What do you want for the 35-year anniversary?

[Anders]

Slightly off-topic but I've been thinking about making a castle-design system the same way. Start with a basic keep, then add things like external walls, fortified gates, etc. as Cost Factors.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Anders

Slightly off-topic but I've been thinking about making a castle-design system the same way. Start with a basic keep, then add things like external walls, fortified gates, etc. as Cost Factors.

Somewhere, I've got an article I never submitted to Pyramid which takes a modular approach, providing pre-built components from which to build a castle: pick some options for materials and "weight" of fortification (that is, short, narrow walls vs. high thick ones), then just buy towers and keeps from a table and y yards of curtain wall.

[Anders]

That's how Swedish D&D handled it. And each component had a Troop Strength which added to defending force (provided the component was fully manned).

[(E)]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

Somewhere, I've got an article I never submitted to Pyramid which takes a modular approach, providing pre-built components from which to build a castle: pick some options for materials and "weight" of fortification (that is, short, narrow walls vs. high thick ones), then just buy towers and keeps from a table and y yards of curtain wall.

Somewhere around the depths of my PC is a draft for a village building system, which is technically accurate but suffers from being able to curdle milk at 50 paces.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by (E)

Somewhere around the depths of my PC is a draft for a village building system, which is technically accurate but suffers from being able to curdle milk at 50 paces.

Which is why you should never offend a witch while you're working on an article.

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by Anders

Slightly off-topic but I've been thinking about making a castle-design system the same way. Start with a basic keep, then add things like external walls, fortified gates, etc. as Cost Factors.

I seem to remember a similarly modular system in first-edition AD&D's DMG.

Making the pieces, using the rules in the Low Tech Companions, should just be a labor of love and math.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Proteus

I seem to remember a similarly modular system in first-edition AD&D's DMG.

I swear I got into trouble every week with my mother because I was always in my room building castles with this system. Every. Week.

(She wanted me to be "normal." I never did quite manage that.)

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I swear I got into trouble every week with my mother because I was always in my room building castles with this system. Every. Week.

(She wanted me to be "normal." I never did quite manage that.)

Same. Hard same.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I would note that, if you really care about the physics and engineering calculations, you can do both of those things without involving GURPS at all, you only really need to involve yourself with GURPS at the point you're converting the physics and engineering into game statistics.

The problem for many enthusiasts (such, I confess, as myself), including GURPS book authors, is that the distinctions and features that one cares about in ones profession or hobby are, in a dispassionate appreciation, quite a bit less significant than +1 on a 3d6 under/over or typical GURPS damage roll. A lot of GURPS' forbidding mass is an accumulation of enthusiasts' darlings that ought to have been ruthlessly rounded off.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

The problem for many enthusiasts (such, I confess, as myself), including GURPS book authors, is that the distinctions and features that one cares about in ones profession or hobby are, in a dispassionate appreciation, quite a bit less significant than +1 on a 3d6 under/over or typical GURPS damage roll. A lot of GURPS' forbidding mass is an accumulation of enthusiasts' darlings that ought to have been ruthlessly rounded off.

Or are much more situational than a simple bonus. For example, at a distance of 20 yards, the difference between 1 MoA and 5 MoA is an inch, which isn't going to make a measurable difference unless you're trying to hit eyes or shoot fingers off, but at 1,000 yards it matters quite a bit.