Running GURPS "rules lite" (but not necessarily GURPS Lite)

[Kage2020]

A little bit of history.

Back in the day, I GM'd Amber DRPG and loved the way that it flowed. What I don't like is the requirement for the GM to pull every answer out of their derriere. At about the same I encountered Eric S. Nylund's Pawn's Dream and it introduced me to an interesting variation on the Amber theme but which also led to something more... mortal, perhaps less hand-wavy (YMMV).

So, I returned to GURPS 3e and then to 4e. And, yet, that Amber DRPG way of running things still appeals and still does to this day.

There are clear ways that the various authors and creators of GURPS have tried to do this. Action 2 -- Exploits optionally removes the Basic Range/Speed Table for ranged attacks at least into range bands. BAD, or Basic Abstract Difficulty, is mean to reduce some of the modifiers "groping" that can go on to create rules stoppage.

Most recently, I was reminded of Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons includes the "...With Spikes" options that suggests that for each qualifier that you add to task difficulty, you just apply a -1 modifier and that might be good enough for standard skill use.

So what rules options do you GURPS'ers here use to increase the speed of your games? Regale me!

 

[Ravenswing]

As much as anything else, I just don't sweat the modifiers. If you're trying to climb a rough brick wall in a driving rain at night, I'll just think "Okay, -4," without cracking open the book to see what the precise modifier is. If the player wants to be more precise, they need to have done that legwork for themselves, and in advance: I don't see any more benefit to the game being held up while a player's thumbing through the book than for it to be held up while I do. The same applies to spells: I want you to have all the parameters at your fingertips, before you tell me that you're casting: how long you're casting, how much energy you're putting into it, what exactly's your target.

A similar paradigm applies in combat. There's enough time going around the table that you should be able to know, before I call on you, what you're going to do. If you hesitate, I start visibly counting down from five: if you don't have your act together by the time I get to zero, you're Doing Nothing that turn and I move on to the next player.

 

[Exploderwizard]

The only thing that makes GURPS kind of slow is advanced combat. Use basic combat and ditch the minis and precise positioning. Basic combat is pretty fast especially if don't use any optional rules. This holds true for a lot of other games as well. Take away the game board and things flow so much faster.

 

[Kage2020]

As much as anything else, I just don't sweat the modifiers.

Yeah, that's a pretty major one. I collect, but have only strategically read, the Dungeon Fantasy suggestion "...With Spikes" was a breath of fresh air.

I guess that even then my brain wants to write down the extremes of some parameters (e.g. visibility/darkness) and then just eyeball it from there on rather than looking up the specific rules.

If the player wants to be more precise, they need to have done that legwork for themselves, and in advance: I don't see any more benefit to the game being held up while a player's thumbing through the book than for it to be held up while I do.

As not all players are willing to pony up on books to play a specific RPG, this is one of the reasons that I would put the relevant books on a private server where the books couldn't be downloaded. This way they can reference to their hearts content. (This is one place where a VTT can be used with GURPS and how, say, GCS operates--that direct link to the relevant rules is sweeeeet.)

The only thing that makes GURPS kind of slow is advanced combat. Use basic combat and ditch the minis and precise positioning. Basic combat is pretty fast especially if don't use any optional rules. This holds true for a lot of other games as well. Take away the game board and things flow so much faster.

Another great point.

For myself, I'm thinking either those in GURPS Lite or Combat Lite (in Basic) is about as much as I want to go.

I wonder if, somewhere out there, there are rules for getting a bit losey-goosey with the 1-second combat round? As a general rule, I like how EABAv2 handles the scaling combat round with respect to "turn mod" so you can do some funky things with time rather than just plodding by on the 1-second round.

 

[thebigh]

I wonder if, somewhere out there, there are rules for getting a bit losey-goosey with the 1-second combat round?

The Basic Set itself suggests getting a bit fuzzy with the one-second time interval when it comes to how much the PCs can speak during a round.

 

[Kage2020]

The Basic Set itself suggests getting a bit fuzzy with the one-second time interval when it comes to how much the PCs can speak during a round.

Yeah. Is that an UK English sentence or an US English sentence, and is either of them an academic?

What, you can talk about 2-3 legible words in that kind of timeframe?

 

[thebigh]

Maybe if you've got a party of horse race commentators.

 

[Kage2020]

Okay, that might be a bit fast. A bit of Googling says 1-2 wps, or 4-6 for a trained voice artist (though I imagine that is under specific circumstances), and...

