Annoying Game Questions You Want Answered

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Poryphory house was hilarious. It tried so hard to be edgy that it went past grimderp to fucking hilarious. For example, the decision that since polymorphed animals didn't have the charisma to be prostitutes that they decided to polymorph random giant regenerating shit-eating monsters to be prostitutes... Someone was either a genius or retarded...

Tyrannosauruses had 10 Charisma. That's not awesome, but it's more than enough for a $20 lay. They're in the SRD. If I were going to make polymorph sex slaves for my brothel, they would be my go to.

I'd pay extra for that. I'm just sayin'.

[Prak]

Yes, but you'd pay a premium for drider prostitutes.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I wouldn't have to pay a damn thing, I know enough about spider mating habits that I am perfectly capable of picking them up for free. Free tip: Start by grabbing her by the mandibles so she can't inject her venom into you.

[Daniel]

Why does GURPS seem to have such a bad reputation online? Any time I've played it, either with people over the internet or in person, it's run smoothly and been a good time.

A good GURPS campaign starts with the GM working out which parts of the rules set he is going to use this time. That does not mix well with the whole GM's have cooties attitude many of the Den regulars have.

[virgil]

A good GURPS campaign starts with the GM working out which parts of the rules set he is going to use this time. That does not mix well with the whole GM's have cooties attitude many of the Den regulars have.

The Den doesn't feel that GMs have cooties. Insofar as Den can have a consensus, the opinion on GURPS has been sparse because it's more of a system design toolkit than a system, which makes any praise/criticism difficult to make. You don't give sports reviews on helmets and kneepads, for example.

[momothefiddler]

If everyone has a pretty solid idea of what they're doing, GURPS works pretty well in my experience. If most people are ok with it and the GM is really solid, it can take a couple newbies.

Then you have my friend, who knew I liked it, so while I was out of state at school he bought the corebooks and decided to run a cinematic zombie game with a group of other people who also didn't know the system. And none of them like math, or reading rulebooks ahead of time.

That lasted about as long as you might expect, and my chances of getting any of them to play a GURPS game I run are roughly 0 at this point.

I think it's really easy to have a terrible first experience with GURPS, and it doesn't have the player base to push through such experiences like some other systems might (I've had plenty of awful experiences with WoD and D&D, but if I want to play a ttrpg, I'd better suck it up and try again).

[RadiantPhoenix]

I thought the den consensus was, "GURPS sourcebooks are the best at what they do, even if you're playing a different system." That sounds like a strong endorsement to me.

[Daniel]

If everyone has a pretty solid idea of what they're doing, GURPS works pretty well in my experience. If most people are ok with it and the GM is really solid, it can take a couple newbies.

Then you have my friend, who knew I liked it, so while I was out of state at school he bought the corebooks and decided to run a cinematic zombie game with a group of other people who also didn't know the system. And none of them like math, or reading rulebooks ahead of time.

That lasted about as long as you might expect, and my chances of getting any of them to play a GURPS game I run are roughly 0 at this point.

Start with GURPS Light, add a few optional rules to emulate the genre, pick a zombie template, pick a point total for beginning characters, pick a starting point.

Seriously, GURPS is easy as long as you realize that less is more.

[virgil]

Seriously, GURPS is easy as long as you realize that less is more.

That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

[Aryxbez]

That does not mix well with the whole GM's have cooties attitude many of the Den regulars have.

I'll bet that most of us here have DM'ed games ratio-wise (myself included). It's not so much that, but lack of consistency when a given RPG falls to "DM fiat" for basic things to arbitrate when we're playing a GAME. Something we're using to be on the same page in the first place, but games to this day still use it in various disempowering ways. Humans as we are, will give various unreliable results, especially if you're going to rely on one person for the entire structure of a game. If anything, GURPS should encourage the group to come together for what rules they want used. Likely requires them all to know the rules quite well if they're using all this stuff opposed to Lite (which I may have consider doing sometime).


