Paper Men and Plastic Monsters: GURPS Content Post

[Kalzazz]

I really liked the rules options you are using and why post. I don't agree with some of it, and I'm not familiar with Madness Dossier very much, but was very interesting

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

I really liked the rules options you are using and why post. I don't agree with some of it, and I'm not familiar with Madness Dossier very much, but was very interesting

Feel free to comment there (or here) about it. My group isn't very rules oriented so I generally don't get much feedback from them either way, so commentary from the wider GURPS community is super helpful to me! I'd be really interested to know where you don't agree!

[Kalzazz]

Abstract Wealth - I admit, I find this an over finicky thing compared to just 'here, you has X dollars/gold pieces/whatever, have at it' You have money, go shopping is a simple concept. A minigame rules system, not so much

Restricted Dodge Against Firearms - I admit, I like the current firearms dodge rules fairly well, and don't find the restricted ones feel that realistic to me at all, just seem overly heavy handed with the nerf bat. I personally will at times even allow Dodge at -2 as long as your moving in a fight and such generally, even if your not even aware of the attack in question, as long as your aware of something. A deer streaking away bouncing around is facing away from whoever is shooting at them, but is still being very problematic to hit. The idea that just because you can't see the attacker means you can't defend against ranged attacks rubs me wrong, since well, the natural defense of many animals or ships facing submarines is to flee erratically, and this can handily defend them from bullets or torpedoes, even if they don't exactly see their foe

So as long as someone is aware there in a rumble, and isnt actively being stationary (using consecutive aim manuevers etc), and hasn't taken an All Out Attack or such, I'm fairly generous with defenses at times

I use the High Tech optional rule of treating trauma plates as semi ablative, that means someone who gets drilled with 10 shots of .30-06 in the trauma plate in their Interceptor Body armor suffers at least a damaged trauma plate if not some actual HP damage, instead of just ping and bounce off

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Abstract Wealth - I admit, I find this an over finicky thing compared to just 'here, you has X dollars/gold pieces/whatever, have at it' You have money, go shopping is a simple concept. A minigame rules system, not so much

In this game though that will mostly amount to a lot of bookeeping for Job rolls and monthly CoL without any real purpose. In practice they'd what spend 80% of Starting Wealth on assets, and then spend a little bit of the rest on a cell phone and personal basics and then have a fair amount of spending money left over. This doesn't really seem like a exercise that would add anything actually fun to the game.

What would you anticipate the PCs wanting to spend money on that would make the bean-counting worth it?

There's also the problem that none of the Sandmen templates have Wealth, even though with US/British espionage service salaries they probably all ought to be Comfortable. Which is something I'd need to look at if I was going to use the regular rules, which means changing the templates, which again is a lot of extra complexity for really no actual utility in play.

Restricted Dodge Against Firearms - I admit, I like the current firearms dodge rules fairly well, and don't find the restricted ones feel that realistic to me at all, just seem overly heavy handed with the nerf bat. I personally will at times even allow Dodge at -2 as long as your moving in a fight and such generally, even if your not even aware of the attack in question, as long as your aware of something. A deer streaking away bouncing around is facing away from whoever is shooting at them, but is still being very problematic to hit. The idea that just because you can't see the attacker means you can't defend against ranged attacks rubs me wrong, since well, the natural defense of many animals or ships facing submarines is to flee erratically, and this can handily defend them from bullets or torpedoes, even if they don't exactly see their foe

Well, Doug's evasive movement rules might be better, but I really tried to avoid using a lot of added complexity if it wasn't going to add much, and I think that using the restricted firearms dodging rule is a reasonable place to draw the line. Notably that deer can use those rules to dodge one shooter.

I use the High Tech optional rule of treating trauma plates as semi ablative, that means someone who gets drilled with 10 shots of .30-06 in the trauma plate in their Interceptor Body armor suffers at least a damaged trauma plate if not some actual HP damage, instead of just ping and bounce off

In practice since you replace trauma plates if they've been shot at all, I'm not sure if this will come up in play much. I'll definitely consider it if people are getting shot several times in the same SAPI during the same mission, though.

I really didn't mention the rules from High Tech I'm likely to use at all, primarily because I was mostly focusing on stuff that relates to character creation here, so maybe I'll make another post about this later, once we start gaming.

I'm also considering writing about options I considered but decided not to use too.

[Kalzazz]

I expect them to buy well, I have no idea. I don't expect shopping to be very important. Thats why I would want to use a simplistic ruleset such as 'Here, you have this much money, and heres a gear catalog' which is intuitive to everyone who has ever gone shopping

TL 8 doesn't have much in the way of magic items or special modifiers, so get a gun, some web gear, body armor and a phone, and ammo for the lot and your good to go, and having items to buy and money to spend on them makes it all easy.



