{"id":2290,"date":"2016-01-14T14:11:33","date_gmt":"2016-01-14T22:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/?p=2290"},"modified":"2016-03-03T16:33:48","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T00:33:48","slug":"streamlining-gurps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/streamlining-gurps\/","title":{"rendered":"Streamlining GURPS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy Thurpsday<\/em>, folks!<\/p>\n

Today’s musings and random neuron misfirings are about\u00a0streamlining GURPS at the table, while you’re running it. It is known, far and wide, that GURPS is “mah jam,” and I love how detailed it can be\u00a0when I want it to be.<\/em> But sometimes,\u00a0it can be really useful to step in the other direction and try to strip away complexity\u00a0instead of adding more.<\/p>\n

GURPS is\u00a0like a microscope — the standard rules are 1x magnification, actual size. If I want to get a little more detailed — say, adding in the bleeding rules, or skills familiarity — that’s 2x magnification. But<\/em>, I can still go even deeper, and explore dedicated books like Tactical Shooting or Social Engineering — 4x magnification. I’m sure there’s an atomic level magnification I simply haven’t discovered yet.<\/p>\n

And I’ve been wrapped in GURPS’ warm, fuzzy embrace long enough to have had a lot of it seared into my gray matter. I may not remember friends’ birthdays, or dentist appointments, but I do know that it’s -1 to parry with a knife, and -4 to try and hit an opponent’s hand. My home games never suffer from “rules stoppages,” having to grind the game to a halt to look something up, because I either already know the rule I need or know where it is on my GM screen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Having said all that, one of my gaming mottos (I have 23) is, the rules don’t matter as much as the fun.<\/em><\/p>\n

If a distant bad guy in a\u00a0game is running away and the party wants to stop him, does it really<\/em> matter if the penalty to hit is -5 or -6? For some campaigns, yes, if the group is emulating a certain type of story and enjoys the specificity and crunch GURPS can bring. But for most one-shots, pick-ups, and convention games, it’s often better to use a more\u00a0“broad strokes” style, \u00a0a way to play that is simplified for the benefit of players who are just looking for a good time and not learning the intricacies of a rules system.<\/p>\n

Now, this can be done to the entire system. I mean, you can break GURPS down to its core\u00a0essence and put it back together in as tiny and freeform package as you like (such as the lovely and free\u00a0GURPS Ultra-Lite<\/a>). That isn’t what I’m doing here. Most of GURPS is super easy because everything you need is right on the character sheet (or easy to remember). So, I usually keep things intact like the wounding modifiers, the maneuvers, the effects of HP loss, all that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n

All I’m changing here is skill resolution, particularly as relates to combat. In my experience, that is the main bottleneck, the thing that can slow down a game as the GM tries to tally together a whole mess of modifiers. GURPS loves modifiers as much as I do (which is to say, a lot<\/em>), but for streamlined games it just doesn’t matter that a minor distraction is -2 and a major distraction is -3, or that a leg is -2 to hit but the groin is -3. I’d rather just say they’re all a -2 and call it a day.<\/p>\n

So, how to do that? The process for determining effective skill<\/strong> in GURPS, the number you need to roll against, is basically something like:<\/p>\n

Base Skill + Maneuver + Target’s Size Modifier<\/h4>\n

+ Postures + Range + Hit Location + A Ton of Other Stuff*<\/h4>\n

= Effective Skill<\/h4>\n

* (visibility, afflictions, footing, mounts… basically, everything else)<\/em><\/p>\n

Base Skill, Maneuvers, and Target’s Size Modifier don’t change. They are core concepts of the system and, more importantly, fairly simple to internalize and remember. That other stuff is what we’re going to streamline.<\/p>\n

Postures<\/h3>\n

The table on p. 551 of the GURPS Basic Set shows the Attack and Defense modifiers for various postures a character might be in: -2, -3, or -4. To zoom out the microscope a bit, adjust GURPS’ usual granularity, I’m going to (mostly) combine the Attack\/Defense modifiers, and limit the options to -2 or -4.<\/p>\n