These are great suggestions and thanks also for the guidance on Maptools.  Im such a technological dinosaur!  lol

In reply to Ceredyn (msg # 101):

NP. I ended up editing the suggestion to give it a bit more ...style. Sorry if it confuses now that you had already read it :\

The Trademark Move perk let's you add +1 to the all skill rolls for a move like that.

My experience with Extra Attack is that it plays poorly with skill caps. It isn't a very good deal otherwise; you could put those 25 points into the skill for +6, which buys off a Rapid Strike penalty quite nicely. I suppose it does work better when you're trying to do something like shield bash/stab, but there's nothing stopping the user from instead deciding to stab twice.

If you shield bash I assume you can't block with it during that turn, but what about dodge?  Would the shield still help your dodge after an attack?

This combo is cool, but it seems it would hurt your defenses.

In reply to RedSabaron (msg # 104):

There are many benefits to Extra Attack over higher skill and using Rapid Strike.

The points in a skill is really good, but it's only that skill. If you find yourself with another weapon or unarmed, those points won't help you, where EA still works.
EA can also be used with any other manoeuvre, such as a Move and Attack for instance (making the skill cap of 9 much more bearable as 2x9 =~75% chance of a hit). RS may not be used with Move and Attack, not even if using Heroic Charge.
Same as the first point, but EA opens up for a host of different tricks where you can exploit the tactical situation. You could make the "bash and stab" but you could also make a Slam and stab, or a trip and swing or a grab and knee-strike or attack two separate enemies.

I find EA to be cinematic because of the versatility it open ups for. I find it on par with very high skill level or weaponmaster/gunslinger. And despite that I agree somewhat with the statement that trait-cost doesn't automatically make something cinematic, I think the 25 points on this one is an indicator that it is not meant for normal people.

Nope, nothing in the rules prevent you from using the shield to block in the same turn. Nor any loss of it's DB bonus. Not even as an optional rule in Low Tech or Martial Arts.
But yeah, I have seen it houseruels pretty often, that you lose the DB bonus of the shield if you use it to attack.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:38, Fri 04 Jan 2013.

Just like you can attack and parry with a weapon in the the same turn, and wouldn't lose a staff's parry bonus.

Remember though that unless you take a modifier from Powers (multi-strike) you cannot use EA to attack with the same limb more than once. And just because "normal humans can take it" doesn't mean that it's not cinematic, just that one level (without multi-strike) isn't exotic/supernatural.

Shield bashes are not great attacks as it is. I wouldn't add an extra penalty for anyone using one. About the only thing going for them is that they are often heavy, and thus hard to parry.

Very good point.

Ýeah, until you get into cinematic DF play and ad some options from Martial arts. Suddenly you can do Swing cut damage with them and they weigh twice as much, making them über weapons that can't be parried and do a lot of damage as you have weapon-master shield. Get two of them for good measures so you do not have a "no shield side".

...yeah, it can become a bit silly.

Which is what I strive obsessively to avoid.  :)

Thanks for everyone's input.

finally got Maptools up and running again. Still a novice with the whole concept of importing tokens from other sources onto my Maptool, but want to give it a try for greater variety of characters.

Does anyone have a good link to a large treasure trove of character icons I can try to import onto my Maptools?

In my GURPS Star Wars game, one of my players developed the following rules for Force powers for me.  He wanted to get some feedback from the GURPS community as a whole.  There's a lot here, so rather than copy and paste the whole thing, I'm just going to post a link:  link to a message in another game

I wanted to use the magic system to model Force powers rather than using Advantages.  We'd like your feedback on what we came up with.

Anyone up for a GURPS Action game? Troubleshooters doing potentially illicit jobs for private clients. Leverage/Burn Notice/Person of Interest inspired. Sort of cyberpunk without the cyber (or the punk).

It's been my experience that Dungeon Fantasy games tend to have short lifespans here on Rpol.  Any thoughts on why that is?

Let me turn the question around a bit, which GURPS genres last the longest here?

The longest lasting one I was in was Arena of Champions. Arena game. Arena games seem to do really well.
Which other genres seem to have longevity?

