DMing is Not Storytelling

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So, since we’re talking about GURPS, what supplements would you suggest for a medieval setting with no magic or supernatural stuff?
GURPS Low Tech (all parts) and GURPS Martial Arts, obviously:thumbsup:!
...and then I notice that robertsconley robertsconley has already answered in more detail. That's what I get for starting to post before reading the thread:grin:!
 
I'm neutral on GURPS Martial Arts for a no-magic setting myself. On the one hand, if you take out magic, it's reasonable for players to put that focus into the combat arts. On the other, GURPS Martial Arts adds a lot of crunch to the table, and it can easily be more crunch than you're wishful of handling.

One consideration is this: even more than supplements, running no-magic low tech GURPS requires a serious Session Zero chat about tactics. No supernatural healing + GURPS + low tech makes combat very deadly, especially with infections and diseases thrown into the mix. A party is going to have to avoid battle except with heavy superiority, or else have days (weeks?) of recovery time built in, or else accept that they're going to have a hefty fatality rate.
 
I'm neutral on GURPS Martial Arts for a no-magic setting myself. On the one hand, if you take out magic, it's reasonable for players to put that focus into the combat arts. On the other, GURPS Martial Arts adds a lot of crunch to the table, and it can easily be more crunch than you're wishful of handling.

The trick is to come up with a cheat sheet of option that are relevant to your setting. Generally a much smaller subset of the entirety of Martial Arts.

One consideration is this: even more than supplements, running no-magic low tech GURPS requires a serious Session Zero chat about tactics. No supernatural healing + GURPS + low tech makes combat very deadly, especially with infections and diseases thrown into the mix. A party is going to have to avoid battle except with heavy superiority, or else have days (weeks?) of recovery time built in, or else accept that they're going to have a hefty fatality rate.
For my campaigns I run a sample combat session to get everybody used to the system. Something I adopted long ago because I lived in a rural area the it was nearly always the case that folks never played GURPS or other systems I used.

Afterward we discuss and players often tweak their characters based on the experience.
 
Anyone do GURPS without Ads/Disads?
I would say it hard to do GURPS without advantages as several important concepts are embodied by them however it nuanced.

Before I started focusing more on classic D&D, my group made characters without counting points from disadvantage. Increasing over the 2000s, it felt it pointless and nitpicking to come up with disadvantages for our characters. We all roleplayed and made characters that were distinct in personality and mannerisms. Before a campaign, we knew how we were going to accommodate those quirks with the character concept. Yeah they were "disadvantages" but..... For example honesty for a paladin.

So we just stopped counting disads even not counting the major ones that actually do cripple your character in one or more ways. Folks I was going to game with were going to roleplay however they were going to roleplay. So for the last handful of GURPS campaigns I ran the rule was you get 150 points broken up between attributes, perks, talents, skills, and advantages.

Also well before this we only counted social, wealth, and other background advantage at the beginning of the campaign. Whatever happened during the campaign happened. In a sense we did what Transhuman Space recommended when a character shift body form. Just jettison the old stuff and tally up the new and that where the character is at the moment.

The lists are not the real issue
The biggest issue with GURPS is not so much paying points for advantages and gaining points with disadvantages. The biggest issue is character growth over time.

If you run campaign like I do, then players will often voluntarily grind out each day of the campaign. It not a case of minutiae ruling but rather players manage to find something adventurous or advances a goal they have every game day. It not uncommon for one my session to be just one game day. I am lucky if a game week passes during a session.

The problem if you give a fixed reward for milestones and/or per session. It starts to add up and the characters gain a lot of power in a small amount game days. For example say an in-game month passes across 12 sessions. And you award 3 points per session. That 36 points of character growth in that in-game month. In a system where 200 hours of learning represent one skill point.

Now I am not a fan of banking points and can only spend them when X time has passed. The players will simply balk at having to spend a lot of down time studying even it done in a short amount of time. The main reason ironically is because of that whole "World in Motion" thing I do. They feel they have to keep running to stay ahead of the game or their opponent (whomever they are) will get the drop on them.

