Gaming Ballistic - GURPS Content Posts

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by whswhs

So it's all built on "there is one intended final resolution of the situation, there is one critical path of actions that will take the PCs there, and there is one set of abilities that will enable the PCs to perform those actions"? But with guard rails set up so you can't not follow the path? I've heard that there are GMs and players who like that sort of thing, but it's totally opposite to what I'm looking for. I've always been a Gregor Vorbarra "Let's see what happens" GM. . . .

Bill Stoddard

All the CoC adventures I've ever played in have been railroad-y. Perhaps when Ken Hite is GM it's a fun train to ride.

They're set up in chapters and you've got to find the right thing to advance to the next chapter. Gumshoe guarantees that with a minimal attention to metagame elements the player will get to that next chapter.

Some of this might be a problem with emulation of the primary source material. Lovecraft's .....let's call them narrators seldom do very much except witness unspeakable horrors and then live just long enough to give dire warning while teetering on the edge of insanity. Hard to call them protagonists they don't tend to be centrally involved enough for that in my opinion.

[HANS]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I have talked rules. I've talked design. I've talked to designers and VTT makers. I've given play reports. But what games would I LIKE to play?

Re: Night's Black Agents. I love Ken's settings, and heartily endorse his attempts to make Ronin and the modern Bourne films gameable. However, Gumshoe is a terrible rules system, the resolution is just too coarse. Yes, I'm a simulationist, but I have great fun with simple systems like that used for Call of Cthulhu. The first thing I want from a game, just like from a movie, is that it suspends my disbelief. Gumshoe is just too simplistic for that.

Cheers

HANS

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

During an interview that was about 50 minutes long, I interviewed Steve Jackson (!) and we covered Ogre and the Kickstarter, Munchkin, his recently released 2013 Stakeholder's Report, and of course we talked a bit about GURPS.

Thanks to Steve for taking the time to join me on the Firing Squad!

I'm a little late on this, but just wanted to say I really enjoyed this interview. One thing in particular that caught my ear was the discussion of a potential "Munchkin Jr", as a fantasy card game for kids with cooperative and resource-management elements. Do you know if there's anything like this that already exists? Or would it be possible to houserule standard Munchkin into a more kid-friendly form?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Whatever, our group hasnt' tried Gumshoe again.

My original impression of it was quite similar to yours. I recoiled that my highly trained medic could only be good at something a few times, and then he was only as good as a totally untrained schlub, mechanically speaking.

Night's Black Agents is a Gumshoe system, and in my interview with Ken he gave me a different paradigm in which to consider point spends as dramatic devices. I want to try that, and experience it with those expectations in my mind from the get go. Because my Trail of Cthulhu experience was not positive. But it perhaps could have been, and I want to give it a shot.

That being said, I would love to convert the NBA setting to GURPS . . .

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by whswhs

So it's all built on "there is one intended final resolution of the situation, there is one critical path of actions that will take the PCs there, and there is one set of abilities that will enable the PCs to perform those actions"?

Not even remotely. Yes, in the hands of a blunt-force-trauma GM this might be the case. But it clearly need not be.

The point of the investigative skills is that if there's a clue there, you find it. What you DO with it is supposed to be the operative decision. Yes, there's vampiric activity. But is it this faction or that faction? Do these clues implicate X, Y, or Z? With the deep conspiracy-building tools in Night's Black Agents, there could always be room for another faction.

I suspect published adventures will always feel on rails, though. That's been my experience with almost of them, in every system.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by HANS

Re: Night's Black Agents. I love Ken's settings, and heartily endorse his attempts to make Ronin and the modern Bourne films gameable. However, Gumshoe is a terrible rules system, the resolution is just too coarse. Yes, I'm a simulationist, but I have great fun with simple systems like that used for Call of Cthulhu. The first thing I want from a game, just like from a movie, is that it suspends my disbelief. Gumshoe is just too simplistic for that.

Cheers

HANS

A fair criticism, and one I brought up to Ken when we spoke. I want to try out NBA in it's element before I switch back to GURPS, which at Seals in Vietnam, Action, or Monster Hunters point levels should handle the setting beautifully and with all the simulationist fervor one could wish.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

I'm a little late on this, but just wanted to say I really enjoyed this interview. One thing in particular that caught my ear was the discussion of a potential "Munchkin Jr", as a fantasy card game for kids with cooperative and resource-management elements. Do you know if there's anything like this that already exists? Or would it be possible to houserule standard Munchkin into a more kid-friendly form?

I wonder about the second one. I can think of a few things that would work, but they'd require a lot of help from Steve.

The kids might play a group of adventurers, and they have to make it through (say) five rounds of combat, trying to destroy the (single) level 20 monster at the end. Each turn, you'd draw a card from a pool of bad guys - say level 1-4, 5-9, 10-14. 15-19, and then 20 (for Fantasy, it's the Plutonium Dragon, right?).

They would kick in a door, draw a card from the monster deck and a room trappings deck. The monsters would get to pull from a Monster Buffs deck - stuff to play on themselves or to play against the PC group.

Might multiply the levels needed to beat each monster by the number of players divided by two, though!

On victory, you loot the room, get some cool treasure, and some Player Buffs. Each round would be about how to best combine to defeat monsters with unique weaknesses.

A Troll might only be vulnerable to fire weapons, requiring 2x his level in "fire damage," which could come from flaming swords, torches . . . but most likely magic spells. Kids with the right class can use the spells, etc.

So there's team play, trying to level up all players more or less equally, sharing of resources, and a building challenge with some randomness to it.


Not sure if there's anything like it already.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I wonder about the second one. I can think of a few things that would work, but they'd require a lot of help from Steve.

The obvious thing is just take out the Knee-Pads of Allure, The Lust Monster, and so on...

So there's team play, trying to level up all players more or less equally, sharing of resources, and a building challenge with some randomness to it.

Munchkin without the "stab your buddy" part, doesn't really seem like the same game.

Not sure if there's anything like it already.

There's definitely kid friendly cooperative games with building resources. Castle Panic immediately springs to mind (and will have a Munchkin-ized version soon).

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Munchkin without the "stab your buddy" part, doesn't really seem like the same game.

Its not, but for the very young kid set, not having the stab your buddy element is pretty much mandatory.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Its not, but for the very young kid set, not having the stab your buddy element is pretty much mandatory.

Yeah, I'm just not seeing why a Munchkin game is what makes sense there. I guess branding?