GURPS Hooligans

[Kelhanion]

Originally Posted by Tinman

Wow! I've heard about and seen in the news about soccer hooligans, but this thread is so European I got culture shock just from reading it. :)

We just had the first capital football derby in Finland in something like forty years and if I read the message boards and the news correctly, people were almost proud that there was a small scuffle before it. You aren't a truly European country unless you use football as an excuse for inexcusable behaviour.

[Onkl]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

Needs Compulsive Carousing and all the rest of the alcohol fuelled ads and disads. Football hooligan is almost synonymous with lager lout.

You make a good point. I need to talk to the GM about making Compulsive Carousing mandatory. Also, Alcoholism is a dire oversight I made so thanks for that.

Also, what do you think about Sense of Duty (FC Solothurn)? I wanted to make it so you had a Sense of Duty to the players of the Footballclub, the management and the fans. I think that [-5] are not enough but [-10] is a bit too much. Any thoughts?

[Kelhanion]

Originally Posted by Onkl

Also, what do you think about Sense of Duty (FC Solothurn)? I wanted to make it so you had a Sense of Duty to the players of the Footballclub, the management and the fans. I think that [-5] are not enough but [-10] is a bit too much. Any thoughts?

I'm looking at the description in the Basic Set and indeed, it's a pretty big gap: [-5] for close friends and [-10] for a nation. I'd say that [-10] would be closer because the Sense of Duty of football fans is quite "irrational". Football is larger than life so naturally the Sense of Duty would be larger than the actual number of individuals involved.

[Daigoro]

IQ 12 seems high, and I would've maybe even put it at 9.

And all the secondary artistic skills should really just be covered by Propaganda or Savoir Faire. That is,

One of Makeup/TL8, Sewing/TL8 (E) IQ+1 [2]; Poetry, Propaganda/TL8, Writing (A) IQ [2]; Artist(Calligraphy or Painting), Musical Composition (H) IQ-1 [2]

I presume these were to cover activities like making team chants, painting banners or sewing club patches onto jerseys and leather jackets. However those skills cover a lot broader range of ability and expertise than would be needed here. Alternatively, make a Hooligan Hobby Skill, which covers all those with the limited range that they'd need to be able to do it.

[Michele]

Hobby (Football Trivia) and Current Affairs (Football News). Note Current Affairs (Sports) is not suitable; hooligans are not interested in other sports.

[joppeknol]

I would like to see some rules which makes it an advantage to drink before the game starts and makes it a challenge to stop in time. (You need to drink a lot before the match in order to be cool but it wil affect you fighting abilities).

[Onkl]

Originally Posted by Kelhanion

I'm looking at the description in the Basic Set and indeed, it's a pretty big gap: [-5] for close friends and [-10] for a nation. I'd say that [-10] would be closer because the Sense of Duty of football fans is quite "irrational". Football is larger than life so naturally the Sense of Duty would be larger than the actual number of individuals involved.

I agree, it's closer to [-10] than to [-5] - you could still just say it's in between and set it at [-8] but that makes it harder to reach the disads limit so I'll just drop it an be content with [-10]. Thanks for your feedback though!

Originally Posted by Daigoro

IQ 12 seems high, and I would've maybe even put it at 9.

Yeah, most Hooligans will probably be quite unintelligent or downright stupid. But there might be the occasional Hooligan that has a higher IQ. I personally know a guy who's a FC Basel Ultra in his free time and during day, he's an MD and I would not stat him out at 9 IQ.

I guess it was stupid of me to write in my first post that you could use it as a realistic template because it is definately not. It was created for a silly and cinematic campaign albeit having a lower power level than I usually am comfortable with. The powerlevel helps the streetfighting though, makes it more intense IMHO.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

And all the secondary artistic skills should really just be covered by Propaganda or Savoir Faire. That is,

I presume these were to cover activities like making team chants, painting banners or sewing club patches onto jerseys and leather jackets. However those skills cover a lot broader range of ability and expertise than would be needed here. Alternatively, make a Hooligan Hobby Skill, which covers all those with the limited range that they'd need to be able to do it.

You are absolutely right. Again, the campaign the GM wants to run is much more cinematic in nature than I first wrote, the sillyness stays the same. Now it seems that the Musical Influence skills will make an appearance soon. Can't get any more cinematic than that!

You are right of course about the Hobby skill - Artist (Calligraphy) is non-sensical, but very silly. And that was the goal.

Originally Posted by Michele

Hobby (Football Trivia) and Current Affairs (Football News). Note Current Affairs (Sports) is not suitable; hooligans are not interested in other sports.

Thanks, noted. I'll add it to the template as it absolutely makes sense.

Originally Posted by joppeknol

I would like to see some rules which makes it an advantage to drink before the game starts and makes it a challenge to stop in time. (You need to drink a lot before the match in order to be cool but it wil affect you fighting abilities).

Good idea, I'll talk to the GM about how to implement that. Thanks a bunch!

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Onkl

Yeah, most Hooligans will probably be quite unintelligent or downright stupid. But there might be the occasional Hooligan that has a higher IQ. I personally know a guy who's a FC Basel Ultra in his free time and during day, he's an MD and I would not stat him out at 9 IQ.

Why not set the default at IQ 9 and allow players to take advantage of the Per/Will house rule if they want and distribute the 60 points they save among attributes and "tough guy" advantages as they like? It'd allow for greater variety, and it's much funnier if one of the PCs is actually smart than if they all are. This dynamic worked beautifully in my mob war game.

Originally Posted by Onkl

I guess it was stupid of me to write in my first post that you could use it as a realistic template because it is definately not. It was created for a silly and cinematic campaign albeit having a lower power level than I usually am comfortable with. The powerlevel helps the streetfighting though, makes it more intense IMHO.

170 points is considerably more than most real people have, IMHO. Regardless, defaulting these guys to dumb mode seems more silly than defaulting them to smart mode, if silly is your intent.

[Onkl]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

Why not set the default at IQ 9 and allow players to take advantage of the Per/Will house rule if they want and distribute the 60 points they save among attributes and "tough guy" advantages as they like? It'd allow for greater variety, and it's much funnier if one of the PCs is actually smart than if they all are. This dynamic worked beautifully in my mob war game.

170 points is considerably more than most real people have, IMHO. Regardless, defaulting these guys to dumb mode seems more silly than defaulting them to smart mode, if silly is your intent.

You are right in what you write, but I can't change the stuff because I am not the GM, so I'll have to invoke my Diplomacy skill every time I want something changed.

The GM set all Attributes to 12 because in this game more than half the players never played a PnP RPG before and the GM "dumbed" it down considerably to start the game out. So in the first session we just rolled against Attributes... and since they're all at 12 it makes for easy play.

I am now in the process of using GURPS GM Toolkit 1: Characters to make "Classes". These will have differing attribute scores for the different roles. I will present them here as soon as I have something I can present.