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Old 10-19-2020, 06:09 PM   #301
kirbwarrior
 
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Default Re: Rules you ignore/alter.

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
There are many jobs where "LJ" appears in the column for Crit Fails and that stands for "Lose Job".
I did not know that was a thing, where are jobs written out?

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
What it is, is hanging the causality of simulation results on elements that are squarely outside the simulation.
I agree. It is an entirely gamist and abstract way of subsuming the combination of results that would lead to the current situation in a way that doesn't require knowing how those events actually happened.

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
Luck and Serendipity are realistic traits because there are people who are demonstrably more lucky than others. We see evidence of such traits in the lives of identical twins which, despite possessing identical genetics and identical environments, usually have divergent paths starting in adolescence. One twin starts getting lucky breaks that the other twin does not, resulting in divergent life paths.
Are there not varying levels of 'lucky'? Game Time on Serendipity comes out to Weekly (without GM adjustment) and I could easily see a monthly or yearly lesser version.

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
as people seem to rarely have lucky breaks without corresponding unlucky events
This is the most bonkers thing I've heard this year and I would love to see the evidence that supports it. Like, I had no idea you could actually measure luck in real life.

Plus, Impulse Buys, or namely Buying Success, might have zero in world explanation. It might literally be the player saying "no, I didn't actually critically fail this particular roll" and no one other than the GM (and other players) would know (even omniscient and perfect gods are still technically below players and GM). Literally any success ever could have been someone spending points and we wouldn't know because spending points and rolling dice is merely an abstraction of real life.
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While I do not think that GURPS is perfect I do think that it is more balanced than what I am likely to create by GM fiat.
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Old 10-19-2020, 06:32 PM   #302
Plane
 
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Default Re: Rules you ignore/alter.

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
Luck and Serendipity are realistic traits because there are people who are demonstrably more lucky than others. We see evidence of such traits in the lives of identical twins which, despite possessing identical genetics and identical environments, usually have divergent paths starting in adolescence. One twin starts getting lucky breaks that the other twin does not, resulting in divergent life paths.
If we assume non-average outcomes result from disadvantages...

Then we should examine how the product of our characters' lives could result in non-average results despite them not having traits like these.

It's our IRL luck advantage somehow bestowed to our character!

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
we do not see anything that seems like Impulse Buys,
as people seem to rarely have lucky breaks without corresponding unlucky events
Even something like Point Debt (you don't have bonus CP to spend, instead you take on negative CP) is something which should probably be more structured.

The simplest example being "I have no bonus CP to spend on 10% Starting Wealth, so I will take a out a Loan instead" and then you incur a Debt quirk (pay 1% SW per month)

You should be able to pay money to remove certain disadvantages (ie pay to have a Wound closed, to clone an eyeball to offset One Eye) though how costly/accessible that is should depend on the setting (magic or high tech could remove many physical disadvantages)

In the case of social ones, it should be possible to buy off a debt (as you might buy off some other quirk) by sacrificing raw bonus CP but this wouldn't mean that something you purchased with raw bonus CP such as 10% SW.

The biggest problem being that with wealth/equipment not worth any points whatsoever (enemies who covet your money offset the benefit to trade it for stuff). Trading your money means you're taking new disadvantages on:
buying food means replacing "people who want to steal my money" with "animals who want to steal my food"
One thing we do know is there is an "inherent debt" built into characters: the cost of eating.

The cheapest known food "travel rations" at 5% CoL ($20 for status-2) per week to avoid starvation.

Someone Poor (1/5 starting wealth) would have $50 at TL0 so Debt-20 (20% per month) costs 10 dollars per month.

Debts cost more the wealthier you get and the higher TL you exist in, so at some point this will surpass the $20 per week it takes to survive.

What we do know though is there would be a way to lower your cost of living: not require food. B50 for 10 points makes you immune to a loss of at least $20/week which works out as $2/week avoided per point. You save even more money by this advantage at higher STATUS levels (they require costlier food to maintain: you must be seen eating fine steak+caviar to be status+5)

Weird thing about that though is you could probably just eat garbage and use illusion magic to make it look like you're eating steak+caviar...

I think maybe in that case you could treat "I cast steak illusions on my moldy trashbin bread" as "a job" except instead of earning money directly, you're mitigating status costs?

This actually makes me wonder: if you're a reclusive millionaire who only eats in private, how could you possibly maintain status if it requires being seen eating?

I think maybe COL could just be "people need to see you spending money to think you have it", so if you aren't seen spending money on food, you must be seen spending it on other things?

If you're not a compulsive shopper that should probably be something like "paying taxes on the property I owe" because you would have SOMETHING conveying to others that you were wealthy.

If aren't paying these directly, you probably have Status as a result of Rank (free Status doesn't pay higher COL) which means someone is still paying it, but it's someone else.
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Old 10-19-2020, 09:18 PM   #303
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Rules you ignore/alter.

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Originally Posted by kirbwarrior View Post
I did not know that was a thing, where are jobs written out?
.
Even just for 4e there are Jobs scattered through the books. For example in Bio-tech(starting on p.202) there are notes after many of the Templates for Jobs for persons fitting such a Template and several of them do cause you to lose that Job when a crit fail is rolled (not even a natural 18).

I'm pretty sure there are others. Looking for them where you find Templates woudln't e a bad way to search for them.

