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Old 03-26-2023, 02:54 PM   #91
kenclary
 
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Default Re: Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

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Originally Posted by Outlaw View Post
A bear is not a character. It's a low intelligence animal not even remotely capable of near human intelligence and cannot even imagine being able to fly. Even if the fly spell specifically granted the intelligence for controlled flight for anything it was cast on, I would disallow it b/c it's just plain stupid to me. A gelatinous cube with no brain or an animal almost totally controlled by instinct can't be granted such intelligence no matter how much magic you throw at it.
The usual rebuttal, of course, is "it's magic." D&D in particular is full of this sort of thing, and extremely vulnerable (read: makes the game quite terrible for some) to bad exploits based on real science. See also peasant railguns, decanters of endless rocketry, etc. Never trust selective applications of real-world logic, and in a game about magic and spells and wizards, all such logic is selective.

(If you activate an Immovable Rod on a moving train, does it wreck the train, or keep still within the train's frame of reference? What about on a spinning planet? A planet orbiting a sun? etc.)

The "Fly" spell is considered "transmutation" so, sure, it works. You just need a willing "creature" and the magic doesn't care about the creature's brain structures.

...

This is all not really relevant to GURPS' complexity. GURPS is more real-ish than many systems, so I suppose it is more vulnerable to this kind of rules lawyering. Or less vulnerable, if the traits were designed with more "consistency" in mind.
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Old 03-26-2023, 03:03 PM   #92
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Default Re: Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

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Originally Posted by Outlaw View Post
A bear is not a character. It's a low intelligence animal not even remotely capable of near human intelligence and cannot even imagine being able to fly. Even if the fly spell specifically granted the intelligence for controlled flight for anything it was cast on, I would disallow it b/c it's just plain stupid to me. A gelatinous cube with no brain or an animal almost totally controlled by instinct can't be granted such intelligence no matter how much magic you throw at it.
My cat can imagine flying, so why can't a bear? As for magic being unable to grant intelligence - in most editions of D&D Druids can grant Human-level sapience and free will to trees, so magic absolutely can grant intelligence.
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Old 03-26-2023, 04:03 PM   #93
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Default Re: Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

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From what I've seen in practice, that largely translates to "don't use limited use things because there's a solution that doesn't require them" which in turn makes that limitation basically negate having the advantage/weapon.
Typically the idea is that the solution that doesn't use your limited resource is more difficult and/or takes longer to pull off - you have to get a lot closer to your target to slit his throat than to put an arrow in it, your limited use ability may well be more likely to one-shot the target (due to higher damage, higher armor divisor, an attached save-or-die effect, etc), you have to sit in place for a week (or longer) to recover from the injury that a single drink of healing potion will get rid of in a moment, and so forth. But going too far such that characters are inclined to hoard their limited-use abilities "just in case" is certainly a risk (I tend to be bad about doing that in video games, at least).

But, of course, if having unlimited usage of your abilities will result in a more enjoyable game, by all means do it that way. You could just handwave away the need for carrying and restocking ammunition, give the characters the means by which they can ignore it (Cornucopia Quivers, energy weapons using perpetual energy cells, etc), or whatever.
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Old 03-26-2023, 05:44 PM   #94
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Default Re: Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

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Originally Posted by WingedKagouti View Post
That's why I really like the Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars RPG's way of handling ammo, you basically have infinite ammo for the majority of weapons until the dice say you run out (usually a GM call on a critical failure). Grenades and certain types of weapons specify having limited ammo, but if a player decides to get those, they are saying they're ok with tracking ammo.
I just like this idea a lot. I could see it being a setting switch; You don't have to worry about ammo until a critical failure says you have none.

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Originally Posted by Outlaw View Post
That's the kicker. GURPS RAW has ALL the kickers...IF YOU WANT THEM. Too many GMs ruin first time players by overloading them with those kickers IMO.
I wonder how many first time GMs don't realize this. I definitely didn't in high school.

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
Typically the idea is that the solution that doesn't use your limited resource is more difficult and/or takes longer to pull off - you have to get a lot closer to your target to slit his throat than to put an arrow in it, your limited use ability may well be more likely to one-shot the target (due to higher damage, higher armor divisor, an attached save-or-die effect, etc), you have to sit in place for a week (or longer) to recover from the injury that a single drink of healing potion will get rid of in a moment, and so forth. But going too far such that characters are inclined to hoard their limited-use abilities "just in case" is certainly a risk (I tend to be bad about doing that in video games, at least).

But, of course, if having unlimited usage of your abilities will result in a more enjoyable game, by all means do it that way. You could just handwave away the need for carrying and restocking ammunition, give the characters the means by which they can ignore it (Cornucopia Quivers, energy weapons using perpetual energy cells, etc), or whatever.
For most of those cases, I find that's part of the fun. If you have six bullets and seventy enemies, then you might turn this into a stealth section where you have to melee all of them. As for health potions in particular, I think they function differently because the effects are long term that you are negating, not short term, especially if you can buy them. That, and literal survival tends to be treated differently than 'ammo'. On the other hand, yeah the Megalixir issue is always there; What if I need this in the next fight more?

The specific handwaves are themselves sometimes fun or a different form of balance; A 'cornucopia' advantage I worked out as being 15pts for bows and one player was willing to take it for all their specialty arrows. Magic as Advantages definitely costs a lot more points than As Skills, but that counteracts the lack of need for in game FP costs.

And as usual, I could easily blame this on a lack of my GM skill. If I knew how to properly do long term resource management, I could properly GM it. I just haven't learned it yet, even when I try or am forced to.
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While I do not think that GURPS is perfect I do think that it is more balanced than what I am likely to create by GM fiat.
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Old 03-27-2023, 01:07 AM   #95
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Default Re: Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

The solution is, unironically: Derision and mild bullying.

