[gurps] GURPS: Nightbane?

[Pauli Hakala]

Jon Lang wrote:
> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 5:55 PM, rekres <rekres at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 9:44 AM, Travis Watkins <terwin3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> If that template is so much more expensive than any of the other
>>> templates, then either A) that template is more powerful than the
>>> others and everyone who does not want to be left behind must play
>>> it(seems unlikely), B) you are not including all of the balancing
>>> disadvantages that will bring down the cost, or C) GURPS is unable to
>>> reflect the disadvantages that normally balance the character
>>> template(seems very unlikely)
>>>
>> D) The Palladium system is wildly unbalanced to begin with and you
>> either play the insanely overpowered munchkin or you SUCK!
>>
>> When converted to a fair and balanced system like GURPS, it just shows
>> up how goofball some of the Palladium material can be...
> 
> More diplomatically: Palladium material doesn't subscribe to the
> notion of system-enforced game balance.  Some character types are
> simply more "powerful" than others.
> 
> Food for thought: in In Nomine, all characters start out with the same
> number of Forces, the same number of Resource points, the same number
> of Attunements, etc.  But when converted into GURPS terms, you get
> wildly varying point totals, sometimes in the hundreds of points.  A
> similar phenomenon sometimes crops up when translating characters from
> GURPS 3e to GURPS 4e, though not nearly as drastic.  Write up a
> character that's balanced in GURPS 4e; then write up the same
> character in Mutants and Masterminds or Big Eyes Small Mouth; or do it
> the other way around.  I can virtually guarantee that the point
> balances won't come out the same - often, they'll be wildly different.
>  And yet all three of those systems claim to provide character balance
> through point balance.
> 
> Point balance does not mean game balance.  It is, at best, a first
> approximation.  At worst, it's a straitjacket that kills
> otherwise-playable character concepts, either directly ("yeah, your
> cop character would fit into my campaign perfectly; I could challenge
> him without squashing everyone else, and vice versa.  But this is a
> 250-point game, and he costs 300 points.  Sorry...") or indirectly (by
> encouraging people to think in terms of point efficiency first and
> concept second, passing up opportunities to flesh out their characters
> with probably-useless traits that would otherwise make sense and add
> flavor in the name of not wasting points, or altering their concept in
> order to justify shaving off points from the total).
> 

Many Palladium character classes are closer to 4 color world of
superheroes than the more mundane, hence in a GURPS conversion the
templates end up costing hundreds of points, just like they should.
GM simply needs to give more starting points than usual for a GURPS
conversion of a typical Palladium game, because of the inherently
epic power level..

With my GURPS 3e conversion of the Rifts setting, I ended up with
allocating 300 points for starting characters - This allowed for
a fairly wide variety of character concepts like mages, psionics,
juicers, borgs, glitter boys etc, while the point total limitation
kept the action just short of demigods and more powerful supers
- Frex, the very powerful and versatile Rifts dragon characters
would have needed something like 800 to 1000 points to start with.

I discussed the matter of starting point total with my players before
we started the campaign, and while they could see the appeal of
allowing for concepts like dragons, they actually preferred to play
characters with a slightly bit saner level of power to begin with,
300 points was a good compromise. (It was also possible to put together
a less powerful dragon species template for those who wanted to play
a dragon even with the lower points total.)


-Pauli
--
"Our ship is made out of darkness, she mocks the laws of nature.
With cables, ropes, tackle and sails, she moves on the waves
of the void. On her decks a red crew, dark as if painted with
blood. From among the hooded cloaks of crimson, eyes of
silver gleam darkly.. Oldest of all is Hiram of Malta, the Red
Commander. He knows the secrets of Schwarzchild Radii, of Neutron
Stars and Cepheids. His hidden paths we follow, like ghosts from
space we strike deep, only to disappear again soon, sometimes even
the fear itself is afraid of us.."
-CMX, Punainen Komentaja
(Translated from the Finnish song 'Red Commander' by CMX)