Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old 08-15-2015, 02:44 AM   #1
johndallman
Night Watchman
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
Default [Basic] Skill of the week: Freight Handling

"If we can't get back to the submarine, we can ship ourselves home by container" -- Action/Reign of Steel PC

Freight Handling is the IQ/A skill of managing the loading and unloading of vehicles. A success cuts the time required for the work by 20%. If there is doubt about an item of cargo surviving the journey, roll against Freight Handling, with a success meaning that it got there. The only default is IQ-5, and no skills default to it. Freight Handling dates back to 3e, when it was just a note under Packing.

Freight Handling is clearly a Professional Skill. GURPS doesn't try to list all of them, but this one can be important for realistic adventuring reasonably often. Apart from simply making sure your stuff reaches the scene, being in charge of loading a vehicle clearly makes it far easier to arrange for an item (or a person) to be on board covertly, or to not be present although the paperwork and witnesses reckon they were. This has all kinds of uses for smuggling, sabotage, and spying. Freight Handling is also used with No-Landing Extraction (B233), which is always an adventure, presumably with a specific familiarity.

Freight Handling appears on templates for transport specialists, merchants and explorers. Action also uses it for Cleaners who transport the evidence elsewhere, and for loading vehicles inconspicuously, although you need Smuggling to conceal things on board. PU3 and PU7, as usual, have examples that include this skill. Spaceships has rules for the time required to load cargo, and the uses of Freight Handling in squeezing oversized loads through hatches; Spaceships 2 expands on them.

My spectacular use of Freight Handling was in our Action/Reign Of Steel campaign. We needed to stow away on a cargo ship to get from North America to Britain, and had sneaked into Boston Harbour's freight terminal. Of course, it was totally automated, but critical successes on Perception and default Freight Handling meant that it suddenly made sense, and we got on board without any fights. The quote at the top was from a subsequent adventure in Crimea.

Have you loaded the dice with Freight Handling?
johndallman is online now   Reply With Quote
 

Tags
absic, freight handling, skill of the week

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:00 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.