GURPS Fantasy / Dungeon Fantasy (and beyond)

[coyote6]

Guns requiring specializations is in the 3e Basic rules; it tells you Guns defaults to "DX-4 or (other Guns skill)-4". And the skill list also says "Guns/TL (type)".

 

[Spellslinging Sellsword]

There are only 2 skills in GURPS Fight Club and skill number 1 is Not Talking About Fight Club.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Guns requiring specializations is in the 3e Basic rules; it tells you Guns defaults to "DX-4 or (other Guns skill)-4". And the skill list also says "Guns/TL (type)".

All I can say is I saw a number of people using GURPS back in the day, and apparently none of them noticed that. I wonder if it ever showed up on example characters anywhere (which would have set off alarm bells)?

 

[coyote6]

All I can say is I saw a number of people using GURPS back in the day, and apparently none of them noticed that. I wonder if it ever showed up on example characters anywhere (which would have set off alarm bells)?

IIRC, the sample characters in Basic 3e were all fantasy characters, so likely not. Maybe for Fast-Draw or Survival? Most other skills requiring specializations are higher tech.

We made extensive use of the separate skill list, where which skills requiring specialization was more explicit.

Also, I bought GURPS first for a grittier superhero game, and then for Special Ops. All the templates sample characters in the latter made it clear about Guns requiring specializations.

(That start probably also made us permanently unwilling to play 100 pt characters. )

[Edit: Templates were later, dur]

 

[Thomas Shey]

IIRC, the sample characters in Basic 3e were all fantasy characters, so likely not. Maybe for Fast-Draw or Survival? Most other skills requiring specializations are higher tech.

We made extensive use of the separate skill list, where which skills requiring specialization was more explicit.

Also, I bought GURPS first for a grittier superhero game, and then for Special Ops. All the templates sample characters in the latter made it clear about Guns requiring specializations.

(That start probably also made us permanently unwilling to play 100 pt characters. )

[Edit: Templates were later, dur]

Well, then I'd say my understanding at the time was just wrong (or I'm misremembering how it went).

But yeah, the excess skill-splitting in some areas never did the system any favors when you were trying to fit a concept into a budget. Like most build systems, there's always at least the problem of "Conceptually and for intended use, the character should have Skill X, but by the time you've got that you should really also have Skills Y, Z and W at not-too dissimilar levels, and I'll probably never use those." GURPS at least had skill defaulting here, but since it tended to be based on "how related are these skills" rather than "are you likely to learn this skill without learning these other three" it only got you so far.

 

[dbm]

Talents are the solution to that problem. You can design a group of related skills which the bonus applies to.

 

[Autumnal]

That would make sense as skill-splitting is often a syndrome of people very knowledgeable about a subject who can't or won't step back and ask the question about what situation in a game is going to care about the difference (or how many of the end users will). I'm not always a fan of massive lumping, and if GURPS was sometimes a bit more serious about defaulting (one of its best design concepts) it'd probably be less an issue, but sometimes people can't resist having the default gaps too large to make all that much sense on practical grounds at least.

We had some tussles during the Adventure play test with one guy whose breakout wanted more detail for his field of expertise, who just wouldn’t get it when we explained how a bunch more skills required to do that one thing well would make it harder to play an expert in it than an expert in anything else. I did sympathize, having hard to learn the same lesson myself, but we left him unsatisfied.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Talents are the solution to that problem. You can design a group of related skills which the bonus applies to.

I have to point out that's at best a GM angle solution, however.

 

[Thomas Shey]

We had some tussles during the Adventure play test with one guy whose breakout wanted more detail for his field of expertise, who just wouldn’t get it when we explained how a bunch more skills required to do that one thing well would make it harder to play an expert in it than an expert in anything else. I did sympathize, having hard to learn the same lesson myself, but we left him unsatisfied.

Its really, really hard for some people. It just feels wrong if you can't step back a bit.

 

[dbm]

I have to point out that's at best a GM angle solution, however.

There are a whole bunch provided and it just says to discuss with your GM if you want something different.

That’s pretty much Rule 1 when making a GURPS character anyway…