Cheat Sheet - Conditional Injury

If you are interested,
check it out.

Conditional Injury is a wound based system to replace the hit points in GURPS. I don't necessarily prefer one or the other, but it's a fun alternative that gives a different flavor to dealing with wounds; some might argue it is more realistic than hit points, I dunno, haven't watched enough people die in real life to make an authoritative statement one way or another. Get the cheat sheet here, if you like it.

Pseudobot - Math and Graphs; How Fair is the Random Stat Generator?

So, last week, and the week before I worked on a tool to randomly generate character attributes in a way that the results would all have the same point values. At first, the algorithm assumed a character would have no decreased attributes and secondary characteristics, which was not satisfying to me, so I adjusted it so that the character could have minimum values based on some numbers I extrapolated from various GURPS sources as the bare minimum ok amount for a character. I think this was a good improvement. However, after making a naive implementation of the algorithm that gave each attribute or secondary characteristic an equal chance of occurring, on a whim, I decided to generate several thousand characters to see what the expected outcomes would be like. The result was that certain things apparently had certain unfair advantages in selecting them that made it so that certain attributes had noticeably lower or higher averages, thus began a complicated process of trying to make the algorithm as balanced as possible.

Pseudobot - More Balanced Random Stat Rolling

This took a really long time to get right, but I have arrived. This is the stats of 20,000 randomly generated characters with 0 points.

• Average DX - 10.04
• Average HT - 10.09
• Average IQ - 10.17
• Average ST - 10.07
• Average Basic Move - 4.68 (This seems pretty low for the average 0 point character, but it is actually pretty ok for behind the scenes reasons)
• Average Basic Speed - 5.03
• Average FP - 9.98
• Average HP - 10.26 (Weirdly high, but still ok.)
• Average Per - 10.02
• Average Will - 10.04

The goal was to make it hit close to what a 0 point character would be. The tricky part is that there is bounding logic which means that the difference between HP and ST isn't allowed to get too far off track, so, for example, if HP is currently at the minimum relative threshold to ST, more ST can't be added until more HP is added. This causes a complicated chain reaction where slightly nudging the balance one way or the other suddenly makes a different result much more likely. I had some weird problems with average IQ suddenly jumping 1 or 2 whole points - not 10.2, 12 - trying to balance the probability of FP versus HT, HP versus ST, Perception and Will versus IQ, but after holding it up to a very shoddy standard of scrutiny, it looks "good enough for me." I might analyze the math and source code in an upcoming post, maybe someone can point out an obvious flaw.

Pseudobot - Jump Command

I added this to pseudobot; I think it's pretty simple, but ah well. It calculates jump height and distance and optionally includes enhanced move and super jump. Wow.

Pseudobot - Random Stats Roller

Similar to my pointless slaying and looting random character generator, but this one just randomly spends a given amount of points on attributes and secondary characteristics. Now you can have "balanced" random stats if that is your thing. I dunno why I made this, but I did.

Pseudobot - Infinite World Universe Generator

It does what I say it does. It rolls random tables and comes up with a lot of stuff for a parallel world. Use it if you like, don't if you don't.

Perk: Quick (Action)

This is a short post, because I need to post something, but today is busy. Basically, extrapolating from the Fast-Draw skill and the Quick Reload perk, perhaps anything that is only almost too long for combat that is represented as a series of ready maneuvers can be reduced in time.

1. Determine the series of ready actions that needs to be done quickly, this needs to be somewhat specific, similar in scope to an instance of Fast-Draw†. Make a DX/E skill based off of that. 
2. After this, take Quick Action† perks as per the application of Quick Draw (Muzzleloader), which is described probably in many places, but for reference, check out Gun-Fu p. 21.

I think this is a pretty simple cinematic stop gap for a weird question I've seen come up a lot, "how can my character do this annoyingly slow thing that is performed as a series of ready maneuvers without a controlling skill in a fast way?" It might be a little powerful if unchecked, but there are rules for controlling how many perks a character can have if that is a concern for a GM.

Review: Pyramid #3/120 - Alternate GURPS V

It's good enough!

The alternate GURPS issues of Pyramid have generally been the better ones, and this one is pretty good as that goes. I forget whether it's the odd numbered ones or the even ones I liked more from the first four, but this one feels like third place of the whole group; neat thing is, whether or no
t the odd or the evens were my two favorite, the placement of this issue doesn't break the pattern. Hooray for that, I think! Let's take a closer look then.

Magic - Dungeon Fantasy Martial Artist Spell List

I mean, this is basically unarmed
combat, right?

