On Paper Men and Disposable Characters

I occasionally peruse Dell'Orto's Dungeon Fantastic; it's good stuff, and he gives me shoutouts and he's still blogging while a lot of my favorite blogs stopped, but a lot of what he discusses isn't that useful to me (and I suspect, a lot of the stuff I discuss isn't that useful to him). Part of it is our respective genres, but there's also a difference in philosophy between how he runs Felltower and how I generally run things, and I think it's typified by the paper man ethos, the amount of investment in your character that I would encourage and that he would discourage, and what that difference means for a lot of games.

Still, I'm fascinated by how other people run games.  I like to explore what other people are doing, because a change of perspective can show me things I never would have considered before.  Even if my style doesn't change, I can still incorporate some of what I learn, and I gain a better understanding of what I am doing.  And, of course, sometimes I find something very good, or I start to see a flaw in some thing I'm doing. So, I wanted to muse on what he seems to be doing and how I might approach a similar thing, or what I might suspect would work well in that genre.

I also want to note I wrote this post months ago. And then rewrote it.  And rewrote it.  So if it seems a little odd and scattered, that's because I've had to take a long time to sort out my thoughts on it.

Gaming Ballistics has a Patreon

If you read this blog, chances are you already read Gaming Ballistic, but if you don't, and you want to support some of the top-of-the-line GURPS content being produced on the web, you should check out the new Gaming Ballistic Patreon (no word on other backer options); if you like what you see, perhaps give him some support.

Blogosphere Roundup: Alternate Feints and Cover, Cover, Cover

 I've seen a couple of posts that I'd like to at least link to, for your reading pleasure, and to discuss.

• Gun-Fu Cover Power-Ups
• Fixed-Effect Feints

Cover Power-Ups

This is sort of a back-and-forth at this point, so I won't talk that much about these.  Chaotic GM was inspired by my discussions of gun fu, and thus posted this, and now I'm inspired, because I really wanted at least one of my styles to have a focus on taking proper cover, and this power-up structure fits very much with how I need to write things up for my martial-arts-as-power-ups.  I'd need to go over it all with a fine-tooth comb and the result would likely be too wordy for even one of my lengthy posts, but I just wanted to say "I intend to use this."  As such, you might find it useful too.

Fixed-Effect Feints

This is actually a few posts, which Dell'Orto links to in his post, but I thought I'd just hit up the other pertinent one real quick. It covers both fixed-effect deceptive attack and fixed-effect feints.

Fixed Effect Deceptive Attacks

I personally have less need for fixed-effect deceptive attacks.  I understand the logic, which is that if it's a fixed effect, it reduces your flexibility.  You're either making a deceptive attack or you're not, so you can't do things like perfectly tailor your attack to maximize your deceptive attack while maintaining your desired ability to hit.  It also makes it easier to create trademark moves, to create techniques, and encourages people to start mixing and matching their attack options as they increase in skill.  If Deceptive Attack is always -4 for -2 to defense, then what sets apart a skill 15 character from a skill 14 character is that they can make a deceptive attack and hit more than half the time; what sets a skill 18 character apart is that they can make a deceptive attack and also a rapid strike (with extra effort) and hit more than half the time. Or they can make a deceptive attack for the vitals and hit more than half the time, etc.

But for me, I tend to play at exceedingly high skill levels, as I run kung fu games where people expect to be able to pull off a wealth of complex moves. I have literally had readers and players complain if I hand them a character with less than skill-18 in their combat skill.  When skill 20-24 is not out of the question, something as small as a -4 becomes uninteresting (though, do note that Dell'Orto suggests a second tier to help with this). More importantly, though, I find that the standard way of handling Deceptive Attacks makes it similar to a contest of skills that always improves in grades.  A skill 22 character is always demonstrably better than a skill 20 because of that additional -1 they can layer onto their attacks if they want, and that strikes me as accurate: each additional increase in skill adds a subtle bit of nuance in this arms race of attack vs parry that gets abstracted away in the rules for deceptive attack.  Fixed Effect makes this less granular.

That's not to say that I'm not interested.  There are some interesting things it does with combat, namely that tendency to force players to think more about their options.  But I'm not 100% sold on it.

Fixed Effect Feints

Fixed-Effect Feints, on the other hand, are a great idea.  I've commented before on the problem with Feint and how unwieldy it can get. A lot of players dislike the Feint skill precisely for this: yes, you lose an attack, but every point you spend in it is a -1 to your opponent's defense; the only way to beat it is to raise your defenses (5/level) or to invest in Feint yourself, which makes it a must-have trait.  It also allows a more skilled opponent to absolutely destroy less skilled opponents.