So for the last couple of GURPS campaigns, I applied a bit Runequest to GURPS. And did the following.
  • Like Runequest if you use a skill in a situation with consequences and succeeded you placed a tick mark.
  • You can convert the tick mark to a roll for XP with a day rest. If you roll a over your skill you get a character point. If you rolled a 17 or 18, (18 if you skill is 17 or higher) you get 2 points.
  • If you rolled a critical success during the game you get 1 xp in that skill.
  • You get 1 xp for every 45 days as "On The Job" training.
  • You get 1 free cp at the end of every session and another for achieve a significant goal (personal or party).

Relevant Blog Posts
Applying some Runequest To GURPS
GURPS, Time, and Experience
 
The trick is to come up with a cheat sheet of option that are relevant to your setting. Generally a much smaller subset of the entirety of Martial Arts.


For my campaigns I run a sample combat session to get everybody used to the system. Something I adopted long ago because I lived in a rural area the it was nearly always the case that folks never played GURPS or other systems I used.

Afterward we discuss and players often tweak their characters based on the experience.
Did this myself back in the late 80's and 90's with new players to GURPS. Taking the Man to Man approach basically or old TFT. It did help quite a lot in speeding up game play on the table.

CRKrueger CRKrueger Not sure how well that would work out. I was pretty strict on what I allowed Advantage/Disadvantage wise but that's about it.
 
robertsconley robertsconley I really like your ideas above with the blending of some of the RQ/BRP mechanics. Speaking of that, one thing I've never really been a fan of in regards to RQ/BRP was the Strike Rank system and phases of combat. I always prefered how GURPS did it, it felt more fluid and fun versus the whole...

RQ2nd Ed.
1. Statement of Intent.
2. Movement of Non-engaged characters.
3. Resolution of melee, missiles and spells.
4. Bookkeeping phase.

I much prefer the GURPS turn sequence. Otherwise there is a lot I've always enjoyed about BRP mechanics. Back in 78-83' we actually tended to play RQ more like GURPS (before there was GURPS of course) where the faster took their turn and the next etc. We basically got rid of the whole statement of intent phase. I always wondered if that would have irked pureist. I kind of view it how many didn't really play DnD or AD&D by all the rules, specially when many of them felt unclear or clunky at the time. Anyhow I'm rambling. lol
 
Heh, I love strike ranks... And I have a dislike for your turn my turn mechanics, at least not without a huge dose of referee discretion, at which point we might as well be playing a statement of intent system... I think I actually am more willing to go along with D&D your side, my side turn mechanics, but would still apply some referee discretion.

But the way I do RQ is:

Statement of intent
Resolution of things in order of strike rank with referee discretion regarding conflicting statements of intent

Note that I use the optional rules where you can delay your attack by 1 or more SR to get more control over hit location. To me that creates interesting choices in combat.
 
The biggest issue with GURPS is ... character growth over time ...

Now I am not a fan of banking points and can only spend them when X time has passed. The players will simply balk at having to spend a lot of down time studying even it done in a short amount of time. The main reason ironically is because of that whole "World in Motion" thing I do. They feel they have to keep running to stay ahead of the game or their opponent (whomever they are) will get the drop on them.

Certainly if you have a Big Bad that never is defeated, that might well be the case. But as with so many other aspects of gaming, players are going to be panicked about downtime only to the degree that it's proven to them that downtime will bite them in the ass. I'm also not at all enthusiastic over XP being tied to die rolls. (Don't mind me -- Jim will remember how Gemstone III once had a mechanic where learning new spells was a matter of succeeding at a die roll when you leveled up. My character had appallingly bad luck in this respect, and when there was a major system revision and characters were converted, the number of spells the character had TREBLED. IMHO, one of the principal charms of a point-buy system is to remove the inequities inherent in random dice rolls.)

For my part, I've a simple fix: XP are awarded as a result of play. Averages 2+ pts per session, about. And I pitch the 1 XP/200 hours of learning mechanic right out the window. Every now and then the players petition for downtime to train various things up. My own world doesn't stop during those periods, but it is what it is.

