When to homebrew and when to use the system?

[jj234]

Originally Posted by Humabout

quote

Thanks for all the advice and charming sarcasm. I'm really glad that there is such an active community for this system. I look forwards to my adventures with GURPS

[dfinlay]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

And even if you're a GM, a proposed house rule may not meet approval from the rest of the gaming group.

This is true of canonical rules (ie published) as well. I recently got GURPS: Back to School and tried to switch one of my games over to a system where they needed to use the time spent rules as well as character points from adventuring, but my players overruled me. :(

[dfinlay]

More on topic, homebrewing is great and I love and do it. That said, as I've gotten more experienced with it, I've realized that GURPS usually has rules for what you are trying to do and they are almost certainly are more heavily play-tested that your home-brews. That said, your home-brews are more closely tuned to the feel you want. Hence, trade-offs.

If you don't know a RAW way of doing something in GURPS, post here and someone will usually find it for you. If for whatever reason, you don't like the methods people came up with, you can home-brew. Just bear in mind that good, balanced home-brews take a fair amount of experience with the system.

As for Powers and it's finiteness, it's actually really surprising, but in my experience, almost any ability you are likely to want to simulate any piece of fiction can be built with it with very little additions. That said, by the very fact that it is combinatorical, some combinations are really good and some are really bad. As such, it sometimes gives costs for things that aren't very reasonable. In these cases, house-ruling a new price can be a decent idea, but I'd recommend against doing this without understanding why the system gave the price it did (sometimes it has a very good reason). If you're unsure, asking on here can help.

Finally, I'd like to welcome you to the strange and wonderful world of GURPS GMing. Enjoy your stay.

[Phantasm]

Really, though, the only things that aren't infinite are defenses. As Kromm has stated, the only fair price for infinite DR is infinite points, so as it turns out nothing is truly "invulnerable" to damage. Some of the spells in Magic (missile shield, force dome) go against this, but are typically houseruled for "as much DR as the setting normally sees as damage". (I'd probably rule that it's quite possible for a nuclear blast to demolish a force dome in one setting where nukes are the weapon-of-last-resort for world governments (up to modern day, and near-future magi-cyberpunk) and not even scratch it in another where nukes are tossed around in bullets (say, a magical version of OGRE).)

[dfinlay]

Originally Posted by tbrock1031

Really, though, the only things that aren't infinite are defenses. As Kromm has stated, the only fair price for infinite DR is infinite points, so as it turns out nothing is truly "invulnerable" to damage. Some of the spells in Magic (missile shield, force dome) go against this, but are typically houseruled for "as much DR as the setting normally sees as damage". (I'd probably rule that it's quite possible for a nuclear blast to demolish a force dome in one setting where nukes are the weapon-of-last-resort for world governments (up to modern day, and near-future magi-cyberpunk) and not even scratch it in another where nukes are tossed around in bullets (say, a magical version of OGRE).)

Unless I'm misinterpreting, I believe he meant finite as in "finite number of modifiers and advantages and thus limited numbers of things you can do", not finite as in finite levels of things.

EDIT: Here's the original mention of finite:

Originally Posted by jj234

Having a finite number of options to choose from really doesn't sit well with me.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by jj234

Yes, I have seen all the other threads. They typically discuss using the Powers approach, but this seems to require an eidetic memory of all the modifiers and other stuff associated with the Powers book.

Not really. There is some learning curve with Powers, but it's fairly easy to look stuff up while you're designing magic: building stuff in advance where possible, rather than doing it during play, is preferable. PDFs make searching fast and accurate.

Even if I was more familiar with the book I still hate the idea of being limited to the modifiers printed on the pages. Having a finite number of options to choose from really doesn't sit well with me.

The options can be combined with other options, the only limit being making sense. The number of combinations is at least hundreds of thousands, likely many millions. The ability to design stuff with Powers isn't (usually) a problem; the point costs sometimes are.

Many of the magic system design options in Thaumatology are not Powers-based.

Any insight you could provide on how to achieve a Naruto-like magic (or power) system would really help.

I'm completely unfamiliar with it, but others may have seen it.

[Crzyraccoon]

GURPS is a system, and it encourage you to change it to your heart's desire. To answer your question, it is all depending on what you want in your campaign, you want a gritty horror game where death is in every corner, use all the optional realistic gritty rules from the basic set and use the fright table a lot, or a cinematic martial arts campaign, allow Trained by a Master and include cinematic moves and actions. This is just scratching the tip of the iceberg but GURPS allows you to play every theme.

If you are also asking how much home brewing, it depends on your theme, GURPS is based on reality so the more different it is from that reality in both physics and theme, the more home brewing is required.

[T.K.]

Originally Posted by jj234

I'm basing my campaign on the anime Naruto.

Hmmm... first, I'd like reinstate that I DO believe you can build anything that's relevant for actual gameplay in a RPG campaign with GURPS. Seriously.

And on top of that, I'd go really bold and also state that you don't need to homebrew 85% of the time.
From the remaining 15% where the rules can't cover you, there's enough structure laid out in GURPS that you have pretty solid guidelines to make an informed brewing ^)^

That said and taken out of the way...

What exactly doesn't suit your taste with the systems already presented in GURPS that goes against Naruto jutsu system?

Starting with the very basics here, you could make something like this using the GURPS basic magic system:

Each school in GURPS would be a Jutsu tree of knowledge, with the more powerful jutsu down the tree, for example, Katon Jutsus would be Fire school, Suiton jutsus would be Water school...
You could simply add some spells that would be missing or change a bit ones in GURPS to better match existing jutsus.

Keep in mind, jutsus in Naruto that are the same effect, but simply more powerful or less and thus in the anime are treated as different jutsus in GURPS could simply be the same spell, only with more Fatigue added to fuel it.

To represent the affinity that some ninjas and some families have, you can use Aspected Magery.
Magery is the advantage in GURPS that adds to spells (A form of Talent) and can be found in the Basic.
There's an option to make it Aspected aka only work in a reduced state or reduced row of spells.

So, let's say you're an Uchiha, you could give their template something like:

Prodigy Ninja (Magery) 2 (Aspected Magery, 2 school only (Fire Spells, Mind Spells), -30% ; Can't use External Energy, -15%) [11]

This means that this guy would be better performing any jutsu (spell) of the Fire and Mind school, basically Katon jutsu and genjutsu since he does have Magery 2 for these schools.

To represent the Dojutsus and the Kekkei Genkai, simply use Unusual Background and build the Dojutsus with a combination of advantages to build the core powers (Sharingan, Byakugan, Rinnegan...) and then allow special spell trees or secret spells if the person has those.

What else do you need of Naruto?

[Kalzazz]

We've tried using DX based RPM for it

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I'm completely unfamiliar with it, but others may have seen it.

Naruto is an anime set in a very alternate world. It has ninja who live in isolated villages where they are apparently taught to leap before thy can walk.

Though these ninja frequently have superhuman physical and martial arts abilities there main source of power is their "chakra" an internal energy identical to what is called "chi" more often in other settings.

They use this chakra to power magical abilities that are called "jutsus". The main characters will know many jutsus and some of them are incredibly powerful.

The title character (Naruto) has as his signature ability "ShadowCloneJutsu!" (you have to shout out the name of your jutsu when you use it) which maps well to the Gurps Power of duplication. If Naruto exerts himself he can make dozens or even hundreds of shadowclones. Definitely a multi-thousand cp character.

Flexibility of Powers isn't really an issue so much as the power level/cp cost of characters in the setting. This is a very high level setting even for Supers.