How to make a Gurps setting work?

[SteampengMK-1]

Greeting there! Steampeng Mk.1 at your service!

I'm just wondering, how does one go about making a GURPS setting, well, work, without getting Crushed by a splat-ton of paperwork.

The Game I'm trying to make is about Steampunk/Dieselpunk (Basically anything form TL-5/TL-5+1:TL-6/TL-5+2:TL-6+1:TL-7) time-travel over a hundred years period (1848-1948) of an alternate earth with some urban-fantasy/lovecraftian cosmic-horrors elements, So I hope this will help out giving people an Idea of what I'm working for...

[johndallman]

Well, the way I avoid paperwork is to get the players to do it. Most of the complexity in the campaign is in their character designs, which I happily crib bits from for opponents.

Your setting looks more challenging for that. I avoid vehicles, except for ones that I can handle narratively. I avoid time travel, because it's a complete monster to GM*. I keep the number of different fantastic elements fairly low.

*For GMing time travel, I recommend the simple system in GURPS Casey & Andy. There's a much more comprehensive system in the Continuum RPG, but it is heavy on paperwork.

[SteampengMK-1]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Well, the way I avoid paperwork is to get the players to do it. Most of the complexity in the campaign is in their character designs, which I happily crib bits from for opponents.

Your setting looks more challenging for that. I avoid vehicles, except for ones that I can handle narratively. I avoid time travel, because it's a complete monster to GM*. I keep the number of different fantastic elements fairly low.

*For GMing time travel, I recommend the simple system in GURPS Casey & Andy. There's a much more comprehensive system in the Continuum RPG, but it is heavy on paperwork.

Hmm...what you say is all well and good, but I was planning on having many vehicles on hand as well ( I love my tanks, and landships)

I do have to ask however, can one simply modified the curtain 4E system slightly to make...Got to get off, type later.

[Ulzgoroth]

I think that the GURPS-ness of the setting is going to be a pretty minor part of your troubles.

The scope of the game being big, complicated, and time travel, on the other hand... (Infinite Worlds, it's good to remember, is only a pseudo-time-travel setting! It avoids the real madness.)

[Anaraxes]

The Britannica-6 setting (one of the Infinite Worlds) seems steampunky. It might be a jumping-off point for you.

[SteampengMK-1]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

I think that the GURPS-ness of the setting is going to be a pretty minor part of your troubles.

The scope of the game being big, complicated, and time travel, on the other hand... (Infinite Worlds, it's good to remember, is only a pseudo-time-travel setting! It avoids the real madness.)

I know what your saying, just use multiple, alternate worlds. I was however planing on time traveling on one timeline. (However, there will only be 3 main "Time points" as it were (1873-aftermath of the great American war, 1898-Tail end of the 90's war, and 1923-, Beginning of the roaring 20's) to start off with. these timepoints however are connected by Warp nodes, which well be found in some areas)

There is also the minor problem of...well, I'm broke. (been trying to get a paying job, but no dice, so instead I get two volunteer jobs for school work), Limiting what I can get (which in other words is anything that cost more than 5-10 dollars, not online, is basically out of the question most of the time). I only have GURPS lite and 3rd party stuff to work off of.

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

The Britannica-6 setting (one of the Infinite Worlds) seems steampunky. It might be a jumping-off point for you.

This, I really want to get, but alas, in order to get it, it might have to pirated it, which I try to avoid.

[mlangsdorf]

My advice would be "only do the paperwork you enjoy", along with a measure of just-in-time-preparation.

As an example, here's my Mecha Against the Giants campaign: http://ottgaming.grimoire.ca/MAGT/Main

If you poke around the website, you'll see there's a fair bit of stats, descriptive text, house rules, and whatever. I wrote up all that stuff because I enjoyed writing that stuff up (only doing the paperwork I enjoy). Perhaps I could have written even more stuff, but to the extent I didn't think I would enjoy doing so, I didn't.

On the other hand, I only prepare one adventure session in advance. The PCs fought the giants at Isentor Bridge last week, so I wrote up the giants and drew the map before the session. They're going to fight the giants someplace else next session, but I haven't drawn the map for that fight yet. And although I have plans for them to dismount their mechs and fight in a cave complex, its no time near when I'll run that adventure so I haven't done any prep work for that yet.

How this applies to your game:
Have your first session only set in one time period. Write as much of that period's timeline as you enjoy writing. Only write up the vehicles you expect to encounter in that session. Make whatever notes you feel you need, and go into as much detail as you enjoy, but don't spend more than 30 minutes on anything that feels like "work".

After the first session, if you're going to do a time jump to a different time period, that's when you write the details for the new time period. Because that's when you're going to use those details.