Sure, continuously played, characters will get up there in power: someone who plays well will get up around 300 pts in three, four years. But I don't sweat it, and that's around the time anyway where people itch to try something new. Looking over my records, eight characters have hit 300+ over 36 years, out of 130-someodd PCs. I don't figure that's excessive.
 
Sure, continuously played, characters will get up there in power: someone who plays well will get up around 300 pts in three, four years. But I don't sweat it, and that's around the time anyway where people itch to try something new. Looking over my records, eight characters have hit 300+ over 36 years, out of 130-someodd PCs. I don't figure that's excessive.
Except the issue with XP over time is not what you described in your post. I am talking about starting with the campaign at the 1st of the Merry Month of Mirtul on Session 1, and reaching the 30th of Mirtual on the 20th session. The character advanced 40 pts in those 30 days of campaign time.
 
Except the issue with XP over time is not what you described in your post. I am talking about starting with the campaign at the 1st of the Merry Month of Mirtul on Session 1, and reaching the 30th of Mirtual on the 20th session. The character advanced 40 pts in those 30 days of campaign time.
Downtime is the only way to avoid that.
Pendragon and Maelstrom, which assume "one adventure per game year", solve that matter best, IMO.
 
Downtime is the only way to avoid that.
Pendragon and Maelstrom, which assume "one adventure per game year", solve that matter best, IMO.
Yeah, Maelstrom handles that really well. (And the new campaign is a thing of beauty).

They also have some of the best historical detail I've seen in a game.
 
Downtime is the only way to avoid that.
Pendragon and Maelstrom, which assume "one adventure per game year", solve that matter best, IMO.
The New version of RuneQuest also has that, the whole seasons of play/downtime concept that Greg Stafford took from his Pendragon Rpg. I do see the reason for down time but the longer versions of that for Pendragon and RQG rubs me wrong. I don't like as a GM being rigidly tied down to when adventuring and down time exist. I'd rather do it in a more fluid dynamic sort of way that was dependant upon the needs of the campaign. Basically I see it as a tool I or the players can use in a limited fashion.



Ravenswing Ravenswing That damn Spell gain roll for GSIII really sucked, the deICEing and doing away with that was one of the better mechanics changes in that regard for sure. Though I did miss the mechanics of mastering armor training at lower levels and choosing which armor you wanted to put training points into. The new system for armor training bothered me that you ended up having to be around 56th or 60th (something like that) as a double armor trainer to be able to be fully trained for full plate. Ugh.
 
Downtime is the only way to avoid that.
Pendragon and Maelstrom, which assume "one adventure per game year", solve that matter best, IMO.
Except I run a sandbox in a way so there is no expectation of when downtime occurs. If the player want to grind out each every day, so be it. I got stuff to make that fun and interesting. If they want to spend six month of downtime before following up on some stuff they found. I got that covered as well.

But in general with all factor equal the players opt to grind out each day. The main reason is because I will roleplay any and all NPCs as desired and they just get sucked into that and overall results in a sense of urgency to get stuff done. Not earth-shattering stuff but in terms of what goals they are pursuing.

The most terse example I got about this of is the city encounter graphic I posted. Note the encounter with the street urchin. Imagine one (or usually more) of the PCs stepping in to deal with this situation. I am quite capable coming up with consistent backstories slanted with the possibility of adventure so when I roleplay the kids it obvious there something more going on. And players get sucked into it. Then they meet the kids elders/parents/guardians/etc. And get involved in that. Soon by the end of the session they felt like they have been on a fun adventure but still haven't reached the sorcerer's supply shop. But then again the in-game day hasn't ended yet.

So when you do this throughout the life of the campaign the time spend playing in the real world (sessions) reflects a shorter amount of time in the game world. Most XP system don't handle this well and so are ill-suited for this style of gaming.

1629216089647.png
 
Yeah, Maelstrom handles that really well. (And the new campaign is a thing of beauty).

