[GURPS] Magic Problems II

A problem of the magic system that can be annoying is that, mastery of a more complex form of magic is entirely independent of the more fundamental skill. A character can sink 1cp on ignite, shape fire, and create fire, and 20 on fireball.

there is a simple solution to this, and its been done before in the game system. If certain spells are skills, why not go all the way and apply technique sub-system to it. Begin a specific Thaumaturgical Discipline, partiuclar to a school of magic. The most basic spells there after are Hard techniques that default -4 or -6 (if VH) to this skill with the same non-spell prerequisites. Every more advance spell, defaults -4 or -6 to the technique it requires.

Consider 35 points:

• IQ12; DX10; Magery (Fire) 0 (5)
• Thaumaturgy (Fire School of Magic) (VH) IQ+3 [20]-15
• Ignite (Hard; Default Thaumaturgy: Fire School+0) [5]-15
• Shape Fire (Hard; Default Ignite -4) [1*]-11
• Create Fire (Hard; Default Ignite -3) [2]-12
• Fire Ball (Hard; Default the Average of Create and Shape Fire -4) [1*]-7!
• Spell Throwing (E) DX [1]-10

*because hard techniques require 2 points to budge the default modifier. Consider 1cp a 0 modifier budget that gives the character the ability to perform the feat.

Notice that more complex spells cannot be better than the fundamental techniques. if Mr. fire wants to master Fireball, he has to master the Thaumaturgical school and all the basic techniques first.

Combine this with the:

x6 (I think I might go with x5 time modifier on ALL spells)

and the Takes Extra time and Haste Rules.

I prefer my system compared to this (35points)

• IQ12; DX10; Magery (Fire) 0 [5]
• Thaumaturgy (VH) IQ-3 [1]-9
• Ignite (H) IQ-2 [1]-10
• Shape Fire (H) IQ-2 [1]-10
• Create Fire (H) IQ-2 [1]-10
• Fire Ball (H) IQ+5 [24]-17!
• Spell Throwing (E) DX+1 [2]-11

I do admit its a bit easier to min max, but

[GURPS] Magic Problems

The magic rules in B237 under Magic Rituals are very odd when you compare them to Time Spent Rules in B346. Note how as the Skill goes up the amount of Time and effort to cast the spell goes down.

In my opinion what should happen is this: Spells should be calibrated to the Hasty Action Rules under Haste B346. Spells taking HALF the time is a -5 Feat, which means it requires a skill of 20 to have a >95% certainty or looking at it in another way, a spellcaster with skill 15, can performing this amazing feat at the cost of 45% certainty!

On the other Hand, when you look at the Skill-9 entry you already have 1/3 chance of success and the casting time and cost are double! Isn't the risk punishment or deferent enough. If you multiply the risk and the additional gains for high skill you have a very steep rising curve of economic profit for the action. My Opinion is to make it a more reasonable Climb.

In my opinion, what should happen is that at Skill-9 where the Spellcaster multiplies the time to of the action by 32 to have a 90% certainty of success basically makes a spell like Ignite fire take 32 to seconds or half a minute, a 2d Fireball a whole minute.

Nerfing Magic in upcomming Fantasy Game.

x6 all Casting Time. Since the default is 1 second, at 6 seconds a 3d fireball will take 18 second. Hasty casting will be a feat of -9 will bring it down to 2 seconds. Extra-Time casting of x32 will take 10 minutes! Analyze magic will take 6 hours!

Low Magic. Basic part of Nerfing magic. A general -5.

Rolling For Spells. There should be some random element in spell access. some, the most basic ones are very easy to access.

Infrastructural and Economic Consequences. 2% of the modern population in a developed country is in food production. Thats how effective and efficient technology has become. It allows these 2% to make 150x more food and all other specialties and export. An economy that can support a BIG chunk of its GDP in security or army. In economics, Armies are not like Businesses which grow to meet the demands and quality of life of its population. Armies and Espionage is the price we pay for a quality of life that we can never figure out how to cut. Even if spells that peer into the future affecting the Information Asymetry, all the progress Magic may be providing may just be all drained by the armies, spies, diviners, monsters and special equipment and investments made in defense of each land.

The trick of finding Equilibrium is enforcing an appropriate cost to the Magical Action. I will draw on a historical era and just look at how many engineers, architects, scientists, managers, builders and planners to keep civilization running and convert all those peoples to mages. Cost of their education and skill, the same as that of an engineer or scientist... as well as the gravity they are capable of given time and resources.

Basically what I could do is tak 15C economic data and converting to swords and sorcery.

Has this Happened to You?

My bros and I were the first to buy the KODT Bundle of Troubles 1-7 and bring them to the Philippines. It was the first and Everyone wanted to borrow it. Being gullible and naive we lent them out, now they're gone.