For example, Alexa is skill 20 with the force sword, and Barlo is skill 18.  She has Parry 13, he has Parry 12.  In a 3e fight, they would just hit one another until someone screws up their parry roll, which eventually means Alexa should prevail, but Barlo could get lucky. In 4e, Deceptive Attacks speed this process up: Alexia is applying a -8 to her attacks to apply a -4 to his defense (Reducing Barlo to Parry 8) and he's applying a -6 to his attacks to reduce apply a -3 to her defenses (reducing Alexa to Parry 10). This means that Alexa is likely to beat Barlo in a few turns (he can keep himself going with retreats, for example, and extra effort), rather than a 10-20 turns. If she feints first, she'll beat Barlo by an average of 2 points, and then she can make a Deceptive Attack to drop his effective Parry to 6.  If Barlo feinted at Alexa, he would likely fail, and even if he succeeded, he's unlikely to apply more than -1 to her defense. So with a single feint and attack, Alexa will probably defeat Barlo in two turns, with only a 2 point difference in skill.

This gets far worse with a character who is mostly defenses.  Say Cain has a neurolash Staff with skill 14, but it has +2 parry, and he has Enhanced Parry.  He has an effective parry of 13, just like Alexa does.  But he can't reduce her defense by more than -1 without risking failure half the time, so she's effectively at Parry 12, and she can reduce his by -4, dropping him to a (reasonable) 9 or less. But her Feints will likely beat him by 6, which drops him to a 3 or less on parry.  The fool doesn't have any weapon skill, so she'll crush him like a bug, despite his impressive defenses.

If we go with a fixed effect feint, then it becomes a contest to see if you can get the -4. It's like stunning an opponent, but with skill rather than damage. In this version, Alexa can drop Barlo's defense more on average, making the move more valuable to her than under the normal rules, but Barlo has a chance of dropping Alexa.  If he gets lucky, he might beat her by a single point, which instantly translates into a -4 to her defense. Thus, he sees value in trying to do something other than frantically defend all the time, and there's a real chance he could beat her.  Cain likewise caps how much she can beat him.  Sure, she's still likely to win the feint contest, and she'll apply that full -4 to his defense, but that's not as bad as -6, and it only drops his defense down to 5 or less, which is a survivable value (it requires extra effort, retreats, all-out defense, etc, but Alexa is giving up a turn to make the feint, so the fact that you could survive it means she's more wearing you down with it than guaranteeing her victory).

This does something else: it prevents the Feint technique from being an effective bonus to defense.  When you get to the point where Feinting becomes so powerful, then players become highly incentivized to take it, not just to defeat their opponents with it, but to prefer their opponents from using it against them.

Say Cain purchased Feint as a technique and then bought Technique Mastery. He has Feint-20 and Staff-14.  If Alexa tries to Feint him, she's unlikely, under the standard system, to apply more than a -1 or -2 to his defenses.  By purchasing feint and technique mastery (RAW that's 8 points, which would only raise his Staff skill to 16 and only give him a +1 to defense), he's effectively increased his defense rating against her by ~+4.  Thus, she cannot reduce his defense to more than about 7 or 8, which is much better than the 3 she was dropping it to before.  He has little incentive to use it against her, for the same reason Barlo has little reason: he's unlikely to get more than -1 or -2, which will not be enough to regularly land a hit on her.  But if we use the fixed effect version, his high level of Feint still acts to protect him, but it becomes all-or-nothing: if she feints, he's trying to prevent the feint from working.  If he succeeds, she gets nothing, but if he fails she drops his parry to 5 again.  At the same time, he has incentive to feint against her, because a successful feint will drop her parry to 8 if he pairs it with his deceptive attack, which would legitimately force her on the defensive.  And he can succeed at that 50% of the time.

The counter argument I hear is that this makes Feint less effective.  First, that's rather the point, as it's one of the more powerful techniques, more powerful than it really should be.  Second, as you can see with poor Cain there, it actually creates more value for it.  I've discussed "capping" feints, but someone points out that greatly reduces the utility of maximizing your feint.  I think this fixes that problem: being a feint expert now becomes about maximizing your chances at getting that -4 (as well as preventing others from getting that -4 on you) than it is about maximizing what penalty you can apply to your opponent. Yes, it's less useful against unskilled opponents, but you don't need much help against those.  It becomes more useful against skilled opponents, which makes it more interesting.