"What? You can't deal with basic GURPS maths?! Bro... (unisex word) Bro... listen... bro... I know...speed, it uses decimals bro, but you can literally just use normal division and use the remainder as a lookup table since the division by four means the decimal place can only ever be .25, .5 and .75. So, 5 = 1.25, cause 4 fits 1 times into 5, with a remainder of 1, and a 1 divided by 4 is literally one quarter, so 1/4 or 0.25.

You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?!

You can't divide a pizza into four parts? Or a cake?

You can't do that?
You can't do that?
You can't do that?!?!?!?!?!?!?

For real? For real now? Really? Really you cannot? You cannot? Especially usually once at character creation?
You simply cannot do it, huh? You will miss out on one of the greatest TTRPG systems ever because you cannot do this? What?

But no, no you won't. Because now...we're gonna just use four movement points for everyone and we will decide initiative once and monsters always move after all players.

Yeah thought you could get away with the GURPS math meme huh, thought you can walk away. No.

Not today buckeroo. We're using simplified rules and you're gonna play, no matter how mad you are right now for me pushing this.

That's what you get for being a slave to popular role playing system published by WotC/Hasbro (don't actually know), you stockholm syndromed poltroon!

But I will replace that.

I will replace your yellow bellied, beaten wife streak with mine.
I'll have you rolling 3d6s in the GURPS mines from now on, boyo. You're going in the pit. You're gonna memorize the nasty transscendantal equation table so hard that it will be your morning and evening prayer. The basic set will be your nighttime pillow and your comfort plush from now on, buckaroo. And you will play GURPS with me or I will physically beat you. I will thrash and flog you. Mercilessly. For being such a little bitch baby. That's right, you heard that right. I will assault you for being such a stockholmed pansy because that's the only damn reason you're not doing it. You're stuck on 'Dindy' and it's a peer pressure thing, you don't want to be uncool for not playing it, you want to belong.

But they're all dead now. They died in the OGl war, they're dead. What are you gonna do now, huh? What are you gonna do now?! Do you really want to slight me too? And lose ALL your TTRP opportunities?

Over basic arithmetic memes that are no hindrance really? Especially with computer tools?

No.
Cause as I said. You will play GURPS tonight. It's for your own good.
HA HA HA HA HAAA.

But for real, I know where you live.... now grab your dice and roll up a character
"
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Old 03-27-2023, 01:17 AM   #96
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Default Re: Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

I don't know if I ever played any game system without some kind of tracked resource.
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Old 03-27-2023, 03:22 AM   #97
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Default Re: Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
I don't know if I ever played any game system without some kind of tracked resource.
Every RPG (TT and digital) I have ever played has used a form of money. A resource both limited and tracked (with varying degrees of tightness).

I am sure games that do not track it exist...but I would expect that would be a minority of games.

Heck in a number of games I have been in that was one 'metric' of winning. You can't tell if you are winning if no one is keeping score.
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Old 03-27-2023, 05:58 AM   #98
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Default Re: Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

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Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
I don't know if I ever played any game system without some kind of tracked resource.
I certainly haven't, but I could potentially see a game system where something like "Abstract Wealth" (Pyramid #3/44) was the default - rather than tracking how much money the character has, there is instead a Wealth statistic that you roll against to see if you can afford an item. I believe that has thresholds where cheaper items (relative to your Wealth) give a bonus to the roll (possibly even making it so you don't even need to roll for really cheap items), and major purchases reduce your effective Wealth level for a certain period of time. You could extend this to consumable items - rather than purchasing flasks of oil that each have a set burn time in your lantern, you just buy some oil, then whenever you use it you roll against something to see if this is your last hour or whatever of oil or if you still have more in reserve (same for ammunition, healing potions, rations, etc - whenever you use them, you make some roll, with a certain result meaning this is your last shot, last potion, last meal, etc). It's not something I think I'd enjoy much (as mentioned upthread, such a system makes your character seem incapable of planning - "whoops, sorry guys, looks like I actually only packed one meal, we'll need to head back to town"), but if someone truly doesn't want any tracked resources but also wants running out to be a possibility, something like this could work.
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Old 03-27-2023, 08:51 AM   #99
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Default Re: Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

I know me a GURPS gm when it gets overly 'mathy' I just do away with the complicated calculation and just make a simple die roll and get on with the game.
GURPS can easily get way to nerdy so I tend to simplify things.
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Old 03-27-2023, 08:59 AM   #100
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Default Re: Math, GURPS, and its reputation for complexity

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Originally Posted by zoncxs View Post
If given the option, people will always want to do the easier choice.

Should you walk to the store that is 20mins away (by walking) or drive? People will want to drive.

This is bad because it makes them lazy and weaker. How does this relate to the topic? They become weaker in the field of Math.

Doing simple arithmetic as adding and subtracting has become such a difficult thing for most people even though it is easy because they have gotten lazy.

None of the "Math" within GURPS has ever caused me issues because I make sure I practice my Math and never fall behin saddledd. If something is a little difficult then I practice till its not, most people don't do this and that is a big problem.

"But I HATE Math! I can never get it!" - Then you have not practiced enough and had horrible teachers.

simplifying the "Math" means you end up with dumber people which lowers what constitutes as "easy" which means you will eventually have to lower it again. Its sad that this is going on.
--------------
Laziness as you call it has nothing to do with it.
this is a roleplaying game and a LOT of us don't want to be saddled with a slew
Of complicated math when their are easier ways to calculate things and thus more
faster gameplay.
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