Fundamentals: The Social Contract

The social contract that should
be enough, but sometimes isn't.

The "Social Contract" is an idea that floats around in Tabletop Gaming about what is expected, in a meta sense for players and the GM. It is closely related to campaign planning, but subtly different; where campaign planning deals with designing the specifications of the campaign or adventure and has direct mechanical or narrative consequences on the game, the social contract is everything that happens outside of a game. In a perfect, ideal world, amongst adults, no one should need to nanny, coddle, and reprimand players, but sometimes there are shades of gray, or a misunderstanding of what is and isn't expected, rude, and polite. Today, I look at a list of questions one can ask themselves and the group while preparing or running "session 0," that might help things go smoother down the line.

Fundamentals: Hidden Doors

Well, come on then, man, someone is
going to find it as soon as they try to
take the wine bottles.

It's a thought been on my mind and that's the fundamental fixture of hidden doors. I get it, they are classic, but they seem like a wonky mechanic to me. I mean, they aren't totally awful, and in some circumstances, they make sense, and they are somewhat iconic of the genre, right? So I'm going to make this a twofer: first we can talk about door mechanics, and then I'm going to get into opinions on hidden doors, which are weird to me, ok?

Fundamentals: Savoir-Faire

This is my first thought when I hear the
word.

I was browsing the official Steve Jackson Games Forum, and noticed a conversation about how many people have taken the Savoir Faire skill, and for what reason. The question struck me as inspirational, because I realize even though it is a skill that almost anyone is always recommended/required to have a point in at bare minimum, it almost always seems like a "waste" besides as a device for defining character. Today, I'd like to brainstorm some ways that I might make this skill more useful.

Fundamentals: How to do "Everything"

Blah blah, business, business, business.

So, sometimes we can't settle on one thing we want to do well, so sometimes we want the ability of ultimate flexibility. GURPS has a few ways to do this, and almost all of them are expensive, but why not catalog them anyway? Today, I'm speaking to abilities that let us become ridiculously flexible, so let's take a look at what they might be.

Fundamentals: Talents and Wildcard Skills

I just went on an impulse
buying spree and got this.
Looks better than I expected.

Today I'm going to write about two different elements of GURPS that try to achieve similar semantic ends, but through different mechanical means. These two elements are:

• Talents - advantages that make you competent at several related skills.
• Wildcard Skills - a skill the bundles several skills at one, giving competence across the board.

I will compare and contrast these devices and try to piece together when one might prefer using one or the other. Let's take a look.

Fundamentals: A Comparison of Ranged Weapons

A bow with a bayonet, am I right?

So, following up on yesterday's post on melee ranged weaponry and the typical pros and cons of each category, I decided to double down and compare the admittedly much shorter list of ranged weapons, including the thrown variants of many melee weapons. Let's take a look and see how they typically compare.

Fundamentals: A Comparison of Melee Weapons

Bow really only counts as a melee
weapon if you use that one advantage
in Dungeon Fantasy 11.

Today, I felt like cataloging a simple at-a-glance, broad stroke comparison between some of the important weapon categories, going skill by skill and explaining the pros and cons of them. There are a few important edge cases here and there, and a few... less important ones? But I hope this can be a useful quick glance for new players that need help making a decision and don't know where to look to find all the details.

Fundamentals: Fighting in the dark

Zoinks!

Darkness is a pervasive obstacle, and makes a lot of thing difficult, especially in GURPS. I had a session last night where players didn't stop to light lanterns, have a fire, or any type of lighting to help them see, and they were mightily surprised to find that they were steeply penalized to the point where a 12 was a critical failure. [Technically, at a modified skill of 1, the player shouldn't have been even allowed to roll, but meh.] This post means to be an index of ways one can deal with darkness penalties, especially from the angle of Dungeon Fantasy and the Basic Set.

Fundamental: Quirks

Sure, wearing a horse mask is pretty
quirky, but can you bring it to life
at the gaming table?

It seems weird that I need to say something about this, but I feel like I need to say something about this. Welcome to the opinion zone, and today's topic is the inscrutable and wholly subjective quirk. What is a quirk? Why do I want them? Why is it so difficult to come up with them? I don't know where to begin with all these questions, but I'll try to speak to why I think you should care about them, and why they matter to me in the games I GM, and how I think you might be overthinking it if you find coming up with quirks to be difficult.

Fundamental: Ranged Combat

First interesting image result for
"Ranged Weapons." The rules for
guns, bows, thrown weapons, and many
missile spells are similar in GURPS.

I was asked to write a bit of a guide on how ranged combat works. I don't think it's especially difficult to understand versus melee combat, so I'll focus on the "gotchas" and the parts I get wrong the most. Without further ado, let's get the ball rolling.

Fundamental: How to Not Die - Advantages and Skills

Unless they have Extra Life.

This is the last possible post in the series that I can think of, besides all the fundamental rudimentary applications of our attributes, and our first line of defense, active defenses, advantages can change the rules of the game to allow us to survive situations we normally couldn't, or simply augment our survival capabilities. Let's take a closer look at all the fundamental abilities that allow us to survive better in the Basic Set.

Fundamental: How to Not Die - Active Defenses and Quick Contests

The person on the right is parrying,
just in case you don't know what
parrying means.

So previously, I started writing about this, and I found that I was going to need to write a lot more in one post than I like, so I decided to break the topic into separate posts. In the previous post, I discussed attributes that are conducive to survival and how they impact survival. Today, I'm going to speak to a mechanic that has a more direct impact on survival, that being Active Defenses. I will go over what Active Defenses are, how to improve them, and then similarly, how Will, HT, and ST also behave in a similar avenue for other situations, namely Quick Contests.

Fundamental: How to Not Die - Attributes and Secondary Characteristics

Lack of HT and FP loss from
dehydration and overexertion.

To be specific, this post isn't about effective combat strategies or little aphorisms like, "the best defense is a good offense," and stuff like that. Nope, I'm strictly talking about mechanisms that you can invest your character points towards so that you don't die. There are a lot of ways to not die, and it could go on for pages and pages, so to split this into manageable chunks, I'm only speaking to Attributes and Secondary Characteristics, which generally have the furthest reaching impacts. Also note, that although there can be many interesting ways to die, I'm mostly focusing on the violent, deliberate, and unsubtle means of shortening a character's life. So in any case, let's get cracking.

Fundamentals: Attacking Twice in a Turn

Sticky Fingers

As a matter of fact, this post is rooted in questions about the Ambidexterity advantage, but I felt like that wasn't enough content to put together an entire post, so I decided to expand on that and talk about multiple attacks in one turn in general. There are a few ways to do multiple attacks and there are usually some good trade offs between each. Let us then take a look at this several methods.

Fundamentals: What can I do during combat?

This doesn't have much to
do with my post. I looked up
"Learning Tabletop RPGS"
on Google Image Search
and saw this. Looks like
something I'd like to look at,
but for some reason, GURPS
isn't on their list of "Top 10
games for beginners."

Actually, in GURPS, you can really do anything during combat mode if you break it down into several Ready or Concentrate maneuvers, but barring "updating my location on foursquare" and "thinking up a really funny one liner for when I finally beat that guy up," what is there to do? Let's break it down.

Combat Maneuver: Feint

Real life example of a feint.

Feints, I feel, I do not utilize enough, maybe? They sound like something with a bit of a niche application, but they might be usable in the right circumstances. On the other hand, I really like deceptive attack. It's kinda fun (if not a little reckless) going for broke with the mindset, "eh, if I didn't miss with the deceptive attack, she probably would have dodged/blocked/parry anyway."
Today, I do little reflection on Feints and try to make them work for me.