Mailanka's Musings -- GURPS Content Post

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Maybe blanks was the wrong term . . . basically enough heft to the setting I can get a feel of it so that as soon as I run into something not explicit I can easily fill it in within the setting and not feel uncomfortable with it and I also just feel a comfortable familiarity with the setting

<snip>

Basically I was probably trying to say that to me that bigger isn't always worse, and that GURPS often feels to concise for its own good

I'm not at all concerned with realism . . . I do care about familiarity though if I want to DM something

For instance . . . an ox is supposed to be strong as an ox, a Navy is supposed to have Naval Intelligence, in order for the DM to feel comfortable with deviating from these things you need to familiarize them with it

Not sure that makes sense

No, it does. As a GM, you need to be able to internally simulate the setting, and additional information helps you do that. If you pick a setting up off the shelf, can you run a game with it? For example, THS is loaded with material, but I could never get a game figured out for it. I had a similar problem with Trinity when it first came out. I just couldn't imagine what a day-in-the-life looked like, what a pretty girl might be wearing, what sorts of things a politician might consider a major scandal, etc. Say, I'm in a cop and I go on a raid, what do I see? If the setting either tells me that, or it's obvious that I don't need additional info, then I can do it. If it's not obvious and the setting doesn't tell me, then I can't. If police raids are a vital part of my intended gameplay, this is a problem

The trick with Sci-Fi is "how much is enough?" THS is a very unusual setting, so it's easy for me to assume that I'm doing it wrong, even with books and books of it on my shelf. Dungeon Fantasy, on the other hand, is super well-trodden, so most people have a good idea of what's going on even if you don't spell it out. With Psi-Wars, I rely on knowledge of Star Wars and the Action genre to power them through, but when I posted my Tactics posts to Patreon, they came with a poll regarding which tactics people thought were worthwhile to print, and the answer came back, overwhelmingly, "All of them, plus more," because evidently, Star Wars and the Action genre don't tell you enough for you to figure out, for example, how a police raid works. Which makes sense: Star Wars doesn't actually show all that much (It's also very, very conservative with details, and a very generic setting)

So, as usual, this is very useful feedback for me. People want to know more than I thought they did.

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

As a note, if you hadn't mentioned the Navy only having the two main combat ships I would have been perfectly happy imagining the entire spectrum.of ships from Space PT boats up through Space Super Battleships . . . but you explained why there were only a couple and it made perfect, after all, take away subs and carriers for a mono medium fleet and the modern US Navy basically has Arleigh Burke destroyers and Ticonderoga cruisers so it's two classes of ships to, easy familiarity!

Man, I wanted to add more ships. You should have the full range! And I'm still on the look out for more. I mean, sure, you can have too many ships, but like the Traders, I think 3-4 ships for their whole race is fine, because you might meet Traders, like, once in a game, but I expect the Empire is going to be a mainstay of gameplay, so having a dozen ships to face off against adds tactical variety. But, damn, the Empire-Class dreadnought has it all. I have a very hard time coming up with other things they'd need.

[evileeyore]

Imp Int and Imp Sec should be flip-sides of the same coin. Roll them up into the a larger parent org, but entirely separate departments. This can also lead to inter-departmental rivalry and cooperation.

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Man, I wanted to add more ships. You should have the full range! And I'm still on the look out for more. I mean, sure, you can have too many ships, but like the Traders, I think 3-4 ships for their whole race is fine, because you might meet Traders, like, once in a game, but I expect the Empire is going to be a mainstay of gameplay, so having a dozen ships to face off against adds tactical variety. But, damn, the Empire-Class dreadnought has it all. I have a very hard time coming up with other things they'd need.

Dreadnoughts are usually very expensive. Bean-counters in the Imperial Senate Military Funding Committee would need to be convinced to support funding for more than a handful of really large ships. Smaller and cheaper ships should exist for various roles.