What sucks is that, its not that they wanted to steal the books. Its mostly that they borrowed it, but without the respect of taking care of something 3 young boys SAVED UP and POOLED their money for with their low buying PESOS. So the books got torn up, damaged, destroyed, stolen and lost.

Sigh... books should not be lent out, unless the person gives you something of equal value collateral. Raised differently, I feel to responsible for what I borrowed... thats why I'd rather not borrow. Screening for who to lend too is just too complicated... so never lend out books on rare exceptions.

Pondering different types of gamers or reasons why people get into gaming

Thinking more about old school and the complaints of the ilk regarding the more negative stereotype with the new generation.

One interesting evolution about the games is that they have been made to be more consistent, robust and easier to use. Imagine the GM and Players of yore as work and responsibilities had finally caught up to him/her. Market Share dips, and these gamers voice their reasons: ease the prep or prerequisites, more robust and consistent rules. Then what happens, the market and makers listens and begin to put more work in order to help these people out.

As the games became easier, the cost to get into the hobby got smaller. More people came in. Some like the previous adopters, but found the hobby just slightly out of reach before. Then there are those who were very different and had a very different view about the game.

Eventually the gamer market grew and inevitably it changed. You have another group of people who came into the hobby with a different take and a very different point of view of the same familiar things. As the market diversified, tastes diversified. Old and New got to sample different genres, flavors and styles. As with much of human experience, subjectivity and personal experiences win out arbitrary lines of difference. We have our old and new schools.

Has anyone looked at their own personal evolution and change in the hobby and admitted to the "bragging rights", the in-jokes and stories that prevented new friend from being made, arguments about style, or when unhealthy amounts of projection and escape were pilled into the hobby? Getting into the hobby when I was in highschool in the late 90s and seeing the values of various groups up till now, same pitfalls are still there. what changed was a more recent adopter.

Although something has really changed, a trend that is very much different from when the games were just trying to be better. The quintessential game fictional GMs like BA, Nitro, and Pete keep aspiring to seem to be a more distant memory. It seems the new systems and its simpler and simpler evolutions are headed to the opposite the direction of the earlier innovators were going.

When the first Gamers took their wargame and decided to perform actions using only their own logic, reasoning and imagination to resolve they opened up infinity... the new systems seek to simplify to the point that infinity is eliminated and all there is are the very very specific rules.

When the Old School Gamers complain of skills are doing the thinking for the player, they are largely correct. The system was designed so that a player with very little or no investment in the gaming-problem solving skills can just jump in. The rewards were designed to intensify the imersion by providing a more fantastic and addictive escape from reality. They were more disconnected to real world sensibilities that sh*t happened and sometimes there are no rewards. The games were designed to hook these new crowd into the hobby and identify themselves as Gamers. The idea was to get them to brand themselves as Gamers so they would be more manipulatable... of course there was no intent to teach them these hard won skills that cost patience and so much time gamers of old so loved.

It seems, the last bastion of the old school is not the new products but the compilation of skills, problem solving habits and outlook to adversity that most of the veterans attribute to the hobby. In the end, its not the game system but how their hard work, camaraderie, fair play and fun changed their lives and outlook on life.

As to replicating all that, I think it does come from any gaming material. It comes from the Player or GM and the values he/she projects in life. That is what people see and what attracts them to what these people find fun and interesting. When they take up the dice with such people, it is only natural that learn and realize the usefulness and the effectives of the gaming medium.

Simply put A Good Person, who happens to love the Game is a Good Gamer. Their presence and character are where the next generations of good gamers will come from... by helping in the development of other Good People who happen to love Gaming.

Less Investment on ME, more on THE character

I find it easier, to role-play a character who I've not invested so much effort in. Role-playing someone very detached from my own personality or who I am, lets me make decisions based on their personality instead of my own ego-in trying to build my investment.

I guess thats what the random character generators are all trying to instill vs the more controlled point builds. Letting "the dice fall where they may" requires a detachment of a story teller who knows that death, loss or adversity is an important part of the story.

So a PC being run by a fellow story teller, who likes his puppet to be very engaging, imperfect and like-able to the audience but lets him go down the path fate has chosen for him without spoiling the ending or the story for the rest of the audience.

Love this post about Behavioral Economics. Game Theory Gamers out there may find the concepts helps understanding player action and behavior.

If GURPS Fantasy only had a random generator like HARN... wait a minute, I could just generate a harn character and just convert it to GURPS... Better, I just get one of those well fleshed out NPCs they have in the website convert it to GURPS without any POINT notes. Yeah, that would be sweet running a modified old school 1e Dungeon module or Harn module with those characters.

Hard decisions in an RPG; KODT helps.

