Re: [HOE] GURPS DEADLANDS DELAYED!

[Darrin Bright <darrin@neobright.net>]

At 09:20 PM 1/16/01 -0800, you wrote:
>I have a question that may be incredibly stupid, but I'm just curious.
>
>Why couldn't SJG present the card-based rules as "optional flavor-rich rule
>variants", or something, and just include them alongside the standard GURPS
>dice-roll and let the players choose which they'd rather use?  

The most popular suggestion on the playtest boards was to list both
systems, dice and cards, with the cards most likely being listed as an
optional system on a sidebar. It's not clear just exactly how the author
felt about this, but from what I remember of the original "final"
manuscript, the cards were still the default for hucksters, and each
hex/spell still had minimum hand requirements. 

To get back to your question, there were several major problems with
representing both systems:

1) Poker odds DO NOT map well to a 3d6 distribution. I came up with some
tables that could do it, but it was nowhere near quick and elegant. 

2) The GURPS mechanics use a target number as well as degrees of success to
determine the outcome of a skill check, and this was nothing like the DL
mechanics. When hucksters cast a hex in DL and only get five cards, it
doesn't matter if that huckster is Edmund Hoyle himself or Joe Schmoe the
two-bit shyster, they each have about the same odds of drawing a good hand
regardless of skill level. In the GURPS system, the better your roll the
better hand you got, and the odds were pretty wacky... 1 in 36 chance of
drawing a Royal Flush? I don't think so...

3) None of the original DL spellcasters use anything like spell points, and
it was very difficult to integrate concepts into the standard GURPS magic
rules. A bit more on this...

The "Generic" part of GURPS more or less means "standardized", and GURPS
has a standardized magic system that uses spell points. Although it would
be fairly easy to translate "strain" into GURPS ST/Fatigue, most Deadlands
spellcasters were created before PEG started using Strain for all their
spellcasters. There are three completely different spellcasting systems
(both from a mechanical and metaphysical standpoint) in DL and absolutely
NONE of them are even similar to the GURPS system. The Huckster system was
the hardest to squeeze into the GURPS mold, but the other spellcasting
systems (Blessed and Shamans) suffered a lot of warping as well.

The consensus on the list was that the GURPS magic/spellcasting system
should be used as much as possible, and the final draft I saw didn't go out
of its way to do that.