GURPS WWII: Their Finest Hour

[copeab]

Really? In a weird WWII campaign there is quibbling over a British character having an American motorcycle? ;)

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by copeab

Really? In a weird WWII campaign there is quibbling over a British character having an American motorcycle? ;)

Question of cultural feel. If you're going to have British characters, small things that don't make them look quite convincingly British will jar more than large general things like the presence of magic. It'd be like having a can-do New England Yankee gadgeteer character who played cricket and whose favourite food was curry.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Michele

... an old .476 Enfield revolver.

If that's the Enfield No. 1, I'm surprised that someone so skilled with guns has kept it. It was replaced in British service by the Webley in 1889, because it was unsafe, with a tendency to go off if dropped, and unreliable.

This is as powerful as a character can get without clearly supernatural Advantages (though his Danger Sense isn't fully explained). This is what the player wanted, a “super normal” who could anyway have a go against low-power supervillains and monsters.

How well did this work out? It's something I've considered a few times, but never dared. The WWII campaign I play in required a minimum of 75 points spend on supernatural abilities.

[copeab]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

It'd be like having a can-do New England Yankee gadgeteer character who played cricket and whose favourite food was curry.

Sorry, I don't see a problem with this either :)

[Michele]

Originally Posted by copeab

Sorry, I don't see a problem with this either :)

On the other hand, I do see the point, and I tend to agree... with the provisos that:

a) I'd make allowances for the players' pet likes and dislikes anyway. If, as I seem to remember, the player really wanted a Harley Davidson rather than anything else, including a Norton, for his own reasons, he'd probably react to my objections by coming up with more or less plausible accounts of how the character had managed to find one. So, do I really want to annoy the player over something like this?

b) One should also keep in mind that I'm an Italian GM with Italian players. Most of us do like British culture, and most of us were fascinated with the British ethos of early WWII, but we are no Brits. Probably, if we all lived in Britain we would have found the Harley Davidson more jarring.

[johndallman]

I did a bit of Googling. Harley-Davidsons were exported to 67 countries by the 1920s,so it seems likely the UK would have been amongst those. They presumably didn't sell large numbers, but it seems to be "unusual", rather than "implausible".

[Michele]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I did a bit of Googling. Harley-Davidsons were exported to 67 countries by the 1920s,so it seems likely the UK would have been amongst those. They presumably didn't sell large numbers, but it seems to be "unusual", rather than "implausible".

Well, I had surmised that, but I'll admit I was too lazy to look it up... Even if the campaign is over, it's nice to know that, thank you!

[Michele]

Originally Posted by johndallman

If that's the Enfield No. 1, I'm surprised that someone so skilled with guns has kept it. It was replaced in British service by the Webley in 1889, because it was unsafe, with a tendency to go off if dropped, and unreliable.

Really? The player never owned a gun save for the smallest hunting thing, but he has a penchant for finding, for his characters, the most unusual firearms. IIRC he wanted that, and a big-bore revolver.
Anyway, the character's main gun was of course the rifle.

How well did this work out? It's something I've considered a few times, but never dared. The WWII campaign I play in required a minimum of 75 points spend on supernatural abilities.

it worked reasonably well. The character was nearly killed a couple of times, but the same happened to the more supernatural ones, and one of them actually died. Naturally, over time the character also acquired a higher-tech gadget to go with the sniping, and a permanent blessing boosting his resistance to physical hazards, so he did not remain a truly mundane hunter, however gifted.

[Martizs]

Excuse me if i post some nonsense i am quite new to all of this, Michele are you starting to play this game and giving out characters?
Cause i want to try and play Gurps or any other board based game online, and i just can't seem to find how.

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Martizs

Excuse me if i post some nonsense i am quite new to all of this, Michele are you starting to play this game and giving out characters?
Cause i want to try and play Gurps or any other board based game online, and i just can't seem to find how.

Welcome, then!
No, the campaign is over. I'm just posting the characters that were used for a long time in a face-to-face gaming campaign. I wouldn't post the characters for all to see if we were starting right now, each of the players has the right to keep his own PC's little secrets if he so wishes.

As to playing online, I think you might have a look at the Play by Post sub-forum. Have fun.