Basically, there's no point in writing up stuff you're not going to use. And if the daunting task of writing up stuff that you're not sure you're going to use is preventing you from writing up stuff that you are sure you're going to use, you need to skip the potential stuff for the sure stuff. No one (except perhaps you) is really going to care about the historical evolution of 1898s landships into 1923s landships. And if one of your players cares about this stuff, you can draft him to do some of the paperwork.

[Gef]

I've run campaigns, with and without GURPS, with and without lots of prep work. The one without lots of prep were fun for awhile, but only the ones that took lots of work ran for years on end and stayed consistently fun, and with one exception those were GURPS games because of its inherent flexibility. Not perfect, but damn good.

That said, MOST of the ONGOING prep work should be on background, not game mechanics. If you enjoy creating your own background, GURPS is an excellent choice, but it's "frontloaded" by design. The rules allow for lots of detail, the detail in turn requires crunchy bits, and the basic idea is that you work out the crunch beforehand, so you can focus on the story when you start playing. As a GM, I prefer to work with players and take on the bulk of work myself: Ask each about hisr character concept, run a short individual prelude off-the-cuff (no dice), then write up a draft character for him to review, adjust, and approve.

Here's my generic advice if you or most of your players are new to GURPS.

First, write up some basic gladiators and some gunfighters. Host a man-to-man wargame with the GURPS combat rules, arena and a gunfight. These are throw-away characters, a one-shot event, designed to familiarize people with basic mechanics. In steampunk/dieselpunk, you'll have guns, but start with swords for this event. It doesn't matter if there won't be any combat in your main game; the combat rules are the most complex part of GURPS and utilize every aspect of the base mechanics (even Influence rolls).

Second, run a one-shot adventure. With people still new to the game, one "shot" could take a couple of sessions. It should be a straightforward scenario in a readily-understood setting with no magic or other weird stuff. I recommend a Western, pick an old movie and turn it into a game. Plenty of conflicts here, range war, ranchers versus farmers, cowboys versus Indians. Heck, a cattle drive would be perfect. The point of this is start using what people learned in the arena session.

Then start your "real" game. What I would do, but may be exactly the kind of work you're trying to avoid, is make the sorts of characters you expect to have as PCs. For instance, in my modern day mutants campaign, where mutants get their powers as teens, I made a 100pt geek, jock, punk, and sosh - the powers go on top of that. The characters have interacted with a lot of other mutant kids, and they don't realize that there are just 4 versions. I tweak each one a little for individuality.

This exercise is valuable in multiple ways. It gives you an idea of what's possible on the point budget you allow, and it prepares you to help your players design their own characters, and it gives you some stock templates to use for NPCs, modified as necessary. Without these stock characters as guidelines, it's easy to over-challenge your players, make 'em feel like their characters are wimps compared to every grocery store clerk. You'll have that moment when you realize that the "reasonable" stats you mentally assigned the street gang punks amount to a 200pt package worthy of Delta Force.

If you have a campaign with weird stuff, like alien races, magic, or super powers, and if that stuff is available to players at the start of the game, then you gotta work out the details in advance. No way around it. But, the process of thinking about the game mechanics for these things will get you thinking about the background, and that's a plus for your campaign in the long run.

[SteampengMK-1]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

My advice would be "only do the paperwork you enjoy", along with a measure of just-in-time-preparation.

As an example, here's my Mecha Against the Giants campaign: http://ottgaming.grimoire.ca/MAGT/Main

If you poke around the website, you'll see there's a fair bit of stats, descriptive text, house rules, and whatever. I wrote up all that stuff because I enjoyed writing that stuff up (only doing the paperwork I enjoy). Perhaps I could have written even more stuff, but to the extent I didn't think I would enjoy doing so, I didn't.

On the other hand, I only prepare one adventure session in advance. The PCs fought the giants at Isentor Bridge last week, so I wrote up the giants and drew the map before the session. They're going to fight the giants someplace else next session, but I haven't drawn the map for that fight yet. And although I have plans for them to dismount their mechs and fight in a cave complex, its no time near when I'll run that adventure so I haven't done any prep work for that yet.

How this applies to your game:
Have your first session only set in one time period. Write as much of that period's timeline as you enjoy writing. Only write up the vehicles you expect to encounter in that session. Make whatever notes you feel you need, and go into as much detail as you enjoy, but don't spend more than 30 minutes on anything that feels like "work".

After the first session, if you're going to do a time jump to a different time period, that's when you write the details for the new time period. Because that's when you're going to use those details.

Basically, there's no point in writing up stuff you're not going to use. And if the daunting task of writing up stuff that you're not sure you're going to use is preventing you from writing up stuff that you are sure you're going to use, you need to skip the potential stuff for the sure stuff. No one (except perhaps you) is really going to care about the historical evolution of 1898s landships into 1923s landships. And if one of your players cares about this stuff, you can draft him to do some of the paperwork.

