12-20-2019, 05:23 PM | #21 | |
Icelandic - Approach With Caution
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Reykjavķk, Iceland
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Re: GURPS Disasters: Hurricane
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Furthermore, just over a week ago this country had a storm, and one of the consequences of that storm was that large portions of the island were without electricity for days. Before the storm hit a warning was issued which basically amounted to "Go home, stay inside until the storm is over." How much storm is a very bad storm? Does the book only cover storms that get the label "hurricane"? Storms that his Iceland are usually leftovers from hurricanes with something more mixed in. We don't give them names in alphabetical order because there aren't enough letters in the alphabet. |
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12-20-2019, 05:37 PM | #22 |
Banned
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: GURPS Disasters: Hurricane
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12-20-2019, 06:07 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Hmm, looks like Earth, circa CE 2020+
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Re: GURPS Disasters: Hurricane
it covers a variety of levels of storms. You may have missed my previous post where I wrote that I playtested a less-than-hurricane storm with my gaming group using information from the book. It worked well (a link to it on a wiki is in my earlier post).
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GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves My first GURPS supplement Top 12 Clues You're a Role-Playing Old-Timer My humorous (I hope) article that also promotes SJGames/GURPS Kerry Thornley: Dwarf Planet Eris, Discordianism, and The John F. Kennedy Assassination Without Thornley, there would never have been the Steve Jackson Games edition of Principia Discordia |
12-20-2019, 09:27 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: New Orleans, LA
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Re: GURPS Disasters: Hurricane
I didn't want to try to play test this but now it's out I had to get it.
Gurps and Hurricane Katrina hold a special place for me. I evacuated having just got the Gurps core rule books and Gurps Fantasy. We all thought it would be a three day thing but it turned out to be very different. I was lucky in that I still had a house when we got back but for the weeks I was away all I read was Gurps. Gurps helped me cope by being a creative outlet that required more work and investment than other RPGs so I was occupied in my freetime with something other then watching news reports of how bad things were back home. While it's not a subject I plan on running, I think it captures the "feel" well. Thanks for handling it as realistically as you guys did. Edit, I also joined the Forums when I got the 4e Gurps stuff...literally a few day before Katrina. |
12-20-2019, 09:43 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: GURPS Disasters: Hurricane
Well I am glad you had a place to go back to and hope your journey has been good.
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My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries |
12-20-2019, 10:17 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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Re: GURPS Disasters: Hurricane
I think that the dex penalties are a bit severe, especially in the lower ranges. Backyard boxing has shown me that I dodge just as well, hit just as well, in 25 mph winds as in calm conditions. (Backyard, no real debris) Some skills should start taking penalties early, others not so much.
An advantage of some sort giving reduced effects of storm environments might not be a bad idea. |
12-21-2019, 12:36 AM | #27 | ||
Banned
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Re: GURPS Disasters: Hurricane
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I'm curious to see the effects of Floodwater & Chaos, and in particular, if the flood discussed is just rising waters (slow flooding from downpours) or if it breaks things down into flash floods, rising water, and storm surge (I lived through that during Rita - definitely the scariest thing I've ever experienced during a hurricane.) I've been through all three, and they're rather different, but for a game supplement, it may have been just lumped together. Quote:
It seems as if the Move Effect applies to anything that moves and the Character Effect should apply to any individual characters. But what's Artifact Effect for? Items in a character's possession - then why Artifact, not Item or Gear? Structures - then why Artifact and not Structure? Regardless - 50 pts of damage per turn seems excessive in 75+mph winds for anything I could imagine this might represent. Many things certainly seem off to me, based on my personal experiences of all the tropical stuff I've lived through here on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. I doubt our Maryland PhD author has much direct experience with tropical stuff, though I could be wrong, but if I had more free time at the moment (I've already got too much to read through and another GURPS project I'm working on), I'd rather buy the product & suggest changes/fixes than just ignore it altogether. Perhaps consider that instead? |
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12-21-2019, 07:53 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: GURPS Disasters: Hurricane
Ah, apologies. I misread while making a quick comment.
I do remember the book tending towards the very strongest storms and not the actually rather moderate ones that occur most frequently. Such as the Cat ones and twos (local effects anyway) in 2004 that had me without power for a total of 17 days. These effects are multiplied or minimized by architecture and landscaping that is or isn't well adapted to storms. Places that get hrricanes frequently would ahve a Darwinian sorting out if humans didn't keep trying to have what they want instead of what works locally. For example, newcomers to florida want to go and build right down on the water with "Cape Cod Cottages" that are multistory houses with sharply angled shingled roofs. The more functional "ranch" styles with low, one-piece roofs are described as "lacking architectural interest". Even if they aren't on the water they want to plant imported varieties of tall, straight oaks and elms that wil last just long (20 or 30 years) to grow big enough to fall on their sharply angled shingled roofs. Said roofs were already wind-damaged by lost shingles. I'm sure that angling your roofs makes much more sense in Iceland than Florida and your trees don't blow over nearly so often. This however is why discussions of storm effects without local context aren't all that useful.
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Fred Brackin |
12-21-2019, 11:23 AM | #29 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Hmm, looks like Earth, circa CE 2020+
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Re: GURPS Disasters: Hurricane
Note also that Tech Level has a huge affect on the impact of a storm. That's not only because of structural issues, but because before about TL7 there's typically no warning. (The book covers that as well.)
I did that in my TL4 adventure, where the storm (not a full hurricane) hit while the PCs were relaxing and having fun at a birthday party in a city on the coast. Then suddenly....
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GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves My first GURPS supplement Top 12 Clues You're a Role-Playing Old-Timer My humorous (I hope) article that also promotes SJGames/GURPS Kerry Thornley: Dwarf Planet Eris, Discordianism, and The John F. Kennedy Assassination Without Thornley, there would never have been the Steve Jackson Games edition of Principia Discordia |
12-21-2019, 12:17 PM | #30 | |||||
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: GURPS Disasters: Hurricane
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