If an Empire is mostly feudally decentralized (following the Holy Roman Empire model), each warlord/moff/sector governor would need to outfit his own command out of his area's own pocket, maybe with some funding help from the Imperial Treasury (but remember that the Treasury would need to do the same to all of the competing warlords). They may see "smaller, cheaper, more expendable" (ala TIE Fighters) as being more cost-effective than "big, powerful, invulnerable" (the Executor or Eclipse SSDs), particularly if they have a low opinion on the human cost (putting barely-trained conscripts into plasteel deathtrap suits that are little more than a uniform, instead of putting everyone in combat hardsuits or battlesuits; "we can always get more men"). From a ship standpoint, one dreadnought would be a status symbol, something to show off to the Imperial elite when they visit or when you visit the Imperial Center as you're trying to gain their favor, while the picket ships, frigate-destroyers, cruisers, and lancers would engage in day-to-day enforcement of the star lanes - anti-piracy, tax collection, strikes against rival feudal warlords, etc.

A more centralized Empire would also probably use smaller ships for anti-piracy, anti-smuggling, and system protection purposes. The big dreadnoughts are nice to have, but if you have five dreadnoughts and one gets destroyed or needs to be scuttled, you're down 20% of your fighting strength as well as 20% of your mobility. If you field 100 cruisers for the same price as a single dreadnought, build 500 cruisers, and 100 of those 500 get destroyed, your power is down 20% but your mobility is not impacted as much as you can spread the remaining 400 cruisers out a bit more than you could 4 dreadnoughts. Plus, they don't take as long to build, so your fleet strength recovers that much quicker in the interim.

YMMV, of course.

[Kalzazz]

On the Action genre compared to Dungeon Fantasy, while I may have watched many many episodes of Walker Texas Ranger and other action fare, I don't have a firm grasp on how to DM it compared to knowledge imparted by reading RPG books, lots of RPG books, focused on Dungeon Fantasy type gaming

I also consider Action a lot trickier to DM as has a real risk of devolving towards 'humans with guns vs other humans with guns'

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Dreadnoughts are usually very expensive. Bean-counters in the Imperial Senate Military Funding Committee would need to be convinced to support funding for more than a handful of really large ships. Smaller and cheaper ships should exist for various roles.

<snip, because the Empire is not decentralized, but it's worth discussing when talking about the Federation that came before it>

A more centralized Empire would also probably use smaller ships for anti-piracy, anti-smuggling, and system protection purposes. The big dreadnoughts are nice to have, but if you have five dreadnoughts and one gets destroyed or needs to be scuttled, you're down 20% of your fighting strength as well as 20% of your mobility. If you field 100 cruisers for the same price as a single dreadnought, build 500 cruisers, and 100 of those 500 get destroyed, your power is down 20% but your mobility is not impacted as much as you can spread the remaining 400 cruisers out a bit more than you could 4 dreadnoughts. Plus, they don't take as long to build, so your fleet strength recovers that much quicker in the interim.

YMMV, of course.

The problem with the bean counters is the strangehold the Admiralty has on power, and the Emperor being a military man himself. You get sort of the old Severan rule of Empire, which is "Pay the troops as much as you can, ignore the rest." It's not quite that extreme, but when it comes to bean counters arguing with admirals, the admiral usually wins.

That said, I think you can definitely make the case for cruisers, politically and strategically. The strategic points you mention are all valid, and the political point is that not everyone should be allowed to handle a dreadnought. Those are big prestige items, and if everyone is special, nobody is! So, the Admiral gets his super-dreadnought, the lesser admirals and commodores get their normal dreadnoughts, and the captains get...? You don't start your command in a dreadnought, obviously, not just because the Empire wouldn't trust you in that, but because those who do command dreadnoughts are possessive of that privilege, so you need something else. Enter: the battle cruiser!

I find even smaller scale ships harder to justify, though I can see corvettes for quick commando insertion (as seen with the Black Ops outrider). Destroyers in the real world tended to fight specific opponents, but I'm not sure there's a need for that here. The obvious thing for them to fight would be fighters, but you have fighters for fighting fighters (specifically, fighters kill bombers, bombers kill cap ships). So I'm not really sure what role they would fulfill, other than light escort duties and long-range recon, and we have Security ships for those sorts of tasks, and the battle cruiser is flexible enough to handle them. One of my patrons suggested a pocket carrier, or a "fighter tender," a large corvette or a small cap-ship that just carried a few fighters that you could warp in and warp out, but I'm not sure that wouldn't better serve a group of pirates better than the Empire.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