They also have some of the best historical detail I've seen in a game.
Yeah, their historical detail ranks along that in Mythras settings, Zenobia and GUIRPS sourcebooks, if you ask me:smile:.

Except I run a sandbox in a way so there is no expectation of when downtime occurs. If the player want to grind out each every day, so be it. I got stuff to make that fun and interesting. If they want to spend six month of downtime before following up on some stuff they found. I got that covered as well.

But in general with all factor equal the players opt to grind out each day. The main reason is because I will roleplay any and all NPCs as desired and they just get sucked into that and overall results in a sense of urgency to get stuff done. Not earth-shattering stuff but in terms of what goals they are pursuing.

The most terse example I got about this of is the city encounter graphic I posted. Note the encounter with the street urchin. Imagine one (or usually more) of the PCs stepping in to deal with this situation. I am quite capable coming up with consistent backstories slanted with the possibility of adventure so when I roleplay the kids it obvious there something more going on. And players get sucked into it. Then they meet the kids elders/parents/guardians/etc. And get involved in that. Soon by the end of the session they felt like they have been on a fun adventure but still haven't reached the sorcerer's supply shop. But then again the in-game day hasn't ended yet.

So when you do this throughout the life of the campaign the time spend playing in the real world (sessions) reflects a shorter amount of time in the game world. Most XP system don't handle this well and so are ill-suited for this style of gaming.

View attachment 34520
Sure, man, I get what you're saying. And I run sandboxes as well, and have run into the same issue:thumbsup:.
Except harsher: A couple of years of weekly sessions - some of which were double sessions, so meriting more XP (for 9+ hours, and no, I don't simply double the amount - more like adding a point or two...), my PCs on the China 1664 (?) game were at close to +800 XP!
I've taken it to heart after that and found a solution (though I'd started already by the middle ofthat campaign, which was circa 10 years ago, I only found a solutions I liked and worked after it...shortly after the shortlived Sengoku one, I think, while running Fates Worse Than Death RPG for the second time).
In my case, the solution was to enforce some diegetic training times. You have a bunch of XP? Great. Now go train to spend it!

Right now I'm experimenting with a Traveller/Ars Magica-influenced solution, which is to remove XP altogether, but to institute a training system (which also makes it easier to improve in the things you've been doing during the adventures). But I ain't got anything I'm happy with, not yet. So training times is my solution for now.

Ravenswing Ravenswing said already he doesn't use training times, though. So it wouldn't work for him...but coincidentally, he doesn't see it as a problem, either, so all is fine:grin:!
But if you see it as a problem - and it seems you do - you have to either enforce some diegetic means of improvement, like training times to spend the earned XP, or else outirght enforce a downtime, period. During which you can assume training happened.
If there's a third solution, I haven't found it yet:shade:.

The New version of RuneQuest also has that, the whole seasons of play/downtime concept that Greg Stafford took from his Pendragon Rpg. I do see the reason for down time but the longer versions of that for Pendragon and RQG rubs me wrong. I don't like as a GM being rigidly tied down to when adventuring and down time exist. I'd rather do it in a more fluid dynamic sort of way that was dependant upon the needs of the campaign. Basically I see it as a tool I or the players can use in a limited fashion.

Of course - all such ideas are tools for the Referee, not the other way around:wink:.
(And it still wouldn't matter if you have two adventures in a year. Just have a month of downtime between them to rest, recover and train, and you should be fine!)
 
Except the issue with XP over time is not what you described in your post. I am talking about starting with the campaign at the 1st of the Merry Month of Mirtul on Session 1, and reaching the 30th of Mirtual on the 20th session. The character advanced 40 pts in those 30 days of campaign time.
Yes, this is a problem I've dealt with multiple times in various ways.

In grad school and through the early 90s, I was working on my own generic system where the whole skill system was derived from Paul Gazis's Eight Worlds Traveller experience system. I designed it so the skill points you got in chargen for an 18 year old PC matched the experience system. And then for in play experience, you would gain XP over time at the same rate. Of course that means that you have to start all PCs at the same age... I think I even made sure the first few years of a character's life gave you most of your native language skill points of something like that.

