Metagame 'tricks' in GURPS?

[sgtcallistan]

Originally Posted by Kage2020

Checked and... interesting. I would still be interested in hearing peoples' experiences in their own additions to their games, but that's an interesting document to look through to save myself some slogging. :D

Kage

Hero Points: an actual card (handwritten by me and perhaps difficult to forge), is given to a player at the start of the session, it permits a descriptive action (one sentence with one use of the word 'and' such as I take aim and shoot him through the head).
This happens, but the opposing forces are still free to act, as are all other PC's, and is still played out in full.

It's a little more than the 'incredible luck' business of dictating a dice roll, but acting more as a story element (I look on them as 'story helpers').

A player always has a minimum of one card, and can save them up, but they only apply to that character.
If the player spends them all, he can still sacrifice his character to achieve such an action (if it's done in the spirit of the game, and not selfishly, I let them survive to be frozen in a autodoc, for later re-insertion into the lot).

Have had: 'I grab the girls and get them back to the ship', which triggered a fast chase with gunfire, the hero getting badly wounded, and collapsing as he ran up the entry ramp.

Have had: 'I deflect the attacking ship's blasters with my force sword, to destroy their weapons'. Which resulted in the villain's little ship retreating to their base, where we were able to track and infiltrate them.

In a highly cinematic game, where the players contribute a lot to the plot, it works just fine, I find.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

I have played in games GM'd by Greenneck, where we have had a Luck stat.

Originally Posted by Kage2020

Did you find that a fun mechanic or too arbitrary? Perhaps not tied into the choices in-game, or, alternately, great because it didn't punish you for those choices?
Kage

It was good to ramp up the tension. It also made you play your character more conservatively, if you were consistently getting low rolls.

[Gef]

Originally Posted by Kage2020

As a quick example, from Amber DRPG I liked the idea of "player bribes."

I allow player contributions, too. In Amber, a player promises a weekly contribution and gets points up front. Since real players have lives, I use a smaller award on a per-contribution basis. The problem I've encountered is that some players have more obligations in real life than others, which leads to drastic disparities over time unless you cap the per-session award at something reasonable.

For instance, I'm not in to painting, but if a player contributes a mini for a PC or recurring NPC, he gets a point. (He still owns the mini, the point is for making it available for use in our game.) If he submits a complete character write-up for a significant NPC (in prose and game mechanics, with a section on tactics be they melee or political), he gets a point, and he may have the opportunity to earn another point later by roleplaying that NPC in an important scene, saving me from "GM Multi-tasking Syndrome". Writing up an organization is worth 2 points, and I have a rubric of 10 points to address (frex, symbol, role, allies and enemies, important members). 2 points seems a good per-session cap. Watch out for overly-complex submissions and omni-competent NPCs or groups.

GEF

PS: I've also played in games that used Whimsy Cards, and that worked well. Not sure if you can still find 'em.

[Phaelen Bleux]

We started using a concept called the "Luck Point." It was a 5-point ad that you spent to accomplish anything defensive--make a Dodge, survive a fall, etc.

You could not pre-roll and see if you failed; you had to "burn a Luck Point" then you automatically succeeded/survived.

You could also not use it to attack or succeed with a skill--only personal survival.

We were playing a modern-day espionage campaign at the time. The idea was to have the campaign be quite deadly, and yet the PCs (and NPCs) could get out of trouble "James Bond style."

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Kage2020

While I consider GURPS my "home" or "go-to" system of choice, I like to take a gander at other systems, not with an eye to playing them but because something about their setting appeals to me or because I've heard good things about the mechanics. In the latter case, not only do I like to appreciate some well written mechanics, but I also like to pilfer them where possible.

Luck mechanics aren't metagame, if it is clearly stated in the rules text that the person controlling the character (a player if it is a PC, or the GM if it is an NPC) must use the Luck ability or ressource to benefit the character.

Also, since you're interested in scouting out other systems, Hero System 5th Edition and 5th Edition Revised has the equivalent of a Luck Advantage, with numerous options for how it can be used. Given the point scale, though, if you want to import it to GURPS the point cost should probably be doubled.


