) |
03-01-2018, 11:04 PM | #35 | ||||||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
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Re: What sort of computer game suits GURPS best?
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Remember, what makes a survival game are isolation, desolation, peril, exploration, resourcefulness, creation, ascendance and regeneration and creation. The PC should find himself or herself alone, wholly and completely lost, with no help from anyone. He or she should face dangers both known and unknown, and figure out how to prevail. In so doing, he or she gains mastery of the new environment, and eventually not only manages to survive, but to actually prosper. Moreover, for most human beings, survival and prosperity is best accomplished as described by the character, Abraham Ford, in The Walking Dead. "You need to find yourself a group of like-minded individuals, and stick to 'em like wet on water." Once the PCs have established a community, then it's no longer a pure survival game; it transforms into something else -- but what that is remains wholly under the control of the players, working together. Quote:
If that's what you want, just play Rust. Or Day-Z. Or Escape from Tarkov. Or any one of, literally, dozens of FPS/base-building "survival" games in which advanced, military-grade equipment just spawns in, magically. Quote:
The PCs must remain the central actors, and the main deciders. The agency must lie with them, which means the conflicts remain manageable by them. The sudden introduction of hugely powerful NPCs renders the PCs effectively inconsequential. Quote:
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Nope. I want immersion, and tactical combat similar to X-Com doesn't provide that, nearly so well. I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but the shift in not only the tone, but the very nature, of the game, away from the central importance of the PCs, would seem like a bait-and-switch, to me. I'd really hate it. If you want to move the PCs in the direction of enhanced capabilities, then make the world into a place where banestorms dump all sorts of stuff from all sorts of worlds. I'd stay away from modern technology (no industrial supply chain, so it's useless, anyway) -- but I'd definitely consider some alternative tech. Maybe allow the PCs to discover broken bits of clock-punk technology they can piece back together, only to learn the laws of physics are different, in the new world. Maybe have ruins left by ancient pre-cursors, which hold artifacts that allow the PCs to gain Magery 0 or rudimentary psionic abilities, which they can then begin to explore and enhance. Maybe the combination of those discoveries, the new abilities, and the "modern" knowledge of the 1850s allows them to begin to construct steampunk one-offs that get turned out by mad scientists using small workshops. Also, if the game does move in the direction of interdimensional travel, I'd stay away from some vastly complex war between Homeline and Centrum. Instead, I'd prefer that, with vast effort and expenditure of resources, the PCs can find portals they can open, which take them from the survival world to ones equally problematic, although perhaps in different sorts of ways. ("Wait! This world is inhabited by vast numbers of fast-breeding TL4 lizard-people who consider all mammals as delicacies, and they want to know where we came from!" or, "Oh, no! That world has the ruins of vast cities, because all the people got killed by tentacled horrors and we just woke them up!")
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03-02-2018, 12:50 AM | #36 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: What sort of computer game suits GURPS best?
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