4e GIN?

[milliken]

Originally Posted by zogo

I thought that was the standard approach to G:IN. CHaracters got Choir/Band Template and their single attunement for free and then got X Points to buy everything else?

My reading was that he was talking about an unaffordable Servitor Attunement, not the free Choir/Band one.

---Walter

[Archangel Beth]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hackard

Military school is always an option.

Andrew, do you want me arrested for trying to sabotage the military?



Other people: Yes. I think that it would take an Intervention to convince me to not make a 4e GIN a "powered by" thing. Doing anything else . . . well, it's actually not really possible at all, anymore, to my understanding. Take Invulnerability to X. Take Ofanim of Fire. GIN needs Invulnerability that isn't a hack like the Treatment from IOU. (A delightful hack, which entirely captures the IOU mentality, I should add. I'm very pleased with it. But it doesn't suit IN.) GURPS 4e, to my understanding, only supports the Treatment-style gimmick.

The whole "Cosmic or not" issue is also really evil if you're going to muck with the whole shebang that GURPS "straight" would presume. If you do Powered By and state flat-out that the GM gets to figure out where and when to apply Cosmic if crossing over stuff, that whole nightmare stops making Beleth giggle.


Still not sure what to do with Forces. Tacking them on with all the associated "Corporeal Forces = ST/HT/DX" mucking seems very inelegant.

I'm more inclined to leave point-costs essentially compatible where it's not just blatantly broken (we did designate Fire as a not-common attack, in GIN already, for instance), and stick in additional, stronger suggestions that GMs grant attunements from Superiors according to brownie points, not character points.

[zorg]

Originally Posted by milliken

My reading was that he was talking about an unaffordable Servitor Attunement, not the free Choir/Band one.

Yep, that's right.
Basically, in IN, it's an attractive option for a demon of Belial to buy the Fireproof atunement, and then some other stuff. If, in GIN, you do the same, you have spent most of your customizing budget on a single attunement (which won't come up that often). This is unsatisfying.

A similiar "glitch" exists among the Servitors of Saminga. Point-wise, it's inefficient to be a Balseraph of Death, since the attunement you get for free only costs 3 CP, anyway. Better to choose another band, get a much more expensive attunement for free, and spend the 3 CP.

I'm aware that IN doesn't set much importance on balancing characters (which is perfectly fine). Gurps, however, does, and this creates problems.

re Essence: in 4E, Essence could be done as a rather straightforward Energy Reserve, with a slow recharge and the Feature: must be bought at the same level as you have Forces. Rites would likely be Perks.

re Forces: I *guess* one could use Forces, at least partly, as a ceiling-Feature thing. Like, "you must keep ST in a certain relation to your Corporeal Forces" (say, four times as much, or what have you).
Of course, this would possibly lead to a rather backward Force distribution (How can I justify my attributes by assigning Forces?).
Or, in a PbG-IN, one could perhaps drop the point cost of attributes altogether, and keep the close impact Forces have... Hey, I like this thought.

To be honest though, personally I have given up on my own attempts to "fix" the GIN rules and bought the straight IN core rules. The main complaint from the players thus far was that IN doesn't have "Quirks" :) My own main complaint is that the IN Core Rules are quite, eerh, colorful.
(it's quirky enough, but it lacks Quirks [-1])

Originally Posted by zogo

Characters got Choir/Band Template and their single attunement for free

Which is precisely why I think it probably wouldn't have hurt to give up on point-balancing the GIN PCs altogether :) Kyriotates and Shedim were anyway more expensive than the other characters.

[Archangel Beth]

Hey, I'd be comfortable house-ruling a couple Quirks and maybe a Perk or two. Go for it... O:>

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

Hey, I'd be comfortable house-ruling a couple Quirks ... O:>

Yeah, my wife made some up on her own. She managed. :)

[Hyrneson]

Originally Posted by Archangel Beth

I think that it would take an Intervention to convince me to not make a 4e GIN a "powered by" thing. Doing anything else . . . well, it's actually not really possible at all, anymore, to my understanding.

I encourage you to try to find a way. Between the 4e enhancements & limitations, Powers, and Thaumaturgy I am sure something might be done for consideration.
Not to blow smoke, but I have faith in the talent of you guys and Kromm. The e23 sales have shown there is interest in IN, so I think that SJ might be more open to the idea to take his thumb off the GURPS side of the scale and let a product be developed that is equitable truer to both systems.

