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Old 08-14-2015, 02:48 PM   #21
Kalzazz
 
Join Date: Feb 2009
Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

Combat is rare in my games due to players having OPH Avoid Fights (joke on OPH, but definitely they are not combat inclined), when combat does happen is usually extremely fast and over the top 'nuclear weapons at 10 paces' style carnage. Such as 3 PCs square off with an Elder Horror (with Destiny Points), 2 zombie dragons, and 100 cultists, 90 with AK-47s and 10 with RPG-7s. 2 rounds later all enemies dead, 1 PC hurt at -2xHP or so and 1 PC untouched

I recently started scoring fights . . . . if the PCs win in 1 round its a Birdie, 2 rounds is Par, 3 rounds is Bogey, 4 Double Bogey etc.

Mostly I run 300/-150/-5 with very few chargen restrictions, so PCs tend to be fairly good at their specialties and highly dysfunctional

My long running Tanuki City USA campaign started in 04 or so, and is designed such that realism is discarded with extreme prejudice . . . so PCs may punch above their weight a bit. (Before I do things in that campaign I ask myself 'could I see this happening?', if the answer is yes I reject it outright)

We are actually doing a 'change of pace' campaign named 'Legend of the Zeroes' that started at 62 points, with the goal potentially being fail hard, fail often
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Old 08-14-2015, 04:58 PM   #22
simply Nathan
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

I haven't had an RPG group since I was 18 (27 now), and the best GM I knew is super absorbed into Minecraft now.

I got an account on this site mostly to ask for feedback on ideas for the setting he wanted to make (aiming for the blandest and most basic fantasy RPG setting we could design, then release our notes to let others easily vary from it at their own tables).

At ages 13-17, rolling polyhedral dice and moving little figures around a paper dungeon map were the extent of my teenage rebellion. Once I got familiar with GURPS I mostly lost interest in other systems.
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Old 08-14-2015, 05:40 PM   #23
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
As the old joke says, "What you mean—we?" I started rpging in 1975, when I was 25.
My error. I'm old and you're ancient. :P


I started rpging in '80 when I was 6.

I started 'feeling old' when I made the comment to a fellow gamer, "Wait, so I've been gaming longer than you've been alive?" That was 16 years ago...
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Old 08-14-2015, 05:42 PM   #24
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I started rpging in '80 when I was 6.

I started 'feeling old' when I made the comment to a fellow gamer, "Wait, so I've been gaming longer than you've been alive?" That was 16 years ago...
Most of my players are nearer your age than mine. There are several whose parents are younger than I am.
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Old 08-14-2015, 07:27 PM   #25
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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Originally Posted by Ghostdancer View Post
After reading up on your Wiki a bit, VariousRen, I've got a few questions and maybe a few suggestions. Take them all with a grain of salt.
  • Healing: It occurs to me that you could create the same low-magical healing effect you want, while also allowing that one big instance of lifesaving magic by allowing supernatural healing to restore at most you HP every month or so and require bed rest for anything else. You could probably create a spell that would accelerate bedrest as well if you were of a mind. It still captures the "magic healing is rare/hard," while giving players options.
  • Long Term Magic Healing: This penalty looks really harsh. Can I suggest using the Long-Distance Modifiers (p. B241) instead, reading miles as days. It's still harsh - but not super harsh.
  • Magic Words: This is kind of neat. I just released something like this on my Patreon page. :-)
  • Detect Spellcaster: How was the cost arrived at exactly?
  • New/Modified Skills: Same here? Design-wise it looks okay, I'm just curious how you arrived at it.

Magic in genreal is as you describe it - "hand wavy" - but honestly, if you were to put some work into it (and I wouldn't mind giving it a go over after you're done) this would be perfect for Ritual Path Magic. Just disallow Ritual Adept completely and limit Magery so that skill levels are capped at a specific point. Overall, a very cool read, thanks again for sharing it.
Healing: Field medic style magic is almost entirely untouched, chant magic allows a caster to throw major heals around every few rounds (20-skill seconds to cast) without any time penalty and get people back on their feet.

Long Term Healing: It really isn't as harsh as it looks on the face of it, because extra time can be used to offset the penalties (but not gain a bonus to skill). An hour of study knocks off -1 of the penalties, up to 30 hours knocking off -5. A successful casting of Body Reading halves these penalties (making it critical to a good long term healer). In play, this ends up meaning 3 days of study on an injured person, then casting a major healing for 8HP, rinse and repeat. It has struck a good balance between having a high HT score for good healing rolls, and magical healing to get you on your feet.

It also has two other benefits. Cleric style casters (Spell casters with chant magic and one college (Healing)) need to have a large supply of FP on hand during a fight just like other mages, so they can heal wounds right after or during. It isn't good enough to heal them in a few hours once you have time to rest, because then the penalties start to climb. In dungeon crawls it leads to a very nice "Press on injured, or back off for a week" feel. Finally, it explains why there are people with missing limbs, old war wounds, ect in a world where clerical magic is common.

Detect: It was based off of Detect (Occasional: People with Magery, 10), then adding Melee Attack (Reach C, -30%) to limit it to touch. 7 points seems about right in the setting, spell casters have a frustrating habit of not wearing tall pointy hats and robes in this world.

