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Old 06-25-2019, 11:15 AM   #21
Ulzgoroth
 
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Default Re: Telegraphic Attack for Ranged Combat?

I'm a bit disturbed by equating 'narrative justification' with visual storytelling cues. Especially when GURPS doesn't actually do visual storytelling...
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Old 06-25-2019, 11:26 AM   #22
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Default Re: Telegraphic Attack for Ranged Combat?

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
I'm a bit disturbed by equating 'narrative justification' with visual storytelling cues. Especially when GURPS doesn't actually do visual storytelling...
I'm not asking that visual cues by provided in GURPS! I'm just saying that in a movie, if you had a narrative justification for somebody getting a greatly increased change to hit, it would be visually expressed. I'd be willing to go with a verbal justification cited from a novel, or with a citation to actual practice of shooting or throwing at targets. I just want to know what Boge thinks is happening in non-game-mechanical terms that the game mechanics is meant to represent.

Actually, I wrote up something a lot like this for GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses, as "Archer's Trance," which gives you +3 to hit a target at the expense of not seeing your surroundings. See the story of Arjuna shooting at the bird in the Mahabharata, which is what inspired that ability. But I don't see that as really comparable to telegraphic attack; it's not shown as something that a neophyte could resort to to gain a chance of hitting, but as something that a highly trained archer would be capable of through superior enlightenment.
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Old 06-25-2019, 03:44 PM   #23
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Default Re: Telegraphic Attack for Ranged Combat?

The idea behind a Telegraphic Attack is that you're really winding up, showing your opponent that you're getting ready to swing. That's why they get a +2 to their defense. They see it coming. How can you telegraph a ranged shot with a bow, crossbow, or gun? Tense up your face? Flex your shoulders before firing? It just doesn't make a lot of sense.
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Old 06-25-2019, 04:04 PM   #24
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Default Re: Telegraphic Attack for Ranged Combat?

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
I'm not asking that visual cues by provided in GURPS! I'm just saying that in a movie, if you had a narrative justification for somebody getting a greatly increased change to hit, it would be visually expressed. I'd be willing to go with a verbal justification cited from a novel, or with a citation to actual practice of shooting or throwing at targets. I just want to know what Boge thinks is happening in non-game-mechanical terms that the game mechanics is meant to represent.
Why did you ask DouglasCole if you wanted to know what Boge thinks?
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The idea behind a Telegraphic Attack is that you're really winding up, showing your opponent that you're getting ready to swing. That's why they get a +2 to their defense. They see it coming. How can you telegraph a ranged shot with a bow, crossbow, or gun? Tense up your face? Flex your shoulders before firing? It just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Which is basically what everybody else in the thread has already said?
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Old 06-25-2019, 05:48 PM   #25
DouglasCole
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Default Re: Telegraphic Attack for Ranged Combat?

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What's the narrative rationale for all of this? How, for example, would you show the hero of a movie doing something in combat that these rules would represent?
There's a scene in Lethal Weapon where Danny Glover does *exactly* this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aSdLAndoJU
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Old 06-25-2019, 06:49 PM   #26
DouglasCole
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Squinting his/her eyes really tight. ;)
That's exactly what Danny Glover does in the movie clip I linked. Now that I think of it, there's the Sniper's Prayer in "Saving Private Ryan" and one of the big scenes at the end of The Untouchables:

"You got him?"
"I got him."
[Bad guy starts to say something]
"TAKE HIM!"

Aiming guy shoots bad guy right through the mouth, naturally killing him instantly because that's what happens in movies.
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Old 06-25-2019, 07:06 PM   #27
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Default Re: Telegraphic Attack for Ranged Combat?

If you goal is just to improve chances to hit, my house rule is that All-Out Attacks (Determined) for a ranged weapon gives a +1 bonus for unaimed ranged attacks and +4 for aimed ranged attacks (i.e., for which you took one or more Aim maneuvers prior to attacking).