RH

[milliken]

Originally Posted by Hyrneson

I encourage you to try to find a way. Between the 4e enhancements & limitations, Powers, and Thaumaturgy I am sure something might be done for consideration.

Maybe, but I doubt it. Some aspects would no doubt be easier, but I used every trick in the 3e books to try to make the first draft of GURPS IN work, and it didn't. Just way too cumbersome.

It's certainly possible to design a GURPS angels&demons game with the In Nomine background and some vague semblance to the IN core rules attunements, but it would be a fairly vague semblance. It also wouldn't be too hard.

Getting anything accurate to how the In Nomine game plays, is very hard. I'm as much of a GURPS gearhead as most anyone (at least for 3e), having written my own character sheet programs and the like. But doing the 300+ attunements and whatnot, twice, is as much as I'm likely to ever want to do, at least until I'm retired. (It was twice because SJ rejected the first draft, rightly, as too complicated and clunky. Believe it or not, the second was considerably better.)

I've only glanced at 4e, not having had the time to actually game for some years, and I don't think it's going to change things a lot. The fundamental problems of realistic vs. epic scales, totally different attributes (which are exposed to the game universe to a fair extent), and play balance vs. not are all still going to be there.

Originally Posted by Hyrneson

Not to blow smoke, but I have faith in the talent of you guys and Kromm.

Thanks, but I'm not sure the result would be much better this time around.

Originally Posted by Hyrneson

The e23 sales have shown there is interest in IN, so I think that SJ might be more open to the idea to take his thumb off the GURPS side of the scale and let a product be developed that is equitable truer to both systems.

Sorry, but I don't think the e23 IN sales suggest that there's any likelihood that a GURPS IN revision/update would sell well enough for the pain of writing and editing it. Regular e23 IN products sell well enough to justify the editorial work, but even the regular products aren't particularly rewarding to the authors. I'd have to guess a GURPS/IN product would sell maybe 1/4 as well, and that's being generous.

It took me several months to figure out all the IN mechanics in GURPS terms, each of the two times I did it. That used up pretty much all my free time, and it's not something I want to go through again, especially for such a small potential audience. It's interesting to think about in the abstract, but slogging through all of it again is a different matter.

[h3rne]

Hi! I'm a gate crasher from a foreign SJG forum... IN got flagged on Websnark just recently and it piqued my interest. I found this thread trying to work out whether to buy IN or go for 3e GIN.

Originally Posted by milliken

...I used every trick in the 3e books to try to make the first draft of GURPS IN work, and it didn't. Just way too cumbersome... Getting anything accurate to how the In Nomine game plays, is very hard...

I couldn't resist pointing out the double irony in the fact that not only is there an RPG that sounds basically unrepresentable in GURPS, but also it is published by SJG! 5e clearly should be called something like QURPS (quite); NURPS (nearly); AURPS (almost); etc.

Anyway, sounds like IN is the way to go. e23 is very tempting for the Core (that or ebay) Any chance of the GM guide anytime soon or does its current availability preclude this?

Thanks for the proxy advice!

Simon*

[Hyrneson]

Originally Posted by h3rne

I couldn't resist pointing out the double irony in the fact that not only is there an RPG that sounds basically unrepresentable in GURPS, but also it is published by SJG!

As Walter noted earlier, the genre could be done and even the frame work of IN represented, the challenge is in doing a conversion of the mechanics of the game system to GURPS.
GURPS represents the game type just fine.

RH

[Archangel Beth]

In particular, Forces and how they affect attributes. Limiting GURPS stats by the amount of Power Investiture is pretty tricky -- especially when humans don't have Power Investiture.

Hm. Maybe the elegant way would be to make Power Investiture a derived stat, like Will and Per are in 4e, and assign an unusual background cost to having them accessible for Song use and the like. The trick becomes deriving three Investitures from four stats, and taking CelForces from Per/Will -- already derived stats themselves -- has a trace of the Ugly to it.


As for the GMG... None of the currently in-print material for IN are likely to show up as PDF at this time, to my knowledge. The moment it goes out of print, though...


The Core Rules PDF is the "third printing." The best you can get on eBay is 2nd printing. (But the errata files can help with that!) I'm VERY fond of the PDF, as it's much easier for me to search on. Mind, far be it from me to suggest you shouldn't get both...

*whistles innocently*