Anyone out there play Bill Gant's Gunmaster?

[Michael Lewis]

I've been reading Harnmaster and discovered this set of rules.

[kato13]

I've looked at it at it seems like a great set of rules.

Targan is the in house expert though. Hopefully he can provide additional information.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

Anyone out there play Bill Gant's Gunmaster?

Have I ever! I'm proud to say that Bill Gant's been my friend for nearly 25 years and I was in the original play testing group for Gunmaster. In fact one of my illustrations is in the first edition of the Gunmaster rulebook.

After Gunmaster was created, every campaign I have run has used the Harnmaster/Gunmaster rules, and after I spent a year converting Twilight:2000 to Gunmaster I ran a 10 year (real time, 8 months game time) Gunmaster:2000 campaign. I've also played in or run many Harnmaster campaigns, several lasting more than a decade.

So yeah, I'd like to think I know a little bit about the Harnmaster and Gunmaster systems

[mikeo80]

Based on what you said, Targan, where could I find the rules? Is the game still in print? On Line? I appreciate any help. Real life has made my google-fu very weak tonight.

My $0.02

Mike

[Michael Lewis]

I'm interested in how you do character creation. Do you have anything you could share?

I've learned the rules for harnmaster 3 and read some of gun master. I want to make a character as in twilight 2000.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by mikeo80

Based on what you said, Targan, where could I find the rules? Is the game still in print? On Line? I appreciate any help. Real life has made my google-fu very weak tonight.

Gunmaster, written by Bill Gant, is a free rules addition to Harnmaster. Harnmaster is highly detailed RPG system originally designed to be used with the Harn setting (Harn is an island similar to Britain on the fictional planet Kethira). Gunmaster isn't usable without first having a copy of and understanding the Harnmaster rules. Gunmaster brings the Harnmaster system, which focusses on realistic depiction of life and combat in a middle ages setting, into the modern era.

The latest version of Gunmaster is meant for use with the Harnmaster Gold version of the Harnmaster rules. There have been a number of editions of Harnmaster over the years, made more complicated by a licensing/ownership dispute between the original creator of the system, the late great N Robin Crosby, and the games publishing company Columbia Games. Harnmaster Gold was the last edition of Harnmaster published by N Robin Crosby. It wouldn't be difficult for Gunmaster Gold to be converted to any version of Harnmaster and I'm sure Bill Gant could provide earlier versions of Gunmaster to assist with that.

All of Bill Gant's various Harnmaster house rules (including Gunmaster) can be found at WarFlail's Armoury house rules section (NOTE SECURITY WARNING see below. If you still wish to visit the site. Remove the code "REMOVEME-" from the link - KATO13 ADMIN). Harnmaster Gold can be bought from Kelestia.com, or from any fine gaming store that still has physical copies in stock.

I've never published my T2K to Gunmaster conversion but I still have the great bulk of it on hand; much of it is in various electronic formats but some of it I'd have to scan from hard copies. If anyone was serious about wanting to use my material I'd be happy to provide them with whatever I could pull together. After my last Gunmaster:2000 campaign ended I was kind of heartbroken so I haven't looked at any of it for some years.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

I'm interested in how you do character creation. Do you have anything you could share?

I've learned the rules for harnmaster 3 and read some of gun master. I want to make a character as in twilight 2000.

The simplest way to create a T2K-type character would be to use the Gunmaster Occupations rules.

In my T2K conversion we made things a whole lot more complicated by using a Lifepath system modified from Cyberpunk 2020 (before I converted T2K I converted the entire Cyperpunk 2020 system to Gunmaster). In my system, a character's career would be generated year by year after they left high school. Admittedly that made char gen a really long and complicated process, but it had the advantage of creating characters with very rich back stories and believable lives.

I'll upload part of my char gen rules, be aware they contain some references to Cyberpunk-game setting rules that I forgot to edit out. I'll try to find my detailed lifepath rules too and upload them when I can.

[Targan]

Also, here is the skill list we were using for my last campaign. Some skills obviously wouldn't apply in T2K as they come from the Cyberpunk 2020 setting. Also be aware that there are 2 tabs, Physical Skills etc and Combat Skills.

[Michael Lewis]

Thanks for posting this. I'll start looking at it. Do you mind if I pm you for questions?

Or would email be better?

