House Rules on File

Assorted House Rules

This is a collection of assorted house rules, some made by us, some made by others, as well as other material that we have found appropriate or useful. These will be filtered into the core material gradually with appropriate marking as the occasion permits. Items not yet filtered may be found in a messy clump below, or in one of the following categories:

Core Resources: This is the core rules section, which contains only content filtered from the original rulebooks.

Assorted House Rules: Various rules that haven't filtered into the main ruleset yet. That's the section you're reading, slick.

General Resources: Generalist resources that may prove useful no matter what game we're running.

Campaigns and Worlds: Various worlds we've thought up and may or may not be putting to use.

Character Templates

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=17255

http://gurps.wikia.com/wiki/Character_Templates

http://gurpsland.no-ip.org/pdf/G4ETemplatesSmall.pdf

http://gurpswiki.wikidot.com/character-templates

http://gurpswiki.wikidot.com/racial-templates

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?412295-GURPS-Combat-Cyborgs-Superheroes

http://awlidan-saga.wikidot.com/forum/t-369069/gurps-templates-and-ideas

http://thastygliaxsvault.wikispaces.com/GURPS+Cthulhu+Character+Templates

http://www.sonic.net/~rknop/php/Omar/planescape/gurps/characters.php

http://crgurps.comuv.com/

http://www.librarything.com/series/GURPS+Templates

http://www.mygurps.com/index.php?p=&a=1g&v=1

http://www.themook.net/downloads/index.php?act=view&id=89

http://slangdesign.com/forums/index.php?topic=535.0

http://www.motoslave.net/gcarepo/browse.php?tags=%22racial%20templates%22

http://wiki.stryck.com/GURPS/GenericTemplates

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/gurps.htm

http://www.penandpapergames.com/forums/showthread.php/5679-Morton-s-50pt-GURPS-4e-Templates

http://tiagohackbarth.com/gurps

http://criticalfailuregame.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/fantasy-templates-for-gurps/

https://gurps-sr.obsidianportal.com/wikis/racial-templates

http://gamingballistic.blogspot.com/2013/10/counterpoint-gurps-complexity-by-mu.html

http://cunningham9.tripod.com/gurpsbureau13blackops/id2.html

http://www.oocities.org/ericbsmith/pdf/Were-Forms.pdf

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=55106

http://www.anargo.net/content/gurps-rogue-trader-space-marine-templates

http://us.vclart.net/vcl/Artists/Jeff-Pullen/Games/Pokemon_GURPs.txt

http://xoomer.virgilio.it/miarmel/

http://panoptesv.com/RPGs/animalia/animalia.html

http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com/2014/01/review-underground-adventures-for-gurps.html

http://www.waynesbooks.com/gurpshistorical.html

http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/me-were.shtml

http://claydowling.com/articles/12222013-2119/instant-gurps-modern-fantasy-setting

http://pandoraslair.org/book/export/html/833

http://www.landauer.us/rome/log/?cat=15

http://www.prismnet.com/~woodward/d7/ggodzilla.html

http://dagwood.sandwich.net/docs/GURPS%20Marvel%20Universe.pdf

http://www.bazzalisk.org/GURPS%20Exalted/GURPS%20Exalted.pdf

Other Potential Sources

Swallowing It Whole - A bit of tongue-in-cheek banter regarding the game mechanics of creatures that (stupidly or otherwise) rely on eating their prey whole. Rules section might prove useful.

Steve Jackson Games Forums - GURPS - A lot of interesting back-and-forth on rules verdicts and such. Interesting threads linked below will be notated by SJGF.

SJGF - Safecracking with a Blowtorch? - On drilling or cutting through safes.

SJGF - Scythe Fighting - Weaponized scythes revisit.

GURPSLand - Might be useful. Has some odd things.

GURPS Resources - Elfworld, Supers, and World of Darkness.

http://gurpspalantirquest.blogspot.com/p/tactics.html

http://serendipity-engine.appspot.com/

http://gurpspalantirquest.blogspot.ca/2013/05/proposal-for-new-melee-combat-option.html

http://gamingballistic.blogspot.ca/2013/05/combat-ebb-and-flow-feint-and-evaluate.html

http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=1315571&postcount=13

http://gurpswiki.wikidot.com/monsters

GURPS as an economic model?

I've been wondering for a while about whether GURPS could be used as an economic engine for a world simulation. This took me to what I think is the edge of some of the mechanics in the game. But yet again, I don't own all GURPS 4e books and I'm probably wrong. The issue is at the edge of GURPS because the system wasn't designed to do that. Yet again, I think that it touched on some core mechanics in GURPS related to experience and character advancement.

This post tackles two related issues: how good can one get at something, and what is the best way to model mastery in a narrow focus within a broader skill scope.

This post is not a Palantir Comission post, just some GURPS musing from a man on sick leave.

The case of Ben, chairmaker

Ben is a chairmaker, he learnt from his father, and has made chairs ever since. He has three styles that he makes, and rarely gets commissions for anything else. This is mainly because his shop is set to prepare certain parts from templates, and that all of his tools are set for speed. Time is money for a joiner.

There is no chairmaking skills in the Basic Set, sadly. Heck, I can't find Woodworking and my heart bleeds a little. I think that in the rules as written (RAW), the skill would be Professional Skill (furniture maker). A skill that I would make DX/A based. One points, gives you DX-1, two DX+0, four points would take Ben to DX+1 and so on.

