GURPS: The Death Spiral

GURPS is a great game. Like B/X, this is a game that I can "think" in easily and play in my head - as long as combat follows the simplified model. The combats can get wildly complex with all sorts of modifiers and conditions, check out this site for some great examples of fights and how the concepts of "shock" and the classic GURPS "death spiral" of getting hit first and the "pile on" effect of damage and penalties give the first hit advantage to the one drawing first blood.

I have heard some criticize the "death spiral" where it is very hard to recover the advantage from damage taken in combat, but to me that is a more realistic portrayal of fighting. There are character options to negate this (the high pain threshold advantage and the berserk disadvantage), and if you were playing a typical D&D fighter-type, the high pain threshold would be a must-buy for me.

Got a Problem? Buy it Off!

That is always an interesting thing with GURPS, a lot of the criticism of the game feel more like a lack of knowledge of the rules or character design options. For a mage or thief who don't normally take damage, the shock rules work as intended and add an extra level of threat to taking damage. For fighter types, you need to spend points to avoid the death spiral since this is your job day in and day out, and if you attended a fighter school worth its salt, they toughened you up like a 2-dollar steak before graduation with the high pain threshold advantage.

The Rules Help Make the World

You thought today's hazing rituals were bad, just go back a couple hundred years and get roughhoused and beat on by your fighter school classmates each and every day. This is a good example of the rules creating a logical behavior in the game world. Does it make sense that the fighter academy give students the option to buy high pain threshold when they (survive) graduate? Yes it does, if you come out of this school, and you want to spend the points, you should be able to buy it for your character.

Well, what does that say about the school? There must be daily organized brawls, getting beat on by rock filled socks, taking wounds in training, and all sorts of roughhousing going on - and it being encouraged by those doing the training. I could imagine a school like this for medieval knights and the place has a bad reputation, has a casualty rate, but produces some of the toughest warriors in the land.

You come out with high pain threshold and you earned that advantage with bruises and scars as your receipt, and you can take some levels of disadvantages in appearance there to help cover the cost. It just works and it makes sense.

Contrast this with a traditional D&D style school where the need for allowing this advantage isn't there, and you have to assume this with the entire "fighters and their higher hit points" thing. You may gloss over the roughhousing and make this more of a family-friendly school of chivalrous knights that looks like a D&D novel book cover of perfect people smiling and posing with swords.

Death Spiral? Adds to the World

You could make an argument that "the death spiral" helps make the world too, and enforcing these rules adds to that gritty, realistic feeling. If you are a fighter, protect your squishy friends who faint at the sight of blood. Don't let them get into danger. Take the damage for them, if need be. You are the warrior, this is your role.

It is not like, well, the thief has 20 hits, he can afford to take a 8 point hit. Who cares? Why give up any of my 30 hits for him? Well, you may want to take the damage instead and have the healer take care of you. That thief may get his attack in and help you all win the fight. You don't want your friends to get into trouble if you can help it, so sacrifice your health if need be.

Like Call of Cthulhu and Insanity

A lot of these games have rules that shape the world. Call of Cthulhu's insanity system, Warhammer FRP and Zweihander's combat systems, Rolemastrer's crit charts, FATE's entire aspect and consequence system, and a bunch of other systems' specific rules and procedures. If you know the game, then the rules can influence the world and help shape it. It just take a couple minutes of thinking about how all this works, and coming up with "the reasons why" and adding some of these to the world before players enter it.

In Cthulhu, there should be some people "not quite right in the head" in the town before you start poking around. Everyone by default is not a sane blank slate and insanity is only now happening because the PCs arrived. Why are those not quite right people that way? Are they just odd with a screw loose, or did this happen for another reason...?

From Abstract to Concrete

The death spiral is one of those rules that creates the line between the melee characters and the non-melee ones, and it can be negated to a degree. In D&D the abstract concept of higher hit points for fighters covers this. In a more simulation style game like GURPS, this difference is built into character design and is a character creation option.

Then the question becomes, how can so many characters buy this advantage? That is a world building question, as a generic "do anything be anyone" world puts you in the fake place of equal choices. There are no equal choices. The world will define them, and as a referee and world builder, part of your job is to make character design options make sense and fit into the world. You could apply this logic to magic schools. Are they in the open, mainstream, and the accepted education of high society, or underground and full of demon worship and dark arts?

Your world building choices, and the backgrounds players want to create, will help shape that world and what skills and design options are available to characters.