Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

While I consider GURPS my "home" or "go-to" system of choice, I like to take a gander at other systems, not with an eye to playing them but because something about their setting appeals to me or because I've heard good things about the mechanics. In the latter case, not only do I like to appreciate some well written mechanics, but I also like to pilfer them where possible.

As a quick example, from Amber DRPG I liked the idea of "player bribes." I'm not saying that it was unique to the system, just that it was the first place that I encountered it and, well, I liked the idea. For the most part, the pilfering from different systems has mostly taken the form of method as it contributes to what I see as improvements to the experience of character generation, and especially so when dealing with online campaigns (which is what I'm mostly restricted to). There's nothing wrong with the approach in GURPS, of course. The whole templates, setting-restricted materials (ads/disads/skills, etc.), etc. is all just peachy. This is just something that I like.

Moving on to the point of the thread, though, at the moment I've been taking a look through Smallville and am liking some of the cooperative background creation, but also the Dresden Files and thus one of my first encounters with the FATE system. There's a whole lot of "meta" in there with regards to Fate chips, etc. Going beyond that, taking a gander at Deathwatch, the idea of the different tactical modes (Squad, Solo) is intriguing regardless of quite how this is handled in-game.

And there's the question: Has anyone been inspired to introduce some "metagame" element, perhaps inspired from a system, to suit your particular style of play? For example, perhaps you like a Group Karma system whereby players can, say, chip in CP that can be used for the benefit of players at specific points, or as a "resource pool" for development of group contacts, allies, or whatever? Or maybe the Good Stuff/Bad Stuff gets your RP juices flowing and players can have Good Stuff (saving up CP) to represent a sort of temporary Luck, whereas Bad Stuff (point burden, or over-expenditure) can be Bad Luck, Weirdness Magnet or just generally just if something is going to go wrong, then the bottle is going to stop spinning on that PC?

Obviously this little quirks aren't going to work for everyone, but as I read through the different systems I realise that they could be useful to some groups in some genre or flavoured games.

Anyway, that got me to wondering whether anyone has done this and, if so, what you've done. Or do you think that this is a bad idea universally, just for you and/or your group, or any combination therein?

This email is brought to you by good holiday spirit and reading through Dungeon Fantasy that really got the 'ole nostalgia flowing. :D

Kage

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

I imported "bennies" from Savage Worlds and changed only how they are spent during the game by setting 1 benny = 1 CP in Buying Success.

- CP are earned by overcoming obstacles or by completing missions/quests/etc.
- Bennies are earned by roleplaying (especially entertaining depictions of disadvantages), good ideas, etc.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

Plot Points (i.e. Player Bribes can be found in Powers p. 192 under the Box Heading GM Bribery).

I have a couple of systems Kage, I'll email them your way and you can take a gander.

Ghostdancer

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

Thanks, Ghostdancer.

There are a number of options in GURPS, of course, but I was just wondering if people had imported other options, be those for the individual player/PC or the group. :D

Kage

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

I use a system I call Drama Points (or, less formally, Drama Cards or Drama Chips, depending on what tokens I'm using for them at the time). They let people mess with die rolls. They are also character points. When you use one on a roll, you're also spending it on the skill/attribute involved in the roll.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

No Prob, check your email when you have time.

Ghostdancer

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

Checked and... interesting. I would still be interested in hearing peoples' experiences in their own additions to their games, but that's an interesting document to look through to save myself some slogging. :D

Kage

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

I have played in games GM'd by Greenneck, where we have had a Luck stat. It went up if you roll a 3 or a 4, and it went down if you rolled a 17 or 18. He would use success/fail numbers from rolls against this stat to help determine who the mutant crocodile would attack, on whom the piano would fall etc.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

That sounds like a randomised variation of the karma concept, or what we used to refer to as the "luck die," or were the GM would make us all roll a die (oh, how appropriate a word) to see who the detritus came down on.

Did you find that a fun mechanic or too arbitrary? Perhaps not tied into the choices in-game, or, alternately, great because it didn't punish you for those choices?

As always, though, thanks for the responses. I'm just exploring options for the "underground living" setting and enjoying reading through how other systems achieve something and how they might be integrated into GURPS (if I wanted; as an option) in an interesting fashion.

Kage

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

I like that one.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

Hero Points: an actual card (handwritten by me and perhaps difficult to forge), is given to a player at the start of the session, it permits a descriptive action (one sentence with one use of the word 'and' such as I take aim and shoot him through the head).
This happens, but the opposing forces are still free to act, as are all other PC's, and is still played out in full.

