Historical Problem

First Champions/Hero then GURPS share a problem.

They are point based systems with near-zero guidance for where you should put your points.

"The good news is that nothing is decided for you. The bad news is that nothing is decided for you." - FuzzyGeff.

In OG AD&D, the RPG I cut my teeth on, you got to make two decisions in character generation:  Race and class.  Even so, your choices could be limited by shitty die rolls.

Traveller, even more so.  Bad stats rolls could force you into the "Other" career path.

This problem was less obvious in Champions because most people had a comic book character they were trying to recreate and a clear vision of your character concept steers you through the process.

Providing you do some reading.

Which made me realize that I'd seen this kind of break before.

A player who makes a fighter in AD&D makes a few rolls and buy some gear and they're done making their character.  It's a bit more complex in later editions and Pathfinder, but the player doesn't need to do much reading to get their character done and be effective.

But a player who makes a spell caster needs to select their spells.  That means they need to open the Player's Handbook and learn how the spells they've chosen work.  It takes a lot more effort.

People naturally gravitate towards either position.

GURPS rewards the player who cracks open the book and spends the time reading about all the skills, advantages and disadvantages.  It punishes the person that doesn't.  In effect, it's a game made for the person who naturally gravitates towards being a spell caster.

It's exasperating trying to get someone who just wants to play the game through the character generation process because you're constantly poking them for decisions that they don't feel, thanks to playing other games, they shouldn't have to be making.

It leads to some resentment, during play, when they cannot do something that they feel is obvious that their character should be able to do.

It's because they're unfamiliar with the choices and ended up not seeing the skill or advantage that would provide them with the ability to do the things they clearly should be able to do.  Since the GM cannot read their mind, we can't help realize their vision.

GURPS introduced templates to help with this, but they only take it so far and, too often, a player will make the template to the letter with little to no individualization.

All of this is a tall, thick wall barring entry into the hobby for a lot of people.  Especially people who're not interested in the fantasy genre. 

7.62x51mm Purple Tip

Japan decided that full up 7.62 NATO was too powerful for its purposes, but also wanted to remain ammo compatible with US forces.

So they made a 7.62x51mm NATO rifle and issued a reduced pressure load to its troops.

For years I didn't have much information on it.

The internet has grown since then.

It's a 139gr bullet at 2,300 fps from the same barrel length as a H&K G3.

The G3 sends a 146gr bullet downrange at 2,625 fps.

The Japanese round, according to Gun Stats will do 5d+2 pi out to 700/2,900.  The G3 does 6d+2 pi to 840/3,500 (High Tech says 850/3,750) and so does the Type 64 firing NATO spec ammo!

The Type 62 GPMG, with a longer barrel will do 6d pi out to 730/3,100 and 7d pi to 900/3,800 with NATO spec ammo.  That 900/3,800 is the same as what the M14 calculates to, but High Tech says should be 1,000/4,200; plan accordingly.

Why did I figure this out?

I made something of a 'verse hopping setting and the players start as tourists at Ayer's Rock Urulu in Australia when the Japanese invade in 1994 inspired by Tom Clancy's Debt of Honor.

I knew the Type 64 rifle fired a reduced power round, but didn't know things like bullet weight and velocity so I made some shit up and called it good when the players captured a couple guns.

Ever since then, I periodically check up to see if more information has escaped the relentlessly classified JSDF records.  It's this kind of secrecy that had the Japanese using the Type 64 in 1994 instead of the 5.56 Type 89!

It's A Race

If I ran a campaign where this was available, the big question is will an NPC have one to confound the players, before a player adds it to their equipment list.

Moar dakka is always the goal of the player, but they often make quirky choices in arming themselves that interrupts achieving the goal. 

They Rhyme

 Something else I noticed, even though I experienced in real time the "this new game is so much better than the other game we've been playing!" feeling.

They all handle things pretty much the same way.

Most of them have a point where you're wounded so badly you pass out.  Most of them have a chance for medical intervention to keep you from dying even if you took a LOT of damage.

None of them are particularly difficult to use, once you've gotten past the author.

LBB Traveller and Top Secret are particularly bad in how they're laid out.  T2K suffers from things being widely separated in the rules as well.

GURPS 2e and 3e both suffer from an odd way of grouping the skills, but the index and Instant Characters sheet works around that.

