03-12-2018, 12:20 PM | #21 |
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Combat Paralysis
It's straying afield, but . . .
There are plenty of fictional examples of teams where most people aren't fighty types yet fighting happens. The popular Sense8 series has only three out of eight (Sun Bak, Wolfgang, and Will), and they quite literally step in for the others – as in, effectively possess the others and fight for them. Most of the others have completely unique skill sets to share. "Nobody can go it alone and we can't afford to lose even one of us" is essentially the premise. And in real life, you do see teams with low-redundancy specialties. Plenty of ice hockey teams have two goalies and that's it. You can't meaningfully play without a goalie, while a non-goalie won't fare well in the nets. I think it's probably better to say that in stories modeled on real-world special operations (including hack 'n' slash dungeon raiding!), everybody needs to be able to fight and you can't afford to be without backup for your specialists. In stories modeled on daytime drama or with a premise like "ordinary people thrown into the apocalypse," you often see just one fighter, just one medic, and so on. Those are reasonable things to base a game on.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
03-12-2018, 12:21 PM | #22 | ||||
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Combat Paralysis
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Well, it might be relatively rare if you ban Luck as being plot protection. But only because of how much that would thin the pool of applicable play groups. Obviously, anything you can accomplish with Luck you can accomplish without it, just at a lower probability. It should be noted that in many such games it's entirely allowable to withdraw from a delve (whether considering that a partial success or mitigated failure) for resupply, recovery, and if need be replacements and then go back in. Unlike a typical military objective a dungeon isn't much of a moving target so you don't have to win decisively on the first attempt. Quote:
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03-12-2018, 12:31 PM | #23 |
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Combat Paralysis
Also of note is what your players like. I've had a few who were 100% happy to have their role be "I'm a noncombatant . . . and also the world's expert on this one thing that makes my life worth more than all of yours if you want to succeed."
One example in particular I can think of was the multi-millionaire social engineer with zero action skills: Because of the campaign premise, he couldn't just hang back and play Patron like an NPC, but had to leave safety to solve the problems he was drawn into as a result of acquiring strange powers (which attracted very scary Things). His wealth and social expertise were irreplaceable. Thus, even though the other PCs didn't like this guy, they kept him alive for numerous adventures – often in seriously dangerous situations that happened on the way to or from some rendezvous. But yeah, I can think of players I've gamed with who would detest such a setup. Another player in the same campaign was playing a hacker who could have said, "Cover for me, or you'll lose one of the world's top hackers and probably fail." But the player didn't like that, so the hacker was actually the physically strongest team member and kind of scary in a brawl.
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Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com> GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News] |
03-12-2018, 12:34 PM | #24 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Combat Paralysis
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Realistically, people wouldn't go 'delving' in a static dungeon, you'd just disassemble it gradually and safely, so unless the players are willing to ignore plausible tactics, adding time pressure is essential. |
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03-12-2018, 12:35 PM | #25 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Combat Paralysis
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For Wolfgang, it's just that he doesn't want to go it alone. 'Riley Blue' Gunnarsdóttir, however, has no useful purpose but to look sort of cute, be angsty and occasionally offer characters drugs when they are sad. She's either an NPC to serve as a McGuffin/Love Interest or her player is really, really bad at character design. Or just bad at everything, really, as she also makes questionable decisions and actively makes everything around her worse. Quote:
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It's just that continuing campaigns usually feature PCs actively seeking out situations full of danger, violence and killing. It's plausible as an accident once, but a couple of dozen sessions in, nobody is really going to believe that your group aren't professionals if you keep running toward danger instead of away from it. And then it's just a question of being competent professionals or the incompetent kind. I despise incompetence. It's worse than evil, if only because I've encountered plenty of incompetence and the horrific consequences it can have, but the jury is still out on how real the concept of 'evil' is.
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03-12-2018, 12:43 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Combat Paralysis
You can't murder the goalie, but injuring them is certainly possible. Not exactly allowed but certainly not rigorously prevented.
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03-12-2018, 12:55 PM | #27 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Combat Paralysis
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Also, as in almost any sport other than full-contact combat sports, deliberate attempts to injure another player to prevent him from being able to compete are probably harshly punished. And, as far as I can recall from watching hockey occasionally, you can hardly touch a goalie without it being a foul.
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03-12-2018, 01:33 PM | #28 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Combat Paralysis
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03-13-2018, 09:11 AM | #29 | |
Join Date: Sep 2010
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Re: [Basic]Disadvantage of the Week: Combat Paralysis
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combat paralysis, disadvantage of the week |
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