Psionics: Based very loosely on the bardic enthrallment stuff, but only in that it was based on skills. None of the PC's have taken up psionics yet, but one of the fights against a skilled psionic felt right, with the PC's being locked out of their body, breaking free occasionally and struggling one or two steps closer before the psionic regained control. It may need to be changed in the future, but for now it seems fine.

I'm glad that you are interested in the setting! If I had known about ritual path magic at the time, I probably would have used it! Now it's a little late to switch things out, but in the future I'm looking for a game to try it with.
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Old 08-14-2015, 10:54 PM   #26
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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Originally Posted by VariousRen View Post
Healing: Field medic style magic is almost entirely untouched, chant magic allows a caster to throw major heals around every few rounds (20-skill seconds to cast) without any time penalty and get people back on their feet.
Hmmm. Interesting. Ok.

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Originally Posted by VariousRen View Post
Long Term Healing: It really isn't as harsh as it looks on the face of it, because extra time can be used to offset the penalties (but not gain a bonus to skill). An hour of study knocks off -1 of the penalties, up to 30 hours knocking off -5. A successful casting of Body Reading halves these penalties (making it critical to a good long term healer). In play, this ends up meaning 3 days of study on an injured person, then casting a major healing for 8HP, rinse and repeat. It has struck a good balance between having a high HT score for good healing rolls, and magical healing to get you on your feet.
So you have low-level healing with high penalties, but it never really comes up in game play because everyone always takes the max time to reduce the penalty? I suppose if that's the flavor you are going for it works (high skill healers are better in general than anyone else because they can soak the penalties).

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Originally Posted by VariousRen View Post
It also has two other benefits. Cleric style casters (Spell casters with chant magic and one college (Healing)) need to have a large supply of FP on hand during a fight just like other mages, so they can heal wounds right after or during. It isn't good enough to heal them in a few hours once you have time to rest, because then the penalties start to climb. In dungeon crawls it leads to a very nice "Press on injured, or back off for a week" feel. Finally, it explains why there are people with missing limbs, old war wounds, ect in a world where clerical magic is common.
Cool. I can get behind that.

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Originally Posted by VariousRen View Post
Detect: It was based off of Detect (Occasional: People with Magery, 10), then adding Melee Attack (Reach C, -30%) to limit it to touch. 7 points seems about right in the setting, spell casters have a frustrating habit of not wearing tall pointy hats and robes in this world.
You'd be better off with Detect Spellcasters (Magical, -10%; Touch-Based, -20%) [7] unless you have to be able to make skin to skin contact with you target in which case add Contact Agent (-40%) as well.

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Originally Posted by VariousRen View Post
Psionics: Based very loosely on the bardic enthrallment stuff, but only in that it was based on skills. None of the PC's have taken up psionics yet, but one of the fights against a skilled psionic felt right, with the PC's being locked out of their body, breaking free occasionally and struggling one or two steps closer before the psionic regained control. It may need to be changed in the future, but for now it seems fine.
Ahh. Ok. Makese sense.

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I'm glad that you are interested in the setting! If I had known about ritual path magic at the time, I probably would have used it! Now it's a little late to switch things out, but in the future I'm looking for a game to try it with.
You can always do what I did when switching from spell magic to RPM - have a magical disaster occur and change how magic fundamentally works. :-)
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Old 08-15-2015, 05:44 AM   #27
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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Playing several times a week is the tough part. As a student, I belonged to a group that gamed all weekend, every weekend, and usually at least one evening during the week. We were playing various OD&D and AD&D forms, and starting from first level was mandatory, and made perfect sense under those conditions.

When your players are adults with jobs and families, one session a week is good going. Making the sessions short doesn't help that much.
Similar history here, similar experiences as we all aged. I'm technically in four games, but only one runs semi-regularly. The other three sort of pop up when the stars are right.
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Old 08-15-2015, 06:49 AM   #28
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Playing several times a week is the tough part. As a student, I belonged to a group that gamed all weekend, every weekend, and usually at least one evening during the week. We were playing various OD&D and AD&D forms, and starting from first level was mandatory, and made perfect sense under those conditions.

When your players are adults with jobs and families, one session a week is good going. Making the sessions short doesn't help that much.
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Similar history here, similar experiences as we all aged. I'm technically in four games, but only one runs semi-regularly. The other three sort of pop up when the stars are right.
I used to game an insane amount of time in my teens and early 20's, but tapered off a bit as I got older. Currently, I run three campaigns: my personal campaign with my gaming group and two others which I am paid to run. The latter two I don't talk about often or in anything other than vague terms because that's part of my contract with those other groups. It's a lot of workload sometimes, but the last two only met up every other week and only for four hours, whereas my regular games are weekly and can go as long as 12-16 hours (10 is our average).
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Old 08-15-2015, 07:46 AM   #29
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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Similar history here, similar experiences as we all aged. I'm technically in four games, but only one runs semi-regularly. The other three sort of pop up when the stars are right.
I run two and play in one. One of the two is nearly monthly; the other is theoretically monthly but often misses months, and the one I play in likewise.
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Old 08-17-2015, 03:35 PM   #30
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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I run two and play in one. One of the two is nearly monthly; the other is theoretically monthly but often misses months, and the one I play in likewise.
I run one that tries for every three weeks, or so, but usually manages to take place once per month.

When one of the other guys in the Denver GURPS Group sets up something, I usually try to attend.
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