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NecroLord
Dumbfuck!
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I don't know if these guys have any theater backgrounds. Just voice acting and some movies on the side.
There many voice actors who did both theater and movies.
For example the honorable David Warner(RIP). Played Gorkon(in Undiscovered Country but also the Klingon Academy game) and Irenicus(Baldur's Gate 2).
Also played as the intimidating cardassian interrogator Gul Madred in TNG.
saint amchad
Novice
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Its almost as if a certain rpg theater group vidcast brought in a lot of homosexuals and perverts...
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saint amchad
Novice
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I've learned that in life, I should spend my time with the most intelligent people I can find. People smarter than myself. That is getting harder and harder to do nowadays, especially in ttrpgs. What's the best complex crunchy system out there? I cut my teeth on Shadowrun, DnD 2.0, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, CoC, Gurps and Battletech. I'm looking for old school 1970's style simulationist.
Not the most complex, but the most popular complex. Something that requires a masters degree to play?
CoC is my go to rn but too many GM's want to kill your character making it all one shots. Ive been looking at Cyberpunk, but probably the older editions. I see a lot of new lets plays have become "theater of the mind" combat bullshit.
Not the most complex, but the most popular complex. Something that requires a masters degree to play?
CoC is my go to rn but too many GM's want to kill your character making it all one shots. Ive been looking at Cyberpunk, but probably the older editions. I see a lot of new lets plays have become "theater of the mind" combat bullshit.
WhiteShark
Learned
GURPS, definitively. It can be made as complicated as you like and is decidedly simulationist. The only other system I've seen compared to it in that regard is HERO, but I've never used it so I can't comment. GURPS also has a a pretty good batch of grognards who can help out with system questions and advice. The system isn't flawless (and neither are its grogs), but I can't think of a better fit for what you're describing.
saint amchad
Novice
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Does anyone even play GURPS anymore? I never found a GM that lasted more than a session.
WhiteShark
Learned
It's obviously not as big a community as, say, D&D 5e, but there's still a dedicated playerbase. The odds of finding people to play in-person are probably pretty low unless you take up the GM mantle yourself. There's a GURPS Discord server and a regular thread on /tg/. You can find a game in either if you look.
The flakiness thing is a whole different issue. The GMs I personally know are wonderful and consistent but ghosting seems to be 'part and parcel' of online tabletop. All you can do is try to read the people you're going to be playing with beforehand or run a game yourself and handpick the players.
saint amchad
Novice
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No I meant, I played back in the day and the new GM's never lasted because they were overwhelmed by all the options. They usually gave up on the system all together.
I'm preparing to run AD&D 2E in a custom world that mixes Crusader Kings 2 barony building, Civilization style tech tree, and using a system similar to what is in Birthright's kingdom system. To top it all off we'll be using Battlesystem to resolve large scale battles. I have a thread here in The Gazebo with all the details.
you people watch way too much of this stupid shit and listen to way too many podcasts. grow up
HeroMarine
Irenaeus
I'm planning a GURPS Cyberpunk and a GURPS Fantasy campaign down the road. I'll keep you posted, if you can play online PnP.
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Play by post or live?
HeroMarine
Irenaeus
I'm still considering options, whichever is more popular. If you're interested in it, I'll post more about it in the future here: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/gurps-in-2023.145840/
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Alex
Arcane
What do you mean by "70s style simulationist"? As far as I know, 70s and early 80s systems tended to not care much about "simulation" at all. Some of them were particularly complex not because they were trying to represent things in multiple different ways; so you had some skills you had to roll a d100 to see if you succeed, others were done on a d10 or 2d6 or whatever. I would be very glad to be shown wrong in this, but actual care for incorporating rules that simulated something of the physical world only began in the second half of the 80s. And even then, while this trend did affect many games, most of them were affected only on the level of making the settings and game-play more like a world you would explore; without much worry about mathematically simulating anything (World of Darkness is an example of this, the system was more or less simple (and even a bit broken), but there was some care put into making the different clans and cities into something consistent. As far as I know, there is little beyond the two big ones from that time, Shadowrun and GURPS (and Shadowrun, while careful to consider how many things should work in system, has a base system that can hardly be called a simulation). The trend died down towards the end of the 90s, and by the middle 2000s, both Shdowrun and GURPS had new editions that weren't as focused on this as before, though to be fair that was much more the case with Shadowrun than GURPS; GURPS loss of focus is something more editorial than rules based.
