Surprise

[KevinJ]

Originally Posted by dgrm4

I am still not agreeing with this rule.

1. I find it very hard to believe that the Ambushers may be surprised, UNLESS a monster/alien that they were NOT expecting is part of the group they are trying to ambush.

2. Even without Combat Reflexes, if you are searching for another group and expect a fight could happen at anytime, then I still don't think you are going to freeze, unless again something crazy like a monster/alien is part of the group that is ambushing your team.

So which combat unit did you serve with?

[KevinJ]

Originally Posted by hal

The GM scribbles some more after making some die rolls. He knows that the way to build suspense is by not telling them what is happening and making a lot of die rolls in order to make his players paranoid.

I have my players make the unnecessary die rolls...

[hal]

Originally Posted by dgrm4

Even when you stack the odds in favor of the PCs they can still lose. We have already had one PC get shot to death trying to take this Bar/Brothel. Bad dice rolls and bad plan by the PCs (good die rolls by NPC enemies). I don't know if you would call it 'rigging the game', but I do give my PCs a slight advantage because I want them to succeed and drive the story forward....and THEY are the story. But, if they do slip then they do die. Gurps can be a deadly system even without the surprise rules RAW....SHEESH, can't we give the PCs any breaks????

Ummmm - bad question to ask when it comes to GURPS. I'll tell you why *evil grin*

Hard to Kill: granting this automatically to the game players does give them a break in that you're stacking the odds further in their favor. The bad news is, that the dice can still decide (as if they had free will to decide!) that your character is going to bite the big one tonight.

Luck: You do realize, that players can get a discount on the luck advantage by limiting it only to death saving rolls right? ;)

Then you have all those fun advantages in the GURPS book that can give the player characters an edge - all because the players thought "Gee, just what I need!" and then started to play their characters based on those traits.

I generally run medieval fantasy games for my players, and rarely ever venture outside the comfort zone for more modern campaigns. Why? Because my players know only too well, that GURPS can be brutal in higher tech levels where death from a weapon doing 6dx3 isn't all that uncommon (let alone the 13d6 50 caliber round from high tech!). In one campaign, the players were involved in playing themselves in a GURPS AFTERMATH campaign (literally before the bombs fell, and after the bombs wiped out civilization as we knew it). Back then, I was using GURPS 1st edition full auto rules, and despite the fact that on full auto, only many of the "to hit" numbers dropped below 8 on 3d6, the players were still on the edge of their seats. So much so, that during one encounter, the players were being attacked by a US military reservist unit, and one player handed a rifle to a 17 year old girl NPC, who was scared of guns, and refused to fire it or even touch it. After the fire fight was over, the one player, playing himself as a character, announced he was back-handing the 17 year old girl. Adrenaline was flowing high that night ;)

Of course, the worst thing I did to the players in that campaign, was to have a sniper hunt them down, and then put a round in one of their favorite NPC's (the 17 year old girl was popular for some odd reason during the ongoing game play) and the same player who back-handed her after the one firefight, went beserk when she went down in the middle of a creek crossing single file. That night, the players were literally besides themselves as they tried to charge a prepared sniper position, and then felt helpless to save the one person they all depended upon after the sniper's booby trap took him down (a grenade in a tin can tied to the tree at knee level with a fish line to pull the grenade out of the can).

Sometimes, the story isn't that they always win and move the story forward. Sometimes it is those failures and how one deals with them that becomes the story, or moves it forward. One player, was surprised at the sudden arrival of another player character. I noted that she didn't say she was announcing her arrival in advance, and I knew the players were trigger happy AND jumpy as they were being mobbed by cannibals (Ever read LUCIFER'S HAMMER?!!!). I asked the player after she arrived "You see someone coming in unexpectedly in the door. Do you fire without seeing who it is, or do you fire immediately so they can't get inside with the plague?" He shot her without taking the time to identify her. And that was player character on player character!

