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Old 04-01-2022, 05:55 AM   #11
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: [GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

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Originally Posted by Opellulo View Post
On one side your system makes sense...

...on the other hand if the purpose of "Maintaining Skills" rules is to provide a somewhat realistic limit on the number of high level skills PC can have, would it be simpler to just enforce arbitrary limits and call it a day?
I think so to, both for the greater convenience of not needing to track every minute of the PCs time (and you have to, or they will legitimately claim they got in their practice during the downtime, and they are going to insist on practicing other stuff and using the hours to points rules a lot too, for even more recordkeeping issues), and maybe more importantly for the social issues. This rule after all amounts to the GM taking away the points you spent on those high skills by engineering situations where you can't practice them enough to keep them. Sure it's not the *worst* possible version of adversarial GMing, but it'd certainly irritate me.
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Old 04-01-2022, 06:34 AM   #12
Varyon
 
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Default Re: [GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

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Originally Posted by lugaid View Post
I think that the basic rule assumes that you'd have to develop them all over again. It might be worth considering an option that, say, doubles the effectiveness of training or something to recover lost Skill levels. I'd want to look through Social Engineering: Back to School to see if the idea is already covered there, actually.
My personal inclination would be a 4x multiplier to points or hours (for learning) if you're regaining a skill level lost due to failed maintenance. This makes it [1] per +1 to skill regained (as once you're at the point where maintenance is a concern, you're at a point where each +1 costs [4]).

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Originally Posted by Opellulo View Post
On one side your system makes sense...

...on the other hand if the purpose of "Maintaining Skills" rules is to provide a somewhat realistic limit on the number of high level skills PC can have, would it be simpler to just enforce arbitrary limits and call it a day?
Hard caps are indeed easier to implement, but some people genuinely like soft caps. Which is what this is - you're restricting how high skills can get based on how long they take to maintain each week. You can, however, run into the issue of a player overestimating his/her character's free time and getting to the point where the character doesn't really have time for adventuring on account of needing to constantly practice.

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
I think so to, both for the greater convenience of not needing to track every minute of the PCs time (and you have to, or they will legitimately claim they got in their practice during the downtime, and they are going to insist on practicing other stuff and using the hours to points rules a lot too, for even more recordkeeping issues), and maybe more importantly for the social issues. This rule after all amounts to the GM taking away the points you spent on those high skills by engineering situations where you can't practice them enough to keep them. Sure it's not the *worst* possible version of adversarial GMing, but it'd certainly irritate me.
This system really doesn't work if your group isn't interested in making general use of the Time Spent rules, yeah. I think it would be a poor GM who specifically sets up a scenario where you lose your skills due to being unable to practice them, however (although I will note that, IIRC, this was one of the consequences of serving jailtime in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion).
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Old 04-01-2022, 06:38 AM   #13
malloyd
 
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Default Re: [GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

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This system really doesn't work if your group isn't interested in making general use of the Time Spent rules, yeah. I think it would be a poor GM who specifically sets up a scenario where you lose your skills due to being unable to practice them, however.
If this system doesn't ever result in lost skills, what's the point of having it in the first place? Since players are not likely to volunteer to lose their skills, the GM is going to have to do [something] to force it to happen if it is going to.
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Old 04-01-2022, 06:57 AM   #14
Varyon
 
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Default Re: [GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
If this system doesn't ever result in lost skills, what's the point of having it in the first place? Since players are not likely to volunteer to lose their skills, the GM is going to have to do [something] to force it to happen if it is going to.
The point, in my opinion, isn't to have characters lose skills; it's to have characters have less time for doing other things because they need to maintain their skills (or even specifically seek out stressful opportunities to use their skills, to maintain them without having to spend so much time simply running in place). Or, rather, it's to have "You need to spend a lot of time maintaining your skills" as an additional cost to having sky-high skill levels (and note that's a rule that already exists in GURPS, this is just an extension of it). Note with the suggested table, skill at Att+10 ends up just requiring 1 hour per day of practice - which IIRC is consistent with the "hour per day" practice/meditation/etc requirements for the Chi and Ninjutsu Powers in Dungeon Fantasy, which doesn't seem too terrible to me.

EDIT: Of course, I should note these aren't rules I'd ever really make use of at the table, as this style of play isn't really something I'm interested in. But I recognize there are some groups who would be interested in such a style.
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Old 04-01-2022, 07:11 AM   #15
sir_pudding
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Default Re: [GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

People in the real world who have to maintain skills ususlly don't spend random blocks of free time studying by themselves or seeking out adventures. They have institutionalized practice with things like routine training regimens, attending professional conferences etc. Usually this is just part of your job duties.

GURPS Time Use has always felt really artificial to me, and results in characters who spend eight hours a day studying Stealth somehow. There's zero incentive in the system as written to do anything like a normal person.

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Old 04-01-2022, 08:53 AM   #16
JulianLW
 
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Default Re: [GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

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... characters who spend eight hours a day studying Stealth somehow....
I.e. Inspector Clouseau and Cato Fong.
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Old 04-01-2022, 10:21 AM   #17
martinl
 
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Default Re: [GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

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Am I missing anything obvious that would make this unworkable (other than the slight addition to record-keeping, which I don't consider particularly onerous)?
You're missing that this is onerous record keeping to a lot of folks.

You're also missing that Duty is already a GURPS disad that covers this issue less annoyingly.

Convert your chart to some frequency numbers for a "Needs to practice" version of the Duty disad, with temporary skill level related consequences for ditching practice.
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Old 04-01-2022, 11:02 AM   #18
malloyd
 
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Default Re: [GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

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Convert your chart to some frequency numbers for a "Needs to practice" version of the Duty disad, with temporary skill level related consequences for ditching practice.
Or just flat out charge them directly for it. GURPS already has a trait that explicitly gives you more or less practice time per day as it's only mechanical effect - Less/Extra Sleep for 2 points per hour. Charging -1 point per 30 minutes per day (or 3.5 hours a week, or 14 hours a month) of "wasted" time and calling it required practice rather than required sleep seems reasonable enough.
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Old 04-01-2022, 01:45 PM   #19
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Default Re: [GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

Other than the various bookeping, playstyle and GM bargaining problems there is an ironic underlining contradition:

Why bother to use a gritty realistic rule to manage a situation like ludicrously high skills, that's everything but realistic?
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Old 04-01-2022, 10:50 PM   #20
martinl
 
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Default Re: [GRITTY REALISM]Proposed House Rule Modifying Skill Maintenance

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Why bother to use a gritty realistic rule to manage a situation like ludicrously high skills, that's everything but realistic?
GURPS be like that, sometimes, but if you wanted it to be realistic you could drop the threshold way down, starting at attribute + 1.
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