Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9546076" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Re: the tech level -- yeah, we keep having to re-edit when 'the future' is. My nephew and niece are still watching Bugs Bunny cartoons that talk about the far-off era of 2000. At least the stuff on that TL 9 list are things we're attempting to emulate -- real time virtuality is sorta here; and we have something we call A.I. that can fool some of the people some of the time, etc. We have those, they're called helicopters.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />More seriously, I remember prototype flying cars* in Popular Mechanics in the 80s&90s. They were always depicted as readily possible, just pointless, inefficient, and of course not something you want every Tom, Dick, and Harry driving over your head every day.*more car-like, ducted fans or whatnotFor me, in broad strokes, the issues I have with GURPS are:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A point-based/build-a-bear system combined with a system where the genre, scale, and even central play activity are all up for grabs quickly becomes an arbitrary artificial economy (not inherently bad, it just quickly becomes of limited use to many people, yet is a central focus of the system).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Similarly a solidly sim game system (one that assumes knowing exact speeds, weights, costs, and the capacities is going to be important) as a choice for a universal any-genre system is going to have challenges. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A universal resolution system trying to encompass any number of central play activities combined with a solidly sim game that dislikes abstraction will either not emulate many activities well, or become a not-really universal system with a bunch of genre-specific subsystems.  </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A 'realistic' combat system (honestly anything were combat is really dangerous and you don't want to be involved in it) mixes poorly with a complex character creation system where you can spend hours making a character. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The combat system is exciting and engaging in a certain range encompassing historic/low-powered fantasy or moderate point value martial artists fighting similar opponents. Once you leave these ranges, it quickly becomes a battle of who has the more expensive/higher tech level/lower legality code equipment (not unrealistic, but not exactly exciting either). </li> </ul>None of these stop the game from being playable, and I've played in several GURPS campaigns over the decades. What it takes is 1) choosing a genre where the system works well, and 2) finding a group willing to work hard to make the system work. What I found I disliked most about the pages of bonuses and penalties (from wind to light level to relative velocity to whatever else) was this: oftentimes a good half of them were things the GM likely hadn't thought about until the skill-roll prompt. Agreed. I think it is a very good 'this group's fourth TTRPG to explore' system. When everyone knows each other, understands how a new system can have pitfalls, and are all in agreement on making the system work (not just not trying to game it for advantage, actively keep it on the rails, etc.), it can be a whole lot of fun.</blockquote>

Verification