Harnmaster/Gunmaster uses 10 second turns but alot can happen in a turn.

heros
 

more often than not I too find that in a game the players are the ones that make the desiscions that lead to PC fatalities.Stupid moves or facing overwhelming odds etc .

As you say -running away is what they think of last -and then its often too late .

I never make a "danger" that they cant get out of though -like a FAC team with a laser designator guiding prescison munitions down on them from 15000 feet without them knowing anything before it goes booom! Like in real life ,where artillery or air strikes occur that you cant defend against .

I find that the most rewarding thing is to present them with a choice -and then see what they gamble on .Of cours ethe choice needs to be a difficult one .."advance ,take th eposition and get the loot " or "run away and have your reputation in tatters"..hehe

The balance is difficult -but all important -I agree.

lastly I find that the players will tell you later that whenever they are struggeling to survive or the going is though will give a far better session for everybody than the ones where the riches pour in and the enemies are not that dangerous.

In other words - give them a position/status that they realize is valuable and than threathen it severly by for instance an advancing enemy force .If you want it more intense -hunt them like dogs ..

Also -if they are on the "last barricade" /back against the wall thats when team work and genuine joy for winning the fight is easiest to achieve .

Uncertainty and the percieved dangerous foe are the GMs best tools..

(imho - h meaning humble of course )

Lol! :) Dunno if that's a compliment to the GM.


True. That approach is good as it keeps players focused. It's refreshing to see gamers playing both sides in the Star Wars millieu. Gives everyone a lot of opportunities for wheeling dealing and thuggery.

Always the best approach. Although deep inside no player really wants to have a character die, my group has matured a bit these days (or so i like to think!). a sort of its not whether you live or die but whether you played well and everyone had a great time. for some reason though, d&d4 brings out the power-gaming streak in them.

Hey Marc,

Neat idea. Pegasus Bridge is really suitable for a party of player characters in Gurps ww2 3e. The what-if modification (alternate history!) adds a great touch. Gives it a very twilight-ish feel as well (good luck you're on your own now...). I won't be surprised if the surviving PCs from the group start picking up german small arms after the ammo runs out, driving frantically to the west in a captured kubelwagen.


Now this is a foundation for a long-term campaign. In any case, it's a good foundation- a lot of chances for character evolution too. don't forget that as they move from one theatre to another, any unlucky PC can pick up a charcter disadvantage or three making his point total actually lower. I like this mechanic as it models the debilitative effects of stress and war on a character. Something like tom hanks' character in Saving Private Ryan. he seemed to have incurred a disadvantage like combat shakes or something like that.

Yes Marc that's true. The 4e book talks about 'dropping in and out of combat time' but its up to the GM to smoothly implement this. I guess it really takes some getting used to on the part of both players and the GM. I could be wrong here but gurps seems to be the odd man out in terms of time frame allotment in combat insofar as rpgs are concerned. many i have seen seem to use 6 second or 10 second combat rounds.

a friend once played phoenix command sometime in the 90s and he said it also used something like the gurps 1 second turns (I could again be wrong here, its been sometime since that chat).

Yes this is very true. I remember having a player once in a gurps twilight game who would change his declared actions repeatedly in mid-sentence, delaying the game. I put a stop to it and ruled that his character was 'hesitating' and effectively doing nothing. Everyone played twilight 2000 1e in the group so they all understood and said that this was a logical way to model combat hesitation in gurps.

Targan, i forget but is 'gunmaster' a published set of rules? I googled it sometime back but could not find it (or maybe I flubbed roll on my computer skill).

HQ, I like the sound of that. Always the stuff of great games. :)

Extensively written and playtested house rules by Bill Gant (another lad from Perth, Western Australia and I would say I am his disciple :)). You'd need one of the editions of Harnmaster to use Gunmaster. There are a number of versions of Gunmaster, one for each of the various editions of Harnmaster. You can download heaps of Gunmaster stuff at www.warflail.com . On top of that I converted both Cyberpunk 2020 and T2K to Gunmaster so you'd need my T2K conversion as well but I'd happily send it to anyone who wanted it.

That's what the Combat Paralysis disadvantage is for ;)

Thanks for the update. I'll check out the site. :)

very true, very true. :)