Imma gonna stop right there. That's quite the opposite of where I would like to go in terms of detail.

 

[Fenris-77]

I think people should have to break anything they say into two word chunks and then they get to say two words every round.

Look out...

there's a...

huge frickin'...

tentacle thing...

on the...

ceiling.

6 rounds baby. Hope it's biding its time.

 

[Kage2020]

And hope that you're not out of breath. Good points all around, but I'm interested in collating ideas so that I can present them to my players so that they know what I'm going to be doing. While I've got some mechanical ones from GURPS, I'm interested in the ones that I miss and other general advice.

 

[Kage2020]

Look out...

*gasps for air*

there's a...

*gasps for air*

huge frickin'...

*gulps*

<character is grabbed by tentacle creature>

Castle Nathan Fillion GIF - Castle Nathan Fillion Richard Castle - Discover & Share GIFs

Click to view the GIF

tenor.com

 

[David Johansen]

The problem with options is that they're always more rules not less. My advice is to simply ignore anything that isn't immediately relevant to the situation. The problem with having rules for everything is that's a lot of rules. If it doesn't apply to the immediate situation don't think about it, don't look it up, don't consider how to implement it. One of the places this is easily done is hit locations. If they don't say "I cut his throat" or whatever, just apply all hits to the body.

 

[AsenRG]

I think people should have to break anything they say into two word chunks and then they get to say two words every round.

Look out...

there's a...

huge frickin'...

tentacle thing...

on the...

ceiling.

6 rounds baby. Hope it's biding its time.

"Ceiling! Tentacles!"

 

[thebigh]

The problem with options is that they're always more rules not less. My advice is to simply ignore anything that isn't immediately relevant to the situation. The problem with having rules for everything is that's a lot of rules. If it doesn't apply to the immediate situation don't think about it, don't look it up, don't consider how to implement it. One of the places this is easily done is hit locations. If they don't say "I cut his throat" or whatever, just apply all hits to the body.

Exactly, and this is actually one of the things GURPS does well. Being so modular you can pick one specific thing out of some sourcebook or other and use it just that one time because a relevant situation has come up, but not be stuck using all that content going forward. It's more fiddly to do that in other systems.

 

[Ravenswing]

As not all players are willing to pony up on books to play a specific RPG, this is one of the reasons that I would put the relevant books on a private server where the books couldn't be downloaded. This way they can reference to their hearts content. (This is one place where a VTT can be used with GURPS and how, say, GCS operates--that direct link to the relevant rules is sweeeeet.)

I have a simpler answer, honestly: if you're not willing to pony up for the books, you don't get to debate modifiers with me. If my reflexive answer for that rainy night climb is -4, then that's the answer. (No prejudice against someone asking to look over my book before the session starts and copying things down, but I don't recall this has ever happened.)

I wonder if, somewhere out there, there are rules for getting a bit losey-goosey with the 1-second combat round? As a general rule, I like how EABAv2 handles the scaling combat round with respect to "turn mod" so you can do some funky things with time rather than just plodding by on the 1-second round.

I use a three-second round myself, without changing any combat or movement parameters; it's a fiat, really. Partly it satisfies my amour propre about exactly how plausible every-second tinkerhammering is, and partly to give more leeway to non-combat actions in melee time.

Maybe if you've got a party of horse race commentators.

Depends. The boffer fantasy LARP I was in for many years timed its spells with a word count: Heal Limb was ten words, while Raise Dead was forty. As the high end strategic healer in the outfit -- and needing to cast that spell upwards of hundreds of times an event -- I could rattle that sucker off like a tobacco auctioneer. Twenty-five years after I was doing that spell regularly at events, I can still say that forty-word chant in under five seconds, reliably. (The degree to which you would regard that as being intelligible speech, I leave to you folks.)

 

[opaopajr]

I remember BANGS being useful under a GM who deeply internalized the rules but was also trying to help us laymen who didn't want to care that deep have fun with the system.

I also noticed in 4e there's like a generalist version of a skill and a more granular sub-breakdown (specializations?) of the same skill. Yeah, using the bigger, generalized skill was a help.

Oh and a cheat sheet of all the basic functions one could do in a turn... but those turns were crazy short. I believe it was 1 second turns, one version maybe had up to 3 second turns for ease of use? Yeah, too piecemeal still... 6 second and 60 turns worked much better in my experience.

