GURPS Meta-Tech

[Jinumon]

I noticed the Dollar Cost on the Meta-Tech Device Table doesn't perfectly adhere to the "-10 SM, ×10 Cost" paradigm discussed beneath the table (SM+3 modifier is 0.02, SM-7 is 0.25).

Is this intentional or the result if a typo? If the latter, which progression should we be following (1-1.25-1.5-1.75-2-3 or 0.85-1.25-1.5-2-2.5-3)?

Jinumon

[zoncxs]

Intentional, the:

"dollar cost by 10 per additional SM ‑10 or divide by 10 per additional SM +10"

Is to calculate SM costs that are lower or higher than what is on the table.

So for SM values lower than SM -12 and for ones higher than SM +6.

[Jinumon]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

Intentional

I was hoping to hear from Chris Rice specifically. Was this a question ya'll already addressed in the Playtest?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Jinumon

I was hoping to hear from Chris Rice specifically. Was this a question ya'll already addressed in the Playtest?

Christopher has opted to largely make an exit from the forums, as he posted here.

As for the playtest, while I can't speak to specifics, I'll note that the pricing was something we spent a lot of time on to try to get something that worked without being ridiculous on the upper and lower ends. I do notice that for most of the table it's -1 step on the Size and Speed/Range Table to price per +2 to SM, with the in-between values being the average of the two (so 0.3->0.25->0.2, for example). The exceptions are seen with SM -6 to SM -5, SM -4 to SM -3, and SM +2 to SM +3; in each case it's essentially a full -1 SSR to price per +1 to SM. I do not know if these are typos/errata or if Christopher and/or Kromm decided these were natural breakpoints that justified a larger reduction in price for crossing.

[Jinumon]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Christopher has opted to largely make an exit from the forums, as he posted here.

Oh my goodness! A sad day indeed. Thank you for the head's-up. I don't think I ever would have noticed, otherwise.

Jinumon

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Jinumon

Oh my goodness! A sad day indeed. Thank you for the head's-up. I don't think I ever would have noticed, otherwise.

Jinumon

You could pop over to https://discord.com/channels/2285469...71130161336380 to ask as an option.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

I note that Excalibur has had its price multiplied by a factor of 100 for "impossible" uniqueness. In an Arthurian Legend campaign, this multiplier should probably instead be x1 for "uncommon" (magic swords aren't exactly available to buy at the market in the Matter of Britain, but any enterprising knight errant has a good chance of having obtained one by the end of his Tale) bringing the cost down to a bit under three million- pricey, but within the realm of plausible for the regalia of a major king.

EDIT: By way of comparison, in the old third edition Magic Items 1, a sword and scabbard crafted to mimic the powers of Excalibur had a theoretical price of around two million for the pair.

Artifacts of Legend/Saga ballparked cost for items on the order of $1,000 per character point of equivalent advantages in a DFRPG world with magic items relatively speaking "all over the place."

So the $2M price seems consistent with that.

The higher price being for basically "one of the only magic items in the world, that needs Cosmic to simply exist" doesn't seem wrong either.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Farmer

Meta-tech is a broad, flexible, consistent...

Want to double down on this. A system usable for everything is extremely unlikely to be spot on for any one given thing. I have run into this time and again with my own broad systems, beginning with the firearms system that was one of my very first attempts at such a thing.

This will always be the case when trying to make a consistent system out of a bunch of individual items that were likely priced as "well, that seems about right" instead of some underlying set of LEGOs, and even more so when even such a building block system is present but allows for much discretion as to how it fits into a genre.

So ... yeah. The price of overall relative consistency is that you can point to numerous examples where the pricing of something doesn't fall squarely on the average cost curve. That's the nature of a curve fit.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by SRoach

You couldn't pay me enough to both be a game designer, and visit the boards where my efforts were routinely folded, spindled, and mutilated in discourse.

It is somewhat unfortunate that such efforts as these seem to go by "I bought your book, that's praise enough" on the positive end, and "let me dissect and disparage at length" for the negative end.

GURPS and its spin-offs are challenging to write for because of a lack of underlying shared cosmology, genre, and campaign assumptions. If you dare to establish some (like my Nordlond setting), you get slammed for "I don't want Vikings" despite what was designed to be a transparent effort to make the viking only skin deep - I've gotten the same "but why Viking monsters?" feedback on my "Nordlond" Bestiary, which is almost literally the D&D Monster Manual moved over to GURPS, with reskinned cosmology/origin.

It's a corker.

[Tyneras]

Limited/Loyal (p. 15) is a great modifier and iconic. But it is also rather expensive for what I sometimes want to do, which ultimately boils down to a simple password or fingerprint/retina scanner for high tech devices, or even a key like in a car. These things prevent casual theft, but won't stop anyone with the right skills.

To that end, I think a perk that can be added to the build would work nicely. Or maybe a really cheap CF.

Perk: Basic Security The device has basic security measures appropriate to it's TL, from physical keys to passwords to biometrics. The security can be defeated by appropriate skills and tools with a 0 difficulty modifier. Good for preventing casual theft or misuse but not considered serious security.

This occurred to me while I was converting various existing equipment to get a feel for Meta-tech and ran into Smartgun Electronics (Basic p.278) and realized it was resulting in some eye-watering outlier prices using Loyalty.


EDIT: Side note, I do love everyone's books, from the Basic Set to Ultra-Tech to Nordlond to Pyramid to Meta-Tech and beyond. I guess I always find giving positive feedback harder than negative. I should work on that.