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.

Does anyone know if there exist other reasons beside of money, why SJG based their rpg adaptation of Munchkin (their main cash cow currently) on DnD 5.5e instead of, you know, maybe their own well-known rpg?

Regarding the money reason:
Being based on DnD 5.5e means probably a wider audience for Munchkin, but being based on GURPS could lead to introduce GURPS to a wider audience in a cross-product campain.
But I guess SJG has mathed the math and behind this.

My next campaign is going to be one in the banestorm setting. In short the idea for my character was a psionic from an alternate earth that had been banestormed to Yrth. After looking into it tho it seems like a very unfavourable deal point wise for that backstory as I would need to take unusual background for 15 points the Anglish language for 6 points and the Yrth culture for the 1 point as they wouldn’t be native to my character. Then I’d have to have the hidden lore (Earth) skill for another 1 point and on top of that tech level 8 (3+5) for another 25 points. Then as a disadvantage I get that I am not from Yrth so if the ministry of serendipity finds out they will erase my memories which is a -20 point secret.

So from what I gather is that if I want this backstory I will have 28 less points to work with, a nasty secret and being worse at skills that rely on tech level due to unfamiliarity. While I would have a higher tech level I wouldn’t really have any benefit from it as far as I’m aware.

My question is, am I overlooking something that makes it more worth it or is it really just spending points to be worse off just for some flavour? Thanks in advance.

Late to the party with GURPS and I'm reading through Dungeon Fantasy RPG hoping to be able to run it soon.

I noticed the two Wizard characters in Delvers To Go (Uncle Seamus and Zephyra) both were given less than the -50 total in disadvantages. Uncle Seamus only has -35 total disadvantages while Zephyra only has -40. The other sample characters all had -50 each so I think this is a weird design choice, considering only the two wizard characters decided not to take the full "allotment" of -50.

What am I missing here?

EDIT: Answered. Overlooked the Wizard template's Per -3 (which is worth -15 points). Thanks u/munin295 for pointing it out.

I wanted to make something like a video game webbing that slowed whoever touched the material down. At first I thought I would use binding but that seems to be entirely about immobilizing them. I also considered using affliction for reduced basic speed, but that feels almost clunky.

I wanted to throw out a canister that exploded into a sticky goo that covered the ground for a limited time (say 30 seconds) and anyone who touched it would be slowed for the duration of touching it and like 10 seconds more after they left its area or it faded.

Any help making this would be appreciated

So, I finally tore GURPS Calculator apart and put it back together. Some of that code was old enough that I didn't recognize it as mine, which made for a fun couple of days.

If you haven't run into it, it's a free site with GURPS calculators and character sheets, and it's been around since 2015. This is the biggest update it's ever had.

Here's what's new:

• Campaign Rolls: Roll from a character sheet, a calculator, or the GM Board, and everyone in the campaign sees it in a shared panel. GMs can roll privately too.
• GM Board: Your whole party in one table. You can run a Fright Check on everybody with one click, or search the party when you need to know who has Forced Entry.
• GCS 5 import is back and working. Sheets also have counters now for ammo, coins, and whatever else you're tracking.
• Everything runs in your browser and updates as you type, so no more round trips to the server like the old days. Every tool has a Help button now too.
• New look, plus 10 themes if you want something different (I'm partial to the green-phosphor CRT one).

I also fixed a pile of rules the old version got wrong, mostly critical hits and hit locations. If you ever got a weird result and figured you'd messed up, it might have been me. Sorry about that.

It's still free and there are still no ads. The home page has a support bar now so you can see what it costs to run (about $15 a month) and where anything past that goes. Right now that's Encounters on the GM Board, where you build fights ahead of time and have the monsters ready to go when the players kick the door in. If the site has ever saved you some flipping through Basic Set mid-session, there's a Patreon.

So what should come after Encounters? I've got a list, but I'd rather hear what you'd actually use. What's the GURPS math you still end up doing by hand?

gurpscalculator.com

Some background:

I've been reading through Shadowrun Anarchy 2.0 (SRA2.0) recently. I was a kickstarter backer, the PDF / print copies will be public soon.