 

[Exploderwizard]

I remember BANGS being useful under a GM who deeply internalized the rules but was also trying to help us laymen who didn't want to care that deep have fun with the system.

I also noticed in 4e there's like a generalist version of a skill and a more granular sub-breakdown (specializations?) of the same skill. Yeah, using the bigger, generalized skill was a help.

Oh and a cheat sheet of all the basic functions one could do in a turn... but those turns were crazy short. I believe it was 1 second turns, one version maybe had up to 3 second turns for ease of use? Yeah, too piecemeal still... 6 second and 60 turns worked much better in my experience.

Good points, and depending on what genre you run there are other shortcuts too. If you don't want to get really involved with all of even the basic skills for a classic egghead character you can just use Science! and be done with it.

 

[robertsconley]

So what rules options do you GURPS'ers here use to increase the speed of your games? Regale me!

Cheat Sheet the lays out what the character can do in combat. Plus don't let players debate the option for more than a minute. We are talking one-second rounds here.

As for Basic versus Advanced, Basic Combat will still take longer to resolve than many systems due to defense rolls. If anything Tactical combat causes combat to be resolved sooner as more straightforward to determine by the referee and players when the target is unable to defend.

The part that novices to GURPS struggle with is not the options but the fact you can do one thing and one thing only. You can move or attack but not both.

The way to speed up combat is to coach the players on tactics. Team up against your opponents, try to attack from opposing sides, and develop an attack routine like Evaluate, Feint, Attack, and so on.

What is special about GURPS is that the rules cover just about anything that want to do as their characters on a one for one basis. Very little in the way of abstraction. The trick is for you to develop your references and cheat sheets so you can cover 90% of what happens in your campaign. From the player's point of view, they just describe what they are doing as if they are there are their characters. What is advantageous in life is advantageous in GURPS. The same for limitations.

The only caveat is that in combat they can only do ONE thing and ONE thing only on their turn and it can't take more than a second.

It is not that any one part of GURPS is particularly complex it is just it is so comprehensive.

 

[Exploderwizard]

It is not that any one part of GURPS is particularly complex it is just it is so comprehensive.

This is the heart of it right here. Actual resolution mechanics are very simple. The sheer weight of possibilities and the time it takes to run through them is what slows things down. I really do support time limits for player decisions in time sensitive situations such as combat.

 

[Cross Planes]

I haven't played GURPS in years so forgive me if this just won't work but could you use a variation 5E's Advantage & Disadvantage where you roll 4d & take 3 lowest for Advantage and then 3 highest for Disadvantage?

 

[Kage2020]

The problem with options is that they're always more rules not less. My advice is to simply ignore anything that isn't immediately relevant to the situation. The problem with having rules for everything is that's a lot of rules. If it doesn't apply to the immediate situation don't think about it, don't look it up, don't consider how to implement it. One of the places this is easily done is hit locations. If they don't say "I cut his throat" or whatever, just apply all hits to the body.

My personal goal is to collect and analyze for preference various peoples' (including the authors) approach to stripping away some of the complexity. "...With Spikes" is a good example because it ignores the gamut of modifiers, at least non-combat modifiers, with a simple notion of shifting the difficulty modifier by additional wrinkles in the task.

Perhaps better terminology is that it presents a procedure, or algorithm perhaps, that takes a whole bunch of stuff and compresses it into one, relatively easy approach that sits on top of the more detailed rules.

And I guess that's part of the distinction for me. I don't want to strip everything away---I just don't really want to use it all the time unless it would be interesting or necessary. I can, for example, in asynchronous play just use the Amber DRPG approach to GURPS attributes/skill levels and use some FUDGE dice or whatever as a random factor (or a flip of a coin or whatever). And, indeed, this is something that I've done with asynchronous play so that things don't get bogged down in dice rolling.

Exactly, and this is actually one of the things GURPS does well. Being so modular you can pick one specific thing out of some sourcebook or other and use it just that one time because a relevant situation has come up, but not be stuck using all that content going forward. It's more fiddly to do that in other systems.

Of course, there's always the "only bring it in if necessary". What I'm looking for are rules, or procedures/algorithms, that people have used that make it more akin to the "...With Spikes" option or Action 2: Exploits with range bands etc.

I remember BANGS being useful under a GM who deeply internalized the rules but was also trying to help us laymen who didn't want to care that deep have fun with the system.

