GUNS!/Blade!/Blunt! -Style!-Style/skills

[lachimba]

The expanded treatment of Wildcard skills in MH1 has made me much more appreciative of using them in GURPS.

Just trying to work out where I would use what in a GURPS game

The obvious progrssion to me is; most cinematic game using frex Gun!/Blade!/Blunt!, the mid point using Style!, and the least using an actual style or just a list of skills. That said a Gun Fu! campaign could be pretty cinematic and still use the styles/skills as are.

Another progression would dictated by trying to keep skill lists short in high point games. So the Guns! where the character has a shopping list of skills and mountain of points to spend, but the low point games having more skills on the sheet.

The only other factor I can think of is flavour. Frex in game where all the players are Gun Men, Guns! is going to get boring fast if all the players are forced to differerentiate themselves yet really only have that one skill to rely on. Style! might hit the sweet spot, but if they all want Double Trouble! actually opening up the Style might be worth it despite frex the cinematic nature of the game.

Any other factors or ideas around Wildcard skills that I might be missing?

[Bruno]

If you're allowing a mix of Wildcard! and regular skills covering the same territory in the same game, the GM should make a point of making sure players are required to take their characters out of their "comfort niche", demonstrating the flexibility of the Wildcard! character.

So for Guns!, if you have the guy with Guns!-18 and the guy with Gun (Pistol)-18, try to make sure to have situations where rifles, shotguns, SMGs, and (if you can find an excuse for it) black powder weapons are either the only option, or the best option.

Make sure there are situations where hanging from a rope shooting could happen - Guns! guy gets to use his Guns! skill for climbing and holding on while shooting, Gun (Pistol) guy doesn't. Acrobatic dodges while shooting, running on a narrow slippery surface while shooting, etc etc. Guns! guy is paying three times as much for his skill, make sure he gets chances to make the most out of it.

I keep using Guns! as my example skill because the different Guns! specialities have some of the most favourable defaults in the game, making it rather tempting for a munchkin to just buy Gun (something) up very high with the same set of points.

Swords! is another dodgy one, but the Blades! version from MH is better (broader, including skills that don't cross default) - but make sure that there's a reason for the character to switch weapons periodically, and get the most out of his flexibility. Blunt! covers less skills, but probably does rather well with many improvised weapons - a Blunt! character has more opportunities to prove how awesome his ! skill is by grabbing random things and hitting people over the head with them.

[Kraydak]

Originally Posted by Bruno

If you're allowing a mix of Wildcard! and regular skills covering the same territory in the same game, the GM should make a point of making sure players are required to take their characters out of their "comfort niche", demonstrating the flexibility of the Wildcard! character.

So for Guns!, if you have the guy with Guns!-18 and the guy with Gun (Pistol)-18, try to make sure to have situations where rifles, shotguns, SMGs, and (if you can find an excuse for it) black powder weapons are either the only option, or the best option.

Make sure there are situations where hanging from a rope shooting could happen - Guns! guy gets to use his Guns! skill for climbing and holding on while shooting, Gun (Pistol) guy doesn't. Acrobatic dodges while shooting, running on a narrow slippery surface while shooting, etc etc. Guns! guy is paying three times as much for his skill, make sure he gets chances to make the most out of it.
...

Be very, very, very careful following the above advice. At the best of times, it runs the very real risk of de-facto nerfing the Guns-Pistol guy. Imagine an ongoing campaign with a Pistolero. All of a sudden a Guns! guy comes along... and the Pistolero finds himself blocked from using his skills.* As a GM I would only feel comfortable doing this if the Guns! guy had significantly more points in Guns! than the Pistolero had in Guns (Pistol) AND all ancillary skills combined, and pistols were a secondary aspect of the Pistolero (likely if the first condition holds and the Guns! guy isn't monomaniacal). If the investment is broadly similar, than it is as much up to the Guns! guy to figure out how to take advantage of his breadth as it is up to the Pistols guy to figure out how to take advantage of his secondary (but pistol related) skills, or his massive Gun (pistols) score.

*What is the pseudo-official name of the process of nerfing characters by introducing a new laundry list of skills?

[PK]

Minor thing -- it's "Gun!", not "Guns!". "Guns" is the non-wildcard skill. Carry on. :)

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by Kraydak

*What is the pseudo-official name of the process of nerfing characters by introducing a new laundry list of skills?

D&D'ing them? (OK, OK, couldn't resist.)

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Kraydak

Be very, very, very careful following the above advice. At the best of times, it runs the very real risk of de-facto nerfing the Guns-Pistol guy.

On the contrary, I think catering to Guns (Pistol) guys limitations is defacto buffing him. Just like anyone else who chooses to specialize in one thing, the drawback is that you aren't good at others. It's up to the GM to periodically throw different kinds of challenges at players, otherwise they aren't suffering the drawbacks. It then further encourages them to keep narrowing their specialty because they get nothing but benefits.