The problem is that doesn't quite work for play... People want to improve at least over the course of several sessions...

That's the problem with the Classic Traveller training system, well you do get an immediate benefit, but it takes 8 years to lock that in and be able to work on the next skill. It's actually slower than skill acquisition during previous experience. Fortunately for me as GM, I really burned out on Traveller for other reasons long before the annoyance of very limited character improvement could become a factor.

In the end, these days I'm mostly turned off from Hero and GURPS. RuneQuest is nice in that it enforces a mix of down time training and adventure. That at least means people aren't going from zero to hero in 30 days... I'm also fine with D&D progression, but since that's almost super-heroic, and you don't improve things one skill at a time, it's not so bothersome.
 
Sure, man, I get what you're saying. And I run sandboxes as well, and have run into the same issue:thumbsup:.
Except harsher: A couple of years of weekly sessions - some of which were double sessions, so meriting more XP (for 9+ hours, and no, I don't simply double the amount - more like adding a point or two...), my PCs on the China 1664 (?) game were at close to +800 XP!
I've taken it to heart after that and found a solution (though I'd started already by the middle ofthat campaign, which was circa 10 years ago, I only found a solutions I liked and worked after it...shortly after the shortlived Sengoku one, I think, while running Fates Worse Than Death RPG for the second time).
In my case, the solution was to enforce some diegetic training times. You have a bunch of XP? Great. Now go train to spend it!

Right now I'm experimenting with a Traveller/Ars Magica-influenced solution, which is to remove XP altogether, but to institute a training system (which also makes it easier to improve in the things you've been doing during the adventures). But I ain't got anything I'm happy with, not yet. So training times is my solution for now.
Yea, I think if you want to run a serious world simulator, world in motion, type sandbox, you need to dispense with traditional XP. Ideally the world simulator with world in motion provides enough reward for the players.

I never ran Hero (or GURPS) long enough to accumulate so much XP that the PCs were unrecognizable from starting.
 
Yea, I think if you want to run a serious world simulator, world in motion, type sandbox, you need to dispense with traditional XP. Ideally the world simulator with world in motion provides enough reward for the players.

I never ran Hero (or GURPS) long enough to accumulate so much XP that the PCs were unrecognizable from starting.
No, I don't think you need to. I mean, I'm doing that, and while I've not managed to get a purely diegetic advancement yet, I don't think this makes my current games less serious, somehow:thumbsup:.
It is just an idea that would appeal to people who would view an alignment between IC and OOC events as desirable, me included. Which is why I'm working on it. But I also admit in advance that the benefits from it to the veracity/realism of the world-in-motion are less than the benefits of getting economics right:shade:.
I do it because I care, that's all!
 
No, I don't think you need to. I mean, I'm doing that, and while I've not managed to get a purely diegetic advancement yet, I don't think this makes my current games less serious, somehow:thumbsup:.
It is just an idea that would appeal to people who would view an alignment between IC and OOC events as desirable, me included. Which is why I'm working on it. But I also admit in advance that the benefits from it to the veracity/realism of the world-in-motion are less than the benefits of getting economics right:shade:.
I do it because I care, that's all!
It depends on what one means by serious... :-) I think it also depends on how long you want to run the game. A solution like Rob's will work fine if you can accept some degree of "faster than realistic" advancement combined with a limited run. But if you want to run the PCs for years and years of game time, you either need to accept super heroic PCs or do something to make the rate of advancement "realistic". I suspect most of us don't run the same PCs for so many years as to trigger super heroic PCs as long as the situation is addressed in some way, such as Rob's solution.
 
Yeah, and I stand by that actually, your disbelief to the contrary. How those systems choose to emulate is driven by genre expecations, usually something like 'adventure fiction'. If it weren't we would have different mechanics. The tasks at hand in a given diegetic frame aren't random, they are driven by genre expecations for the most part.