As for my own homebrews, I don't have anything special. I'm fascinated by Luck trats, but haven't done much with them.

Minor and Major Coincidences are much like Serendipity in GURPS but limited to lesser effects and to frequency of use. Also Aspected Luck was regarded by many medieval people as a real phenomenon (as portaryed in "The Long Ships", by Bengtson) that they openly talked and thought about (i.e. not metagame). That's like GURPS' Luck with a Limtitation, except the specific implementaion is unattractive, so the GM needs to fix things up and reduce the cost, e.g. by allowing Very Aspected at -60% as an alternative to -20% Aspected.

More generally, some characters just have more luck than others. It is not metagame at all, if it is observabable and discussable by in-world denizens.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Gef

I allow player contributions, too. In Amber, a player promises a weekly contribution and gets points up front. Since real players have lives, I use a smaller award on a per-contribution basis. The problem I've encountered is that some players have more obligations in real life than others, which leads to drastic disparities over time unless you cap the per-session award at something reasonable.

For instance, I'm not in to painting, but if a player contributes a mini for a PC or recurring NPC, he gets a point. (He still owns the mini, the point is for making it available for use in our game.) If he submits a complete character write-up for a significant NPC (in prose and game mechanics, with a section on tactics be they melee or political), he gets a point, and he may have the opportunity to earn another point later by roleplaying that NPC in an important scene, saving me from "GM Multi-tasking Syndrome". Writing up an organization is worth 2 points, and I have a rubric of 10 points to address (frex, symbol, role, allies and enemies, important members). 2 points seems a good per-session cap. Watch out for overly-complex submissions and omni-competent NPCs or groups.

You can solve that problem with diministing returns

In Sagatafl, players performing work to enrich their characters, prior to gamestart, are awarded Bonus Points (BOPs), e.g. 1 BOP for a short prose backstory or a detailed CV, 2 BOP for a long prose backstory or a very detailed and long CV ("long" requires the character to have something like 18+ years of interesting history so won't work for youngsters), 1 BOP for a small family tree, 2 BOP for a larger family tree, 1 BOP for one juicy family scandal, 2 BOP for 2+ juicy family scandals, more BOPs for famous ancestors or connecting the character to an important NPC in the setting or to another PC, and so forth.

BOPs are then converted to Goodie Points, the equivalent of GURPS' Character Points, via a "pyramidal" function. 1 BOP is 1 GP, 3 BOP is 2 GP, 6 BOP is 3 GP, 10 BOP is 4 GP and 15 BOP is 5 GP.

(You can also use other functions like 1/2/4/8/16/32 (note the differences in the slope!) or the overal steeper 1/3/10/30, but I think in this particular case, pyramidal is the best choice, because the returns shouldn't be too diminishing.)

In this way players who care deeply about the setting are rewarded, but obsessive-compulsives who want to squeeze out every single point of the system find that the last few points cost an inordinate amount of time and effort. (Players who land on an exactly threshold value could be called "landers" and can be teased for putting in the exact amount of work required and no more, i.e. they're doing it purely for the points rather than out of love for the setting).


A similar diminishing returns principles can be used for per-session contributions, such as writing up the events of the session, making drawings of scenes one found interesting, or whatever, and likewise a DRF can be used for the "interest" paid by pre-gamestart contrbutions, as your suggestion with bringing a painted mini for use in the game. That won't work in Sagatafl (GPs are for character creation only, but XPs could be paid instead), but in GURPS doing any one "thing" as contribution could pay a "interest" of 1 CP per session, but if you want the 2 CPs per session you must do any four "things".

[Gef]

Originally Posted by me

Writing up an organization is worth 2 points, and I have a rubric of 10 points to address (frex, symbol, role, allies and enemies, important members).

I wrote this one myself, as a reference sample for a contributed organization: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=10978

GEF

PS: Thanks Peter for the suggestion.

