GURPS: Disadvantages system

Let’s talk a little about GURPS - Generic Universal RolePlaying System, made by Steve Jackson. If you’ve been reading another posts in this blog, you know that this is my favorite system. I love it for its high realism and flexibility, but there’s the most important reason – and its called Disadvantages. If you think they are made for getting extra points – you are wrong, and maybe you should try other ways of entertaining yourself but roleplaying games. I believe that Disadvantages are the main tool for creating character, cause any other characteristics – like a stats and skills – are weak parts,  cause players will always try to have benefits whenever it’s possible,  shortly - there’s only one rule for stats: the more = the better. And the same about Advantages, I’ll show you that: imagine that we’ve just generated a character, it doesn’t matter who – empire swordsman or chaplain of Blood Angels chapter. What do we have without Disadvantages? We have a simple meat grinder, strong and agile, with a list of his battle skills level 16+, and with few Advantages like a Combat Reflexes and Ambidexterity… Perfect war machine without a face. Munchkins will love it, for sure.

I can hear you screaming: “Wait, wait, so where the hell the roleplay is?!”

That’s what I am talking about: Disadvantages. They will upgrade your kill unit to Character. Make your swordsman Blind, drug Addicted and Bully – and you will see the true face and the soul of paper doll holding epic sword +5. Make him Overconfident, Lecherous and, for instance, Greedy – and you’ll get a completely different person. Later I probably will write about my own characters, follow this blog if you’re interested :-) 

So, in my opinion, the stats, skills and advantages are just a background and a base for a really important part of your character. And by the way I also often use the list of Disadvantages from GURPS rulebook in roleplays (games without any system), and I still can’t get how did I play ADnD in the past, without the concept of Disadvantages itself.

Even If you have never played GURPS, you should at least check out the list of Disadvantages – I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, some of them are genius.

And may the Force be with you :-) 

Falloutwiki

Great resource about Fallout setting, you can really find anything you want to know about Fallout there. Enjoy.

Fantasy girls

Don't you like them? ;-) I do.

RPG = Middle Ages? Hell no!

Of course, often it is. Professor JRR Tolkien might be connected with this fact as well as Robert Howard. Hundreds of fantasy novels, movies and games make us associate any roleplaying game with the Middle Ages, swords, crossbows, chainmails and wizards' staffs. ADnD system best fits m.a. adventures in Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance or something else. Personally I don't like ADnD due to it's primitivity, GURPS is much better in my opinion, but actually it's not the topic of this post :-)
I just can't understand people who say "it’s not interesting to play any other tech level setting, cause of blah-blah-blah". Oh, come on. I love tech level 3 /medieval in GURPS/ and i'm playing crpg, mmorpg and even sometimes pnp games with TL3 and its boring heavy-armour-and-two-handed-sword-good-paladins, cloack-and-pointy-hat-and-staff-wise-wizards, leather-armour-and-dual-wield-daggers-artful-rogues, but if you’ve never tried something else - you wouldn’t even be able to imagine what you have lost.

You've lost gentlemen in tailcoats with revolvers in their hands, ladies in evening dresses, waltz, steam locomotives, zeppelins and spirit of Victorian era of Steampunk genre.
You've lost benefits of motor vehicles, automatic weapons, cell phones, TV, Internet and other electronics and gadgets of our time.
You've lost the wild sceneries, savage tribes of survivors, combination of ancient melee weapons with guns of our days and future, the permanent lack of ammo, fuel and food (exactly in this order!), struggle for ancestors' knowledge, their secrets and technologies (from aircraft building to temporary closing-down). These are the features of postnuclear world. Recall the Fallout or Mad Max, isn't it exciting?
And recall the spaceships, all kinds of aliens, laser and beam weapons, force swords and the Psionic or even the Force itself, do you really think all these things are worse than tiresome medieval elves&dwarfs? Give a chance to other worlds, maybe you'll like it more, maybe your destiny is not an axe slashing or fireball throwing :-) And remember that you can always get back to your dungeon :-)

Have fun!

Where did you have?..

