GURPS Fantasy / Dungeon Fantasy (and beyond)

[Thomas Shey]

I get some of the problems the 1-second round was trying to address; particularly in modern games, the rate of fire is glacially slow compared to what most firearms can do, and even in melee it often underestimates the speed of attacks seriously.

The problem is, it ignores the other side of that (or at least understates it); when using that high potential rate of fire, most shots go anywhere but into the target in a combat situation. Even the -4 is not enough to represent that properly. So you end up with the situation where combats end up being over much, much too quickly, because the system ignores the amount of time people spend assessing what to do, catching their breath, circling or the dozen other things that drag out combats in reality.

As I recall there was a set of rules floating around years ago that forced some stall time into the game, but I don't recall exactly how they worked any more.

 

[Thomas Shey]

If you wanted to, you could.

I don't use a grid at all - neither hexes nor squares. 1 inch equals 3 feet (1 yard).

I don't remember how GURPS facing rules work any more, but I'd think going from hexes to squares would have some impact there.

 

[Emerikol]

I get some of the problems the 1-second round was trying to address; particularly in modern games, the rate of fire is glacially slow compared to what most firearms can do, and even in melee it often underestimates the speed of attacks seriously.

Is the issue verisimilitude? You could just abstract it and say a turn is a turn and the time is undefined. What matters is what you can do in a turn which may be driven by their official time but to me that isn't always true.

 

[Argyle King]

I don't remember how GURPS facing rules work any more, but I'd think going from hexes to squares would have some impact there.

Yeah. It would change facing rules a bit.

Mainly, you'd need to make a judgement call on what counts as front, side, and back when it comes to squares.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I get some of the problems the 1-second round was trying to address; particularly in modern games, the rate of fire is glacially slow compared to what most firearms can do, and even in melee it often underestimates the speed of attacks seriously.

The problem is, it ignores the other side of that (or at least understates it); when using that high potential rate of fire, most shots go anywhere but into the target in a combat situation. Even the -4 is not enough to represent that properly. So you end up with the situation where combats end up being over much, much too quickly, because the system ignores the amount of time people spend assessing what to do, catching their breath, circling or the dozen other things that drag out combats in reality.

As I recall there was a set of rules floating around years ago that forced some stall time into the game, but I don't recall exactly how they worked any more.

The simplest way I've heard to address this is to assume that once firearms are present, people hunker behind cover and aim and do all those things, and then rounds are the 1 second out of 5 or 6 where something interesting happens (and then moving the combat time-elapsed measure to 5 or six seconds per round).

Obviously it runs into issues with cases where someone does go full-auto-blindfire or start swinging fireman's axes at each other in the middle of a gunfight, but in most cases, it is good enough to satisfy most people most of the time.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Is the issue verisimilitude? You could just abstract it and say a turn is a turn and the time is undefined. What matters is what you can do in a turn which may be driven by their official time but to me that isn't always true.

You just used "abstract" and "GURPS" in the same sentence, didn't you?

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah. It would change facing rules a bit.

Mainly, you'd need to make a judgement call on what counts as front, side, and back when it comes to squares.

I was thinking more in terms of the question of six surrounding opponents (varied by terrain) as compared to four (or eight, if you allowed the corners).

 

[Thomas Shey]

The simplest way I've heard to address this is to assume that once firearms are present, people hunker behind cover and aim and do all those things, and then rounds are the 1 second out of 5 or 6 where something interesting happens (and then moving the combat time-elapsed measure to 5 or six seconds per round).

Obviously it runs into issues with cases where someone does go full-auto-blindfire or start swinging fireman's axes at each other in the middle of a gunfight, but in most cases, it is good enough to satisfy most people most of the time.

The weirdness I can see coming up with that is movement. You can just multiply it out, of course, but then some people find it strange they couldn't shoot at the person running from cover to cover.

 

[dbm]

You just used "abstract" and "GURPS" in the same sentence, didn't you?

The Action! line is all about using more fuzzy / less concrete options to keep things moving. There’s usually a GURPS for any variation you want to go with.

 

[Voidmoji]

As I recall there was a set of rules floating around years ago that forced some stall time into the game, but I don't recall exactly how they worked any more.

That would be article "The Last Gasp" in Pyramid 3/44, if anyone is interested in reading it.