Lancer

Ohh... that is what Fionavar's avatar was supposed to be . A gecko, not a dragon. Everytime I see that avatar now I will be thinking of the Geico lizard commercials Congratulations everyone!

You might like the new Red Sonja comics too..

And an addendeum to my most recent post: This "superhero vs. common man" problem also varies in severity depending on the setting. Some D&D settings were just inherently more lethal than others inspite of having a D&D ruleset. In Planescape, for instance, PCs just can't go into Sigil/an Outer Plane/ a gate-town or whatever and start murdering innocents without immediate retribution from any of the various planar beings, Gods, celestials, lower planar beasts, Abyssal Lords, Lords of Nine, Lady of Pain (and so on) most of which would be able to pen the PCs into the dead book without breaking much of a sweat. Not that I advocate playing Planescape under d20 but in a d20 Planescape game this would hold true as well. So the lesson learned here is that you can instill "the fear of combat" notion into PCs if there are forces inherent in the setting that will always be more powerful than the PCs. If you play your cards right the superhero vs. common man syndrome corrects itself, IMHO. Either you are in a setting where no matter where you go there is always something bigger and badder than you are (Planescape) or the DM provides realistic consequences that make the players think twice before taking out that nice village community (as explained above).

I don't have any favorite actors or actresses.. Just ones I think are hot.. That said, Angelina Jolie and Hudson Leick are incredible looking women.

And you don't find couples dancing to be fun?

I love to dance and I am pretty darn good at it. My favorites are swing dancing and latin (particularly merengue!) Though I can also do "booty dancing/hip hop."

I don't see these said "role-playing" solutions as a cruel way for the DM to "punish" the PCs for not behaving but actual logical, believable responses to these situations. I actually have no problem if the PCs wish to take out a village under most circumstances.. I just want them to realize that there will be repercussions for their actions... That's all...Just like in real life. Depends on the size of the village. What are we talking about here? A tiny community of 50 or several hundred? Or a small town of a a thousand or so? For a tiny community of 50 out in the middle of nowhere I concur that that a party of high level PCs would be able to take it out without so much as breaking a sweat. This becomes more difficult, however, as the community population size and/or sprawl increases. Although the town guard (if it has one) would be obligated to stay and fight, on the whole people are not stupid, mindless beasts that just fight to the death. There will be many that will flee simply out of fear of losing their lives or those of the ones they love(i.e women with children, or the weak..etc.). There will probably be others that witness the carnage first hand and realize how futile it would be to retaliate. As a result, there will most likely be surviving witnesses and so word would eventually get around (particularly in larger villages) unless the PCs take extreme measures such as completely surrounding the village with a large military force. But this is a very different scenario altogether from wiping out an entire community. I don't think powerful PCs under any ruleset should fear engaging combat when it comes to confronting their local barkeep. How you explained you handled this situation was very good though. Never said anything about letting the PCs getting hunted down within one or two days of committing the atrocity. Retribution could take days, weeks, months (or even years) depending on how quickly word gets around, reinforcements are sent and how well the investigations go. Regarding investigations, even if there is nobody alive that can identify the PCs (which would be very unlikely after such a large slaughter and because of survivors as explained above) clues left behind can very well implicate the PCs. The same way PCs are always successful in finding clues to implicate NPC villains, I don't see why NPC investigators wouldn't be able to do the same every once in a while(in fact this could be a potential source of new rivals/enemies for the PCs). Just because they are the PCs and the heroes of your story doesn't mean they are above the law. Done carefully none of these examples represent "convenient opposition" but rather realistic scenarios that could very well happen. Nevertheless, I agree that these are roleplaying solutions. But since these are realistic consequences (in my mind) they would hold true in any other game. They are good enough to still instill a "fear of combat" attitude into the PCs without losing the veil of believability.

I believe Vampire:Bloodlines already won RPG of the Year for 2004. Didn't it?

haha Although, I am still backwards when it comes to class-based systems. *shrugs* I imagine that the SLA Industries core book is still around. It has a dark hardcover with a pic of Halloween Jack on the front. Hard to miss. The core mechanics are superb and (like I said in an earlier thread) combining the core mechanics of SLA Industries with the extensive skill list of GURPS would yield a game that would literally shake the heavens themselves. If nothing else, SLA would be a great source of inspiration for your own home-brew game.

Yeah, good point... I confess that I don't know the others, but then what does that tell us of the industry standard... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> They should be "rasing the bar" every year not lowering it

@ Jediphile My favorite skill-based system to date is the one in SLA Industries. The game mechanics are *SIMPLE* yet very fluid and detailed... gameplay is quick. Basic mechanic involves rolling 2d10+ skill ranks vs. target number.. 11+ is success while 21 and above is a critical success. that's literally is it. No more silly rolling tons of dice, counting successes and subtracting failures. SLA has a very good skill, disadvantage, advantage system, has a great phase combat system and the setting is just pure gaming bliss. I imagine that the core concepts can be easily translatable to any game. It is one of the skill-based systems that least sucks. Highly Recommended.

Many of the skills (and the tons of disadvantages/advantages) form the function of having more attributes. There is no real reason to have tons of attributes and subabilities if the game mechanics makes due without them.

Jediphile just loves keeping this thread goin'

Sorry.. I got carried away I have never played d20 CoC so I can't comment on that since d20 sucks so bad..but I have something to say... Dang.. It took me forever to find this post. But here are my thoughts on the matter here. Check post #292.

Well, of course that's the whole point with trade-offs. All skill-based systems I have tried have them too.

