10-21-2015, 08:39 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Diceless GURPS: Mechanical Discussion
I tried doing a search, and that function seems broken for now, but I'll post my thoughts on this here. Over the years since GURPS has come out, various mechanics, both built into Basic Set and coming out in supplements like Power-Ups: Impulse Buys and Power-Ups: Wildcards have come out for various ways of achieving success while ignoring the dice rolls through Destiny Points and spending your Character Points. My intention is to use these to outright REPLACE the dice entirely which would make for easier chat-based games and encourage descriptive roleplaying to give bonuses and penalties. What I propose is as follows:
TASK RESOLUTION: Take skills as usual, but always assume a base roll of 11. Apply modifiers as usual. This means that Parries and Dodges will always tend to fail without bonuses and most competent adventurers will succeed without penalties. If you don't like this, adjust your base roll based on the feel for the campaign: An easier, lighter campaign may assume a base roll of 9, giving defenders in combat an advantage unless the attacker starts to use Deceptive Attacks. Potentially, combat should require a different base roll (this is something to be discussed. A few major questions would be: Should the defender and the attacker assume different base rolls? Who should get priority? Should it be assumed that both the Defender and the Attacker succeed their rolls, thus requiring points spent to force a failure on somebody else? Or should it be assumed that the defender is assumed to lose and needs to spend points to avoid the attack using a Diceless system? CONTESTS: Again, assume a base roll of 11. This basically means that the highest adjusted skill will tend to succeed. Keep this in mind! Skill bonuses and penalties to the situation can still apply. This makes tracking skill bonuses and penalties very important to Diceless GURPS. Your success or failure literally hinges on giving yourself benefits and giving your foe as many penalties as you can. DAMAGE: Convert every 2d to a 7. If its an odd number of dice, the last die adds 4. (9d = 28 [8d] + 4 [1d] = 32) becomes Then apply any other additions or subtractions. Spend an Impulse Point, Wildcard Point or Destiny point to make it 6 damage per die. Apply all other rules as usual. Speaking of... BUYING SUCCESS: GURPS Impulse Buys + Destiny Points + Wildcard Points Suddenly this becomes VERY important to the game. Contests can become Bidding Wars using Impulse Points, Destiny Points and Wildcard Points to buy success. Encourage players to purchase Destiny and Wildcard skills and enforce this effect. Buying a critical success in combat should not be allowed unless it is against a Mook. Additional Concerns: How should Complementary Skills work? Would just invoking the skill (so long as it is above the base roll) allow you to gain its benefit? Last edited by sonic232; 10-21-2015 at 08:43 AM. |
10-21-2015, 08:57 AM | #2 | ||
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Diceless GURPS: Mechanical Discussion
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This model also creates a strong premium on having very high levels in some skills: someone with Stealth-20, for example, is essentially always going to remain undetected, because she never gets bad rolls. Given that resource management of the buying-success points becomes the key to the game, there's a case to be made for using something less complicated than GURPS as the underlying game system. Have you looked at the Gumshoe game system? I don't know details, but it seems to have some related ideas, from what I've heard. Quote:
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10-21-2015, 09:10 AM | #3 | |||
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Diceless GURPS: Mechanical Discussion
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That's what I was thinking, but I wanted to make sure others agreed. |
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10-21-2015, 09:20 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Albuquerque
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Re: Diceless GURPS: Mechanical Discussion
If you want to use a diceless system, I would suggest using some other sort of engine like the FATE point economy and assume that everyone rolls a "0" on the dice. I would soften it a little bit, and use advantages and disadvantages to determine "aspects" for invoking or compelling, and provide "soft" bonuses for being more skilled, better prepared, having skill in situations that call for it, etc. Might take a little tweaking, but it would probably get some mileage. Unfortunately, you would end up with the situation where it is more beneficial to be a jack of all trades as opposed to mastering a few areas.
An example could be Attractive, Beautiful/Handsome, Very Beautiful/Handsome may only provide additional benefit when being compared to another attractive person. Or, since it is leveled, you might allow it to be invoked more than once in order to gain more benefit. I could see it working really well with GURPS, though it would be a bit more of a bother ;) Edit 1: though with the stealth-20 example, in GURPS they are largely going to go by undetected anyway, and high skill only serves to maintain your advantage against people with above-average Per. |
10-21-2015, 09:21 AM | #5 | ||
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Diceless GURPS: Mechanical Discussion
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10-21-2015, 09:39 AM | #6 | ||||||
Join Date: Jun 2006
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10-21-2015, 12:45 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Dec 2008
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Re: Diceless GURPS: Mechanical Discussion
There was a Pyramid Article about this exact thing. I thought it was one of the Alternate GURPS, but I can't seem to find the article.
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10-21-2015, 12:57 PM | #8 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Diceless GURPS: Mechanical Discussion
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EDIT: Nevermind! Pyramid 3/65: Alternate GURPS III - This One Goes To 11! Wow, I basically just re-invented that article, huh... Even mentions Impulse Buys... Last edited by sonic232; 10-21-2015 at 01:02 PM. |
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10-23-2015, 11:20 AM | #9 | ||
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Albuquerque
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Re: Diceless GURPS: Mechanical Discussion
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10-25-2015, 09:57 AM | #10 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Diceless GURPS: Mechanical Discussion
Yes, which is what a lot of diceless conversions do... And what the article did, which I inadvertently recreated ^^; Not sure if I just came to the same conclusion or if I was subconsciously spouting information from an article that I had read but didn't consciously remember, but I pretty much accidentally summarized most of the article in my original post.
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Tags |
diceless, gurps, impulse buys, wildcards |
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