I gotta blame it on KODT, the comic makes me want to role-play. I can really relate to what the GM agonizes through when characters act psychopathic and unrealistically. Reading more on Emotional Intelligence, I gain more appreciation on subject matters like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I got a lot of ideas when I saw excerpts about Restrepo, that documentary about the lives of soldiers in isolation during their afgan tour.

In the traveller game, my best friends character, min-maxed marine with subdermal armor took my dying character and used him as a human shield.

Since rounds are simultaneous, Adrian, our mild mannered civilian angel-investor had just gone limp from a shotgonne scatter when he was caught by a enhanced marine and used as a body shield witnessed by his his young and scrappy bodyguard, Finn. The young man, never saw such inhuman disregard for a comrade especially his mentor. After the battle, when the marine Maguay Jones turned his back, he basically let loose with the primitive alien WWI submachinegun. He kept shooting, ignoring the "captian" who was called him out to stop. Finn just kept walking, dropping the submachine gun when it ran out and taking his autopistol to finish him off at the head. The subdermal armor more visible more than ever, I could Finn was asking himself

"WHY!?! you're a freaking monster! You could have taken those slug throwers, why did you have to use him as a shield!" - Finn thought.

Before he even had a chance to avenge his principal and mentor, he was gunned down with a MG, by the captain. I found that over kill, in the point as a director and the audience.

No one tried to use Psychology bring him out of Shock because the only two people who had the skill were my characters.

Considering what I should do, before the act, I imagined what one of those soldiers would have felt, or I would have felt if I saw my captain abused like that. In many airsoft games, the cheating and the trash talking, it wouldn't be hard to lose one's temper, see red and resort to violence.

Its funny to be a Psychopath in DnD, Hackmaster or in stories of KODT. I guess if I were playing DnD, and the game was like a slapstic comedy that would slide. But, if it was an episode of Firefly, I think the audience and myself would be scratching our heads if it the reaction wasn't appropriate.

After the act everyone did agree it was the right thing to do. Strangely, before the action was about to happen I pointed out to my BF that it is highly unrealistic for anyone to take an ally's recently dead body (because death is not that instantaneous as they would make you believe) and use it as a shield without any consequences. Quickly the term: Marine was used in defense... of course studies regarded PTSD have a different take on what a REAL soldier would do in a situation. I was imagining Nitro, what his reaction would be if the term Marine was besmirched in that way. Being one doesn't excuse a person to act like a psychopath and I feel confident many would agree.

In my critique, a Captain should not have tried to gun down a Civilian Bodyguard and should have first made a check at the context of the action and the appropriate response. Good leaders are not trigger happy, and when it comes to morally ambiguous circumstances they quickly weigh rational action against the humane one. In these instances, they would use diplomacy or pep talk to snap a soldier or civilian out of the trance.

I'm happy that both characters died, while the marine survived (yes he took point blank burst shots, rolled 2 11s). It would have been weird and unfair if the marine died and I wouldn't not be able to face by BF so easily. I was worried he would take it personally, and the character death and his surviving despite the action would have very interesting consequences if played out- if the players decide to act on it. I guess if they do decide to act on it, it would be more interesting and people would begin thinking: how would a person really react in this circumstance?

It was fun that like the old school tradition, I gave my characters to the GM after they died. That was cool.

Freethinking and RPGs... hmmm...

Anyway, our GM said it would not be a great feat to introduce 2 new characters in our game. There are XPs being dished out for RPing, its just more interesting to watch in the mind's eye when humans interact more realistically.

All that KODT, made me appreciate characters dying for the actions they did with the information and the behavior they have established. None of this Acting on Player information or motives. Anyway, I didn't spend any effort making or min-maxing the character, I just rolled them both up in the 1001 Traveller UPP book (really just rolled and took what came up in a 1d100 in the merchant section).

Strangely, I've think of BA and Sara as the Quintessential RPG players and wonder how they would have played it out.

GURPSing Theory of multiple intelligences

I'm trying to write up the intelligences as Talents using Theory of multiple intelligences

Interestingly 15cp Talent has NO limits B90. (13 or more related skill).

Logical-Mathematical Intelligence is the Int that handles a lot of the serious scientific and modern cognitive heavy work. all the things we owe to technology, innovation, and reason is handled by this intelligence.

Check this out Breaking it down:

Raw Int (minus Will and Per) is 10cp! Thats cheap and easy to min-max especially with racial templates. Thats +1 per 10cps to any IQ skill. Now looking at talents, the most expensive talents has a finite (as long as it is related) and expensive bonus of +1 every 15cp with a limit of +4. Talents are more nerfed than the IQ... which is weird because it makes the dominant strategy is to max out IQ and using talents becoms a draw back. Talents detail character and express their personality because they act on their inclinations.

As broad as Logical-Mathematic Intelligence can be, it would be better if it was broken down to 10 point groups. Now abstracting or rationalizing would be very difficult, because like many people LMInt is not my strongest suit.