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Old 04-28-2022, 11:55 AM   #41
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Questions while reading rules more accurately...

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Originally Posted by Gollum View Post
Of course.

Which is why I (house) rule: about one second. It remains one second ... plus or minus some tenths and hundredths. It just remains vague to avoid endless discussions about the real ability of an average man without training to run 5 yards from standing still in just one second, as noted by Varyon above, to draw a sword from his scabbard while a trained warrior will just have the time to attack him once with his knife, and so on.
Or, you could just change the turn length into one that actually permits doing those things. For example, moving 5 yards from a standing start in one second is not only beyond the capabilities of an average person, it's impossible for a human to achieve (world record sprint times, starting from a runner's crouch on blocks, are about 3 yards in the first second).
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Old 04-28-2022, 12:20 PM   #42
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Default Re: Questions while reading rules more accurately...

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A GURPS turn is 1s because it's defined that way, but you'll get a lot fewer improbable results if you change it to 2s.
To be clear, you'd have everything happen the exact same way in a normal turn, but state that 2 seconds have now passed instead of only one?

Hmmm...I must say that taking 2 seconds to run 5 yards, or having someone fast-draw his sword as a free action and then attack a foe seems much more palatable to me. But everything else stays the same; i.e. battles lasting 10 turns (20 seconds instead of 10 passing) everyone still suffers FP losses? Spells now last 2 minutes instead of one minute?

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Old 04-28-2022, 12:25 PM   #43
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Default Re: Questions while reading rules more accurately...

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Or, you could just change the turn length into one that actually permits doing those things.
Sure… But everything will have to be reorganized and rewritten, which would take a huge amount of work.

Furthermore, longer turns have their own problems: how many knife slashes can you realistically do during one two-handed axe swing? Does that attack really requires a full turn … Which eventually leads to opportunity attack rules and the likes. And it is not at all simpler, neither more realistic.

GURPS as written works very well as soon as you consider that a turn is not a strict second but “just a way of breaking a battle into manageable chunks!”

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Old 04-28-2022, 12:44 PM   #44
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Default Re: Questions while reading rules more accurately...

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To be clear, you'd have everything happen the exact same way in a normal turn, but state that 2 seconds have now passed instead of only one?

Hmmm...I must say that taking 2 seconds to run 5 yards, or having someone fast-draw his sword as a free action and then attack a foe seems much more palatable to me. But everything else stays the same; i.e. battles lasting 10 turns (20 seconds instead of 10 passing) everyone still suffers FP losses? Spells now last 2 minutes instead of one minute?

thom
And why not, indeed?

Thus, let’s say that one combat round lasts between 0.5 and 2 seconds (1 on the average) and almost all reality checking problems are solved.

After all, the most important remains that every character has the same opportunity to do what his abilities afford him to do. Running a number of yards equal to his movement, drawing his weapon, doing it and attacking if he is skilled enough (successful Fast-draw roll), attacking once and defending himself, attacking twice but without defending himself, and so on.
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Old 04-28-2022, 01:21 PM   #45
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Default Re: Questions while reading rules more accurately...

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I wasn't saying anything about using combat rounds, or even changing the length of turns. I was saying that five seconds of movement isn't an extreme amount that should exhaust you or whatever, because people train harder thsn this routinely. Even I do, and I am not a peak athlete by any stretch of the imagination.
If you can do retreats, engages, and clean form attacks, every seconds, then I'd say you must be exceptionally good, having to not only change direction, on a second tact basis, with all the counter momentum that's added to it, but you also are in 'fight mode' against a potentially dangerous opponent.

And I also still think that just doing that for training is pretty intense.
Unless, of course, retreating is just taking a small step, then yeah, but then we're back in 'is it really a retreat' or just spacing for a particular style, like boxing, which, again, I'd put under 'no special bonus because flavor' ...if going by 'realistic human' and not 'by RAW'.

Noone would fight like that. Noone believable. Not in MMA, not in Boxing, not in meth hobo fights, not even in amped up martial arts movies.
Because it's ridiculous.

A true retreat every second? followed by a step back in (required if one stays put and doesn't follow like in boxing) and a clean attack?

Maybe I need to animate this or something to make my point better, but nothing I envision like that is anything other than ludicrous.
And taxing, and unsteady, unless, again, you're some sort of momentum and mass/friction control god.

That said, if turns were longer then that would be more believable, but not in a second tact.

Judo is such an effective martial art because momentum and stuff carries over and can be exploited.
So being a monkey spring bean is silly. You'd be spending quite a bit of stamina doing that, even if you're trained. You'd still be burning more than if you moved less erratic.


No way this is more energy efficient than doing standard flowy 'regular combat dance' flavor footwork, even if by game rules, it's not more taxing.
But it would be ...for believability.

And because I don't think that fighting like that is as effortless as standard fighting, including the active defenses, I also think that it should cost something, even if it's role playing based.
Aka, dumb monkey thug, stop jumping around. Fight like a man, and not
retreat, reengage, hit, retreat (and again, I mean RETREAT, not flavor 'we're both dancing a dance of death with the attack animation and movement and other stuff)

I guess long story short, I think I'm on team "costs movement".
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Old 04-28-2022, 01:35 PM   #46
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Default Re: Questions while reading rules more accurately...

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e (world record sprint times, starting from a runner's crouch on blocks, are about 3 yards in the first second).
A complicated road to start down because you'll have your runner acceleratign more in the seconds later until he's hitting speeds not possible for the simple Gurps "sprint" model. Even that " average 18 year old fit for military service" will be doing more than 5 or even 6 yards per second.

