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Don't worry about that, it was a nerd spat. We all yell at each other but it's completely meaningless. For the name, just give it a working title and change it around until something sticks. Start with something corny and terrible so you'll want to change it.
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# ? Jun 28, 2011 06:29 |
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 18:02 |
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DiscipleoftheClaw posted:That's why they send them to an academy, and they train them there. So they are all trained in cop skills. You can make an argument that like, you could let PCs be forensics guys and such too, but those guys are not Cops! They are technical specialists. The Oldest Man posted:This is a dumb argument because you can do any of those things with GURPS. I have played in, and run, games that range from "everyone takes the same template and customizes with quirk points" to "everyone takes a wholly different template with non-overlapping abilities" and both work equally well. Mechanically, both are completely valid. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 15:36 on Jun 28, 2011 |
# ? Jun 28, 2011 15:21 |
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MadScientistWorking posted:This argument got started with Gau saying that having characters in a space setting without specialties is realistic when its probably the most idiotic setting to do that in. That's not what Gau said at all and you should probably stop.
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# ? Jun 28, 2011 16:33 |
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MadScientistWorking posted:I wasn't actually talking about forensics though. I was talking about the oddles of common specialties that it would be insane to train every single police officer in. Ironically, the most obvious counter is Special Weapons and Tactics. Ironically, you can't read posts, because I was talking about beat cops. We were discussing the beat cop and detective templates, like would be used in a mystery game. Spoiler alert: Despite what CSI tells you, SWAT Officers don't solve crimes. They just shoot poor brown people with surplus military hardware. Edit: I realized the wording in that post is a little unclear. It is the SWAT guys with the surplus military hardware, not the poor browns. They have wallets.
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# ? Jun 28, 2011 16:34 |
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MadScientistWorking posted:I wasn't actually talking about forensics though. I was talking about the oddles of common specialties that it would be insane to train every single police officer in. Ironically, the most obvious counter is Special Weapons and Tactics. A SWAT team is comprised of a bunch of guys who are all trained in the same school to do the same things. In fact, they're all even cross trained so any one of them has passed the sniper course, the forced entry and room clearing courses, etc. They're only "special" in comparison to regular patrol officers, who they don't cross-team with. quote:This argument got started with Gau saying that having characters in a space setting without specialties is realistic when its probably the most idiotic setting to do that in. Depends on the setting. High point THS games get characters who are so omnicompetent that specialization is an anachronism.
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# ? Jun 29, 2011 01:49 |
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With just two books, you get more bang for your buck than SO MANY other systems out there.
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# ? Jun 30, 2011 06:22 |
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Sam. posted:Post-apocalyptic. I get how GURPS is supposed to be realistic and IRL getting shot can hurt you pretty badly, but it seems like bad gameplay for PCs to die in one or two turns. Quite a few people agree. If you're not fond of the more realistic elements of "advanced" combat, then make/enforce Traits that increase survivability and use the optional Cinematic house rules included in Campaigns.
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# ? Jun 30, 2011 06:55 |
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Ragitsu posted:Quite a few people agree. If you're not fond of the more realistic elements of "advanced" combat, then make/enforce Traits that increase survivability and use the optional Cinematic house rules included in Campaigns. One thing that's easy is just giving everyone some variant of Luck for free.
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# ? Jun 30, 2011 07:46 |
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Ragitsu posted:Quite a few people agree. If you're not fond of the more realistic elements of "advanced" combat, then make/enforce Traits that increase survivability and use the optional Cinematic house rules included in Campaigns. And there are a lot of them, from Flesh Wounds to Cinematic Explosions.
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# ? Jun 30, 2011 13:18 |
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NovemberMike posted:One thing that's easy is just giving everyone some variant of Luck for free. Luck is good, but, on the whole, I prefer a Luck Point based mechanic (basing Luck Points off of the rule of Buying Success, in Campaigns, is a good start).
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# ? Jun 30, 2011 14:47 |
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I think I'm going to deal with it by reducing the number/TL of enemies with guns and having better armor. How do you deal with combat in a play-by-post game? It seems like it would go really slowly.
