4e GIN?

[Hyrneson]

One thing that suprised me about Lithroy (and smite me if I missed it) was that it still refered back to Third Edition GURPS.
I know there is a celestial shudder when someone asks about adapting GIN to 4e but couldn't TPTB figure out a crib sheet for use in house and that way the new (and oh so very cool) stuff that comes out can not immediately need to have revision plans made for it to get it up to the 4e rules?

RH

[milliken]

Originally Posted by Hyrneson

I know there is a celestial shudder when someone asks about adapting GIN to 4e but couldn't TPTB figure out a crib sheet for use in house and that way the new (and oh so very cool) stuff that comes out can not immediately need to have revision plans made for it to get it up to the 4e rules?

The problem is that working out the stuff that would need to be in the cribsheet is the *hard* problem. Making it releasable would be fairly easy.

---Walter

[Archangel Beth]

I have some plans which require prodding my original volunteer (who has had a Bad Attack of Life) or doing some serious computer archaeology to dig up his original draft and do Something with it.

For the foreseeable future, I'm using GURPS 3e. (Aside from the fact that Litheroy's been in the pipeline since... well, since pretty close to before 4e, IIRC.) I can cook up conversions from IN to G3e a lot more easily than I can figure out the new 4e rules with an attention-demanding six-year-old in the house.

However, it is on my To Do list to do that above-listed Something.

Probably, however, not on a day when I have had only 5 hours sleep.

[Hyrneson]

Hmm, now that I really think about it, and you have discussed it, I can see where the matter isn't as easy as I first thought.
I had figured that it would just be a case of applying the GURPS 3e->4e suppliment, but then I thought about the GIN is already a conversion.
I suppose stacking conversion on conversion might work, but not well enough that a product should go out without some testing. :)

Beth, I too have the same affliction as you (the strong willed, high energy six year old) who, though he is not a demon prince, definately works for Factions and has distinctions as a Captain of Negeotiations.
It's the one and a half year old who might qualify as yours does for Cute, definately qualifies as a Captain of Distractions. :)

RH

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Hyrneson

I can see where the matter isn't as easy as I first thought.

To put it delicately :)

If you ask me - and I suppose that you do, because who wouldn't? - a G4IN would need more like a new approach rather than a "mere" update to 4E rules (a huge "mere" as I'm well aware of).

A "mere" update wouldn't solve the much-discussed problems of the original G3IN, imo (unimportance of Forces, differing point costs of Attunements making certain approaches unviable, inelegant mechanics due to trait-bloat). *)

A new approach could be to accept that GIN characters *do* have different point levels. This wouldn't leave a fireproof servitor of Belial broke after paying for the fireproof-attunement. Something along the lines of "Every character gets an attunement for free".

*) No offense meant. GIN was a nice, and above all, huge piece of work.

[milliken]

Originally Posted by zorg

A "mere" update wouldn't solve the much-discussed problems of the original G3IN, imo (unimportance of Forces, differing point costs of Attunements making certain approaches unviable, inelegant mechanics due to trait-bloat).

Unfortunately most of those would probably still be problems with any sort of 4e adaptation, even though 4e is presumably "cleaner" than 3e. If it were being done over, it would probably be a "Powered by GURPS" release, I suspect.

Originally Posted by zorg

A new approach could be to accept that GIN characters *do* have different point levels. This wouldn't leave a fireproof servitor of Belial broke after paying for the fireproof-attunement. Something along the lines of "Every character gets an attunement for free".

That's certainly a possibility, we pretty much did most of that with the "you get Choir/Band and Superior free" option, which is the one I generally recommend. The fireproofing attunement is probably the most annoyingly expensive in the game, and there really wasn't any way to fix it, since it was a clear match with the Supers invulnerability to fire. If I recall right, there aren't many others that really break the bank, though.

