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Old 08-07-2020, 11:01 AM   #1
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default using Warp to unseen locations without the Blind enhancement

B97 aside from direct viewing or remote viewing has this baseline option:
visualize it clearly (which is only possible if you have visited it previously in person)
B98 (lower left, "Removal")
There is an additional -2 to teleport to a place you have visited but cannot see.
This is mentioned immediately after a -2 "per level of removal" penalty for second-hand viewing, using an example of -4 for two levels of removal.

I'm trying to understand how "additional" is interpreted here. Is that like -2 on top of the -4 example to create a -6 penalty for "unseen but visited", or just a -2 penalty with "additional" being in respect to the previous "Preparation Time" modifiers?

I'm also wondering how we can deal with the idea of "I visited this place".

Taken super literally, it might be "you had to occupy this specific hex to visualize it clearly, otherwise you can't teleport there, and you can only have a relative facing in that hex that you had previously had a relative facing in".

Like for example: if you had once ascended a set of stairs, then you could visualize what it's like to be climbing those stairs, and teleport facing upward, but NOT facing downward, unless you had also descended those stairs, in which case you could visualize facing both directions on them?

For more flexibility (not literally needing to occupy the specific hex you're teleporting to) I'm wondering about ideas where you occupied NEARBY hexes enough to sort of visualize the area.

For example:

You were climbing a long staircase, but only got 1/4 of the way up. But you were able to see the entire flight of stairs, so you want to teleport halfway or 3/4 of the way up the stairs. Even though you didn't literally occupy those positions on the stairs, you're able to visualize them because you were directly nearby.
One idea I had for this is: an additional -1 penalty per yard of separation from the place you originally occupied, so long as it was visible and you looked at it? This would also require maintaining whatever facing you would have needed to see that location: ie you're basically "zooming in" to visualize that location.

This could lead to non-ideal situations where you are at default facing a direction which is not strategically good.

For example: there is a 3-hex-wide hallway. You previously walked along the middle of that hallway, but want your warp to end up hugging one of the walls INSTEAD of the middle.

Your line of vision towards one of those wall-hugging places is diagonal from the middle, so if you teleported there, instead of facing directly forward down the hallway (front-middle facing) you would be facing diagonally too (front-side facing)
Envisioning a different facing (keeping parallel with the hall, despite occupying a wall-hugging position) should probably be additional penalties, like a -1 per facing change or something along those lines?

Another issue which comes to mind is MEMORY.

If you climbed the stairs 5 minutes ago, you can probably visualize it a lot more clearly than if you climbed the stairs 5 years ago.

Not to mention: people pay attention to their surroundings to varying degrees: you would be able to remember stairs a lot better if you were paying close attention to the stairs than if you were distracted and multitasking.

Repetition is another: someone who climbed the same set of stairs 20 times in a row the previous day might remember them better than someone who climbed them once the previous day.

That makes me wonder if maybe some kind of time-based and repetition-based modifiers could be used. Maybe to some kind of initial skill roll which you'd do prior to rolling the IQ for Warp.

B64 Jumper (which uses a similar system of -10 for instant use, 0 modifier for 10 seconds) "World" varant has you spend 1 hour per character point to learn an IQ/easy skill to attune to various worlds for example. I'm not suggesting character points be spent (there are millions of potential places you could visit in a particular world) but something along the lines of "time spent in a location makes you more able to visualize it for Warping blind" sounds right.

There isn't anything like that for Jumper (Time). Weirdly enough it also seems to be equally easy to teleport to different time periods no matter how far off. The closest thing is B64's "Limited Jumps" which is vague (GM sets maximum time period). You might somehow base that on B99's "Range Limit" where the % is based on a penalty, except Jumper (Time) doesn't actually have a "penalty for timetraveled" built into it like Warp has "penalty for distance traveled"

One solution to that might be to borrow a concept from the "Time-Spanning" enhancement. P109 mentions using B241 Long Distance Modifiers subbing days for miles. Would it be too crippling for Jumper (Time) to apply penalties like this inherently?

There are 1760 yards in a mile, so 200 yards is 200/1760 of 24 hours, or 2.(72) hours, meaning -0 penalty to time travel less than 2.7 hours forward or back.
-1 if Jumping 12 hours or less
-2 if Jumping 24
-3 if Jumping 3 days
-4 if Jumping 10 days
-5 if jumping 30 days (~month)
-6 if jumping 100 days (~season)
-7 if jumping 300 days (~year)
-8 if jumping 1000 days

-2 per factor of 10 is -10 for 10,000 days (~27 years), -12 for 100,000 days (~273 years), 14 for million days (~2739 years), -16 for 10 million days (~27,000 years)

To offset penalties like that, a GM might allow 'Time Spent' bonuses if going beyond the 10 seconds needed to avoid a penalty? Or just have them make multiple shorter jumps to avoid the penalty.

Getting back to Warp anyway, I was thinking something along the line of using Time Spent rules for familiarizing oneself with a certain area. Like for example if spend 8 hours sitting on a bench waiting for a bus, you're probably a lot more familiar with envisioning that chair's relative location than if you sat there 8 seconds.

I was thinking some kind of skill roll just borrowing the same IQ penalties that Warp itself uses, where you make that roll when you try to recall that location and if it passes the GM lets you roll at IQ-2 to Warp there, but it if fails, you can't remember it clearly and you can't.

Or for a more continuous and less discrete system: maybe you can still teleport there on a failed roll but you must apply the MoF on that roll to your IQ-2, so badly-remembered places eventually just phase out of the realm of possibility.

Aside from a raw IQ roll I'm wondering if anyone can think of a skill that would make sense to sub for IQ in terms of remembering places you've been. Maybe even Per-based rather than IQ based. A high-IQ person might not be very aware of their surroundings! They could be excellent teleporters but bad at remembering places they've been, making them most competent at going places they're seeing.

As for places you are seeing: maybe a "pre-roll" of perception would also make sense? IE you can more clearly visualize (even using your own sight) a well-lit place than a -9 darkness penalties room?

Similar idea: still allow attempt on a failed Vision (or Vision-based skill) roll, but apply MoF to the IQ roll used for Warping.
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