 |
Ranathim Mechanic
by Dan Smith |
I wrote the post on vehicular extra effort so I could write this post.
I've been struggling for a long time as to how to handle people kitting out their rides. Several people have pointed out that Han Solo flew a "modded" YT-1300 light freighter, and even if we set aside Star Wars, the whole point of series like the Fast and the Furious is to brag about how cool your vehicle is. Technologically minded characters will want to roll back their sleeves and upgrade or modify their vehicle somehow, and fighter Aces and Smugglers will want to brag about how their signature ship is "the fastest in the Galaxy."
The problem here, though, is that GURPS Vehicles is
awfully complicated. For example, if you swap out one engine for another that's twice as powerful in output, that doesn't mean your vehicle is twice as fast as it was. What if the engine is heavier? And even if it isn't, aerodynamics (or hyperspatial hyperdynamics) will have something to say about it, as you get diminishing returns. Thus, we need to break out the spread sheets every time we mod a vehicle. In a sense, the
genius of GURPS Spaceships was to waive all that complexity away by creating a very modular system. In GURPS Spaceship, you really can just swap out one engine for another! But we've discarded that system, as it creates some other issues.
So, I built
Redjack vehicles to tackle this problem. If you want a
modular vehicle, you don't get a
Valiant or a
Javelin, you get a
Wildcat. In creating them, I did several quick variations, streamlined some elements, and then gave you the modules you could load. But that gives you a
modular vehicle. That lets you swap out one blaster cannon for another, or slot in some accessory, like a hyperdrive, cloaking system or force screen. What if all you want to do is tune up your vehicle? What if you just want it to be faster or tougher?
GURPS Action has a variant of this: they let you
downgrade your vehicle for -10% price for some random
problem, typically a -1 to something on your stat line. Why can't we just do the reverse? This doesn't represent do something like getting a fundamentally different engine, but doing some minor tinkering and gadgeteering, like tweaking the engine to be a bit more efficient, or rewiring the power system to be more resilient, or adding a turbo. They're meant to be simple statline manipulations or a few minor tweaks to customize your experience, as an optional rule.
What follows is intended for Psi-Wars, but should work in any game with some modifications.
