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Old 08-13-2015, 02:17 PM   #11
VariousRen
 
Join Date: Apr 2015
Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

Ghostdancer, I completely agree, and I also love the way that low point characters are never completely outclassed by higher point ones in the same way that they are in something like D&D. Because a stab through the heart is about as deadly at 40 points as it is at 300, clever gameplay can be very rewarding at all point levels.

My favourite moment was at the very start of our low fantasy game, the party was a group of kids (15 years old) raised from birth in the army (we didn't know why). The town we were stationed in for training was being attacked, and the leader of the camp was trying to get us out while the more disposable troops held off the attackers.

At the time, Terry had both post-combat-shakes and cowardice(15). When the leader said we should get going and we were attacked by orcs, Terry critically failed his cowardice roll. I realised that it was very possible that he would lead us deeper into the war, and in my critically failed mind, there was only one way to stop him from bringing us on that death march. As he fought off the orcs (and the other PC's danced around the edges taking swings when they could), Terry walked up behind him, and axed him in the back of the skull (he had taken off his helmet to speak to us, conveniently). The rest of the PC's kept the orcs away, while I axed him in the skull until he finally stopped trying to get up. We looted the body, and then ran out of town, having decided that it was time to get away from the army that had basicly imprisoned us since birth.

It was only afterwards that the DM told us the stats for the leader, something like DX-16, ST-18, HT-16, HP-26, and so on. He was suppose to be a RPG style super character, who would get us out of town, but a freaked out teen with an axe and the ability to sneak up behind him was enough to put him down without a scratch. 40-CP character: 1, 400-CP character: 0.
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Old 08-13-2015, 02:25 PM   #12
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

I ran a fantasy campaign a while back that was in the vein of Tolkien (destroy the macguffin and protect a non-warrior type). The group was pulled together from the best heroes of the day and by a demigoddess. No one ever balked about their roles in the game because they choose them, but when the demigoddess rolled three 18s back to back on survival/stunning because of a single high damage attack my players looked at GURPS in a whole new light. It doesn't matter how many points you have - a critical success/failure at the wrong/right time is deadly. Now I'll happily admit that tuning that dial up or down is very tricky. One thing I've wanted to do for a while has been to create a series of rules that are "bundled" together to simulate particular genres or game styles so GMs can just grab and go. But digging through all the books and putting the page references together usually stops me. It's just too much work. Still, it might be worthwhile now. Hmmm.
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Old 08-13-2015, 02:35 PM   #13
VariousRen
 
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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Originally Posted by Ghostdancer View Post
I ran a fantasy campaign a while back that was in the vein of Tolkien (destroy the macguffin and protect a non-warrior type). The group was pulled together from the best heroes of the day and by a demigoddess. No one ever balked about their roles in the game because they choose them, but when the demigoddess rolled three 18s back to back on survival/stunning because of a single high damage attack my players looked at GURPS in a whole new light. It doesn't matter how many points you have - a critical success/failure at the wrong/right time is deadly. Now I'll happily admit that tuning that dial up or down is very tricky. One thing I've wanted to do for a while has been to create a series of rules that are "bundled" together to simulate particular genres or game styles so GMs can just grab and go. But digging through all the books and putting the page references together usually stops me. It's just too much work. Still, it might be worthwhile now. Hmmm.
I will use this opportunity to shamelessly plug my own game. We use an obsidian portal page to hold all the information about the world and the rules we are using. https://the-fall-of-brekhan.obsidian...ikis/main-page

It is a low tech, low fantasy game, very high on the realism and gritty axis. Magic is almost all house ruled, and healing magic is very weak. We have had players bleed out in the arms of their comrades, characters who retired for several months to wait for war wounds to recover, and PC's limping into court after an assassination attempt the night before that left them at -HP. If you ever put together a list of different rules, you are fully welcome to grab from the list of rules we use.

If anyone is interested the sessions are all recorded and posted on youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdo...YLkfnhr3vYXpFg
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Old 08-13-2015, 02:54 PM   #14
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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I will use this opportunity to shamelessly plug my own game. We use an obsidian portal page to hold all the information about the world and the rules we are using. https://the-fall-of-brekhan.obsidian...ikis/main-page

It is a low tech, low fantasy game, very high on the realism and gritty axis. Magic is almost all house ruled, and healing magic is very weak. We have had players bleed out in the arms of their comrades, characters who retired for several months to wait for war wounds to recover, and PC's limping into court after an assassination attempt the night before that left them at -HP. If you ever put together a list of different rules, you are fully welcome to grab from the list of rules we use.