[Michael Lewis]

Originally Posted by Targan

The simplest way to create a T2K-type character would be to use the Gunmaster Occupations rules.

In my T2K conversion we made things a whole lot more complicated by using a Lifepath system modified from Cyberpunk 2020 (before I converted T2K I converted the entire Cyperpunk 2020 system to Gunmaster).

Which version of the Cyberpunk rules did you use? It looks like there are a couple of them out there.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

Thanks for posting this. I'll start looking at it. Do you mind if I pm you for questions?

Or would email be better?

Please feel free to contact me. PMs are fine but my inbox is perpetually close to full so emails might be a better option.

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

Which version of the Cyberpunk rules did you use? It looks like there are a couple of them out there.

Secend edition (I bought everything published that I could get my hands on). Only recently became aware that they made a third edition in 2005.

[mikeo80]

Targan,

I just went to the WarFlail's web site. My Anti Virus program went NUTS as IE tried to open the site. Any Ideas? Thoughts?

The Kalestia site worked fine.

Just thought you would want to know.

My $0.02

Mike

[Michael Lewis]

What character sheet do you use? Harnmaster Gold?

What did you use for vehicle combat?

Could you explain your character creation process from Gunmaster 2000?

What are Skill Checks?

Do you get all of those occupational skills?

How many optional skills do you get?

What is luck?

[kato13]

Originally Posted by Targan

Please feel free to contact me. PMs are fine but my inbox is perpetually close to full so emails might be a better option.

I had no idea the limit was so low (100). I have upped the Max message count to 500.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by mikeo80

Targan,

I just went to the WarFlail's web site. My Anti Virus program went NUTS as IE tried to open the site. Any Ideas? Thoughts?

Hmm, I opened it yesterday and my anti-virus software didn't blink. I'd be very surprised if Bill allowed anything malicious on his site but it's connected to a Harnmaster webring that tends to automatically open when the site is accessed and I can't vouch for all the other sites it's connected to.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by kato13

I had no idea the limit was so low (100). I have upped the Max message count to 500.

Thanks Kato!

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

What character sheet do you use? Harnmaster Gold?

Some of this is going to have to wait until I'm home from work! I can answer some of these questions though. If you're using Harnmaster Gold as your base system, the Harnmaster Gold character sheet should work fine. We had customised character sheets made using MS Excel. They maximised skill slots and allowed more room for some of the pseudo-skills we added as the conversion evolved.

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

What did you use for vehicle combat?

Basically T2K 1st edition vehicle combat rules, but with all the numbers converted to Gunmaster. We used Guns, Guns, Guns (3G) to do all the weapons calculations, converted those numbers to Gunmaster stats (IIRC there are conversion notes in the back of the Gunmaster rules) and also converted all the vehicle armor numbers to Gunmaster as well.

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

Could you explain your character creation process from Gunmaster 2000?

That's one of the questions that'll have to wait until I'm home and I can post here or send you the Lifepath rules.

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

What are Skill Checks?

Skill improvement checks. One of the problems is that my group of players all started playing Harnmaster using the original 1st edition rules. Many of the terms from those original rules we kept using, despite perhaps slightly different terms being used in later editions. Skill checks are the way in which Harnmaster skills improve. Each skill has a Skill Base (a number based on the average of the 3 stats most applicable to the use of that skill plus Sunsign bonus if any) and a Mastery Level (ML). The ML is basically the skill level. In the version of Harnmaster we were mostly using (1st edition + Bill Gant's Harnmaster II house rules) a character's maximum possible ML in a skill was (5xSB)+25. If the GM decides that a character is due a skill improvement check, the chance of the skill improving is maximum possible ML minus current ML. If you roll under that number the ML improves by 1. This means that once a skill is near its theoretical maximum, skill improvement is hard to achieve.

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

Do you get all of those occupational skills?

Yes. Harnmaster, Gunmaster and especially Gunmaster 2000 do have unusually large numbers of skills.

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

How many optional skills do you get??

I'm going from memory here but I think you sacrifice 2 of your skill checks for that year for each optional skill you want to open.

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

What is luck?

Luck rolls are really cool and can be easily used in pretty much any game system. They go like this: roll a D100, then try to roll under that number on a second D100 roll. If you roll above the first number you're unlucky. If you roll below the first number you're lucky. Any multiple of 5 or 10 is a critical result, otherwise it's a marginal result, so you can have a critical success (CS), a marginal success (MS), a marginal failure (MF) or a critical failure (CF). The CS/MS/MF/CF system is of course standard in all versions of Harnmaster. I believe the original idea for Luck rolls comes from the Pendragon system but Bill Gant adapted it for his Harnmaster II house rules.