It's a little more than the 'incredible luck' business of dictating a dice roll, but acting more as a story element (I look on them as 'story helpers').

A player always has a minimum of one card, and can save them up, but they only apply to that character.
If the player spends them all, he can still sacrifice his character to achieve such an action (if it's done in the spirit of the game, and not selfishly, I let them survive to be frozen in a autodoc, for later re-insertion into the lot).

Have had: 'I grab the girls and get them back to the ship', which triggered a fast chase with gunfire, the hero getting badly wounded, and collapsing as he ran up the entry ramp.

Have had: 'I deflect the attacking ship's blasters with my force sword, to destroy their weapons'. Which resulted in the villain's little ship retreating to their base, where we were able to track and infiltrate them.

In a highly cinematic game, where the players contribute a lot to the plot, it works just fine, I find.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

It was good to ramp up the tension. It also made you play your character more conservatively, if you were consistently getting low rolls.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

I allow player contributions, too. In Amber, a player promises a weekly contribution and gets points up front. Since real players have lives, I use a smaller award on a per-contribution basis. The problem I've encountered is that some players have more obligations in real life than others, which leads to drastic disparities over time unless you cap the per-session award at something reasonable.

For instance, I'm not in to painting, but if a player contributes a mini for a PC or recurring NPC, he gets a point. (He still owns the mini, the point is for making it available for use in our game.) If he submits a complete character write-up for a significant NPC (in prose and game mechanics, with a section on tactics be they melee or political), he gets a point, and he may have the opportunity to earn another point later by roleplaying that NPC in an important scene, saving me from "GM Multi-tasking Syndrome". Writing up an organization is worth 2 points, and I have a rubric of 10 points to address (frex, symbol, role, allies and enemies, important members). 2 points seems a good per-session cap. Watch out for overly-complex submissions and omni-competent NPCs or groups.

GEF

PS: I've also played in games that used Whimsy Cards, and that worked well. Not sure if you can still find 'em.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

We started using a concept called the "Luck Point." It was a 5-point ad that you spent to accomplish anything defensive--make a Dodge, survive a fall, etc.

You could not pre-roll and see if you failed; you had to "burn a Luck Point" then you automatically succeeded/survived.

You could also not use it to attack or succeed with a skill--only personal survival.

We were playing a modern-day espionage campaign at the time. The idea was to have the campaign be quite deadly, and yet the PCs (and NPCs) could get out of trouble "James Bond style."

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

Luck mechanics aren't metagame, if it is clearly stated in the rules text that the person controlling the character (a player if it is a PC, or the GM if it is an NPC) must use the Luck ability or ressource to benefit the character.

Also, since you're interested in scouting out other systems, Hero System 5th Edition and 5th Edition Revised has the equivalent of a Luck Advantage, with numerous options for how it can be used. Given the point scale, though, if you want to import it to GURPS the point cost should probably be doubled.


As for my own homebrews, I don't have anything special. I'm fascinated by Luck trats, but haven't done much with them.

Minor and Major Coincidences are much like Serendipity in GURPS but limited to lesser effects and to frequency of use. Also Aspected Luck was regarded by many medieval people as a real phenomenon (as portaryed in "The Long Ships", by Bengtson) that they openly talked and thought about (i.e. not metagame). That's like GURPS' Luck with a Limtitation, except the specific implementaion is unattractive, so the GM needs to fix things up and reduce the cost, e.g. by allowing Very Aspected at -60% as an alternative to -20% Aspected.

More generally, some characters just have more luck than others. It is not metagame at all, if it is observabable and discussable by in-world denizens.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

You can solve that problem with diministing returns

In Sagatafl, players performing work to enrich their characters, prior to gamestart, are awarded Bonus Points (BOPs), e.g. 1 BOP for a short prose backstory or a detailed CV, 2 BOP for a long prose backstory or a very detailed and long CV ("long" requires the character to have something like 18+ years of interesting history so won't work for youngsters), 1 BOP for a small family tree, 2 BOP for a larger family tree, 1 BOP for one juicy family scandal, 2 BOP for 2+ juicy family scandals, more BOPs for famous ancestors or connecting the character to an important NPC in the setting or to another PC, and so forth.

