Reviewer gives GURPS Space substance 3 out of 5

[KDLadage]

OK... this is off topic, but is a point being made to a post in this thread... if anyone wants to continue this discussion, we can take it out of this thread and into its own...

Originally Posted by Kromm

(stuff about the shape of point sitribution curves in G4e)

My only complaint about GURPS points schemes is that it was obvious to most that having a curved costing scheme for attributes was a mad thing as it created obvious min-max points (such as the Racial +3 bonus to an attribute being the cheapest way to reach a 16 attribute) as well as disproportionate costing (my human ST 16 (Racial 10 + 6 additional) cost me 80 points, your characters ST 16 (Racial 13 + 3 additional) cost you 60 points.

So... after getting rid of this scheme in attributes and even in most advantages (if they are leveled, they appear to be at a constant rate anyway)... you left this scheme in when dealing with skills and techniques...

Skills have a cost of 1 + 1 + 2 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 etc...

Why?

Seems like you could have had a much simpler way of doing this like:

Difficulty ................. Cost
=================================
Techniques
- Average ........... 1 per level
- Hard ...............2 per level

Skills
- Easy .............. 1 per level
- Average ........... 2 per level
- Hard .............. 3 per level
- Very Hard ......... 4 per level


This would be simple, elegant, and linear -- just like everything else in GURPS.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by DryaUnda

Balance, I can understand--but no realism? I thought realism was the big niche of GURPS.

Some would say . . . I've never made that claim but neither have I ever brushed it off. I will say that GURPS doesn't pretend to be any different from other RPGs in how it regards character design -- which is to say, its first goal is to enable players to create fun and capable fictional heroes. The character-creation rules definitely value balance, completeness, ease of use, and flexibility above realism. I wouldn't want to rate the five, but realism is in fifth place because nobody likes to be told, "Your hero based on X from your favorite movie/novel/video game isn't realistic, so the game is going to penalize you if you attempt to create her." I might not like 15-year-old, 5'-tall, 90-lb. ninja girls with the strength of a 6'6" man and expertise of a 45-year-old martial-arts master, but it's a valid concept for a heroic, fictional character and I'd defend to the death a player's right to explore it. GURPS' oft-cited bias toward "realism" is typically raised in the context of combat rules, equipment rules, historical research, etc.

[naloth]

Originally Posted by KDLadage

Battlestar Galactica -- (I assume you mean the new series) 90% of the series (thus far) has been dealing with humanocentric, person-to-person, political, and social storytelling. The starships themselves are background, and the space-combats have been primarilly plot devices. The need to deal with ship-to-ship specifics is not there at all.

So what you want is G:Soap Opera where you have lots of drama but no "space" action?

Star Trek -- the ships are nothing but plot devices in Star Trek. Do you know how you can tell? The capabilities and limitations of the ships change each episode to fit the needs of the plot being told. If you need rules to cover "this ship can do whatever is needed to move the plot forward" then I am not sure what set of rules you are looking for.

Star Wars -- again -- the ships in this setting are plot devices. The battles are large, epic, and completely impersonal. The only exception? The original Star Wars trench run. And this entire sequence was there to accomplish two things: to show that the Death Star was big, nasty, and to be feared; and to teach Luke a lesson in trusting his instincts instead of mechanized targetting devices.

Having played the RPG games that these shows spawned, I can safely say that *our* campaigns needed what Space doesn't have.

My ST character was an engineer. Gadgets, ship repairs, ship optimizations could have been fudged, but it was much more interesting to have rules to back him up.

My character was SW character was templated off the "Brash Pilot" and flew an escort Y-Wing for our freighter. He did alright port side, but it would have been a waste of a lot of skill points if he didn't use his piloting skills.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by KDLadage

OK... this is off topic, but is a point being made to a post in this thread... if anyone wants to continue this discussion, we can take it out of this thread and into its own...
[...]
So... after getting rid of this scheme in attributes and even in most advantages (if they are leveled, they appear to be at a constant rate anyway)... you left this scheme in when dealing with skills and techniques...