It's like letting people take 50 points of social disadvantages in a game where PCs are NEVER expected to talk to NPCs, only kill them. In this kind of game, I'd recommend instead just giving them 50 extra points and forbidding social disadvantages over letting them take it, and risking some players figuring out the "free points" and others not.

It's the same thing with a game full of hyperspecialists - it's all fine and dandy if all of your players are playing that schtick, and the GM is tailoring everything to their strengths. But throw in one player who didn't get the message, or who just wants to try something different, and he's basically going to be playing with a handicap that he doesn't even know about.

The extreme case (without wildcards) is the game with one character with Broadsword 21 and perhaps a couple points in Intimidation, and another with Broadsword 15, Bow 15, Climbing 15, Stealth 15, Hiking 15, Survival (Woodlands) 15, and etc. If all you run is "Kick in the door, murder the orcs", the well-rounded guy is rarely going to get to use that Bow skill, and the rest of his points might as well have been spent on Artist (Flower Arranging).

Wildcard skills are very much like Well Rounded Guy - if Wildcard guy put 24 points in Gun!, and Non-Wildcard Guy put 24 points in Guns (Pistol), and you never put the two guys in a situation where they have to do anything other than point the gun and pull the trigger, Wildcard Guy is going to wonder why he was so stupid as to take the Wildcard skill - he could have just taken Guns (Pistol) and had just as simple a character sheet, and perhaps bought Luck (Aspected Guns) with some of the extra points to distinguish himself from Non-Wildcard Guy instead of the not-very-useful Wildcard skill.

[Novembermike]

I totally agree Bruno. The person that bought Guns (Pistol) should be able to use it most of the time, but if you only put them in situations where pistols are mostly useful then you've removed any reason for Gun!. If you have engagements that start at 400m, areas where a flamethrower is useful or points where you have to infiltrate without weapons and pick up whatever you can find, then the Pistol guy is still useful but he'll have points where he wishes that he knew how to shoot a rifle or that he was using a familiar pistol. The counterpoint is that the pistol guy probably used less points for similar competency, so either he's incredibly dangerous with his pistol or he has extra skill he can use.

If a player payed for breadth of ability, let them gain some benefit from that.

[Kraydak]

Originally Posted by Bruno

On the contrary, I think catering to Guns (Pistol) guys limitations is defacto buffing him. Just like anyone else who chooses to specialize in one thing, the drawback is that you aren't good at others. It's up to the GM to periodically throw different kinds of challenges at players, otherwise they aren't suffering the drawbacks. It then further encourages them to keep narrowing their specialty because they get nothing but benefits.

PCs are generally built on a cp budget. So assuming that the two characters have the same percentage of their cp budget dedicated to gun-related (however loosely) stuff, you get something like:

Gun! 24 (only gets you up to DX even...)

or

Pistol 8
Acrobatics 4
Perception 5
Brawling 2
Soldier 1
Armory 2
Tactics 1
Gun control laws and enforcement (USA) 1
(all of which can come under Gun!)

To get Bang! skills up to useful levels, you have to spend boatloads of points on them. Someone who doesn't go the Bang! route is either going the Inhumanly High skill route (Gun Pistol-DX+6 24) or will have an appropriate level of ancillary skills to be insulted by the term "hyperspecialist".

Now, a pistol-focused character should expect the occasional pistol-unfavorable encounter. He should NOT by blindsided by the percentage of pistol-unfavorable encounters increasing when a Gun! character enters the party, any more than the Gun! character newly joined by a Pistol DX+6 hyperspecialist comrade should see a drastic increase in the number of -10 environmental penalties encounters where the DX+6 guy can still shoot with an effective skill of 13, but the Gun! guy is down at effective skill 7. Either situation results in one character being nerfed by the existence of his counterpart.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Kraydak

Now, a pistol-focused character should expect the occasional pistol-unfavorable encounter. He should NOT by blindsided by the percentage of pistol-unfavorable encounters increasing when a Gun! character enters the party, any more than the Gun! character newly joined by a Pistol DX+6 hyperspecialist comrade should see a drastic increase in the number of -10 environmental penalties encounters where the DX+6 guy can still shoot with an effective skill of 13, but the Gun! guy is down at effective skill 7. Either situation results in one character being nerfed by the existence of his counterpart.

Ok, see, now I'm seeing your objection. I'm thinking about this at a campaign level. This is the sort of thing that should be discussed with the players up front, before anyone starts character creation. Not "the new guy", anyone.

You're thinking about this as a "patch day surprise". You shouldn't discuss genre and playstyle after things have all gone pearshaped! That's much too late!

[OldSam]

By the way, is there any difference between the wildcard-skills "blunt!" and "stick!"...?

If they are basically the same IMHO it would be better to use the name "stick!", because it already appeared like that in the Supers-Sourcebook (with explanation etc.) - Of course technically it does not matter but it would be more consistent with other material...