Ben would be an apprentice at first. Let's assume that he is lucky enough to learn with someone capable of teaching the ropes. This means that each skill point would take about 200 hours of instruction. Let's assume that Ben's mentor can teach up to Profession (furniture)-12, and that Ben has a DX of 11. It will take 4 points for him to get to Skill-12. This implies some 800 hours of apprenticeship. Let's assume a 8 hours of profession-related activities day. That probably mean a longer workday than this, but I like the number. It will take 100 days of work for Ben to become a Skill-12 chairmaker.

The case of Ben learning on the job ad infinitum

From now on, Ben is learning on his own. Let's say that he keeps the leisurely work day of 8 hours of professional activities and that he “learns on the job” as he goes. His learning rate is now 1 point per 400 hours, each skill level requires 4 points, or 1600 hours of work. That is 200 days of work per skill level. Assuming a 5 day week, we're talking about 1.25 skill level per year. After 10 years, Ben is Skill-24! He can perform OK even under impossible conditions (-10). When Ben hit his 25 years pre-retirement party, Ben has a Skill-41. He can run a chairmaking business in a universe where wood doesn't exist, while being besieged by an army of undead.

Maximum Skill level that makes sense (in a realistic context)

How high is high enough? Well, the odds of succeeding a task of normal difficulty (no modifier) stop increasing after reaching Skill-16. Another ceiling of interest is Skill-26, where all skill checks are critical successes unless it is an automatic failure (17 or 18). At Skill-26, even an impossible task (-10 modifier) hits a maximal odds ceiling. Arguably, Skill-36 is the place where an impossible task is almost certain (98%+) to be a critical success.

I'd argue that the level at which a skills hits its apex is when a very unfavourable (-3) check has 90% chance of success. Skill-17 fits the bill (17-3 = 14, 90%), this level gives a 16% chance of a critical success on an average roll. Whatever the mechanics may be, it appears reasonable to limit mundane, on the job learning to Skill-17. Here, I'm assuming an average person with a base attribute of 10, so the progression allows for up to attribute + 7, or 24 pts, 28 pts, 32 pts and 36 pts respectively for easy, average, hard and very hard skills. That corresponds to ~5 years (Easy), ~5.6 years (average), ~6.4 (hard) and ~7 year (very hard) to reach this skill's apex.

The question is: what kind of mechanics should be used to get this kind of results?

Why aren't all experienced chairmakers not SUPER-chairmakers?

Angle 1 : Production and Skill refinement become uncoupled at some point.

Arguably, doing the same thing over and over again has no real learning value past a certain point. Let's say that this is the Skill-17 threshold. One angle would be to claim that the time spent on the long task of refining skills cannot be claimed as production time. Of a 8 hour day, 7 can be production and 1 development (or about one skill level per 10 years). It is a financial and time-intensive burden to become a master. But the learning time is spent broadly on the skill's scope. I think that I like this mechanics. A key design decision would be at which point doing uncouples from learning. It could be skill-17, or attribute + 0. The second option may be more realistic in the context of a world simulation of chairmakers.

Angle 2 : Specialists versus Generalists

At some point, Ben will stop learning about running the shop: buying supplies and dealing with shipping. Ben will also stop learning about sharpening blades, tuning spokeshaves, etc. Ben will become a “better” chairmaker: he'll turn components faster, make the joints tighter, etc.

This seems to me like the technique mechanic is appropriate here. Ben will become a much better chairmaker, without becoming a better professional. The main problem with this approach is exacerbated by the fact that it is cheaper in terms of character points to build up a technique than it is to build up the full skill. Without setting a realistic technique ceiling relative to the default, Ben could still be able to make masterwork chairs using only a piece of dental floss as tool, some stick of balsa wood, in a zero gravity environment (a good -10 modifier here).

Using techniques makes sense: Ben will have an effective skill in a narrow focus area that is higher than his general professional skills. This focus can be developed faster (because it is cheaper). And possibly breaks through the Skill-17 barrier discussed above as Ben becomes a master at something in particular.

Angle 3 : This thing all thing devours…

Time.

Let's pretend that Ben stops making chairs: who knows, he got press-ganged into the navy for 10 years and disappeared from the face of the earth. Ben will get rusty: he will lose his edge as a master chairmaker, although without becoming a neophyte all over again. In fact, he will probably be able to pick things up quite fast once that he gets back into the business.

It doesn't really take a 10 year hiatus to lose your edge; ask an Olympian. To maintain a master level, there comes a point where all waking hours must be arranged to make it happen. This implies that master-level skills are volatile, and I believe that we just got ourselves well outside of the realm of the rules as written. However, there are possibly two mechanics at play here:

Mechanic 1 : Unused skills go rusty but don't go away.

For skill level under the master's level (Skill-17), it probably makes sense to apply a -2 (rusty) or -4 (very rusty) that can be shaken off quickly. Kind of like when you get to put on a pair of ice skates after 20 years: you look like a fool for about 5 minutes and then you are fine. Maybe, the rusty penalty strikes faster for high skill level, say in the order of days or weeks, while it applies in term of months or years for lower levels. A simulation would need to estimate better these rates, but a bit of hand waving would work OK within a game context.

Mechanic 2 : The beast that must be fed principle.

Maybe character points become volatile past a certain level. In other words, there is some kind of decay model that must be counteracted by practice and learning. The maximum achievable level thus become the equilibrium point between learning and rusting up. However, there is no mechanism that I know that can do that. A monthly check against decay maybe? And if so, a check against which attribute? Well, p. 294 of the Basic Set has an optional rule just for that. According to the rule, all unused skills degrade after six month if a IQ check is failed. Edeitic memory is useful (+5 or +10), crash training leads to a -2 on the check. For “extreme” skills (atttribute+10), this check is made daily. I like this rule… and it is in the book. There may be a way to phase the 6 months to 1 day cycle of decay a bit.

