12-09-2009, 06:48 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
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Re: Help bury my problems with GURPS?
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12-09-2009, 06:49 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Houston
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Re: Help bury my problems with GURPS?
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As it stands, it IS loosely based on the US Dollar. The operative and emphasized word there is LOOSELY. Even your bread example its off by a large % compared to the real world and Im not sure where this comes from or how useful a metric it is. Im sure of this though, the economy works as written as long as its not put in weird situations. (i.e. Alchemists turn lead to gold en masse, Alien replicator tech is sold at walmart). Ive joked a few times about GURPS: Storefront being a nice book on how to world build an economy. ITs threads like this that make me think it should actually be written. Nymdok |
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12-09-2009, 06:57 AM | #13 | |||||
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Help bury my problems with GURPS?
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As for the reference, no doubt there's more than one, but the first thing that popped into my mind was Garrett's Lord D'Arcy dueling on a bridge. Though the "Tarnhelm Effect" was more like Avoidance than Invisibility, as I recall. Quote:
Real-world prices aren't "balanced". Horse buggies didn't get cheaper just because we have cars; in fact, they'd be more expensive now if you commissioned one to be hand-crafted for you. An Aston Martin V12 Vantage doesn't cost 50% more than a Ford Mustang because it has a 50% higher top speed. The economy doesn't care about "balance", but supply and demand. If you try to put prices on mundane gear for "balance", you'll simply create an unbelievable world. See D&D -- in which case just go for the Dungeon Fantasy line, and leave the world as its logical stub once you do that, just Ye Olde Generic Tavern and Shoppe where you can buy your items at balanced prices and ignore the effect on rest of the world as it's irrelevant to the game anyway. As often gets mentioned in any thread about the price of an advantage, there's no such thing as a price universally balanced on the basis of utility, because exact utility depends on the individual game world. Unaging is a classic example. Or Vacuum Support in the average fantasy game, where you never leave the surface of a planet. Or True Faith in a mundane, gritty, WWII game without any vampires, zombies or cultists to liven things up. |
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12-09-2009, 07:51 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: LFK
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Re: Help bury my problems with GURPS?
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12-09-2009, 08:48 AM | #15 | |||
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Virginia, US
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Re: Help bury my problems with GURPS?
I can empathise with some of these problems, though to be honest most of them come down to my own love-hate relationship with GURPS: I love the game/approach but hate the fact that I don't get to spend the time reading through everything. On the bright side, the bods here seem to have an infinite amount of patience so all is well on the Western Front. For me, anyway. When I'm not to embarrassed to post... ;)
On my own behalf, I tend to categorise the out-of-the-box GURPS magic system as generic, rather than universal. With a bit of minor tweaking, either following the rules or just making conscious decisions about what you would prefer for a given setting, you can turn the generic system into a magic system for much generic fantasy. Thus, as wrong as I might be, I view conflating "generic" with "universal" to be a conceptual mistake. On the other hand, the flexibility of the magic system is enhanced in Thaumatology and a number of alternatives offered, as previously offered. The various types of syntactic magic tend more towards the universal than generic, though each comes with its own flavour. And, of course, as numerous people have already mentioned, the Powers approach of using advantages/limitations/enhancements to build a power pretty much reflects the "universal" approach. (And one of the reasons that I consider Powers to be the third core book along with Characters and Campaigns.) The only problem with Powers is that it can take a whole lot of time tweaking if you're not intimately familiar with the approach. (For example, I couldn't quite get Powers to work with the flavour of magic/psykers in the Warhammer 40,000 universe as I saw it or them, thus ended up using a merging of Powers and Threshold-based magic. As it stands, though, some of those assumptions are flawed--I can begin to achieve some of the effects, but my knowledge falls short with regards to some of the other problems that I had.) Others have mentioned VDS as something that you might be waiting for. I'm also going to add in (and apologies if already mentioned) the Vehicles supplements--as described, these may provide the examples that you need so that you can subsequently custom-tweak them to give the "character" that you need. On the other hand, there's no reason that you cannot just create the armour as a character (I'm thinking of the ISWAT robot in the back of the book). Indeed, I've been suggesting that some chappies who are playing around with Dark Heresy do something similar for the armour of the "Space Marines" to give them the same unique flavour as FFG's Rogue Trader attempts to do with starships (without going to video-gamey, of course). Quote:
Not that I would want to do that myself, so I'll just wait until VDS comes out and sign in contentment when it does. Until then, if I want to kludge it I'll either use Vehicles 3e or try to work something up in Spaceships, which while not ideal is a good enough stop gap measure for me. Quote:
With that said, I also don't have a problem with "realistic design" that can be contextually tweaked depending on the setting. Quote:
I'm finding it difficult to get to grips with why someone would want a "cost determined by usefulness" economic model, but--hey!--each to their own. I would worry about food--which seems pretty darned useful all things said and done--becoming overpriced. Or water for that matter. And, of course, all that changing in a different world. At the same time, I don't see why "custom device design" is impeded by the "realistic" list, though certainly why you wouldn't want to use Powers to develop an advantage-based can opener or tinder box. I guess I'm just finding it difficult to think of an example that might be obvious to you but would otherwise present some substantial difficulties. If, for example, you were talking about magical items then you could judge this from the value of magical artifacts. Made from Powers? Base the cost on the Cash for Points for the appropriate TL. If it's priceless, just assign it a ridiculously high cash cost. Again, I'm probably really missing something here, so my bad. Kage |
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12-09-2009, 09:26 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Help bury my problems with GURPS?
