Alright, enough of that bullshit. So here's the deal: I want to like GURPS: it has a lot going for it, at least in terms of support from the twenty years of Amaze-balls supplements. I want to enjoy spending 200 character points on 300+ skills. I want to enjoy 1 second combat rounds and six different damage calculations.
Every few years, I take a look at my collection of GURPS stuff and tell myself that this time I'll come to love it. But maybe I'm just too damn ADHD, or maybe my tolerance for minutiae has slackened from my teenage years, or maybe the idea of a supplement just for guns makes me giggle. Whatever the reason, I just can't enjoy GURPS.
But rather than have another piss and moan session on the Internet, I decided to try and 'fix' GURPS. Well, by 'fix' I mean alter the system in such a way that would allow me to hand it to a complete newbie and have them create a character in 20 minutes, and play in 10.
Here's what I'm doing: Character creation is divided into 4 discrete modules with their own pool of character points to spend. You have your Characteristics, Skills, Backgrounds, and Equipment. Each section has fairly significant alterations to the base GURPS game, and ends up looking like a GURPS/HERO hybrid.
Within Characteristics, I'm decoupling Perception, Will, Status and Charisma from whatever weird psuedo-stat hell they're in. Damage bonus is unified to a single track (swing/Thrust unified), and Move becomes Speed, which will play into the more abstracted combat rules. Fatigue becomes Willpower, rolling HT and Will into a single pool with multiple uses.
Skills are more generalized, with a unified cost structure. Specialties take the place of techniques. The idea is fractal complexity, where a player can choose their level of investment in the skill system. So a character can have the skill "Hand to Hand Combat" and be fine, but if they want to delve in they can take the "Spear" specialty that lets them focus their character more.
Backgrounds roll in Advantages and Disadvantages into one package, and at the key to setting customization. A medieval setting might have a dozen or so Backgrounds detailing caste and nationality, while a fantasy setting might use backgrounds for all the fantasy races.
Within Backgrounds, Personality and social disadvantages have been unified as well. The Player will pick three flaws from the supplied list. Depending on how New School I'm feeling, they might act like FATE aspects, letting the players call act on them to refresh Willpower. Maybe not.
Anyway, here's where I'm getting stuck. It's making my skull hurt.
GURPS does not like opposed checks. Most roll-under systems have an issue with opposed checks, and handle it with some sort of cross-indexed table, or noting the difference in rolls. Then they usually handle opposed checks completely differently in combat. It's one of the advantages of roll-over systems: the process for opposed checks and normal checks is usually identical.
This isn't just a theory-wank issue, this counts towards speed of play at the table and ease of learning. It think I've found a solution.
Treat opposing tests as the Opposition imposing a penalty on the active participant. Any score above a 10 imposes a +1 penalty on the target's roll (or perhaps scale the resistance by 1/2, like d20.) This has the advantage of unifying resolution mechanics across the board. If I tell a player that they have to make a roll with a +2 penalty, they know that they have to roll 3d6+2 and get under their score. Attacking a skilled combatant might give you a +2 penalty (provided they are aware of the attack.) This also gives excellent scaling with higher skill levels. Having a skill of 19 might mean that your typical mook is easily dispatched, but a warrior with training equal to you (imposing a +9 (or +5) penalty) will make significantly more difficult to land a shot on them.
This may make more skilled characters much more difficult to strike, but that is as intended. A character with a skill of 10 in Longsword would have little chance of landing a blow on a character with a 16 Parry (giving a +3 penalty. I'm leaning more towards the 1/2 skill above 10). The bonus might have to fall on a different curve, something more akin to the OD&D bonus curve. I think the costs of increasing a skill are high enough to merit a better Resistance value.
This segways into my thoughts on combat. I'm not a fan of the 1 second round. There's just too much chaos in combat to make choices second by second. If you look at footage of MMA fights, streetfights, and firefights, you can see that there are distinct moments of decision: do I go on the defensive, do I look for cover, do I attack? Six seconds looks like a good compromise there. Each character gets a number of actions per round based upon Speed. These actions refresh at the start of the round, and can be used on their turn to attack, move, start a spell, etc. You can also squirrel one or two away to use later in the round for defense, or for higher skill level tricks like ripostes or takedowns. If you're out of Actions, I figure you can spend 5 Willpower to gain an extra action.