Conclusion

I think that I like Angle 1 because there is no need to invoke new mechanics. Angle 2 also applies, and would work best in combination with Angle 1. Angle 3 has a built-in mechanism for character point decay (mechanic 2). In other words: there exists a point where doing isn't the same as learning, this point could be Skill-17 in a realistic setting. It is possible to specialize using the technique mechanics. However, time spent out of practice would tend to dull peak performance.

This is by no means a sound mechanics to handle skills in an economical simulation: there is too many calls to be made by the GM. A bit of formalization may make it work as a mechanical process. However, I think that it would work as a way to handle this type of situation around the table.

Reconciliation of adventure rewards and the GURPS skill learning system

I've posted a few times on the topic of learning and skill acquisition in GURPS. There seems to me that there is a drastic disconnect between getting a point at the end of a session and placing it in a skill, and having to learn for 200 hours in order to accomplish the same. Learning is learning, I propose here a records-keeping free way to handle abstracted learning which is compatible with the possible fast-pace of adventuring-based learning.

My motivation here is for the campaign Reclaming Khazad-Dum, where a large number of NPCs will have to learn vital skills, and time is sensitive. It can be applied in all other situation where PCs want to improve in an abstracted manner.

Punchline : Quick table for acquiring skill points through learning/doing things

Target on 3d6	Hours of activity
3	2
4	8
5	20
6	40
7	64
8	100
9	150
10	200
11	250
12	300
13	330
14	360
15	380

Modifiers: Learning on the Job: -1, Self-teaching: +0, Education with a teacher: +1, Intensive training: +2, Learning beyond 16 character points:-1, beyond 20 points:-2, important use in the narrative: +4

This table should be used to determine whether abstracted learning yields a character point in a given skill.

It is better than the RAW because:

it requires no records-keeping of time.

Less predictable.

More compatible with the faster point acquisition rate when adventuring.

Single 3d6 resolution : Approximate up the cumulative learning time, apply modifier, roll, apply results.

Geek zone : Deriving this table

First, let's get rid of keeping track of hours. This makes the whole thing very predictable, and I really dislike records-keeping in the first place. The base learning rate is 400 hours of learning to acquire one point (self-learning). Let's turn this concept on its head and assume that it take on average 400 hours, and that the likelihood of acquiring a point in a skill is 1/400 per hour. This probability leaves us with an expected learning rate unchanged, but less predictable.

P = 1/400 is exactly the probability to get a 3 with 3d6. How convenient. Also, one of the coolest property of 3d6 is the fact that the probabilities are roughly doubling for each increase in target score on the dice roll (except for the 9 to 11 range, where it is flatter). This was the whole basis of my own resolution system that I created before I discovered GURPS. This properties thus implies that the probability of acquiring a point roughly increase by 1 for each power of 2 hours spent learning. Here is a quick table based on self-learning where it takes 400 hours to acquire point:

Target on 3d6 Hours of activity 3 2 4 8 5 20 6 40 7 64 8 100 9 150 10 200 11 250 12 300 13 330 14 360 15 380

The probability of acquiring 1 point rises to 50% after 256 hours. I first modeled using a power of two progression, but the actual values based on the probability distributions make more sense, even though the table is less intuitive.

Self-Teaching, Learning on the Job, Teachers According to Basic Set p. 292, the rate of learning is affected by the condition of learning, conveniently in powers of two!

Learning mode Check Modifier Effect on Rate

On the job -1 X 1/2

Self-teaching 0 X 1

Education +1 X 2

Intensive training +2 X 4

This is pretty straightforward and matches the RAW well enough. The only difference is that I used the self-learning rate as X1 instead of the Education rate: people usually read on their own.

Discussion and parting shot(s)

This translation of learning time into probabilities slightly increase the learning rates if 3d6 are rolled more often rather than wait for longer period before rolling. This is acceptable if we assume that the best bang in learning happens earlier, and refrain from exploiting the mechanics by breaking longer abstracted learning times into smaller chunk just to roll multiple times.

My favorite aspect of this alternative mechanics, beyond the jettisoning of records-keeping, is that it simulates somehow adventuring-based learning, where it is possible to acquire a point into a skill in much less time that 200hrs of dedicated education, or 800hrs of on the job training!

Skill pile-up in GURPS

Abstract (if you don't like long blog posts)

In this post, I explore the resolution of tasks when performed by more than one character. I focus on a searching task that must be completed within a given time frame, and seeking an object that is assumed to be there. I wrote this to help me prepare for an upcoming challenge that may happen in the Palantir quest. It is also usable in the more general case where multiple testing overestimates the odds of success when too many people are trying to do the same thing

Observation: More people added to an already crowded kitchen doesn't result in a better meal.

Cause: There is a cognitive and communication-based overhead to the division of a task.

Leadership: A leader overcomes this cognitive/communication overhead

Conclusion : A successful leadership manages the division of a task to overcome this overhead.

Conclusion : Leading all but one worker into a set of complementary supporting tasks brings the highest possible payoff, but is also the most sensitive to incompetence of the lousiest team members (and leaders).