One problem with "free attunement", though, is that they're free choices of a single positive feature, unlike Choir/Band and Superior choices, which bundle a lot of stuff together, some of which is negative, where you can't just pick and choose all that freely. So it makes some sense that attunements should be paid for. But the GURPS costs didn't always come out sensibly for In Nomine, and we could only bend things so far with limitations.

One of the drawbacks to GURPS is that it assumes a given capability has a flat value across all genres, which really isn't true. In this case, a capability which has a fairly high value in a Supers game (fire invulnerability) has a much lower value in a setting where fire is not a particularly common attack, and where people don't need to walk into burning buildings frequently....

With a "Powered by GURPS" version, we'd probably have been allowed to set point costs appropriately for the IN setting, and not have had to try to shoehorn everything into existing GURPS mechanics. Frankly, I think the difficulty in doing this for In Nomine is one of the things that convinced SJ that "Powered by GURPS" might be a good idea for converting existing settings, though the problems first surfaced, I think, in the conversions of White Wolf's Vampire books.

I don't know if, in a PbG In Nomine, we'd have been allowed to add Forces as primary attributes, though, or exactly how we'd have done that. Most of the other major issues in the conversion would have been much smoother, though. My own inclination would have been to take the GURPS skill and combat systems intact, and do the supernatural stuff as novel powers, costed by fiat and playtest. I'd probably have added Perception, Precision and Will back in as attributes, as well. Not sure what I'd have done with GURPS HT, which doesn't really exist as a concept in regular In Nomine. So it's still not trivial....


---Walter

[zogo]

Originally Posted by zorg

A new approach could be to accept that GIN characters *do* have different point levels. This wouldn't leave a fireproof servitor of Belial broke after paying for the fireproof-attunement. Something along the lines of "Every character gets an attunement for free".

I thought that was the standard approach to G:IN. CHaracters got Choir/Band Template and their single attunement for free and then got X Points to buy everything else?

[Andrew Hackard]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

I can cook up conversions from IN to G3e a lot more easily than I can figure out the new 4e rules with an attention-demanding six-year-old in the house.

Military school is always an option.

[Archangel Beth]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hackard

Military school is always an option.

Andrew, do you want me arrested for trying to sabotage the military?



Other people: Yes. I think that it would take an Intervention to convince me to not make a 4e GIN a "powered by" thing. Doing anything else . . . well, it's actually not really possible at all, anymore, to my understanding. Take Invulnerability to X. Take Ofanim of Fire. GIN needs Invulnerability that isn't a hack like the Treatment from IOU. (A delightful hack, which entirely captures the IOU mentality, I should add. I'm very pleased with it. But it doesn't suit IN.) GURPS 4e, to my understanding, only supports the Treatment-style gimmick.

The whole "Cosmic or not" issue is also really evil if you're going to muck with the whole shebang that GURPS "straight" would presume. If you do Powered By and state flat-out that the GM gets to figure out where and when to apply Cosmic if crossing over stuff, that whole nightmare stops making Beleth giggle.


Still not sure what to do with Forces. Tacking them on with all the associated "Corporeal Forces = ST/HT/DX" mucking seems very inelegant.

I'm more inclined to leave point-costs essentially compatible where it's not just blatantly broken (we did designate Fire as a not-common attack, in GIN already, for instance), and stick in additional, stronger suggestions that GMs grant attunements from Superiors according to brownie points, not character points.

[Hyrneson]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

I think that it would take an Intervention to convince me to not make a 4e GIN a "powered by" thing. Doing anything else . . . well, it's actually not really possible at all, anymore, to my understanding.

I encourage you to try to find a way. Between the 4e enhancements & limitations, Powers, and Thaumaturgy I am sure something might be done for consideration.
Not to blow smoke, but I have faith in the talent of you guys and Kromm. The e23 sales have shown there is interest in IN, so I think that SJ might be more open to the idea to take his thumb off the GURPS side of the scale and let a product be developed that is equitable truer to both systems.

RH