GURPS 4e's index is very poor compared to the previous versions, but the layout is easier to navigate. 

That Wasn't So Bad, Was It?

Some of the games I remember being difficult to figure out weren't so bad.

Top Secret was easier than I remembered, but the book is still laid out poorly for finding things quickly.  Still haven't found the rules to use a sword hand to hand.  Yes I did!  It's in the ranged weapons chart for throwing the damn thing.  HWV is the "hand weapon value" of a ranged weapon used in hand to hand combat.  What a stupid way to list it.

Traveller's armor rules weren't nearly so awful as I recall. 

GURPS 2e is every bit as bad as I remember it being, we noticed that the M-26A2 didn't do a lot better than a good crossbow right quick.

I left for the Army before it had become an issue and I wasn't really a GURPS minded person yet.

I was enthralled with GDW's 2300: AD system and universe at the time.

By the time I'd gotten out, 3e was out and we could see that it did what we wanted better than 2e and it even survived my first try at converting T2K. 

M16ish At 50 Yards and/or Meters

Little Black Book TRAVELLER 

Traveller is my first game that had guns at all.

In Traveller the "M16" would be an assault rifle from Book 4: Mercenary.

Defenders range modifiers are (semi/auto): Close -4/-4, Short +1/+1, Medium -1/+2, Long -2/0, Very Long -4/-3; Wound Inflicted 3D; Defender's Armor: Nothing +2/+4, Jack +2/+4, Mesh -1/+2, Cloth -3/-1, Reflec +2/+4, Ablat 0/+2, Battle -5/-4.

The skill you use it with is Gun Combat, with a specialization in assault rifle.  We're going to go with Gun Combat: Assault Rifle - 2 to be consistent with the skill level 12 in GURPS later on.

The basic roll to hit is an 8 or higher on 2d6.  The average roll of 2d6 is 7, so you need some modifiers, like your skill, to actually hit on average.

You get +1 for every level of skill you have. 

If your Dext is below 5, you get a -1 to hit.  If it's 8 or higher you get a +2. 

50 yards meters is "Medium" range.  -1 to hit with semi-auto fire (one shot per round), +2 to hit with auto (4 shots per round).  The magazine holds 30 shots.

If the target is unarmored, +2 to hit with semi, +4 with auto. 

If our Gun Combat: Assault Rifle - 2 character with Dext 8 fires on someone at 50m they need a 3 or more (97.22% chance) with semi-auto fire and 2 or more (100% chance) with automatic fire on 2d6.  The average damage applied to any stat will render our target unconscious.

But if we're dead average across the board, our Dext is 7.  That means we need a 5 or more (83.33% chance) with semi-auto and 2 or more with autofire.

It'll do 3d6 damage when it hits.  Each die is applied, randomly to Strength, Dexterity or Endurance.  When one stat is reduced to zero, the victim is rendered unconscious; two is seriously wounded and all three is dead.  Two dice hitting the same stat can end the fight in a single round.

Notice that firing more rounds increases your chance to hit, not the amount of damage done. 

All in all, it's pretty straight-forward and simple.  There's an unneeded complication with range bands we never bothered learning or using.  I remember we changed armor to absorbing damage rather than making it harder to hit, but I don't remember the specifics.

Top Secret

Top Secret is the first game I owned that had an assault rifle called M16 by name.

The M16 is PWV 79, Range modifiers of: PB +5, S -8, M -50, L -160, WS S, Rate 3, Ammo 20, Cost 325, DECP NC, HWV 14.

I remember TS being convoluted in figuring out combat and I did not misremember. 

First you need your "Offense Value" this is the average of your Coordination and Courage.  You rolled percentiles to get those and the average percentile roll of 55 gets you a score of 65.  (65+65)/2=65, so the average Offense is 65.

How much damage you can take is determined by your "Life Level" which is the average of Physical Strength and Willpower.  Same average of 65.

Once again, 50 yards is medium range.

To hit you take your Offense Value, add the weapon's PWV (Projectile Weapon Value) subtract the Range Modifier and subtract the penalty for extra shots.

Semi-auto fire is 1 shot per turn, the M16 can fire up to 3 per turn.  The second and third shot get -11 and -22.  The Top Secret M16 has a 20 round magazine.

