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Old 03-12-2021, 03:34 AM   #21
WingedKagouti
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Jumper

Jumper with Tunneling almost feels like it should be a free advantage if allowed in a campaign, otherwise the PC pays a hefty premium to allow the entire party to advance the campaign.
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Old 03-12-2021, 04:42 AM   #22
RogerBW
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Jumper

This is a very odd one from a campaign construction point of view.

I agree with John that if Jumper (World or Time) is in play at all the campaign should be about jumping. And in that case probably everyone should have it, or at least there shouldn't be one character who has to take the point hit while becoming "the guy who gets everyone to where the adventure is going to happen" – or to look at it another way, if the narration starts "you all arrive on P3X-289" and ends "you all jump out to the next adventure" that's not really a capability of the individual PC.

Of course, what players want to do is get away from that kind of template, and say things like "hang on, three adventures ago we were in a place with a thing that would be really helpful against this week's problem, so let's pop back there and borrow it". Then I could see a mixed party of jumpers and non-jumpers.

Where the cost becomes most relevant is if characters have different restrictions on their use of the power. It might be interesting to say in campaign setup that each PC has to put X points towards Jumper, but they can use whatever enhancements and limitations they like to get it to value X; so one can do it instantly but only once a day, one needs to work up to it but produces a tunnel, and so on.

In Infinite Cabal the initial group of PCs had that one Jumper with the sword, one psionic based loosely on the Cabalist World-Walker template (IW p. 196), and two mages with the Gate college (which was significantly cheaper in fatigue than usual, by campaign rule, but even so we didn't use them much – flattening out someone's Fatigue is more restrictive on further actions than using up an n/day use of Jumper).

In game-mechanical terms I'd like to see this "flatter" – the concentration and fatigue requirements should ideally be attachable with limitations, not baked into the power.
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Old 03-12-2021, 06:09 AM   #23
Crystalline_Entity
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Jumper

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Originally Posted by RogerBW View Post
I agree with John that if Jumper (World or Time) is in play at all the campaign should be about jumping. And in that case probably everyone should have it, or at least there shouldn't be one character who has to take the point hit while becoming "the guy who gets everyone to where the adventure is going to happen" – or to look at it another way, if the narration starts "you all arrive on P3X-289" and ends "you all jump out to the next adventure" that's not really a capability of the individual PC.
I think if jumping becomes a narrative convenience to enable the PCs to get to the plot, rather than an ability which contributes to problem solving during the plot, I'd maybe look at alternative to Jumper. An Unusual Background might work, or something I toyed with a while ago is using the Spaceships-as-Patrons rules from Pyramid 3/71 Spaceships II, which is for the similar case where the spaceship is a background element to enable the plot. It just needs a way of pricing the ability in $ - metatronic generators from Pyramid 3/46 Weird Science or the parachronic flux drive from GURPS: Spaceships 7 maybe?


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Originally Posted by RogerBW View Post
In Infinite Cabal the initial group of PCs had that one Jumper with the sword, one psionic based loosely on the Cabalist World-Walker template (IW p. 196)
How does World-walker template work in play? It's 40 points like all the other Cabalist lenses on IW196, but it feels like there's a less player control there, the GM decides where you find a pathways or gates, and where they goes, compared to a 40 point Jumper ability which looks like it could give the player much more control over where and when they can go.
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Old 03-12-2021, 06:54 AM   #24
johndallman
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Jumper

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Originally Posted by Crystalline_Entity View Post
How does World-walker template work in play? It's 40 points like all the other Cabalist lenses on IW196, but it feels like there's a less player control there, the GM decides where you find a pathways or gates, and where they goes, compared to a 40 point Jumper ability which looks like it could give the player much more control over where and when they can go.
The See Invisible (Quantum Flows) was sinificant, since it allowed locating gate-related things over long distances and gave an alert that history was at risk of changing. The Omen advantage on the template looks as if it is meant to be Oracle, and the player didn't take that.

Given the Infinite Cabal party's capabilities, the World-Walker template wasn't all that important. It did give them a potential way out of worlds they could not otherwise escape, but they never got stuck badly enough to resort to it. It did help with discovering the "B-Axis" of the Astral Plane, which is too complicated to described here, but is in The Path of Cunning #2.