At home, at friend’s place, in a cottage at the seashore, in cafe, on the roof – these are the places where I had played various pen&paper role-playing games :)

No rulebooks have any instructions on where to play, really. So I’ll just talk a little about it in general and about my own experience. The most common way is to sit around a table with character sheets, maps, rulebooks and, of course, dices on it. I have to say that it’s not a bad idea, especially at winter or simply when it's snowing or raining. And it's sometimes useful to have a PC or a laptop to check something if needed, or to show players the map in Google Earth, for example (if their character’s adventures are on the Earth, of course:)

Players usually like to eat while playing, so ordering a pizza, buying some burgers or chips, or making a large plate of salad is always a great idea. Personally, I can’t remember any game session without having a break for meal. By the way, this is a nice reason to play in a café, but it must be quiet and not crowded there, cause off-topic noises are really annoying and can interrupt the game easily. And it's quite useful to have a place for smokers not far from the play-location if some players smoke. When it’s warm and sunny it’s really nice to play outside – maybe in a park or even in a forest, fresh air ftw :) Burning the campfire and laying on some cover or sitting on logs around it can be much better than playing in a room. And believe me, the table is not the most important thing, when we played on the roof we didn’t need any, actually the only problem we had there was wind which could blow away all your papers, so you gotta keep your eye on them and be ready to catch ;) I’m sure you can also play on a train while traveling somewhere together – I think it’s funny too, if anyone's tried you are welcome to leave your comment :) So, as you see, rpg are like sex – new places give new impressions, but doing it in bedroom is always good too.

Roleplay in PC games

Are you always satisfied with the plot of the game? What if there isn’t any? What if I say you can make the story neverending?  I believe I’m not the only person playing this way, but I hope you’d like to hear about it.

Playing Need For Speed 3: Hot Pursuit as a child I’ve always imagined that every computer-controlled racer is my schoolmate. We have been talking walkie-talkie during the race, competing, betting and so on. And that was funny! Much funnier than just pushing the accelerator key.

Worms Armageddon – I bet you gave those funny worms the names of your friends if you played this game… or the names of people you didn’t like. “We are ready to strike, commander McQueen!” :)

When I was playing Warcraft III: Frozen Throne I also imagined that my friends are chieftains of orcish hordes, alliance marshals, elven elders and generals of the Scourge. And every skirmish against AI was interesting and exciting. Later, in Rome: Total War they became Greek kings, pharaohs of Egypt and Celtic warlords. I’ve painted the map of some Isle where our nations lived and fought. Honor, cowardice, heroism and betrayal, war and peace. It may be ridiculous but I liked this game. Just because my opponents were not just faceless AI, but the people I know.

Didn’t you feel a little sad when the storyline in Grand Theft Auto ended? I remember how in GTA: San Andreas I had a taxi car modified hard and painted in white. Yeah, like in Gérard Pirès’ and Luc Besson’s “Taxi” . I had the same nervous passengers and wicked sick driving.  And that was the reason to play a few days longer.

About a week ago I remembered that I still hadn’t finished the Fallout 3. So I loaded my progress and continued playing. But when it was 5 or 6 AM game suddenly showed me the outro. And my only thought was “W-T-F?!” It can’t be the end, I didn’t explore even ¼ of the Capital Wasteland!

 In short, I decided to do it again, from the very beginning. But how to make it interesting? Obviously, choose another stats, perks and behave yourself not the same way you did first time… Did you ever hear about Geralt of Rivia, the Witcher? If not – you really should. Check this.

So, I imagined that my character had read a lot of books while living in Vault 101, and his favorite is the “Witcher Saga” of Andrzej Sapkowski. If anyone in Wasteland asks my character’s name – the answer is “Geralt”. He isn’t insane, he’s just a dreamer. He is strong, agile and lucky (for critical hits) – those are his main stats – and he has white hair.

Vampire's Edge (or just a common Chinese Officer's Sword), Shishkebab – as witcher’s main weapons. Pistol, assault rifle or shotgun as secondary (this is post-nuclear witcher, right?). Flamer and all kinds of land mines and grenades for the most dangerous monsters. Drugs as magical potions – Psycho, med-x, mentats and jet. They all improve the witcher’s powers letting him fight against the ferocious beasts… which the Capital Wasteland is full of.  And the most important thing: witcher is not a Brave Knight, he is not good. Not bad. He is true neutral. He doesn’t care if peasants ask him to slay the ghoul or wyvern for free. Potions and weapon repairing is expensive, so any work must be rewarded. Nevertheless, in novel Geralt wasn’t the common witcher, merciless mutant without a heart, so sometimes – when I really feel like doing something non-neutral or even for free – I do it. And I didn’t find my dad yet, but when I do it I probably won’t behave like a fantasy novel character, cause dad’s only person in Wasteland (actually in the entire US!) who knows who I am.

