Ravens N' Pennies - GURPS Content Posts

[Wavefunction]

Originally Posted by Anders

Interesting. When will the D-team kick off?

This.

No pressure. :p

[The_Ryujin]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Thanks, guys. Sometimes it hits me really hard. Most times I can just power through it. But not this time. Hopefully I'll be able to get everything else organized so that I can go back to a 3 day release schedule on the blog. That's my goal. But I want to get all my Aeon Teams settled down, kill off my work pile to manageable levels, and get a nice bumper of blog posts in case I do feel a bit unwell.

No problems there man. Just keep up the awesome work.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Anders

Interesting. When will the D-team kick off?

Originally Posted by Wavefunction

This.

No pressure. :p

I need to finish off some tidbits for the other teams and then make sure my workload is caught up sufficiently. Once that happens I can finish up your guys documentation and then we can go round and round till we have characters. :-)

Patience, guys. Patience.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by The_Ryujin

No problems there man. Just keep up the awesome work.

Thanks. :-) I will.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Gamemaster's Guidepost: Someone Always Has to be the Nazis

Nazis....I hate those guys. After a random comment from someone else I got to thinking...what is a "nazi" (metaphorically speaking) and how could you use it for your games?

[Kalzazz]

The term I generally use is 'goblins', the sort of general purpose riff raff that exists primarily to be killed in job lots

However to me the most iconic is 'Goon with an AK-47', they can be Soviets, minions of some 3rd world dictator, mercenaries, drug cartel, terrorists, mafia, ninjas , gang members or Viet Cong, but once you start getting a bunch of guys toting AK-47s together they are the most classic and iconic enemies du jour. They don't even have to be human, they can be undead, robots, golems or whatever if they feel motivated enough, but give them an AK-47 (or an AKM) and put them in groups

In the Tanuki City USA campaign I run, I specifically tell players at chargen time 'the modern equivalent of the goblin, and most staple adversary is the goon with an AK-47, so suppose you are 10 paces from a dozen skill 12-14 goons wielding AK-47s, ready? Fight! Do you win? If not, you need to rethink your character, because you will be running into these guys'

As a DM, especially in a system like GURPS which lacks as much a regimented set of character builds and monsters (NOTE! I am not saying that GURPS lacks monsters, but that it doesn't have quite as regimented a comparison of monsters to characters) where players can't be expected to have memorized half the monster manual it can really help to give players some examples of expected Red team foes so they can get a better feel of where they stand

For instance in my Zombies and Loin Cloths campaign, I specifically said 'Any of the monsters from GURPS Zombies are good, as are the critters from DF Summoners, and you can expect versions of monsters from Myth the Fallen Lords and Doom'

Is that all the monsters in that campaign? Of course not. And I probably won't use every single zombie type from GURPS Zombies on camera either. But it gives them a good baseline idea of what they will run across and how strong their characters are (or are not), and they aren't bothered when a zombie wearing black shoots them with a shotgun, because they were warned ahead of time to know Doom enemies are a thing, and of course certain types of Doom zombies wear black and wield shotguns

edit - oddly enough, in Zombies and Loin Cloths I dont think I really use Nazis (or goblins) per se, your garden variety adversary is some version of undead, who deserves pity and when possible an honorable (if field expedient) funeral. Many of them are former members of the Royal Army or Royal Constabulary who fought and died against the Necro Lord and thus were raised as undead in his service. Many of them even have some manner of name or backstory that underscores this, for instance one boss (though by virtue of being a boss, not really a goblin / Nazi) was named Oscar the Bear, who was an officer in the Royal Army who defended the East Watchtower and lit its beacon, fighting to keep the beacon burning so the Royal Family had time to evacuate as the Necro Lord's army struck, then raised as a burning zombie in constant torment by the very flames of the watchtower beacon to serve the Necro Lord etc

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Gamemaster's Guidepost: Someone Always Has to be the Nazis

Nazis....I hate those guys. After a random comment from someone else I got to thinking...what is a "nazi" (metaphorically speaking) and how could you use it for your games?

It is depressingly ironic that we dehumanize those that dared to dehumanize so many. If torture is evil, then torturing a torturer is still evil.

[mhd]

Unless we're talking about non-sentients/free-willed beings (robots, zombies...), I've got a hard time with both moralistic simplicity (I've got video games for that) and strangely enough, mook rules. The latter always seem like bad patches for a rule system to me. IMHO not needed in GURPS, especially if the point delta is high enough. I'm for rules that apply to everyone at the table, both mechanical and moral.

I think society in general is moving away from that -- although that seems to make some people seek this out in RPGs even more so. Then again, my first RPG experiences included orcs and goblins that were closer to the Indians of (later) Western movies, not the Tolkienistic theological corrupt beings of D&D, so that might have some influence, too.

I've got a hard time enough with the general kill count of RPGs, there's only so much handwaving I can take if I aim for a (for me) decent level of immersion.

[Flyndaran]

Some nice black and white playing is fun. I just don't like shoe horning real people or hypothetical sapients into true monstrous inhumans like has become the norm with regards to Nazis. Sadly, because of culture it has become a shorthand for inhuman monsters "in need of killin'."

[Anders]

I hate Illinois Nazis.