BANGS? As in "bang skills" that are now named "Wildcards" and denoted with an exclamation point, e.g. "Guns!"? These are generally agglomeration of related skills that cost significantly more than the standard skill, but you get a bunch of skills including and (optionally) some other things with it, e.g. meta-currency for influencing success etc.

Wildcards are one of those concepts that definitely have their place to describe hyper-competence, but I certainly wouldn't want to make all skills Wildcards. Indeed, I imagine that, for me at least, the more satisfactory approach would be to use standard skills and just get rid of 90% of them. Go with just "Guns" or "Pistols, SMGs, Rifles..." etc. depending on the requirements of the campaign.

As a quick example, I used Wildcard skills for the Magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus in the Warhammer 40,000 setting to represent their competence in the various fields of technological endeavour. Those underneath them used the standard tech skills and were beholden to TL modifiers in terms of the tech that they could use (and resultant modifiers).

I also could have just pared down the skill list and created new ones to fit the more normal interpretations of the setting.

Errr, I guess that's a really long way of saying it might be better to pare down the skill list for the setting than to use Wildcard skills.

Yeah, too piecemeal still... 6 second and 60 turns worked much better in my experience.

I wonder if there is a way, as above, to borrow from EABAv2 here? Six seconds, or worse, is an awfully long time in combat terms. Indeed, with my original group who played AD&D, the combat round and what you could do in it was a real problem and one of their major grips with the system.

(I guess this gets into the comprehensive comment, below?)

 

[Kage2020]

I haven't played GURPS in years so forgive me if this just won't work but could you use a variation 5E's Advantage & Disadvantage where you roll 4d & take 3 lowest for Advantage and then 3 highest for Disadvantage?

I'm sorry? I don't quite get what you're referring to. I'm probably just being a little dense.

 

[thebigh]

In D&D 5e, an "advantage" roll means you get to roll your d20 twice and pick the better of the two rolls. A similar thing in GURPS would be to roll 4d6 but pick the best three of those four dice.

 

[Cross Planes]

In D&D 5e, an "advantage" roll means you get to roll your d20 twice and pick the better of the two rolls. A similar thing in GURPS would be to roll 4d6 but pick the best three of those four dice.

I apologize for not breaking it down better. I also realize that you are dealing with a flat roll vs a bell curve so the math might not work very well.

 

[Sharrow]

I haven't played GURPS in years so forgive me if this just won't work but could you use a variation 5E's Advantage & Disadvantage where you roll 4d & take 3 lowest for Advantage and then 3 highest for Disadvantage?

You could, but why? Doing that does weird things to the probability curves and devalues high skill levels. And you'd probably still have bonuses and penalties for some things anyway. Advantage/disadvantage adds complexity unless it completely replaces bonuses and penalties (and in D&D also completely replaces changing DCs, which it doesn't {it's a shitty mechanic for a game of D&D''s mechanical weight}).

 

[thebigh]

I won't advocate using it, but I would point out that 4d6 drop highest keeps the bell-curve more or less intact. It becomes skewed and the mean moves from 10.5 to 8.79 but it's still a bell curve. In play it likely wouldn't feel very different to a simple +2 or +3 modifier except that crit successes become 3.5 times more likely and crit fails become 6 times less likely. You become more protected against fumbles and because of that I can understand why some people might prefer it to a simple +2 or +3.

 

[Ravenswing]

Mm, I'm with Sharrow. The way to less complexity isn't to add MORE moving parts. This hobby's already littered with far too many bizarre mechanics just because someone (a) thought something was Cool!, and/or (b) was trying very desperately not to be sui generis.

Beyond that, one of the attractions of GURPS is that you have some certainty as to your odds of doing things ... as indeed professionals ought to know. I see no benefit towards turning "I've got about a three in five chance of pulling off that shot" into "Hell if I know."

 

[Sharrow]

I won't advocate using it, but I would point out that 4d6 drop highest keeps the bell-curve more or less intact. It becomes skewed and the mean moves from 10.5 to 8.79 but it's still a bell curve. In play it likely wouldn't feel very different to a simple +2 or +3 modifier except that crit successes become 3.5 times more likely and crit fails become 6 times less likely. You become more protected against fumbles and because of that I can understand why some people might prefer it to a simple +2 or +3.

GURPS already provides fumble protection, albeit only when you get to an effective skill of 16-. You also get an increased critical chance at 15- or 16-.

