Bat in the Attic - GURPS Content Post

[robertsconley]

Looking at a better way of awarding experience in relationship to in-game time.

Post

Link to an earlier post that looked at applying Runequest's method of XP award to GURPS.

Two campaign logs to illustrate how my GURPS campaign go.

The Nomar Campaign, Part 1
The Nomar Campaign, Part 2

[Christopher R. Rice]

Welcome to the Brotherhood of Bloggers Who Blog Too Much! *hands decoder ring*

[robertsconley]

<twiddles with the ring>

"Eat more GURPS Flakes."

I knew it was too good to be true ;-)

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

<twiddles with the ring>

"Eat more GURPS Flakes."

I knew it was too good to be true ;-)

"GURPS Flakes, starting your day off the generic way!"

[Purple Haze]

If you think RuneQuest method of learning through experience is good you have obviously never actually played RuneQuest. It is an abomination. Any player with half a brain games it unmercifully. You end up with a party of tick hunters who have every skill in the game on their character sheets, and whose best skills are those they randomly happened to get lucky with.

[Kalzazz]

That sounds like my experience with Palladium Fantasy

'Gain CP for using skills? Use skills on EVERYTHING!'

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

If you think RuneQuest method of learning through experience is good you have obviously never actually played RuneQuest. It is an abomination. Any player with half a brain games it unmercifully. You end up with a party of tick hunters who have every skill in the game on their character sheets, and whose best skills are those they randomly happened to get lucky with.

I have run Runequest a few times. Enough to know about the issue. I already used this system in a long GURPS campaign. Unlike Runequest version the player still get a free cp every session. Plus xp for achieving goals and finally a cp for a crit succeed. None of them I think would have kept Runequest style munchkinism in check but in conjunction they seem to work.

But the primary reason the issue doesn't come is due to my style of refereeing and running a sandbox campaign.

[johndallman]

How does one start a skill under this system? Can you buy it with a character point, or do you have to succeed at a default roll? The latter would reproduce a problem I found in playing a long RQ campaign: when your skill is very low, getting a tick is (a) quite hard work, because your chance of success is low and (b) dangerous, because you're using up actions on things that probably won't work.

Does your GMing style involve many rolls at penalties? (GURPS Action's BAD makes them very common) I could see that having a problem with this system, simply because a skill of 14-15 becomes highly unreliable when subjected to significant penalties, yet rolling above it to gain skill is quite unlikely.

Overall, having played quite a lot of RQ, I think I'd prefer playing GURPS with smaller cp awards than using this method.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by johndallman

How does one start a skill under this system? Can you buy it with a character point, or do you have to succeed at a default roll?

In my opinion this makes more sense under GURPS with its system of defaults. You would have to succeed the default under meaningful circumstance. Then fail the subsequent roll to learn the first cp.

The other method is to save up some coins and train.

In practice the PCs just used their free cp or cp earned through achieving goals.

Once the group decided to take some time out and train their first cp. Each picked a skill and one I think picked a skill that needed 1 cp in.

Originally Posted by johndallman

The latter would reproduce a problem I found in playing a long RQ campaign: when your skill is very low, getting a tick is (a) quite hard work, because your chance of success is low and (b) dangerous, because you're using up actions on things that probably won't work.

One reason we decided to go with the aware of 1 cp per session to head off the above. There also the training time rules which give the players 1 cp per 45 days of adventuring. Or faster if they go with dedicated training.

Originally Posted by johndallman

Does your GMing style involve many rolls at penalties? (GURPS Action's BAD makes them very common) I could see that having a problem with this system, simply because a skill of 14-15 becomes highly unreliable when subjected to significant penalties, yet rolling above it to gain skill is quite unlikely.

I tend to run 100 to 150 pt GURPS fantasy games with a lot of the combat options that are oriented toward realism coupled with GURPS Magic. Pretty much I run things by the book when I can.

In general I don't recall having many rolls at penalties.

[robertsconley]

I look at adding d6s to a GURPS success check and see if it is similar to the advantage/disadvantage mechanic of D&D 54.

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/20...advantage.html

As Douglas Cole points it out each d6 added and taking the highest 3 or lowest 3 is equivalent of +1 or -1 modifier.