06-14-2020, 07:37 PM | #11 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Tech books are cumulative
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So how do YOU use the tech books? Do you use them to build custom equipment lists? Do you find it necessary to use the books from previous tech levels to fill them out? Quote:
To put it yet another way: If someone told you they were interested in running a game set in World War II and wanted recommendations on which books to get for equipment rules, would you recommend just High-Tech or both High-Tech and Low-Tech? And you're not recommending something just because it would be nice to have it. It would be because you thought they needed it to accomplish their goal. I guess the question just isn't very clear, since most people seem to be drifting off topic. Sorry about that. I'm not sure how else to put it. |
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06-14-2020, 07:51 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: Oklahoma City
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Re: Tech books are cumulative
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06-14-2020, 08:00 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Tech books are cumulative
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A tech book for the right period has most of whats needed, especially combat gear as that changes rapidly. For much equipment the stats change little except for price so reprinting would be seen was wasted space for most readers. Long as I have the references of Table of Contents, Index, and with PDF a search function plus I can use the section outline in my left nav bar I am content. Its Pyramid searches that kill most of my time, luckily thats not a lot of hear though. Pyramid gave us a lot of material we would never have seen though and the themed issues help so worth that to me. It happens a lot and we have lost many good regulars who still play or write for GURPS that visit the forums less or not at all because of it.
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My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries |
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06-14-2020, 08:50 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Tech books are cumulative
Considering the order the books were written and published in, historical cumulativism doesn't mesh well. They came out in antichronological order after all...
My view is generally less that you need all of them to fill in the more persistent bits of primitive tech than that you need (or at least want) all of them to fill in the upgrades to basic concepts and previously-overlooked subject matter. Which really generalizes beyond the *-Tech series.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
06-15-2020, 08:42 AM | #15 |
Join Date: Oct 2013
Location: Mülheim an der Ruhr
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Re: Tech books are cumulative
I tried to use the Tech books as a GM, but it is a lot of work, as my players don't have any GURPS books and are more interested in DnD.
I read a little but in the end I used only the Basic Set. Or some specific list, as seen in Action or the fan made Fallout. I think that if my players were interested in equipment, we would probably use the tech books as needed. but it was not my case. I generally stick with only the Basic Set because it is less work for me. |
06-15-2020, 10:53 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Tech books are cumulative
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You're also right in the middle of modern industrial warfare. Pretty much all the stuff you need is going to be mass produced in huge quantiies in distant locations and shiped to where you are, also in very large quantities. Sometimes it's going to fall out of the sky as if you were part of a cargo cult. I can imagine a WWII game where you sort of needed LT but it would be on the margins of the genre. Maybe you're stuck behind the lines in the Phillipines are are cut off from TL6 civilization. You still might spend more time stealing what you needed fro the Japanese or scavenging it from tL5 scrapyards than going back to the Stone age. People at TL5-8 use _categories_ of things that were invented at TLs 1-4 but specific items are normally highly updated and mass produced as well. No, you don't ned LT as a genral thing for higher tL games.
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Fred Brackin |
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06-16-2020, 12:48 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
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Re: Tech books are cumulative
1) You don't "need" any of the Tech books to play in any setting. They're just very useful. You can just wing it, using the lists in Basic as a beginning frame of reference. Google/Wikipedia the real world objects when something comes up you didn't foresee. Future tech you need to give some thought to, but you can just pick a favorite sci-fi book or series and go by what they have and don't have.
There are hundreds of RPGs in different settings that have a tiny fraction of GURPS's equipment info (if any), and it's never stopped anyone from playing them. 2) Even if you have all three books, I guarantee that at some point you'll want info that none of them have. You'll have to do one of those things up there anyway. One book, two books, or all three, the only thing that changes is how often you have to wing it. Last edited by transmetahuman; 06-16-2020 at 12:49 AM. Reason: Typos |
06-16-2020, 05:21 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Tech books are cumulative
Yes, I know that. I've run plenty of games without them. "Needing" isn't the point here. If I said "need," it was only shorthand for "decided that a large equipment selection is desirable and that a pre-published source would be preferable to just making stuff up."
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06-16-2020, 05:44 AM | #19 | ||
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Tech books are cumulative
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06-16-2020, 08:31 AM | #20 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: Tech books are cumulative
In most games, I only NEED one tech book, and in a low-combat game, basic can suffice just fine. One player might go and seek out a custom weapon from a non-core book, but they write down everything on their sheet and then we're done.
The exception is bio-tech, which usually needs ultra-tech to go with it, but that's to be expected. Some Genre's require more books, but you expect infinite worlds to use more of the tech books than other settings.
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high-tech, low-tech |
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