Some games exist outside these two that tried different, sometimes interesting, things. I know there is one called Phoenix Command that is supposedly too complex, but I've never played. Aces & Eights is a bit of an outlier, it came out in the 2000s and has a bunch of subsystem all using different rules, a bit like those older games. But it has an interesting way to deal with damage using "shot clocks" and silhouettes. Basically, you overlay the shot clock (which is printed over a transparent sheet) on top of a silhouette representing who you are trying to shoot. The game comes with a few of those, but the GM can download any image in the internet to represent the situation (angle, position, cover, human shield, etc) of who is to be on the receiving side of a shot. The shooter determines where he wants to place the bull's eye and rolls. The better he rolls, the closer to the bull's eye he hits, depending on a draw of a card, your shot will veer to one side or another. Another one that seemed really interesting is "Twilight: 2013", released in 2008. It is a military, post-apocalyptic RPG. I've never played it, but the rules seemed pretty interesting. In particular, I remember there being rules to how many calories your character needed based on his attributes. Most rules like that are optional, though, so the GM is free to select what he wants to focus on.
As far as I know, complex "simulationist" RPGs has been a pretty dead genre in the last 15 years or so (again, I would be very happy, very happy indeed if anyone is to prove me wrong). GURPS, at least, besides still being mostly compatible with the 3e era stuff (although how ST works now can be a bit of a headache), still got a few articles and pdfs that are pretty interesting. I think tactical shooting is probably the prime example of that in the new edition, and Douglas Cole wrote a few interesting articles in the 3rd iteration of the Pyramid magazine (now defunct, but the pdfs are all still available). As such, GURPS is probably your best bet for complex simulationist stuff, if this is what you meant.
By the way, funnily enough there was this news on the front page of SJGames today:
Many games by Fantasy Games Unlimited were very simulationist as was Game Designer's Workshop games.
Top of the list is Aftermath! published in 1981. Here's the chart you needed to use to resolve any and all combats.
Champions came out in 1981 and that was a simulationist superhero RPG.
Alex
Arcane
I don't know much about FGU, and of GDW, I most know them from publishing Gary Gygax's RPG after he was ousted from TSR. Dangerous Journeys is not exactly what I would call a "simulationist" RPG. The game is full of details, mind you, and is very interesting. But these details are not exactly concerned with simulation. I will try to check Aftermath! when I have the chance. I get the impression that FGU did make games where combat was much less abstract than in D&D, so that is something that I definitely missed in my post. If I am not mistaken, Rune Quest and other Chaossium games from that line also had this characteristic.
How? I am not too familiar with Champions, although I know the HERO System. I wouldn't call HERO a simulationist RPG (in fact, I would say it is the opposite), but I am open that Champions might be a different beast altogether, especially early on.
Edit:
To be clear what I am calling "simulationist", GURPS Supers in 3rd edition (that is, the book that was available during 3rd edtion of GURPS) had the "Body of Fire" advantage. That advantage was levelled, and said the flames your body was made of had a temperature of 500º (I think it is using Fahrenheit, so that would be 260ºC) plus 25º per level. The advantage has rules to figure out how much damage that should do upon contact or proximity, but leaves it up to the GM to figure out what could be burnt or not given the temperature. The rules for psionic powers were even more so geared by "simulation"; each level of teleknetic power allowed the psychic to raise or lower the temperature of 10 cubic inches of an object (that had to be affected whole) by 50ºF for each turn (second) of concentration. Damage from this and possibly from catching fire was left to the GM (and while raising the whole body temperature of someone enough for them to catch fire might be clearly fatal, this might really not be the case when the power was used on something non organic).
In 4e, on the other hand, Body of Fire is a meta-trait, that is, a template built from other advantages as a way to save time. This already shows the drift away from the simulationist approach. The system is more concerned with making sure the trait matches the meta-game usefulness of other aspects rather than that it matches the in game "reality". Furthermore, the damage done by someone with that meta-trait is done by an "innate attack", a type of advantage that causes 1d per level and can be configured in various manners according to modifiers you might purchase for it. In particular, it is modified so that it is a continuous aura instead of a blast as per default. Now, I am not arguing this is bad, I think tweaking these advantages can be a lot of fun (and I think HERO is a better system for that). But again, this is more concerned with the meta rules system than the imagined reality of the game. For instance, you could use these advantages to try to simulate what Spider-man does with his famous web. But a simulationist game shouldn't be about trying to fit the imagined reality to the abstract rules, but the other way around. In such a game, rather than figuring what advantages you need to replicate spider-man's web, you should have some parameters for the web (how much tensile force they can take, how much can you produce per second, etc), and use these to figure out, during play, what you can do with it. Can you sling from building to building? That should not be an issue of buying some movement advantage associated to the web, but rather of the web being able to withstand your momentum, the speed the web rope is launched and of you being coordinate enough to keep the swinging motion without having to focus on it.
