RPG Jutsu - GURPS Content for Ninjas

[GodBeastX]

Dungeon Fantasy – Why I think it’s D20 for GURPS!

It's GURPDay and today I was feeling the need to tackle a slightly controversial topic. It touches on why I feel Dungeon Fantasy is great for those who want to play a D20 world in GURPS.

I imagine quite a few players already use Dungeon Fantasy for just that, but here's my thoughts on the matter none-the-less.

Dungeon Fantasy – Why I think it’s D20 for GURPS!

[Dammann]

Excellent post. I agree with you about how I imagine Dungeon Fantasy to be played most of the time, as well as the lack of more adventures as a weakness. Also, your writing style is very good, with momentum to your arguments and enough support to make your conclusions convincing. I'm adding this one to my "check regularly" list.

[GodBeastX]

Brief site update just talking about my views on the Dungeon Fantasy kickstarter.

[GodBeastX]

Ideas and Concepts with Character Attributes

An update for GURPS Day. GMs have quite a lot of information they track. Today's posts gives a brief on how one might use character attributes to track nebulous ideas.

Ideas and Concepts with Character Attributes

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

Ideas and Concepts with Character Attributes

An update for GURPS Day. GMs have quite a lot of information they track. Today's posts gives a brief on how one might use character attributes to track nebulous ideas.

Ideas and Concepts with Character Attributes

Its an interesting idea that bears review.

[Christopher R. Rice]

I've read this three times and the more I read it the more sense it makes. Nice job, dude.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

I've read this three times and the more I read it the more sense it makes. Nice job, dude.

Yep, My first thought was ok but is it useful?
By the time I got to the end I can see utility.
Rate a party and than various satellite NPCs, organizations and even event or plotlines and you can have a sort of flow chart or mind map for interactively working out storylines.

[GodBeastX]

Overpowered – GM’s Guide to Challenging Players

New and old GMs often have trouble challenging overpowered players. This article contains tips and ideas GMs can use for dealing with such a situation at a table.

Overpowered – GM’s Guide to Challenging Players

[Kalzazz]

Higher skills can well help also to make things more fun and/or less tedious. I definitely enjoy skills in the 20s and such, why? Awesome, I can make called shots, or rapid strikes, or called/shot rapid strikes, deceptive attacks oh my! And I can often still crit on a 6! Having played at lower skill levels . . . the more skill, the more fun choices to make.

For our hypothetical skill 14 sniper (which may be entirely realistic), but depending on the player it might not be so fun!

He can - have a 50/50 chance to miss outright firing at a man sized target 10 yds away without all out attack or aiming
All out attack torpedoes his defense, which may cause unhappiness
Aiming takes up time (and again, if he dodges while aiming, well great, that doesn't help either)
Even if he does roll well enough he may hit
- the enemy may just dodge
- he may roll lousy damage and the enemy stays up even if hit

So his snipers ability to actually make a meaningful dent in enemy numbers may be depressingly slow to realize if it is taking him several combat rounds to drop just a single adversary

If he raises his skill, where he can reliably hit foes, with neat things like quick shot (to hit more than one foe a round), prediction shot (to hamper enemy dodges) and called shot (to put shots where it counts, to hamper bad damage or enemy HT checks) he may be a much happier camper!

So anyway, a player is spending oodles of points to get good at what they do, they presumably have some reason for it. So ask them and see why they wanted the power in the first place

On the hypothetical gun user, I have played a few characters with sky high gun skill, here are a few examples

1. I decided to make a sharpshooter for a mid-high powered Weird West campaign, somehow it just seemed a really cool thing for a sharpshooter to be able to shoot someone in the skull 1 mile away. So I gave them enough skill to do that! Why? Because it just sounded cool. And it was cool. But overall, it seemed that only relatively rarely in game was there a specific need to shoot people in the skull 1 mile away without aiming, so uhm, kinda a waste. And not terribly

2. Low point total, low combat game, but guns Rifle of like 18 or so . . . . I just was interested in playing a hyper focused character, and was fine with the notion my character spent the majority of the time just being set dressing (I discussed this with the DM ahead of time). The very rare combat encounters I was effective, but still . . . . not that effective. Because 18 skill still has its problems at the whole, actually killing things thing.

