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.

Guys, is there any gurps module to help city management? I want to make a campaign based on building a city from zero, starting as a village, and then a small city, then a megalopolis, yada yada.

Could you guys help me?

Hey guys, I would Iike to start a solo campaign in GURPS, using Dungeon Fantasy. How many points would you recommend for a single PC to make them robust and survivable enough to solo dungeon crawls?

Thanks

I want to know of there is any city management and creation module

If the carrier attack is a natural weapon, such as Claws or Teeth, Follow-Up is a +0% enhancement. (Exception: On a passive carrier attack such as Spines, Follow-Up is a -50% limitation.)

Is there some kind of downside to passive attacks? Because if there is, I can't see it. I am so confused as to why this is, and I don't think I misread anything.

I was messing around today with how you'd price drow magic like Faerie Fire for a racial template essentially intended to recreate the race as it appears in Forgotten Realms and the like, using the Affliction rules for GURPS, when it hit me: Affliction is priced completely wrongly in a very significant way.

From reading around, I know I'm not the first one to notice how bizarre it is that an Affliction that temporarily affects a target with a minor Disadvantage like, say, Bad Smell is somehow more expensive than the baseline Affliction that just outright stuns the target for the same amount of time, all because you have to buy it as an "Enhancement" (even though it's really doing the opposite of enhancing the ability) that then also fully replaces the far more powerful stun effect. One suggestion I saw involved changing the base cost per level of an Affliction that imposes a Disadvantage to be the cost of the Disadvantage with which it afflicts the target. So then our silly "Bad Smell" Affliction would be 10 points per level just like the standard Affliction, and any Enhancements or Limitations would be applied to that base cost.

But should these really be priced the same as one another? Should an annoying but largely harmless nuisance effect really be as expensive as an extremely powerful stun effect?

That's when it hit me: Disadvantages are normally "always on." When you're refunded 10 points for Bad Smell, you're not getting those points for being briefly afflicted with it until you successfully roll to resist! You're getting those points for always being smelly. And looking back at Affliction's default effect, well, it's a total stun. So how many points would a Disadvantage where you're just permanently stunned and can only ever take Do Nothing actions (although you're still conscious and can defend at -4) actually be worth? Because that's the "Disadvantage" the default version of Affliction is using!

Well, Quadriplegic is worth -80 points. I've seen it suggested Total Paralysis would be worth -150 points. Decreased Time Rate is -100 points. Tentatively, Perpetually Stunned might be worth around -100 to -150 points, then? For the sake of this exercise, let's be conservative and say -100 points, though I'm inclined to say it should probably be higher.

In that case, the standard version of Affliction is effectively imposing, temporarily, a 100-point Disadvantage on targets, not a 10-point Disadvantage! Following that same rule from before, the standard version of Affliction should then cost 100 points per level, not 10. Obviously, that's far too much! However, if we want to instead let the standard version of Affliction remain at its normal price of 10 points per level, then we're effectively establishing that an Affliction that imposes a Disadvantage divides the value of that Disadvantage by 10 and then uses the resulting number as its baseline cost.

So, an Affliction to make a target stink while it's in effect would use Bad Smell (-10) and wind up costing 1 point/level (10/10 = 1) as a base cost, before any Enhancements or Limitations are applied, which is far more appropriate for what is essentially just a nuisance effect. Compare this with the standard rules, which would instead make it cost 11 points per level—oddly more than the cost of the infinitely more powerful and useful stunning Affliction.

Obviously, we could make other adjustments. Perhaps we feel that a stunning attack is too cheap at 10 points and want to increase it. In that case, we'd just redo the math accordingly and everything else downstream of it, e.g., setting it at 20 points means we're now only dividing Disadvantage values by 5, which means a Bad Smell Affliction now costs 2 points, and so on.

Thoughts?

We've seen a lot of good, alternative zombies as of late - from the "zombies" of Smile to those in The Sadness... has anyone put together rules for these alternative zombies in GURPS?

Does leveling up an advantage cause the Base Cost to raise? For example:

Mana Damper costs 10 points/per level.
Does that mean that if I take Mana Damper 3 times, it has a new base cost of 30, or is it still 10?

I'm trying to figure out if I add Area Affect (which adds 50%) to Mana Damper at level 3, will it cost 35 points (adding 50% of 10) or 45 points (adding 50% of 30).

First of all: I really like GURPS and would like to work on its reputation and representation. The latter one is mostly driven by us - the players - as SJG is mostly absent, at least in my bubble.

I‘ve mainly two points I want to address:

1. Whenever GURPS comes up in different communities, it’s inevitable described as heavily crunchy. While partly true - depending on GMs decisions - a lot of this reputation have two sources:
   * Basic Set‘s massiv content and art of presentation, which I‘ve seen described as „wall of text“. While it doesn’t bother me, I see why it can hinder some newcomers. That’s something we as community can’t fix and could only be corrected by a potential 5th edition.
   * An inevitable bring up of GURPS Vehicle which only exists for 3rd edition. This supplement is almost 30 years old. Even compared to the publication of GURPS 4th edition it’s old enough to go to school. Bringing it up in discussions about todays GURPS experience feels like discussing the balancing of a current-unnamed-mainstream rpg due to one(!) supplement for its predecessor.
   
2. Whenever someone requests tips for a rpg to translate a video game into a ttrpg and almost whenever GURPS is mentioned someone will add the fun-fact that the first Fallout video game was designed with GURPS in mind. While true, I don’t find it helpful as
   * GURPS wasn’t implemented in the final product. Bragging with something that DIDN‘T happen feels really strange to me.
   * The regarding Fallout game was released at almost the same time as GURPS Vehicle. This means that, even if the original Fallout game did only slightly changed the internal rules to not be just GURPS, it doesn’t account for a experience with a current Fallout video game.

TLDR: Whenever GURPS is presented in discussions outside of this sub, a lot of (really) old stories come up, suggesting (at least to me) that a lot of people never moved on. This isn’t only the case for GURPS supporters but also for people who tried it once using a previous edition of GURPS and decided to meme about it since then.

A few additional points to consider:

* I think the demographic of GURPS players is slightly older than for a current-unnamed-mainstream rpg (I‘m also not the youngest player). And older people tend to be more nostalgic.
* A lot of current GURPS players still rightfully enjoy GURPS 3rd edition including Vehicles as its quality didn‘t vanished with time.

So, as for me, I still recommend to look at GURPS when it seems to match the discussion, but I try to avoid examples that are old enough to have children.

What do you think?
How can we as a GURPS community work on the reputation and representation of our beloved rpg?

What are your thoughts on this book? I want to use it as a resource for a game set in New Orleans.

Does it have any location/ setting information?

Thanks!

I'm new to GURPS learning it last week, and still learning tbh. Can someone explain to me how signature gear works, and how it's different from regular equipment I don't really understand it.