[Michael Lewis]

Originally Posted by Targan

Some of this is going to have to wait until I'm home from work! I can answer some of these questions though. If you're using Harnmaster Gold as your base system, the Harnmaster Gold character sheet should work fine. We had customised character sheets made using MS Excel. They maximised skill slots and allowed more room for some of the pseudo-skills we added as the conversion evolved.

I started using Harnmaster III character sheet but noticed that it does not have the touch stat. That's why I asked

Originally Posted by Targan

Basically T2K 1st edition vehicle combat rules, but with all the numbers converted to Gunmaster. We used Guns, Guns, Guns (3G) to do all the weapons calculations, converted those numbers to Gunmaster stats (IIRC there are conversion notes in the back of the Gunmaster rules) and also converted all the vehicle armor numbers to Gunmaster as well

That seems like a lot of work. I was afraid of that.

Originally Posted by Targan

Skill improvement checks. One of the problems is that my group of players all started playing Harnmaster using the original 1st edition rules.

Harnmaster III is different in that regard

Originally Posted by Targan

Yes. Harnmaster, Gunmaster and especially Gunmaster 2000 do have unusually large numbers of skills.

What scares me is starting the PC's out with too much skill. Did this happen in your experiences?

Originally Posted by Targan

Luck rolls are really cool and can be easily used in pretty much any game system. They go like this: roll a D100, then try to roll under that number on a second D100 roll. If you roll above the first number you're unlucky. If you roll below the first number you're lucky. Any multiple of 5 or 10 is a critical result, otherwise it's a marginal result, so you can have a critical success (CS), a marginal success (MS), a marginal failure (MF) or a critical failure (CF). The CS/MS/MF/CF system is of course standard in all versions of Harnmaster. I believe the original idea for Luck rolls comes from the Pendragon system but Bill Gant adapted it for his Harnmaster II house rules.

This sounds interesting. I thought about using Piety as some sort of luck role.

Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

[Michael Lewis]

It's funny. You are exactly 24 hours and 1 second ahead of me.

Actually no. That's wrong. I'm off by twelve hours and 1 second. It's morning there and night here.

[Targan]

If you're using Harnmaster III you should definitely take a look at Bill Gant's house rules for HM 3rd edition, and also his Harnmaster Advanced houserules, they're designed for Harnmaster III and even more detailed.

Originally Posted by Michael Lewis

What scares me is starting the PC's out with too much skill. Did this happen in your experiences?

That can happen but as skills get into the elite levels they become very hard to improve. Also, you could use this option: http://www.warflail.com/downloads/HMG_HR-Skills.pdf
More of Bill's house rules, this time for HM Gold, it truncates very high skills for starting characters to more reasonable levels. It might solve any discomfort you have in that area.

In addition, we were using Bill Gant's ML Decline rules from his Harnmaster II houserules (I'm not sure why but Bill no longer has his HM II houserules available on his website). Under the ML Decline rules, skills which are not used or practiced for some time can slowly decline. This means that a GM can choose to have a PC who has high skill levels in certain skills early in their lifepath generation but change careers and no longer use those skills much, suffer some decline in those skills prior to the campaign commencing. The ML Decline rules work exactly the same during campaigns, should the GM choose to apply them.

[Cdnwolf]

Originally Posted by mikeo80

Targan,

I just went to the WarFlail's web site. My Anti Virus program went NUTS as IE tried to open the site. Any Ideas? Thoughts?

The Kalestia site worked fine.

Just thought you would want to know.

My $0.02

Mike

Same thing here...

[cavtroop]

Originally Posted by Cdnwolf

Same thing here...

The site IS infected. Source: I do information security for a living

After a short period of time, it attempts to redirect to a malicious site at "biezebeize.be"

I would not visit the warflail site, and Kato should probably remove the URL from this thread until it gets cleared up.

If anyone knows the author and wants to contact him, this is the bad part of the page: <div align="left"><a name="top"></a> </div><!--74ed9f--><script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" >

it contains an obfuscated javascript (dunno what it does exactly, but it can't be good).