That extra shot penalty adds up until you take a round to recover, it can grow to be very severe.  It's actually quite GURPS like!

There are other penalties for movement and position we're skipping for now. 

So, at 50 yards with our M16 we have 65 + 79 - 50 = 94 or less on percentiles against a standing opponent for our first shot, 83 or less for the second and 72 or less for the third if we fired automatically.  On average, all rounds will hit.

That's more like sniping, ain't it.

If we're firing from rice-paddy prone (-5) at a target who's running and dodging (-20)...  That drops our chances to 69, 58 and 47 respectively.  On average only the first two hit.

On to damage! 

We roll on the General Injury Determination Chart to see where we hit with those two rounds.  The average roll of 55 will generally hit the abdomen or lower back.

Then we roll two d10.  The first tells us what type of damage from abrasion to internal damage.  The second tells us if the wound is serious or light.  The average roll of 5 gets a light laceration which applies 5 points against the target's Life Level, down to 60 from 65.  At the other end, a 6 and a 10 gets a serious internal injury and does 12 points of damage, down to 48.

It's going to take more shots than I remembered to shoot someone to death.  Top Secret trends to the cinematic end of the scale!

There are optional rules in the Top Secret Companion that give the location, type and severity in a single d1000 roll.

Twilight: 2000

Stats are determined by rolling 4d6-4, making the average 10.  A favored stat averages 15 and a slighted stat 5.

Hit Capacity varies by hit location.  Head is equal to CON, body is STR+CON+STA, other locations are equal to CON+STA.  Average person has 10, 30 and 20 respectively.

Everyone starts with the Combat Rifleman (CRM) skill at 20.  You can buy that up using skill points.  We'll buy it up to 74 to match the Skill 12 in the GURPS 2e example.  The skill is modified by range to get a "Base Hit" number which you need to roll, or less, on a d100.

An M16A1 has: ROF 4, Mag 10, Rng 50, Dam 2, and Arm -.

ROF is rate of fire in "shots," Mag is magazine capacity in "shots" which are 3 bullets each.  Rng is a range increment in meters.  In our example 50m is close range (the "Base Hit" is 60% skill or 44), 100m is medium range (30% skill or 22) and 200m is long range (10% skill or 7) and 400m is extreme range (special to hit rules), Arm is the armor multiplier which makes armor more or less effective against some weapons (no effect here).

Did you hit?

On average, a 74 skill is going to be missing at 50m.  If you spend a turn aiming, your first shot of the next round is at double the "base hit", or 88 in our example.  The aimed shot will, on average, hit.

Where did you hit?

An aimed shot can hit a specific hit location by halving the base hit number, which was normally doubled by aiming, returning it to it's original value, or 44 in our example.  Sniper weapons don't suffer this penalty!

If you didn't aim at a specific hit location, you roll 1d10 on the appropriate hit location chart.  Most likely hit the abdomen.

How much damage did you do?

At close range the M16A1 does the 4x the base damage plus 4d6 or 4d6+16; average of 30.  That's enough to drop someone's body damage capacity to zero.  This is a serious injury and they need to make a CON roll (d100 of CONx5 or less or 50 in our case) or fall unconscious.  This is beyond negative head damage capacity (a critical injury), so they'd be automatically unconscious and die in 1d10x10 turns if no medical assistance is rendered.

NPCs are supposed to use a simpler set of rules that gives them less damage capacity, 2d10x2 or 22 on average.  We never did use this rule, it doesn't add that much bookkeeping to the game and it made the fights better. 

I don't think we adhered to the rules very closely at all. 

GURPS 2e

All GURPS skill rolls are 3d6.  We're ignoring passive defense.

We don't have an M16, so we'll let the M-26A2 from GURPS: Autoduel 1e stand in.

With a, commonly taken, 12 skill in Guns/TL7 and straight 10 stats.

Our 10 ST is above the minimum of 8, so no penalties from that. 

It's Inc. is 20, so there's a -3 for range.

You can fire 2 shots semi-automatically or 3 shots in a burst.  We get 30 shots.

If you take turn to aim before firing, you take no penalty to the first semi-auto shot or any of the rounds in the burst.

If you don't take a turn to aim, they are all "snap shots" and have a -4 penalty.

So, chance to hit with an aimed shot is 9 or less (37.50% chance).  Snap shots are 5 or less (4.62% chance).