Don’t know how to end this post. For sure, you can’t play any game like this. It’s not possible in movie-like games without any opportunities to step away from the plot, like Half-Life or Call of Duty (it doesn’t mean these game are bad, I like them too :) ), but I hope I showed you the way to make some games more interesting, and I hope you’ll like it. 

Have fun!

 

Warhammer Online 1.2 patch

Patch 1.2 released, let's see what it brought to restless Warhammer players ;)

Well, the main idea is "woo-hoo!" Really. Warhammer Online is still ain't perfect game, but it's one step closer now. Or maybe even two.

First - Interface/design/models/etc

So, now you can see every member of your warband on the map and minimap. Wherever they are! Seems like an obvious necessity, but we had been playing for 6 month now without this little thing. Moreover, now there are arrows on the map, with a click you’ll be able to see the map of the nearest zone. So you don't have to use your scroll wheel whenever you feel like checking the situation in the tier. Bravo, Mythic! Seriously, such a trivial option, but it makes me happy. 

Next, the various mounts (2 new for anyone, 3 new for guilds only) - they are cool! Yes, most of empire players ride black horses now, but still, the opportunity to choose makes players happy too. 

Ironbreakers said they have new cool axes models, haven’t seen them yet, but I believe my dwarfs :) Seems like Chosens have new axes too, I've been killed by one today :p

By the way, RvR-influence rewards bugs fixed (Knight's rewards were absolutely invisible, now they have 3d-models). Pity that no one who has at least Sentinel set won't use these rewards, cause sets have better stats, despite the fact that it's rather hard to get full RvR-influence in tier four. I think Mythic should link all these items into some set, "Veteran" for instance.

Craft system

Well, I can't say much about it, because none of my characters have any crafting skills. But most of my guildmates like new system. I like it too, because of free Chaos Black Dye. My Knight looks great now, screenshots below :p

Class balance

Hard to say exactly how good it is after only one evening of testing, but I'd say things became better. Witch elves are not overpowered now ( /dance ), armor is important, so tank archtype is buffed a little, absorb morales are useful too, and so on and so on. In fact, some classes are still ignored by Mythic, but I am sure their time will come.

By the way, the toughest class now is... archmage. Two detaunts + tank's guard ability makes them almost immortal. It's true, I saw how our archmage tanked 4 enemy melee-dps :) More information: here and here. My congrats to AM's, although this bug will be fixed soon, enjoy your demi-god powers today, let it be the revenge for all the suffers :)

Domination System

It works! Nobody still knows if it is better or worse than old system, but personally me likes it. We've locked zones the same way before (by taking all the battle objectives, keeps and blocking enemy warcamp) PLUS we needed to win all the scenarios. And it used to take us about 3-4 hours, now we can do it in 2 hours, without any scenario problems. It is good for Order of Eltharion, because Destro scenario premades are really, really strong.

(For those who don't know - while at US servers order dominates, at EU we are outnumbered. Eltharion was the first server where forces of order invaded the Inevitable City. Probably it’s the only server the EU ones, where it’s like that, but I’m not sure. Anyway, we relaxed too much and destruction struck back, so capital count is 4:3 now.)

So, going back to the problem with scenarios - our premades are pretty strong too, but we are really outnumbered. While our premades are winning one scenario, enemies win three. That's why frontiers are always in Reikland, Eataine and Kadrin Valley.

On the other hand, there’s still such a threat as nightstalkers, who lock zones at night and rush to defenseless capital. I wish Mythic made some "playtime", from 6 pm till midnight for example, which wouldn’t let the capital be burnt down, when normal people are at work/university or just sleeping. It doesn't matter how strong we are, none of our victories give us anything — enemies can simply wait until we go to bed and capture all the zones. Actually, this is what they do now, three out of four Altdorf sieges had been done this way. Hope Mythic will realize that although WAR is everywhere, warriors sometimes want to sleep a little :)

Live Event

I was not waiting for Bitter Rivals and Slayers, but have completed today's tasks. This event it the same as Heavy Metall was — boring enough. But scenario (Twitted Tower) is funny, the way from respawn to battle objectives reminded me about Serious Sam. 

And by the way, two simple tasks grant the first bar of influence which unlocks the title The Doom Seeker, sounds nice I think. If you are interested in other titles - check this link, list is not full, but pretty long.

So, I'd say good job, Mythic! You did well, but don't relax, you still have a lot to do.

And some screenshots, as I promised :)