The whole system essentially boils down to test rolls, and in the case of combat, contested rolls that then also use the margin of success for the winner. I've been finding it a very elegant system so far!

There are concepts in the system that gesture towards narrative vs simulation, but they aren't deeply baked into the test system itself, so can be adapted easily into a more simulationist style. I tend to have a mix of both, so it hasn't been a problem for me.

The discovery:

SRA2.0 combat uses contested rolls, and if the attacker beats the defender, they hit. The number of hits / successes gets added to the damage.

All weapons have a base damage, so it's the successes that add some variables to how hard the hit is.

There are a lot of other elements in the book (ranged vs melee, other defender options, etc) but this mechanic just struck me as so elegantly done.

It means that your attack roll and damage roll happen at the same time, and a high success in attacking transfers directly to damage. (Avoiding the sometimes underwhelming result of rolling to hit and then rolling low damage.)

My idea: Apply the overall concept to GURPS.

• current method currently is attacker rolls, defender rolls if attacker succeeds, then damage rolls

• GURPS Anarchy:

  • attacker roll
  • defender chooses available defense skill and rolls
  • count the margin of success
  • standard weapon damage applies plus margin of success

• if defender succeeds, possibility of a riposte? Especially if margin of success is high. Maybe riposte is a technique or a sub-maneuver attached to Wait or something.

Questions:

I like this idea quite a bit, but I'd love to get feedback. Would something like this obstruct any useful advantages / disadvantages, etc? (Or could those adapt into this easily?)

note: I've formatted this for readability, but in this strange world, that might make folks think this was generated by an LLM. That is not the case! Every letter was 'generated' with my fingers on the keyboard!

LATER EDIT:

Many have been assuming this is meant to be a Quick Contest in place of the regular combat method. That's not the case. This would be a resisted roll happen at the level of the attack roll, just as it is in normal GURPS combat flow.

None of this is meant to speed up combat. The main point of elegance I enjoyed in SRA2.0, was that of baseline damage for a weapon, modified by the scale of success. It makes that attack roll very interesting, and avoids the up-down experience of landing a hit but then rolling minimal damage. The damage (still having randomness, because it's affected by the attack roll) is addressed at the same time as the attack roll.

So, based on that, let me outline this with a bit more detail.

Resistance Roll. (Page 348)

From the book:

The attacker must succeed to win. He cannot win by having the smallest margin of failure. If he fails his roll, he loses automatically and his subject does not need to attempt a resistance roll.

The attacker must win to affect the subject. All ties go to the defender.

Only done at the moment of the attack roll. Defender declares their defense. The margins being counted are between the attacker's target and the defenders target, not against each other.

Deceptive Attack, Rapid Strike, etc. remain as modifiers.

Masters should expect a very high margin of success baseline, so trying something else shouldn't be enough of a penalty modifier to make the options too risky. (And their attack is just as risky in a resisted roll as it is on their own.)

Still use critical failures and successes.

Melee only? At the very least, only when both combatants are in some way capable of negotiating the outcome... moreso than simply dodging a ranged attack. This is a resistance roll, and melee combat makes more sense in terms of 'resisting' the outcome.

"Partial Victory:" (where it's important to know the attack landed but was interrupted.) We can resolve this because the defender declares their action. If it's a parry, and the defender wins, then any necessary results can follow.

This could make someone very skilled with a simple weapon very deadly, because they'd know exactly how to use it. And someone less skilled but with a more 'powerful' weapon can still be dangerous. (Possibly to themselves, depending on the weapon! A crit miss with a chainsaw could be a problem!)

Much of the above also is meant to address the critiques of Kromm, though he's critiquing Quick Contest, not specifically a resistance roll at the attack roll moment. Kromm's critiques:

https://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=2585204&postcount=12

Questions I still have: Defense skill is inherently lower based on GURPS history and playtesting. I think for this I'd have to go 'full skill defense' which you can read more about.

Either way, this will require some playtesting.

Optional rule: defender declares before attack roll, as per:

https://www.gamesdiner.com/2007/07/decide-drop-excess-combat-info-from-defense-evaluation-gurps-4e3e/