I came up with this rule to replace the various "non-combat bonuses" for ranged attack - particularly firearms, as defined on p.9 of GURPS Tactical Shooting - that were added in order to match "real world" accuracy results on a firing range. I made the change because I found the reason for giving the non-combat bonuses were too easy to argue that they could be applied in certain situations even in combat. For example, "+1 if no one is shooting back thus no sense of risk to the shooter"; well, players can easily get into positions where the enemies don't know where they are and get the bonus, arguing they won't be worried until spotted...

To avoid the headaches of such debates, I simply upped the bonus if you All-Out Determined after an Aim to represent all of those "non-combat effects", and players can specifically make the choice to apply that extra bonus or not, with the associated risks of All-Out-Attacks having no defenses. To me, someone doing an All-Out (Determined) really isn't worried about someone shooting back, so should get the same bonuses as firing on a range where he (hopefully) not worried about someone shooting at him. Note that I also balance this out by requiring players to do Fear checks to be able to take All-Out maneuvers in situations where they actually are under fire or in danger of taking damage.

A side perk of this house rule is that the use of Aiming and All-Out (Determined) for ranged attacks actually went up in my campaigns... at least until the PCs reach a skill level where they didn't care about the bonuses anymore.

It also made minion bad guys who took time to Aim significantly more dangerous, so beware of that effect, thus re-emphasizing the "advice to GMs" that opponents you want your PCs to breeze through should not Aim with ranged attacks, as adding Acc +4 for an Aim+ AoA combo is nasty. But that very threat that I could do that made my players more cautious of anyone with a gun, and more likely to provide covering fire just to have opponents make fear checks so as to not Aim and All-Out... so, from a GM perspective, I found that to also be a win (but that's what I want in my games, which is certainly not the situation for every campaign).
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Old 06-26-2019, 12:14 AM   #28
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Default Re: Telegraphic Attack for Ranged Combat?

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Originally Posted by DouglasCole View Post
There's a scene in Lethal Weapon where Danny Glover does *exactly* this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aSdLAndoJU
Yep, it's a thing in HK 2 gun ballet films as well, Chow Yun-Fat shooting the back of the bullet to blow up a pipe and to open the door to the weapons vault in Hard Boiled springs to mind. On top of that his character does this after abandoning one more usual aiming attempt (but I can't find a clip).

IMO in that particular genre it's a motif that comes through from the HK martial arts sensibilities they're partly built off. (So I guess kind of in keeping with the subject of the thread)


To be honest I think looking at aiming in a variety of ways as a meaningful moment in and of itself is a common thing in a lot of gun heavy genres, western's spring to mind as well.

One of the reasons I like your On target article is that it references this idea that aiming itself can in RPG terms be a gamable action that is subject to variables and tensions in it's own right and not just an announcement and step before resolving the attack.
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Last edited by Tomsdad; 06-26-2019 at 01:38 AM.
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Old 06-26-2019, 01:11 AM   #29
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YOne of the reasons I like your On target article is that references this idea that aiming is itself can in RPG terms be a gamable action that is subject to variables and tensions in it's own right and not just an announcement and step before resolving the attack.
And while the narrative stuff is fun and all - and it is - this was the real point of the article, made not entirely for game-mechanical reasons. This matches my real-world experience on the rifle and pistol range. That includes dynamic targets at IPSC as well as things like the Zombie Shoot I did a long time ago. Sometimes you're just ON, and your sights magically align and you JUST KNOW you've made a great shot. Sometimes your sights wander and you just get get the sight picture you want. Sometimes you get impatient and aim badly and just mash the trigger and you know it.

While all COULD be abstracted into the shooting roll, that doesn't match my experience.

From a reviews standpoint, On Target remains perhaps my second-most adopted article/concept behind my grappling works. Folks that have used it loved it; I've heard at least one group who won't NOT use it after trying it, so it's not JUST me.
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Old 06-26-2019, 01:21 AM   #30
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From a reviews standpoint, On Target remains perhaps my second-most adopted article/concept behind my grappling works. Folks that have used it loved it; I've heard at least one group who won't NOT use it after trying it, so it's not JUST me.
I intend to try it out if I ever get my Old West game off the ground.
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