Gaming Ballistic - GURPS Content Posts

[DouglasCole]

ValenGURPSDay: GURPSDay Summary Feb 8, 2019 – Feb 14, 2019

Thursday is GURPSDay, Valentine’s Day, and a great day for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 was put on the “watch this space” calendar. SJG doesn’t do teasers – they’re either ready to rock, or they keep quiet. So look for this one.

Also, The Citadel at Nordvorn will go live on Kickstarter on Tuesday, Feb 19. Return to Nordlond about 250 miles east of Isfjall as the raven flies . . . and check out the Kickstarter preview.

In personal Gaming Ballistic News:

• The Lost Hall of Tyr proofs are on the way; I should get one from the US printer today even!
• The graphic design of Citadel got a major overhaul, and the Kickstarter is ready to go; it’s even approved by KS launch control.
• I posted a hoped-for publishing schedule for me in 2019.
• I received word from my authors on TFT projects that the first two (one from each) are over 75% completed for writing.
• I’ll be headed down to FNORDCon April 6-7, and running a table. Lots of Nordlond, maybe a preview of Citadel even, and several surprises

[DouglasCole]

The Citadel at Norðvorn, the second third-party supplement for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG went live on Kickstarter this past Tuesday, Feb 19.

The setting is done, the encounters and interactions are being written, and I've started to talk to artists about visualizing the world described. With the right support, not only will it be great for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, but it could be used in nearly ANY world calling for a vivid and living world with a Viking-inspired culture. Festivals, detailed descriptions of three living, breathing towns, each with their own distinct personality and needs, plus the often-neglected villages that appear every few miles even in a faux-medieval landscape!

We had an amazing first day, and can use your help getting to first the basic funding goals, and then pushing to the stretch goals for a larger book and better printing. Sean Punch wrote an entirely fascinating*foreword to the book that every GURPS fan should read. It also hints of the next big Dungeon Fantasy RPG happening: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2, which will be Kickstarting in March. If it funds, we will also see a reprint of the Boxed Set!

Norðvorn and Monsters 2 are not connected with each other, other than both bringing new life to an amazing boxed set that as fans we all feared had failed to thrive. These projects - with at least two more on the way later this year from Gaming Ballistic, and whatever Evil Plans SJG has in store, will hopefully change that. As a wise time traveler once said: "It goes like this. The Future's not set."

In personal Gaming Ballistic News:

• I will be on Geek Gab's Game Night - for the third time! - starting at 9pm Central Time to chat about Citadel, GURPS, TFT, Dragon Heresy, Vikings, and trying to run an indie game company. Check it out here at the appropriate time!
• The Lost Hall of Tyr 2nd edition physical print proof from the US printer were approved today. Based on their projections, that project should complete something like*two months early.
• I posted a hoped-for publishing schedule for me in 2019.
• I received word from my authors on TFT projects that the first two (one from each) are over 75% completed for writing; there are ten in the works total
• I'll be headed down to FNORDCon April 6-7, and running a table. Lots of Nordlond, maybe a preview of Citadel even, and several surprises

For even more good stuff, check out

The Citadel at GURPSDay: Feb 15 to Feb 21, 2009

[Plane]

I just threw some grappling into a boxer v brawler fight and ended up grabbing a guy by the shirt.

I was imagining how this could go down in Technical Grappling, and remembered your Control Point system's baseline assumes a clothed target, ad that them not wearing clothes on a body part (ie a bare arm, a bare torso, a bare leg) gives I think a point of Control Resistance subtracted from the Thrust roll.

This made me wonder: in the baseline rules which assumes you are grappling clothing, were there any versions of "Break Free" which, instead of breaking their grip on your clothing, reflect removing the article of grappled clothing instead?

That seems like a difficult but potentially useful (and maybe easier) trick against someone with a super-strong grip. They might have a ST 30 grip on your shirt, but if you can manage to wriggle out of the shirt somehow, it should't matter, right?