I'm less sold on the idea of a higher tier of a fixed feint, though.  Setting aside my total embrace of uncapped deceptive attacks, I think a penalty to defense of more than -4 really needs some justifications.  Being prone is a -3, being stunned is -4, being unable to see your opponent is -4, but somehow, a feint can be -8? How bad are your defenses that you're as bad off as if you were blind and stunned? What did he do?  It also, again, allows you to crush unskilled defenders even worse than before, but we already have deceptive attack for that.  That said, you might need something like that to deal with extreme opponents, but you're unlikely to succeed by 10+ against a similarly skilled opponent; this is only really useful against people with ridiculous defense values that don't have comparably high skill levels to match. So I'd have to think on it.  This might be better handled as a sort of perk or special technique that allows you to take a greater risk, or caps how low you can bring the target's defenses (it can apply a full -8, but not if your opponent is already "underwater" and so can't drop your opponent's defenses below, say, 10).

So I like this. I might introduce it, but given how passionate my readers are about martial arts in Psi-Wars, I'll doubtless hear quite some debate back and forth on the merits of it before I do it, hence this post.  I also wanted to highlight what I think is a great idea.

Cross-Post: The Reaver's Hand as Power-Ups

I've been a backer for Christoper Rice's (of Ravens and Pennies fame) patreon for quite awhile, at varying degrees of commitment, for a long time.  A lot of Rice's material has made it into Psi-Wars, from Keleni Stickfighting (Ishen Denshin, from his pyramid article, Mind and Body) and the Dead Art (Thanatokinesis, from his article, Necro-Psi) as well as likely others that don't spring immediately to mind.  He's not an explicit collaborator, but I borrow so much of his stuff that I sometimes think of him as one.

At some point, he saw fit to show me a preview of what became his Mind and Body martial art follow-ups, to give feedback.  This was quite some time ago, so I went hunting for my notes on it, but could not find them.  Nonetheless, I remember I was busy so I only really had time to discuss one, which was the Reaver's Hand, and I discussed it because I found it so profoundly engrossing and inspiring.  It was, and remains, a martial art that I could see integrated into Psi-Wars (though I'm never sure how to integrate his patreon material into my game, as I don't want to reprint it, but I can't very well point to a pyramid article somewhere either), especially as an assassination technique for the Ranathim death cult.

To honor its release, I've written a version of the Reaver's Hand as an upgrade set (with Chris's permission).  Now, as with all upgrade sets, I've taken some poetic license with it; in particular, I've focused on Steal Life as the primary psychic ability of the style, with Detect Life and the Reaver's Hand relegated to exercise and super-cool secret, respectively. I'm not covering the full scope of the style, and while you will doubtless get a sense of what the style is like, if you truly want to understand it (I will reprint no rules), you'll need to go get the original article itself, which you can do right now by becoming a backer.  It will cost you $2 (two dollars!) to gain access to, so if this interests you,  you'll have to make the sacrifice of an overpriced latte this month, but I think its worth it and, who knows, maybe you'll stick around and read more of his stuff.  Poke around and see if you like what he has.

A Conditional Injury Deep Dive

Check out Douglas Cole's Site Here

If you’ve followed my material for a while, you may have noticed something of a love affair I have with the works of Douglas Cole. At one point, one my patrons joked that the general topic poll was “What Douglas Cole article do I want Mailanka to talk about this month?” It’s not really personal; I’ve gotten to know him and he’s a great guy, but this is purely business: the material he puts out regularly hits exactly the right notes for me, and reshapes how I run games. I’ve used his material in Cherry Blossom Rain, G-Verse and, yes, Psi-Wars.

So, this month, my Patrons voted for A Deep Dive into Conditional Injury, the latest optional rule by Douglas Cole that made it into one the last pyramid issues to see print (Pyramid #3/120). It entered Psi-Wars canon officially as a rule in the Action Vehicular Combat system, where I use to greatly simplify vehicular damage, to make normal vehicular damage look an awful lot like GURPS Spaceship Damage, and to more closely track vehicular damage as a series of destroyed systems, rather than an ever mounting escalation of concerns. Today, I’m going to be looking deeper into the article, its implications, what I’ve learned since I started using it, and in what ways we could spice it up.