Two aimed, semi, shots are at 9 and 5.
Two snap, semi, shots are at 5 each.
Three aimed, burst, shots are at 9 each.
Three snap, burst, short are at 5 each.

On average you're gonna miss.

But if you aimed, you can pick a body location, and take a penalty to hit.  The body is a -0 though.  Some locations do more damage and have special effects, like crippling a limb or knocking them unconscious before their HP drops to zero.  The head, for example is -5 to hit, has DR 1 for the skull, but gives double damage and damage of HT/3 or more causes them to be stunned and HT/2 or more knocks them unconscious.

The hit location of a snap shot is determined by a 2d6 roll and looking at the table.  Coincidentally, the average roll of 7 on 2d for a random location also hits the body!

The M-26A2 does 2+2 dice of crushing damage. 

The average damage is 9, and will do 9 points to an unarmored torso; they keep fighting.  This same damage roll would do 16 points to the head, this both stuns and knocks the target out; but you'd need a 4 or less to hit with an aimed shot. 

We didn't play much Autoduel, so we never really got the warts located. 

GURPS 3e.

Update: I forgot the blow-through rules. 

The average person has straight 10 stats and we're sticking to a skill of 12 in Guns/TL7 - Lt Auto.

An M16 does 5d crushing damage, SS of 12, Acc 11, 1/2D 500, Max 3,843, Wt 8, RoF 12*, Shots 20, ST 9, Rcl -1, Cost $540, TL 7.

First, the unaimed semi-auto shot:  The range of 50 yards is a -9 penalty giving us a net skill of 3.  That's below the SS number of 12 so we get an additional -4 to hit for a -1 chance on 3d6.  Any roll of 9 or higher is a critical failure, so...  maybe don't make this shot.

Aimed, semi-auto shot:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, for a net +2 or 14 or less (90.74% chance) to hit the body, 13 or less (83.79% chance) for a second shot and 12 or less (74.07% chance) for a third.  On average, all three hit!

5d crushing does an average of 17 points of damage to the body, but is reduced to 10 because of the blow-through rule on p.B109, which is enough to warrant a "consciousness roll" against HT on 3d6 to stay awake.  On average, they make it, but are very penalized by the damage with regards to movement and DX based skills.  The second shot drops them to -10 and this adds a "death roll" against HT to keep from dying.  The third shot drops them to -20, another consciousness roll and two more death rolls.  This is bad.  Three death rolls in rapid succession rarely yields happy results.

Aimed, semi-auto shot at the vitals:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, -3 to hit vitals, for a net -1 or 11 or less (62.50% chance) to hit the body, 10 or less (50% chance) for a second shot and 9 or less (37.5% chance) for a third.

On average two rounds hit. 

Vitals do triple damage after subtracting the DR of the target, which is 0 here.  So our average roll of 17 damage does 30 points dropping the target to -20 and requiring 4 death rolls.  The second shot takes them to -50 and 6 more death rolls.

How about an unaimed blast of full-auto fire?  Same chances as before, but with an additional -1 for recoil on the first burst, -2 on the second, -3 on the third, and -4 for the fourth.  Spraying and praying doesn't really work.

An aimed blast is 13 or less for the first burst, 12 for the second, 11 for the third and 10 for the fourth.  Using our average rolls of 10 we look at the table on p B120 and find: we hit with 3 rounds from the first burst, 3 from the second, and 2 from the third.

8 rounds to the body doing 10 each on average because of blow-through totaling to 80 points of damage which is well past the 60 needed to get auto-death.

The players really liked rolling for each separate round/burst. 

GURPS 3eR with High Tech 3e.

The average person has straight 10 stats and we're sticking to a skill of 12 in Guns/TL7 - Lt Auto.

An M16 does 5d crushing damage, SS of 12, Acc 11, 1/2D 500, Max 3,843, Wt 8, RoF 12*, Shots 20, ST 9, Rcl -1, Cost $540, TL 7.

First, the unaimed semi-auto shot:  The range of 50 yards is a -9 penalty, -5 for bullet-shyness, giving us a net skill of -2.  That's below the SS number of 12 so we get an additional -4 to hit for a -6 chance on 3d6.  Any roll of 4 or higher is a critical failure, so...  maybe don't make this shot.