Bah..It's not nearly as bad as you imply. PO renders much of the material in the PHB, DMG and such to be redundant. And I only use part of C&T, most of S&P, and don't use S&M at all. Although I do have house rules modifying rules I didn't like in the core rules, most of my effort has been on fleshing out the game world (like the cosmology stuff I have been sending you! , or AD&D priesthoods, updated Immortals, ..etc ) rather than actual fixing of rulesets. I have *a lot* of material that fleshes out Mystara and Planescape for my campaigns and although I do have some rule fixes, PO does a good job of doing the brunt of that for me.

No.. d20 just sucks a mouthful of _____ No.. you'd just have other problems like unnecessarily cumbersome (or simplified) combat, streamlined but cumbersome mechanics, mini-maxing supreme, incomplete skill/magic lists, and even more house rules..etc. There will always be issues in all systems that would need to be addressed. The only one that I have tried that wasn't oozing problems left and right was SLA Industries.. And even in that one mechanics for space combat and vehicle stats are inexplicably absent. Which is inexcusable being that it is a sci-fi game where space travel is downright common. In addition, why spend many years converting your favorite campaign setting to this other game (running into incompatibility issues and making many unfortunate compromises with the conversions along the way) when you could instead be making adventures, running campaigns and fleshing out your world? I just have no desire to convert AD&D's magic system, all 15 Gazs, HW Gazs, Creature Crucible, Immortals rules, War Machine rules, all the various monstrous compendiums + the equivalent for my Planescape/Ravenloft settings to another ruleset. Only then having to contend with making house rules for things I find out later to be imbalanced (and/or incompatible) given the ruleset I decided to use.. I'd be 80 when I am done which would leave little time left for actual gaming and therefore not a very realistic option. I'd like to think I am a crafty enough DM (and so far it would seem that way )to render all the above unnecessary. If I were to create my own gameworld from scratch(which of course wouldn't already come with its own ruleset), then and only then would I consider using something other than AD&D. The classes in PO aren't really restricted classes, though. They are more like templates. The only restrictions present are the implied fantasy archetypes that I choose to adhere to. Although you can choose to make untraditional characters such as a ranger wizard or a gnome/paladin/necromancer <_< or whatever suits your fancy with your favorite skill-based fantasy ruleset, such characters don't make much sense within the scope of traditional fantasy literature and movies. If you don't want to follow any archetypes that's fine but I personally prefer my characters to mimic the archetypes established by fantasy heroes of myth and lore. Player's Option allows for sufficient variability within the established fantasy archetypes. And even if you don't like something, PO is quite flexible and easily adaptable.

Yeah, but I guess Lancer just doesn't feel that the classes restrict him or his game, whereas I see classes like a box or a leash - as long as you're fine within the box you're assigned to, you really won't have a problem, but the walls are there, and you'll feel them immediately if you push against them. Or it's the leash - you're completely free within the space the leash allows you, but try to go further than that and you'll be reined in (or else choke, which is what I do...). The game might still work with those restrictions, but even if I can live with them, I still want them gone on principle. No leash for my imagination and no box for my character to fit into! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Just make a very, very long leash. The sky's the limit. The only real leash is the DM's own restrictive imagination.

Not to mention the rules just aren't good. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The character creation rules are superb. I agree that combat is unnecessarily cumbersome, but then again, I don't really play GURPS. Because of the painstaking research they put into all their products, their sourcebooks are among the best sources of inspiration in the industry. I use their sourcebooks and skill/disadvantage/advantage lists as inspiration for other, better games.

I would love to see a generic-post apocalyptic GURPS sourcebook which explores all different ways in which a world can get destroyed. Be it from nuclear warfare, a plague, an alien invasion, natural disaster...etc. It need not be nuclear in cause though it certainly could be. Basically, I'd like a GURPS book which gives a comprehensive treatment of the genre from top to bottom like SJGames does with all its sourcebooks. They always seem to do a great job doing the research in every sourcebook they put out.. You gotta hand it to them.

What I woud like to see is a GURPS Cyberpunk sourcebook for the 4th edition. I am hoping that is on the agenda. The old one is nigh impossible to find nowadays. Edit: Another one would be a GURPS Post-Apocalypse book. That would be nice.. AFAIK, SJ Games has never produced a general sourecbook based on the post-apocalyptic genre. I think this one would sell.

Very extensive. I do believe including all the relevant material from the compendii in the core books was one motivation behind the 4th edition (in fact, they say so in the introduction...). To give you an estimate, the first book, "Characters", is 330+ pages long and is almost exclusively about character creation with Advantages from p.32-118, Disadvantages p.119-166, and Skills p.167-232. So the compendii should be completely obsolete if you get the "Characters" book. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Wow... That is indeed extensive.. Looks like I will be getting them then

"Alien" was very good but "Aliens" was even better. Aside: But shouldn't this really be in the way-off topic forum lest you incur the wrath of the green dragon.

How extensive are the lists in the GURPS 4th edition set? Is it ridiculously extensive or will they have to resort to making another Compendium to include missing disadvantages/advantages like in 3rd?

Ohhh... I was confused when I read this initially because of course rangers can have mastery under PO rules.. Then I realized you are probably talking about high and grand mastery. But, yeah, I never really had any problems with rangers not being able to cast spells or mages not being able to heal.. But then again those are just the fantasy archetypes I am used to. I don't see too many healing mages or spell-slinging rangers in literature. I do agree that the scoundrel vs. ace pilot discrepancy in d20 Star Wars sounds like a major oversight on the part of the designers. Did the designers ever watch the movies?