BOPs are then converted to Goodie Points, the equivalent of GURPS' Character Points, via a "pyramidal" function. 1 BOP is 1 GP, 3 BOP is 2 GP, 6 BOP is 3 GP, 10 BOP is 4 GP and 15 BOP is 5 GP.

(You can also use other functions like 1/2/4/8/16/32 (note the differences in the slope!) or the overal steeper 1/3/10/30, but I think in this particular case, pyramidal is the best choice, because the returns shouldn't be too diminishing.)

In this way players who care deeply about the setting are rewarded, but obsessive-compulsives who want to squeeze out every single point of the system find that the last few points cost an inordinate amount of time and effort. (Players who land on an exactly threshold value could be called "landers" and can be teased for putting in the exact amount of work required and no more, i.e. they're doing it purely for the points rather than out of love for the setting).


A similar diminishing returns principles can be used for per-session contributions, such as writing up the events of the session, making drawings of scenes one found interesting, or whatever, and likewise a DRF can be used for the "interest" paid by pre-gamestart contrbutions, as your suggestion with bringing a painted mini for use in the game. That won't work in Sagatafl (GPs are for character creation only, but XPs could be paid instead), but in GURPS doing any one "thing" as contribution could pay a "interest" of 1 CP per session, but if you want the 2 CPs per session you must do any four "things".

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

I wrote this one myself, as a reference sample for a contributed organization: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=10978

GEF

PS: Thanks Peter for the suggestion.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

I did up a system by which chips are awarded at the end of games along with CP. Chips for the most part cannot be translated to CP, and there were no other wealth awards. Every chip spent could be translated to 1 month of income (PCs wealth level /12). To have a specific magic item show up in a hoard, or to make meta-game changes <one time use luck, plot changes, etc>

Here is my chart for awards/spending:
Role playing awards

Creation awards:
Drew/found a picture – 10 chips
Wrote a background story – 10 chips
Advanced background story with in game events – 5 chips

Luck awards (only applicable on a non-altered role that had significance):
roll a 6- 1 chip
roll a 5- 2 chips
roll a 3 – 4 chips
roll a 17 - 3 chips
roll an 18 - 5 chips

Play Awards
Most in character: 4 chips
Most humorous: 5 chips
Most Serious: 3 chips
Most Disturbing: 3 chips
Most unusual use of skill/power (successful): 4 chips
MVP: 8 chips
Most Useless award (player has to have tried things and failed regularly): 5 chips

Event Awards:
Words before swords – 2 chips
Swords before words – 2 chips
Memorable moment – 1 chip/each
Unlikely success(modified skill less then 9 on an important roll and you succeed) - 1 chip/each
Impossible Successes (modified skill less then 7 on an important roll and you succeed) 2 chips/each

Spending Chips

Meta:
EXP – 20chips for every EXP point
Unusual study – 1 chip/level of skill advancement without study time or reasoning
Metaplot change (brother in town, etc) – 1 for little effect, 5 for minor effect, 10 for major effect
Acquire magery(0) – 20 chips
Raise magery (up to 3)– 10 chips/level
Raise magery (beyond 3) – 20 chips/level
Reload weapon (new quiver of arrorws/magazine/etc) – 1 chip
Specialty reload (full mag of tracers, quiver of flame arrows, etc) – 2 chips

Dice & luck:
Roll multiple times; take best – 1 chip/roll
Reroll- 3 chip/reroll
Reroll a critical – 5 chip/reroll; loose bonus from the critical
Force someone else to reroll- add 2 to the above costs.

Treasure:
Mannawell- 200 chips
Items- Each chip is worth 1/10 of starting wealth modified by wealth level
Materials:
Unusual materials(no effectiveness change; crystal instead of iron, etc)- 1 chip
Excelent materials (tiatanium, mithril, etc; adds +1)- Double cost
Fantastic materials (Orlicarlum (+2), magic null, etc) Quadruple cost
Construction:
Fine +1 dam– quadruple cost (No cost in modern)
Very fine +2 dam – twenty times cost (quadruple in modern)
Enchantments:
See enchantment table

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

The campaign I'm wrapping up right now, which was presented throughout as a Sify action/adventure TV series, uses this mechanic:

I used some reasonably weighty-feeling black-and-white poker chips for the tokens. The players would reach a dramatic impasse and firmly clink their chip or chips on the table. They've been a lot of fun, particularly near the end of a game session, when I've built up to the session's critical cliffhanger.