Originally Posted by Gef

I've run campaigns, with and without GURPS, with and without lots of prep work. The one without lots of prep were fun for awhile, but only the ones that took lots of work ran for years on end and stayed consistently fun, and with one exception those were GURPS games because of its inherent flexibility. Not perfect, but damn good.

That said, MOST of the ONGOING prep work should be on background, not game mechanics. If you enjoy creating your own background, GURPS is an excellent choice, but it's "frontloaded" by design. The rules allow for lots of detail, the detail in turn requires crunchy bits, and the basic idea is that you work out the crunch beforehand, so you can focus on the story when you start playing. As a GM, I prefer to work with players and take on the bulk of work myself: Ask each about hisr character concept, run a short individual prelude off-the-cuff (no dice), then write up a draft character for him to review, adjust, and approve.

Here's my generic advice if you or most of your players are new to GURPS.

First, write up some basic gladiators and some gunfighters. Host a man-to-man wargame with the GURPS combat rules, arena and a gunfight. These are throw-away characters, a one-shot event, designed to familiarize people with basic mechanics. In steampunk/dieselpunk, you'll have guns, but start with swords for this event. It doesn't matter if there won't be any combat in your main game; the combat rules are the most complex part of GURPS and utilize every aspect of the base mechanics (even Influence rolls).

Second, run a one-shot adventure. With people still new to the game, one "shot" could take a couple of sessions. It should be a straightforward scenario in a readily-understood setting with no magic or other weird stuff. I recommend a Western, pick an old movie and turn it into a game. Plenty of conflicts here, range war, ranchers versus farmers, cowboys versus Indians. Heck, a cattle drive would be perfect. The point of this is start using what people learned in the arena session.

Then start your "real" game. What I would do, but may be exactly the kind of work you're trying to avoid, is make the sorts of characters you expect to have as PCs. For instance, in my modern day mutants campaign, where mutants get their powers as teens, I made a 100pt geek, jock, punk, and sosh - the powers go on top of that. The characters have interacted with a lot of other mutant kids, and they don't realize that there are just 4 versions. I tweak each one a little for individuality.

This exercise is valuable in multiple ways. It gives you an idea of what's possible on the point budget you allow, and it prepares you to help your players design their own characters, and it gives you some stock templates to use for NPCs, modified as necessary. Without these stock characters as guidelines, it's easy to over-challenge your players, make 'em feel like their characters are wimps compared to every grocery store clerk. You'll have that moment when you realize that the "reasonable" stats you mentally assigned the street gang punks amount to a 200pt package worthy of Delta Force.

If you have a campaign with weird stuff, like alien races, magic, or super powers, and if that stuff is available to players at the start of the game, then you gotta work out the details in advance. No way around it. But, the process of thinking about the game mechanics for these things will get you thinking about the background, and that's a plus for your campaign in the long run.

Both of these post were quite helpful. :)

speaking on character make, I was trying to make some to make some templates, which I should bring up here in a weeks time.

On a different note, something that been slightly driving me nuts...

I'm trying to make each weapon (Pistols, Rifles, SMGs, ect.) for each nation (America, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Britain, France,the 2nd Confederacy) unique and with it own advantage and Disadvantage. The style I got down so far.

America: Reworked Civil war to 1890's firearms with something newer here and there
Germany: WW-1/2-ish style weapon, cutting edge for the time, with some sci-fi here and there
Austria-Hungary: Clockwork/air-powered weapons with a few crossbows

Britain:WW1/2 ish style weapons, British style, with there own Sci-fi here and there
France:Weird-weapons (Think Hotchkiss)
2nd Confederate: Revolver style weapons

Each nation is going to get it own Rifle,pistol, shot gun, machine guns(SMG, LMG, MG, and HMG), Cannons/auto cannons, and a few "weirds"(or two)

I well post the Some of the weapons I have in mind tomorrow, but I might as well let people bring there own ideas first.

[Gef]

Originally Posted by SteampengMK-1

I'm trying to make each weapon for each nation unique and with it own advantage and Disadvantage.

Two points:

1) Know your players. Some like this kind of thing, others don't want to be bothered with such details, and in no case should the gun overshadow the gunman PC.

2) It's not at all realistic; the fact is that different models do have different features and drawbacks, a lot of which is below the resolution of the game and a lot of which is down to individual taste. However, it's off to sort them by country, rather than by manufacturer, with large manufacturers having multiple models. They're all dealing with the same laws of physics after all: Bigger charge, more recoil. More accuracy, longer barrel. More bullets, smaller calibre.

EDIT: That said, different top secret technologies are fine, your TL X+1 stuff. But a "cutting edge" WWII-style gun should be reverse-engineerable by an American manufacturer, and if Civil War era muzzle-loaders are all they've got, the new design will be in high demand.