Skills have a cost of 1 + 1 + 2 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 etc...

Why?

Seems like you could have had a much simpler way of doing this like:

Difficulty ................. Cost
=================================
Techniques
- Average ........... 1 per level
- Hard ...............2 per level

Skills
- Easy .............. 1 per level
- Average ........... 2 per level
- Hard .............. 3 per level
- Very Hard ......... 4 per level


This would be simple, elegant, and linear -- just like everything else in GURPS.

It wouldn't work, you'd have someone becoming a master brawler or gun expert in a couple of weeks, while having to spend years to learn basic proficiency in other skills.

Personally I think the biggest fault of the skill system is in the defaults not being stat/2, I also think there should be a mid-level between default and skilled, something like 1, 1, 2, 4, where the first 1 would halve the default.

(I do agree we're off topic though...)

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by KDLadage

Skills have a cost of 1 + 1 + 2 + 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 etc...

Why?

We wanted the initial buy-in for skills to be cheap, to allow for character concepts that require many skills and to make "crash courses" possible, as both are in-genre for many types of games. However, we wanted skill cost to ramp up at higher skill levels to prevent mastery from becoming trivial. This suggested that making the first few skill levels cheaper than the steady-state cost would be preferable.

We didn't want defaults between skills of differing difficulty levels to be an easy way to crock the system, and we wanted to make it possible to price general skill bonuses and Talents without regard to difficulty. This suggested that the steady-state cost of a skill level should be the same for skills of all difficulties.

The system we ended up with in 4e met all of our goals while eliminating the odd asymmetry between physical and mental skills, and the need for players to deal with three progressions for two categories of skills instead of one progression and one set of simple shifts.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Kromm

As a comparison . . . you need rules for chains of command and strategy to run most kinds of military games but for few other kinds of games, so rules for those things will go in Military. On the other hand, firearms and hand-to-hand combat systems are of use in many, many kinds of campaigns -- military games are but a small subset -- so those rules and stats won't be in Military, but in High-Tech and Martial Arts.

Are you Saying that GURPS Military, is going to the replacement for Special and Black OPs ;) Not that It's a bad idea

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by KDLadage

OK... this is off topic
[...]
My only complaint about GURPS points schemes is that it was obvious to most that having a curved costing scheme for attributes was a mad thing as it created obvious min-max points (such as the Racial +3 bonus to an attribute being the cheapest way to reach a 16 attribute) as well as disproportionate costing (my human ST 16 (Racial 10 + 6 additional) cost me 80 points, your characters ST 16 (Racial 13 + 3 additional) cost you 60 points.

First, to put it back on-topic, let's consider BIO ships, which used racial templates even in 3e (not that I liked the idea too much...).

It would be reasonable to train a tactical ship's brain (or whatever CNS it has) to perform smart and well-coordinated (i.e. dextrous) moves. Not so for a heavy hauler that was 'born' to fly in straight lines and never encounter obstacles large enough to be worth dodging. With 4e's linear cost, it is as easy to train an IQ5 DX3 biofreighter to become an vacuumobatic ace as the special military fighter with IQ and DX 15+. Races (including bioships) are supposedly specialized in something. Linear costs get rid of such specializations.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Kromm

You need aliens and planets to run most kinds of space SF games but for few other kinds of games, so rules for those things go in Space....

Umm... StarTrek never had any consistency with aliens and planets, but somehow people keep claiming it is a proof that spaceships don't need consistency. Weird.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Kromm

... However, we wanted skill cost to ramp up at higher skill levels to prevent mastery from becoming trivial...

I just don't understand why you didn't think that attribute 'mastery' should be even less trivial compared to an 'All 12s' JoaT?

[ziresta]

Originally Posted by Molokh

Umm... StarTrek never had any consistency with aliens and planets, but somehow people keep claiming it is a proof that spaceships don't need consistency. Weird.

Never? So, you never knew from one episode to the next what a Klingon, Vulcan, or Ferengi was going to be like? Or that a Class M planet was one that could support life? Yes, there were inconsistencies, but not nearly as many as there were in what the ships and other tech could do.