Scenario

The orcs have broken through the outer defenses. There is not a lot of time to spare! The scriptorium contains one key document that must not fall in the hands of the enemy. Unfortunately, the scriptorium was vandalized by fleeing dwarves in the past week: the whole place is a mess. Six dwarves with Research-12 are tasked to find this document within the hour. This task is considered to be hard (-4), because of the disorder caused by vandalism. All six dwarves head for a set of shelves, however, the mess on the floor is such that something could easily be missed. One of the dwarf takes charge: Dwarf Bob will be scanning the most promising scroll cases that the other four will pre-screen from the shelves.

“GM, what is this task's difficulty? Come on, we're six working together… cakewalk right? Why don't we just all roll and see if one of us gets a success?”

Two dwarves walk into a scriptorium…

The simplest team is a team of two. Let's look at how to resolve this scenario for a pair of dwarves.

Case 1 : Independent attempts

The most simple case is where two dwarves enter the room and start searching independently. This may not be an optimal strategy, but we need to discuss it anyway here. Both dwarves will have a target number of 8. This means that each has 25% chance of success, and the chance of having at least one dwarf succeed is 43% .

That one fails doesn't influence the odds for the other dwarf. This is not as self-evident had Dwarf A had Research-20 and Dwarf B, Research-12. It would be tempting to say that if the really good one failed already, the odds should be worst for the second dwarf. However, unless the first dwarf makes an even worst mess (or tidy thing up) while searching, the difficulty level should be unchanged.

One last note, I don't think that a second check by one character should be allowed in the event of a failure. The margin of failure may be used to determine at which difficulty level the check would succeed, and how much time must be added to the search before it matched this difficulty level. After all, given infinite time, something that is there will be found.

Case 2 : Complementary attempts

Let's consider an alternative where the scriptorium is large and the search task can be trivially shared. The task difficulty needs to be adjusted for each dwarf to reflect that less volume needs to be searched in the same amount of time. A hard (-4) task may be downgraded to very unfavorable (-3). Individual odds are now based on a target score of 9. This means an individual probability of 37% and an overall probability of success 67%.

There is a snag in this model. It doesn't really makes sense if both dwarves succeed since there is only one thing to find. The check with the highest margin may be selected as the truly successful one, and the other simply assumed to have positively determined that the object is not there.

Had the dwarves decided to take the same amount of time to cross-check each other's work, the complementary attempts process would repeat itself, unchanged if the scriptorium remains unchanged. The odds of finding the target object jumps to about 90%. This higher probability really comes down to the fact that the total time searching in this room is multiplied by 2.

Case 3 : Supporting attempts

A compelling case is that where one of the dwarf does the research, and the other dwarf acts as a support. This has the advantage that the support dwarf may be using another skill than research if it makes sense. The GM must make the call to determine whether a supporting dwarf automatically alters the difficulty level of a check. An example where no check is needed is when Dwarf B simply fetches and put back piles of scrolls for Dwarf A to examine (making the task very unfavourable -3 or -2). Alternatively, Dwarf B may be using his research skills to identify the most promising sections for Dwarf A to search. The alternative option may alter the target score for Dwarf A based on the check's margin, and capped at +/- 5. The potential effect should be higher, but coming with a risk that the supporting dwarf makes life harder for Dwarf A. The cap, if used at all, should be such that a supported skill check potentially benefit the most from this strategy.

The cases where n dwarves walk into a scriptorium

I'm a computer scientist. My favorite question starts with: “What if an infinite number of…”. So…

What if an infinite number of dwarves walk into the scriptorium. Let's say, more practically, as many dwarves as there are scrolls in the room. If each dwarf checks one distinct scroll, then the target scroll is sure to be found. The problem is no longer a matter of whether each dwarf are good at research, but whether whoever lead the operation can competently coordinates all of the dwarves to do this silly task.

Case 1 : Independent attempts (no leader)

Here n dwarves are essentially competing for space and resources. This is an uninteresting possibility: the task difficulty should reflect the clutter and chaos of having n people stepping on each other's toes. GM's call. GMs of the world, go to town with a stiff penalty, this is not a search party, it's a n-dimensional posse.

Case 2 : Complementary attempts (with leader)

This case is interesting and crops up a lot in adventuring parties. Figuring out how to split a task in n parts becomes increasingly a matter of leadership than researching skills. First, assuming a perfect leadership, we first need to determine the difficulty level of the task is divided into n parts.

In absence of an explicit leader, two people can work together without penalty. Three to five at -2 (very unfavourable), 5-10 at -4 (Hard), 10-20 at -6 (very hard), 20+ at -10 (impossible). This should be task-independent and based on the limitations of people's ability to coordinate. For example, 6 dwarves trying to split the search spontaneously would make an unfavorable task (-1) into a Hard one (-5): the odds of missing something altogether gets large when each dwarf thinks that someone else has already looked there.

A leader can lead a lot of people, and this number is task-dependent. The limit on the number of truly complementary “moving parts” is, however, task-independent. This is why squads were of size 8, and contemporary sections are made of three fire teams of two soldiers. The margin of a leadership check should be used to offset the penalty incurred by the division of a task into complementary ones. A GM should decide on a bonus cap that makes sense. To pick up on the previous example, if one of the dwarf decides to act as a leader, he will be able to apply his margin against the -5 (hard penalty of having 5 people trying to complement each other). A failure makes things worst as some parts of the scriptorium will be overlooked while other are checked more than once. It makes sense that a leader should first succeed a check in the skill required to analyse the task, at average difficulty (+0), in order to be able to use his/her leadership. It makes no sense to have someone coordinating a task that he/she cannot understand.