 

[thebigh]

GURPS already provides fumble protection, albeit only when you get to an effective skill of 16-. You also get an increased critical chance at 15- or 16-.

True. But in this context I was specifically talking about rolling an 18, which is always a crit fail regardless of skill.

 

[Kage2020]

In D&D 5e, an "advantage" roll means you get to roll your d20 twice and pick the better of the two rolls. A similar thing in GURPS would be to roll 4d6 but pick the best three of those four dice.

I love how "Keep the Best Three" works in EABAv2, but it's not something that I think that I would want to try and replicate in GURPS.

 

[Skarg]

I mean, what I do, is just apply my years of experience as a TFT & GURPS GM, and my years of thinking about things since I became a TFT GM. It gets easier. The TFT & GURPS books are resources for how things work, and what modifiers are appropriate. You do NOT need to learn or use them all.

What I have found, is that the more I've used the system, the easier it became. At first, TFT (GURPS' simpler ancestor, re-released in 2018) was more than enough detail for me, but it was extremely useful (especially as an 11-year-old first-time GM) to have rules for how to handle all sorts of situations, AND FOR THOSE RULES TO MAKE SENSE, and be aimed at normal humanoids.

I put the making sense part in all caps, because that was why we got into TFT, and rejected D&D. It's relatable. It makes sense. It recommends having things make sense. It has several examples of the types of simple mechanics that can represent things making sense.

TFT was enough for us for about 5-6 years of heavy play. After that, we started to find it a bit predictable, and started to want more detail, complexity, options, etc. A year or two later, GURPS 1e appeared, as was perfect for us. GURPS supplements and 3e kept pace with our interests. (GURPS 4e was too much crammed into the Basic Set, while also trying to appeal to a different kind of gamer.)

Anyway, I may be too experienced with GURPS and my own tastes and ways of playing, and also too unfamiliar with yours, to offer very useful advice, other than you can just add and remove any of it to taste, but that I find it got immensely easier, for me, with experience. I don't use complex rules and house rules because I love being overwhelmed. I do it because it's NOT overwhelming to me, and I've grown interested in tuning things that much.

But I'd advise people to start with TFT or a pre-4e version of GURPS, and/or the 3e GURPS Lite and add some world book, and then start sneaking in a few rules from the Basic Set from anything you find lacking. And/or play with some experienced GMs who will handle most things for you but learn from how they run things.

 

[Kage2020]

While the experience is always going to be a field leveller, "git gud" ( ) is what I had hoped that this wouldn't turn to. I may have only started with GURPS 3e before migrating to 4e, and then took one hellacious break, but what I was looking for was more approaches and procedures that I did not already have.

(Also, I have TFT but when I cracked it open and it didn't really inspire me so I put it back down again.)

Anyone who has used GURPS for even the briefest amounts of time and has sought help on the various forums will, before the usual dog piling starts on GURPS, be told the following (in no particular order and all true):

• Start simple with Lite. It has all you need in 32 pages.
• Remember, GURPS is 3d6 roll under against a target number +/- situational mods!
• Get used to Lite before you begin to add in more detail through the other supplements.
• Get How to be a GURPS GM. It will really help (insert other How to be... options depending.)
• <arguments then break out as to what is considered "core">
• <arguments then break out as to why you shouldn't use GURPS and why its fundamental broken>

This is GURPS' version of calculus' derivation from first principles. Let's certainly keep this in mind, but can we not skip to the equivalent of just using dy/dx = ax^a-1 ?

I agree about "tuning things". Elsewhere, in the past, I would frequently note that the sentiment of "...it just feels like GURPS" is somewhat disingenuous when one considers it is not a comment that is frequently applied to other generics of house systems. The difference? The time spent to customise GURPS to the setting and shaping it from a generic to a dedicated system that just happens to use GURPS as it's mechanical substrate.

So, again, the question is not to echo Bones' discussion with Spock in Star Trek IV, but rather to identify useful approaches and procedures that could be helpful either to overwhelmed novice GMs (good identification, there), or experienced GMs--even experienced GURPS GMs--that might want to run the game without memorising the entire game line ( ).

If all it comes down to is what I've already identified, then fair enough.

Edit: I couldn't unsee the lack of punctuation where it was needed.

 

[Skarg]

Well, my first impulse is to think that it makes most sense to hear what a specific GM is experiencing, and try to offer tailored help.

I don't know much about Amber, so I'm not really sure what you're hoping for on that front.