On the Action genre compared to Dungeon Fantasy, while I may have watched many many episodes of Walker Texas Ranger and other action fare, I don't have a firm grasp on how to DM it compared to knowledge imparted by reading RPG books, lots of RPG books, focused on Dungeon Fantasy type gaming

I also consider Action a lot trickier to DM as has a real risk of devolving towards 'humans with guns vs other humans with guns'

Nights Black Agents is probably the best book in the world for getting into the heart of what makes the action genre work. There's a pulse to a thriller: the price of information is danger; the reward for information is more danger. To figure out who kidnapped your sister, you have to face some punks in a dangerous dive bar. Once you've found out that the mafia had something to do with it, the mafia's been tipped off to your investigation, and they try to blow up your car.

Thus the typical action game should have a mystery at its center, some thing evil that someone is trying to do, that the heroes need to first uncover, and then stop. One of the reasons I included agendas in my descriptions of my organizations is not just as "adventure ideas" for people who participate in those organizations, but also as "adventure ideas" for the PCs to oppose!

Ideally, your mystery should have layers. NBA has its Conspyramid, but this is based on the Push Chart from... some freebie game anyone can check out. I'll look it up, if you're interested. Kenneth Hite doesn't exactly hide where his inspiration came from, so I'm sure a quick google search will unveil it. In any case, the point is that our mystery has some structure, usually several groups acting in concert, or in a hierarchy. Daredevil Season 1 has a really good, obvious example of this (even though the hierarchy isn't that deep, but you've got Union Allied and various goons as the front, then the 3 major minion groups as the next layer, and then Owsley and Wesley as the nearly final layer, and then Kingpin at the top, at least from the perspective of Daredevil himself).

A typical game will have the following beats: the heroes need to know something. They find out a way to access that information, but this requires careful planning (and perhaps mini sub-adventures to get everything in place for their heist). Then they enact their plan, face danger and attempt to access information. At least one thing goes wrong and requires someone to improvise (which, by the way, just inevitably happens in most Action games, so it's not something you need to inject. Someone always flubs a vital roll). Once they've succeeded and accessed that information, this always trips some higher level of the organization's awareness, and they immediately send goons out to stop them. The heroes face danger and, once they've survived, they gain an additional clue that points them to the next bit of something they need to know.

Most such adventures start "in media res," but the res that we're in the media of doesn't (obviously) pertain directly to the core adventure. The heroes are just doing their thing, being awesome, and in the course of their normal adventuring, they stumble across the first big clue in the mystery. A fine example of this is every Expendables movie ever.

Psi-Wars already more or less has this layered structure, though it might not be obvious, but I think even if people don't see it, they'll grasp it. The Empire obviously uses mooks to do most of its work: security troopers, naval troopers, whatever. But they also have cool agents and higher level politics that work above those guys, so once you've faced your basic minions, you work your way up to commandos and special agents, and then, behind all of these political shenanigans, obviously, are the space knights, secret cabals with psychic power working behind the scenes to enact their will. These likely have layers in them too. Then, you've likely got some Big Damn Secret lurking behind even that, should the GM want to go that far, things like "What caused the Cataclysm that ended the Evil Sexy Space Elf Empire?"

So, we borrow one of our agendas. An Imperial official has been squeezing a world for personal profit, and Imperial Security has wised up and sent a special agent to investigate the sudden drop in profits and rise in rebellious activity from a fairly profitable world. Meanwhile, the Imperial official is doing his best to hide his tracks by eliminating witnesses and, of course, arranging for the assassination of the security agent.

The organizational chart for this guy, or his mysteries, aren't too hard to figure out. He's probably got some local law enforcement in his pocket, and likely a local criminal element. There might be someone higher up the ladder than him as well, someone who squeezes him to get him to squeeze the planet's population, but that's not that important right now.

So, we can start in media res: the rebellion on this planet needs more supplies, as they know that the Empire is bringing in "someone important" (the special agent) and they want to strike before the Empire can crack down, but all this heightened security means they need someone competent, like a PC smuggler, to bring them their supplies. Cue our heroes. Naturally, we have an adventure of them slipping past the suddenly raised security levels, and then trying to make their way to the rebel base.

