GURPS Black Ops to 4th edition

[griffin]

Originally Posted by oma

Upon reading templates in Black Ops ... Make it a higher cost template? Pare it down to less skills or attributes? I would think that lowering attributes would be better than eliminating the skills. Of course, in my game I also use the variant separating WILL and PER from IQ, so that inflates my cost even more.

Your ideas from converting 3rd to 4th and point differences.

Not speaking about Delta Force, but Black Ops templates and Black Ops in general. I think the book should have a reboot. Keep a lot of the background info but re-do most of the book from the ground up. This includes updating the templates so the templates are more specialized and are more in line with Monster Hunters. Lower some of the stats, emphasize WildCard! skills, revamp the training schedule so they spend less time training and get into the field sooner.

For Black Ops templates I'd keep them at around 750 points for a new Black Ops agent. That puts them on a favorable footing compared with Champions from Monster Hunters (at around 400 points). I'd also allow for agents with mystic powers including magic. However, I would NOT allow Black Op agents that are Inhuman. That should be a major difference between what MH allows for Champions and Black Ops allows for its field agents. NO MONSTER BlacK Ops agents!

[oma]

Yeah sorry, I am basing a campaign loosely off of Black Ops, but I'm using Special Ops templates. No 750 point players. I think we will be 250-300pts cause it's too dang hard to get a Delta Force/Navy SeAL for less than that. They will be military that slowly uncovers the evil in the world. No "company" to guide them. They will be instrumental in forming "the company" as they go through the campaign. It will be all set in present day.

[vesper]

I did a conversion from 3rd to 4th with a few tweaks for my game. I avoid Bang skills. This is what I had for base template

Combat ops 720pts
Int ops 737pts
Science Ops 708pts
Security ops 708 pts
Tech Ops 724 pts

I told players they had 750 pts to round their characters out and called it good,
Vesper

[davidtmoore]

Originally Posted by oma

Yeah sorry, I am basing a campaign loosely off of Black Ops, but I'm using Special Ops templates. No 750 point players. I think we will be 250-300pts cause it's too dang hard to get a Delta Force/Navy SeAL for less than that. They will be military that slowly uncovers the evil in the world. No "company" to guide them. They will be instrumental in forming "the company" as they go through the campaign. It will be all set in present day.

That's a pretty sweet idea for a campaign direction. You gonna do a couple of time jumps as the players gather resources and influence?

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by vesper

I did a conversion from 3rd to 4th with a few tweaks for my game. I avoid Bang skills.

My hand began to cramp sympathetically when I read that. (I had some good experiences with Black Ops, but writing the skills down wasn't one of them. In fact, when I first saw Bang Skills, my first thought was "Black ops!")

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by oma

Yeah sorry, I am basing a campaign loosely off of Black Ops, but I'm using Special Ops templates. No 750 point players. I think we will be 250-300pts cause it's too dang hard to get a Delta Force/Navy SeAL for less than that. They will be military that slowly uncovers the evil in the world. No "company" to guide them. They will be instrumental in forming "the company" as they go through the campaign. It will be all set in present day.

You may want to check out Seals in Vietnam

[kenclary]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

My hand began to cramp sympathetically when I read that. (I had some good experiences with Black Ops, but writing the skills down wasn't one of them. In fact, when I first saw Bang Skills, my first thought was "Black ops!")

Bang skills are great for certain types of Black Ops campaigns, but not all. I rather like the idea of Black Ops done with Harsh Realism and Tactical Shooting instead of Bang skills and Gun Fu. I hope that, if there ever is a 4e update to Black Ops, it would cover advice and templates/lenses for doing both.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by oma

Yeah sorry, I am basing a campaign loosely off of Black Ops, but I'm using Special Ops templates. No 750 point players. I think we will be 250-300pts cause it's too dang hard to get a Delta Force/Navy SeAL for less than that. They will be military that slowly uncovers the evil in the world. No "company" to guide them. They will be instrumental in forming "the company" as they go through the campaign. It will be all set in present day.

I tried doing some 4ED conversions of Special Operations a while ago - I stopped because I moved and cancelled the planned campaign. I was trying to be as realistic as possible, and wound up with SEALs in the 350-400pt range, and was expecting Delta and DEVGRU to be a bit higher. A lot of the additional expense came from 3ED to 4ED changes (like the elimination of the 1/2pt skill), the rest from some research into what SEAL training actually included. Also, since I was trying for realism I did not make any attempt to optimize the templates - it would probably be possible to reach similar effective performance levels for less points.

[oma]

@David

I believe the campaign will be a future rifts campaign. The players are fighting against this secret evil and eventually as they are growing, the EVENT happens. This releases the Rifts of time and space and demons in the thousands and all kinds of aliens enter and destroy the world. PCs are instrumental in helping mankind survive against the encroaching devastation and after building a reputation they are on a mission and the PCs are bathed in the energies of a strange warp in time and space and are shunted into the future over 200 years. They arrive at a more stabilized time (ie Rifts setting), and pick up their lives. They are now living in a time that people talk about their legends. I think it will go over very well as the Rifts setting requires higher point values to keep the survivability and balance going. I figure at that point they will be 375-400 points.

[RyanW]

Note also that since the costs of stats and skills have both changed, optimized 3e templates might need adjustment if you want to retain that optimization.