The GURPS Meta-Tech Hype Thread

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by J. Edward Tremlett

A TV remote that lets you decide which characters live and die in a movie you haven't seen before. But if you press the button too soon the actor will die in real life.

If the actor is already dead, does it re-animate them?

How suave does Zombie Errol Flynn get to be?

[Varyon]

A Shardblade (the "dead spren" subtype, which is more akin to gear) from The Stormlight Chronicles. For reference, these are oversized - but incredibly light (a bit lighter than a standard sword) - swords that can cut through almost anything (exceptions are largely just other Shardblades and Shardplate - a type of self-regenerating magical power armor). They cause no visible wounds to living things, but still cause Injury - in fact, unhealing Injury - and if they kill something, this fact is rather obvious in that it causes their eyes to burn out of their skull (they damage corpses just fine, though). They are outright indestructible. An unbonded Shardblade can bond with a particular user (which takes around 5 days), after which point it can be dismissed into a pocket dimension (even if it's miles away from the user); resummoning it has a delay of 10 heartbeats. A bonded user can relinquish the bond at any time, and automatically does so upon death (if it wasn't summoned already, it will appear near their corpse upon death).

I think that should be all the necessary information for building it.

[Scriptorian]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

You might also be able to use Meta-Tech to price out the cost of powers as skills with a little ingenuity. Doing that might let you backward engineer some kind of spell creation system for GURPS Magic..

I am now extra-hyped but also annoyed because I’ve spent the last couple weeks on a powers-as-skills system and now I’ll have yet another thing to cross-reference and check against. 😝

[Tyneras]

I've got a selection of creations, particularly some robots, I look forward to recreating to compare the creation process.

Admittedly, being easier and more consistent than a cludgy system that straddles GURPS 3e and 4e isn't a high bar to pass.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Proteus

If the actor is already dead, does it re-animate them?

How suave does Zombie Errol Flynn get to be?

Whalberg-stop-it.gif

Originally Posted by Scriptorian

I am now extra-hyped but also annoyed because I’ve spent the last couple weeks on a powers-as-skills system and now I’ll have yet another thing to cross-reference and check against. 😝

Man, if you find a way that actually works let me know. I've tried to reverse engineer what we've got since like 2008 and the only thing it's proven is a) I'm probably mad and b) you can't do it with the existing stuff. You'd have to set new RAW to make it work. Though I did come up with an interesting thought on skills as powers for Meditation I'll post in a few days.

Originally Posted by Tyneras

I've got a selection of creations, particularly some robots, I look forward to recreating to compare the creation process.

It's really quite simple. There is no process per se, more an idea of how one might do a thing. That's why I've been saying "method" constantly. There is no page on endless page of 1 through 20 steps to do this or that. It's literally, "Build this as you would a character/power, here is a power requirement, here is a cost." Done. For example, I could say, "a TL9 Combat Android (GURPS Ultra-Tech, p. 167) with a non-volitional AI (GURPS Ultra-Tech, p. 27) is 478 points. Using GURPS Meta-Tech, that's $717,000 in cost and requires 6D cells per day of use." This absolutely requires that you have some knowledge of the system when it comes to characters and powers...but there are a LOT of example powers all over the GURPS 4/e spread and same with templates.

Where I think some folks will be able to really dig in is the origins and commonality rules. Add that to a girthy section on modifiers/traits and how to use them and it'll hopefully be useful for gamers of all stripes.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Addendum: Some things probably don't need much expanding, but a Pyramid length treatment on which traits represent what TL for things like robots, battlesuits, and vehicles would be useful I'd think.

This book is meant to hook into the vast resource that is GURPS 4e and use it to make your gear. It's not really meant to supplant it. I know that probably disappoints more than a few folks, but it was the goal in 2012 and it was the goal in 2023 when I was giving it a full length treatment. I really feel I met that goal. We'll see on Thursday I guess.

(Sorry I've been absent, been a bit sick and am recovering still - the echo of my time in the hospital. Gimmie three more items so I can start doing some conversions for you good folks!)

[Farmer]

How about...

A quarterstaff that can become a naginata or a double-ended naginata. Self powered. When bladed, it's very fine and AD2 against physical armour and AD10 against magical or psionic DR. It can becoming flaming, on command, and the damage of 1d6 is applied ignoring any DR if the weapon penetrates.

When it's in staff form, nobody pays it any attention or care. If it does flaming damage, all the damage done cannot be healed other than by natural recovery. The weapon itself is unbreakable.

Changing form takes a turn and the weapon is unready during the change. Flame on lasts for 1 minute (or until commanded off), and it takes 1 hour before it can done again.

It was forged by a mortal, but they were assisted by an immortal whose blood and sweat were absorbed during the forging, and the smith was guided by a god.

It is unique, but also part of a set of weapons.

[Refplace]

A dimensional gate network like in Cenotaph Road or the GURPS Locations Wellspring of Creation portals.

[calmquist]

If no one else has other ideas, there is always a Poké Ball or similar monster capturing device.

It is single use and can be thrown at a certain type of monster. If it hits, it has a chance to capture the monster and turn it into a summonable ally stored within the ball.

[Khannis]

I asked that question here in a thread some ten years ago, but I'm wondering if Meta-Tech would have a new angle on this:

Suppose you have an item, to use the original example, a suit of Advanced Power Armor from Fallout. This item isn't unique, there are hundreds in existence, but only a small organization (the Enclave), which mostly leads an existence hidden from the wasteland at large, has the resources to produce it. To make it worse, only a few organizations (the Brotherhood, its splinters, and other organizations descended from the pre-war military) even have the knowledge necessary to train its members in its operation, and are heavily invested in keeping this knowledge a secret.

Besides being rare and poorly understood by 95% of the setting, it's also both extremely useful, and virtually useless. If you know how to use it, you can become virtually invulnerable to most of the **** the wasteland can throw at you, if you don't, it's about as useful as a very heavy coffin, a bitch to carry around, and a target on your back. And good luck convincing the other guys in power armor to buy it from you, instead of just taking it back by force. The NCR has been known to strip power armor of virtually all systems except the protective layer, making it a sort of heavy plate armor made from advanced composites, generally assigned only to exceptionally strong soldiers defending choke-points and static positions. All this to say that they derive some value from it, but its in a specialized role and they throw a lot of what makes it valuable away (nightvision, enhanced strength, waste recycling, rad-sealing, targeting systems, drug injectors, etc.)

Figuring out the price of something that's incredibly rarely bought or sold is a bitch, and I ended up just winging it at the time. Just wondering if there was a better way to do it. Maybe I'm insane and there's no point in figuring out a cost for this, but it's aggravating that something that can have such a huge mechanical impact can't be properly quantified, if that makes sense.