GURPS Overhaul - Initiative

[Varyon]

It's been a while, but both Peter V. Dell'Orto and Douglas Cole have been looking at a rather impressive exchange of sword blows in GURPS terms, and I couldn't resist taking Doug's analysis and throwing it through my Initiative system. For simplicity, I'm assuming both fighters start at IP 100 and they both have Move 5 and Init 10.

Red starts with a Step and Thrust, which is going to have partial overlap - 40 IP for the Step, 60 IP for the Thrust, with the lesser cost halved, so end cost is 80 IP. White opts to Parry, for 40 IP. Red has IP 20, White has IP 60. 4 time steps later (400 ms), White takes a defensive stance and takes a swing, which would be worth 105 IP but he opts to take a -2 to damage to drop that to 95. Red opts to Parry, for 40 IP. Red has 20 IP, White has 5. 8 time steps later (1200 ms), Red takes a Committed Stance and swings at White, which would be worth only 52.5 IP but Red opts to go for broke and dedicate 91.875 IP (which we'll round up to 92) for a +3 to his attack. White manages to Parry, using up the full 40 IP so his Defensive Stance gets him a +1 to defend. Red has 8 IP and White has 45. 6 time steps later (1800 ms), he decides to capitalize on Red's greatly-reduced defense, going into a neutral stance and swinging for 87.5 IP for a +1 to hit. Red can't Parry or Retreat, so he's stuck using Dodge, at -2 for 20 IP. White successfully hits, but doesn't do enough damage to cause Shock. Red has 48 IP and White has 12.5. Red knows he has one chance to maybe reclaim his dignity before the round is called, so 1 time step later (1900 ms) he opts for an out-of-turn action, a swing that should cost 105 IP (for being out-of-turn). He drops this to 55 IP by taking a whopping -10 to his attack, but gets this to -4 by going Telegraphic and accepting a -2 to damage. White only has 22.5 IP, so he has to take a -4 to his Parry to drop it down to 20 IP. The Telegraphic Attack gets that to only -2, and he opts to take a knee (which probably shouldn't require any IP, and if it did would have perfect overlap with his defense anyway) for +2 to defend (as per Doug's suggestion) to bring it back up to his normal Parry. He succeeds, and wins the exchange hands-down.

How does this match up with the fight itself? We've got White taking his swing at only 400 ms rather than at 700, Red making his second attack at 1200 ms rather than 1000 or so, White making the fatal strike at 1800 ms rather than around 1600, and Red trying his desperation move at 1900 ms rather than 1750. All told, while the numbers don't match entirely, overall the fight fell into the rules fairly readily. I suspect I may be overcharging a bit for out-of-turn actions, but honestly that's more a game balance than realism thing.

[DouglasCole]

Glad my breakdown shows some utility.

[whswhs]

I'm afraid my inclination is to decrease the amount of bookkeeping that's needed to run combat, not to augment it. This seems like it would have to augment it.

At the very least, you need to open with a paragraph that motivates the adoption of the system, rather than just saying, "There are games that do this, so what would it be like if GURPS did it?" Rhetorically it's more effective to put the big selling point up front.

Bill

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Glad my breakdown shows some utility.

I'm actually surprised my system ended up matching decently well with the fight, as a lot of the IP costs were just semi-educated guesses. I did have to contort a bit at the end to get that last strike by Red, but I think that's more an issue with some of the game balance stuff - only being able to change stances on your turn, out-of-turn costing double - than anything else. Toning that down a bit, he probably should have been able to do that last strike as an All Out Attack without taking nearly as many penalties as he did.

Originally Posted by whswhs

I'm afraid my inclination is to decrease the amount of bookkeeping that's needed to run combat, not to augment it. This seems like it would have to augment it.

At the very least, you need to open with a paragraph that motivates the adoption of the system, rather than just saying, "There are games that do this, so what would it be like if GURPS did it?" Rhetorically it's more effective to put the big selling point up front.

Bill

The concept is extremely niche, and I strongly suspect anyone who would be interested in implementing it would already have the inclination. It's not going to be an easy system to implement, and the gains are probably minimal, but it addresses a few (arguably minor) concerns of mine and seems like a neat concept to me.

As for bookkeeping, GM's who have access to a computer can easily set up a spreadsheet that will handle a lot of it for them - and honestly, I'd suggest against using the system if you don't have such a setup. With two combatants involved it's fine to do it in your head or some scratch paper, but once you've got multiple combatants with different Init values, it could easily get overwhelming.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Varyon

As for bookkeeping, GM's who have access to a computer can easily set up a spreadsheet that will handle a lot of it for them - and honestly, I'd suggest against using the system if you don't have such a setup. With two combatants involved it's fine to do it in your head or some scratch paper, but once you've got multiple combatants with different Init values, it could easily get overwhelming.

I have a computer, but it's a desktop; I don't think my budget will ever extend to a laptop (not least because it would have to be Apple). I have Excel, and have used it occasionally. But setting up a spreadsheet to do that sort of thing would be quite beyond me.

And the other thing is, using a spreadsheet during a game would require my focused attention—and I want my focus on the interaction with the players. So I don't think I'd be the target market for a rules system that needs a spreadsheet.

Bill Stoddard

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I have a computer, but it's a desktop; I don't think my budget will ever extend to a laptop (not least because it would have to be Apple). I have Excel, and have used it occasionally. But setting up a spreadsheet to do that sort of thing would be quite beyond me.

