[GZG] A tale of two threads... i.e. Playtest.

9 posts ยท Mar 2 2007 to Mar 2 2007

From: Evyn MacDude <infojunky@c...>

Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 11:42:32 -0800

Subject: [GZG] A tale of two threads... i.e. Playtest.

There seems to be two camps, and maybe one or two in the middle.

One is hot for FT stuff

the Other for FMA and or Bugs Don't Surf.

and the others.

With that I am firmly in the second camp, I would love to see
some stuff for small scale ground combat/rpg combat.

I would love to thrash out character development, detailed vehicle
construction and combat, and integrate Full Thrust
flavored character driven space combat at the fighter/dropship
or small starship level.

At this point My default for this is to just use GURPS, but that seems to be a
less than optimal solution at this point.

From: damosan@c...

Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 14:56:09 -0500

Subject: Re: [GZG] A tale of two threads... i.e. Playtest.

> On Mar 2, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Evyn MacDude wrote:

> At this point My default for this is to just use GURPS, but that

Having looked at the GURPS construction rules I'd sooner eat glass. Extra
sharp glass....

Damo

From: Laserlight <laserlight@q...>

Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:01:05 -0600 (CST)

Subject: Re: [GZG] A tale of two threads... i.e. Playtest.

> There seems to be two camps, and maybe one or two in

Plenty of people are in both camps--FMAS *and* FT3.

> I would love to thrash out character development,

Stuart Murray's ECC Saturday AM game had Heroes and Extras. The Heroes had
personal characteristics: Shooting skill, Brawling, Smarts (ie reaction rolls,
spotting), Toughness (armor), Wounds, and Luck Points (which let you
automatically succeed at a die roll). Extras came in groups of about 4, led by
a Sidekick, and acted like SG squads. That worked well and was quick and
cinematic.

From: Roger Books <books@m...>

Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 15:38:57 -0500

Subject: Re: [GZG] A tale of two threads... i.e. Playtest.

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lI had to design a
GURPS spaceship once. After getting over the shock that they weren't metric I
tried for two hours. I ended up converting to MKS, doing the design and then
converting back.

The sad thing is I think in Imperial Units.

Roger

> On 3/2/07, Damo <damosan@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Evyn MacDude <infojunky@c...>

Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 12:55:15 -0800

Subject: Re: [GZG] A tale of two threads... i.e. Playtest.

> On Mar 2, 2007, at 12:38 PM, Roger Books wrote:

> I had to design a GURPS spaceship once. After getting over the

Damn straight, I much prefer SI to imperial.

> The sad thing is I think in Imperial Units.

There is a 12 step program for that isn't there?

From: Samuel Penn <sam@b...>

Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 20:55:59 +0000

Subject: Re: [GZG] A tale of two threads... i.e. Playtest.

> On Friday 02 March 2007 19:42, Evyn MacDude wrote:

The problem I've had with FT in this regard is that it doesn't scale very
well. Characters are often interested in things at the fighter scale (and
don't want to die due to a single d6 roll)
or small ships - say a few hundred tonnes in the Traveller universe.

However, most SF universes also have very big ships, and I'd really like to be
able to use the same system to model them *without* changing the scale each
time. You can model a battle between Far Traders at 1 mass = 10dt can model a
battle between dreadnaughts at 1 mass = 1000dt, but you can't mix them both in
the same battle (extreme example, I know).

Sometimes you (well, I) want to be able to do this, and would like to use one
scale for simplicity without small ships being a single hull box and big ships
being thousands of hull boxes.

GURPS tries this, but rolling 6d6 x 10,000,000 for damage is just silly.

From: Samuel Penn <sam@b...>

Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 21:00:15 +0000

Subject: Re: [GZG] A tale of two threads... i.e. Playtest.

> On Friday 02 March 2007 20:38, Roger Books wrote:

I never bothered with the third step.

http://www.glendale.org.uk/gurps/index.html

Somebody is working on a similar conversion for 4th Edition.

The biggest ship I designed with GURPS Vehicles was an Imperial Star
Destroyer. I don't have the design anymore, which is a shame because it was
very silly, even sillier than my ISD designs for FT.

From: Tom McCarthy <tmcarth@f...>

Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 16:11:41 -0500

Subject: RE: [GZG] A tale of two threads... i.e. Playtest.

Not entirely OT...

I think the Earth Force Sourcebook for Babylon 5 primarily had characters as
bridge crew, and let them break the FT rules if they made RPG skill rolls of
sufficiently difficult degrees.

As fighter pilots, RPG characters could benefit from the More Thrust ace
rules, and of course, 'dead' in FT simply means 'shot down' or 'fighting to
keep the ship from exploding' or 'forced to eject', all of which let the RPG
continue nicely.

From: Roger Books <books@m...>

Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 16:21:03 -0500

Subject: Re: [GZG] A tale of two threads... i.e. Playtest.

_______________________________________________
Gzg-l mailing list
Gzg-l@lists.csua.berkeley.edu
http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lNicely cinematic.

Darth Vader was "dead" at the end of A New Hope.

#!@$, I forgot to buy the original cut of SW over Christmas.

Roger

> On 3/2/07, McCarthy, Tom (xwave) <Tom.McCarthy@xwave.com> wrote: