Control (Shaping)

In the powers book is the Control Advantage. And I'm glad we have the control advantage, but I have a few complaints with it:

• quantity and finesse of control scale together
• It gives massive arbitrary bonuses
• Its priced fairly for someone who uses those massive bonuses for every single thing they do

I was building a powers based magic system and had the thought that I didn't want the ability to move a cubic yard of dirt to also include the ability to give anyone in that hex -5 to basically everything. I wanted something that acted like the shape spells from magic. And so I decided to wing the advantage:

Control (Shaping): Rather than using the standard rules for control, base the rules off of the shape spells, like shape earth or shape water. You can control level x level /2 cubic yards. Notably, this cannot be used to give arbitrary combat bonuses. The cost is the same as any other level of control, and can only be taken for solids and liquids.

Is it any good? Well, I haven't tested it yet. But my Tuesday night game is going to be playing in a game with it for the next few months, so in a while I'll be able to tweak costs and tell you how well it did or didn't work. I do know that shape earth is one of the most widely used and best liked spells in Gurps Magic. We'll see if this is overpowered, or if its just fun.  Hopefully it will play out like having a mage with shape earth, which I've played before and seems to constantly be useful but never quite be broken.

I look forward to reporting on this tweak!

 

Create Visible Light

In Gurps powers, the create energy advantage can create light... but it creates "1000 KJ" of energy. KJ is not how I usually measure my light, and its not how many people measure their light. So how much light does Create Visible Light [10] actually create? And how do you even measure that?

The radius lit in this table is lit with the officially recommended light level for indoor settings like bedrooms. I recommend using this as "no vision penalty"... though see the "nickpick" section for more details.

Radius	Time	Radius	Time
1 yard	2 days	7 yards	1 hour
2 yards	12 hours	10 yards	30 minutes
3 yards	5 hours	15 yards	15 minutes
5 yards	2 hours	20 yards	7.5 minutes
		x2	x1/4

Time listed is for each 1000 KJ of energy. If you have Create Visible Light 3 [30] and thus have 9000 KJ of light, a 5 yard radius light can last for 2 hours * 9 = 18 hours.

If you're not interested in being sure why this works, or about environmental complications that might make your game more interesting, you can stop reading here and just use the table. If not...

Touchy Feely TK

Sometimes a Psychokenesis user wants to be able to use their sense of touch as part of their TK. As part of my current Psi-wars stuff, I certainly want that. Here are two abilities that let them do this. 

 Thanks to Calmquist, who basically built these for me by himself!

Power Systems I've Used, Adapted, or Modified

 Last Week, I talked about a specific powers system I used in a recent game. Of course, I love magic systems and powers system in gurps, and I love to tinker. Here are some of the powers systems I've used in my various games: 

Monster Hunters

I've run various monster hunter games over the years. The point of these games is that its usually really easy to get a monster hunters game off the ground. I almost always have an RPM mage of some stripe, as well as an inhuman. The rules for inhumans are really smooth, almost not a power system, though I consider it to be one. I've found RPM to be really strong in PC hands, and less strong in GM hands. Part of this is because the players get lots of planning time for their spells right on the scene of the action, and as a GM I have to plan all the enemy spells ahead of time. It'd be really nice if RPM Ritual lists for enemy load-outs were a thing. I've run a couple games where I limited mages to 400 points and gave everyone else either 500 points or 600 points that could only follow the templates strictly. I still got mages and they felt about right. I haven't really played with a psi or crusader PC for more than a session, and the experiments play pretty similar to inhumans. 

Banestorm Atlante

 Banestorm Atlante featured three magic systems. One was my first real play test of Magic as Technology. The Melbronx had devices that let the user read the minds of others, another for levitation, and another for fireballs. The limitation was the skill of the user, based on Electronics Operation (Magic Device Operation), and on the availability of the materials used to make the devices. I really liked the effect and the result: the players treated the limited number of magic devices with respect a game where they had a monthly budget of about a million bucks.

The second magic system belonged to the elves, and was never given stats. From the players point of view, it required a lot of study, plus an innate gift they thought for 70% of the campaign was exclusive to elves. The magic probably should have been bought as Mind Control and Affliction: Physical Only Modular Abilities, both with a time limitation, requiring skill rolls to use, and a modifier penalizing the skill roll and giving. Even that would probably have been far out of the point range I wanted, so I just kept not giving them stats, and when a player eventually got the physical only modular abilities affliction I told her to pay 5 points for magery and then to start buying up skill. So if you have a good enough idea of how NPC magic works, and don't tell the players, you don't really need points...

Third magic system was a bunch of racial magical powers, and those just kind of worked smoothly or didn't come up. 

