GURPS Znutar?

[AberranTux]

Years and years ago when there were wolves in Wales and uncles at Christmas, a The Awful Green Things from Outer Space thread happened over on the Board and Dice Games forum.

Originally Posted by Shostak

As a board game, it works really well solo or 2-person.

For multi-player, it could be worthwhile to stat up the characters and run it as a GURPS space horror game--possibly with a comic element.

It is probably a sign of how stir-crazy I've gone that, a night or two ago, I was suddenly seized by the desire to create 4e racial templates for the seven species represented in the game, and to design the Znutar and the society that launched it using GURPS Space. So far, all I have are the Redundans' advantages (360° Vision, an Extra Arm with Extra-Flexible, an Extra Leg) and the Ook's disads (No Fine Manipulators, Wild Animal).

Any suggestions?

[shadowjack]

I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. :) ("But what if you saw two hippos?")



If this were written up formally, to represent the Awful Green Things variable vulnerabilities, I'd use multiple mini-templates, to be selected randomly. (I know GM monsters don't need formal templates, but what the heck, someone might want to play a Friendly Green Thing.) Exactly mimicking the effects in the board game might prove difficult, but it would still make sense to have, say, one possible build have high DR vs. fire, ST and DX boosted by exposure to Zgwortz, and Allies triggered upon death by explosion (those cursed Fragments!)… while another game might have Vulnerability to fire, high DR vs. corrosion, and Epilepsy triggered by radio waves.

The Awful Green Things definitely have Cast-Iron Stomachs.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by AberranTux

It is probably a sign of how stir-crazy I've gone that, a night or two ago, I was suddenly seized by the desire to create 4e racial templates for the seven species represented in the game, and to design the Znutar and the society that launched it using GURPS Space. So far, all I have are the Redundans' advantages (360° Vision, an Extra Arm with Extra-Flexible, an Extra Leg) and the Ook's disads (No Fine Manipulators, Wild Animal).

Can we get a text description of the species please, for those of us who are unfamiliar with TAGTFOS?

[AberranTux]

Originally Posted by shadowjack

I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. :) ("But what if you saw two hippos?")

"I saw where a hippo was not, and said, no. This will not do."

If this were written up formally, to represent the Awful Green Things variable vulnerabilities, I'd use multiple mini-templates, to be selected randomly. (I know GM monsters don't need formal templates, but what the heck, someone might want to play a Friendly Green Thing.) Exactly mimicking the effects in the board game might prove difficult, but it would still make sense to have, say, one possible build have high DR vs. fire, ST and DX boosted by exposure to Zgwortz, and Allies triggered upon death by explosion (those cursed Fragments!)… while another game might have Vulnerability to fire, high DR vs. corrosion, and Epilepsy triggered by radio waves.

I likes the cut of your jib, mistopher. Work out the point value of the addies and disads, and the modifier values of the attacks, and one can swap out as needed.

The Awful Green Things definitely have Cast-Iron Stomachs.

How I missed that, science doesn't know.

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Can we get a text description of the species please, for those of us who are unfamiliar with TAGTFOS?

In reverse alphabetical order (what those of us who had a certain childhood might call zetabetical order):
* Snudalians (from Snudl-1 and Snudl-2) -- tetrapodal (means they have a total of four limbs -- two arms, two legs) reptiloids with tails and crests. The yellow Snudalians have single-spiked crests and single tails; the green Snudalians have forked crests and forked tails.
* Smbalites (from Smbal), sometimes spelled Smabalites -- short orange roly-poly tetrapodes with shaggy head-hair.
* Redundans (from Redund) -- red hexapodes with heavy trilateral symmetry (only one mouth, but three eyes atop the torso, three tentacular arms and three tentacular legs).
* Ook -- a sort of bluish kiwi with three eyes.
* Frathms (from Frath) -- blue tetrapodes with long necks and wiry head-hair.
* Awful Green Things -- adults have spherical bodies, fronted by a single bloodshot eye, atop two legs; babies have blobby bodies covered with cilia. Fragments just lie there secreting slime. Eggs can be mistaken for rocks (that's how the first specimen got on board the Znutar, in fact).
* Leadfoot the robot (unique specimen) -- cylindrical body either black or a very dark grey, stuffed with fnudding (replaced with a fresh batch every night, "while the old was being fed and cleansed"), two arms, two legs, one face.

Now you know, and knowing is half the Mandatory Educational Content Segment (TM).