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# ? Jul 2, 2011 00:59 |
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It can go slowly. There's a few of ways to help speed it up. You can have everyone give general instructions and then you interpret them into round by round actions ("I'm going to shoot the guy closest to me first, and then the other guy, and I'm going to aim for both attacks."). Or you can have players give you a list of contingency actions (i.e. "I'll aim for a round and then shoot that guy in the groin, and if he's still standing I'll aim and then plug another shot into his vitals. When he falls I'll fire a three shot burst at the other dude. If I'm shot at I'd rather drop and dodge and lose my aim bonus than take a hit. If I am hit anyway I'll fall behind cover if I am ambulatory. If I'm not, I'll play dead. If my gun jams I'll drop it and switch to my pistol."). Or you can run the combat in IRC or some other chat service so that everyone involved can make their minds up ahead of time. Or you can just accept that it'll be slow and plan on only getting through a few rounds of combat (at most) in any given day.
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# ? Jul 2, 2011 01:23 |
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Hi, everybody! Let's talk about one of the most popular GURPS interpretations out there right now, which is GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. Around the time D&D4e came out (2007-8) the GURPS line had a fairly robust series of toolbox books but it still required a lot of groundwork for GMs to make campaigns and for PCs to build effective characters - even moreso for newbies. Sean Punch, line editor of the entire GURPS franchise, set out to make an interpretation of old school dungeon crawling with a primary emphasis on showcasing the GURPS combat system. As a result, Dungeon Fantasy came about and has been extremely successful, spawning thirteen source books and being driven as chiefly a PDF digital download only affair. What Dungeon Fantasy Is Mentioned previously, Dungeon Fantasy's main deal is to get as close to the 'pick up and play' model as possible. Made popular with other systems, Dungeon Fantasy strikes a balance between this 'ready to play' mentality while retaining the richness of combat that played a large part in the early development of pen and paper roleplaying games. As a result, it is mentioned multiple times in the original product line (Dungeon Fantasy 1 - Adventurers and 2 - Dungeons) that the game is oriented chiefly towards combat. Templates are built so that it is a lot of effort to make an incompetent character, and the amount of choices are reduced but still allow some variety of gameplay. What Dungeon Fantasy Isn't Realistically speaking Dungeon Fantasy is an interpretation of hack and slash dungeon crawls. You can use it easily enough for actual adventures as well, of course, but like any GURPS game it does expect you to set the record straight as a GM. It was only very recently that a "Monster Manual" was produced for further streamlining - prior to that there were only fairly loose guidelines on how to generate monsters and examples. Dungeon Fantasy does NOT come with random dungeon generating tables. It expects you to create dungeons and populate them yourself, and will tell you how to let the players explore it with their myriad skills, but it does expect you to put in at least an hour or two thinking about what you want to run. If you are truly pressed for time, it is better to play a boardgame for the night or something to that effect. Political intrigue, city adventures, and mixing technology isn't a strong suit of Dungeon Fantasy either. You can provide plenty of pointers and there are plenty of chances to roleplay, but Dungeon Fantasy benefits greatly from a formulaic dungeon crawl or plot-encounter-plot-twist-encounter-boss fight type of setup. The Books There are as of this time (July 2011) thirteen books in the Dungeon Fantasy series, which I will briefly categorize and summarize here. Dungeon Fantasy also requires GURPS Basic Set (Characters only truly essential but Campaigns is highly recommended); for casters, GURPS Magic; and for special cases and extra options, GURPS Martial Arts. Character Generation: Dungeon Fantasy 1 - Adventurers. The original book which provided 250 point templates for most everything. Also provides a master trait list for people who want to 'roll their own' DF templates or run a DF-styled game, also listing common equipment and adding some extra options. Dungeon Fantasy 3 - The Next Level. Provides nonhuman races of various sorts and introduces lenses, 50 points to allow more versatility and cross training. It also provides improvement paths for every template featured in DF1. Dungeon Fantasy 4 - Sages. Outlines two new templates, the Artificer and the Scholar, and appropriate lenses and such for each. Dungeon Fantasy 5 - Allies. For 'summoner' type templates or those which have the capacity for familiars, animal companions, and so forth. Dungeon Fantasy 7 - Clerics. Outlines various deities in terms of concepts rather than citing actual pantheons (real world or fantastic) to allow any holy people (Clerics, Holy Warriors) some more options on what their code of beliefs are. Dungeon Fantasy 9 - Summoners. Outlines a special subset of wizards which chiefly specialize in making other things do stuff for them. Includes a normal Summoner, Elementalists, Necromancers, and Shamans. Also provides extra "Servitors" or advanced allies for use. Dungeon Fantasy 10 - Taverns. You can make an innkeeper now. Dungeon Fantasy 11 - Power-ups. A "sequel" book to DF3, this book provides improvements to class templates, racial templates, and summarizes all the level up options available for the templates provided prior (except for innkeeper). Dungeon Fantasy 12 - Ninjas. Yes! Prepare to spend more money on basic equipment than a Barbarian does on magical equipment! I'll do the others later, I'm tired.