Last edited by johndallman; 03-12-2021 at 11:26 AM. Reason: Spelling
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Old 03-12-2021, 06:54 AM   #25
TGLS
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Jumper

I feel that Jumper is priced such that a GM let's a player exploit it to a maximum effect. Things like:
-> "Aw, this wall's in the way." "Don't worry, I'll jump elsewhen where the wall doesn't exist and open up the door on the other side.
-> "Ha! My base is invincible! No one could possibly get in! Wha, How?!" "I took a quick trip back to the 1300s and got help from my friend the Duke."
-> "How are we ever going to get enough money to buy the McGuffin?" "Don't worry, let's make a trip to Bulk Barn and do some spice trade with those Medievals on Dandolo-2"

If you only let players jump at the beginning and end of each adventure Jumper is probably only worth a perk.
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Old 03-12-2021, 07:42 AM   #26
WingedKagouti
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Jumper

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Originally Posted by TGLS View Post
I feel that Jumper is priced such that a GM let's a player exploit it to a maximum effect. Things like:
-> "Aw, this wall's in the way." "Don't worry, I'll jump elsewhen where the wall doesn't exist and open up the door on the other side.
-> "Ha! My base is invincible! No one could possibly get in! Wha, How?!" "I took a quick trip back to the 1300s and got help from my friend the Duke."
-> "How are we ever going to get enough money to buy the McGuffin?" "Don't worry, let's make a trip to Bulk Barn and do some spice trade with those Medievals on Dandolo-2"
If the GM allows those uses, Jumper essentially becomes "Plot and campaign bypass". And if the GM constantly finds ways to prevent uses like that, they're basically telling the player that those points were wasted.
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Old 03-12-2021, 08:23 AM   #27
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Jumper

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
The question is discover. Travel to at will is a given if you can discover it, and impossible if you can't, that's just what the trait does unless very heavily modified.
If not "travel to at will" then the question is "clearly visualize".

If you have new Worlds and want to visit a world where somebody else is President you can just visualize a newspaper headline with President Fill-in-the-Blanks name in it. How do you viisualize a TL11 world?

Go with a pulp magazine cover with flying cars and I might let you go to Gernsback istead of Disneyland.
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Old 03-12-2021, 08:23 AM   #28
TGLS
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Jumper

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Originally Posted by WingedKagouti View Post
If the GM allows those uses, Jumper essentially becomes "Plot and campaign bypass".
Yeah, it kind of does. Of course, so is unlimited teleportation, the other 100 point advantage. The GM needs to carefully set limitations (small and big L) on Jumper to avoid short-circuiting the plot while also not turning one player into X-100 point taxicab.
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Old 03-12-2021, 11:24 AM   #29
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Jumper

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
If not "travel to at will" then the question is "clearly visualize".

If you have new Worlds and want to visit a world where somebody else is President you can just visualize a newspaper headline with President Fill-in-the-Blanks name in it. How do you viisualize a TL11 world?

Go with a pulp magazine cover with flying cars and I might let you go to Gernsback istead of Disneyland.
There's no "clearly visualize". The word "clearly" is nowhere in the Advantage description at all. (Jumper and Snatcher are not laid out as close parallels.)

Indeed, Jumper says pretty much nothing about the requirements for activation outside the raw game stat aspects. In either general use or New Worlds use. One could argue though that the 'visualization' aspect can't be necessarily visual though. A Jumper could be blind and never have seen anything at all and have no problems. And to memorize a world you have to visit it, but you don't have to learn anything about it. You could have a black bag over your head the whole time and be Jumped directly into a featureless bunker, and you'd still be able to revisit that world on your own later.


(Aside from being something with next to no footing in the text, I don't think your 'picture one feature' demand works the way you're looking at it. visualize a newspaper headline with an alternate president's name and you could get a world where they're president. Or one where they were president in the past. Or one where somebody had such a headline appear in a graphic novel panel to establish alternate history for their story. Or the otherwise useless world where some trolls stashed a crate of printouts with nothing on them but "President X" for every name they could think of. It only 'works' because you're choosing to treat that visualization without the hostility you bring to looking for ultratech.

...Meanwhile, you could probably pretty reliably visualize a piece of technology like a flying car or beam weapon that your known tech base can neither build nor simulate with convincing practical effects. Even if you get a world where the tech you visualized still isn't real, they've got something you didn't before.)
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Old 03-12-2021, 11:52 AM   #30
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week: Jumper

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
T

(Aside from being something with next to no footing in the text, I don't think your 'picture one feature' demand works the way you're looking at it. visualize a newspaper headline with an alternate president's name and you could get a world where they're president. Or one where they were president in the past. Or one where somebody had such a headline appear in a graphic novel panel to establish alternate history for their story.
Alright, I'll spell it out _exactly_.

The newspaper headline is on a speciific newspaper with today's date on it and the only difference is the name of the president in the headline. The newspaper is in a coin-operated box in front of a convenience store exactly like the one your departure point has.

Visualizing that gets you the IQ-3 roll that is the best you can do.

Perhaps you can visualize a future civilization but at best I'd let you do that with the standard TL penalties whihc are -15 for TL8 to TL11 and impossible for a greater spread.

As an alternative, how can you wander around the alternate universes at random (and "discover" things)? The rules text in Characters provides no way to do that intentionally at all. You can try to go somewhere specific and roll a crit fail but that's about it.
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