And the other thing is, using a spreadsheet during a game would require my focused attention—and I want my focus on the interaction with the players. So I don't think I'd be the target market for a rules system that needs a spreadsheet.

Bill Stoddard

Yes, I meant "has access to a computer during the game." The spreadsheet would actually be fairly simple - here's an example of what a column would look like:

13.5
Kate
0
=A3+A$1

The first entry (A1) is the character's Init value. The second would be the character's name. The third is currently a placeholder - when the battle starts, this is where you'd put the character's actual starting IP at. The fourth takes the previous line and adds Init to it - you can simply copy and paste this cell going down the line to get the character's initiative at each time step. The whole thing can be copied and pasted in the next column over (the A's will change to B's on their own), at which point you just change the name and Init and it works as needed. You can easily map this out for, say, 10 seconds (most GURPS fights end before that), then when someone hits 100 you let them take a turn and replace their IP with whatever the remainder is (and if someone gets hit with something that drops their IP, you do the same). Here's something that would be the first second of 4 PC's up against 6 Gladiator Apes (DFM1 p17); for simplicity I assume everyone rolls a 10 and lacks CR/LR:

Init	13.5	12	11.5	10	11	11	11	11	11	11
Char	Kate	Grom	Corwin	Jill	Ape1	Ape2	Ape3	Ape4	Ape5	Ape6
0	40	35	30	25	30	30	30	30	30	30
0.1	53.5	47	41.5	35	41	41	41	41	41	41
0.2	67	59	53	45	52	52	52	52	52	52
0.3	80.5	71	64.5	55	63	63	63	63	63	63
0.4	94	83	76	65	74	74	74	74	74	74
0.5	107.5	95	87.5	75	85	85	85	85	85	85
0.6	121	107	99	85	96	96	96	96	96	96
0.7	134.5	119	110.5	95	107	107	107	107	107	107
0.8	148	131	122	105	118	118	118	118	118	118
0.9	161.5	143	133.5	115	129	129	129	129	129	129
1	175	155	145	125	140	140	140	140	140	140

At 0.5, Kate reaches 100, so she gets to act. Let's say she spends 60 IP moving closer to the apes. At 0.6, Grom spends 20 IP to start Aiming with his musket. At 0.7, Corwin and the Apes all reach 100, but as Corwin has the larger number, he gets to go first. He's already close to Ape1, but not enough to attack - he opts to Wait, preparing a swing with his axe for 35 IP. Ape1 is Berserk, and he spends 60 IP heading toward Corwin, at which point Corwin's Wait is activated and he strikes (spending another 35 IP), killing Ape1 in one shot. The other apes each spend 80 IP trying to reach his friends. At 0.8, Grom's turn comes up again - the apes are a lot closer now, so he abandons the Aim and shoots Ape2 in the Skull, burning 40 IP and killing the ape. Jill also gets to go - she takes a Defensive Stance and activates a spell in her wand for 20 IP. At 0.9, Kate gets another go - a DWA with Partial Overlap, consisting of a strike with her claws (50 IP) to Ape3's Vitals and swing with her tail to Ape4's Neck (60 IP), for a total of 85 IP. Ape3 fails his HT roll against Knockdown/Stunning by 2, losing 100 IP and being stunned, but survives the hit (no IP loss from shock as he's Berserk); Ape4 loses his head. Finally, at 1.0, Kate gets another turn - she does a Step (40 IP) and shoots (60 IP) the spell in the wand with Partial Overlap for a total of 80 IP. She hits Ape5 and discharges the spell in the wand, hitting him with a Major Wound - but he succeeds at the HT roll against Knockdown/Stunning and loses no IP. At the end, here's how things look:

Init	13.5	12	11.5	10	11	11	11	11	11	11
Char	Kate	Grom	Corwin	Jill	Ape1	Ape2	Ape3	Ape4	Ape5	Ape6
0	40	35	30	25	30	30	30	30	30	30
0.1	53.5	47	41.5	35	41	41	41	41	41	41
0.2	67	59	53	45	52	52	52	52	52	52
0.3	80.5	71	64.5	55	63	63	63	63	63	63
0.4	94	83	76	65	74	74	74	74	74	74
0.5	*47.5	95	87.5	75	85	85	85	85	85	85
0.6	61	*87	99	85	96	96	96	96	96	96
0.7	74.5	99	*40.5	95	-	*27	*27	*27	*27	*27
0.8	88	*71	52	*85	-	-	38	38	38	38
0.9	*16.5	83	63.5	95	-	-	*-51	-	49	49
1	30	95	75	*25	-	-	-40	-	60	60

You'd simply continue this until the battle was over. The asterisks are for when IP dropped due to either taking action or (in the case of Ape3) losing IP from getting hit.

[jeff_wilson]

Varyon, are you familiar with Ysgarth or any other games by Dave Nalle, like Suburban Slasher? They run on action points.

As I recall, the sanctioned-but-never-released GURPS MMO also involved point-based turn initiative.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

Varyon, are you familiar with Ysgarth or any other games by Dave Nalle, like Suburban Slasher? They run on action points.

Afraid not. I've never seen a CT-like initiative system outside of JRPG's.

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

As I recall, the sanctioned-but-never-released GURPS MMO also involved point-based turn initiative.

That certainly would have been interesting to see.