Some actual questions:
1) I recall Lago_Paranoia said once that 4e finally figured out summons in one given supplement(s), but then ones after it pucked it up? (I think it was Psionic Power that was one forget the lessons) Wondering if anyone can help me find the quote (already tried), or answer what books those were where summoning was done well? Basically want to look at it to see if it's a good template to handle Summoning Monsters for a new fantasy game (I just know want them to take up some actions controlling more than likely).

2) So there's some RPG's I want to review for the Den in the future, but have trouble wrapping my head around them. Whether its like opaque mechanics that are harder to figure out (Through the Breach), bunch of granular crap that I'm perhaps focusing on the wrong things (Age Past), or otherwise new enough in general it can be harder to get immediate bearings on the rules and what's over/under powered. What would you guys suggest for ways to help overcome that, and give a more productive review?

[Daniel]

Seriously, GURPS is easy as long as you realize that less is more.

That's not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Well, I'm not exactly a GURPS enthusiast.

But GURPS having options for everything so that you can make very precise choices to match the needs of a particular campaign is one of the games main features.
Also, a lot of the time going rules heavy is a waste of time.

[momothefiddler]

If everyone has a pretty solid idea of what they're doing, GURPS works pretty well in my experience. If most people are ok with it and the GM is really solid, it can take a couple newbies.

Then you have my friend, who knew I liked it, so while I was out of state at school he bought the corebooks and decided to run a cinematic zombie game with a group of other people who also didn't know the system. And none of them like math, or reading rulebooks ahead of time.

That lasted about as long as you might expect, and my chances of getting any of them to play a GURPS game I run are roughly 0 at this point.

Start with GURPS Light, add a few optional rules to emulate the genre, pick a zombie template, pick a point total for beginning characters, pick a starting point.

Seriously, GURPS is easy as long as you realize that less is more.

?? I feel like you missed the entire point of what I said. At no point did I say GURPS doesn't support a cinematic zombies game; I said that GURPS doesn't support people unused to the system jumping in without a lot of guidance, and when it fails it fails hard. I could run a cinematic zombies game. He was under the mistaken impression that he could buy the core books and have people show up at his house on Saturday. And that latter misconception is both understandable in the ttrpg environment and fatal in terms of GURPS.

EDIT:

Seriously, GURPS is easy as long as you realize that less is more.

Yes, and knowing that it's a toolkit and knowing how to use that toolkit are learned skills. "Realizing less is more" is a big chunk of GM expertise in GURPS and it's not one that the books do a great job of easing you into, especially since you're almost definitely coming from a background of "if it's written in the book, it's (at least intended to be) law".

[Daniel]

Don't worry Momo,
I understood. It is just that I found picking up basic GURPS expertise easy. But I gave up on "if it's written in the book, it's law", relatively early in my gaming career.

[Prak]

Look, the real trouble with GURPS is the real trouble with the hobby in general everything. 98% of everything is crap, and that includes GMs. We can talk about game theory and have nice little circle jerks and flame wars over what is and is not good, but most GMs in the wild are shit, and while a game can be designed to compensate for that it's extremely difficult to do, and most games don't even try, and most of the time you have to settle for a shit GM, settle for a GM who is vaguely competent but doesn't do things your way, or settle for GMing. GURPS being more of a toolkit than a game just exaggerates this problem, because while a crap GM can run a D&D game that you can wring some enjoyment out of if you can get on the same footing as them, a crap GM will make a crap GURPS game and it's a lot harder, I would imagine.

That said, if I found a Hellboy/BPRD fanboy who ran even a kind of incompetent GURPS Hellboy Sourcebook+IOU game, I'd call that a win on first principles.

[Gnorman]

Free tip: Start by grabbing her by the mandibles so she can't inject her venom into you.

Fun fact: this is also an effective tactic when dealing with human women.

[K]

Poryphory house was hilarious. It tried so hard to be edgy that it went past grimderp to fucking hilarious. For example, the decision that since polymorphed animals didn't have the charisma to be prostitutes that they decided to polymorph random giant regenerating shit-eating monsters to be prostitutes... Someone was either a genius or retarded...

