What sort of computer game suits GURPS best?

[wmervine4]

I was just thinking about survival type computer games and in many of these games they have the concept of a randomly generated character's backstory or profession they held before the game starts. I was thinking that this concept might mesh well with the rules for Who Gets a Default? on B173.

In games like this, a randomly generated character's skills are often randomly generated also, but it would be interesting if the character's backstory/profession played into which skills the character was even aware of. For instance, a chemistry professor would definitely have the skills Chemistry and Teaching, and would be aware of skills like Administration, Farming, Hazardous Materials, and Pharmacy which would allow rolling at default, but might know nothing about Computer Hacking, Engineer, or Urban Survival.

This type of game would require quickly being able to gain at least a rudimentary skill level in the skills crucial to your character's survival, but I think it would be fun to have to cope with a character's knowledge and experience gaps based on their own personal history. It would add another layer to the challenge of surviving.

[corwyn]

Umm, a post-apocalyptic game based on 1950s society and vision of the future?

What? Too soon?

[wmervine4]

Originally Posted by corwyn

Umm, a post-apocalyptic game based on 1950s society and vision of the future?

What? Too soon?

Well, sure, GURPS Fallout could work. That particular union of two companies didn't work out in the past, though I think there are several people on these forums that think GURPS would be well suited for a Fallout style computer game.

The latest incarnation of the Fallout series isn't very GURPS-like, but I think it could be done well if re-imagined with GURPS rules. Now that the After the End line exists, GURPS Fallout could be even better.

[wmervine4]

I think GURPS is one system that could serve as the core rule set for a variety of computer games. You could call it GURPS Engine, or something like that, and it could be a set of web services, DLLs, or whatever, that codify the GURPS rules into computer code that could be leveraged across multiple computer games. Unlike several popular series that re-imagine aspects of the core mechanics with each iteration, the GURPS rules could stay consistent across genres, tech levels, and sequels.

Bah, anyway, I know I have ridiculous pie-in-the-sky ideas, but I like to dream, and I enjoy these hypothetical thought experiments. :-)

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Maz

Two things set GURPS apart from many other games; Generic and universal. I think those would have to be part of a game for it to feel like GURPS. Ie. you need to some sort of cross-genre/setting.

I think the game can move the characters toward that, slowly, but it should take a long time.

Remember, what makes a survival game are isolation, desolation, peril, exploration, resourcefulness, creation, ascendance and regeneration and creation. The PC should find himself or herself alone, wholly and completely lost, with no help from anyone.

He or she should face dangers both known and unknown, and figure out how to prevail. In so doing, he or she gains mastery of the new environment, and eventually not only manages to survive, but to actually prosper.

Moreover, for most human beings, survival and prosperity is best accomplished as described by the character, Abraham Ford, in The Walking Dead.

"You need to find yourself a group of like-minded individuals, and stick to 'em like wet on water."

Once the PCs have established a community, then it's no longer a pure survival game; it transforms into something else -- but what that is remains wholly under the control of the players, working together.

Originally Posted by Maz

I think it would be awesome if the game started out like tshiggin's example. But then suddenly people start showing up with automatic weapon trying to "change history" ie. Centrum. And you get drafted into helping Homeline fight them. First on you hometurf, then taking the battle to another, completely different setting. But the homeline team is stranded there, they know high-tech and counter-espionage stuff, but they do not know how to survive in a forest with TL:5 equipment.

Now this, I don't like. For one thing, it wouldn't help everyone in the MMORPG, equally. For another, automatic weapons require a huge industrial supply chain to remain useful. Once a functional supply chain exists that allows the constant use of advanced technology, then the game is just a first-person shooter with base-building; it's no longer a survival game.

If that's what you want, just play Rust. Or Day-Z. Or Escape from Tarkov. Or any one of, literally, dozens of FPS/base-building "survival" games in which advanced, military-grade equipment just spawns in, magically.

Originally Posted by Maz

You character might focus on learning their new technologies. They might discover they have innate magical/psionic powers or they might just continue developing the skills they are already good at, becoming even better.

Now, if the goal is to enhance the capabilities of the character, I think that's great. I just disagree with the means by which you accomplish it. The introduction of out-time forces who are Better Than You makes the PCs nothing more than cannon-fodder in a war between powerful forces they don't understand, the waging of which they have little control.

The PCs must remain the central actors, and the main deciders. The agency must lie with them, which means the conflicts remain manageable by them. The sudden introduction of hugely powerful NPCs renders the PCs effectively inconsequential.

Originally Posted by Maz

You would need "outdoorsy"-skill like survival to survive (find resources and animals to hunt and so on).
You need combat-skills to fight animals...

(SNIP)

Good so far...

Originally Posted by Maz

...as well as centrum agent and other "bad guys".
You need social skills to socialise with the other locals who might otherwise join centrum. And to gather intel.
You need tech skill, especially if you want to learn the higher tech stuff.

...but, here, you just turned the characters into pawns in somebody else's war, and the "somebody elses" are NPCs. This is the very definition of No Fun.

Originally Posted by Maz

A key factor of the game would be the "survival part" of gathering resources for survival and to maintaining equipment.

Absolutely.

Originally Posted by Maz

And also tactical combat, with a turn-based hex-grid combat system.

Nope. I want immersion, and tactical combat similar to X-Com doesn't provide that, nearly so well.

Originally Posted by Maz

Well thats something I would play.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but the shift in not only the tone, but the very nature, of the game, away from the central importance of the PCs, would seem like a bait-and-switch, to me. I'd really hate it.

If you want to move the PCs in the direction of enhanced capabilities, then make the world into a place where banestorms dump all sorts of stuff from all sorts of worlds.

I'd stay away from modern technology (no industrial supply chain, so it's useless, anyway) -- but I'd definitely consider some alternative tech. Maybe allow the PCs to discover broken bits of clock-punk technology they can piece back together, only to learn the laws of physics are different, in the new world.

Maybe have ruins left by ancient pre-cursors, which hold artifacts that allow the PCs to gain Magery 0 or rudimentary psionic abilities, which they can then begin to explore and enhance. Maybe the combination of those discoveries, the new abilities, and the "modern" knowledge of the 1850s allows them to begin to construct steampunk one-offs that get turned out by mad scientists using small workshops.

Also, if the game does move in the direction of interdimensional travel, I'd stay away from some vastly complex war between Homeline and Centrum. Instead, I'd prefer that, with vast effort and expenditure of resources, the PCs can find portals they can open, which take them from the survival world to ones equally problematic, although perhaps in different sorts of ways.

("Wait! This world is inhabited by vast numbers of fast-breeding TL4 lizard-people who consider all mammals as delicacies, and they want to know where we came from!" or, "Oh, no! That world has the ruins of vast cities, because all the people got killed by tentacled horrors and we just woke them up!")

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

Nope. I want immersion, and tactical combat similar to X-Com doesn't provide that, nearly so well.

I prefer turn-based, hex grid, UFO: Enemy Unknown style combat.