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# ? Jul 12, 2011 07:25 |
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Dungeon Fantasy is the best dungeon crawl system there is, pretty much. It is completely point and shoot, but still leverages GURPS under the hood so the combat is a lot more textured than in (say) D&D where all characters behave sort of like pudding blobs of HP with a half dozen magic wands that each do one thing. It does require some experience to GM well, since monster threat level is only approximately related to point total. DF player characters are built around templates. Basically, a template is 250 points and the intent is that a starting character will be 250 points- so you drop a template on it, customize a bit, and you have a playable character. Currently, DF offers the following character templates: From DF1: Barbarian (hits things really hard, is generally a beefstack: easy to create/play) Bard (magic spells, large variety of supernatural abilities: hard to play) Cleric (healing, smiting, buffing, debuffing: medium) Druid (interesting spell list, plus a big palette of really awesome allies and powers: medium) Holy Warrior (gets the Cleric's supernatural powers but subs beating guys to death for the spellcasting: easy) Knight (the "fighter" of DF, except not a chump: easy) Martial artist (lots of powers to choose from, odd weapons, Chi-skills: hard) Scout (Legolas mode activated: easy) Swashbuckler (weapon master + fencing weapons, fast and loves called shots: easy) Thief (utility jack-of-all-trades skill character with backstabbing ability: medium) Wizard (huge spell selection to choose from, no catch: medium) From DF4: Scholar (re-configurable skill slots and the ability to cast any spell in the game with Wild Talent: medium) Artificer (gear-based jack-of-all-trades who really needs the DF8 item tables for maximum effectiveness: medium) From DF7: Cleric/holy warrior/druid variants aplenty (really depends on which variant- some are straight forward, others are tricky to be effective with) From DF9: Demonologist (so ambiguously grimdark I can't believe it: medium) Elementalist (basically an aspected Wizard with huge blasting potential and great allies but less flexibility: medium) Necromancer (hordes of skeletons? great powers? yes please: medium) Shaman (all ally spirits, all the time- tricky to make this guy more than a minion delegator: hard) From DF10: Innkeeper (lots of interesting options, fun to play but low on basic monster-killing power: medium) From DF12: Ninja (my hanzo steel: medium) Assassin (if you looked at thief and thought it wasn't lethal enough, here you go: medium) From Pyramid: Justicar (sort of a more utility/bounty huntery sort of knight which will work better in an urban adventure with some investigation challenges: medium) Mystic Knight (uses the Imbuement powers from Power-ups 1 and another issue of Pyramid, fills the elusive "sword guy with magic sword powers" niche: easy, but get ready to have 3 pdfs open to make one)
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# ? Jul 12, 2011 07:56 |
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So taking my earlier idea of GURPS: Nazi Zombies, and combining with my favourite GURPS book, I came up with something that is, according to a few of my players. badass and fun. SEALs in Vietnam: Zombie Don't Surf. Why the zombies I don't know. I'm blaming the Soviets right now. But there is apparently something awesome about a being sneaky, killing Charlie, doing almost Shadowrun-type stuff, and then whipping out a shotgun or Death Machine M60 on a bunch of zombies in a tunnel system full of traps. Gentlemen, I have hit paydirt. A game my players love, and I love to write for/run. Gritty action, brutal combat, and lots of room for humourous/badass/amusing antics. During the test run I was running with one of my players, after a few stumbles she managed to basically re-create the Black Ops tunnel mission. Only with a horde of zombies behind her character as he jumped on to a PACV hovercraft a few meters below. The character intentionally hit a claymore wire when he jumped, sending a huge number of ball bearings tearing through 15-20 zombies towards him, with a spectacular rain of blood and zombie bits landing on the PACV's crew(and the other SEALs who had already gotten to it).