Aimed, semi-auto shot:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, -5 for bullet shyness for a net -3 or 9 or less (37.50% chance) to hit the body, 8 or less (25.92% chance) for a second shot and 7 or less (16.20% chance) for a third.

On average, all three miss!  But let's assume one does. 

5d crushing does an average of 17 points of damage to the body, which is reduced to 10 because of blow-through, which is enough to warrant a "consciousness roll" against HT on 3d6 to stay awake.  On average, they make it, but are very penalized by the damage with regards to movement and DX based skills. 

Aimed, semi-auto shot at the vitals:  -9 for range, +11 for Acc, -3 to hit vitals, -5 for bullet shyness for a net 6 or 6 or less (9.25% chance) to hit the body, 5 or less (4.62% chance) for a second shot and 4 or less (1.85% chance) for a third.

Even though we probably missed, vitals do triple damage after subtracting the DR of the target, which is 0 here.  So our average roll of 17 damage does 30 points of damage because of blow-through dropping the target to -20 and requiring 4 death rolls.

How about an unaimed blast of full-auto fire?  Same chances as before, but with an additional -1 for recoil on the first burst, -2 on the second, -3 on the third, and -4 for the fourth.  Spraying and praying doesn't really work.

An aimed blast is 8 or less for the first burst, 7 for the second, 6 for the third and 5 for the fourth.  Using our average rolls of 10 we look at the table on p B120 and find: we missed with all 12.

Adding in that bullet shyness penalty, because combat, really pissed the players off. 

GURPS 4e

The average person has straight 10 stats and we're sticking to a skill of 12 in Guns/TL7 - Rifle.

The M16A1 is TL7, does 5d pi damage, Acc 5, Range 500/3,200, Weighs 7.2/0.7, RoF 13, Shots 20+1(3), ST 8†, Bulk -5, Rcl 2, Cost $550/$34, LC 2.

Snap shots have been eliminated!  So has blow-through for the body.

Skill 12, -8 for range, 4 or less to hit with three rounds of semi-auto fire.  Yeah... No.

Aim for a second.  Skill 12, -8 for range, +5 for Acc.  9 or less.  On average, still a miss.

Aim for two seconds.  Skill 12, -8 for range, +5 for Acc, +1 aiming bonus.  10 or less!  On average, one hit.

5d pi to an unarmored ST 10 torso is about the same as before, doing 17 points of damage on average, but without blow-through, all of those points do damage.  It takes the victim to -7 points of damage, requiring a HT roll to remain conscious.

13 round blast without aiming?

Skill 12, -8 for range, +3 for volume of fire.  7 or less.  Prolly missing with all of those too.

After aiming?

Skill 12, -8 for range, +5 for Acc, +3 for volume of fire.  12 or less.  Average roll of 10 with a Rcl of 2 means two rounds hit.

17 damage from the first round gets to -7 and a consciousness roll.  17 from the second round gets to -24, another consciousness roll and a death roll.

4e angered several players because their characters became ineffective with the golden standard of a 12 skill.  I'd been looking for a means to simulate the vast expenditure of ammo to a single hit since I started playing GURPS and 4e solves for it nicely. 

I'm Gonna Shoot Someone

I'm gonna shoot someone with my vast collection of role-playing games.

The big question is how many games?

My first thought was to compare T2K to all three editions of GURPS I have here and use an M16.

Then I realized that Top Secret has stats for an M16 too.

But, if I use a different gun, like a Colt Single Action Army, I can include Boot Hill!

Boot Hill might end up as an aside at the bottom because Boot Hill is why I got interested in American History and actually read my dad's Time Life Old West books.

GURPS Old West has what I need for that comparison. 

1488? REALLY?!?

Is the inbred group of voters at WorldCon culturally appropriating Nazis with this 1488 shit?

 I've noticed that I have not read a Hugo award winner in a very long time.

I was half paying attention during the Sad Puppies and Rabid Puppies era and noticed that the point of the Hugo stopped being excellence in story telling but excellence in checking the progressive, minority, disability, LGBTQ boxes by the author regardless of the quality of the work.

Especially when there were Sad Puppy supporters saying things like, "I despise the author personally, but they wrote a really good story and should get your nomination and vote." 

I stopped reading at least one webcomic over the Hugo controversies.

