Would the peasant railgun be possible in GURPS?

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

It strikes me as a specifically computer game and 3e.3.5e D&D idea ... earlier editions of D&D were usually like GURPS, the GM was always right. It was 3e D&D which tried to offer exactly one clear and authoritative answer to any question governed by the rules.

Rules lawyering is an old tradition, but this specific idea strikes me as specific to a particular concept of the game.

D&D3.x was very clear that the GM could, and should, rule on ambiguous situations, and that they could and should change rules that were resulting in dumb outcomes. I don't know of any GM that's ever allowed instantaneous message movement via chain readies, let alone a 'peasant railgun', nor even teleporting samurai (there was a class feature for them that allowed a step between each blow of a great cleave, so as long as they never missed and every hit dropped someone they could 'teleport' across crowded battlefields).

Likewise, I don't know of anyone who allowed some of those obviously abusive character builds in their games (though less obvious builds certainly slipped through), just as I don't know any GURPS GM that would allow those cheap galaxy-killing area attacks you can legally build. In each case that doesn't mean people didn't have fun coming up with the builds, even though they probably never had any intent to use them in a game.