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# ? Jul 14, 2011 06:21 |
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Sam. posted:Picked up the Basic Set and some other stuff cheap at a used book store. This seems like a really nice system. One question (I'll probably have more later): Why is HP so low compared to weapon damage, even with DR from armor added? It seems like people will die from a few shots from most guns at TL 5 or above. Is there something important I'm missing? If you want to get shot a lot, you should buy lots of hit points. In a realistic game, you don't buy lots of hit points, and getting shot is often bad. In a less realistic game, you can buy as many hit points as you want. My suggestion for a game modeled after something like Star Wars, Gladiator, or other high action milieu is to double your basic hit points. With 20-30 hit points, characters aren't invulnerable, but they can take a couple of hits and rarely suffer crippling injuries from normal weapons.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 06:48 |
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NovemberMike posted:Make sure that you enforce some kind of niche protection. If the abilities of the characters overlap too much then it can get boring with every character having nearly the same effective ability. GURPS is actually a game where I could see everyone running virtually the same character sheet, but with five different Quirks. Assuming the character design was competent, of course.
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# ? Jul 17, 2011 06:54 |
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DF 13: Loadouts is out, which includes about a million pre-computed equipment packagesfor all archetypes with pre-figured costs (including options for various levels of sig gear and Wealth) and combined weights to match your encumbrance levels.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 05:43 |
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The Oldest Man posted:Dungeon Fantasy is the best dungeon crawl system there is, pretty much. It is completely point and shoot, but still leverages GURPS under the hood so the combat is a lot more textured than in (say) D&D where all characters behave sort of like pudding blobs of HP with a half dozen magic wands that each do one thing. It does require some experience to GM well, since monster threat level is only approximately related to point total. I remember seeing a post by Kromm where someone had said that X class was underpowered and he showed how mathematically each class had about the same durability and damage output over time despite going about it different ways (Barbarians deal damage in large chunks, Swashbucklers tend to be able to do targeted attacks, Knights can often wade in better and afford to attack more aggressively due to the extra armor etc. Thieves aren't fighters though). It was a really good example of how well balanced GURPS is. I'll have to see if I can find it again.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 07:49 |
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NovemberMike posted:I remember seeing a post by Kromm where someone had said that X class was underpowered and he showed how mathematically each class had about the same durability and damage output over time despite going about it different ways (Barbarians deal damage in large chunks, Swashbucklers tend to be able to do targeted attacks, Knights can often wade in better and afford to attack more aggressively due to the extra armor etc. Thieves aren't fighters though). It was a really good example of how well balanced GURPS is. I'll have to see if I can find it again. I'd like to see this. I can believe that some of the classes have similar damage potentials, but I don't see how (e.g.) bard or thief could measure up damage-wise. Not that that's a bad thing, they have plenty of other useful things to do than be pure damage machines.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 16:55 |
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Captain Foo posted:I'd like to see this. I can believe that some of the classes have similar damage potentials, but I don't see how (e.g.) bard or thief could measure up damage-wise. Not that that's a bad thing, they have plenty of other useful things to do than be pure damage machines. IIRC he excluded classes that were explicitly not there to be fighters, such as the thief and the bard. The main point was that all of the classes that had most of their points in combat related stuff were roughly on par as long as they were played well.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 18:30 |
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So Barb/Knight/Holy Warrior/Swash/Scout/(Martial Artist?)