Case 3 : Supporting attempts Here, we are entering a dangerous territory. One researcher and n-1 support dwarves. What can possibly go wrong? The leader here can be the researcher, or a third party. The challenge is to coordinate a set of n-1 complementary supporting tasks. There is both a potential for benefit and for disaster. In order to keep things simple, it make sense to treat the sum of all margins of the supports checks, minus the penalty for the number of complementary tasks, plus the leadership's margin. This has the consequence of yielding the largest boost to the ultimate research check if the supporting staff is competent, and under a good leadership. I can see that such benefit should be capped by the margin of the leadership roll. For example, if the Ledership check succeeds by +4, the most benefit from collaboration will be +4. If the leadership check fails by 2, the check has no mininum but cannot be any larger than -2.

Conclusion

I plan to playtest this approach whenever the occasion arises. It took a while to think about it, but not really to use around the table. I like methods that leaves most of the decision as hand waving to the GM. I love the use of the narrative terms average, unfavorable, hard, very hard, impossible to make quick calls. I hope that if you made it this far into the post, that it helped you think about this fairly common problems in RPGs. Maybe even to come up with better, more elegant solutions.

Mining Knowledge in GURPS

Character Knowledge

This section is the first part of three on character knowledge, mining for, and designing sources of knowledge. The emphasis of this section is on character knowledge: the skill-based abstracted knowledge that players can invoke to fill in details in an adventure. As a GM, I used these as potential monkey wrench as I leave it up to dice to determine how much PCs really know before they walk into something.

Area Knowledge, Lore and History

These skills are key in my campaigns. I don't really think that I'm handling it very differently than anyone else. As a GM, I like to use dice to determine character knowledge because it sends the story into unpredictable paths. Knowledge-based skills are weird because, by being anchored on IQ, seem to make the strange assumption that smarter people would know more than other on a topic after being exposed to it for the same amount of learning or experience. In the defense of the RAW, we can always argue that the smarter people will get more insight from the same quantity of information, or that it takes less character points to be able to recall the same amount of useful details.

Case 1 : What is the answer to question X?

A PC has Area Knowledge(Shire)-10: what does it means? It means that this PC has 50% to know a fact about the Shire. Or more precisely, that if we'd poll 1000 “locals”, only 500 would get the answer right. A matter of common knowledge about the shire would mean that, say 90% of the folks know about it (90% is about a target number = 14 on 3d6, or thus +4). The PC would have thus skill+4, or 14 as its effective level of knowing this fact. Interestingly, someone with Area Knowledge(Shire)-13 would have a net target of 17 (99.5%). A little learning, or a good IQ goes a long way when playing this game. Here are some examples of trivia knowledge and related modifiers that I came up with:

Modifier	Prob (%)	Examples
-7	0.46	What is the name of the fiancee of Old Farmer Took’s third son?
-6	1.8	How many sons does Old Took have?
-5	4.6	Where is Old Took’s farm?
-4	9.3	Is Old Took’s farm beside the Mill?
-3	16
-2	26	What is the shortest path to the Mill from here?
-1	38
0	50	Where is the Eastfarthing Mill?
+1	63
+2	74	Where is the nearest Inn from here?
+3	84	Where is Bag-End?
+4	91	Which village is just north of Hobbiton?
+5	95	Where is Hobbitton?
+6	98	Is Eastfarthing East of WestFarthing?

In case of a mismatch between the skill used and the question. I use the GURPS task difficulty (Basic p.345) to stack an additional penalty to the check. For example, knowing about the Shire is very unfavourable in answering a general question about Bree (-2), but could hardly be used to answer a general question about the Misty Mountains (-4). -2 means that about 1/4 of the Shire folks would know, while -4 implies that only 1 in 10 would know this details about the Misty Mountains. If the query was more specific than “general”, apply a second modifier as described in the previous section.

In mid-play, there is no need to sweat the details: get an intuition for the meaning of these penalty and pick one that is about right! Case 1 is a binary case: you either know something or you don't. The next sections uses the margin of success to selectively release information.

Case 2 : What do I know about topic X?

This is such a common question. This case is a good way to reward players researching and using their knowledge to prepare an adventure. I used it in the Palantir campaign often, and in critical places. Instead of carefully preparing a laundry list of everything that a PC knows about something, I get them to roll and reveal knowledge as needed (and narratively convenient) based on the check's margin of success.

For information that I want to provide beforehand (push information), my prep-work comes down to a list of facts that are ordered from general to specific. For example, a Finbert enters Minas Tirith to report to the citadel. The question is “What do I know about making my way to the Citadel?”. The city is imposing, almost oppressive. What does Finbert knows about it before entering?

Margin of Success	Known by (%)	What does he know?
-6	98	Mmm, Minas Tirith is a large city with levels
-5	95
-4	91	There are seven levels in Minas Tirith. The 7th level is where the citadel is.
-3	84
-2	74	There is a road going up to the Seventh level.
-1	63
0	50	The main road winds all the way through each gate.
+1	38	It takes passwords to go through the 7th Gate.
+2	26	There is a good Inn on the 5th level with Hobbit rooms.
+3	16	It is possible to find good pipe-weed on the 4th level, from a man called Heron.
+6	1.8	The captain of the 7th Gate is called Marion, he is a history buff and a pipe-weed aficionado (euphemism).
+8	–	There is a secret passage on the 6th levels that is used to sneak into the 7th level.

Making queries about other topics in Minas Tirith should be independent rolls, unless the topics are closely linked. If so, the next roll may be granted +/- 1 (or 2). But try to keep the checks separated: it isn't because Finbert knows about Marion, Captain of the 7th Gate's drug addiction that he should know any particular details about the city's storm drain system.

