Just Roll 3d6 - GURPS Content Posts

[philosophyguy]

I just posted a review of Power-Ups 7: Wildcard Skills . This is a really useful resource for streamlining games. While doing the review, I also re-discovered the idea of Wildcard Points, a form of buying success that makes wildcard skills worth investigating even in games with long skill lists and lots of crunch.

[philosophyguy]

Today's post on Aborting Combat contains GM-centric advice for ending a conflict that seems too deadly for the PCs.

There's a lot of discussion about combat balance in GURPS, and it's true that balancing combat encounters can be challenging. This post approaches the problem of balance from the other direction: what if GMs knew how to abort a combat sequence without making it feel fake to the players? If GMs develop that skill, then balancing combat perfectly becomes less important because the GM has an escape hatch available for when combat becomes accidentally unbalanced.

[philosophyguy]

There's a new post at Just Roll 3d6 on character creation options. This post discusses five mechanical options for building characters, from standard point buy methods to templates to completely point-free approaches. The focus is on understand what each method does best so you can choose an approach that fits the needs of your game and your players.

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by philosophyguy

Today's post on Aborting Combat contains GM-centric advice for ending a conflict that seems too deadly for the PCs.

There's a lot of discussion about combat balance in GURPS, and it's true that balancing combat encounters can be challenging. This post approaches the problem of balance from the other direction: what if GMs knew how to abort a combat sequence without making it feel fake to the players? If GMs develop that skill, then balancing combat perfectly becomes less important because the GM has an escape hatch available for when combat becomes accidentally unbalanced.

"Even something as simple as the passage of time can have an effect"

I imagine that LOTR-like orcs would end up retreating when they're in sunlight, and LOTR trolls would turn to stone outright! :P

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by philosophyguy

There are some obvious ways to bail from combat if an encounter is too deadly: having the NPCs suddenly pull their punches, adjusting stats on the fly, or fudging dice rolls.

I end up fudging a lot of rolls if the players are getting antsy. Things go from a mathematical system to improvised narration--and back again, when the situation is more controlled.

[philosophyguy]

Two new posts this week, both focused on the Kickstarter campaign:

Dungeon Fantasy Kickstarter Announced is a mini-review of the Kickstarter offerings, based on the information publicly announced so far, and an encouragement to participate if you have not done so already.

Why GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is awesome discusses both why fantasy dungeon delves are a great genre, as well as why GURPS implements that genre extremely well for both new and experienced players.

[Kalzazz]

One thing that would help immensely on helping players avoid getting stomped by biting off more than they can chew is better tips and guidelines on how to impart knowledge about how chewy something is

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

One thing that would help immensely on helping players avoid getting stomped by biting off more than they can chew is better tips and guidelines on how to impart knowledge about how chewy something is

"These mercenaries are wearing rough, ill-fitting uniforms. The ceramic inserts for their armor seem to be missing, leaving them at a significant disadvantage."

[philosophyguy]

The latest post from Just Roll 3d6 is up: Ballparking Damage in GURPS. This post gives order-of-magnitude damage roll estimates for a variety of weapons and injuries, so GMs can estimate how much damage attacks should do when they don't have the weapon statistics in front of them.

[philosophyguy]

Halloween is coming up, so Just Roll 3d6 dives into Simplified Fright Checks. Fright checks can be used in almost any game genre to add an element of risk, vulnerability, or fear. This post shows how to simplify fright checks, all the way down to basic success roll.