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The guy behind ACKS and the more rescent Ascendant is a trained Harvard attourney and he took a look at this whole thing:
https://arbiterofworlds.substack.com/p/the-perfidious-treachery-of-wotc
TL;DR version: WotC is going to get away with this unless the OGL movement sticks together and makes their own new thing.
https://arbiterofworlds.substack.com/p/the-perfidious-treachery-of-wotc
TL;DR version: WotC is going to get away with this unless the OGL movement sticks together and makes their own new thing.
saint amchad
Novice
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That's a bit hard to read, but it doesn't look too different than Cyberpunk 2020 flowchart. I want something that is still fun and doesn't simulate every single individual raindrop and is complex just for complex sake.
Am I alone in needing grid/hex maps and a system based in somewhat logical reality? I used to play with guys who could do the complex calculations in their head, and they had a good logical argument as to why something would work in the game world and I learned something new. I look at gaming as running a simulation for things one would like to experience, but it seems most players want to play what used to be called "bullshitting sessions".
WoD is fine for storytelling, as a lot of systems are, but that's a completely different hobby in my eyes. Am I out of the loop? Was I in prison too long and the hobby passed me by?
I played Champions. It was tons of fun.
One of the original big boy companies. They did tons of RPGs through the years.
GDW is famous for Twilight: 2000 which the first edition is very simulationist.
Hero System is the refined version of Champions.
Where do you think Steven Jackson got his ideas from? None other than Champions and that has advantages that levels up your combat abilities.
WhiteShark
Learned
No, you're not alone at all in that regard, but it is true that since the hobby has gone mainstream it has drawn in many who prefer completely untethered fantasy. I've watched the decline on /tg/ in realtime for years now. Even D&D 3.5 is grounded compared to what passes for an """RPG""" these days. Fortunately these types tend to segregate themselves into D&D 5E or storygame systems, so you're not liable to meet many if you stick to something crunchier.
Also, Alex, I'm forced to disagree with you a bit. It is true that the GURPS rules tell you game mechanics rather than physical traits of an effect, but that's because the player is expected to start with the physical and then work out the game mechanics. Everything non-fantastical still starts with base reality for its calculations, such as with all ballistics damage, for example. The idea is that the mechanics reflect reality to the extent that you can rely on the mechanics rather than running all the physics calculations yourself at the table. If all you were given is real-world physical traits and a calculator, there would cease to be much point in having game mechanics at all.
Alex
Arcane
I am not sure what you are disagreeing with me specifically. If it is about 4th edition, then some things indeed have a base on reality (thought, to be fair, a lot of that is inherited from 3rd edition, like ballistic damage). But other stuff is just inherited even from man-to-man as an approximation of what the designer thought was fair. One particular quip I have about it is how easy it is to cut through the best low tech armour. The best DR you find in the basic book is 7. A short sword with sw cut damage is going to do 2d-1 damage in the hands of an ST 13 warrior. ST 13 in GURPS is nothing to laugh at, I agree, but it is hardly something reserved only to super heroic characters either. 2d-1 will be able to cut through DR 7 27% of the time. This wouldn't be so bad in a more abstract system since then you could argue it is find weak spots in the armour or whatnot, but GURPS already has provisions for targeting specific body parts and finding chinks in the armour, so that doesn't work so well. Especially since the damage that got through will be multiplied by 1.5 like all cutting damage, so it can't even be argued that this is some damage done by force rather than literally cutting through the armour.
If you mean my example with spider-man, I was just trying to explain the difference of rules being based on "meta" aspects of the game, such basic advantages, vs being based on "reality". I know most games will give you easily usable game rules, and by all means, they should. But there is the issue of how workable these things are. For instance, neither in 4e or 3e, is there a real relationship between "fire" or "burn" damage and temperature or flame size. In 4e in particular, though, being able to withstand any kind of temperature, no matter how high, is not translated into any amount of burn DR. The burn damage then exists as a kind of meta concept, separated from that of fiction, whether it may be caused by a dragon's breath, a flaming barrel being thrown against you of what have you. Funnily enough, this doesn't apply to how GURPS Magic works, and the "resist fire" spell allows you to ignore any burn damage whatsoever, unlike any power in the book.