Dreadstormers

Dreadstormers is about psychic secret agents infiltrating and steeling a space dreadnought. It uses Psionic powers, plus a few custom powers from both the GM and players, alternative abilities, and buckets of points: all psychic powers, skills, and talents must be under 100 points of the 380 total. I've really liked the result. The characters feel competent and dangerous when their powers are suppressed (the first half of the game) and awesome when their powers on online, without being able to simply solve the challenge in five minutes once they have their power.

Called From Exile

Called from exile is set in space, with a fairly heavy emphasis on psionics. It uses psionic powers as written, a buffed version of alternative abilities where they can be used at the same time, and an alternate pricing scheme for powers that directly compete with vehicles. Essentially you can pay 60 points for stats similar to a mecha or 30 points for only one mecha-level ability. I set a 150 point limit on powers for this game. 

I haven't been quite happy with the results. If ST and TK were overpriced before, they are underpriced now. I probably needed to charge twice as much as I did to simply have a vehicles stats. I remain convinced that the price is fair if you have to get out of the mecha, but not if its a psionic power you can't leave at the door of a dinner party. 

The main probably is really that all the players are relying on the psionic powers shorthand on their sheets rather than having power modifiers written down that tell them what their ranges and penalties are. One of them also struggles to tell apart the wrapped up advantage from the skill. This causes all sorts of issues at the table. This is a communication issue, and its probably my fault... but it means I will not be using the official powers from the book again.

Overgrown Secrets

I've talked about Overgrown Secrets ultra-lite take on metatronic generators before, and I still really like it. 10 points of advantages with a specific sort of fluff and a gadget are just really easy to whip up quickly. 

Overgrown secrets also had a bunch of racial magical powers, which I worked out before hand. These were all NPC, so points didn't matter.

Murder in the Court

Murder in the Court used Realm Powders, which I blogged about last week! I loved the magic system, though it has a huge impact on the society, and so isn't for every game-- but a good magic system is like that!

Wrapping Up

I've played other games, but those are my most recent and memorable, at least as far as powers are concerned. I hope these give you ideas, and help guide you towards what does or doesn't work. Have fun with your games!

Rules I Don't Use, Replace, or Revise: Jumper

One of my favorite advantages in Gurps is Jumper. Jumping from one world to another is a central feature of the signature setting, Infinite worlds. Jumper lets you travel in time, journey to Hell,  reach the elemental plane of earth, explore a shadow version of a place, venture to alternate histories, and rule pocket dimensions. It is an exceptionally evocative advantage central to multiple subgenres. It inspired some of my first gurps characters, and it shows up on character sheets in my games today. 

Its also a jumbled quirky mess. Normally, I wouldn't bring this up unless I had a fix, but a conversation with other Bloggers has increased my willingness bring up the problem without proposing a finished solution.  We will look at the odd quirks in Jumper, some reasons for those quirks, and hopefully get a gut feeling for what a fix would look like. 

Metatronic Generators In Low Tech Settings

Historically, I've always looked at Metatronic generators funny. They provide a direct translation from points to cash, and that often gives funny numbers. The base version also has this weird assumption that you will be using electricity baked into it, and they're generally based off of Psychotronics, which are intentionally an area of weirdness. 

 I just realized that I'm using them for a TL1 fantasy game.

Not intentionally, but the more I look at the "Magic System" the players have access to, the more I'm convinced that it can be usefully expressed in terms of Metatronic generators. So what's the system, and what settings do I use to make Metatronic generators useful at TL1?

Costs ER as a Cost Reduction

My greatest frustration with 'costs FP' is that it reduces a set percentage of the ability cost, no matter how large or how small. This makes spending the FP for cheap abilities, like a minor attack, almost prohibitive in cost, while costs FP on something like jumper is nearly a point crock, particularly if you have lots of points to spend on an energy reserve. A lot of attention is placed on how small of a discount costs FP gives in the first place, but the real issue is that costs FP doesn't care about how many points the ability cost in the first place.

For example, Sardon half-demon has 3 levels of telescopic vision, but he has to draw on his unholy power to use them. This costs 3 ER. Sardon's ability is Telescopic Vision 3 (costs 3 FP per minute -15%) [13]. He only saved 2 points on this ability, which normally costs 15 character points. And he has to pay 3 FP each time he uses an ability he paid almost full price for. Elidoran the elf can slip between worlds, but it costs him 1 FP. His Jumper (costs 1 FP -5%) [95] is a solid 5 points under what he would have paid without spending FP. Is that price wrong? probably not, but Elidoran gets a 5 CP discount from spending 1 fatigue point while Sardon got a 2 point discount from spending 3 fatigue points. Its not worth it for Sardon. Why? because FP cost CP. Sardon's player and the fluff would like to just buy more ER to reflect growing closer to his demon roots. but it costs more to buy a single point of ER than to remove the limitation on telescopic vision.

This is a limitation on player concepts. They are told what they want to do is expensive, when it really shouldn't be. Its not about munchkinry, its about making wizards limited mainly by the energy pool viable.

Having identified this problem, I will now fix it: