GURPS Uplift

[nick012000]

Has anyone made an automated creature generator yet? I'm half-tempted to create one. Probably a Java application with one button and a text feild. Hit the button, and it rolls the dice, then it wades through a if statements to determine what it does, and prints the results on the text feild.

[Magehound]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Heh. Keep in mind, that's my REBUILT collection. I originally had something close to 30 boxes of stuff. To break my collection addiction, I had to hire someone to sell all that stuff privately and on eBay (and the blankety-blank walked off with about a third of it, grumble grumble...)

Back before WOTC stopped doing PDF scanning (and LONG before the Hasbro suits made them do "cease-and-desist" orders on all the sites selling their PDFs...), I rebuilt my D&D collection (Basic, AD&D 1E, AD&D 2E, and some other out-of-print TSR/WOTC items) with PDFs. And I bought some of the d20 stuff I liked. And picked up a few other gaming systems. I'm currently sorting through what made it up here on the move, deciding if I'm going to purge more. (I'll likely reduce by another three or four boxes. But they're NOT getting my GURPS or Forgotten Realms 3E stuff...)

Niice, I'm mainly limited to D&D and WhiteWolf because that's about the only things sold in the bookstores here (if there's branch of a comic book store locally, I haven't found it yet), I discovered GURPS by reading a review in one of my Dragon magazines, and gleefully started collecting those soon after. If anything, I prefer the GURPS dice system to D&D's. Sorry to hear about the third-party shafting on ebay though, I know that stung.

I draw stuff from all over the place. GURPS Uplift (the issues of environmentalism, species preservation, the collection of knowledge, and the uplift of biological and digital species; not to mention I like imagining the ur-species of some of the aliens listed), GURPS Alpha Centauri (starting with the neo-ascetic movement, but also some of the faction ideologies), Battle Tech (I'm fond of the Taurian Concordat and the Diamond Sharks, as well as portions of another half-dozen factions), Star Drive (there are several factions that appeal to me, plus I like some of the aliens), and Transhuman Space (so much...). Plus various books I've read. Basically, if you pull from one source, you're a plagiarist. If you pull from MANY sources, it's "research." :-)

Yep, especially if you're nice enough to mention references, which never hurts. My general book collection is bigger than my sourcebook one. Last time I checked I had over 600 books, ranging from paper-making through Game Theory to Sociobiology. Not all of it applicable I admit, but in writing and RPing, sometimes it's good to know "cocktail knowledge" to sprinkle around to add that extra touch of realism or to aid a plot twist.

And if you're in Battletech... well, I had a kick ages back rolling out the Clan totem animals from Mechwarrior. Lost those though, I really should do it again, the Strana Metchy wolves and Hell's Horses were interesting.

[QUOTE}I have a "Mary Sue" mini-space empire society that is way too ideal. I'm in the process of fleshing them out, and in tossing in undesirable elements to make them a little more plausible...

Do tell. What book series is that? And have you read Julie Czerneda's Species Imperative trilogy?[/QUOTE]

Ah, Mary Sue empires, that's basically the same problem the book series I work on has, but in an established canon, which is so much worse. I hate to admit it almost, McCaffrey's Pern series (the older parts, not the latest books, because those are plain anathema to me), it was a very good concept series, but I do feel it was so poorly carried out. Especially when it tries to be included among the likes of Niven's Ringworld and Integral Trees.

And yes, I have, I have all three, they were quite good. Have you read C.S. Friedman's 'This Alien Shore'?

Aside from having my "Mary Sue" society bringing in early-Uplift (slow-and-safe biotech) chimps and dolphins, I also have them bringing in gorillas, orangutans, and pygmy elephants (Borneo elephants).

Not to mention a veritable "Noah's ark" of remnant populations and DNA catalogs of various species. (Thus, they start from existing animals, but rebuild diversity by using their DNA catalogs and a little genespliced mutations.) On their several worlds, they've built various "domed biomes" of the various regions of Earth, recreating everything possible.

I also imagine them having ur-species of Gubru, Jophur, Kanten, and Tytlal to discover. (Interesting groups to Uplift and societies to craft...)

Hmm, so are you playing the uplifting out with the meta-game in Uplift sourcebook? Either way, I kinda like the premise so far.

Then I toss in unusual and interesting creatures I've found. For instance, the Future Predator of the now-canceled Primeval series. It would be interesting to have a "bat sonar" form of "vision" creature, but having to reduce their natural aggression.

Now, I'd always been under the impression that bat sonar vision was how the advantage Sonar Vision worked. But anyway, quite interesting there, I'm sure your characters will have plenty on their hands just trying to contain a specimen of Future Predator for study.

[Magehound]

Originally Posted by nick012000

Has anyone made an automated creature generator yet? I'm half-tempted to create one. Probably a Java application with one button and a text feild. Hit the button, and it rolls the dice, then it wades through a if statements to determine what it does, and prints the results on the text feild.

If you know how to make one, I'd be one of the first to ask you to do so.

[Pragmatic]

I'm a collector, not a player or a GM. I do "thought exercises." Thus, all the fun is just in imagining. I'm not sure I'd ever actually roleplay. Le sigh.

[Pragmatic]

GURPS Uplift is one of the reasons I'm hoping to see the Bestiary series come out soon. Having a ready supply of statted-out ur-species, whether normal domestic or wild animals, or an array of alien species with interesting attributes, would be wonderful.

[Magehound]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

GURPS Uplift is one of the reasons I'm hoping to see the Bestiary series come out soon. Having a ready supply of statted-out ur-species, whether normal domestic or wild animals, or an array of alien species with interesting attributes, would be wonderful.

Well, there is a GURPS Space Bestiary, if that helps.

[nick012000]

Originally Posted by Magehound

If you know how to make one, I'd be one of the first to ask you to do so.

I've got some assignments to do for university before I can even try, but I suppose I can give it a shot. The fact that the algorithm's already written out makes it easier. It'll just be somewhat tedious to do.

[Flyndaran]

Does anyone else find the rules to prone to giving absurdly high levels of sensory abilities?

[Pragmatic]

I just noticed, this weekend, that GURPS Biotech has some information on Uplift modifications (more along the lines of "At this tech level, you can do..." than "it costs this many Uplift points to do").

P. 86&87, if anyone is interested.

It also has some rules on how to adapt animal stat blocks to templates.

[stefanj]

Writing GURPS Uplift required more work than my Master's Thesis at CMU and didn't get me a job at Oracle.

If chunks of it live on by getting adapted into other GURPS products I'm all for it.