Basic Abstract Difficulty questions...

[hal]

Hi Folks,
First, a disclaimer: The player who is playing Sean McGuinness, do not read further. Ditto for William Green.

Ok, that being said, I've a problem of sorts. I'm using GURPS ACTION 2 EXPLOITS seriously for the first time, and I'm trying to keep things moving in a way that is fun, unpredictable, and still be something that the players can engage in without dying quickly, or being stonewalled by an enemy with a HUGE bad value of -10.

So, putting this into perspective:

We have the Villain. He's put everything into motion, and he works at a Multi-national corporation. He stands to benefit personally from his plan working as expected. Problem is, he works for a HUGE and VERY powerful multi-national corporation with links into banking, high-tech manufacturing, low tech manufacturing, as well as security personnel training for hire, security advisors for hire, computer security personnel, police training personnel etc. HUGE multinational corporation with many many fingers in everything. What the corporation can do, he can sort of do as long as he is discrete.

We have the middlemen - they are putting the Villain's plan into gear and keeping it running. They keep the Villain clean.

We have the soldiers of the Middlemen - their job is to keep the Middle men clean - no traceable evidence left behind, no witnesses left behind, and certainly no hint of impropriety that can cause major embarrassment for the Multi-national corporation.

And finally - we have the goons. They are the ones who handle the violence, get paid and are supposed to keep their mouths shut or someone will be dispatched to shut their mouths for them. They are the "Street Talent".

There are currently three "Street Talent" teams in play.

Team #1 is doing nothing more than stealing things, hiding what they steal, and covering up the theft in a way as to throw off suspicion that anything is being tampered with. The only thing they have in their favor is that no one really cares what they do, they're just a spec of dirt on a dirty canvas.

Team #2 was hired to ice an overly inquisitive Private Detective who was getting too close to the action.

Team #3 was hired to ice the Ace Reporter who hired the private detective. It was comprised of a Hacker and a shooter (using a Law against a van with two people in it).

My gut feeling is:

Villain should be a BAD of -10.
Villain Underlings should be BAD of -7
Villain secondary layer should be BAD of -5
Villain Street Talent should be BAD of -2

Does this make sense? The heroes have to deal with the street talent to find out who hired them. They already believe that this was intended to be a false flag operation, but they don't know HOW the Ace Reporter knows this. Only what she told them...

They suspect that someone intends to bring Tolliver's Disease into America from Africa - not by accident, but by intent. Stolen Vaccines worth $500 retail, could easily go for $5,000 during a panic (or more). Discredit the company manufacturing bad vaccines - buy up its intellectual property (ie patents) and then go into business for yourself manufacturing "Good Vaccine" seems to be a viable scheme right? The heroes just have to trace it back to the Villain, or failing that, to one of the individuals who are paid to keep the Villain clean.

My intentions? The person who did the sniper work is going to brag about what she did, and how she has an ace in the hole that cleans up the crime scene for her. This is something that could show up in a streetwise situation, or can be discovered if someone has Connoisseur: Small arms.

The police department can get its hands on Passenger Manifests in and out of the local airport, which might give the players some clues. Actually finding Street Talent team #1 would potentially cause another round of "clean up the loose ends, kill the witnesses" kind of reaction, which in turn, would lead the players to the mid level guys. But these are major professionals (hence the higher BAD.

Am I going overboard on this?

[newton]

could you tell us what BAD means? Is it narrative power or some sort of challenge rating?
edit: oh it’s “basic abstract difficulty”

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by newton

could you tell us what BAD means? Is it narrative power or some sort of challenge rating?
edit: oh it’s “basic abstract difficulty”

Just to prevent confusion, it's a general rating for the situation challenge introduced in the GURPS Action series.

[Anaraxes]

"BAD" stands for "Basic Abstract Difficulty" (as in the title). It's an idea introduced in Action 2, Exploits, which replaces the usual task difficulty modifiers with a single rating for how difficult that phase of the adventure is. The intent is just to simply and save time, versus looking up all the possible modifers for every action.

Originally Posted by GURPS Action 2 p 4

As an alternative to detailed modifiers, the GM can set a single difficulty – the Basic Abstract Difficulty (BAD) – that covers all aspects of a particular phase of the adventure. This is simply a penalty from 0 to -10 that replaces detailed situational modifiers. The only other modifiers that apply are those that the PCs bring into the picture: bonuses for equipment, penalties for disadvantages, etc.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by newton

could you tell us what BAD means? Is it narrative power or some sort of challenge rating?

BAD is a core part of the Action 2 book.



My initial reaction was "That's way too high!", but when looking for ways to demonstrate my point, I became a little more reserved in that statement.


The best skill for each template in Action averages to 18. This is not the average level of all skills, but the average of the top skill. The maximum is 20 (the hacker) and the minimum is 15 (the cleaner). before gear, no one has a better than 50% chance of succeeding with ANYTHING against the big bad. This can be boosted, but its very very high.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by ericthered

My initial reaction was "That's way too high!"

The rule does define the range as from 0 to -10, so presumably the Big Bad rates the Big Penalty. (Else, who would?) You can also possibly expect the PCs to pack some fine gear for a +1 or +2, at least. (It just depends on whether your crack team is executing their plan to liberate the MacGuffin from the museum, or whether you were abandoned in the jungle with your issue gear only to have to face off against a space alien.)

The book also suggests as an alternative to the primary means of the GM just making up the BAD value, to use the value of the current opposition as an Enemy and divide by 4. So a -10 would be a -40 point Enemy. One person built on 150% or more of the PC's points would be a mere -20; -40 is the "entire government, guild of powerful wizards, an organized super-team" level.

