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Old 08-23-2018, 11:20 PM   #1
johndallman
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Default [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Enemies

“He’s his own worst enemy.”
“Not while I’m alive, he isn’t.”
House of Commons, 1978.

Enemies [-1 to -60] is a mundane social disadvantage. There is an individual or group that has something against you personally, and puts effort into disadvantaging you in some way. The disadvantage first appeared at GURPS 1e, and the basic idea has not changed, although there have been many additions and variations.

The player gets to pick the general nature and power level of the Enemy, with the GM’s agreement. After that, the GM is responsible for managing them, although the players can naturally make suggestions. The value of an enemy is determined by their power, for which there are some special cases, their intentions and their frequency of appearance. Power varies from one person, less powerful than the PC with the disadvantage [-5], to a very powerful organisation [-40]. The special cases are an “Evil Twin*,” who can be readily mistaken for you, or an unknown enemy, where the character knows nothing about them, and the player only knows how many points they’re worth. Both of the special cases can increase the base value of the enemy. Intentions modify the final value of the disadvantage, from full value if the enemy intends to kill you, to a quarter value if they’re only spying on you. Frequency of appearance uses the standard modifiers, with the standard caveat that the GM does not have to roll, and can decide when enemies appear according to the requirements of the scenario, provided the average frequency of appearance is about right.

You can’t have more than two Enemy disadvantages, or more than [-60] worth of enemies, just to keep your enemies from dominating the game. Really powerful Enemies may well do that anyway, and should be used with caution. If you manage to kill off, make peace with, or simply become uninteresting to an Enemy, you need to buy off or replace the disadvantage; doing this in stages by buying down the frequency makes sense if they have competing priorities. Gaining Enemies can happen if a Secret is exposed, as part of Amnesia or Social Stigma, or to pay for acquiring other social advantages, such as a Patron.

Enemies are a reasonably common disadvantage option on published templates. Action uses Enemies’ table of enemy power levels to calculate Basic Abstract Difficulty (BAD) penalties. Aliens: Sparrials are prone to have them, as are many kinds of Banestorm characters. Boardroom and Curia deals with organisations that are, or have, Enemies, while Fantasy covers gods, spirits, angels, demons and ancestors as Enemies. Horror has many ways for the GM to use Enemies, and Infinite Worlds has some who can hunt you across worlds. The Martial Arts series has more mundane enemies on many of its templates, while Monster Hunters has more options than “Monster of the Week.” Powers covers Enemies for characters with superhuman abilities, and Psis and Psionic Campaigns address the problem of Enemies who want to experiment on you. Reign of Steel: Will to Live has deadly enemies, while Social Engineering and Back to School usually deal with less violent ones. Space has material on Enemies in secret-agent campaigns, and on the pointlessness of Evil Twin if appearance is easily changed. Supers has Enemies shared by several characters, and Age of Sail: Pirate Crew has an example in the Royal Navy.

I’ve never used Enemies in a GURPS campaign, after unsatisfactory experiences with the very similar Hero System disadvantage. There, I’d created an enemy for the campaign scope as the GM and I understood it, but they became irrelevant as the game moved into various otherworlds, and culminated in an epic journey back from the land of the dead. I was very happy with this – scope growth is something I like in an RPG – but I’d lost part of the characterisation, in a way that felt like cheating.

How have Enemies been important in your games?

* Evil Twin came from GURPS IOU, where an obvious trick was to be the Evil Twin of a sensible student, if you could find one.
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Old 08-24-2018, 12:35 AM   #2
Phantasm
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Enemies

In my games, one thing I have to remind players of is that an Enemy actively has a beef against your character, personally, in order to qualify as an "Enemy". There may be a government agency that hassles your kind just for existing (a xenophobic manaphobic totalitarian regime whose army shoots mages and non-humans on sight, or a federal law enforcement agency full of racist bigots), but so long as you don't operate where they do and stay under their radar, they don't qualify as an Enemy.

However, if you're a criminal or an urban vigilante, it makes sense to have "Enemy (Law Enforcement; Hunter)", "Enemy (Newspaper Publisher; Rival)", or "Enemy (Reporter; Watcher)".


The "Enemy (Monster of the Week)" from Monster Hunters comes in handy in a lot of serialized games. However, as a GM I've been known to use that as a campaign feature rather than giving players points for it. In my Marvel Reboot project and game, I've been toying with giving a few folks a similar "Enemy (Rogues Gallery)" for characters who have a lot of antagonists that can pop up almost at random to make trouble for the character. (For example, on any given day Spider-Man almost never knows ahead of time if he'll be facing Green Goblin, Venom, Scorpion, the Vulture, Sandman, Hammerhead, Black Cat, Electro, or any other criminal he's tussled with in the past and is seeking revenge.)


And sometimes the players pitch me ideas for Enemies, then describe them in such a way that I have to chuckle and say, "sounds like they have your character as an Enemy instead." :)
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Old 08-24-2018, 06:54 AM   #3
whswhs
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Enemies

I find some use in the lower-end versions of Enemies. "Rival" is good for someone who wants to outdo you, which could be a sibling or a business competitor; "Watcher" can be a snoopy parent, a journalist who writes about you a lot, or a Patron you have to report to. None of these concepts quite fits the straightforward melodramatic hero/villain dynamic.
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