WhiteShark
Learned
There's an optional rule from Low-Tech that fixes this:
This does seem to be the case. I'm querying a friend on whether there is any book that gives a concrete scale, but so far all I've found is the broad rule in Basic Set. There's enough there that one could derive a scale based on implied temperatures but how true to life that would be I do not know:
If you spend part of a turn in a fire (e.g., running through the flames), you take 1d-3 burning damage. If you spend all of a turn in a fire of ordinary intensity – or if you are on fire – you take 1d-1 damage per second. Very intense fires inflict more damage; for instance, molten metal or a furnace would inflict 3d per second! Use Large-Area Injury (p. 400) in all cases.
It's only separate at the level of the rules, and for good reason. The expectation is that you take the advantages that logically represent your character in the fiction. If the source of your resistance to ambient heat should also make you resistant to heat damage, then you should take those two advantages in tandem. On the other hand, I can think of plenty of reasons why they might be separate. Maybe you're only resistant to heat applied in the very short term, in which case you would only take Damage Resistance: Heat and not Temperature Tolerance. Maybe you are resistant to heat in the long and short term but not to internal burn damage/body temperature manipulation, so you would take Damage Resistance: Heat (External) and Temperature Tolerance. Maybe you have a supernatural ability that functions along conceptual rather than rational lines and so only defends against one or the other.
The point is, by decoupling the two effects you have a better toolkit to model precisely what you want. Combining related effects might seem reasonable at face value but it locks the rules down in a way that is antithetical to the fiction. It would be crazy to expect the game designers to foresee every possible use case and permutation. Better to leave the exact ins and outs of the fictional physics to the GM and simply give him rules for how things would work under his premises. As long as the fundamentals are grounded (and they generally are), the fantastic can be entrusted to the people at the table.
Alex
Arcane
There's an optional rule from Low-Tech that fixes this:
Lots of little issues like that have patches in books beyond Basic Set. I will concede that the necessity thereof does mean Basic Set isn't as grounded as it could be, but most other systems don't even come close in this department.
Fair enough, but my point was simply that being grounded in "realism" isn't something that came from the beginning.
As for that peeve, to be quite honest I think that is still being pretty generous to the attacker. Hitting someone in armour with a sword like it was a club would, I think do more damage to the sword than to the person or the armour. But like your patch shows, this is far from being unfixable.
Consider this, depending on the material a character is made of, then flames of a certain temperature shouldn't do any damage at all. On the other hand, a very hot flame, even if it is small sized, might be able to cut through his "burn DR". This points to that fire or heat damage should be derived from two variables instead of one. And that is not even going into larger characters being able to be damaged more by fire because they have a larger area to burn.
To be quite honest, I fully understand why most games don't want to bother with this level of detail. But GURPS used to be one that was willing to tackle it, even if only as optional rules. Nowadays, well, you still have people willing to do it, but the focus of the game is far from it. Stuff like Dungeon Fantasy and playing around with powers clearly became more important.
Sure, but that is the point, that the design of 4e sees the game's reality as fitting around the rules instead of the other way around. 3e frequently had the opposite take (but not always), which is one reason why its advantages aren't standardised like 4e. You might be able to get the same "effect" for more or less points using advantages that are different in what they represent.
The point I am trying to make is that this approach that was more common in 3e was "simulationist", that is, the rules tried to fit themselves around what was represented, not asking the players to fit what they represent around the rules. In particular, I was pretty annoyed with 4e when I tried to replicate a fire giant from AD&D and then found out that there was no way to make you literally immune to fire or heat. At least with a normal advantage.
I can think of reasons why your resistance to burn damage might be strange and finicky, but if that is the case you could just make a new advantage to represent them (and they probably will end up looking less contrived than how you might end up justifying the game as is).
That is nice, but you can leave the tools for the GM to come up with new abilities as he sees fit as well.
The reason the rules in 4e look like what they do is because of "balance". The meta system has to be equalised so that the specifics of powers, abilities and whatnot can be left as details or modifiers of the approved meta concepts. I don't have anything against this kind of design, but I think ultimately, GURPS 4e falls short of HERO in trying to ape it. Instead, I would rather see the kind of design we had in 3e taken even further. In 3e, you had specific prices for different attribute values, which meant that a race with inherent attribute bonuses might pay less character points for the same deal as another race with different attributes. Many people saw that as a weakness of the old system. I say it was a strength and should be taken even further! Let different races have entirely different cost schemes for the attributes, like supers did to strength. If character points is somehow proportional to rarity, then something costing 50 character points might indicate that maybe 1 in 10 humans (or what race have you) would be that good (or, conversely, -50 cps for something 1 in 10 would be that bad).
My point is that, for a "simulationist" game, I expect something where the rules are molded to fit with the fictional reality of the game (that might include things like aliens, psionic powers and nuclear battery powered lasers), not the other way around.
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