To incentivize that i some situations, I'm wondering what kind of benefits that should offer. I was thinking for example:

1) grappler cannot use Brute Parry against your Break Free, if you are breaking free of your clothing instead of breaking your clothing free of him
2) Break Free only suffers 1/2 the normal DX penalties from CP applied to clothing you're trying to remove

I don't know if I'm right to still be using Break Free though, or of there's something else (Ready maneuvers?) you would use to reflect the varying difficulty of removing different articles of clothing.

There are also probably cases where escaping clothing isn't a guarateed escape from a grapple. A large creature for example could probably wrap its hand around someone's entire arm and clamp down so hard that it would be very hard to remove the jacket and you'd need to break their grip to loose the sleeve enough to get out of it.

This would be different than say, a small dog who is clamping down on 100% material and not exerting any clamping pressure on your arm at all so you could slide right out.

[DouglasCole]

Nordvorn Update: Funding, Writing, and International Shipping

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Plane

This made me wonder: in the baseline rules which assumes you are grappling clothing, were there any versions of "Break Free" which, instead of breaking their grip on your clothing, reflect removing the article of grappled clothing instead?

Nothing there as of yet; that's the sort of highly situational thing best resolved by the GM!

That seems like a difficult but potentially useful (and maybe easier) trick against someone with a super-strong grip.

It does!

I don't know if I'm right to still be using Break Free though, or of there's something else (Ready maneuvers?) you would use to reflect the varying difficulty of removing different articles of clothing.

There are also probably cases where escaping clothing isn't a guarateed escape from a grapple. A large creature for example could probably wrap its hand around someone's entire arm and clamp down so hard that it would be very hard to remove the jacket and you'd need to break their grip to loose the sleeve enough to get out of it.

This would be different than say, a small dog who is clamping down on 100% material and not exerting any clamping pressure on your arm at all so you could slide right out.

Both of these would be situational, I suspect. Wriggling out of clothing feels like a series of DX rolls to me in conjunction with Ready maneuvers. Ultimately, this seems the sort of thing that it'd be really sub-resolution to try and resolve without folks rolling their eyes and saying "see! this is why you don't play GURPS!"

In general, the other way to go is to resolve it as a break free attempt, but with a situational penalty given by trying to wriggle out of your clothing. If you succeed, yer a bit closer to your b-day suit than you were. If you fail, either the grip was too tight or you're not nearly wriggly enough.

[Plane]

Clothing durability is also an issue, I'm sure I've seen videos of street fights where in the process of of grappling a cheap sleeveless shirt (ie "wifebeater") it ends up either tearing or actually coming off (or partially off) accidentally (with neither the attacker or defender necessarily intending for that) in the scrabbling.

Then of course there's also intentional "I'm lifting your shirt overtop your face so you can't see me" move (could be done by grappling the bottom of the top or the back) which blinds someone until they go out of their way to get the shirt off their face (which would be easier using hands, though you might be able to do a hands-free Break Free using neck movements)

If you were doing a "shift grip" from Torso to Neck or Head (face/skull) I think if you were doing some kind of "keeping my grip on your shirt and just sliding it up" kind of move then you should get to ignore control resistace for a bare neck/head because you are basically making it effectively clothed by sliding the shirt overtop of it, like in 2009 and 2016 examples. But the downside to getting this benefit is you are helping them undress so they should be able to escape from wearing the shirt more easily now since it has been moved up (free abdomen to cover neck, free chest to cover head) each step removed should be 1 step easier to escape the shirt entirely.

[DouglasCole]

Big "prelude" section today: read the whole thing!

GURPSDay: Feb 22 to Mar 1, 2009

[DouglasCole]

Big GURPSDay post about Kickstarter's today.

Thursday is Back the DFRPG Kickstarters Day

Please reshare the blog post wherever you can. Both projects will benefit from funding sooner rather than later.

[DouglasCole]

Ballistic's Report and Financials 2018 - Gaming Ballistic

[DouglasCole]

The Citadel at Norðvorn for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG has funded.

There are still 12 days to go in the campaign during which we can knock down stretch goals.