The only things I would replace the range table with, is a differently-tuned range table, or GURPS' original Increment system.

I don't like range bands much, and I don't much like the BAD nor the DFRPG simplifications. Modifiers are something where I've memorized most of the ones that commonly come up, and I have decades of experience picking numbers that feel about right for how difficult something would be. BAD and "everything's another -1" both seem inferior to me, to GM assessment. Some GMs find BAD helpful, or just "wing" modifiers, I tend to think if a GM has played much GURPS, they could assess modifiers pretty easily. Unless the GM really struggles to come up with appropriate numbers, that tends to work.

But maybe I'm too far removed from before I learned to do that, to relate to the difficulty and think what would be helpful to say about it.

Still "don't sweat the modifiers" is good as long as the GM isn't doing a bad job with it.

I've memorized the % odds of 3d6 roll-under, and also have a "feel" for it, and for skill levels and target numbers, from having been using that core system since 1980. Once you have that down, then you can think things like "how good should someone have to be, to have a good (or a 50/50, or a near-certain) chance of succeeding in this situation? That can be translated into a difficulty modifier. With practice, it takes almost no time to generate your own reasonable-enough modifiers on the fly.

The Basic Set advises to pretty much never look up rules or numbers during play, if it can possibly be avoided. Look things up between sessions, or when players are talking amongst themseleves. During the action, "when in doubt - roll and shout!"

And don't let the players refer to books during the action, either.

I tend not to even let them think too long before saying what they do, if it's their turn during combat. If they can't say what they do fairly quickly, and are holding up the game, then apparently they're taking the Concentrate (on what to do) maneuver. Next player . . .

I almost never dispense with combat maps. At most, I'll use larger-scale and/or pencil sketch maps rather than hexes and counters. In long-range encounters (e.g. with guns) it makes a lot more sense not to use hexes. But hex-based combat is one of the reasons I want to play. And again, it doesn't slow me down much at all. So again, maybe my perspective isn't relevant to this conversation. ;-)

I think maps also tend to make action situations easier to play out, because the map and positions on it answers tons of questions about who can see and do what when, with near-zero conversation necessary - people see the situation and react to it, instead of talking, describing, asking and arguing about it.

The 1-second scale is to fairly/correctly resolve situations where people are in a situation where they can mess with each other immediately. When that's not the case, the people outside the lethal immediate situations can be ignored for several rounds, until/unless they become involved. When people aren't fighting someone, they can do things at a much larger time increment. Figuring out how to run that as a GM isn't really covered, and I suspect comes with experience, but I don't find it all that hard to figure out. It does mean though that (for example) if two people are in a knife fight, while everyone else is in the next room trying to unlock a door, they're pretty much not going to be involved in the fight at all.

During combat, many NPCs (and some PCs) will tend to be spending time doing inefficient things rather than non-stop fighting, unless they're actually right in the middle of fighting someone.

What I do tend to simplify/ignore, is calculating point costs for traits. And I don't use most of the 4e things like Powers, Imbuements, Innate Attacks, (usually) most of the Reaction Roll system, most of the Wealth/Status rules, most Enhancements and Limitations, formulae for "correctly" calculating point values of customized traits, etc.

I tend to have a GM Control Sheet for the main party characters and the common NPCs, and the adversaries and other likely-to-appear characters, that show the numbers I might need to know, with many characters on one sheet of paper.

 

[Savage Schemer]

The Basic Set itself suggests getting a bit fuzzy with the one-second time interval when it comes to how much the PCs can speak during a round.

After years of hating even the idea of a 1 second round (and being so hung up on it I'd avoid the game entirely), this was something that really stood out to me on a recent "fresh" read through of the game. Specifically, the text makes the point that you should be constantly moving in and out of "combat time". Even when you're still effectively in combat. This allows for those moment where a lot of things seem to happen really quickly, as well as "breathers" where perhaps you take a few moments for dialogue and the like.

My own natural inclination had been to keep everything to 1 second during "combat scenes", which draws combat out to the point of painful absurdity.

That proved to be a real eye opener moment for me that suddenly made GURPS much more palatable. I haven't yet got GUPRS back to the table to give it an honest go, but I'm kind of keen try it out.

 

[robertsconley]

When we are talking about 1 second round we are talking about a combat system where you get to do one action and one action only. Unlike other systems where multiple things can happen during a player's turn.