Something this video made me notice is how similar the language is of the WorldCon nominating committee and Steve Jackson Games discussing inclusion with the upcoming GURPS 4eR.

Which makes me want to ask Sean Punch, "Are you actively happy with the Hugo Award?"

I think the answer matters because when we filter based on the attributes of the author and not the quality of the work, we will not be getting the highest quality work. 

Slow Your Roll

Harvey found me sloth themed dice!

They're absolutely the cutest!

I Wish We Had Some Grenades

So many role playing games made explosions so complicated we never bothered learning the rules.

Or, it was such a chore we never used them enough to remember them well enough to want to use them.

So in Top Secret or Twilight: 2000 we just didn't buy grenades.

At least, that's how I remember it.

I just checked T2K and the rules aren't so bad, but we had scars from some poor piece of game design.

Top Secret doesn't seem that hard either...

Wait...  Some game had a rule about when an explosion was confined it was greatly multiplied and we always remembered that rule and it got applied to every game!  This is just another reason we all agreed to change to GURPS.

No matter where our aversion came from, we didn't often use grenades.

The GURPS rules for explosions are generally clear.

So I am more willing to add grenades to the equipment list of my characters.

But something I failed to internalize until watching a movie tonight was fragmentation grenades have 4-5 second fuses.

A turn is a second long in GURPS.

That means throw grenade and it doesn't go boom for another 3-4 turns.

I can't wait to see how that turns out in play.

It Bears Mentioning

I went to check the private messages at the SJGames forum where I'd confronted Sean "Kromm" Punch.

I got one message from the thread starter thanking me for speaking truth to power.

That makes it worth it to me.

I Figured Out Why *I* Was Offended

The "inclusion" and "sensitivity" changes for GURPS 4th Edition Revised could have been made silently.

They could have just gone through and eliminated the so-called offensive references without making an announcement they were making sensitivity changes.

They virtue signaled.

I'm part of a weird, in between, where I'm OK with not offending people, even fringe folks, but am getting sick and tired of the announcements that they are making changes to be less offensive...

While missing that the announcement is what's offending me.

I know, "straight white male, who cares if you're offended?"

My wallet cares.

What really pisses me off is that SJGames used to be the different gaming company.

They stood up against The Man and didn't do things like everyone else.

And here they are, in lockstep with all the other game publishers.

I kinda feared this when the theater kids took over gaming after Critical Role started their show.

In hindsight, that almost guaranteed we'd get a more "Hollywood Safe" crowd, or at least the companies would aim at this much smaller and more vocal market.

It was their market share to keep.

I'm gonna just keep playing with my version of the game with the racially insensitive references.

They don't bother me.

My four main worlds are an alternate WW2 with magic and LITERAL Nazis, an alternate history where magic became real after Trinity, an alternate history where WW3 started in 1997 and a conversion of Traveller.

All have bigots in them.  All of them don't care about the sensitivities of the groups being oppressed by the bad guys.

Nazis murdered people by the, literal, box car.

Racism and bigotry is a core part of Funny New Guys!

The Soviets don't love their children too in Twilight: 2000.

Traveller is so casually racist that there's hundreds of intelligent species that are called "minor races."

The move to inclusivity and sensitivity is a move away from dramatic conflict.

Without such conflict, the story is stale and boring.

A Reminder

The goal of any business is to appeal to everyone who wants to purchase the product.

By selecting one group of customers over another you are automatically refusing their money.

Alienating existing customers for this other group means your are refusing future sales to an established customer.

If you publish a role playing game, you're saying that you don't need them any more: but they can reply, "I can play the game with what I already have, forever, without spending another nickel.  Can you keep the doors open and the lights on if I stop buying stuff from you?"

In fact, if they go out of business tomorrow I still have enough stuff to keep playing.

I did not have to buy anything more to play this last time when FuzzyGeff came to visit.

Game Designer's Workshop has been out of business since 1996 and I am still playing two of their flagship world settings using GURPS.

Does SJGames really think I still need them?

I really don't.

They've gone woke and if you read Sean "Kromm" Punch's reply to why they're doing this, they cannot see that the sensitivity bullshit is offending people.  They don't care about us, but I suspect that they will miss us soon enough.

Just look at the shambles NASCAR is in after they chased the inclusive chimera.

Uniformity

Something kind of dull about making soldiers for gaming is the uniformity.