Someone on a forum was discussing the possibility of a small buff to martial artists in Dungeon Fantasy. The suggestion was to allow them access to the body control magic college and base it off of their Chi power. I think that's an interesting start, but because I can't think of anything interesting to write this week, let's go with a slight refinement of that concept.

Campaign Planning - Dungeon Fantasy War

Probably using this?

My other campaign did not get off the runway after a few weeks. That's fine. I can put it in my back pocket for later, maybe polish it up a bit more and recycle it. So let's try something a bit less niche. A combination of Dungeon Fantasy sensitivities and Mass Combat experimentation. I wouldn't be surprised if this turned out to be a flop as well, but ah well.

Review: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 4

15% cover art.

For better or for worse, the Dungeon Fantasy Monsters line has been a little bit inconsistent in what to expect from the titles. Better because sometimes you get cool surprises; DFM2 had some really neat stuff. Worse because sometimes you don't know that there is cool stuff under the covers; I didn't get DFM2 for forever because it sounded pretty boring from the title alone. This book though, Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 4 - Dragons is everything it says in the title; it's monster dragons 4 (for) Dungeon Fantasy. Ok, let's take a closer look.

Encounter: Lagiacrus

Something Like this.

I'm playing a lot of Monster Hunter World, and I dunno what to write this week, so as a thought exercise, let's stat up a Lagiacrus. Using data from one of the Monster Hunter Wikis, Gulliver Mini from T-Bone's Diner, the 3e stats of a Liopleurodon from GURPS Dinosaurs, and the 3e to 4e conversion guide, let's see what happens.

Pseudobot - Updated Some Indices

Was slacking on the Pyramid issue index. It's updated for the last two months now. Can't think of anything interesting to write this week, but that counts as doing something, I think. Pseudobot is now used on 154 Guilds, or what most people call "servers." Sounds kinda cool.

Review - Hall of Judgement

Store Link

In a meta-GURPS way, this is kind of a special, potentially paradigm changing book; it might be the first major third party GURPS (technically, Dungeon Fantasy RPG) supplements completely endorsed by Steve Jackson Games. Its potential success or lack thereof could have an impact on future third-party supplements, so in that particular vein, it's a pretty exciting book. I backed the kickstarter at some level, forget which, but the one that gets the hard copy and the digital copies; I'm informed that my hard copy is in the mail, so this review is mostly based on the contents of the digital media. I doubt the physical media will have a world changing effect on my opinion, but if it does, I certainly will revise this review.
With that segue complete, I'd like to say now that despite the book not looking like something I wanted, I bought the book, and I was not surprised; it was very much what I expected anyway: a pretty down-to-earth dungeon delve with some Norsey trappings. I knew I am not particularly fond of most of those things and I still bought it hoping that maybe it would defy my expectations; it didn't. It was exactly what was advertised. So if you read the blurb on warehouse 23 and you like what you read, you might like this; if you read the blurb and you don't like what you are seeing, there is a good chance you won't like it. In any case, let's take a closer, more detailed look; let's see what I liked and didn't like, and paint a clearer picture of my conclusion.

Campaign Planning - Lands out of Time

A large amount of the work
is already done for me.

Let's use the campaign planning form from the back of How to Be a GURPS GM and see how much it helps in planning. I'm going to be using Lands Out of Time as a basis, so some of the questions are answered for me; others are not. Let's see if this helps, and let's see if it has any holes that need to be shored up.

Pseudobot - Broken Blade Calculator Enhanced

This week, I added repair calculations to the Broken Blade command. Those were more complicated than the rest of the functions. I had to extrapolate out some of the costs for big weapon damage because the pyramid article only goes out to HT - 10. I found a trendline with a pretty good fit though, so I like the numbers. If you don't like them though, just don't use the calculator for any damage values that exceed -10 I guess.

Pseudobot - Broken Blade Calculator

Made a calculator for the broken blade that calculates a lot of the boring stuff for you so you can get to the cool part faster. Thinking I'll add a feature next week to help calculate repair costs as well. Might see if I can format the data a bit better.

Pseudobot - Despair Fright Check Table

It's slightly different from the other ones. It has a lot of crying.

Like that, maybe

Pseudobot - Added DFRPG version of throwing damage/range calculation

It's not that different from GURPS' version; but it's slightly different. So, enjoy, I guess.

Source

Pseudobot - Added some more critical failure tables

Added all the critical failure tables from the back of GURPS Thaumatology to the critical miss/failure command. No more flipping through books. Roll that Spirit table.

Source