I never actually cottoned to BAD, myself, and never used it in a game. Once we're that casual about it, we're casual enough just to go with the GM making up penalties on the fly as suits, feeling no particular need to have every penalty in the same scene be the same value.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

The rule does define the range as from 0 to -10, so presumably the Big Bad rates the Big Penalty. (Else, who would?) You can also possibly expect the PCs to pack some fine gear for a +1 or +2, at least. (It just depends on whether your crack team is executing their plan to liberate the MacGuffin from the museum, or whether you were abandoned in the jungle with your issue gear only to have to face off against a space alien.)

The book also suggests as an alternative to the primary means of the GM just making up the BAD value, to use the value of the current opposition as an Enemy and divide by 4. So a -10 would be a -40 point Enemy. One person built on 150% or more of the PC's points would be a mere -20; -40 is the "entire government, guild of powerful wizards, an organized super-team" level.

I never actually cottoned to BAD, myself, and never used it in a game. Once we're that casual about it, we're casual enough just to go with the GM making up penalties on the fly as suits, feeling no particular need to have every penalty in the same scene be the same value.

Now you see why I'm a touch concerned about using it myself - until now, I'd largely ignored it.

I'm also planning on "episodes" where the heroes get to find "Dirt" on what is going on, thereby lessening the overall BAD in the final moments where they try figure out WHO is the final bad guy. Knowing sort of where the "plot" originates from is relatively easy. Finding out who specifically is behind the plot - that's a horse of another color. If the players make it to Tier 1, all the better. If they stop at Tier 2, then they will have an enemy who will strike at them over and over until they either put paid to him outright, or they end his ability to utilize resources that technically, aren't his to use.

But, I was hoping to hear from others who actively USE the BAD rules from Action 2. Eventually, I will have had experience using it from this Fantasy Grounds campaign I'm running. Given a choice, I'd like to avoid stupid mistakes where possible. ;)

[evileeyore]

The way I run Basic Abstract Difficulty:

B.A.D. doesn't apply individually, it always applies to the whole of the situation. So if it it's B.A.D. 4, then all the badguys get +4 to their abilities, non-combat rolls for the PCs are at -4, etc.

But then I still 'vaguely' stat out the foes.

Mooks have everything at 10, Sergeants at 12, Lieutenants at 14, etc. Any identifying abilities are spelled out. You get the idea.

So the Big Bad's skills and abilities might run the gamut from 16-22, and then get a 'bump' from B.A.D., whatever the current level of B.A.D. is.


I use B.A.D. as one part weather vane* for the Players and one part "a reasons the foe's competence might vary as the story goes along".

* The Players know what the B.A.D. level is. Though for a DF game I might have to remove that. I'm not sure.


I also make liberal use of "B.A.D. Get's Worse" and my own "B.A.D. Relief", the latter of which is that I'll put in ways or means for the PCs to improve their odds, to reduce B.A.D.


In Dungeon Fantasy one of the ideas I've liked is wedding B.A.D. to the actual dungeon/hex crawl level/area. So as the PCs go lower into the dungeon (or deeper in the Marches) things naturally become harder.

[Kromm]

Remember a few things about BAD:

• The golden rule, stated in full: The GM can revert to detailed modifiers whenever he wants, such as for important special cases, random occurrences that aren't tied to the adventure, or events that would genuinely benefit from a dramatic pause. The goal of BAD is to estimate an adventure's challenge level and save time when details matter less than flow – not to supplant the GM's judgment. In short: Use BAD when you haven't thought of the full set of modifiers and don't believe that thinking about them would make the game more fun.

• BAD changes throughout most adventures. However, BAD doesn't always change for the worse; there are some very interesting mission profiles where the barrier between the heroes and the Big Bad is incredibly imposing (difficult BAD), but if it's knocked down by dogged hard work, the "inner defenses" are weak and mop-up faces negligible BAD. And BAD doesn't always change. There are adventures of fixed BAD . . . in many kinds of war-movie action, BAD would be set by the strategic timetable, and while it may vary from assignment to assignment, it could remain static throughout any given operation.

• When BAD does change, it doesn't have to start at 0 and go all the way to -10 on every adventure! There will be easy missions where BAD starts at 0 and progresses to -1, and then -2, . . . and that's it. There will be tough jobs where it starts at -5 and plunges to -10 so fast that heads spin.

• One can use putative Enemy disadvantage value divided by 4 to gauge BAD; e.g., on some jobs, the Big Bad might be a single serial killer who's equal to the PCs in power (Enemy [-10], for -2), on others it might be a band of corrupt cops (Enemy [-20], for -5), and on still others it could be SPECTRE, which is functionally a national government with missile bases and space assets and everything, just no internationally recognized territory (Enemy [-40], for -10). One never has to do this, though; it won't always make sense, which is why the rule is given as optional.

• BAD is never a skill bonus for fully fleshed-out NPCs. Rather, you either work out NPCs in full and you ignore BAD, or you don't and you assume they have effective skill 10 + absolute value of BAD. If a henchman's character sheet says "Observation-12," that henchman has Observation-12 when BAD is 0 and Observation-12 when BAD is -10. It's when you don't bother with character sheets that BAD matters; then some generic bad guy has effective Observation-10 when BAD is 0 and Observation-20 when BAD is -10. Note my repeated use of "effective" . . . the latter use of BAD reflects "actual skill, equipment quality, extra time, and anything else that might matter," so a mook with effective Observation-20 might have skill 12, +4 for "best equipment possible" (cleared ground lit by floodlights, binoculars and IR goggles on hand, radars and seismic sensors, etc.), +2 to simulate the efforts of a whole squad (not just one mook), and +2 for knowing the terrain, having stared at it for months. Instead of working all that out, which takes time, the GM just hand-waves it as effective skill 20.