11-18-2016, 12:06 PM | #1 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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[Basic] Skill of the week: Sports
Sports is the DX/A category of skills for playing sports to a high standard. If an activity is IQ-based, it's a Games skill. Obviously, there are many Sports skills, and some of them have very little in common; defaults other than the general DX-5 depend on the sport. It's occasionally possible to use them in combat, for moves that are very much like a sport, such as making a slam with Sports (Rugby); the commonest case is catching an object thrown to you (B355). Detailed knowledge of the rules and history of a sport is a Games skill, and lets you referee a match, rather than play in one. The skill for fans is Current Affairs (Sports), or (particular sport). Sports skill appeared at GURPS 1e.
The basic GURPS contest of skill mechanics will work fine for one-on-one sports like billiards or singles tennis. Team sports with complicated strategy like American football or cricket are probably best handled with a variant of the Mass Combat system, with a contest of IQ-based Sports by the captains or coaches, modified by team strength, and team members having individual "sports strength", conveniently equal to their skill level, and maybe special classes of ability, if those make sense for the sport. That's most likely for games with well-defined positions or roles, like a baseball pitcher. Sports shows up on a few published templates, usually as a hobby. Bio-Tech gives mechanics for using steroids to boost Sports performance, and its drawbacks. High-Tech has sports drinks and equipment for a few sports and Horror has golf clubs as weapons. The Hot Spots books for Florence and Constantinople cover the sports of the period, and Low-Tech tells us that surfing in pre-European-contact Hawaii was a sport of chiefs, comparable to jousting. Infinite Worlds applies cross-world familiarity penalties to the skills, and Martial Arts deals with the difference between Sports and Combat Sport skills. Power-Ups 3: Talents tells us that all Sports skills count as one for Talent purposes, and provides examples and an anti-talent; the Quirks and Wildcard Skills volumes have more examples. Powers provides a cinematic use for Sports (Surfing) if you can walk on water, and Social Engineering points out the applications of Sports in finding a game, and in judging the audience's mood. Supers has (Paragliding) and (Skateboard) and their equipment, and you can fight Zombies with bats at full (Baseball) or (Cricket) skill. I have the odd character with a point in a Sports specialisation, but I have never used this skill in a game. Have you?
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11-18-2016, 12:34 PM | #2 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Sports
I've often given players 10 free "Flavor" skills, and I see sports come up in these a lot.
I've always treated Sports as a kind of DX equivalent to Professional Skill. It covers a variety of oddball DX skills that are grouped together because they're part of a sport. When characters have skills that would translate from sports on a regular basis, I encourage them to buy "Sumo" or "Throwing" at full price. (or whatever it is, but those two are most common). I've never seen anyone try this, but its possible the skill could be used similarly to carousing. I've seen lots of film where the hero earns the trust of the guys playing streetball and is then able to get info he otherwise couldn't out of them.
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11-18-2016, 12:49 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Sports
I knew a chap who was working on an American Football simulation. When I last heard about it, he was trying to decide whether he needed to model individual finger strength or whether grip strength per hand would be enough.
In an Infinite Worlds campaign, I had a character with Sports (Cricket) as a colour skill. Alas, I never worked up a situation to make it important in play: I had hoped either to have him turn up at a country house, Black Orchid-style, or arrange for him to be holding a long piece of wood when someone chucked a grenade or something at him. Ah well.
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11-18-2016, 12:50 PM | #4 |
Join Date: May 2007
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Sports
When working up a character recently for a Magical Girl campaign, I did toy with the idea of using Sports (Softball) to launch magically created fragmentation grenades with a softball bat as an innate attack. Ultimately, though, I ended up going in completely different direction with the character. I can't think of any other time when I've considered using the Sports skill.
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11-18-2016, 02:00 PM | #5 | ||||
Dog of Lysdexics
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Melbourne FL, Formerly Wellington NZ
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Sports
Some Relevant Kromm Quotes:
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09-28-2018, 12:54 PM | #6 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Sports
Quote:
For example, in baseball, one could buy batting, pitching, or a specific position in the field as a Technique. For soccer, forwards, wingers, backs, and goalkeepers would have different Techniques. This lets you have specialists and all-rounders, but being an all-rounder who's as skilled as several specialists costs more than being those specialists.
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The Path of Cunning. Indexes: DFRPG Characters, Advantage of the Week, Disadvantage of the Week, Skill of the Week, Techniques. |
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09-28-2018, 05:44 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Sports
Never forget the old manga/anime adage: if you can compete against someone at it, you can run an overly-serious (perhaps to the point of silliness) story about doing so.
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09-29-2018, 05:48 AM | #8 |
Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: England
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Sports
I think this depends on how much use the skill will find in the game, and thus what resolution you want. Techniques can give you high resolution but can be expensive in terms of CP.
I'd maybe allow specialisation as an optional speciality, e.g. Sports (Netball: Goal Attack/Shooter) (DX/E) or Sports (Cricket: Bowler) (DX/E), despite B169 restricting that to IQ-based skills. There's also the Hyper-Specialisation Perk too, though I'd prefer an optional speciality for this sort of breadth of speciality. |
09-29-2018, 06:13 AM | #9 |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Luxembourg
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Sports
For sports like football (soccer), quidditch or Sensha-do, specialisation are almost required for some positions, rather than techniques.
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09-29-2018, 08:42 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: [Basic] Skill of the week: Sports
Quote:
Girls und Panzer would clearly be based on a Sports version of mass combat. . . .
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Tags |
basic, skill of the week, sports |
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