View Single Post
Old 08-09-2014, 09:21 AM   #6
Kromm
GURPS Line Editor
 
Kromm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
Default Re: [Basic] Skills of the week: Bicycling, Driving and Piloting

In my secret-agents campaign, Bicycling has come up several times. In countries with excellent road networks in good condition, it's a great way to move around while remaining relatively anonymous, as you aren't pulling in at service stations to buy fuel all the time and you aren't sporting a numbered plate. You can also switch to pedestrian pathways and wilderness as needed, and physically pick up and hide your vehicle. And in many places, you can travel anonymously in a huge peloton of commuters. Of course, it's slow and offers no cover whatsoever. Still, everybody has the Bicycling skill.

Driving is essential in such a game. It's one of the few ways to move a team of agents and their gear from A to B quickly and without the equipment or the agents' faces being too visible. It's often the best way to chase down rivals, too. And more dramatically and less realistically, a spy story without the occasional car chase is boring. The PCs in my campaign mostly have Automobile for ordinary street cars and Heavy Wheeled for makeshift armored transports and trucks loaded with surveillance gear. Motorcycle is well-liked by showoffs, and even Halftrack has shown up, for snowmobile action.

Piloting comes up least often. Aircraft are very, very powerful and useful for secret missions, but also costly and risky. They have to take off and land in suitable areas, creating dangerously predictable bottlenecks. They are easily tracked on radar, and usually are tracked outside of lawless areas. In many jurisdictions, you have to file a flight plan and show a lot of paperwork even to get onto the tarmac. Also, aircraft area easily crippled. Even so, the PCs find Helicopter and Light Airplane kind of useful – especially Helicopter, as such vehicles can take off and land almost anywhere, hover behind concealment, and allow relatively stealthy insertions and extractions.
__________________
Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch <kromm@sjgames.com>
GURPS Line Editor, Steve Jackson Games
My DreamWidth [Just GURPS News]
Kromm is offline   Reply With Quote