Hmmm. Maybe this explains their comfort zone being TL 3 and lower. I positively smile remembering all the "fun" stuff. Mike Milligan the Special Forces soldier, Davey Smith, Darleen Smith, as well as the baby rescued from a motorcycle gang, not to mention Camp Unirondock where the players earned the nickname "Hole in the head gang" (prompting Fort Drum survivors to mount a search and destroy mission against the player characters)

I will never forget the looks on the players faces after they ambushed two men who tried to kill them just to steal the liquor in their house after the bomb fell (the bums used a garbage truck no less). They couldn't quite figure out why people were shooting at them after they appropriated the garbage truck until one of them finally realized "Hey, think they might believe we're the robbers instead of the robbers we killed yesterday?"

Ah well. Guns have their place, providing as GM, you remember that most shots missed their targets except at close range, and that most people are lousy shots.

Those three mercs you described as knowing their business, probably should have been good shots, and great at surviving. But...

Even the best warrior can be laid low by a stray bullet ;)

[dgrm4]

Originally Posted by hal

Those three mercs you described as knowing their business, probably should have been good shots, and great at surviving. But...

Even the best warrior can be laid low by a stray bullet ;)

Yep. They all had DR 7 armor and 17 gun skill...but the PCs laid them to waste with the ambush. Once again, excellent Rapid Fire rolls for the PCs and a couple of Critical Failures on the NPCs side....along with standard bad rolls. I was really surprised at how bad it went for the NPCs.

Gurps is a finicky game, you never know how a firefight will go, even if you give one side or the other an advantage.

[hal]

Originally Posted by dgrm4

Yep. They all had DR 7 armor and 17 gun skill...but the PCs laid them to waste with the ambush. Once again, excellent Rapid Fire rolls for the PCs and a couple of Critical Failures on the NPCs side....along with standard bad rolls. I was really surprised at how bad it went for the NPCs.

Gurps is a finicky game, you never know how a firefight will go, even if you give one side or the other an advantage.

So the question is - which is it that you desire? To know how it will go, or to not know? Dice is used to keep things random and unknowable.

Have you ever played JAMES BOND the role playing game? There they had a thing known as Hero points, where you only earned them during game play by rolling a qualty one result (almost the equivalent to a crit hit). You could use the hero points to lessen the damage done against you, or you could use the hero point for other things (My memory being like a sieve these days, I'd have to read up on what it does permit). The point is - you had a specific number of them to help keep the character alive, but when the hero points run out, then you're at the mercy of what ever fate throws at you.

And oddly enough? GURPS even has a game mechanic to simulate this - called spending experience banked experience points to relabel a shot as a flesh wound, etc ;)

Mind you, I'm not calling you someone who is more likely to run a cinematic game or not, but you may want to look more closely at the cinematic rules if it gives your players the extra edge to survive.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by dgrm4

Gurps is a finicky game, you never know how a firefight will go, even if you give one side or the other an advantage.

Couple of things...

One <GM hat on> IMHO a fair bit of being a "hero" is how you deal with things when the things go bad <ie the dice shank you>. <GM hat off>

In 25+ years of RPGing in GURPS one of my favorite momemts was when my 100 pt Martial Artist and the party he was with got ambushed/kidnapped out of the inn that was their base. We all woke up naked an chained in a locked chamber. One PC was a Cryokinetic (most of the other PC's didnt know it) he started working on freeze/shattering the chains of the others.

Two bad things happened with the dice...one the shank (think troll but bigger/ meaner) made a perception roll and started into the cell...two the Cryokinetic kept failing rolls on my ankle chain (3 links one try per link).

The MA built when meditation was interpreted to allow a "cold beserk" state...was build to take advantage of that rule. I stood and taunted the shank as he took a range 1-3 two handed "Grain Flail" to me. I was calling his momma things, I spit on him at one point. I fairly knew this 17 yr old kid was going to die, but he was built on the "rather die than quit mold", plus while he held the subgenius' attention his friends were able to slip around the sides and out...and the cryokinetic got another try or two...The GM didn't really fugde any die rolls, but he did have an NPC or three show up "just short of too late" without much in the way of reason. Objectively the PC mostly stood there being beaten to death (somewhere between -2xHT and -5xHT), couldn't even fight back. But he realized it, saw what he COULD do, and calmly worked on enraging the big palooka into focusing just on him, so his friends could get away. Different strokes for different folks but sometimes a character *may* go out that way and the Player will be fine with it.

