Problem with Stealth?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Or, conversely, the times when freakishly improbable things happen are the times people tell stories about, and therefore play a disportionately large part in narrative.

Well, that represents a design philosophy I do not care for. I don't want unrealistic rules designed to lead to a specific narrative style.

Fortunately, I believe that as long as GURPS rules are understood to apply to adventuring conditions and under less adverse circumstances, much fewer rolls should be called for, GURPS rules are not unrealistic in making failure reasonably common and catastrophic failures sometimes unavoidable.

A pretty common thread in memoirs by people who have served in Special Operation Forces is the huge role played by Mr. Murphy. Things that seem trivial in private life or even training catastrophically fail when the stakes are life and death.

Things that PCs do tend to be analogous to special operations, i.e. a small team of experts with limited support available to them on-site attempting challenging tasks where there is a risk of injury and death. Conventional military forces, law enforcement, rescue workers or other groups that also might face life-and-death challenges tend to have much more manpower available at the scene than a small group of PCs.

So, I don't have a problem with a critical failure on a Stealth roll being an unfortunate and potentially catastrophic mistake, like knocking down a heavy object, stumbling on something or stepping on a branch. While people under no pressure rarely encounter such mishaps, actual trained SOF personnel do, in real life, when the stakes are high enough. And I wouldn't be calling for an unmodified roll in 'adventuring time' unless they were.

[Boge]

Originally Posted by Brandy

A lot of things that I've seen people point out as "problems" through the years go away if you stop thinking of GURPS as a simulation engine and start thinking of it as a game. I know that I've been guilty of this in the past, but today my response to the rules saying "Here's a way to use this skill to adjudicate an adventuring task" is to grab dice and roll, not to wonder about what that interpretation means for the game world writ large or to figure out how I would handle a dozen edge cases before using the rules-as-written for the straightforward case.

I'm also comfortable with letting skills and die rolls be PC-centric. PC wants to move stealthily? Roll vs. Stealth. PC has a chance to spot a stealthy intruder? Roll versus per. Neither one needs to be an opposed roll -- one could easily use the BAD mechanic from Action and avoid any contests (which takes care of the weirdness from the OP, by the way).

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that as a thought experiment. Nor am I saying that if your group enjoys getting down into the details of exactly how loud a sneaking person is in dB and then figuring out how that affects a hearing Per check, that that is hurting wrong fun - far from it. However, if trying to nail this stuff down keeps you from actually playing or enjoying the game, you might try letting a little "roll and shout" into your life.

That's been my problem with Gurps lately. I've gotten so caught up with the ins and outs of the rules that I'm forgetting it's more of a narrative game ran by the GM. I roll the dice and he/she tells me what happened. It was actually more enjoyable back when I didn't know any of the rules.

The problem today is that I think about doing something, and then I play through it in my head, wondering if it's even feasible. In order to know my risks and chances of success, I need to know how the rules are played. Otherwise, I end up dead on my first night playing with my first character and my first turn (true story).

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by whswhs

And that method of estimation produces absurd results. Consider, for example, vehicle operation. Any critical failure is not merely a crash but a bad crash. A control roll is required for a landing in bad weather. One bad crash out of 216 such landings would cause so many deaths per year that air travel would be shut down on any such day. The 1/216 odds are unrealistically high. The probabilities you have in GURPS play are not probabilities in the real world, but more like probabilities in movies or novels where exciting things happen.

Where does it say that it is a bad crash rather than just a crash?

I don't think this fits even for "movies or novels where exciting things happen". Rather there it is often the case that such embarrising failures don't happen for skilled characters unless there is a good reason for it (such as being drugged or something, which would be represented as a penalty to rolls in GURPS). They might not even have any normal failures! Every attack of the skilled swordsman hitting unless the opponent makes a successful defense etc. The exiting things which tend to happen are things outside their control.

Originally Posted by Icelander

There is an implicit assumption that 'normal' rolls are made during adventures, with mundane activities being condensed into a Job Roll over the whole month. And the fact is, under conditions of stress and confusion, like any combat situation ot potential combat situation, people are a lot more likely to fail dramatically and catastrophically.

Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction, which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war.
- On War, Carl von Clausewitz.

That seems like it would be double counting, since stressful activities being harder is already accounted for by the high TDMs that they are losing out on compared to rutine activities.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Andreas

That seems like it would be double counting, since stressful activities being harder is already accounted for by the high TDMs that they are losing out on compared to rutine activities.

Not really, as Job Rolls specifically don't receiive a positive TDM, because they represent a whole month of rolls.

[AlexanderHowl]

Positive dice modifiers for time really should not be given in the majority of cases. For example, someone who is Driving from point A to point B should only get +1 to Driving for taking extra time if they really do take twice as long to get there (having to pull over for directions does not count). Jobs should really be considered to require the full time required (including the break periods required to maintain productivity), with people who spend less time either doing less work or doing work more quickly (both of which should suffer negative time dice modifiers).

For example, a character with Physician-18 gets a job as a doctor while still maintaining an adventuring lifestyle. They can try working twice as fast or working half as hard in order to free up 20 hours a week of time, but they would receive a -5 to skill either way. In both cases though, I would also inflict an equivalent reaction penalty on them from their coworkers, clients, and bosses, as they would be seen as shirking their duties and/or neglecting their work. Of course, the margin of success on a job could be a measure of efficiency, with freelance people doing more work while regular workers work less hard, so it is better to work efficiently than to work quickly.