Tyrannosauruses had 10 Charisma. That's not awesome, but it's more than enough for a $20 lay. They're in the SRD. If I were going to make polymorph sex slaves for my brothel, they would be my go to.

The adventure had animals as well, but they decided that intelligent Cha 15 monsters that were hanging around on a nearby island would bring in bigger bucks.

Lots of elements of that adventure are dumb, but I think that most adventures can reasonably been said to be that way.

I think I liked this one because it actually was memorable. Memorable adventure settings have always been a failure point in published DnD adventures.

[Prak]

So, Tome of Necromancy makes several references to "Lifesight" but I can't find anything called "Lifesight." Is that supposed to be the feat Life Sense?

[Username17]

The thing that got me about the gulguthydra polymorphed into a prostitute was that it was the authors trying to be more clever than they actually were. They were like "Yo! gulguthydras have high charismas for being scary or something, so when we turn them into sexy ladies they are high charisma sexy ladies! Aren't we clever?" And the answer of course, is no. You are not fucking clever, because that's stupid.

In 3e D&D, anything that gets separated from your body reverts to its original form. This means very importantly D&D polymorph doesn't change how you smell. So any creature that has, for example, an incapacitating stench, is not one that can be convincingly polymorphed into a human. However sexy it looks, it will still have an incapacitating stench.

I would in general like D&D adventures to try to be smarter. But obviously there's a hard cap of how smart an adventure can be based on how smart the writers are. And Paizo doesn't really seem to be blessed with the smartest people.

-Username17

[virgil]

Pathfinder's polymorph rules don't seem to have the rule of separated parts reverting, so scent would be changed. I don't know if this is specifically applicable to the gulguthydra because I don't know how old the adventure is.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I think I liked this one because it actually was memorable. Memorable adventure settings have always been a failure point in published DnD adventures.

I've run Skull and Shackles for Pathfinder. I've read Poryphory House once years ago. I remember less about Skull and Shackles.

[Daniel]

In 3e D&D, anything that gets separated from your body reverts to its original form. This means very importantly D&D polymorph doesn't change how you smell.

-Username17

In defense of the idiots of this world. Realizing and remembering this sort of detail at the right moment mixed in with all the other rules stuff shows considerable brainpower. Most people never notice.

[fbmf]

So, Tome of Necromancy makes several references to "Lifesight" but I can't find anything called "Lifesight." Is that supposed to be the feat Life Sense?

http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Lifesight_(3.5 ... e_Ability)

Game On,
fbmf

[hyzmarca]

So any creature that has, for example, an incapacitating stench, is not one that can be convincingly polymorphed into a human. However sexy it looks, it will still have an incapacitating stench.

It could plausibly be a sexy human that doesn't bathe. Or that uses skunk spray as perfume. That's not a very inviting prostitute, of course, but still, a hole is a hole, even if that hole is probably diseased. That's what condoms are for.

[RadiantPhoenix]

So any creature that has, for example, an incapacitating stench, is not one that can be convincingly polymorphed into a human. However sexy it looks, it will still have an incapacitating stench.

It could plausibly be a sexy human that doesn't bathe. Or that uses skunk spray as perfume. That's not a very inviting prostitute, of course, but still, a hole is a hole, even if that hole is probably diseased. That's what condoms are for.

I would imagine that it would be difficult to fuck while incapacitated.

[hyzmarca]

So any creature that has, for example, an incapacitating stench, is not one that can be convincingly polymorphed into a human. However sexy it looks, it will still have an incapacitating stench.

It could plausibly be a sexy human that doesn't bathe. Or that uses skunk spray as perfume. That's not a very inviting prostitute, of course, but still, a hole is a hole, even if that hole is probably diseased. That's what condoms are for.

I would imagine that it would be difficult to fuck while incapacitated.

Clothespin on nose, the standard method for defeating all smell-based attacks.