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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9194580" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Young adult math geek me loved GURPS Vehicles when it first came out. You could calculate and re-calculate the cost or fuel expenditure or performance of your spy car or futuristic tank based on before and after you added an extra 5 points of DR onto the armor (or if you included cramped or spacious control stations). You could do the same 'more DR, or more HP?' type questions you could with character creation, but also add the wrinkle of 'but what if I up-spent and got the ultra-light-weight version  of on or the other?' I remember deciding that my futuristic space station's escape pods needed months of supplies instead of weeks (because anything that would cause you to abandon ship for it likely meant that anyone who might rescue you wasn't in-system). Thus the size of the pods had to be modified and the fuel they contained as well. And because of the weight and size change of those, the whole station had to be redesigned and calculated and decisions made to maintain certain performance goals given certain budget limitations. On days when I was looking for ways to put off college homework, this was a great product. A few things happened. <ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I no longer am looking for ways to take more time to do my not-at-the-table-with friends part of TTRPG gaming.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I have a job which more than covers my need for minutia. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I realized, at some point that, after all the calculations were completed, the vehicles often boiled down to a semi-brief list of stats and performance metrics (approximately the same as a PC and their basic gear, plus some extra movement functions like handling and acceleration). The only thing all the extra hoops did was give a more complicated way of determining those values, but didn't, in and of themselves, make the values more exciting.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I noticed that, as complex as they made things, simple qualities that differentiate real world vehicles (or that you might want in your game-world vehicles) aren't available. You can vary your drive-train and power plant wattage and total vehicle weight, but you can't vary torque. It's hard to make a pickup truck which can haul an immense load which can't also go 180 MPH when unloaded. It's hard to make two F-Zero racecars -- one with a higher top speed but low acceleration and another with the reverse. If you can't accurately model reality, and you can't make distinctions between vehicles which would make you choose one over the other, then what exactly is the point?</li> </ol>The last part there being key, and kind of the point I keep making on the subject. For me, the math can't be there just for it to be there. It has to serve a larger point (and then, the point has to be one I consider actually valuable to the gaming experience).</blockquote>

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