New to GURPs; not sure where to start

[DrDraxium]

I wasn't quite sure if these questions deserved their own thread, I'd be happy to make a GURPS - Newbie Questions Here thread if need be, but I thought this would be the best place to ask them. Having read this thread in its entirety from start to fininsh in preparation for my first foray into the world of GURPS (and roleplaying itself for that matter) has been a great help.

I'll be taking on the role of GM and only have GURPS Lite at this stage, (and have printed out copies for everyone playing) and depending on how our first session or two go I may purchase the Basic Set. So apologies in advance if any question here that I'm asking are covered in the extended content.

I've spent most of my spare time over the past two weeks fleshing out content, drawing up maps, NPC sheets etc. and am quite aware I may be suffering from "analysis paralysis" and that practice would probably make a lot of this clearer to me, but I have another week until the first session and everyone here seems extremely happy to help so I figured, why not.

Anyway, to the questions.

QUESTION 1

Considering 17-18 is ALWAYS a critical failure when rolling against a skill, would there be any point in having your skill rank anything about 16? I suppose modifiers would come into consideration here, because if you had a skill of 25 in shortsword and for whatever reason you had to roll against that + modifiers of say - 6 bad juju or something you'd still be fine because of your insanely high shortsword skill.

Shortsword 25, rolls 16 (actual 25) - 9 (from the effective 25 rather than the 16) = 16

Or have I just confused myself even more? Maths isn’t my strongest suit, but I feel that GM’ing GURPS may force me to improve this skill whether I like it or not.

QUESTION 2

I'm eventually going to be running a six player game in which you assume the party is moving as one throughout the game's setting, how do you decide the order of actions (non-combat). If they're all screaming out "I do x," and "I do y," do you just have to let them talk amongst themselves and elect an "leader" to say what the party is doing?

Are they allowed to split up? For example four people go into one house two go off elsewhere. Is this roleplayed simultaneously (a nightmare for the GM and the players to be sure) or sequentially (not as bad, but still means several people have to simply be "off scene" until the current "on scene" group has finished its actions or reunite with the "off scene" group.

I understand these questions might just be a case of transient house rules, "well as a GM I often do this" kind of scenarios, but that's fine. I'm just trying to get a feel for how the experienced GMs out there handle these, I'm assuming, commonly encountered issues.

[_Civ_]

Question 1:

You have it right. If I have a skill of 25 it's going to take a modifier of -10 or so to make any difference on my chance to suceed. A -10 isn't hard to rack up if you are taking a long shot with a ranged weapon though. I'm not sure how much GURPS lights includes, but in the main books your skill modifies your chance of critical success. Also, there are all kinds of special manuevers you can try that impose negative modifiers to hit that give you other benefits (lowering your foe's defenses, targeting a hit location, and so on). Again, probably not something to worry about for GURPS light.

Question 2:

Six players is a lot. I find 4-5 to be ideal. The more confident, loud players will inevitably get your attention more easily and get more of your time. And that's okay, not everyone enjoys being in the spotlight constantly. But as GM it is your job to make sure everyone gets a chance to participate. If I feel some players are getting shut out, I will ignore the loud 250 lb guy shouting in my ear, and ask the quiet 90 girl, "Julie, what is your character doing?"

And split groups is something I avoid whenever possible. Usually, I run them in sequence, so I spend 15 running group A and then switch to group B, and back and forth. I try balance stopping with one group at a point where they have something to dicuss or figure out, to to keep them busy; versus giving both groups equal time.

I've explained to my group that I have no desire to run a split group and that if one character wants to go off on his own adventure, the character can do that, but that's not the adventure I'm running.

Also, I recommend doing some mock combats with a friend or two, it will help the first session go much smoother.

Hope this helps, and welcome to the forums!

[OldSam]

Originally Posted by DrDraxium

QUESTION 2
I'm eventually going to be running a six player game in which you assume the party is moving as one throughout the game's setting, how do you decide the order of actions (non-combat).

If there is a situation where several characters wants to act I usually stick to a more or less fixed turn-order for all players outside of combat, too (e.g. clockwise). That means first I describe the scene, then Player A tells me what he/she wants to do, then Player B, Player C etc.
And of course in many cases the order just follows the event, e.g. an NPC talks directly to Player C or only Player B perceives a specific threat...

I would recommend to keep the "acting time" of each player relatively short, because all players want to have their moment ;-). Thus normally a "single turn" shouldn't be more than about 1-2 minutes, then you should make a leap in ingame time and skip to the next player. Long "single turns" only make sense if the whole groups is waiting for the result or something like that.

If your group decides to split up, the same applies: You should regularly skip scenes and leap in time between the 2 or more part-groups, to keep everyone in the game... btw I never would do something like forbidding them to split the group because it should be their own decision. Nevertheless you can convince them with ingame informations or events that it is a bad idea - e.g. if there are marouding groups of orcs in the whole area it might be tactically better not to split the own forces...

[mlangsdorf]

I normally handle actions outside of combat by asking people what they want to do, picking a person more-or-less at random, and resolving his action. Then I pick the next person and repeat until everyone has acted. If people want to do more stuff, I generally handle it on a game time basis: If Alice wants to spend an hour shopping and then do some research, but Bob wants to spend 4 hours rebuilding his guns for more accuracy and then track the masked killer, I deal with Alice's research attempts before Bob's tracking. If Alice had spent 6 hours shopping, I'd have dealt with Bob's tracking first.

If you're an inexperienced GM and you have a large table, you probably shouldn't split the party until you get more experience under your belt.

Hope that helps.

[DrDraxium]

Thanks for the help and welcome guys.

I am amazed that splitting groups does actually occur, but I suppose with experience and the aid of sequentially playing two groups (something I picture would happen quite a bit in GURPS: Action heist scenarios), anything is possible. There's so much thinking outside the box for a GM (and the players), I guess that's one of the most appealing parts of the game which keeps people continually coming back for more.

The date has been set for the first session and the players are already voicing their ideas and enthusiasm.

I'm going to use GURPS character sheet to run up a few draft characters and run through some sample combats with one of the players tomorrow morning.

[mlangsdorf]

Splitting the party is often easier in Action, because it's very in-genre for the team to be geographically separated while working on the same overall objective. It can often be handled like a combat in which the PCs are physically scattered but in the same turn sequence.

For example, the team is infiltrating a building to steal something. The Investigator goes first, rolling Tactics and Intelligence Analysis to set up bonuses for everyone else from his command post in another building. On her turn, the Face makes a few Fast-Talk and Disguise rolls to let security give him access to the vault controls. Then the Wire Rat makes some Electronics rolls from his van in the street to talk the Face into opening the vault. Finally, the Infiltrator makes some Climbing rolls to get to the vault entrance through AC conduits and makes the Lockpicking roll to crack the safe that contains the mission objective. Easy.

It gets complicated when the Face is buying a jet plane, the Investigator is shadowing Mr. Big, the Infiltrator is blowing off steam with a few friends, and the Wire Rat is building a remote controlled surveillance drone, even if they're all nominally in the same room.

[DrDraxium]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Splitting the party is often easier in Action, because it's very in-genre for the team to be geographically separated while working on the same overall objective.

I suppose it's also easier for the game to flow because in Action scenarios, the players are more likely to be communicating via radio or some medium of equal tech level allowance, as opposed to something like a TL2 scenario where in most situations, one group would just be hoping against hope that things are going smoothly for the other one.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by DrDraxium

I suppose it's also easier for the game to flow because in Action scenarios, the players are more likely to be communicating via radio or some medium of equal tech level allowance, as opposed to something like a TL2 scenario where in most situations, one group would just be hoping against hope that things are going smoothly for the other one.

Another nifty trick is to let the players that aren't present run some of the bad guys if one group gets into a fight.

[DrDraxium]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

Another nifty trick is to let the players that aren't present run some of the bad guys if one group gets into a fight.

Delegation of GM duties, whilst fleshing out some of the more bland NPCs with PC influence. Brilliant!

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by DrDraxium

Delegation of GM duties, whilst fleshing out some of the more bland NPCs with PC influence. Brilliant!

Just gotta make sure your players can handle it. Notably that a) the ones playing the PCs won't be ****** that the ones playing the NPCs tried to kill them, and b) that the ones playing the NPCs don't use special knowledge of the weaknesses of the PCs they're fighting against them, unless it's something the NPCs should already know.