In a bit of support for this, you can contrast GURPS and the Hero System. Both are universal systems based on 3D6 resolution, but because they evolved out of different progenitors (gritty fantasy with GURPS, superheroes with Hero) there are important differences in expectation baked into the mechanics. Yet they're absolutely both set up to be universal systems now.

Edit: To make it clear, what I'm suggesting is that you can have a generic game with very strong (though broad) genre biases, and one with very weak ones. I'm not particularly interested in getting into whether GURPS has a "genre" other than to the degree I assess it in the WH response.
 
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Although I'd also suggest that GURPs core provides a framework for simulation, but doesn't provide it without sourcebooks. Simulation requires detail.

Depends on how much detail you view as necessary there. The basic GURPS material is not what I'd call schematic.
 
I think you can replace "sourcebook" with "knowledge" however, which can be provided by the GM or non-gaming resources.

At the least its also going to require houserules, as GURPS is a system that's going to require you to do supplimental mechanics for some settings; ad-hoc is not liable to work well with the general structure of the system.
 
In a game of WH4e, first session, Pc dies because of his own pistol exploding in the first round of combat, as per RAW.

Is it reality modelling, or genre enforcing?

This is going to sound odd, but "could be either."

What I mean by that is that even rules designed for verisimilitude (I don't think "realism" is actually achievable to enough of a degree to be a functional target, but that can be argued to be a semantic argument) are going to be colored by the expectations of the designer, and one of the things that will impact that is how he sees some things working will be colored by both what he sees as "realistic" fiction, and by kind of a negative space created by his experience with other kinds of fiction (i.e. things he thinks of as "unrealistic").

As an example, you see a lot of games that conflate "realistic combat" with "lethal combat", in the sense that they have set the dials on various combat mechanics so that they actually make combat more lethal than actually matches with reality; that's often because they're reacting to other system approaches and/or looking at extreme cases and setting that as a higher occurrence than it should be.

So the answer is "Is the gun explosion chance modelling actual reality, or is it emulating a down-and-dirty feel? If its trying to do the former is it overstating how likely it should be?"
 
Well yes, but that is sort of my overall point in this thread. GURP isn't a genre-based game, so the more extreme a genre (the further it deviates from "realism") the worse a job it does emulating it. GURPs Supers I recall being particularly bad.

At least the 2e and 3e versions absolutely were; I've been told the 4e version is somewhat better.

(Though some of that was less that GURPS isn't set up to be able to do it--almost no generic game that starts out as anything but a supers game has easy going here--but that some of the biases they went in with required more heavy lifting to get right for that. Its not a problem limited to genre things; the GURPS Witchworld book though not a bad reference was kind of terrible as a game because it tried to shoehorn the basic GURPS magic system into it when it was middlin' poorly suited for the job).
 
I see that often and I recall fondly how much fun the GURPS Wild Cards game I ran one summer while stationed in Europe. I think it might have been because it was 2nd/3rd edition and with 100 point starting point totals.

Wild Cards is also a relatively abnormal supers setting; though it has people that dress and act like superheroes, its really more of a people-with-powers setting where some people have decided to fly their flag that way than a setting that has that baked into it.
 
Except the issue with XP over time is not what you described in your post. I am talking about starting with the campaign at the 1st of the Merry Month of Mirtul on Session 1, and reaching the 30th of Mirtual on the 20th session. The character advanced 40 pts in those 30 days of campaign time.

The issue applies to pretty much any system with an XP mechanic, paired with a campaign that does plot arcs. And I don't sweat that either. With all the fiats and compromises inherent in tabletop systems, the number of game-days expended in a player's accumulation of Z amount of XP is an amour propre issue that doesn't fret me in the slightest. If it did, well ... how much XP is awarded in how many sessions taking how many game-days are all factors entirely within my control as a GM.
 