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 21:05 |
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I found this but there might be more.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 21:52 |
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Lynx Winters posted:I found this but there might be more. IIRC there was one where Kromm (or someone else, I might have been associating Kromm with that post) went through Knights, Holy Warriors, Scouts, Martial Artists, Barbarians and a few nods to some of the options casters have and they all ended up pretty balanced against each other in terms of their combat abilities against a couple different sets of enemies. It's been awhile though, so I might be misremembering the author.
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# ? Jul 20, 2011 22:47 |
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Well if you want raw damage output, a Druid with the Martial Artist lens that combines Partial Shapeshifting (Tiger Paws) with Power Blow/Flying Leap is pretty silly. Doable on 300 points!
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# ? Jul 21, 2011 02:05 |
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So! I was originally going to work on explaining what books are most relevant to GMs in the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line but I think they are pretty self explanatory: all of them, basically, especially the ones not listed as being specifically for characters. Each book adds something to the table that can help people who are stuck for ideas - DF2 sets the ground floor on how to master dungeons and such. I have been working on trying to get GURPS functional in Maptool now that it has reached an official stable release candidate. Thus far things seem to be working quite smoothly, but I am looking at trying to deconstruct the current framework that is out there (ran into some licensing issues or somesuch to publicly continue development) in order to get functioning HP and FP bars. There are some mockups of trying to get the core Actions that you can do in a turn to show up as States, but I am also trying to figure out kind of a more basic "click button to make your character prepare a Move and Attack action" sort of deal to make it even easier. We'll see. Some new questions for discussion, though, do you find that terrain and maps more explicitly designed for square grid systems like D&D translate over well for GURPS tactical combat? I'd imagine getting 'gridless' versions and converting hexes to freeform movement with rulers would probably be the best solution, but I'd like to hear other people's experiences with it.
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# ? Jul 22, 2011 09:04 |
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From the depths of Dungeon Fantasy I have returned! TOM put up a summary of all the 250 point lenses in an earlier post and I provided a brief list of books pertinent to players, but what about the guy calling the shots? How is he going to actually run the specialized brand of hack and slash skulduggery that is GURPS Dungeon Fantasy? Well, aside from being acquainted firmly with the capabilities of the templates that the players have picked, he should also take a look at the following books... Dungeon Fantasy 2 - Dungeons. About half of the book is dedicated to mechanics both players and the GM will find useful, and the other half is strictly for GMs in the finer aspects of adventuring, selling, monster creation, sample monsters, mapping, and so forth. It also establishes a baseline cost of living for Dungeon Fantasy - 150 bucks per week. Even the most dead broke dungeoneers should be able to have something to show for their time in the dungeon, and if that means the only thing you have to sell is your story (something you can actually do), they should at least break even for being able to stay in town and recharge important items. Dungeon Fantasy 5 - Allies. Covers extended options for allies and companions the players can summon and also the GM to use. Useful if you need some extra examples of monsters that you can throw at players, as it follows the stat block format provided in the GM section of DF2. Dungeon Fantasy 6 - 40 Artifacts. Providing ideas for cool bang-whiz loot to center an adventure or even campaign around, this is usually viewed as not that important but provides some nice options. It also goes a little into some origin stories for the items in question in order to give it more history than "A Flaming Longsword". Dungeon Fantasy 8 - Treasure Tables. One of the largest PDFs in the series, this is solely dedicated to what everybody in Dungeon Fantasy wants - loot! This still falls into the GURPS situation where it does take a lot of time to generate the treasures from the book. However, it does go into materials, a variety of weapons and armor, jewels, art objects, and the like, plus any appropriate references if necessary. A handy resource to create some cool treasure hoards at random, or just pick and place. Dungeon Fantasy 10 - Taverns. While viewed as a somewhat 'lackluster' supplement due to bringing nothing particularly new to the table (for players) it expands on the often abstracted hub of information in town that all of the greatest adventures start and end. Provides four fully fleshed out taverns with separate personalities, adventure seeds that can spring from the taverns, and maps suitable for scaling and printing out (or exporting to a Virtual Tabletop program such as Maptool). Dungeon Fantasy 11 - Powerups. While intended for the players to provide all manner of kooky ways to make their characters even more fearsome in combat, these can be a great asset in producing all sorts of fun gimmicks for NPCs and other villainous sorts (who quite frequently are cut from a similar template the players are, just evil). Dungeon Fantasy 12 - Ninjas. Gimmicks to use against the players! Get them in dumb situations with smoke bombs! All sorts of weaponry! Still a sparse book, though. Dungeon Fantasy 13 - Loadouts. Need to kit out an adventurer (PC or NPC) quickly? Here you go! Dungeon Fantasy - Monsters 1. Featuring a full index of the example monsters in the Dungeon Fantasy product line up to this point (March/April/May 2011), it has many excellent example monsters, bonus templates, and basically gets things in order to give a GM enough ideas to get rid of those pesky players and some adventure seeds to chew on.
