Help Me Understand the GURPS Design Perspective

[DrunkonDuty]

I love FASERIP. Very quick and intuitive.
I also love Champions. Not so quick and requires more system mastery but very good at detailing a very wide range of power levels.

I've gotta say I never liked GURPS Supers but, like many posters here, I find it a good system for more "realistic" genres. I remember with great fondness a GURPS swashbuckling game from back in the olden days.

 

[Argyle King]

I would agree that GURPS tends to do better with "realistic" genres.

Personally, I've had success running Supers games, but that success has come from wanting to add an underlying edge of reality. (Which isn't the same as saying it was realistic; I simply wanted to address elements which are typically glossed over or handwaived in a typical comic.)

 

[Argyle King]

I think Beavis & Butthead introduces genre issues that the system isn't necessarily the best at handling. Can I make it Aunt May instead? Hulk wins - there's no resolution required.

If it's Emma Frost (the White Queen) then the situation is more interesting, because if she gets to put a telepathic feeling of weakness onto the Hulk then maybe she can defeat him. If she's in a mutant-shutdown zone, then again Hulk wins with no resolution required because Emma Frost as a normal person can't beat the Hulk.

How would a character like Squirrel Girl be handled?

 

[Numidius]

How would a character like Squirrel Girl be handled?

With care, of course

 

[pemerton]

How would a character like Squirrel Girl be handled?

I'm relying on Wikipedia here:

a furry, prehensile tail roughly 3–4 feet long, sizable buck teeth strong enough to chew through wood, and superhuman strength and agility that allows her to easily jump between trees. Her fingers have sharp claws that assist her with climbing, and she possesses retractable "knuckle spikes" roughly 2-3 inches long on each hand. Most importantly, she can communicate with and understand squirrels, but does not communicate with squirrels telepathically. Squirrels have also been depicted as understanding her when she speaks in English.​

That looks like Enhanced (d8) or Superhuman (d10) Strength, similar Reflexes, Climbing d8, Leaping d6, Weapons d8. Probably also Squirrel Control d6 with an SFX to step up squirrel-related assets. Probably one or two other SFX but I'd need to know a bit more about them to make useful suggestions.

Her specialties (roughly, skills) would seem to be Psych and Tech Expert. (Judging from a quick skim of that Wikipedia entry). Maybe also Acrobatics Expert.

Is this the sort of answer you're looking for? Or are you asking more about quirk/comedy? Both Deadpool and She-Hulk have "breaking 4th wall" SFXs that allow stepping down a Doom Pool die. Maybe that would also fit Squirrel Girl.

 

[pemerton]

How would a character like Squirrel Girl be handled?

A follow-up - are you meaning Squirrel Girl vs Hulk?

Hulk has Godlike Strength d12 and the SFXs Strongest There Is! and Hulk Smash!

In a reaction against an opponent with a Strength power trait, spend 1 PP or step up your emotional stress to add a die equal to the opponent’s Strength to your dice pool.

Against a single opponent, double a Gamma-Charged Genetics die. Remove the highest-rolling die and add another die to your total.
​

If the table, given whatever is established in the fiction (maybe Squirrel Girl is tickling Hulk with her tail), wants the arm-wrestle to go to resolution rather than just declaring "Hulk wins", Hulk is likely to have a bigger pool with bigger dice and so has a pretty good chance of winning.

 

[Umbran]

How would a character like Squirrel Girl be handled?

Squirrel Girl is a difficult character to deal with, in that she doesn't really play by the same rules as everyone else. The fiction establishes successes for her that, by other things established in the fiction, should not work, and does not explain these successes.

F'rex - she defeats Dr. Doom with a swarm of squirrels. Doom's armor is well established as being impervious to anything squirrels can dish out, but she won anyway. Why? shrug. She's the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. SHe beats Thanos (one of the most powerful villains extant) offscreen, with no explanation given.

It is the lack of explanation that makes it difficult to build in game terms. It is rather like being Squirrel Girl is secondary to being Unbeatable. So, SFX to the effect of "I am Unbeatable" would probably be called for.

 

[Argyle King]

Part of my point is that, Squirrel Girl's power seems to be to simply win -even when it makes no sense at all that she should be able to.

That's an inconsistency which is (maybe) fun in a narrative comic. But, even there, I think it can often stretch what the reader is willing to buy into.

In a game (or something which relies on a shared understand of success/failure,) I'm inclined toward believing that simply announcing an end result of an action without some manner of explanation would be unsatisfactory to most. From what I am hearing, the Marvel game attempts to have some method of quantifying how and why powers work. There's at least some idea and measurement concerning who is stronger, faster, smarter, etc.

Otherwise, I find the dismissive nature with which Beavis was treated to be unfair. His ability to transform into Cornholio wasn't even considered. Hulk gets TP'ed, cannot break out of the paper before being kicked in the nads, and loses.

 

[pemerton]

Squirrel Girl is a difficult character to deal with, in that she doesn't really play by the same rules as everyone else. The fiction establishes successes for her that, by other things established in the fiction, should not work, and does not explain these successes.

F'rex - she defeats Dr. Doom with a swarm of squirrels. Doom's armor is well established as being impervious to anything squirrels can dish out, but she won anyway. Why? shrug. She's the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. SHe beats Thanos (one of the most powerful villains extant) offscreen, with no explanation given.

It is the lack of explanation that makes it difficult to build in game terms. It is rather like being Squirrel Girl is secondary to being Unbeatable. So, SFX to the effect of "I am Unbeatable" would probably be called for.

Part of my point is that, Squirrel Girl's power seems to be to simply win -even when it makes no sense at all that she should be able to.

In mechanical terms, for Marvel Heroic RP, this sounds to me like an ability to step down Doom Pool dice (I mentioned an example from Deadpool and She Hulk upthread). Perhaps also an ability to reroll by spending a PP - this would be the Unbeatable suggested by Umbran.

The issue of whether squirrels vs Doom actually allows a check, or not, is a GM/table call. Whether Doom is statted as a major character (affiliations of d10, d8, d6) or minor character (affiliations of d8, d6, d4) is a GM call.

In these ways MHRP is "fiction first" - decisions have to be made about narrative weight and narrative possiblity before the mechanics are deployed.

 

[Umbran]

The issue of whether squirrels vs Doom actually allows a check, or not, is a GM/table call. Whether Doom is statted as a major character (affiliations of d10, d8, d6) or minor character (affiliations of d8, d6, d4) is a GM call.

The idea of having Doctor Doom be a minor character... it boggles the mind.

In these ways MHRP is "fiction first" - decisions have to be made about narrative weight and narrative possiblity before the mechanics are deployed.

Yes, well, that's kind of analogous to how we come by some of the inconsistencies of the superhero comics genre, which gives us issues if we are trying to use the comics as a guide - different GMs might make different calls on that - just like authors don't all do the same thing. In every other comic, the idea of squirrels being an issue for Doctor Doom would be ludicrous. In Squirrel Girl? Nope, it can happen. The narrative weight of anything Squirrel Girl does in her own comic is not consistent with the rest of the comics universe.