[shadowjack]

Adding to the above:

The Snudalians, Frathms, Smbalites, and Redundans are space allies, like Star Trek's Federation, and the Znutar is the ship they've sent on their five-year mission to go boldly et cetera. They all seem roughly biocompatible in regards to air, food, and drugs -- "Zgwortz" is something canned that might be food and might be an intoxicant. (I always imagined it was basically their version of beer, perhaps one of the heavy types that is practically a meal in itself.)

The Snudalians and the Frathms seem to occupy the "normal humanoid" position; these would have the closest to human stats. They had the command positions on the good ship Znutar; whether this is luck, cultural hegemony, or because the other species aren't suited for command is never explored.

The impression I had from the art and the counter stats was that Redundans were lighter-weight but faster and more dextrous (all them tentacles), while Smbalites were squat and strong.

Their ship is a classic 1950s bullet-shaped design, using some sort of explosive rocket fuel. It has a lab, mess and galley, machine shops, sickbay, comms room, computer room, three different ship's launches (a two-man rocket scout, a four-man flying saucer, and a large lander), and a supply of rocket probes. Their armory is non-lethal (on their physiology, at least): stun beam pistols and knock-out gas grenades.

They do not have artificial gravity; if the ship is not under thrust, everyone is in free fall. The game they call "pool" basically involves baseball bats, croquet balls, and all six walls of the pool room; hitting a ball into your crewmates is considered fair play.

The Ook is an apparently non-sapient critter they picked up on another planet as a biological sample and ship's mascot. On the Ook homeworld, they seemed to move in large, scattered groups. Its body is perhaps the size of a ostrich's, but the legs are short and stocky. It's not a strong fighter, but can fight. I don't know if it can actually fly.

The Awful Green Things consume their prey rapidly and breed prodigiously (and apparently asexually), which plays into the board game mechanics; the crew player needs to swiftly and methodically expunge the Things, or the ship will soon be overrun; the monster player wants to eat as many crew as possible, both to eliminate enemies and to fuel faster breeding.

The crew's job is complicated by their not knowing what of their weapons and tools will be effective on this unknown form of life -- when you first test a category of weapon on a Thing, you draw a chit to discover what effect it has. Sometimes they harm, sometimes they're ineffective, and occasionally they make the monsters stronger. The crew throws everything they've got into the fight: stun pistols and gas grenades, canisters of rocket fuel, kitchen knives, pool bats, food canisters, fire extinguishers, welding torches, jars of acid, and "comm beamers" (presumably high-output radio equipment pried from the walls, or kit-bashed in the electronics room).

Hand-to-hand combat is always effective… so it's weird that pool bats might not be, but maybe the Things have a strange response to the material.

The Things have no visible mouths, so I always figured they absorbed their prey like slimes. The legged adults move faster and hit harder than the cilia-clad juveniles. Some attacks might blast a Thing into multiple sticky fragments, each of which may later grow into a new and whole Thing; in the boardgame, fragments can't move to another space but can attack where they are, so in GURPS terms they may have some limited mobility. The Things can survive exposure to vacuum for at least short periods, and can even move along the exterior of the ship.

Leadfoot the robot is slow but tremendously strong and durable. Your classic stompy humanoid robot ("DES. TROY. IN. TRU. DERS."), but it may be pseudobiological within its metal casing, given that its innards need feeding. A common optional rule is that Things that consume it may suffer odd side effects.

[dcarson]

Here are the rules from the SJGames site for the board game. http://www.sjgames.com/awfulgreen/img/rules.pdf

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Okay, extrapolating liberally from the above descriptions, the artwork in the rules, and the movement rates in the rules (which I just doubled for GURPS Move to maintain the relative proportions), and treating opportunities to purchase Rank as individual circumstance rather than Social Regard or Stigma, here's my take on the easy ones:

~~~~~

Snudalians [6]:

Secondary Attributes: Move +1 [5];
Perks: Scales [1];
Features: Yellow or Green w/ Single or Forked Cosmetic Crests & Tails [0];

~~~~~

Frathms [5]:

Secondary Attributes: Move +1 [5];

~~~~~

Smbalites [4]:

Secondary Attributes: HP +2 [4]; Move -1 [-5];
Advantages: Injury Tolerance (No Neck) [5];

~~~~~

Redundans [30]:

Attributes: ST -2 [-20];
Secondary Attributes: Move +3 [15];
Advantages: Extra Arms x1 (Extra Flexible +50%) [15]; Extra Flexible Regular Arms x2 [10]; Extra Legs (3 Total) [5]; Injury Tolerance (No Neck) [5];
Notes: I could see 360-Degree Vision for these guys conceptually, probably with Eye Stalks -20%, but the artwork doesn't depict them that way and they're already the most expensive by far so just add that if you want to.