The issue applies to pretty much any system with an XP mechanic, paired with a campaign that does plot arcs. And I don't sweat that either. With all the fiats and compromises inherent in tabletop systems, the number of game-days expended in a player's accumulation of Z amount of XP is an amour propre issue that doesn't fret me in the slightest. If it did, well ... how much XP is awarded in how many sessions taking how many game-days are all factors entirely within my control as a GM.
Except with a sandbox and the player driving the tempo and pace, I don't have the option of fiat. I have to build the mechanics so it flow naturally regardless whether a lot of campaign time passed in various session or only a small amount of campaign time. It not a me thing, I took a serious look at it after players noticed the discrepancy themselves.
 
An interesting XP might be one where most experience is gained by passing of time, however, there is possibility for experience from unique intense situations (adventures) but either limited as to how many per unit time, or on some kind of diminishing returns. That ends up distinguishing heroes from ordinary people (they rarely are in unique intense situations). Rob's system or RQ's system are actually examples of this, but I was thinking of a system where advancement is even more driven by long term passing of time.
 
Eh, I don't pretend to understand it, but if it really bugs you to award X experience in Y game-days, no matter the passage of real time, so be it.
 
I think there are sometimes some jarring results from experience that is disconnected from realtime, but its not something noticeable to everyone because, frankly, in a lot of games longer-term passage of time is often glossed over anyway. It tends to be stark when the game has a setting-assumption about how long the typical person takes to achieve certain things and PCs often do it in a fraction of time (RQ Rune Priests I'm looking at you). Often there's only so much you can handwave with "players are prodigies" in those situations.

As others have mentioned, in games that are less player-driven in terms of how events roll around, you can hose that down by setting up so adventures only come along spaced out, but if you're doing sandbox stuff that doesn't work very well.
 
It depends on what one means by serious... :-)
Exactly the same thing that you meant when writing "serious world in motion simulator":grin:!

I think it also depends on how long you want to run the game. A solution like Rob's will work fine if you can accept some degree of "faster than realistic" advancement combined with a limited run.
And depending on the game, I could...or not:thumbsup:.

But if you want to run the PCs for years and years of game time, you either need to accept super heroic PCs or do something to make the rate of advancement "realistic". I suspect most of us don't run the same PCs for so many years as to trigger super heroic PCs as long as the situation is addressed in some way, such as Rob's solution.
Yes, those are the choices, I agree. And since I've got a player who would very well run one PC for the rest of the decade, I'm faced with it.
Luckily, she doesn't mind my diegetic advancement solution, so it's all fine:shade:!
 
I dunno, man. In terms of resolution systems, they take up more space than anything but magic.
Coincidentally, those two are also the hardest to roleplay on the table... or is it a coincidence:gunslinger:?
Likewise, you can say in medieval-setting games the longest subsection is the one describing how the setting differs from our world...usually called simply "setting info":thumbsup:.
 
Coincidentally, those two are also the hardest to roleplay on the table... or is it a coincidence:gunslinger:?

Eh, there are other things just as difficult; they just aren't as big a part of most action-adventure fiction. Trying to purely roleplay barony management wouldn't exactly be a peach either. Nor anything involving construction.

Its just we don't take it as a given there'll be useful corebook support for that sort of thing barring specific game purposes.

Likewise, you can say in medieval-setting games the longest subsection is the one describing how the setting differs from our world...usually called simply "setting info":thumbsup:.

Well, note I was talking about game system sections. You can end up having huge amounts of setting text depending on the game, well in excess of all the mechanics put together. This isn't even uncommon with really off-the-beaten-path settings.
 
Eh, there are other things just as difficult; they just aren't as big a part of most action-adventure fiction. Trying to purely roleplay barony management wouldn't exactly be a peach either. Nor anything involving construction.
You might almost think some games would have devoted supplements to that as well...oh wait, Harn Manor, Maelstrom's Manor supplement and Pendragon's rules for domain management just called in:grin:!
And those, BTW, are often sections with procedural rules as well as setting info.