For dodging gunfire I pretty much use 'If basic set says you can dodge, you dodge. If basic set says you can't dodge, then by DM ruling you can often dodge anyway at -2'

Admittedly 'by DM ruling' is a bit fuzzy, so its not perfect, but I find basic set overly harsh, and I find the restricted dodges against firearms rules harsh to the point of annoyance and nerf bat anti realism (not that I actually go for realism, to much realism annoys me greatly, but anti realism that seems solely to exist for nerf bat purposes annoys me more than realism by far)

From my experience, the combination of semi ablative trauma plates and/or random hit locations are the two main things standing between modern PCs and being unstoppable gods of death (alright, slight exaggeration, but really, modern armor is sooooooooo good!)

edit - Yes, I expect PCs to get new trauma plates between missions if they get damaged (they are cheap after all), but it still means they don't want to eat multiple torso hits within the same quest

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

I expect them to buy well, I have no idea. I don't expect shopping to be very important. Thats why I would want to use a simplistic ruleset such as 'Here, you have this much money, and heres a gear catalog' which is intuitive to everyone who has ever gone shopping

That is kind of weird because I see using Abstract Wealth as vastly simpler. Especially compared to Job Rolls, Cost of Living, and Debt (which feels more like balancing your bank account and paying bills than shopping). Instead almost anything they are likely actually to buy with personal finances is cheap enough that they just do, and if something really weird happens where they want to spend some of their own money on something expensive we have some rules available to handle that with a roll (which I don't anticipate much use of, but it is good to have it available).

TL 8 doesn't have much in the way of magic items or special modifiers, so get a gun, some web gear, body armor and a phone, and ammo for the lot and your good to go,

The Project will issue them firearms, load-bearing equipment, body armor, ammunition and even secure phones (as well as more esoteric stuff like glyphs and ikhoters), so I don't anticipate much demand for trying to buy this stuff with personal finances, especially since the stuff they get issued isn't hampered by Legality Class.

and having items to buy and money to spend on them makes it all easy

Sure spending starting wealth is easy, and Job Rolls and Cost of Living might be easy, but they aren't fun either. Figuring out credit cards with the regular rules is either really simplistic (just take as much Debt as you like whenever!) or not really addressed at all (depending on how you view it). Tracking every transaction you make even for incidentals is just boring, and the players aren't very likely to spend much on anything cool, so mostly we'd be tracking cab rides, cigarettes, and airline drinks. I would much rather just be able to say "You take a taxi" and skip the bean-counting step entirely.

In fact, this stuff bugs me enough with how it needlessly slows play that I probably wouldn't run the game at all if I didn't have some way to handwave it.

Admittedly 'by DM ruling' is a bit fuzzy, so its not perfect, but I find basic set overly harsh, and I find the restricted dodges against firearms rules harsh to the point of annoyance and nerf bat anti realism (not that I actually go for realism, to much realism annoys me greatly, but anti realism that seems solely to exist for nerf bat purposes annoys me more than realism by far)

I think the rules are close enough to how I was trained to do individual rushing, that I didn't have a problem with them in the Tactical Shooting playtest and I don't have a problem with them now. They are, IMO, realistic enough for a game.

From my experience, the combination of semi ablative trauma plates and/or random hit locations are the two main things standing between modern PCs and being unstoppable gods of death (alright, slight exaggeration, but really, modern armor is sooooooooo good!)

I will certainly take this into advisement! I haven't actually done a lot of stuff with contemporary firearms and body armor, so I don't really have any in play experience with this yet.

edit - Yes, I expect PCs to get new trauma plates between missions if they get damaged (they are cheap after all), but it still means they don't want to eat multiple torso hits within the same quest

The Project is insanely wealthy, insanely well-connected and also not incompetent; they will have their trauma plates replaced after being hit. You probably aren't aware of this, but this requirement is actually printed on every SAPI plate in real life. No organization with decent logistics is going to not replace the things as needed.

[Kalzazz]

Do they carry spares with them? I admit, I kind of assumed they got them replaced when they got back to base at the end of a mission. There dirt cheap, but also heavy, so I've never seen PCs carry spares so by the time the party completes a mission they may well be reduced to a fraction of starting DR

My dads stories of his time as a GI always emphasized the desire to squirrel supplies away wherever you can wedge them on your person and in your vehicle, because no telling when/if they will be available in the future, but that was TL 7

I will think more and reply on the wealth thing later

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Do they carry spares with them? I admit, I kind of assumed they got them replaced when they got back to base at the end of a mission. There dirt cheap, but also heavy, so I've never seen PCs carry spares so by the time the party completes a mission they may well be reduced to a fraction of starting

In real life you generally aren't going to be in more than one extended battle per day and usually getting shot at all, even if you are later determined to be uninjured, is going to put you out of action, except in the most highly kinetic engagements (e.i. a real battle like 2nd Fallujah); although there were supply problems during the initial stages of OIF for example, when the coalition advance was vastly faster than anticipated. Sandmen aren't special operators (except for the Commando, of course) and their missions are probably not nearly as kinetic as a massive MOUT battlefield.

Like I said though, I probably will use those rules if needed, thank you for reminding me.

[sir_pudding]

Today, I weigh in on the the tone of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Today, I weigh in on the the tone of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.

Good post.