Re: GenCon Demo Scenario
 

By having the zombies Dodge, you teach players that Dodge is a thing in GURPS. To me, that seems more important than what makes tactical sense for the zombies.

You can explain All-Out Attack if it comes up, but showing fundamental features of GURPS is a higher priority.

Re: GenCon Demo Scenario
 

By having the PCs dodge you teach them that dodge is a thing in GURPS.

That's showing a fundamental feature right there.




Which means you cant reload, change posture, feint and so on.

Reloading bows is probably something you want to let people do.

And from what Doug wrote Feints and so on WERE in the demo.

By making the zombies all out attack you do not take away a key feature of GURPS in comparison to D&D because the PCs still get a dodge, parry and/or block.

Im surprised that I have to point that out here to people familiar with PC defence rolls.

Active Defence is going to be pretty obvious the first time one of the PCs is hit, and then defends. You are then going to have to explain DB and so onto them.

I'll give you that players might think that only PCs get an active defence but I doubt it, because sooner or later one of them will all out attack and lose it. They'll see the difference right then.

Re: GenCon Demo Scenario
 

I don't recall people using ranged attackers much if at all. I recall seeing Feints maybe one or twice, but not often.



Which is only part of the equation. "So I can dodge but they can't?" seems like a tiresome question to answer repeatedly.


Pretty much. Again, I was there. It worked. People liked what they saw. I'm not about to armchair quarterback the GM or the demo folks. That's bout all I need to say on the subject I think.

Re: GenCon Demo Scenario
 

That's the important thing. We had mostly non-GURPS people running this demo all weekend and it ran fine and people came away, by and large, more interested in GURPS (or at least the DFRPG) than when they started. Would an experienced GURPS player have made different tactical choices? Certainly - but that wasn't the point of the demo. One of the points of the demo WAS to show how DFRPG differs from other fantasy RPGs the players may have seen, and zombies who can dodge attacks are very different from the mindless shamblers in other games.

Most important, however, it worked. Nitpicking the demo for not doing something it was never intended to do misses the point entirely, I think.

Re: GenCon Demo Scenario
 

Asking questions about an event or offering suggestions for it is not armchair quaterbacking.
The 1940s origin of the expression is an non expert offering advice and opinion (presumably to an expert)
It seems to have expanded to someone who says what to do without getting involved..

I've just asked why a decision was made and given reasons for trying something different.

Most of the reviews for DFRPG have pointed out things that they would have preffered while saying it works Most players I have ask questions and suggest different ideas while still agreeing thst the session worked.


I hope the suggestion is considered and accepted/rejected in the spirit in which it was given.

Re: GenCon Demo Scenario
 

Demonstrating basics of GURPS combat (PCs and NPCS both make active defenses) > verisimilitude of enemy tactics

Re: GenCon Demo Scenario
 

The simple fact is that we timed these demos in the office, running them with the options we chose. They came in at a speedy 5 minutes, which is where you want your demo to be at a convention like Gen Con. They have to:

A. Appeal to non-fans
B. Be fun
C. Be fast

Adding any options to a players choices means the game is going to go over time and you're going to either lose their interest, or even worse, give them a bad first experience. We wanted heroes to be able to hit the monsters pretty much every time, but also show them that the monsters had a way to defend themselves, hence one choice for defense on the sides. I completely understand the desire to give players a lot of options to give them an example of the entire system, but that just is not conducive to a good general demo. We did provide them with further information about the system ("There's more options than we are providing, like X, X, and X, this is just a quick demo to give an example), or if an existing GURPS player game up, Jimmie and Ben were able to give some more detailed rundowns of the differences.

However, for the general, mass consuming audience, this demo was just about the perfect distillation of what we could do with Dungeon Fantasy RPG in 5 minutes.

Re: GenCon Demo Scenario
 

It might make sense to just use a different foe type than zombies. Skeletons with shields perhaps, we know from Jason and the Argonauts that skeletons block.

Re: GenCon Demo Scenario
 

So Skeletons that can shield block is perfectly realistic but dodging Zombies , now that... that is unrealistic?

Re: GenCon Demo Scenario
 

Nothing to do with realism, just tradition. Zombies are supposed to be slow plodding hordes.