I’d also like to add that in working on this article, I had a chance to speak to Douglas Cole himself about it. I’ll note some comments he made throughout the body of the article and clarify some points. One thing that Douglas wanted clarified was that he didn’t playtest these rules. Thus, if you wanted to use these rules, I wouldn’t worry too much about sticking to exactly what he wrote because he rigorously proved that they worked. Rather, see the article as a detailed exploration of an idea.  

Also, if you're not already aware, Douglas has a kickstarter program that's coming up.  If you like his stuff, or you like what you see here and are curious to explore more of his ideas, check it out here.

Cross-Post: The Foalkan Clans

So, one of the players of the currently defunct "Tinker Titan Rebel Spy" has been tinkering with some Psi-Wars material, and I wanted to address it, because whenever someone posts Psi-Wars material, I want to give at least a shout-out.  I find a little commentary helps as well.

Here is the post: The Foalkan Clans

Before I dive into any further commentary, I want to address the concept of "adding Psi-Wars material."  I wrote Psi-Wars to be used, and to be useful.  I'm not really a fan of people who thump RPG setting books and say "This is canon!" except in the cases of discussion ("Well, as written, the Akashic Order is a thing and it works like this...") where you want to establish the baseline "as written."  In your own campaigns, you should be able to do as you wish.  But more than that, I wrote it to be explicitly "large."  I see it as a framework in which you should be able to put your own material.  I did this because of my initial frustrations with gaming in the Star Wars universe, in that I found it difficult to see where I could put my own material or have my own adventures (this seems to be a somewhat common complaint, if the new trilogy is any guide).  Thus, if I see people trying to add their own material, then I know my design is succeeding.

When I "finish," I'd like to break out the setting into "degrees of canon," with the "white canon" representing the core truths on which the setting hinges (things like "There is an Empire" and "There is Communion"), "grey canon" which are things that are fairly central but can be customized to serve the campaign pretty easily, things like the state of the Cult of the Mystical Tyrant, the moral nature of the Empire, or the exact nature of the Skairos.  Finally, I'd like to have a "black canon," which is entirely optional elements that may or may not be included without issue.  Certain alien races, like the Traders or the cat-people (the "Asrathi") or the Shepherdist faith, are all examples. If you dumped them from your game, nobody would notice. Also, if you added them to the game, they wouldn't interfere.  I'd very much want to throw open Black Canon to whomever wanted to add to it, and hinge open grey canon a crack so people could offer their own interpretations and spins on particular setting elements.

So, this is a very long way of saying: If you write it, I will come.  Not only that, I'll probably try to find some way to enshrine it.

Onto the commentary.

Meditations on the Biplane Part I -- Feedback

My discussion of dogfights have stirred up quite some commentary, not all of which I've had a chance to really address, and some I cannot (yet) address.  I take that sort of enthusiasm as a good sign, and I wanted to tackle a specific post here, by the esteemed Salsathegeek.  His commentary is especially important to me, as he's played a fighter ace, and his experience is one I seek to improve by updating these rules.  If he likes them, then it's a sign of a job well done, and if he doesn't, it hints that there are further problems, so I take his feedback seriously.

I should point out that he's not exactly criticizing me so much as expounding on what I'm talking about.  I don't really feel I need to "defend" myself (I think creators should avoid defending their work anyway; it should stand on its own two feet), so much as expand on some concepts and address why I'm doing certain things, and what it might look like if I didn't.  That is, I want to explore, rather than refute, his feedback.  I want to see what I can take from it and what you could for your own settings.

Scoping the Competition: Star Warsiors

Clearly, I'm not the first person to think about filing the serial numbers off of Star Wars and building my own thing. I wonder, though, if Psi-Wars can ever reach the dizzying heights of Star Warsiors, with its heroic Karate Farmer, his master, Wise Puppet, and the villainous Door Ladder.  You can check out the story here (and here)

Cross-Post: Libris Ludorum Ruminates on Houses

Nemoricus, who is one of my most supportive Patrons (also the author of the Psi-Wars primer: I just post what he gives me; and the author of the Psi-Wars bibliography, which I'll post soon; and frequent editor of my material) has been following the houses closely and decided to explore them, noodling through them in a series of four posts that I'd like to share with you, and then comment on.