[starslayer]

I did up a system by which chips are awarded at the end of games along with CP. Chips for the most part cannot be translated to CP, and there were no other wealth awards. Every chip spent could be translated to 1 month of income (PCs wealth level /12). To have a specific magic item show up in a hoard, or to make meta-game changes <one time use luck, plot changes, etc>

Here is my chart for awards/spending:
Role playing awards

Creation awards:
Drew/found a picture – 10 chips
Wrote a background story – 10 chips
Advanced background story with in game events – 5 chips

Luck awards (only applicable on a non-altered role that had significance):
roll a 6- 1 chip
roll a 5- 2 chips
roll a 3 – 4 chips
roll a 17 - 3 chips
roll an 18 - 5 chips

Play Awards
Most in character: 4 chips
Most humorous: 5 chips
Most Serious: 3 chips
Most Disturbing: 3 chips
Most unusual use of skill/power (successful): 4 chips
MVP: 8 chips
Most Useless award (player has to have tried things and failed regularly): 5 chips

Event Awards:
Words before swords – 2 chips
Swords before words – 2 chips
Memorable moment – 1 chip/each
Unlikely success(modified skill less then 9 on an important roll and you succeed) - 1 chip/each
Impossible Successes (modified skill less then 7 on an important roll and you succeed) 2 chips/each

Spending Chips

Meta:
EXP – 20chips for every EXP point
Unusual study – 1 chip/level of skill advancement without study time or reasoning
Metaplot change (brother in town, etc) – 1 for little effect, 5 for minor effect, 10 for major effect
Acquire magery(0) – 20 chips
Raise magery (up to 3)– 10 chips/level
Raise magery (beyond 3) – 20 chips/level
Reload weapon (new quiver of arrorws/magazine/etc) – 1 chip
Specialty reload (full mag of tracers, quiver of flame arrows, etc) – 2 chips

Dice & luck:
Roll multiple times; take best – 1 chip/roll
Reroll- 3 chip/reroll
Reroll a critical – 5 chip/reroll; loose bonus from the critical
Force someone else to reroll- add 2 to the above costs.

Treasure:
Mannawell- 200 chips
Items- Each chip is worth 1/10 of starting wealth modified by wealth level
Materials:
Unusual materials(no effectiveness change; crystal instead of iron, etc)- 1 chip
Excelent materials (tiatanium, mithril, etc; adds +1)- Double cost
Fantastic materials (Orlicarlum (+2), magic null, etc) Quadruple cost
Construction:
Fine +1 dam– quadruple cost (No cost in modern)
Very fine +2 dam – twenty times cost (quadruple in modern)
Enchantments:
See enchantment table

[seasong]

The campaign I'm wrapping up right now, which was presented throughout as a Sify action/adventure TV series, uses this mechanic:

You start with three drama tokens at the beginning of each game session. You can spend them as follows:
Scripted Victory! (2 tokens, before roll) - automatic critical success!
Dramatic Moment! (1 token, before roll) - roll 3 times, take the best.
Sudden Insight! (1 token, before roll) - +5 to skill on next attempt.
Rewrite! (1 token, after roll) - re-roll at +2 or force an opponent to re-roll at -2.
Flesh Wound! (1 token, after damage roll) - reduces damage to a graze (1/10th damage, rounded up).

I used some reasonably weighty-feeling black-and-white poker chips for the tokens. The players would reach a dramatic impasse and firmly clink their chip or chips on the table. They've been a lot of fun, particularly near the end of a game session, when I've built up to the session's critical cliffhanger.

Enough fun that I'm planning to use them again in my next campaign.

[Kage2020]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Luck mechanics aren't metagame, if it is clearly stated in the rules text that the person controlling the character (a player if it is a PC, or the GM if it is an NPC) must use the Luck ability or ressource to benefit the character.

My apologies.

At the same time, now I'm wanting GURPS Metagame as an update to Social Engineering. :D

Thanks for the contributions--they are much appreciated.

Does anyone use these concepts in character generation?

Kage