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GURPS gripe + RPG suggestions

Posted By: SiliconDream=PN= (mates.HIP.Berkeley.EDU)
Date: 1/16/2000 at 10:11 p.m.

First, the gripe. Dan can tell me whether this has already been discussed on the GURPS newsgroups, but it seems to me that one of the major reasons why the characters aren't always translated that well is that they tried to make their GURPS point costs always match their point costs in Myth.

This seems very ill-advised to me. A GURPS campaign should cover many more areas of life than the Myth games do. The in-game cost of a Myth unit is supposed to be based on how valuable it is on the battlefield. But the value of an RPG character should reflect how well s/he can accomplish *any* task s/he might choose to undertake in the course of a campaign.

For instance, compare a berserk and a bre'Unor. In the game, a bre'Unor costs a third again what a berserk costs--and rightly so, since he possesses both melee and ranged attacks that can do a significant amount of damage. But would a bre'Unor RPG character really be more capable than a berserk? Most berserks have useful skills, in farming or sailing, by means of which they can make a living and even become quite wealthy if they wish; they can travel throughout the Province, the North and the Cath Bruig unmolested, being trusted allies of the Light whose reputation would probably deter most bandits. Bre'Unor are bone-throwing savages who don't really know how to do anything except kill things and talk to wolves; a bre'Unor who sets foot outside that region of the Ermine controlled by his kind will either be arrested by the first Legion squad he meets or dispatched by a passing group of fir'Bolg or berserks. Which unit would *you* rather be.

Now, clearly, when the GURPS guys started designing the character templates they ran into this problem. Characters' relative point costs had little relation to their relative costs in the Myth games. What I think they should have done is just said, "Well, okay, Dwarves shouldn't be as valuable in GURPS, since the ability to throw explosive cocktails is a lot more useful on the battlefield than in most other areas of life," and left it at that. What they *did* do is tweak the attributes, and add on all sorts of advantages, disadvanatges and skills, so that the point costs *would* reflect those in the game. And so we have Dwarves that can take almost twice as many hits as Berserks, and Mauls that run faster than Myrmidons.

End of gripe. Now on to the suggestions:

#1: Do any of you think we'd be justified in bugging GURPS to correct this? To redo their character templates so that they reflect the actual abilities of the characters as seen in the Myth games, even if this means that their GURPS values don't have much to do with their game values? And even if we would be justified, would it do any good? Bungie doesn't really seem to mind.

#2: Could we use a more "realistic" system in your eRPG, WW? I realize you're close to finished with it and you've probably already addressed this problem, but I think it would definitely make the RPG more immersive for me if it reflected the game more accurately. I'm not saying we should ignore the GURPS templates--they do a good job of showing the necessary skills, advantages and disadvantages each character should have. I just think we should revise the attributes to be more accurate, and strip away the superfluous skills, advantages and disadvantages that were added to make the points come out right, and use these as our base templates before customizing. If someone wants to have his Dwarf have a big bag O' hit points like the GURPS ones do, then fine, but he ought to explain why rather than treating it as perfectly usual for Dwarves.

--SiliconDream

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