After that you'll probably have to try and fix the distance running rules. :)
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Old 04-28-2022, 01:36 PM   #47
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Default Re: Questions while reading rules more accurately...

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To be clear, you'd have everything happen the exact same way in a normal turn, but state that 2 seconds have now passed instead of only one?
Yes.
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Spells now last 2 minutes instead of one minute?
I probably wouldn't bother with changing anything that isn't accounted for in seconds. I'm not sure I've ever had a GURPS combat that lasted more than 30 turns.
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A complicated road to start down because you'll have your runner acceleratign more in the seconds later until he's hitting speeds not possible for the simple Gurps "sprint" model. Even that " average 18 year old fit for military service" will be doing more than 5 or even 6 yards per second.
Well, sure. The sprint bonus should probably be +100% or more. Which makes it consistent with enhanced move, which already applies +100% per turn.
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Last edited by Anthony; 04-28-2022 at 01:40 PM.
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Old 04-28-2022, 01:54 PM   #48
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Default Re: Questions while reading rules more accurately...

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Aka, dumb monkey thug, stop jumping around. Fight like a man, and not retreat, reengage, hit, retreat (and again, I mean RETREAT, not flavor 'we're both dancing a dance of death with the attack animation and movement and other stuff)
Again, if you insist on interpreting a Retreat and Step as moving back a full yard, then forward again a full yard, you're going to get silly results. In a fist fight, a Retreat may be backing up to just outside of your opponent's punching range (which may be only a foot, or less, from where you are standing). But GM's need a way to judge if you have enough space to maneuver in this manner effectively, and "you have a hex of clearance behind you" is an easy way to do that. A GM who is a glutton for complexity could decide to implement a houserule that required characters to state which part of a hex they currently occupy (one of the 6 sides, or the center, for example), give fractional Reaches to attacks (Reach 2/3 means you can hit someone on your side of their hex from the middle of your hex, or someone in the middle of their hex from their side of your hex, or someone on the opposite side of your hex from you) and require Retreating out of their attack's Reach to actually get the full bonus, for example, allowing characters to be in (or at least temporarily retreat to) hexes that are partially occupied.
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Old 04-28-2022, 02:41 PM   #49
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Default Re: Questions while reading rules more accurately...

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does the Retreat option requires to use the step allowed by most combat maneuvers?

Rules are not truly clear about that (Basic Set, Campaigns, page 377):
"To exercise this option, you must move away from your attacker: at least one yard, but not more than 1/10 your Move – exactly as for a step (see Step, p. 368)."
Does "exactly as for a step" means that it is a step, the only step you are allowed to do during your turn, or that it is an additional free step?
There's been confusion about this as far back as 3e, that they actually answered the question in page 68 of http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/Compendium2/ called "Retreating Clarified"

The backward step taken when retreating does not count against your character’s Move score on the following turn.

The justification is that your character is being driven back by the force of an attack, not just stepping.
It's definitely a strange explanation, since "driven back by the force" sorta makes sense if you were making contact (like a block or parry) with a force that could inflict knockback, but not in other situations like a dodge (contact doesn't happen) or an attack which doesn't inflict knockback (like a laser)

It even goes so far as to suggest amending the standard rules (retreats do not use your step) by suggesting an OPTIONAL rule that it uses a step from your next turn:

However, there are those who feel that this is unrealistic.
As an optional rule, a character who retreats has his Move and Step each reduced by 1 on the following turn.
Since most characters have a Step of 1, this means that they may not take the “Step” portion of a “Step and . . .” maneuver;
a character with a Step of 2 could only Step 1 hex, etc.
What I don't like about that is it assumes you'd have a step the next turn to spend - that's not the case if you're forced to Do Nothing.

Even that seems generous IMO, it'd be even more brutal if you had to have an unspent step from your current maneuver to pay for retreats, then you could only get that option to retreat if you weren't advancing.

I do like the idea of a block or parry harnessing knockback from a neutralized (successful block or parry) crushing melee attack to aid retreats though. I'm not sure how to implement it. Maybe something like allow Roll With Blow even on a successful Block/Parry and still roll damage but just to see if you can get some knockback to harness, defender's option?

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Having a polearm and the ability to unimpededly retreat is a huge advantage and should be.
Yeah although if we wanted a realistic balancing option I think the cure would be representing people's lack of situational awareness, like accidentally backing into a team-mate, tripping over a body, etc.

This is why sometimes people won't retreat directly backward and will do sort of a sideways retreat so they can use peripherhal vision both to monitor the threats they're retreating from but also where they're stepping behind them.

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Or, you could just change the turn length into one that actually permits doing those things. For example, moving 5 yards from a standing start in one second is not only beyond the capabilities of an average person, it's impossible for a human to achieve (world record sprint times, starting from a runner's crouch on blocks, are about 3 yards in the first second).
There might be solves for this other than changing the 1s turn, because that seems to work decently for how many punches and stuff people can throw.

Like what if for example we changed the size of a hex from 1y to 1f? Then to move 3y/s (9fps) you would need Move 9, nearly double the standard Move 5.
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Old 04-28-2022, 04:21 PM   #50
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Default Re: Questions while reading rules more accurately...

Because 6" miniatures and maps the size of your living room are very practical.


2 second turns would mean grenades explode sooner, after two turns. This would seem to make it completely impossible to throw them back, which isn't completely accurate. It would still be possible to jump on them or kick them into s grenade sump, so there's that.
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