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# ? Jul 26, 2011 21:47 |
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Been looking through some more GURPS books, and Infinite Worlds seems like a pretty solid setting. Is there any reason why there aren't any Infinite Worlds games in PbP?
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 02:23 |
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They're retard magnets.
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 03:10 |
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Lynx Winters posted:They're retard magnets. Care to elaborate?
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 03:14 |
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People see 'Infinite Worlds' and think 'I can play anything!' Most people's idea of anything is pretty retarded. edit for clarification: I mean the anything as in concepts for Infinite Worlds, not anything in general.
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 03:17 |
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Let me tell you about one of my first GURPS characters who also happened to be an infinite worlds character. Let me tell you about actually meeting a 250 point disad limit, almost entirely social disads, including some completely mutually exclusive ones. Retard magnet is an understatement. It creates retards.
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 03:55 |
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When people submit characters to Infinite World games, the character process goes like this. 1) Create some goofy character that's probably little more then a passing fancy. 2) Write up a background world that loosely justifies the character. I think IW could work, but the GM has to place very strict guidelines on what can be made or force people to create characters from established IW worlds.
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 03:57 |
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DocBubonic posted:When people submit characters to Infinite World games, the character process goes like this. The problem with requiring people to only use established IW worlds is that all GURPS Worldbooks are IW worlds. So you've got a Yrth Elf Archmage over here, a Reign of Steel Robot, an OGRE, a Lensman, a Black Ops agent, an entire spaceship crew from Traveller, an Atomic Lich, and a motherfucking Tyrannosaurus as your party. Actually, that sounds pretty awesome. Somebody do that, I call dibs on the Tyrannosaur.
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 04:23 |
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DocBubonic posted:When people submit characters to Infinite World games, the character process goes like this. Hey now, I think Valerius' Iron SWAT game started out fine. Would have been better had we gotten to run the mission, but it started just fine.
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 12:13 |
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Kwyndig posted:Actually, that sounds pretty awesome. Somebody do that, I call dibs on the Tyrannosaur. See? It's starting already and all we're doing is discussing the problem.
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 13:25 |
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I blame an extreme allergic reaction as to why I thought that was a good idea. Those characters would actually be terrible together in a game. Now, as a book, that might work, but books have the advantage of not having the goddamn cybertank be overpowered except for its inability to fit inside buildings.
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 13:38 |
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Couldn't it work if we establish the characters are on the same page communicating with each other, have a common goal, and probably have worked together for a while? What makes IW harder to make work than, say, Planescape?
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 13:48 |
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Personally, I think IW is an interesting setting, but just not compelling for a game. It's a lot of historical sandboxing (which is arguably GURPS's thing anyway), very little potential for character conflict. I can hear "Everything's the same except the Nazis won WW2!" only so many times before my brain starts shutting down. Then again I may be a hypocrite since I think Banestorm is pretty fuckin neat.
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 14:01 |
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# ? Apr 26, 2024 18:02 |
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DocBubonic posted:When people submit characters to Infinite World games, the character process goes like this. Couldn't you avoid that by making the characters all be from Homeline (or Centrum, which might actually make more sense since they're less accepting of outsiders), and avoid them being literally retarded through all the disads by having a lower number of points like 100 or 150?
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# ? Aug 1, 2011 16:24 |