Re-rolling on Knowledge

As a rule of thumb, don't. A knowledge check should be about what they know, or can recall from a close-at-hand source without doing research. If you feel like re-rolling, then you might as well decide what piece of information you want to pass to the PCs and spare them the dice rolls. There is nothing wrong with it, I just don't think that it is as much fun. Fun overrides everything.

Designing Sources of Information

In this section, I propose a way to generate the content of sources of information such as books, libraries and collective knowledge within crowds. The GM can plant any information in such source, the rest is randomly generated only as needed.

Designing books, libraries, etc.

We'll use the example of a library, but the source of information can be a book, a crowd, anything that can contain information will work. Unless that you want to completely define the content of a library, it is best to treat it as an entity with its own “stat block”. Similarly to the process described in the post on character knowledge, the actual knowledge stored in a library is finite, but not fully defined. Here is a template statistics block:

Property	Type
Research Base Time	Time	Time of typical search
Research Modifier	Check Modifier	Base modifier to any search
Knowledge base	Skill-level, research modifier	Any number of skills
Specific content	Topic, research modifier	Any number of pre-determined topics

To discuss the statistics, let's consider as an example the actual library of Bilbo Baggins.

Property	Type
Research Base Time	4 hours
Research Modifier	-2 (messy)
Knowledge base	History(Shire)-14 [+0 research] Area Knowledge(Shire)-12 [+2 research] Herb Lore-10 [-4 research]\\Hidden Lore-8 [+1 research] Naturalist-13 [-1 research]
Specific content	Trolls, Ecology Wargs, Ecology [+2 research]

The research base time for this library is the time that it would take to make a superficial survey of the collection such that someone can get a grasp of the library's overall content. In this case, let's say that it could be done in about 4 hours. A neat table estimating base time with respect to TL and corpus size would be sexy right here, but for now I'll leave it as a value to hand-wave.

Bilbo has not maintained much of a filing system, but has kept some kind of thematic order in his collection. Finding material on a specific topic is thus very unfavorable (-2), a modifier that applies to the entire library.

The library mostly focuses on History of the Shire. It contains a lot of encyclopedic content that is particularly well organized (hence +2 research). The content in Herb Lore is scattered (-4 research) and fragmentory (level 10 only). There is, hidden in these books, a little information about Hidden Lore (Level 8 only), but Bilbo has bookmarked most of these (+1 research). The library as a whole is a rich source of scattered information on animal and plants (Naturalist-13, -1 research).

Determining presence/absence of specific content

This is the same thing as asking to the library if it knows the answer to a specific question. This check is done in secret, either on the fly, or during preparation. The procedure is identical to the that of performing the check for any character. Determine how specific the content is, apply the appropriate modifier and check against the library's appropriate skill. The margin of success (or error) becomes the research modifier for this content.

Example 1: the GM needs to determine what is in the library about the battle of Bywater. This is a History(Shire) check done at +4 as most (90%) hobbits knows about this famous chapter of recent history. History(Shire)-14+4=18, roll 16. This is a success with only a +2 margin.

Example 2: Learning about the motivations of dragons is an obscure topic even for Hidden Lore. Let's apply a -3 modifier to this. Hidden Lore-8-3=5. Roll: 13, a failure by 8. There is nothing in this library about dragons but mere mentions of the word.

Example 3: Is there a map of Northfarthing with all streams and roads? It is an Area Knowledge which is rather specific. Let's give it a -3 penalty and assume that about 15% of the hobbits could indeed reproduce this map from memory. Area Knowledge-12 -3 = 11. Roll: 6, success by 5.

After completing these examples, we can update the stat block as follow (only if done during prep work).

Property	Type
Research Base Time	4 hours
Research Modifier	-2 (messy)
Knowledge base	History(Shire)-14 [+0 research] Area Knowledge(Shire)-12 [+2 research] Herb Lore-10 [-4 research] Hidden Lore-8 [+1 research] Naturalist-13 [-1 research]
Specific content	Trolls, Ecology Wargs, Ecology [+2 research] Battle of Bywater (history) [+2 research] Map of Northfarthing, streams and roads [+5 research] Dragons, Not there.

Researching

The main idea here is to use research to determine how much time it takes to either find a piece of specific content, or confirm that it is not there. The key principle is that a good researcher is efficient at finding information. The skill check emphasizes the time factor more than whether the research will work or not. Sometimes, researching is more than seeking, but collating and summarizing information: there is more to research than just looking things up.

Searching for a given piece of information is done in a few steps:

The PC declares what he/she is looking for.
If the topic is not listed in the Specific Content section, determine whether it is, and add the topic to this stat block field.
The Research skill of the PC is modified by the library's base research modifier, then further modified by the modifier for this specific content.

The researching PC rolls a check against the skill related to the Specific Content. A failure of this check incurs an additional -1 penalty. This is due to the effect of not being able to navigate efficiently the subject matter.

Before the check is done, ask the PC how long he/she is willing to research. Roll 3d6; the time to complete the research task is equal to the base time, doubled as many times as the margin of failure, or halved as many time as the margin of success. If the PC searches for less than the target amount of time, they get no answers. ('As long as it takes' is a legitimate amount of time to spend looking.)

Research Skill modifiers

Adjustment	Type
-1	Failed a skill check
+1	Familiarity: has spent more than base time researching with this information source
+/- var	Resource base modifier
+/- var	Content base modifier

Announce the outcome (whether positive or negative).