Anyway, that's where I'm going with this. I know this was a definite example of HeartBreaker World Theater, but fuck that.
Every few years, I take a look at my collection of GURPS stuff and tell myself that this time I'll come to love it. But maybe I'm just too damn ADHD, or maybe my tolerance for minutiae has slackened from my teenage years, or maybe the idea of a supplement just for guns makes me giggle. Whatever the reason, I just can't enjoy GURPS.
But rather than have another piss and moan session on the Internet, I decided to try and 'fix' GURPS. Well, by 'fix' I mean alter the system in such a way that would allow me to hand it to a complete newbie and have them create a character in 20 minutes, and play in 10.
Here's what I'm doing: Character creation is divided into 4 discrete modules with their own pool of character points to spend. You have your Characteristics, Skills, Backgrounds, and Equipment. Each section has fairly significant alterations to the base GURPS game, and ends up looking like a GURPS/HERO hybrid.
Within Characteristics, I'm decoupling Perception, Will, Status and Charisma from whatever weird psuedo-stat hell they're in. Damage bonus is unified to a single track (swing/Thrust unified), and Move becomes Speed, which will play into the more abstracted combat rules. Fatigue becomes Willpower, rolling HT and Will into a single pool with multiple uses.
Skills are more generalized, with a unified cost structure. Specialties take the place of techniques. The idea is fractal complexity, where a player can choose their level of investment in the skill system. So a character can have the skill "Hand to Hand Combat" and be fine, but if they want to delve in they can take the "Spear" specialty that lets them focus their character more.
Backgrounds roll in Advantages and Disadvantages into one package, and at the key to setting customization. A medieval setting might have a dozen or so Backgrounds detailing caste and nationality, while a fantasy setting might use backgrounds for all the fantasy races.
Within Backgrounds, Personality and social disadvantages have been unified as well. The Player will pick three flaws from the supplied list. Depending on how New School I'm feeling, they might act like FATE aspects, letting the players call act on them to refresh Willpower. Maybe not.
Anyway, here's where I'm getting stuck. It's making my skull hurt.
GURPS does not like opposed checks. Most roll-under systems have an issue with opposed checks, and handle it with some sort of cross-indexed table, or noting the difference in rolls. Then they usually handle opposed checks completely differently in combat. It's one of the advantages of roll-over systems: the process for opposed checks and normal checks is usually identical.
This isn't just a theory-wank issue, this counts towards speed of play at the table and ease of learning. It think I've found a solution.
Treat opposing tests as the Opposition imposing a penalty on the active participant. Any score above a 10 imposes a +1 penalty on the target's roll (or perhaps scale the resistance by 1/2, like d20.) This has the advantage of unifying resolution mechanics across the board. If I tell a player that they have to make a roll with a +2 penalty, they know that they have to roll 3d6+2 and get under their score. Attacking a skilled combatant might give you a +2 penalty (provided they are aware of the attack.) This also gives excellent scaling with higher skill levels. Having a skill of 19 might mean that your typical mook is easily dispatched, but a warrior with training equal to you (imposing a +9 (or +5) penalty) will make significantly more difficult to land a shot on them.
This may make more skilled characters much more difficult to strike, but that is as intended. A character with a skill of 10 in Longsword would have little chance of landing a blow on a character with a 16 Parry (giving a +3 penalty. I'm leaning more towards the 1/2 skill above 10). The bonus might have to fall on a different curve, something more akin to the OD&D bonus curve. I think the costs of increasing a skill are high enough to merit a better Resistance value.
This segways into my thoughts on combat. I'm not a fan of the 1 second round. There's just too much chaos in combat to make choices second by second. If you look at footage of MMA fights, streetfights, and firefights, you can see that there are distinct moments of decision: do I go on the defensive, do I look for cover, do I attack? Six seconds looks like a good compromise there. Each character gets a number of actions per round based upon Speed. These actions refresh at the start of the round, and can be used on their turn to attack, move, start a spell, etc. You can also squirrel one or two away to use later in the round for defense, or for higher skill level tricks like ripostes or takedowns. If you're out of Actions, I figure you can spend 5 Willpower to gain an extra action.
Anyway, that's where I'm going with this. I know this was a definite example of HeartBreaker World Theater, but fuck that.
GURPS Haxorzz
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