If anyone is interested the sessions are all recorded and posted on youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdo...YLkfnhr3vYXpFg
Interesting stuff! Thanks for sharing.
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Old 08-13-2015, 03:39 PM   #15
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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Has anyone experimented with running shorter 2 hour sessions twice or three times a week to speed through the low point section while saving the now-vs-later decisions?
Playing several times a week is the tough part. As a student, I belonged to a group that gamed all weekend, every weekend, and usually at least one evening during the week. We were playing various OD&D and AD&D forms, and starting from first level was mandatory, and made perfect sense under those conditions.

When your players are adults with jobs and families, one session a week is good going. Making the sessions short doesn't help that much.
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Old 08-13-2015, 08:40 PM   #16
Christopher R. Rice
 
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

After reading up on your Wiki a bit, VariousRen, I've got a few questions and maybe a few suggestions. Take them all with a grain of salt.
  • Healing: It occurs to me that you could create the same low-magical healing effect you want, while also allowing that one big instance of lifesaving magic by allowing supernatural healing to restore at most you HP every month or so and require bed rest for anything else. You could probably create a spell that would accelerate bedrest as well if you were of a mind. It still captures the "magic healing is rare/hard," while giving players options.
  • Long Term Magic Healing: This penalty looks really harsh. Can I suggest using the Long-Distance Modifiers (p. B241) instead, reading miles as days. It's still harsh - but not super harsh.
  • Magic Words: This is kind of neat. I just released something like this on my Patreon page. :-)
  • Detect Spellcaster: How was the cost arrived at exactly?
  • New/Modified Skills: Same here? Design-wise it looks okay, I'm just curious how you arrived at it.

Magic in genreal is as you describe it - "hand wavy" - but honestly, if you were to put some work into it (and I wouldn't mind giving it a go over after you're done) this would be perfect for Ritual Path Magic. Just disallow Ritual Adept completely and limit Magery so that skill levels are capped at a specific point. Overall, a very cool read, thanks again for sharing it.
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Old 08-13-2015, 08:58 PM   #17
Victor Maxus
 
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

Low point is my standard. 25 CP for medieval, 40 for horror and 50 for space explorers. But with mine they grow slowly, and my characters don't mind, in fact they enjoy it. They liked struggling through their first early adventures where their greatest threats were surviving adverse weather conditions and the occasional small band of brigands or orcs. Now, after a few years of play, they have reached 65 total points. Not much, but they are happy about their gradual success. They started as peasants in a village (all teens, with little prospect of the future). Now they are growing. One has his own small fishing boat, another is studying to become a herald, a third a priest in one of the churches, three have made man-at-arms for nobles, and another is now the private ostler for the Queen herself.

I know, big deal, but for us, it is what we want. We spent years in high powered, awesome character playing and now they are more than content with the low end of the adventures. If you are a group of 250 point characters, who cares if you kill that one troll. A group of 40-50 point characters, that's a major accomplishment.

It really is all perspective and personal taste. But I like the idea of low character starting, even if you are building them high. There's more satisfaction at accomplishment and instead of thinking up a back story, you actually play through it. But it does take time and commitment, and fortunately my players have that.
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Old 08-13-2015, 09:48 PM   #18
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

Low CP is very relative for genre and campaigns, the exalted-gurps game I've been running had the players feeling very low powered at around 250 points starting out. These days (40ish sessions later) they are about 800 points and have just started to grow into mature power which even powerful people in the game world have to respect.
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Old 08-14-2015, 12:49 AM   #19
evileeyore
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Default Re: Low CP Characters: Start small, Grow often

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I wouldn't even try to run multiple sessions in a week. My players are too busy for more than one session a month—and one of my two current campaigns seems to miss nearly as many months as we actually get together for.
Well yeah, we're old. When I was in grade school we gamed friday night through to sunday afternoon, with only breaks for meals, to go home and shower, and a pair of 4 hour naps.

In high school, I ran 3 games during the week (before school, at lunch, and during a study hall) and was in two different games after school and we all still did wargaming/rpgs on the weekend.

After graduation we got jobs and all that ceased. We never knew how good we had it then.
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Old 08-14-2015, 06:24 AM   #20
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After graduation we got jobs and all that ceased. We never knew how good we had it then.
As the old joke says, "What you mean—we?" I started rpging in 1975, when I was 25.
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