I've been in a few fantasy (not DF) games which have lasted quite a while.  I'm of the understanding that the game I'm currently in has been going on for more than a year.

Prior to the game I'm currently in, I was in a Banestorm game which went pretty well.

Fantasy seems to do really well.  However, most of the DF games I've joined have ended after maybe a month at most.

Hm. That's interesting.

I wonder if DF games in meatspace last a long time or if they die out quickly as well?

I haven't had much of a chance to try a face-to-face DF game yet.  I had one which was going pretty well in the middle of last year.  Unfortunately, a leaky ceiling and a rain storm combined to spell doom for the character sheets.  The momentum of the game never fully recovered.

The most successful face-to-face GURPS games I've run have been Supers games.  The most successful ones I've been a player in have been either Modern or Sci-Fi.  While I wasn't a player in the game, I'm also aware that a friend of mine ran a pretty successful game based loosely on the tv show Supernatural.

Thus far, the wrestling game (which I mentioned in the rules thread) seems to be going well.  I'm still working out a few wrinkles in the rules since I'm still trying to figure out how to portray some of the tropes involved with pro-wrestling matches, but it's going surprisingly well.  The group is enthusiastic about playing.  With more time, I'll have more accurate answer of how well; currently, only two sessions have passed.

Games seem to succeed based on two key ingredients:  player commitment and GM commitment.  I don't think the genre has as much to do with it as the engagement of the GM and the players.

I've been in successful supers and arena games, but the two longest-living genres for me have been sci-fi (specifically GURPS Traveller) and fantasy.  I played in both for over four years, and the games were going before I joined them (one is wrapping up now, but the other is still going strong).

I'd agree with that.


It simply seems to me that a lot of the DF games I've joined here on Rpol do excellent when coming out of the gate, but then quickly and abruptly stop.  On more than one occasion it seemed as though a lot of the group simply stopped posting, and, in one of the games, the DM simply announced that he didn't feel like running the game any more.  The most disappointing thing about all of them has been that there are still a lot of character ideas (ones I created for those games) which I haven't fully explored.  I wish I were exaggerating when I said I think the longest one went for about a month before dying off.

I wonder if it has something to do with the character creation process lending itself to a bit less investment. I mean, you can easily just say: "Um...Catperson Swashbuckler, go!" And have no more characterization than that. And even if you have an involved backstory, it isn't going to really show up on the character sheet since (maybe in the quirks) since DF is very, very template based.

So maybe GURPS players are less invested in those PCs and more apt to abandon them than if they were custom made?

The templates provide a lot of choices that make me feel more invested than a ready-made character. I don't think that has anything to do with it.

I think players have failed expectations and become uninterested as a result. Make sure you set clear guidelines for posting frequency. (3-4 times/week and once/24 hours in combat seems very fair.) Hold to those guidelines. Keep your word. Dont change the players' expectations for how you're running the game unless the players are all in favor.

On the player side, all it takes is one person to hold the game up for everything to die out. If you don't want your game to die, be honest and ask your players why they aren't posting. It might be you, as the GM, being boring. It also might be one player who posts half as often as everyone else, which discourages everyone (including the GM).

For less experienced GMs, Robin's Laws of Good Game Mastering is amazing. Buy it.

I don't think that's the case (at least, not necessarily). In my multiple failures at running play-by-post DF-style games (i.e. GURPS games that were based on d20-style adventure modules), I took the standard route to character creation of giving everybody X points to do with as they wished.

That didn't seem to evoke any greater level of commitment (for either the players or for myself) than using templates, unfortunately.


That said, I think that one reason GURPS arena games like Arena of Champions, Zuddha Yuddha, etc. have done well is that their format is much more friendly and compatible with the medium of play-by-post.  Your match starts, you have a week or two of activity, and then it's over. If you're busy IRL, you can skip the next round without hurting the game as a whole. If you don't like the game, you can quit without hurting the game as a whole. Nothing that any one player does prevents, or even significantly hinders, the game's continuation, so you avoid the "one bad apple spoils the whole game" problem that's endemic to more conventional PBP adventures.