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Old 09-24-2014, 01:27 PM   #1
vicky_molokh
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Default Pyramid #3/21 Cyberpunk - Keeping It Real - REVISITED

Greetings, all!

I've been recently reminded of this article in a different thread, so I decided to take a look at it. Re-reading it, I have to say that I'm on one hand I like the overall intent, since I'm currently in a game that does its best to just barely stay on the realistic side of the edge. On the other hand, I'm finding many solutions worth reexamining, perhaps altering.

Animal Empathy: yesh, just taking Animal Talent will probably raise fewer questions.

Catfall: Buying extra HP against falls should come with Massless +0%, otherwise it defeats the purpose.

Danger Sense: why not just use the -50% Hypersensory limitation that negates the spooky-warning-despite-numbed-senses phenomenon? I seems very suitable.

Daredevil: I get neither what's so bad about it (see the note on Luck below), nor why it was considered fair to replace rerolling criticals with ignoring criticals other than a natural 18 for the same price.

Empathy: The Empathy Talent is now my all-time favourite talent to take for a face character . . . but could someone explain why is the Empath Talent considered preferable to regular Empathy in realistic campaigns? Its only significant difference is the effective -1 on emotion sense rolls and an inclusion of Diplomacy into the list of affected skills. Oh, and the training time discount.

Enhanced Defences: yeah, the existence of Combat Reflexes muddies the waters, creating powerful incentives to make up a limitation for the latter.

Gadgeteer: agreed, just buy Versatile and moar skillz. I actually saw a build where buying up the primary skill is a better/cheaper idea than buying Versatile (admittedly this is a 1-point difference).

Gizmo, Gunslinger: not sure what to say.

Hard to Kill: 'Acting skill, perhaps with the optional specialization “Playing Dead”' should probably be replaced by One Task Wonder.

Indomitable: Will+5 (Only against influence rolls, -40%) seems off. It probably makes more sense to just limit the maximum level of Resistant (Influence Rolls) to +8, since Indomitable and Resistant (Influence Rolls) are the same trait.

Intuition: again, the Hypersensory limitation might be an interesting alternative to the original change.

Serendipity: not much of an argument there - if the GM doesn't believe that Timothy Dexter was real, nothing can be done about it. The Patron replacement seems as good as any, then.

Luck: okay, this one I don't get. Surely one could just apply some limitation saying 'Can not be used to reroll things which the PC has no way of influencing'? After all, the Luck trait need not represent coincidence - it can represent focus, reliability, special training, as in the case of the martian embassador in Pyramid: Transhuman Space II.

Perfect Balance: the Superior Equilibrioception talent might be a good idea.

Plant Empathy, Special Rapport: uh, yeah.

Unfazeable: Rule Of 15 (and 16, and 17 . . .) is a good thing to buy if you can't get the real thing.

Unluckiness, Weirdness Magnet: same issue as with Timothy Dexter, but with reverse polarity.

----

What others say?
Thanks in advance!
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Old 09-24-2014, 11:17 PM   #2
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/21 Cyberpunk - Keeping It Real - REVISITED

Luck-related stuff is thorny, in terms of realism, because we have no actual way of telling whether a person is "lucky" or whether things just happened to go their way. For a realistic game, I'd err on the side of simply not allowing such traits and letting the dice fall where they may.
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Old 09-24-2014, 11:39 PM   #3
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/21 Cyberpunk - Keeping It Real - REVISITED

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Benj View Post
Luck-related stuff is thorny, in terms of realism, because we have no actual way of telling whether a person is "lucky" or whether things just happened to go their way. .
Luck is things just happening to go your way.
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Old 09-24-2014, 11:45 PM   #4
The Benj
 
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/21 Cyberpunk - Keeping It Real - REVISITED

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Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
Luck is things just happening to go your way.
Yes, but that could be because your player spent points for that to be the case, or because they happened to roll well. That's my point.
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Old 09-25-2014, 12:21 AM   #5
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/21 Cyberpunk - Keeping It Real - REVISITED

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Luck: okay, this one I don't get. Surely one could just apply some limitation saying 'Can not be used to reroll things which the PC has no way of influencing'? After all, the Luck trait need not represent coincidence - it can represent focus, reliability, special training, as in the case of the martian embassador in Pyramid: Transhuman Space II.
I rather think luck as luck is vastly more realistic than luck as being just that good.
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Old 09-25-2014, 03:40 AM   #6
vicky_molokh
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/21 Cyberpunk - Keeping It Real - REVISITED

Quote:
Originally Posted by David Johnston2 View Post
Luck is things just happening to go your way.
Except when it isn't:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pyramid #3/62 - Transhuman Space II - Three Offices,
Port Lowell
Her Intuition and Luck don’t represent anything
supernatural or even especially uncanny – she just has very
good instincts, especially in social situations, and is highly
unlikely to do anything disastrous.
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Old 10-03-2014, 03:06 PM   #7
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/21 Cyberpunk - Keeping It Real - REVISITED

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
I've been recently reminded of this article in a different thread, so I decided to take a look at it. Re-reading it, I have to say that I'm on one hand I like the overall intent, since I'm currently in a game that does its best to just barely stay on the realistic side of the edge.
Sorry for the late (and rather long) response to this. As the original author, I'm pleased to hear that someone likes at least the intent.

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
On the other hand, I'm finding many solutions worth reexamining, perhaps altering.
Yes, I have some sympathy with that. It was published 4 years ago, and largely written quite a while before that; I think I would do some things differently now. In some cases, I definitely wasn't aware then of some of the modifiers Vicky is suggesting; maybe some of them didn't exist, or at least weren't so widely applied.

Anyway, here are a few thoughts/explanations about the cases Vicky mentions.

Catfall: I agree, Massless ought to be included, of course.

Danger Sense: I agree that Hypersensory would be a possible way to go. I think I wanted to build a version explicitly from existing realistic abilities, rather than (to put it crudely) having a "Realistic" limitation on the unrealistic advantage. I guess that there's a small payoff in the more detailed modelling of how these rolls relate to other perception rolls.

Daredevil: see Luck below. Regarding the specific point about crits, it's again about building the effect using existing traits. Since a high enough skill can lead to Critical Fails occurring only on an 18, a bonus to skill limited to the circumstances described in the original trait is a way of realistically controlling Critical Fails. I thought of it as a big bonus, with a very big limitation, though there was no way to get a flat cost for all characters. I'm not sure I got the balance exactly right.

Empathy: it's good to see such a positive comment on Empath Talent. It's a simple enough idea, but I was pleased when it made it into Power-Ups 3. Note that idea that the PC can still make the IQ roll was not part of the original Pyramid version, but added in the transition to Power-Ups. Without that, it is simply a conventional Talent, and so again automatically realistic, in the sense of being just a bonus to skills. (By the way, the -1 you mention applies only in comparison with the [15] version, not the [5] version; some discrepancy is inevitable from the fact that the difference in cost buys you two extra levels of talent, whereas the difference in the rolls is 3 in the original.) I love the point in Power-Ups about Empathy and Empath being cumulative; not mine, but a nice way to make Empath more generic.

Hard to Kill: I agree, Playing Dead should be a One Task Wonder. I think - hope - that I wasn't aware of that perk at the time. I was either ahead of my time, or just plain ignorant.

Indomitable: yes, using the machinery from Resistant is a good idea. The bonus then seems rather stingy; if Immunity to Influence Skills is [15], then one should get a (realistic?) +8 bonus for only [7]. In the spirit of the original article, one could obviously spend the remaining [8] on pertinent skills, say, or perhaps in part on a general +1 to Will.

Intuition: pretty much as Danger Sense, above; Hypersensory would be an interesting approach, but wouldn't quite achieve everything I wanted.

Serendipity: this is fundamental, in that it's a kind of pure luck that isn't really open to the "really good/careful" perspective. It isn't that I don't believe people like Timothy Dexter can't exist. (I'd never heard of him, and the linked page isn't very convincing, but I think I get the point.) It's that a person having had that kind of luck up to a certain point doesn't realistically give him any better chance of being lucky again, unless of course in the process he's acquired other positive traits that DO make it more likely - Contacts, Reputation, actual skills... But Serendipity is saying that good i.e. lucky things are going to keep happening to the character, without any real mechanism. Personally I don't believe in, and can't even really make sense of, this idea, in the real world; I don't regard it as realistic. I've got nothing against it as a supernatural effect; it is a kind of generalized Destiny (or Destiny is a kind of Aspected Serendipity or Luck). I didn't mention Destiny in the article, as it is unequivocally (I think) supernatural.