EDIT: after some more research, that malicious javascript redirects users to the infamous Blackhole Exploit Kit: http://labs.sucuri.net/db/malware/ma...lackhole2?v403

You need to avoid that Warflail site at all costs until it's cleaned up.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by cavtroop

If anyone knows the author and wants to contact him...

Originally Posted by Targan

I'm proud to say that Bill Gant's been my friend for nearly 25 years and I was in the original play testing group for Gunmaster.

I'll talk to him ASAP.

[kato13]

Originally Posted by cavtroop

The site IS infected. Source: I do information security for a living

After a short period of time, it attempts to redirect to a malicious site at "biezebeize.be"

I would not visit the warflail site, and Kato should probably remove the URL from this thread until it gets cleared up.

If anyone knows the author and wants to contact him, this is the bad part of the page: <div align="left"><a name="top"></a> </div><!--74ed9f--><script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" >

it contains an obfuscated javascript (dunno what it does exactly, but it can't be good).

EDIT: after some more research, that malicious javascript redirects users to the infamous Blackhole Exploit Kit: http://labs.sucuri.net/db/malware/ma...lackhole2?v403

You need to avoid that Warflail site at all costs until it's cleaned up.

I agree that obfuscated code is weird. While the page tests clean on 5 different webbased tests (Norton, MCAfee, Google, etc) it is VERY suspicious. I am going to modify the link so the user needs to make a conscious choice to visit the site. I never like removing information, but if the clicker makes an informed choice to see the information it is in their hands.

[Targan]

Bill Gant has investigated overnight and found that in the last week or two someone has thoroughly infected the WarFlail site. He's taking the whole thing offline for the time being and it's likely the site will never be active again. I feel terrible but there's no point having an infected site remaining active. It saddens me as the site's been running for more than a decade I think.

[kato13]

That stinks. Cleaning a site is a colossal pain. Since I am the goto guy for my circle of friends for all things web I have cleaned up about a half a dozen sites. You are right usually throwing the whole thing out and starting from scratch is the easiest thing to do.

Since it looked like the site had a lot of stuff they were giving away, might I suggest using a file locker site, or even generating a torrent if the owner is willing to do so.

Torrents can be useful and totally legal for this kind of stuff if the owner is willing to share.

Getting back to the hack. I will never understand the full on black hat hackers. I will admit to a lot of "grey" stuff in my past, but rendering sites useless using an automated insertion program (little skill or innovation required) for marginal returns makes zero sense to me. Some people just want to watch the world burn I guess.

[cavtroop]

Originally Posted by Targan

Bill Gant has investigated overnight and found that in the last week or two someone has thoroughly infected the WarFlail site. He's taking the whole thing offline for the time being and it's likely the site will never be active again. I feel terrible but there's no point having an infected site remaining active. It saddens me as the site's been running for more than a decade I think.

Wow, that sucks He should investigate putting the material up on a Google Pages (or Sites, or whatever they call it) - that way he doesn't have to worry much about security or cpanel exploits etc etc, and the data stays online Though transferring all that info could be a PITA

[Cdnwolf]

Ummm some of the articles I found on Scribd.

[Michael Lewis]

This sucks! I guess I'll have to find another system.

[ducatidon]

Long time HarnMaster fan here....Ive a copy of GunMaster, and Id be very interested in any Traveller conversions.

For myself, Ive found that the damage charts actually translate rather closely to T2K and/or traveller. For example, i just use Traveller/striker to T2K wound levels and convert to Harnmaster (3rd) Injury difficulties.

For example, you are shot by an AK47, and after armor, only 5 points remain. an impact of >5 is a M1 injury. Saves actually having to calculate impacts for firearms and crazy high armor protection values.

Ive also found that skill levels can port over pretty easily as well. For example, 2 levels of firearms becomes +2 OML. I actually use Traveller or T2K character generation (Mechmarrior is close enough to the same too) roll the additional stats (3D6) and add an additional D6 to Traveller stats. (for % stats just divide by 5)

The biggest part of difficulty is assigning attributes to each skill. Many modern skills are identical to ancient skills in HarnMaster.

I dont use Piety or Aura. Instead I add Education and Social Standing as stats.

I also assign technical skills under Tech, using EDU/EDU/EDU as the governing stats.

Anyway, thats the basics. It allows more attributes, a wider range of skills, and a better wound system.