This is a monthly r/GURPS thread for anything and everything related to your own campaigns. Tell us how you and your friends are making out. Update us on the progress of your game. Tell us about any issues you've run into and maybe we can help. Make suggestions for other players and GMs.

This is a monthly r/GURPS thread for anything and everything related to your own campaigns. Tell us how you and your friends are making out. Update us on the progress of your game. Tell us about any issues you've run into and maybe we can help. Make suggestions for other players and GMs.

I'm a GURPS newbie, so forgive what may be a fairly obvious question.

The lightning spell in Magic, page 196, states:

Shoots a bolt of lightning from a fingertip. This bolt has 1/2D 50, Max 100, Acc 3.

I'm having trouble deciphering what this means. I have no doubt I could hunt down the Accuracy part (I'm guessing it's a +3 to the target of whatever attack roll is necessary), the rest is a little harder for me to decipher.

1/2D sounds like half of 1d6.

But what's the 50?

And what is Max 100?

One thing that always bugged me about self-control disadvantages is that the GM usually is the one who needs to remember they exist, not the player. If both the player and the GM forget that a player has, say, Compulsive Gambling, then the player just effectively has a few free character points.

Trying to remember the more obscure self-control disadvantages - especially in the right moment - may be a bit on the hard side. Especially with multiple players and, well, "in the moment" while you try to describe the evil grin and evil plan of Dr. Destruction, and also the laser grid atop the button labeled "Blow up the planet", and thinking about grappling rules, and looking for the stats of cryo-grenades you quickly may forget that the player has taken Truthfulness and this may actually be appropriate here. And the player may have forgotten it too!

I thought that it might be better to outsource this on the players themselves. But how to do it best?

My idea is tied to the idea of Fate Points usable for - well, various stuff described in "Impulse buys" (sucess upgrades, rerolls etc). There is now also a new resource, which we will call Self Control Points (SCP). One hundred SCP can be exchanged for one one-time Fate Point.

How does one earn SCP? Very easily. You automatically get fifty at the end of a play session (number obviously adjustable). However, you gain less of these SCP per Self-control disadvantage equal to the negative character points of this disadvantage if you did not "indulge" in it at some fitting point during the session. Say, you have had -5 points from Gluttony. If you were not gluttonous at any appropriate point in this session, you receive only 45 SCP. If you also had pyromania at -7, and didn’t set anything aflame, you'd thus receive only 38 SCP. The player never rolls! They just need to make the decision - and the more points there are in the disadvantage, the more they want to indulge in it - which is effectively an actual mental self-control check.

Effectively, players are incentivized to actually "play to their weaknesses" to not lose out on SCP and consequently, these juicy Fate Points.

Of course there is negotiation with players (no, looking out of the window is not "Curiosity" and turning the stove on is not "Pyromania"). But this negotiation arguably is exactly the same as in any normal session when such a check would come up, and players may also directly ask "If I go down the dark stairwell, is this enough to be considered curious enough?".

[Perhaps one could give "partial successes" (okay, looking into the schoolboy diary is technically somewhat curious) or "bonus points for very appropriate disadvantage RP" (burning down Rome is definitely satisfying Pyromania and then some) and arguably even "extra points deducted when you really really should have used the disadvantage but didn't" (Not giving a vow to finish the dragonslaying quest when the king all but explicitly asked for it? Really? And you have conpulsive vowing? I pointed it out at the time! Like, Mary here doesn't have compulsive vowing, and she made a vow!)]

Is there anywhere I can find a complete list of GURPS status effects. I mean things like: Stunned, Frozen, Knockdown, Grappled, Burning, Bleeding, Poison, 1/3 HP/FP, etc. I'm probably missing quite a few.

Aside from role-playing, alternative histories are my second hobby and I recently got the idea of combining my two hobbies by playing nations/states like characters.

So let‘s see how far GURPS‘s flexibility got me:

1. Wealth and TL are obvious

2. Diplomacy is handled like social interactions incl. social traits, e.g.

* Overconfident for great powers.

* Reputation

* Rank

1. Geopolitics by traits, e.g

* Allies

* Enemies

* Patrons

* Duty (e.g. military alliances)

* Dependents (e.g. colonies)

1. State competences are modelled by skills, e.g.

* Propaganda

* Diplomacy

* Administration

* Economics

* Strategy

1. Attributes work like

* HP = Society Resistance (get damage by war, revolutions, plagues and crises)

* ST = Military strength

* IQ = State efficienty

* DX = State flexibility

* BM = Logistics

* Will = Political Stability

* Per = Surveillance and Intelligence gathering

But I‘m not quit sure how to handle battles/wars.

What do you think? Has anybody already tried something like that?

I want to make character that forcibly feels emotions of people around him. How can I do it?

I run a Discord Community for PBP games using GURPS.

We teach the system in demos and long discussions as needed. No stupid questions. We have several experts in the system and over a dozen games in action at any time. Over 50 active players and hundreds of lurkers watching, curiously. Lurkers can read all active games, ask questions, but not interfere in the actual in-game RP.

We are a friendly community first, as gamers. If you want to join, we’d love to have you. Here’s the link: https://discord.gg/EnE2eJjjh2

Come on in, ask us anything (relevant) and see if there are any interesting games starting up, or pitch one and see if folks are interested.

How do you do calculate a skill and damage using an improvised Weapon?

Examples might include a chair leg, or an auto pistol with no ammo (used as a melee weapon).

Specifically I'm after the skill and damage associated with hitting someone with the butt of a modern ranged weapon.

Is there anything in the rules or do you just improvise?

If there's no rule for it, I'm thinking I may have to just workout how they're using it, and find the closest weapon skill (maybe apply a penalty for using incorrect tools). Then for damage just use a character's melee damage without any modifiers. I hope there are some alternatives for this.

Hello all!

My group and I are pretty experienced with GURPS, but recently one of our GMS(We have three in my group who trade off) has been unsatisfied with the pace of combat. We started using a combat timer with a 1 minute limit, but even that still is not giving them the pace they are looking for. He has said it is making him want to run combats less, which is not what you want to do for a post-apoc campaign.

I wanted to ask if anyone else has felt the system drags in combat, and what(if anything) did you do to overcome that sensation?

As background, we have played on GURPS for 5 years now, using it as our primary game system. Before that, we were a WEG Star Wars group, where the combat is a bit more punchy and faster. We have explored other game systems before, like SWADE, D6 Generic, and Cyberpunk 2020, but we all like the variability of GURPS, and the consistency. We aren't looking to switch, at all, but I wanted to see if this is something other people face?

Our simple combats sometimes take 2-4 hours, with 6 players and an equal number of NPC's...

Open to all suggestions!

Earlier I asked about you folks' favorite low-tech pairings with a shield, and someone jokingly (?) suggested a laser pistol. With that in mind, let's try a high-tech variant! Let's say you're an ordinary TL8 competent adventure protagonist (at least 150pts with -50 disads cap, and possibly no more than 30 points of weird exotic powers), but you found a wrist-mounted force shield generator. Maybe you were attacked by a weird alien, defended yourself, and took the future bracelet off its corpse. Maybe you were given the mysterious technological relic by an extradimensional being beyond space and time in order to defend the cosmos. Maybe you found it in the trash. In any event, you get a Force Shield, and you get to pair it with a TL8 tool or weapon of your choice when you go on your dangerous adventures. What one-handed weapon are you picking?