They all, basically, use the same gear so there's not a lot of personalization to do.

Well, there's some, but...

If one takes the personalization too far one ends up looking like the crew from an action film where no two characters use the same weapon, cartridge or magazines.

My T2K conversion gives a price break for buying weapons that are issued to the character's home nation.  That encourages them to use the standard weapons.  That discourages personalization...

C'est la vie!

Failing To Prep Is Prepping To Fail

Daosus' comment in this post reminded me that it's not just failing to read the rules that leads to a player having no fun.

AD&D's Oriental Adventures is an example of the players not bothering to do any of the prep needed to make characters that fit the setting.  Kara Tur isn't the same as Greyhawk and they just treated it like a normal D&D campaign and didn't do any of the social stuff that so enamored me with it.

I had medieval Japan on the brain and even with GURPS (which the players already were fine with) they didn't bother learning fuck-all about being a person living in the Sengoku period with magic.  One even took my copy of GURPS: Japan home for a week and didn't even take it out of his bag.

WW2 at least has movies they likely have seen for them to base their characters around.

Traveller is a world with near 50 years of material and a new player will have to take sips from the firehose or they will not even know what they don't know and there's just too much to do on the fly now for the GM.

Something that's important about this lack of preparation is the player's character is, nearly always, FROM the world setting!  They are members of their home culture which isn't a late 20th, early 21st century American.

The players who read the material get back more than they put in.

The players who didn't are always either bored or upset that they aren't getting what they wanted. 

When Does The Campaign End?

I have successfully managed to play a campaign with fewer than two sessions a year.

That campaign is technically still out there, but I think I didn't start it properly and it is thus painted into a corner.  It's defacto dead even if it's not dejure dead.

Marv and FuzzyGeff are at a cliffhanger in Twilight: 2000 and that campaign will run until one of us gets sick of it.  I will badger them to keep playing until that someone is me.

But when is a campaign over?

I don't tend to make settings that have an end point.  You don't reach a conclusion to the story there.

There are campaigns that DO have an ending point.  If the players reach that point, the campaign is over and they win!  Or they fail and give up or die.

I've had several campaigns just peter out and stop.  Most times when I run out of ideas for the world that I'd created.

I've had a few where the players stopped showing up.  Hard to keep going when there's no way for a player's character to be absent from the world.

I've even had a couple where the players flat said they didn't want to continue that setting any more.  This happens most often in Traveller where the party is the crew of a merchant ship.  Economics & Accounting is not near as exciting as it sounds. 

It's The GM's Job

The GM being the arbiter of when to make a roll or not is their job.

That can be zero rolls if they like what the players are doing and think they should succeed without involving chance.

That can be many rolls if they want chance to have a larger role in the game.

It can be anything in between.

If can be zero rolls if they dislike what the players are doing and they think they should fail without giving them a chance.

And, for the absolutely stupidest of my readers:*  This decision about how many rolls is independent of the game rules.

It's not a GURPS thing.  It's not a D&D thing.  It's not a Hero thing.  It's not a Traveller thing.

It's a GM thing.

The GM and the players should get on the same page about how often chance is involved.

I tend to roll a bit more often than some because I don't want to railroad the players into being defacto NPC's who only have a little agency.  Letting it to chance is more fair.

If I wanted to control all the characters fully, I'd write fiction...  And you can see from the infrequent snippets of Sabers and Sorcery how well I am doing.

*So stupid, in fact, that I've decided to reply to the comments I've shitcanned until they realize that they are not being allowed to talk.  Not because they're not raising good questions, but because they're being a dick about it and that's contraindicated by the commenting rules.

Make A Roll

FuzzyGeff is something of a math geek and his knowledge of statistics has colored how I do gaming once I learned a bit of statistics myself.

Because of things like the critical failure's default of 18 should result in a mean rounds between failures almost ten times worse than a rifle that is KNOWN to be unreliable.

That same critical failure would mean half the air wing of every aircraft carrier would be in the drink every cruise.

Many commercial aircraft would become lost and need constant guidance to find the airport and it would become insane to fly at night because of the darkness penalties.

There are a myriad of things that require a bit of knowledge, but no actual skill to perform and, if there's no stress, a person just does.

It's that stress part that can, often, be missed when a GM says, "make a roll."