Once they get there, it's fairly easy to tangle them into the plot. Someone has contacted the rebels and has given them information on the coming special agent, including the means necessary to assassinate her. Something's fishy about the contact, though, and players who want to investigate that fishiness can track the guy back to his connections with the Empire, though tracking him down and evading anyone trying to hide the truth is an adventure on its own.

If they choose to carry out the assassination, that alone is an interesting adventure. If they succeed, then the imperial official just pins all the blame on the rebellion and "heroically" mounts a crackdown, attempting to kill two birds with one stone. Their contact/ally who arranged for the assassination betrays them, and the players are on the run, trying to figure out what it is they missed (which, of course, we let them do).

But say the assassination fails, or the players realize someone is trying to turn them into stooges, then they have to decide if they want to finish off the assassination anyway. Technically, they're all on the same side: everyone hates the evil official. But... if they get a better official here, the Empire solidifies its grip. Is it, perhaps, better to let the official remain, ******* everyone off, until we can mount a full rebellion and loosen this world from the Empire's grip? On the other hand, this might be the perfect time to try to convert that special agent, get her on your side and serving the rebellion, which would certainly LOOK like she was doing her job, at least at first.

Either way, we're now trying to stop this evil official, one way or the other. In both cases, we need the muscle of the rebellion to do that, so we need to solidify their position, get more supplies, undermine Imperial defenses, and prepare for the final raid against him. If we want the Empire to support us, we need proof of his wrong doing, but even if we don't, proof of his wrong doing would go a long way to undermining the Empire, and make for great propaganda, so these become our two goals: Prove he's a jerk, and prep for the final attack.

And once the PCs have everything in place, then we can escalate. They prepare for their final battle, and we can reveal whatever force lurked behind the official. In fact, looking for proof of this official's guilt has probably turned up some interesting clues to this higher level conspiracy. Now, we confirm it, dramatically, with the sudden arrival of a dreadnought, or the appearance of an evil space knight, or the discovery of some sickening lab. We can do this before the big battle, during it, or after it. The official might fall to the players, or he might escape (to be hunted down later) but his part of the story as the "big bad" is largely finished at this point. The PCs have defeated him, but now hold clues to a bigger and more dangerous mystery and, that mystery has just punched them right in the face, showing them how unprepared they are.

That's how a typical Action adventure should work, more or less. I use Psi-Wars as an example, but it's just an action movie painted with the bright neon colors of space opera, to make some elements stand out more.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Imp Int and Imp Sec should be flip-sides of the same coin. Roll them up into the a larger parent org, but entirely separate departments. This can also lead to inter-departmental rivalry and cooperation.

This is already largely true. The Empire's Org chart has the Emperor at the top (Rank Everything 10), and beneath him, you have the Chancellor (Administrative/Political Rank 9), the Emperor's Hand (Security/Intelligence Rank 9), and the Grand Admiral (Military Rank 9). Beneath the Chancellor, you have the Ministry and the Senate. Beneath the Emperor's Hand you have Security and Intelligence. Beneath the Grand Admiral, you have the Imperial Navy and Black Ops.

I could discuss more rivalry between various groups. There's an odd relationship between the Senate and the Ministries. I suspect the Navy finds Black Ops spooky and useful, but often doesn't even know it's operating except at the highest levels. Intelligence and Security, though, must have an interesting relationship, as Security keeps putting bad guys away, and Intelligence keeps pulling them back out. That might be worth looking into in greater depth.

[Mailanka]

Happy GURPS Day! The last day look at imperial intelligence services, I have on offer Black Ops and Intelligence personnel, including commandos, demolitionists and prison soldiers.

[Mailanka]

In this Patreon post ($1+), the Scale of the Empire, I break down the academic question of the Empire's scale to offer an idea of how ships they have in a fleet, how many fleets they have, how much of the Galaxy the Empire actually rules, and how hyperspace geometry shapes that dominion and the defense of what the Empire (or anyone, really) controls.

[Mailanka]

I come bearing a Sunday Special! The Inestimable Erik Michalik agreed to write up some blasters for Psi-Wars, and I happily present them, plus my thoughts on where they'll fit in the setting, plus as added bonus, a gathered list of GURBs many upgrades to the Blaster and Laser Design system, which I often use when building my weapons for Psi-Wars.