Enough fun that I'm planning to use them again in my next campaign.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

My apologies.

At the same time, now I'm wanting GURPS Metagame as an update to Social Engineering. :D

Thanks for the contributions--they are much appreciated.

Does anyone use these concepts in character generation?

Kage

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

I'm interested in Robin D. Laws' "Hamlet's Hit Points" (it is also available as physical book). Maybe the book has some "metagame tricks", but not "rules" per se, in the sense of "crunch".

I haven't read it yet, but by seeing reviews, it seems an interesting and useful reading.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

The way my players bribe the GM is less rules-related and more beer-related.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

Another one was giving each player five tokens at the beginning of the game. They could expend them as rerolls of a single die, or keep them as character points for expenditure during post session character development.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

In my experience unless you run a particularly lethal game that will simply translate to no use of re-rolls and +5 exp/quest.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

Here's what I do:

Character experience points (CP) are awarded at the beginning of each session, four CP per player. CP can be spent for:

1) A single use of Luck (re-roll a failed die roll or force an NPC to re-roll)
2) Adding a narrative element to a scene. For example, if it hasn't been determined by my description, a character can spend a CP to establish that the carriage that he or she is riding in has a trap door to the roof; the players can trigger the arrival of an NPC into the scene (this would be a good time for the chambermaid to arrive); or whatever. So long as it doesn't violate any established continuity, players can exert a small amount of control over how the scene plays out.
3) Improving the character. Points do not carry over from session to session.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

7th sea used Drama Dice as it's metagame mechanic, and it worked reasonably well (The system itself had major structural flaws, but the metagame mechanic was not one of them). The only flaw was tying it to experience points. It means that they were seldom used, because you were "bleeding XP" if you wend to try something awesome, and used a lot of DD to do it. It resulted, in my experience, in characters acting very cautiously, the opposite of the intended effect, that was meant to simulate highly cinematic actions.

Personally, I say that if what you want is having players spend them freely, you should:

• Put an expiration date on them: Players are much more likely to expend a resource that renews itself and is wasted if unused, than one that they can hoard.
• Don't tie it to experience or any other mechanic

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

Or put a ceiling on them.

The Essence mechanic in In Nomine (which powers both supernatural abilities and luck) isn't a bad model to follow here, in my opinion. Essence regularly regenerates and there are tricks the players can do to speed that regeneration up .... but you can't have more than a certain amount of Essence points, maximum. Again, the player is discouraged from hoarding, since you'll inevitably hit the ceiling and not get any more until you spend again.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

That's... that's... Just fantastic. :D

Gluten-free beer for me!

Thanks to the people that have contributed to the thread. It is much appreciated and has inspired me in a number of different ways. Great.

Kage

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

It was a Cliffhanger / Horror game. Most sessions resulted in the players using three or four of them. One entertaining combat with a bunch of Nerlochs* in a tunnel complex soaked up all of them.


*From one of the Creatures of the Night. Able to FNORD.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

Potentially interesting idea — jargon copied from Shadowrun 2ed, mechanics copied from Consumable Signature Gear:

Karma Pool(5/level)
You have a pool of [Level] karma points. Each session, these refresh to full. You can spend a karma point from this pool in place of a character point to activate a transient rule like Influencing Success Rolls.

This way, a character who regularly uses such rules sacrifices a larger amount of power once, instead of a smaller amount of power on an ongoing basis. Other characters can still spend a smaller amount of power once to dip into the rule.

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

Be careful with it. It will work IF you severely restrict what the CP can be used for: not to fuel advantages with the cost CP limitation (multiplies cost by 1/5, just like Alternate abilities). Also, be careful as not all the options are equally powerful (and beware of bullet time at 3 CPs. 1 ue of bullet time per session at 15 CPs is a steal).

Just a degenerate example:

Crushing Attack 60 (6dx10, cost 1 CP per use) [60]+Karma Pool 1 [5] means that you have a one use per session artillery-level attack per just 65 points

Re: Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?
 

These would be pretty unbalancing; as long as you specify that Karma Pool can't be used to power advantages though it is pretty handy. I remember some stories on the forum about games in which one player would always burn CP for dice rolls while the others managed to save theirs. This was OK for a while, but eventually the CP burner got quite far behind the other characters in terms of capabilities. Worse yet, he had to continue to spend CP just to keep up with the other characters. An advantage like this, properly restricted, would have prevented this from happening.