Its just we don't take it as a given there'll be useful corebook support for that sort of thing barring specific game purposes.
True. But I'd argue that this is 1) because it's on the "above group of PCs" level, and some campaigns would never go above that, and 2) those things would vary so greatly you can't write a universal game supplement about them.
And we were talking about GURPS here. Of course it would be left to GM judgement - with support for individual settings... I mean, a supplement for being the mayor of a village in 11th centure Medieval England and the mayor of a village in 21st century New England would be rightfully laughed at...and let's not even compare villages in rural India and rural Russia!

OTOH, knowing what happens when a punch or knife is needed in most games, and most people lack enough experience with that to be able to just roleplay it. Unlike, presumably, talking to other people.
Firearms and extranatural elements/powers in slightly less, but probably needs more rules because of the lack common ground to work with (I mean, nobody, AFAIK, has seen working magic that would allow throwing fireballs, or at least I've missed the news:tongue:)!

And again, a group of pirates, roaming pseudomedieval mercenaries, or bounty hunters roaming the space in their beaten ship simply don't need domain management rules, because the PCs don't interact with domain management.
Now, if they could become nobility, sure... oh wait, wasn't this actually expected in the first RPG ever published:tongue:?
Anyway - the ability to become nobility isn't to be taken for granted. It depends on the setting (some settings would require you to acquire land, and all land is already owned by somebody, for example).
And thus we're back to the inability to write setting support for all possible settings out there!

Well, note I was talking about game system sections.
Barony management would depend heavily on the setting, though. A barony in 9th century England would differ greatly from the same barony in 19th century England. And let's not even talk about the differences with 19th century Russia or China, and the baronies in Ravenswing Ravenswing 's home setting:devil:!

Conversely, cutting unarmoured people with a sword wouldn't differ that much...though different armours would have to be accounted for, or different blades - but the process itself hasn't changed all that much!

You can end up having huge amounts of setting text depending on the game, well in excess of all the mechanics put together. This isn't even uncommon with really off-the-beaten-path settings.
Yes, and they'd often feature rules about domain management as well.
Also, a GURPS setting supplement, like Banestorm, can easily dwarf the length of its combat system. So it's not different at all - except for the fact that, it being a generic system, the setting supplements are not part of the corebook:thumbsup:!
 
I'm not "narrating a story", I'm refereeing a game. As a GM, I like to be surprised, too.

I get what you’re saying and I think that element is important. But aren’t you also narrating to the players?

The function of the GM is bot solely that of referee. If I’m playing basketball, the referee isn't prompting any of my choices as a player….we don’t interact meaningfully as a core part of the game…he’s simply there to enforce the rules.

With an RPG, that’s not the case. You have to narrate. You have to present the players with decision points. You have to think about consequences and then respond to the actions their characters take.

You also likely give at least a little consideration to making things interesting in some way. Like the NPCs you come up with and the goals they have. They’re likely not mundane things….they’re likely exciting or intriguing. The locations that may come up in play are likely dynamic.

These kinds of considerations are related to storytelling, I’d say. You have to come up with ideas and they should engage your players.

Now that doesn’t mean that GMing is storytelling or is only storytelling. It’s more complex than that and it involves other responsibilities, too….like refereeing, as you mention. But I do think it involves storytelling.
 
Now that doesn’t mean that GMing is storytelling or is only storytelling. It’s more complex than that and it involves other responsibilities, too….like refereeing, as you mention. But I do think it involves storytelling.
Okay. If gamemastering could be described a falling somewhere on a spectrum between "storytelling" and "referee" then my style would be deep on the referee side of the dial.
 
Okay. If gamemastering could be described a falling somewhere on a spectrum between "storytelling" and "referee" then my style would be deep on the referee side of the dial.
I find a lot of people get all tanlged up in this. Not because their own style doesn't work well, but often because they have other ideas about what it is they're doing and don't want to be seen to be doing 'the other thing'. Lets set aside the word storytelling for moment, loaded and contentious as it is. A DM might be engaging in evocative description, adjudicating results, and explaining decision points and still not be anywhere near the word that shall not be spoken. That DM is, however, pretty close to the word narration. Narration as an idea is a great one for RPGs, and I wish people would leave the bloody story part out.
 
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