Improving the Tonfa

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Sindri

I said a redesigned list.

OK.

Originally Posted by Sindri

The improvement through adventure rules are irrelevant. They don't discriminate between what you are improving or what you are doing so they just speed up things they don't chance anything about the fundamental character.

To my mind, Improvement through study and Improvement through adventure are closely linked. A skill (or any other given ability) improves with both. The first is slow and always at the same rate. The second represents sudden boost thanks to experience and sudden understanding of something important. Both together are quite realistic. One without the other is not as much.

And Improvement through adventure discriminate a bit what is improving: it has to be something which is used during the adventure. Which makes a huge difference with D&D like improvement, for instance, where a character suddenly get a new ability without having learned or tried to use it during his adventures.

Originally Posted by Sindri

And yes, obviously there was a reason the GURPS authors chose to link in game learning speeds with out of game point costs. The consequence of that however is that you cannot derive anything from a combination of the learning mechanics and how long it takes to learn something in the real world because any link between how long it takes to learn something in the real world and in GURPS is incidental.

Of course. In reality, learning depends on so many different factors than it is impossible to be realistic here. A rule of that kind can just be plausible and consistent. It cannot correspond to a real number of hours...

In reality, it is impossible to say how many hours I will need to fully learn a given technique with a given weapon, for instance.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Practically anything I could replace it with would... also be insert-time-get-points. I'm not talking about a specific implementation here but the entire category of similar rules. Not that I won't have training rules but being able to convert time into points is something I've rejected.

It's still impossible to do something else in GURPS. Even if you say +1 to the skill, rather than +X character points, +1 to the skill does correspond to a given number of character points (most often 4).

Originally Posted by Sindri

You aren't enforced to buy anything.

If a fifth edition is published, I'll be enforced to buy the new Basic Set or I won't be anymore able to take benefit from the new fifth edition publications...

Originally Posted by Sindri

It's not like new stuff isn't done while the old stuff is being redone either.

New stuff go on being published, yes. But it is slowed down. Because rewriting the old one inevitably takes time. And since Basic Set, and other major books are very dense, they take a lot of time to be rewritten.

Originally Posted by Sindri

SJGames has so far mostly stuck to using errata for actual errata rather than rules revisions which is something I appreciate. Even if they started doing more significant corrections, corrections do not an edition change make. Fourth edition is not third edition corrected, it's third edition with the things that require a rewrite to change. That's the entire point of edition change; being able to make significant rewrites at the core of a system that will be heavily tested and supported by default instead of hiding in a Pyramid article.

Yes. I fully do agree. But I don't think that GURPS need a true rewrite. Just some corrections here or there.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Creatures I'll give you even though they are easy to convert and lwcamp is doing good work on detailed fourth edition animals. Vehicles I'll partially give because VD isn't out yet even though much of their stats are easily convertible especially for vehicle use in the sort of game that isn't using VD and Spaceships is usable with many vehicles if you like it's approach. Weapons though? How many obscure guns are there in third edition that haven't been updated to fourth? Surely there can't be that many.

There aren't many, indeed. But when you read a third edition book and you see something interesting (yipee!), there is always another feeling that come at the same time (draft! I will have to convert it in the new rules). That don't make things easy.

Originally Posted by Sindri

Well you know your monetary and temporal resources better than I obviously. However if there's an edition change you don't have to buy the new versions of books if fourth or third edition classic books or the new things for fifth edition coming out in parallel to the fifth edition versions of traditional GURPS books are a better use of resources.

Of course. But the Basic books of fifth edition will still have to be bought again... At least, if I want to buy and understand some of the interesting fifth edition books. Otherwise, I will be stuck on fourth edition.