Luck: pretty much as Serendipity, but also open to a couple of other interpretations. Firstly, it could represent something realistic such as character somehow being "careful". Personally, I'm not keen on Luck as the mechanism for representing that, though it is clearly now canon; more to the point, I don't think it was a well-established use when I was writing. Secondly, it can represent a style of play, an aspect of being Cinematic. In that case, arguing that it isn't realistic would be rather missing the point. That's fine, but to me it would not then be a trait belonging only to selected PCs, though it might be a trait possessed by all PCs and by major NPCs. It's not really a personal characteristic but a function of role, in some sense. I rather like the Action approach, where every PC template includes Luck - but it's only appropriate for certain styles of play.

Perfect Balance: yes, Superior Equilibrioception is pertinent here, particularly its Alternative Benefit. It's interesting that the talent has to make reference to "any DX roll... that would benefit from Perfect Balance"; you might think that the more general idea of a Balance roll might exist. The talent doesn't have a source listed in Power-Ups, so presumably didn't exist at the time I was writing.

Unfazeable: absolutely, Rule of... perks would be good here.

Unluckiness: I agree that some of the same issues apply as with the positive traits. Again, in reality there are clearly cases where individuals have been unlucky, in that improbable bad things have happened to them. But I don't believe in Unluckiness i.e. a personal trait that means that such things are going to continue to happen. For me, that would be supernatural; again, a kind of (negative) Destiny. On the other hand, while I don't think Luck is a particularly good model for careful realistic characters, I am a bit more comfortable with Unluckiness as a model for careless realistic ones. Rather than replacing it with Klutz, as suggested in the article, I think that just trusting the GM to stick to realistic disasters or themes would probably be fine. The purist would add Game Time, +0%.

Weirdness Magnet: similar to the above. Weird things happen, but if weird things continue to happen to someone, this is basically supernatural. All the alternatives mentioned above exist, of course. It may be that actual ongoing effects have been inadvertently acquired, such as a Rival (as in the article) or Reputation. Thought: could you apply the Unknown special case (not a modifier, in the strict sense) to a Duty? Or it could be that actual behaviours cause it - as in the article. Finally, just as Luck for all can really be a style of play, you could argue that many groups of PCs act, or are treated, as collective Weirdness Magnets anyway.
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Old 10-03-2014, 04:05 PM   #8
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/21 Cyberpunk - Keeping It Real - REVISITED

Luck-related traits are not realistic in-character traits. But character sheets aren't in character. And someone being consistently fortunate is not unrealistic. Luck-related traits work as a way of choosing for your character to be one of the people who gets a lot of good (or bad) breaks, without representing those people as actually having any special property intrinsic to them.


...As goes the semi-regular 'is luck realistic' discussion.
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Old 10-04-2014, 10:24 PM   #9
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/21 Cyberpunk - Keeping It Real - REVISITED

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
I rather think luck as luck is vastly more realistic than luck as being just that good.
Magic is not more realistic than skill. For some reason this topic has gone in emotional circles in previous threads, so shouldn't be given more than a cursory synopsis of arguments.
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Old 10-04-2014, 11:39 PM   #10
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Default Re: Pyramid #3/21 Cyberpunk - Keeping It Real - REVISITED

I think I see the issue here and have a proposed solution. I don't think anyone should argue that side people when you look at there life stories say 'that person was lucky'. Luck and serendipity help make sure that when your PCs story it's told it will say 'that person was lucky'.

However when the luck is 100% reliable and predictable then it can lead to a style if play where the PC 'knows' they are lucky and relies on it. Occasionally being very reckless 'knowing' through there player that they will succeed. That is the part that needs to be mitigated the PC being able to'count on' there luck because it is a reliable game trait.

As such allowing luck and serendipity but with the unreliable limitation maxed out at 12 skills assure that when the characters story is told they had an unusual amount of lucky breaks but not that they could reliably 'trust fate' and do the seemingly impossible.

Also allowing luck 'correcting critical failure only' should be allowed for PCs who are extra careful or skilled, as the rate of critical failure while thematically a good rate is far too often to line up with reality for most individuals.

Last edited by starslayer; 10-04-2014 at 11:43 PM.
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