Example 1: Searching about the ecology of trolls in this library will be done at -2 (base modifier). Searching about wargs will be done at +0 (-2 base, +2 content modifier). Arnadil has a Research-12. He doesn't have any points in Hidden Lore, and this skill has no default. He thus gets an additional -1 on both checks. He rolls a 6 for Troll Ecology (target=9), a MoS of 3. He zeroes on the troll information in a mere 30 minutes (four hours divided by 2^3). For the wargs, his net target is 11 and he rolls a 9: a MoS of 2. He gets the relevant passages together from a few books in 1 hour (four hours divided by 2^2).

Example 2 : Arnadil now wants to know about the exact location of the Battle of Bywater. He already checked against his own skill and failed. He must thus research the topic. To do this, he has History(Shire)-11, rolls a 11 and pass. The final target score is thus 11 -2 (messy) +2 (specific modifier) = 11. He rolls 15, a failure by 4. Finding this detail will take 64 hours, or about 8 days of hard work. Maybe it is because the location has to be pieced from many vague scrawls scattered over many books.

Example 3 : For good measure, after overstaying his welcome for more than 8 days, Arnadil starts searching for details about dragons. He still has no points in Hidden Lore (-1), but is now familiar with the library (+1), and there is still a -2 for the messy state of things. Research-12-2=10, rolls a 6: a MoS of 4. After searching around for 15 minutes, Arnadil can assert positively that there is no real information about dragons anywhere in this library.

More examples

Treatise on Fire arts

Property Type Research Base Time 2 hours Research Modifier -4 ( obfuscated ) Knowledge base Hidden Lore(elementals)-14 [-1 research] Thaumatology-10 [+1 research] Specific content Ignite, spell [-2 research]

This book is a compact source of information. It is a thick book: a superficial scan through would take about 2 hours. It is about various topics on fire: a superficial coverage of thaumatology and thoroughly covers fire elementals. It is written to be intentionally difficult to follow: has no logic flow, table of content or index. A very frustrating book to work with.

A PC with Research-12 and Thaumatology-10 attempts to determine whether there is a spell hidden in the book. The PC rolls 3d6 against his Thaumatology (relevant skill), get a 8. Success. The research roll will be done at -6 (-4 because the book is intentionally obfuscating the information, -2 because the spell is particularly fragmented into passages all over the work). The check against Research-6 gives a 10. A failure by 4, or a search time 32 hours. It will take a while before bringing all the pieces together into a coherent whole. The PC gets himself a large coffee, a ham sandwich and gets to work.

What was the name of that Breelander that Alexi Proudfoot bought a horse from?

Property Type Research Base Time 45 minutes Research Modifier -5 (drunken party) Knowledge base History(Shire)-14 [+0 research] Area Knowledge(Shire)-12 [+2 research] Area Knowledge(Bree)-12 Specific content

The party at the Green Dragon just got a little wild. Finbert has to find the name of a Breelander that he suspects to be smuggling barrow-down cursed gold through the Shire. He knows that the smuggler is a horse trader from Bree. It is already 11PM, the place will be cleared by 1AM.

Step 1 - Does anyone at the Green Dragon knows the answer to this question?

Well, there is not a lot of horse trader in Bree, so about 75% of Bree lander would know (+2). The crowd as a whole has Area Knowledge(Bree)-12+2=14. Roll: 10, MoS of 4. Apparently, zeroeing on the right people won't be too hard. The party's stat block looks now like this:

Property Type Research Base Time 45 minutes Research Modifier -5 (drunken party) Knowledge base History(Shire)-14 [+0 research] Area Knowledge(Shire)-12 [+2 research] Area Knowledge(Bree)-12 Specific content Clary Marsoon [+4 research]

Step 2 - Finding out the answer.

This is getting interesting and different. Research here is the skill to parse through people to find the right folks and get the answer out of them. The GM rules that there will be two relevant skills at play here: Carousing-13 and Interrogation-9. The respective rolls are 4 and 10. A critical success and a failure by 1. The GM rules that great carousing cancels poor interrogation tactics. Finbert has Research-10, -5 because it is a party and +4 for the subject's modifier: a net target of 9. He rolls 11, a failure by 2. Unfortunately, the 3 hours required to find the information is more than the time left in this evening. Finbert, a bit dejected, tries as hard as he can but the right person eventually slips out. He'll have to find this name another way… maybe somewhere where people aren't so drunk.

Conclusion

The purpose of this mechanics is to generate randomly and on demand the content of books, libraries, or even collective knowledge in a group of people. I have applied my early ideas on research in a real game once and the dice were lucky: the Palantir Commission folks got their hands on the book rather quickly. I was hoping for a multiple-day search, but hey… Halin didn't put all these points in Research just so I railroad him into something else. Of course, my library's base modifier was not large and negative enough.

Learning and Skill Advancement

The previous post looked into extracting information from sources. It also proposed a way to create sources of information such that their content can be generated on the fly. This post is looking into turning information into knowledge. In GURPS' terms: using information to learn and advance skills to higher levels.

Preamble

Learning is a topic that is covered in Basic Set p.292 and is a topic that, for some reasons, really interest me. This is probably so because I would like to use one day GURPS mechanics as a basis for an economic simulation. I always wanted to know more about the process of learning. I've proposed a way to rule on learning long task in a recent post, and plan to merge these ideas with this post on learning sources.

Principle

Learning materials are sources of information that passively teach material. They are different from information sources as described previously because they can also be used to acquire or advance skills in addition to be used to answer questions.