Another thing in the rules...(cinimatic options in Martial Arts?? IIRC) as GM you can allow PC's to Buy Success. <look in indexes under Flesh Wounds or Buying Success>

My GM will allow a PC to pay a CP (mark it off gone forever) to make a roll a sucess or to say IT IS ONLY A FLESH WOUND. I routinely hold 1 unspent cp in bank, all the time, just in case. Only had to use it once in the last 4ish years (Fantasy less deadly than Modern) but I like to have the option as painful and expensive as it is. Something you might wish to implement.

But Yeah GURPS + Guns = deadly. Kinda a lot like real life.

Good luck.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by hal

Have you ever played JAMES BOND the role playing game? There they had a thing known as Hero points, where you only earned them during game play by rolling a qualty one result (almost the equivalent to a crit hit). You could use the hero points to lessen the damage done against you, or you could use the hero point for other things (My memory being like a sieve these days, I'd have to read up on what it does permit).

• Any major character could use them defensively, to alter by one in either direction the quality rating of any die roll that affected them.
  
• Heroes but not villains could use them offensively, to alter by one in either direction the quality rating of any die roll made by them.
  
• Player characters could use them "on the environment", to work minor effects of serendipity, such as (example from the rule-book) a car in a dealer's lot having keys in it.
  
• Player characters could spend them on the encounter system. In a "cold" area this tended to produce an encounter that would draw them into a "hot" area, and in a "hot" area it tended to produce encounters that gave significant plot opportunities, such as a potential romantic encounter with the Beautiful Foil.

James Bond 007 was a little charmer of a game design. Best match of game mechanics to genre I've come across in an RPG. The encounter system in particular is a rare work of art and beauty, and sadly completely useless for anything except a cinematic game in the James Bondage genre.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by dgrm4

Even when you stack the odds in favor of the PCs they can still lose. We have already had one PC get shot to death trying to take this Bar/Brothel. Bad dice rolls and bad plan by the PCs (good die rolls by NPC enemies). I don't know if you would call it 'rigging the game', but I do give my PCs a slight advantage because I want them to succeed and drive the story forward....and THEY are the story. But, if they do slip then they do die. Gurps can be a deadly system even without the surprise rules RAW....SHEESH, can't we give the PCs any breaks????

Luck is the go-to advantage for 'you guys pull through even when things go wrong or you're in over your heads'. Luck is particularly the perfect countermeasure to the 'you have rolled poorly, have a copy of Characters and a new sheet' effect.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Luck is the go-to advantage for 'you guys pull through even when things go wrong or you're in over your heads'. Luck is particularly the perfect countermeasure to the 'you have rolled poorly, have a copy of Characters and a new sheet' effect.

QFT one of the big changes from 3rd to 4th ed was making Luck something you called before a roll...this is important I want three tries at it. to the current something you CAN call after a roll....Holy excriment that will kill me lets see if the other two rolls will give me a 15 or under, while retaining the earlier usage.

It took Luck to Something Very Nice to "If I have a 15 point character I know exactly where my entire budget is going."

Luck = Critical Insurance (Your crit fails Your opponents crit successes its all good!!!)

4th Ed Luck...if you don't have it Can You Read?

Again as always IMHO and IME. I do not wish to offend but truthfully it is how I feel.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Witchking

4th Ed Luck...if you don't have it Can You Read?

Again as always IMHO and IME. I do not wish to offend but truthfully it is how I feel.

There are reasons not to have it, or not to permit it. Luck can have a considerable game-mechanic level impact on the tone of the game. Some games will work much better with 'everyone has at least 2 levels of Luck (maybe with Limitations)'. Some will work much better with 'no one has any levels of Luck'...

But at least a bit of it is a great buy, yeah.