Leif's DISCONTINUED GURPS Traveller Game, Recruiting Thread

[Leif]

So I'm giving serious thought to starting a GURPS Traveller game. I have one potential player, Scotley. Don't know how many more I would care to accept, but maybe 1-3 more. Also not sure when the actual game could begin, as I am not even close to up-to-speed on the GURPS rules yet. This thread is mostly just for discussion and brainstorming. So far, it has been suggested that the party be comprised of at least one Zhodani, which is something of a departure from usual Traveller canon, to say the least, which usually places pcs on the side of the Imperium and makes Zhodani default bad guys. Should be interesting, to say the least.

The Zhodani are feared/hated by the Imperium (Humaniti in game terms) because they support and encourage the psionic talents of their citizens. The word is that they cannot be trusted because you never know when a Zhodani is reading your mind, or what he/she might force you to do against your will. This is in line with the misunderstanding of psionics by Humaniti, but it may not be all that far from the truth?

 

[grufflehead]

Serious thought you say? So if I said I haven't played GURPS more than once or twice (got a 3rd Ed book on my shelf though) and have managed to miss Traveller in 30 odd years of gaming, so am fairly oblivious to much of the setting, that's not a good start, right? Put me at #4 on your 1-3 list, and if you end up with a spare space give me a shout - cos you and Scotley are on my 'would like to get in a game with those guys sometime' list. Blame Mowgli

 

[Shayuri]

I wuv me Traveller! And GURPS! That's the first system I ever played. I love it.

As for the filthy Zho...it could be interesting. Maybe some kind of ambassador, or fugitive from the Consulate? What sort of background for this lonely person do you have in mind?

 

[Leif]

I wuv me Traveller! And GURPS! That's the first system I ever played. I love it.

As for the filthy Zho...it could be interesting. Maybe some kind of ambassador, or fugitive from the Consulate? What sort of background for this lonely person do you have in mind?

Somehow, Shay, I had a vague idea that this thread might get your attention! From our shared Babylon5 game I got the idea that you're fully down with sf gaming. I just can't get into B5 that much. I'd rather watch the tv show than play the game. Too bad it's not available where I live.....

About the 'filthy Zho' however, Scotley indicated that as his preference without really knowing anything about the race. I just told him that the Zhodani ship plans looked the coolest to me, so that was what he said he prefferred for a character. What I was thinking was that the party would be Zhodani merchants, soldiers, spies, whatever is the preference, maybe a combination of all of those and/or some additional ideas that spring up? Clearly, you'll be the Old Hand at GURPS, so you might have to do some hand-holding to get the rest of us up to speed. Can you handle that?

And as I think about it more, I suppose that you could all be Imperial subjects (you'll have to earn citizenship, of course) who are in a Zhodani ship for some reason. Let me know how you folk prefer to proceed, please?

Serious thought you say? So if I said I haven't played GURPS more than once or twice (got a 3rd Ed book on my shelf though) and have managed to miss Traveller in 30 odd years of gaming, so am fairly oblivious to much of the setting, that's not a good start, right? Put me at #4 on your 1-3 list, and if you end up with a spare space give me a shout - cos you and Scotley are on my 'would like to get in a game with those guys sometime' list. Blame Mowgli

Wow, I'm flattered! Actually, I have NEVER played GURPS yet, but the 3rd edition is what we'll be using. I have 4th as well, but Traveller used 3rd. 2nd edition GURPS Traveller, 3rd edition (revised) GURPS rules. Go figure.....

 

[Leif]

Blame Mowgli

Incidentally, GH, I blame Mowgli for almost EVERYTHING, anyway!

 

[Leif]

I wuv me Traveller! And GURPS! That's the first system I ever played. I love it.

So tell me, if we wanted to start a GURPS game with characters roughly the equivalent of 7th-8th level in D&D terms, how many character points are we talking about for the build? Just based on my extremely limited experience, I would guess maybe 150-175. Am I even in the ballpark?

 

[Shayuri]

Sort of. Though in truth, it's hard to gauge in those terms.

A GURPS character, in a non-supers game, isn't really much more durable with 200 points than with 100. They don't get harder to kill with experience, like D&D characters do...except in that their skills increase, which has cascade effects on defenses and so on.

So there's no easy common grammar between the games to use as comparison points. The best way I can think of is to say that a level 7 or 8 character in D&D is at the "mid-point" of his or her career, generally. In GURPS, a new character starts at 100-150 character points depending on campaign power level. In sci-fi especially, you can get away with less, because the equipment is better. So we'll say 100cp, plus up to 40 in disads...standard GURPS 3rd Ed starter characters.

Generally characters get 1-3 experience points per session, occasionally with bonuses for mission objectives, rp, etc... Say an average of 2, for a conservative estimate. So then, in theory, if we work out how many sessions it takes to get to level 8 in D&D, we can use that as a benchmark for how many cp to give beyond the initial 100.

I figure, in D&D, a level every 7 or 8 sessions is about right, yes? Well, tellya what, you can now tweak this however you want. If we assume 7 sessions per level, then we add 112cp to the normal starting level. 7 sessions per level, times 8 levels, times 2 cp per session total. Plug in whatever numbers seem appropriate to you.

I think, eyeballing this rough example, I'd start us at 200cp, plus 40 in disads. That's nice and even, and trades well with what I've played in terms of mid-level GURPS (as opposed to high level Supers games, which typically start at 400 or 500 and go from there ).

 

[Leif]

disads? Just guessing again, but you do mean "DISADvantage" character points, don't you? [SBLOCK=example for those who don't know GURPS] Like let's say my character has the disadvantage of being compelled to hold forth a great length on any subject that he thinks makes him sound educated, whether he knows anything about it or not. This could really be a show-stopper in a play-by-post game, but disregarding that, this disadvantage might buy me about, what, 20 additional character points? (Character points are what you 'spend' to 'buy' ability scores, skills, etc, etc.) In practice, this looks very much like taking a disadvantage in HERO, too.[/SBLOCK]

Truthfully, I was thinking more along the lines that these characters would have very little need to take any disads. I was hoping to avoid them altogether.

And, um, I guess that combat in GURPS Traveller is probably just as deadly as combat used to be in the old GDW Traveller, huh? In other words, you really don't want to take any enemy on unless you know you've got a serious edge over him, preferably an edge that he doesn't know about!

And I pretty much want these characters to start out being butt-kickers and name-takers. I don't want to mess around with piddling crap. Life's too short! I need some honest to goodness space opera (the genre, not the FGU game of the same name) and I don't have time to waste while the characters get all "grown up" and figure out who they are. Is ya wid me???

And one more thing: The whole image of some dude on his starship with his cutlass by his side is ... quaint, true enough, but I want these folk to have the potential to be armed to the teeth, with weapons from GURPS Traveller, GURPS Space, and/or GURPS Ultra-Tech. (Oh, man! GURPS Ultra-Tech has the best goodies of all, too!) So maybe it's not so much Traveller as I led you to believe?

 

[Shayuri]

It just means "disadvantages."

As for including them...they're always optional. And you can always outlaw 'em. I find they're an entertaining part of the system, but they generally work kind of like alignments...the more you play, the less you actually need to use them. They're meant to provide a mechanical basis for roleplaying (in most cases, though some actually represent limits to the character's abilities, like blindness, or poverty).

Without disads, you might want to bump up the cp count a bit, to keep the power level where you're talking about...though again, in Traveller, a fair amount of your "power index" comes from your gear, not from anything you buy with character points.

 

[Leif]

True, true. But skills, and specifically spaceship skills, is more what I was thinking about instead of combat capability.

You better go back and take a look at my latest edits to post #8.