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Old 12-13-2014, 06:36 AM   #1
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default [Basic] Skill of the week: Counterfeiting and Forgery

Counterfeiting and Forgery are related IQ/H skills: one is for forging currency and the other documents, such as ID cards and passports, and they default to each other at -2. Both skills are only taught by the underworld, and government agencies. The rules for success and failure, and for detection of the fakes, are slightly different between the skills, and could use tidying up, but I haven't found a way to do this without adding far too much complexity.

For Counterfeiting, roll for each batch of fakes. Critical success means they're as good as the real thing. I presume that banknotes might be detected by having serial numbers that duplicate other notes, or which haven't been issued yet, but there's nothing about the notes themselves that gives any clue that they are fake. Failure on the initial roll means that the fakes will be recognised automatically, when you attempt to pass them. For ordinary success on the initial roll, you need to re-make that initial roll, at the same target number, when you try to pass the money, and any failure means it's spotted. If someone is suspicious, the passing roll is a Quick Contest vs. the best of his Forensics, Merchant, or Perception. Critical failure on a manufacture or passing roll means that you got unlucky, and there are worse consequences than just refusal of the money.

For Forgery, there's no manufacture roll for the batch, because it's assumed documents are forged individually. Instead, the forger's skill roll is made each time the document is used, unless the first roll was a critical success, which seems to mean the document is as good as a real one. Circumstances may affect this roll: a routine border check gives +5 to the forger's roll, for example. Any failure means the document is not accepted, the consequences of which vary widely by circumstances.

There are lots more things to forge at various TLs, from document seals to death certificates. Fake financial instruments, such as stocks and bonds, seem to be Counterfeiting, as per Action. Dungeon Fantasy has Forgery as the skill for detecting fake artefacts, which seems odd. Mysteries has clever ways to commit crimes with forgeries.

Both skills take equipment modifiers. Counterfeiting takes modifiers of +1 to +10 for genuine materials and requires a sample of the real thing. Forgery gives +3 for altering a genuine document, -5 for no sample of the real thing, plus modifiers for the severity of the check. Action has equipment for both skills at TL8, and High-Tech has much more detail, making it clear that Forgery is also the skill for faking handwriting, including in front of witnesses. Low-Tech has the details for TL1-4, and Ultra-Tech some very powerful devices for high TLs.

Magic has the Duplicate Object spell, which can be very handy for counterfeiting. Social Engineering has uses for both skills with assorted forms of deception. Thaumatology: Magical Styles points out the uses of Forgery with the Illusion college, and Ritual Path Magic has an example of forged credentials.

I'd feel tempted to change "critical success" for "as good as real" to "critical success or any success by 10+", since when large resources are thrown at these problems, the results get very good. During WWII, the British secret services found that most German printing firms used Monotype typesetting machines, and had custom Fraktur typefaces for them, all slightly different. This would have been a nightmare if those typefaces hadn't been mastered by the UK branch of Monotype (a US company), which still had all the masters. Suddenly, the combination of that and the ability to get paper made to precise specification - hard for criminals, easy for a government - was producing large bonuses to Forgery. The Germans returned the compliment in the well-known Operation Bernhard.

Counterfeiting and/or Forgery appear on templates in Action, Bio-Tech, Dungeon Fantasy, Fantasy, Horror, Infinite Worlds, Monster Hunters, Psis, Reign of Steel: Will to Live, Space, Tales of the Solar Patrol and Supers. PU7 has examples that include both skills.

I don't think I've ever used Counterfeiting in any RPG. It's difficult and risky, but terribly unexciting, far more so than staying at home building magic items. I've seen Forgery used, but not often: while I've played a fair bit of secret-agent GURPS, there have generally been backers or NPCs who provided forged documents, although their quality was sometimes open to doubt. The Honest Face perk can be really, really worthwhile at times. The one time I recall a PC using Forgery was when a group of agents were attempting to reverse a foreign takeover of their agency, and had technically gone rogue. We'd also recruited a new PC from a criminal background, and she had enough Forgery to customise some genuine security passes.

What outrageous fakes have you managed with these skills?
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