The Posts

• House Sabine
• House Grimshaw
• House Elegans
• House Kain

Cross-Post Highlight: GURB, the Generic Universal Roleplaying Blog

I think I've mentioned several times that I regularly use material from other blogs to power Psi-Wars, and 90% of the time, I mean I'm using GURB.  He regularly dives into all parts of Ultra-Tech and pulls out more nuance that you can add to your setting and gadgetry, which is exactly the sort of thing I need.  If I'm honest, give GURB a year, and I won't need GURPS Vehicles 4e anymore.

I want to highlight two things.  First, GURB has put together an extensive modification of the article "Blaster and Laser Design" from Pyramid #3/37 "Tech and Toys II."  Erik, the writer of GURB, promises that at some point, he's going to compile all of his material, but I thought I would at least compile a set of links, for my own convenience, and for yours!

Second, I've noticed that Erik is a fan of Star Wars and, hoping that he was a fan of Psi-Wars, I asked if he'd be willing to donate some guns.  I gave him no constraints other than to allow him to create what he wanted to create and to follow the conventions of Psi-Wars, which meant he had to discard his alternative rules for Star Wars-style blasters (a rule I have in place to avoid more house rules than necessary, but I happen to think it's a good one, as removing the surge modifier from blasters would make some kind of EM disruptor an interesting weapon to wield against robots, so I might institute it anyway, but he's been kind enough to leave everything as backwards compatible as possible).  You can check out the weapons here: Psi-Wars: A Blaster Grab-Bag.

A Psi-Wars Round-Up

I should pay better attention.

I wrote Psi-Wars for people to use, so when I see people using it, that warms my heart.  I also believe in the Death of the Author, in the sense that I do not believe my way is the only way to run Psi-Wars, or even that it's my own setting (that's why Iteration 5 was a very good stopping point, because it gives GMs the tools they need to write their own material).  Thus, when someone creates new material or goes in a new direction, I feel that adds to Psi-Wars.  It can also highlight weaknesses and things I need to shore up, which makes it good feedback for me as well.

Today, I've got two blogs for you, both of which have been delving into Psi-Wars.  The first is adding lots of optional rules to everyone's favorite mechanic: Communion. The second is actually using Psi-Wars for a campaign. Fun!

Mailanka Rants: It's okay to like bad movies

So, a friend recently linked me to this guy's channel on movie editing and criticism, and he gets into some pretty deep stuff, but the one that leapt out at me, that I felt demanded greater discussion, was this video.  The question he is asked is this:

Jurassic World: I liked the movie because it felt like a bad B-movie.  Do you think movies can be genuinely good because of their "badness"?

 To which Folding Thoughts stumbles a bit, because how can you call something good because of its badness?  Then he begins to discuss genre, but I think his initial confusion signaled something important: the questioner framed his question badly, and I think I know why.

The question isn't really "Can bad movies be good?"  but "Is it okay for me to like a critically panned movie?"

The answer is yes.  It's also not the point.

GURPS-Day Cross Post: So you wanna play in a game, huh?

Hey, it's November, and this month, the GURPS blog selected "Community" as its theme.  Being a good member of the blogging community, I'd like to join in.  Originally, I wanted to talk about one of my favorite topics: legacy, and contrast it with the murder-hobo straw man.  But, after some discussions on GURPS Discord (You guys hang out there, right?) that inspired me, I remembered an old topic I wanted to talk about, especially since I've taken up playing in a GURPS game.

The world of RPGs brims with advice to GMs about GMing, and that's hardly surprising.  For one thing, GMing takes a lot of work, and thus there's a lot to discuss, and a lot of people want to learn to GM better.  For another thing, us GMs tend to get really good at planning, thinking and writing, and thus we're more likely than, say, a more casual player, to write about what we know.  But being a good player is just as important as being a good GM, and it's a topic that doesn't get much attention.

So that's what I want to address.  How can you be a better player?

Cross-Post: Why Not Pokemon?

The post I look forward to the most all week is Benjamin Gauronskas's weekly cross-post, both to get an idea of what's going on across the blog and to see if anything I did over the week merited a mention.  I think Benjamin is a case-study in two good pieces of advice I could offer to any blogger.

The first is that if you want people to read your stuff, talk about them (especially in a positive light), a point also well elucidated in Terry Pratchett's "The Truth" (at least, I remember it well).  From my perspective, through his weekly commentary on the blogosphere, Benjamin has become the pre-eminent "GURPS Blog" commentator, and which means he holds my attention, which means I often end up quoting him on this blog.  Cross-posting works, and it's one of the reasons that I think the GURPS blogosphere is really flowering right now, because of all this cross-pollination.

