GURPS: Star Frontiers, Update #4

Damage types.

Silly, pedantic, element-based damage types.

One thing about role-players is that they fetishize damage types far more than they should. Science fiction games often fall into this trap, but you see this in 5E with all the damage types there, with 13 types being in the game.

Starfinder had eight types, but weapons have levels, and every three or four levels, every weapon type was repeated, with most of the damage types represented. So there would be eight level 1-3 pistols, eight level 4-6 pistols, and so on. Sometimes you needed a cold pistol, other times you needed that electricity pistol. Starfinder's weapon lists were massive, easily filling hundreds of entries, and adventure paths would add dozens more weapons for no good reason.

The game also had two armor class values, energy and kinetic.

The Esper Genesis game falls back on the 5E tropes, but unless a monster has a resistance or weakness to that type of damage, the damage is just damage, and who cares? You have one AC value. Of all the science fiction games, this one does things the most "5E way," and you are not worrying about damage types for most attacks.

And we get to Star Frontiers. You can combine a suit and a screen to layer defenses against different types of damage. Of suits, you can do with either laser or ballistic/melee protection. With screens, you get protection against laser, ballistic/melee, electrical, and sonic attacks. Typically, all our characters wore suits that provided ballistic and melee protection, as well as a screen for lasers. This way, you could rely on the suit for protection in more social situations, such as a fight in a space bar, and then, when the lasers started flying, the screen was turned on. Electrical and sonic attacks were rarer, so those tended to be the ones that got through your defenses more often.

Star Frontiers combat meant "turning on your shields" in personal combat, and making sure you had the correct resistances to damage types in your group. GURPS really isn't about that, and it is a different style of combat in the system that is more armor-focused. We have force screens in Ultra Tech that can function similarly, with a DR 60 (for personal conforming, TL 12^, super science), and you can specify an energy type for a 50% cost reduction. Star Frontiers is not a TL12 setting, though. For a TL 11 field, I would halve the DR to 30.

The conversion is at a point where, if I try to convert mechanics, I will be here doing these little conversions forever, trying to tweak it and make it work, but inevitably breaking something else. One of the things is that GURPS has solved many science fiction gaming problems with the rules the game already contains. GURPS is a well-tested and well-designed system that works, taking into account numerous science fiction tropes and pieces of gear and technology.

I am not giving up on this, but if I want an exact simulation of Star Frontiers, that would require a significant amount of design work. For most people, just use GURPS Space and flavor the setting with the Star Frontiers races and setting, while using GURPS to replace the gear and tech lists entirely.

For the average game, tossing out the Star Frontiers gear, which TSR designed for their "attack versus defense" game, is the way to go. GURPS is far better designed, written, and put together for science fiction gaming the way it is, and more people should just use the races and universe.

GCA: Random Characters

While I love the GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) program, the paid-for alternative on Warehouse 23, GURPS Character Assistant (GCA), is also a good option.

One of the best functions of the GCA alternative is the "Create Random Character From Template" option in the top menu. This option takes a template, preferably one of the more expensive ones, and randomizes the choices so you can create a random character to begin playing with.

Of course, if there are potential synergies, such as weapon master (or fast draw) in a weapon the character is not skilled with, I am allowed to go in and fix those, and do a few clean-up items. If something is game-breaking, I will change it. But I keep things as they are, and if my knight is a shield, spear, and flail user with a sling as a ranged weapon who gambles and has a criminal background - that is who I got.

Spells and gear I will need to add myself. I will let the character's skills guide me, especially for spells. If a wizard has elemental or demon lore, that will change the spells I choose. I will need to build a gear loadout for each character.

Random characters are fun! They force me to play with weapons, skills, advantages, disadvantages, and builds that aren't my typical choices, and challenge me to optimize that build with future character points. If you are an experienced GURPS player and want to challenge yourself outside your comfort zone, play a random character and build them into a viable one.

Also, I am not as attached to these characters as I am to my "pet characters", which I tend to stick with game after game. Random characters will be much more fun since there is little chance that I will want to protect them, and another amazing random creation is a button-click away. After a while, I will be invested in them and want to protect them, maybe, but still, I won't care as much if their story ends, and I need to start another.

I am starting to play through some excellent Basic Fantasy adventures with the GURPS rules, such as the Morgansfort campaign. Now, these adventures and Basic Fantasy are great games, and I can enjoy these adventures with many old-school games, even classics like Old School Essentials or Castles & Crusades. Since I source all my old-school monsters and treasures from Basic Fantasy and convert them to GURPS (see my B/X Conversions page), this works easily for me.

Doing this playtest will likely force me to update my conversion page. Still, there are many good suggestions for quickly adapting B/X monsters to GURPS without needing expansive bestiaries written for the game. Are they perfect? Not by a long shot. Do they work? They should, and with powers that are more like bang skills, like a spider's "entangle 13-" or "venom 11-" powers, they should work well enough, and not every monster is the same (or should be), and even powers can vary. Some spiders won't have entangling or venomous powers.

This is my issue with most kitchen sink fantasy bestiaries, and after a while, players know what to expect. A monster "outside the norm," like a mana spider that shoots magic missiles, will be seen as cheating by the referee, or a goofy one-off. For me? Mana missile 14-, 1d6 damage, 6 shots, and uses spider stats. I'd give them a one-use 12-minus magic web spell. Monsters are not supposed to be familiar. That next fire beetle may explode after it dies. You just don't know.

Much of today's fantasy games contain bad habits or false assumptions that D&D forced on us, and we follow them without questioning. Part of the fun of fantasy gaming is not knowing what to expect. D&D has enshrined all its goofiness and has become predictable and boring. This recycled fantasy culture gets boring. Yes, it is iconic. But this place isn't where fantasy gaming started, and it is not the place in the unknown that makes us fear the next monster in the dark.

For me, GURPS works well and gives me that "immersion feeling" that I crave when I convert a setting to GURPS. This was reported from players of GURPS Traveller as well, even though people played the same setting with the original 2d6 rules, once they switched to GURPS, it almost felt like people were "in VR" and actually experiencing the world in person.

GURPS is highly immersive, with a level of detail and reality that makes you feel like you are in the world, looking around, watching people walk by and doing their things, hearing the sounds and smelling the smells, and living there. I can't explain why this happens, only that it has been reported many times, and I also get that feeling.

This is the GURPS Reality Immersion Field.

It exists.

I will likely expand the setting a little; the encounters and adventures mention traders on the roads, but I have no other towns near the fort to trade with, so I may add a few places of my own. The setting is perfect for expansion, so I shall create a few more towns and link this to the city to the north.

A solid, expanded, old-school adventure with random characters and GURPS?

This sounds like fun.

Kickstarter: Mission X

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamingballistic/mission-x

How did I not know about this?

I went searching Kickstarter for GURPS projects, and I found this one.

A Dungeon Fantasy style GURPS science fiction game taking inspiration from Aliens, Stargate, and X-Com? From Gaming Ballistic, the source of all these high-quality Dungeon Fantasy books, adventures, and expansions? Are you kidding me? This looks amazing.

Tracking this, and a sidebar link added for the most visibility we can give the project.

Let's send this one to the moon!