Old hands do tend to speak more of "Jobs Tables" because they were an extremely common feature in 3e books. The 3e tables use the same basic principles of success and failure. It's just the economic specifics that have changed.
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Old 10-19-2020, 09:51 PM   #304
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Originally Posted by Otaku View Post
Abstract gaming concepts are inspired by things in reality and fiction... and fiction is often inspired by reality. Even if it simply amounts to translating the historical, improbable successes into a package that will produce similar results in GURPS, it seems like a non-issue to me.
This isn't an 'I hate buying successes with character points' argument. I do a bit, but that's a totally different thing.

This is a 'I hate using Buying Successes to explain how typical NPCs can hold onto a job' argument.
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Old 10-19-2020, 10:33 PM   #305
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Default Re: Rules you ignore/alter.

Gurps is a tabletop rpg system, not a reality simulator.
It does give better result than others when used for mass statistics but you will get problems, there are too few possible dice results.

If you start to roll 480 job monthly rolls for every npc to simulate their career, the system granularity will bite you.

Same problem with rolling 100000 spell casting and deciding the local enchanter guild is overcome by accidentaly summoned demons.
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Old 10-19-2020, 10:49 PM   #306
AlexanderHowl
 
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Default Re: Rules you ignore/alter.

You can easily calculate the probability of job rolls. Assuming skill 12, 480 rolls would result in 360 successes (~10 of them critical) and 120 failures (~10 of them critical). For freelance jobs, you can assume that the average margin of success is '2'.

As for the enchanter, they are summoning a demon once every 10,000 rolls, so it is unlikely to be a major factor (the fact that the enchanter is starving to death while they are producing their inventory is likely a more major concern). It is actually much more likely that an enemy summons a demon to attack them and the authorities blame the enchanter.
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Old 10-19-2020, 11:23 PM   #307
awesomenessofme1
 
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Default Re: Rules you ignore/alter.

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
You can easily calculate the probability of job rolls. Assuming skill 12, 480 rolls would result in 360 successes (~10 of them critical) and 120 failures (~10 of them critical). For freelance jobs, you can assume that the average margin of success is '2'.

As for the enchanter, they are summoning a demon once every 10,000 rolls, so it is unlikely to be a major factor (the fact that the enchanter is starving to death while they are producing their inventory is likely a more major concern). It is actually much more likely that an enemy summons a demon to attack them and the authorities blame the enchanter.
How is any of this a response to what was actually said? They said it was unnecessary and caused needless complication and confusion, not that it couldn't be done.
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Old 10-19-2020, 11:54 PM   #308
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Rules you ignore/alter.

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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl View Post
You can easily calculate the probability of job rolls.
Job rolls are one of the rules I ignore. Job results really aren't that random on a scale of a month, any sudden changes to your job situation are generally going to come from independent events unrelated to your actual job skill, so there's not much point to making job skill rolls.
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Old 10-20-2020, 12:27 AM   #309
Plane
 
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Default Re: Rules you ignore/alter.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
There are many jobs where "LJ" appears in the column for Crit Fails and that stands for "Lose Job".
I'm not sure how many exist in 4E but I found 3 in Fantasy:

F114 (Archer in peacetime, keeps job in wartime but gets injured, so could DIE)
F118 (Bard losing court position)
F215 (Engineer anytime)

Them losing jobs on crit fails is a lot more believable to me than for other jobs.

Artificers lose reputation,
assassins get wanted by authorities,
bandits get injured,
Barbarians nothing (no job rolls even though they're basically also bandits)
Battle Mage is injured,
Enchanter loses money,
Hedge Wizard makes a Fright Check,
Holy Man loses powers (monthly rolls to regain),
Knight is injured (you can die from losing 3d HP...)
Spellcaster gets bad rep
Thief is arrested/tried
True King doesn't make job rolls
Village Sage DOES make job rolls but apparently has no crit fail result
War Dancer gets injured
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Old 10-20-2020, 08:39 PM   #310
kirbwarrior
 
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Default Re: Rules you ignore/alter.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Even just for 4e there are Jobs scattered through the books. For example in Bio-tech(starting on p.202) there are notes after many of the Templates for Jobs for persons fitting such a Template and several of them do cause you to lose that Job when a crit fail is rolled (not even a natural 18).
I somehow have never seen that. Also, I'm not sure I've ever opened that book... EDIT: Just did a quick search of "Job Description" in books I routinely use and nope, none of them have it. Fantasy does, but I don't think I looked over those temples when I used that book in the past.

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Job rolls are one of the rules I ignore. Job results really aren't that random on a scale of a month, any sudden changes to your job situation are generally going to come from independent events unrelated to your actual job skill, so there's not much point to making job skill rolls.
I think job rolls are good for roleplaying opportunities. Maybe instead of some simple result, you get some 'complication' that you have to deal with and your job skill(s) will come in handy for trying to avoid [terrible thing] but the odds are against you.

Then again, I do think GURPS is generally with you. A stable job has no difference between success and fail. A fluid job does. What you could instead do is throw away job rolls for stable jobs and keep them for variable jobs, dangerous jobs, and less-than-legal jobs. You could even push the roll; maybe you make a job roll at the end of the year and any failure means something came up.

Then again, even in 'stable' jobs like office work, the boss might be looking for anyone to hire and whoever critically fails- I mean messes up today is who gets kaput so your skill level at least matters a little (like how the critical failure range changes from 15 to 16 skill).
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While I do not think that GURPS is perfect I do think that it is more balanced than what I am likely to create by GM fiat.

Last edited by kirbwarrior; 10-20-2020 at 08:42 PM.
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