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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Willie the Duck" data-source="post: 9879502" data-attributes="member: 6799660">Just like modern screenwriters, I struggle with games-set-now and what to do with ubiquitous communication and information-gathering and how many information-gap holes they close.Much of my GURPS book collection is 3e, and even if you ignore the actual IRL numeric issues (dollar values, etc.) some of the tech assumptions look very dated.GURPS: Cyberpunk treats having built in watches, calculators, cameras, and low-level binoculars as separate abilities (a modern version might be a single 'non-disarm-able smartphone' ability, costing less but not having the specific skill bonuses, etc.). Cyberpunk games in general run into the issue that we are already living in the cyberpunk future, and it doesn't look like we thought it would.A lot of the basic near-future and GURPS: High-Tech weaponry was borrowed from original Traveller, which borrowed it from 1950s&60s Popular Mechanics issues (what the 'battlefield of the future' looked like when Marc Miller was growing up) -- gyrocs, caseless or electrothermal ammo, railguns as ridiculously high rate of fire weapons, armor piercing fin-stabilized discarding-sabot tank shells, etc. Little of it is wrong (well, outside the already fantastical stuff like monowire), and some of it actually seems prescient -- lasers chewing through armor, so you add all your shots per second together before subtracting damage reduction vaguely models how missile defense lasers work over time, railgun tech being perfected for really small bore sizes ('needlers') first. However, a lot of it does feel a bit antiquated; and things like drone warfare, AI targetting tech, ECM vs ECCM, and the movement from dogfighters to long-distance missile fighter jets deserve more specific rules coverage.Credit where credit is due, GURPS: Transhuman Space is set to get the timelines for solar colonization wrong (most near-future fictions have), but predicted meme warfare, online monitoring, and verifying authenticity and a lot of things we're actively dealing with now at least broadly-speaking correct.It had its ups and downs.</blockquote>

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