3. A character of mine had 16 rifle skill, and was not terribly intended as a fighter, she was more a gadgeteer / cleric type utility (her job title was Cleric
of Hephaestus, God of Anachronisms). Her ability to actually contribute in fights was . . . dreadful. She couldn't hit anything at much range it seemed, in melee she had far to much of a glass jaw (she really needed to hit things at range!), and didn't always drop things when she hit! After watching her more or less become a punching bag a few to many times and pretty much being dead weight when combat started, my CP definitely started getting spent on nice things like much higher skill, gunslinger (my favorite rifle), and Quick Shot technique (to shoot at two targets a round), and Fast Firing (to shoot two bullets) at each, so while she was pretty flimsy, and had no real defenses, she could at least try to kill things before they killed her

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Higher skills can well help also to make things more fun and/or less tedious. I definitely enjoy skills in the 20s and such, why? Awesome, I can make called shots, or rapid strikes, or called/shot rapid strikes, deceptive attacks oh my! And I can often still crit on a 6! Having played at lower skill levels . . . the more skill, the more fun choices to make.

For our hypothetical skill 14 sniper (which may be entirely realistic), but depending on the player it might not be so fun!

He can - have a 50/50 chance to miss outright firing at a man sized target 10 yds away without all out attack or aiming
All out attack torpedoes his defense, which may cause unhappiness
Aiming takes up time (and again, if he dodges while aiming, well great, that doesn't help either)
Even if he does roll well enough he may hit
- the enemy may just dodge
- he may roll lousy damage and the enemy stays up even if hit

So his snipers ability to actually make a meaningful dent in enemy numbers may be depressingly slow to realize if it is taking him several combat rounds to drop just a single adversary

If he raises his skill, where he can reliably hit foes, with neat things like quick shot (to hit more than one foe a round), prediction shot (to hamper enemy dodges) and called shot (to put shots where it counts, to hamper bad damage or enemy HT checks) he may be a much happier camper!

So anyway, a player is spending oodles of points to get good at what they do, they presumably have some reason for it. So ask them and see why they wanted the power in the first place

On the hypothetical gun user, I have played a few characters with sky high gun skill, here are a few examples

1. I decided to make a sharpshooter for a mid-high powered Weird West campaign, somehow it just seemed a really cool thing for a sharpshooter to be able to shoot someone in the skull 1 mile away. So I gave them enough skill to do that! Why? Because it just sounded cool. And it was cool. But overall, it seemed that only relatively rarely in game was there a specific need to shoot people in the skull 1 mile away without aiming, so uhm, kinda a waste. And not terribly

2. Low point total, low combat game, but guns Rifle of like 18 or so . . . . I just was interested in playing a hyper focused character, and was fine with the notion my character spent the majority of the time just being set dressing (I discussed this with the DM ahead of time). The very rare combat encounters I was effective, but still . . . . not that effective. Because 18 skill still has its problems at the whole, actually killing things thing.

3. A character of mine had 16 rifle skill, and was not terribly intended as a fighter, she was more a gadgeteer / cleric type utility (her job title was Cleric
of Hephaestus, God of Anachronisms). Her ability to actually contribute in fights was . . . dreadful. She couldn't hit anything at much range it seemed, in melee she had far to much of a glass jaw (she really needed to hit things at range!), and didn't always drop things when she hit! After watching her more or less become a punching bag a few to many times and pretty much being dead weight when combat started, my CP definitely started getting spent on nice things like much higher skill, gunslinger (my favorite rifle), and Quick Shot technique (to shoot at two targets a round), and Fast Firing (to shoot two bullets) at each, so while she was pretty flimsy, and had no real defenses, she could at least try to kill things before they killed her

All good points. I touched a little on this, showing how being "overpowered" can be fun =)