Most players find a combat system where you can do two things like a move and an attack. Quaff a potion and attack, etc. To be more enjoyable.

 

[Sharrow]

You can do two things in very limited circumstances. You can 'move and attack', which lets you move you full move and attack, but your attack is severely limited in accuracy. Also, when you 'all-out-attack' you can choose options that let you do more than one thing - but doing and AoA means no defences until your next turn, so it's a high risk choice.

I've considered going to a 3-4 second turn with two options allowed, but it changes quite a few things around moving and attacking, would require some rule to prevent 'run around' attacks, and so on, and I'm too lazy to write all that up for what I feel is a limited benefit. I've made peace with the fact that most fights will be over before anyone can reinforce, unless they're right in the next room.

 

[Moonglum]

GURPS is a groovy game, but when I want to play it with a lighter touch I reach for TFT

 

[Kage2020]

Okay, let's see where this goes.

I don't know much about Amber, so I'm not really sure what you're hoping for on that front.

It's an illustration of a procedure to support asynchronous gameplay by, essentially, removing dice and using qualitative terminology as a method of determining outcomes. While the Amber DRPG doesn't do quite so well as, say, the Unisystem approach to going diceless, there are other procedures---such as using an overlay of FUDGE (mapped to GURPS resources)---might be helpful.

On the other hand, the "Amber" approach is in some ways less elegant than Unisystem and is not what I would want to do in synchronous play.

The only things I would replace the range table with, is a differently-tuned range table, or GURPS' original Increment system.

Or, as you note and as noted up-thread, just use the range bands from Action 2: Exploits. You might not like them, but they're an option of not having to deal with full Range/Speed table.

Modifiers are something where I've memorized most of the ones that commonly come up, and I have decades of experience picking numbers that feel about right for how difficult something would be.

Again, this is the "git gud" argument that, if you'll forgive me, is not particular useful in this circumstance. We're back to Bones and Spock again.

I'm happy that you're "decades of experience" works for you---like it would work for anyone with any system---but that's less useful to novice GMs, GMs whose preferences don't align with spending decades of what for them might feel like banging their head against a wall, or for people who bounce off GURPS because it's "too complex".

Specifically, the text makes the point that you should be constantly moving in and out of "combat time". Even when you're still effectively in combat.

True. And the game that I mentioned---EABAv2---does this mechanically in interesting ways, too. But there it is mechanically expressed, so bouncing in and out of combat---or taking more or less time to do a thing---is covered mechanically. On the other hand, bouncing in and out of combat time as it pertains to such things as, say, Aim and Evaluate might be more problematic to the aforementioned novice GM or someone that doesn't want to memorise a raft of modifiers.

Again, I'm playing Devil's Advocate for some of this---trying to take the stance of someone that bounces off GURPS' modifiers. The simple solution is probably to give ranges for event types and environmental situations and let the GM choose a value Likert-style.

Most players find a combat system where you can do two things like a move and an attack. Quaff a potion and attack, etc. To be more enjoyable.

At the same time, you've got the absurd 1-minute round that I remember from AD&D. ;)

You can do two things in very limited circumstances. You can 'move and attack', which lets you move you full move and attack, but your attack is severely limited in accuracy.

I was going to point this out, but Sharrow had already done it.

I've made peace with the fact that most fights will be over before anyone can reinforce, unless they're right in the next room.

Here is where the guidance for bouncing in and out of combat/non-combat time might be useful especially as it might pertain to switching into moves like, say, Aim and Evaluate. (For example, if you're playing a Fire Team and have recently repositioned during combat, have re-set, reacquired targets and evaluating options/opponents, how might that play out relatively simply when one bounces back into 1-second increments?)

(FWIW, I personally like bouncing between the time scales and though it was an excellent touch in EABAv2, too.)

GURPS is a groovy game, but when I want to play it with a lighter touch I reach for TFT

Let's assume that's not an option in this case because, of course, you could just name any other "lite-r" game out there, too?

 

[Moonglum]

TFT is not just another 'lite-r' game; GURPS directly evolved from TFT and inherited pretty much all of its DNA.

 

[Kage2020]

TFT is not just another 'lite-r' game; GURPS directly evolved from TFT and inherited pretty much all of its DNA.

Yes, I know. But you might as well try and suggest that "I" go play AD&D. It might share some DNA with subsequent editions, but they are very different beasts.

I... think that this thread is done, TBH. Thanks for the input, all.