Too many people look at the rules and see more places to make a roll than another rule-set and declare the new game bad because you CAN make more rolls...

But it is, and has always been, the decision of the DM or GM to call for a roll in any given situation.

If they suddenly start calling for more rolls when you change from D&D to GURPS it might mean they want you to work harder for it and D&D didn't have the mechanism to force you.

Twilight: 2000 has no mechanism for making the character respond to something creepy and frightful.  GURPS does.  So when in the catacombs under Częstochowa, I can call for a Fright Check and impose a reaction on the character.  T2K is a pure honor system to act afraid that I've seen fail over and over.

So GURPS has more rolls than T2K because of having rules to handle the frightened.

Which brings us to "GURPS sucks!"

Did the GM call for a roll under a rule that the game you prefer doesn't have that caused you to conform to the character you created?

The fright check from the T2K module "The Black Madonna" ticked off a couple of people who had played at my table under the OG T2K rules.  It thrilled others.

YMMV.

But, if we're going to overgeneralize, then I would say that the real reason that some people hate GURPS and cannot stand that other people enjoy it is because they are lazy.

They don't wanna work to make the character.  They don't want to put in the effort to learn how to assemble the character they want and, having failed to so, blame the game.

Then they don't want to be exposed to many die rolls, because a die roll is chance and chance is something they cannot control and without that control they may fail and without being able to declare, "I win!" they don't want to play. 

Contrast this to the person who did read the rules and learned to make the character they wanted.  They're never complaining about the rules.  They're an example of being satisfied by a successful application of labor.  Mike Rowe would understand the feeling.

The epiphany of realizing the complainers never learned to make the character they want to play comes from noticing that I have converted so many character from other games JUST to learn the rules.  I.  Have.  Never.  Failed.

GURPS has never failed to be able to accommodate a character from a different game.

Traveller, Twilight: 2000, AD&D 2e, Champions, Shadowrun, etc.

4th edition of GURPS is better at it than 3rd edition revised, but even 3eR never actually failed.

Not that the haters ever read this far. 

 

Dumbass Shitheel Was Involved

I finally got to the bottom of why The Lovely Harvey refuses to make a character and play in our reindeer games GURPS.

I knew she'd had a bad experience with Dumbass Shitheel and a little throw-away fantasy world I'd made for them to play in and for her to learn how to game.

But I'd no idea how bad.

She'd known Dumbass years longer than I had and he'd not only left her hanging, he actively led to her character getting killed.

That was in game.

The way he treated her about it out of game made her say, "I'm never going to do this again!"

Worse, his treatment of her was reinforced by, some, of the people at my table when she hung around an kibitzed when we visited Iowa and from how some of her questions were answered at my 30th birthday party gaming session.

I think I know which people too.

I don't think they're still in FuzzyGeff's group any more.

Hazing and chauvinism are not good ways to get women involved in the hobby, gentlemen.

She got the impression that she was thought to be stupid because she didn't know everything we knew about gaming.

How could a beginner?

She's definitely not stupid.

She was just never given a fair chance at learning the game and then was treated poorly by some people AND overhear them being chauvinistic sexist pricks while I was doing GM stuff.

In a lot of ways I am happy that I lost contact with a few of them.  Might lead to me getting a sore throat from the screaming I wanna do at them. 

Cyberpunk

I've done a few attempts at doing Cyberpunk.

They run into problems.

The biggest one is something that happens to a lot of campaigns.  People stop showing up on the regular so you can't plan on their role in the party.

The setting itself is a bit of a problem since most of the books are (were?) single protagonist and most games are multi-player.

But the biggest problem is the net-runner part.

First, too many friends knew that computers did not work that way, and would be stupid to make them work that way.

Even accepting that computers work that way, the guy with the deck gets their own mini-adventure while the rest of the party twiddles their thumbs.

The two most successful versions of it I ran didn't have the net-runner deal.

One was like combining Navy SEALS and Sneakers.  It was fun, but the party got butchered by a competing team.

The other was having the party be cops in 2037 Des Moines.  That worked shockingly well.

Doing a Shadowrunesque version with GURPS worked pretty well, and the reason computers worked like the fiction was magic computers are inherently so much faster and near unlimited storage as compared to silicon that the security shit you have to put up with is worth it.

That's the only time I've ever seen anyone try to explain why computers don't work like the real world.