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Old 08-29-2014, 10:14 AM   #1
Kromm
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Default GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

Life looks like a nail
To someone with a hammer
Choose your hammer well
— Scholar!
The GURPS Power-Ups series returns with GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills. This volume collects every wildcard skill published to date and tackles some tough criticisms about them:
They aren't worth the points! This is too often true for wildcard skills as presented in the GURPS Basic Set. Although some are great deals that bestow broad competence, just as many are expensive ways to buy cheap skills. GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills remedies this flaw by waiving penalties originating from fussy subdivisions of knowledge; showing how standard skills default to and can be improved from wildcards; spelling out how perks and techniques work for wildcards (hint: generously); offering sweeping skill-level-based bonuses and enhanced critical-success ranges; allowing multiple wildcards to be combined for a task; making controlling attributes and canonical skill lists negotiable in play; and expanding on the game-changing Wildcard Points introduced in GURPS Monster Hunters. By choosing the right options, you could make wildcard skills competitive with super-powers . . . if you dare.

There aren't that many of them! For whatever reason (perhaps the one above!), many GURPS writers have overlooked wildcard skills. GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills collects what examples do exist, sure, but it also does something far more important: it provides rules and advice to help you create balanced, well-rounded wildcards of your own. Set a fair scope by looking at the skill's role in the campaign or by mechanically counting the standard skills and techniques it replaces – preferably a little of both. Enhance weak or narrow wildcards with additional benefits. Invent flavorful wildcards that encompass martial-arts styles, character templates, magic, Imbuement Skills, and more. Get a feel for how many distinct wildcard skill your campaign actually needs.

Those that exist are uneven! An unavoidable side effect of having dozens of writers work on hundreds of supplements and articles is that not everybody will have the same vision. GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills irons out this wrinkle by annotating all of the "official" wildcard skills it lists. While purists can rest assured that the wildcards do appear in their original form (complete with source citations), each one also comes with suggestions on which new benefits and optional rules would suit it and, where necessary, beef it up. If a wildcard is too narrow to be competitive, the notes aren't afraid to say so . . . and then go on to solve the problem by recommending further standard skills to add or other wildcards to merge it with.
In and around all this are plenty of other useful thoughts. Some are eminently practical, like how to handle the bonuses and figured stats that certain standard skills give when those skills are embedded in wildcards. Others are essentially philosophical; e.g., the similarities and differences between wildcards and Talents, and between wildcards and Expert Skills. Many concern campaign planning, such as when not to allow wildcards – and the possibility of replacing all skills with wildcard skills. And then there's the wild stuff, like wildcard "skills" for monsters, and extending the wildcard concept to techniques, languages, and powers.

So why limit yourself? Get wild today!


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Old 08-29-2014, 10:20 AM   #2
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Default Re: GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

DOGGAMMIT! I gotta wait 'till I got money in the account on Monday to get this! You couldn't've waited another week? (Just kidding; I'm just glad it's available.)
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Old 08-29-2014, 10:43 AM   #3
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Default Re: GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

Is this the Gamers Gone Wild issue?
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Old 08-29-2014, 12:21 PM   #4
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Default Re: GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

Quote:
Originally Posted by tbrock1031 View Post
DOGGAMMIT! I gotta wait 'till I got money in the account on Monday to get this! You couldn't've waited another week? (Just kidding; I'm just glad it's available.)
If it was available last week (or if the sale was longer by a day), I would have bought it as part of the sale, as it is I'm going to wait for next week. I'm going to buy it soon though, it's extremely relevant to Phoenix Imperative. If it had been available during the sale I probably wouldn't have bought something else: so you win, SJGames.
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Old 08-29-2014, 01:47 PM   #5
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Default Re: GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

Not bad, not bad at all. I can't say it won me over to using Wildcard Skills for my characters, but it certainly makes the concept viable, especially if you have new players or those who just want a simple sheet first, optimisation second. On the whole I would put the usefulness a bit lower than Power-Ups 3: Talents, to which it certainly owes a spiritual debt.

I want to especially call out the box "To the Skills . . .and Beyond!" on p. 20. Especially Wildcard Techniques! will come in handy in my games.

Of course, the book doesn't answer one very important question: Which Wildcard Skills to use in GURPS Wild Cards?
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Old 08-29-2014, 07:35 PM   #6
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Default Re: GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

I've been using Wildcard Skills more and more lately, so this book has been highly anticipated by me. I look forward to giving it a thorough read tomorrow during a lazy day at work. Also, I totally called that PU7 was going to be Wildcards ages ago! ^.^
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Old 08-29-2014, 08:36 PM   #7
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Default Re: GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

I have not been a real fan of Wildcards, I use them and like them but they dont excite me. This book helps there.
I expected the catalog which is nice, even if I have most of the books.
Some of the rules hinted at in supplements are made explicit and clear here, like talents dont add. Other rule clarifications and ideas are good too.
the Other benefits though, that I like even more then the basic Hypercompetency system were used to from MH.
And it all meshes well with talents andthe differences and similarites are well discussed.
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Old 08-29-2014, 09:16 PM   #8
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Default Re: GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

Damn fine book, Kromm!
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Old 08-30-2014, 01:40 AM   #9
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Default Re: GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

Favorite line: “if the goal of using wildcards is to simplify character design and accelerate game play, a good start is to avoid bean-counting!”

I’ve been waiting for this volume of Power-Ups for some time now, and I’m very pleased with it. That said, I’m an incorrigible system hacker; and this supplement has given me some ideas:

• Styles! aren’t just for fighting. There’s the recent Pyramid article that defined Social Engineering Styles; and there’s a whole book of Magical Styles that could provide a different way to handle different flavors of magicians other than Colleges! Of special note is that Magical Styles often reorganize the prerequisite tree, changing what default penalty a given spell might have based on which Magical Style! you base it off of.

• Basing Wildcard skills off of Talents or Talent-like Advantages: in 3e, Will was a Talent-like Advantage; in 4e, it’s (effectively) an Attribute. Likewise, I could see treating Talents and Talent-like Advantages as alternate bases for Wildcard Skills: that is, instead of having an IQ-based Wildcard Skill, you might base it on (10+Charisma) or (10+Voice) in situations where Charisma or Voice is a more appropriate factor to consider than IQ is.

• Template Wildcards and Template Building Blocks: love ’em! That said, I wonder about the feasibility of splitting the potential uses (e.g., component skills) of such a Wildcard Skill into two parts, Primary and Secondary, and applying, say, a -2 penalty to all secondary uses. The idea is similar to the “Average is Average” option, except that you’re assigning a modifier based on how central or peripheral the skill is to the Wildcard’s concept rather than on how difficult the skill is to learn.
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Old 08-30-2014, 02:30 AM   #10
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Default Re: GURPS Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills

The book very much surprised me by allowing spending Hypercompetence points from Money! on buying cash through points. The surprise is because it's essentially like Independent Income, but given out at a rate of 'per session' instead of 'per unit of in-game time'.

Hmm. Makes me wonder about the legality of applying 'Not Game Time, +0%' to Independent Income proper.
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