From the publication of GURPS Fantasy 1st edition, where the Standard Magic system was introduced, you have had an alternate system: Alchemy. Change the brew times and maybe the material component costs and you have an alternate spell casting system.
When Fantasy was split into Magic and Fantasy 2nd you got a verb/noun system (used twice) and alternates like College Casting. Supers added a way to make 'magical powers' utterly independent of the pujblished magic system. Celtic Myths showed how to revamp the existing system around trees while Voodoo tossed it out and started anew.
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12-09-2009, 10:09 AM | #17 | |
Join Date: May 2006
Location: Germany
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Re: Help bury my problems with GURPS?
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If you like a detailed design system, spaceships may be a bit superficial. It's designed for ease of use, building a spaceship from 20 blocks á 5% of its mass. It's versatile and useful, but if you care about details, you'll need VDS. Which won't come out before 2011. |
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12-09-2009, 11:12 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
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Re: Help bury my problems with GURPS?
I know I have some replies (a surprising number for such a short period of time!), and forgive me for ignoring them for JUST a moment, but I just remembered my other main peeve. Editting that into the #3 spot on the list.
EDIT: Okay, I'm caught up now. Anyway, I'm glad to see these responses are largely consistent! I was kind of prepared to anticipate a lot of diverse "pulled out of extraneous orifices" material potentially, but it seems a lot of these issues have fairly concrete 'right' answers. Anyway. Going point by point and addressing this thread as a whole, #1, magic. Some useful info there concerning the Thaumatology "magic as powers" thing. I'll definitely be checking that out. The problem of more specific systems that don't already have pre-written systems in a GURPS supplement still seems to remain, though. There are as many magic systems as there are possible magical settings, and any setup with a finite number thereof is insufficient. I'm hoping the "magic as powers" bit will help resolve the issue of spells without any analogs in advantages, though. While turning an advantage into magic is easy, the reverse doesn't yet appear to be true. But here's hopin'! In my browsing of thaumatology so far, though, #2, vehicles. My statement the VDS was "omitted" was more that it seems like such an essential concept it needed to be one of the earliest things out, not the latest. I hope it tackles the issue. Hearing spaceships has something I can hobble through on for now gives me hope, though. I'm not demanding a simulation down to the quantum level, just a way of putting price tags on things. I just hope it's applicable to more than JUST spaceships in at least kind of a pidgin capacity. I know one supplement in the series features mecha, but from what I've glimpsed it looks like it just provides examples rather than giving any kind of design method or rules. #4 as it's now listed, no signature. You know, my example probably does misapply this. I think we can consider it resolved without fuss. #5 as it's now listed, budgetting. My main concern here is for putting price tags on things not based on any kind of 'marketable' value. If your world is simulating (or gently satirizing) a traditional fantasy RPG, things like "+1 weapons" will generally have some kind of consistent pricing. What I overlooked at the time, though, is that Magic covers this, if a little limpwristedly, with its section on magical economies. Still, it gives you somewhere to look. The overall point that the financial "point" system isn't necessarily meant to be balanced like character points are seems to be a fundamentally sound argument, so I'm probably misapplying it. This isn't really something that worried me a whole lot in the first place, so even a partial resolution mostly cuts the mustard here. Anyway, thanks very much for the input! This is some serious headway in resolving my more serious concerns. Thaumatology and Spaceships are my next scheduled stops. Thank goodness for the advent of PDF publishing! Small update: Amusingly, the magic issue seems reversed. Magic as powers seems to provide a solution to the finite systems dilemma while leaving the spells without advantages one unresolved. Kind of the opposite of what I was anticipating, but it's still nice to see that aspect cleared up a bit. This looks like a very good way to custom-tailor new systems with some kind of groundwork. It inclines me to ask; does Thaumatology cover any "bare-bones" system of no-strings-attached type magic? Thinking on it, it seems like such a thing might be workable for turning spells into natural abilities. You'd have to kind of judiciously avert your eyes from the character having the Magery advantage (probably?), but if it allows for spells that work like effortless natural abilities, it seems like it'd simulate that effect pretty well. I haven't yet seen such a thing (probably because it balances as gracefully as a hippo on pointe), but "Threshold-Limited" magic seems to approach it. Last edited by Venatius; 12-09-2009 at 11:54 AM. |
12-09-2009, 11:25 AM | #19 | |
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Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: East of the moon, west of the stars, close to buses and shopping
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Re: Help bury my problems with GURPS?
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ETA: I'll also note that at low-to-moderate skill levels and under trying circumstances (fighting while wounded or in poor visibility, firing missile weapons, etc.), the attacker's skill is sufficiently low that hitting isn't a foregone conclusion, while defense rolls can be sufficiently low that they're vastly unlikely to be successful in the event of a successful hit, making them a Hail-Mary sort of thing rather than the sole determinant of how the fight goes.
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12-09-2009, 12:03 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Dec 2009
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Re: Help bury my problems with GURPS?
Attack/defense as contests actually is a published variant? That sounds very promising. You raise a very good point about low skill levels, but once you get into the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon stuff (or Equilibrium, if that's more your style), the core system as-is seems to rely entirely on defense skill and/or total blind luck in rolling crits. I had wondered about converting the rolls to quick contests as a way to avert this, but I wasn't at all sure if it'd play out well or crash into some unforeseen conflicts with existing rules.
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magical styles, newbie, problems, questions, vehicles |
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