The second is that if you want to improve your writing, write.  Anything you make a habit of doing will improve.  Also, if you want people to read your stuff, write.  People prefer something to nothing, so even if they think your stuff is terrible... they're still reading it!  It's terribly brave to put your stuff out for the world, but being brave, being willing to fail in the effort to improve, is how leaders are born.

So, where is brave Benjamin leading us today? To Pokemon.  He's been making quite a few, and some people have asked him (excitedly, I'm sure) if he's making a pokemon campaign.  This is his response:

I've had some serious writer's block this week, so I've been putting up some filler posts statting out pokemon abilities. I think I'm getting a reputation as someone who is trying to create a pokemon setting, and I'd like to clarify that isn't the case: Pokemon, well, any video game has some moves that are interesting (and some that are trivial) so my train of thought is along the following lines:

1. Making abilities based on a list of already existing concepts is easy, but helpful.

1. Demonstrating that it's "easy" or at least "possible" to convert any given ability is a good demonstration of the flexibility of the system,

1. Pokemon is fun and popular, so it's a somewhat accessible introduction to what GURPS can be or do for people who have ever thought of playing a tabletop RPG but are worried about playing a system that requires them to shoehorn things into mechanics that don't support their designs or assumptions.

In any case, it has been a bit of an education for me, with people helpfully pointing out things that could be done differently or better, so that's appreciated.

In other words, he's just writing them to maintain his habit, and because they're easy, and because he knows them.  He's also stated that he dislikes ripping stuff off, that he'd rather make his own thing, which is a sentiment I obviously agree with.

But as I read that, I thought it was a bit of a shame that he's essentially throwing away his material.  Now, far be it from me to criticize someone working to work, because all work leads to other work.  By building these abilities, he's sharpening his ability-building skills, and deepening his understanding of Pokemon.  That's a worthy goal!  But I love to say "Why do one thing when you can do two?"  If you're going to go to all the work to build up those abilities, why not also turn them into something someone can play with?  Well, he's already answered that: because he doesn't like to rip stuff off.  Besides, I'm sure you can find a half dozen, half-finished GURPS Pokemon games out there to pick from.  How could he make his material stand out?

Well, given that I'm writing a knock-off of Star Wars, I think the answer would obviously be to write a knock-off of Pokemon.  Since that sort of thought process is largely what my blog is about, I thought I'd dig into why Pokemon rocks, how we can capture that feel, and use it to build our own campaign.

The Illusion of Mechanics

According to some, this is good art

According to some, this is not good art

I've seen a couple of posts that touch on a topic very near and dear to me when it comes to game design, not because I agree or disagree, but more that they enter into that arena and invite discussion on the topic.  The first is Creighton Broadhurst's Why Character Optimization Is Pointless (Unless You Enjoy It) and Christopher R. Rice's Building Player Characters To Concept.  The theme they touch on is the illusion of mechanics.  At their core, they say "Mechanics don't matter" Or, at least, these mechanics don't matter, but maybe those do.  And they also point out that this is a matter of taste.  As you'll see soon, I don't disagree with their premise.  This is not a rebuttal of their posts, but a comment on some larger implications, and what their perspectives on game design can do to inform your own perspective, even if you disagree with them.

On the Cost of Advantages

Christopher Rice over on Ravens and Pennies is in full rant-mode regarding the cost of advantages, and he's right.  Go over there and read it.  Done? Great!  The only problem I have with his post is that, in my opinion, he doesn't go far enough.  I'll explain in a minute, but let me first shout "Hear hear!" for a bit.

Cross-Post: Collaborative Gamer's Solo Campaign

+Justin Aquino's talking about it, so I have an excuse to talk about it too.  I've been avidly following +Collaborative Gamer's solo campaign for awhile now, and I think it's great, but for different reasons than Justin (that's not to say that he's wrong, just that we see different facets).

I'm a big believer in Failing Faster.  The point behind Psi-Wars is to finish a campaign sooner rather than later, so I'm borrowing as much as I can from other works, including Star Wars itself and various GURPS books.  The point is that the perfect campaign that takes ten years to never get off the ground is always inferior to the shoddy campaign that actually gets run.

Yet people complain that GURPS takes too much work to get up and running, and they do have a point.  I've been working on Psi Wars off and on since January, and while I'm farther than what you see in my posts, I'm not much farther.  I have been slowed, to be sure, by getting married and by the fact that I actually have to make all of my notes presentable, but it's still taking some time.  How can we make it go faster?