Let's treat learning sources as entities, with inherent knowledge. The content is described by a list of skills which are rated using a level to define the knowledge's depth. The structure of the source is defined by a research modifier. Finally, the pedagogical value of the source is rated using Teaching Levels. By abstracting these sources as if they were characters, learning from them becomes a special case of learning from an instructor (or a master).

New Stat Block for Learning Sources

Property	Type	Note
Research base Time	Time	Time of a superficial scan through to get a grasp of the source’s content.
Research Modifier	Check Modifier	The efficiency of the source’s structure to locate, extract and digest a piece of information.
Pedagogical Value	Teaching-level	The clarity of the source as a learning resource.
Knowledge base	Skill-level, research modifier	Any number of skills
Specific content	Topic, research modifier	Any number of pre-determined topics

Design Notes

Research Base Time

Set this value to the amount of time needed to fetch a piece of information with a success with a Margin of Success (MoS) of 0. This base time will either be repeatedly doubled or halved, based on the MoS/MoF of research rolls.

Research Modifier

A Task difficulty modifier to a research check. Use a modifier of 0 for sources which can be quickly scanned. Positive modifiers indicate a combination of better searching features (structure, table of contents) and cohesion of content such that related information is grouped together. Negative modifier indicate lack of structure, cryptic organization, or even deliberate attempts to obfuscate content.

Pedagogical Value

The teaching skill level of the work. A teaching level under 12 indicates that the work is not adequate to provide efficient learning (see rules on Education). The monetary values of sources grows sharply with their pedagogical value. There are rules below on determining this value if a PC wants to create his/her own.

Knowledge Base

The list of skills that are embedded in the source. The level indicates the depth of details for each skill. This level is used both to procedurally define specific content, and limit the depth of skill advancement as a learning tool.

Source type designs

Source Type	Notes
Reference Work	Highly structured documents with a positive research modifier and a low pedagogical value.
Textbooks, treatises	Highly structured documents with a pedagogical value above Teaching-12
Tutorials, technical manuals, howtos	Very effective didactic tools with Teaching-12 or above, but a negative research modifier. Tutorials are really not designed to be comprehensive, nor references.

Self-learning from sources

It takes 200 hours-equivalent instruction by a qualified instructor to acquire a point into a skill. Learning time doubles for self-learning. In order to qualify as pedagogically effective, a source must have Teaching-12 (after adjustments for language, etc). If a source doesn't qualify, learning occurs twice as slowly as with a qualified instructor. The table below indicate the odds of 3d6 of acquiring a point into a skill. It is adapted from the post on records-keeping free skill progression.

Target on 3d6	Self-learning (hours of reading)	Effective Pedagogy (hours of study)
3	2	1
4	8	4
5	20	10
6	40	20
7	64	32
8	100	50
9	150	75
10	200	100
11	250	125
12	300	150
13	330	175
14	360	180
15	380	190
16+	400	200

Modifiers: -1 if skill of source is equal to skill level to learn, -1 for skills points above 16, -2 for skill points above 20, +1 if the source succeeds its Teaching check.

Teaching Checks

Not only does a source either qualify as learning material or not, but it also has the ability to be more of less effective at each character point gained by learning. To determine this, make the source check against its Teaching level. +1 for a success, -0 for a failure. Critical successes are +2 and -1 respectively for success and failure.

Combination learning

If a source is combined with other form of learning, aggregate all form of learning after converting for their relative rates: 2X for education, 4X for training by a master, X1/2 for on the job learning.

Boundaries of learning

A source can only be used to learn up to the source's level for a given skill. There is a -1 penalty to acquire all points that are toward the effective level of the source itself. For example, someone with an IQ 11 needs 8 points to acquire Thaumatology-12, and 12 points to get to Thaumatology-13. If the source has Thaumatology-13, the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th points will all be done with the -1 penalty. It will not be possible to learn the 13th point (Toward Thaumatology-14) at all as it exceeds the source's level.

People may “overgrow” a source, but it still may yield information through research: just not a body of information that is consistent to acquire a whole character point anymore.

Example: The Mystic Art of Gardening

Property	Type
Research Base Time	2 hours
Pedagogical Value	Teaching-12
Research Modifier	-1 (scattered)
Knowledge base	History(valars)-9 [+0 research] Area Knowledge(Mirkwood)-12 [+2 research] Naturalism-12 [+0 research] Herb Lore-10 [-4 research] Hidden Lore-13 [-1 research] Naturalist-13 [+1 research]
Specific content	Seek Plant-13 [-1 research] Identify Plant-13 [-2 research] Heal Plant-13 [-3 research] No additional spells [-4 research]

This book is a treasure trove of information on plants and their hidden lore. It was written as a learning resource (Teaching-12), and not so much as a reference (-1 research). There is a lot of information on plants, and their hidden lore as well. The hidden lore is, however, harder to keep track of. If a PC searches hard, he/she will be able to research and find three hidden spells. There is a little Herb Lore in this book (level 10 at most), but is is written in jargon and difficult to parse (-4 research).

Seeking hidden spells from the rest or the content

A PC may declare that he/she is looking for a spell, any spell. The first one to find will be the first one listed in the specific content. In this example, Seek plant was buried between two sections with no clear heading (-1 research). A further attempt would reveal Identify plant (provided that the PC dedicate enough time to search for it). If the PC discovers all three spells, he/she would have to fail to find the 4th spell before it can realize that the source contains no more spells. Of course, if the book has a shiny table of content with the page number for each spell, make this discovery automatic (or with a large and positive research bonus). You may still hide a powerful spell underneath with a large penalty to research to make the book more interesting.