Anyone out there play Bill Gant's Gunmaster?

[Targan]

I had no idea the limit was so low (100). I have upped the Max message count to 500.

Thanks Kato!

[Targan]

What character sheet do you use Harnmaster Gold

Some of this is going to have to wait until I'm home from work! I can answer some of these questions though. If you're using Harnmaster Gold as your base system, the Harnmaster Gold character sheet should work fine. We had customised character sheets made using MS Excel. They maximised skill slots and allowed more room for some of the pseudo-skills we added as the conversion evolved.

What did you use for vehicle combat

Basically T2K 1st edition vehicle combat rules, but with all the numbers converted to Gunmaster. We used Guns, Guns, Guns (3G) to do all the weapons calculations, converted those numbers to Gunmaster stats (IIRC there are conversion notes in the back of the Gunmaster rules) and also converted all the vehicle armor numbers to Gunmaster as well.

Could you explain your character creation process from Gunmaster 2000

That's one of the questions that'll have to wait until I'm home and I can post here or send you the Lifepath rules.

What are Skill Checks

Skill improvement checks. One of the problems is that my group of players all started playing Harnmaster using the original 1st edition rules. Many of the terms from those original rules we kept using, despite perhaps slightly different terms being used in later editions. Skill checks are the way in which Harnmaster skills improve. Each skill has a Skill Base (a number based on the average of the 3 stats most applicable to the use of that skill plus Sunsign bonus if any) and a Mastery Level (ML). The ML is basically the skill level. In the version of Harnmaster we were mostly using (1st edition + Bill Gant's Harnmaster II house rules) a character's maximum possible ML in a skill was (5xSB)+25. If the GM decides that a character is due a skill improvement check, the chance of the skill improving is maximum possible ML minus current ML. If you roll under that number the ML improves by 1. This means that once a skill is near its theoretical maximum, skill improvement is hard to achieve.

Do you get all of those occupational skills

Yes. Harnmaster, Gunmaster and especially Gunmaster 2000 do have unusually large numbers of skills.

How many optional skills do you get

I'm going from memory here but I think you sacrifice 2 of your skill checks for that year for each optional skill you want to open.

What is luck

Luck rolls are really cool and can be easily used in pretty much any game system. They go like this: roll a D100, then try to roll under that number on a second D100 roll. If you roll above the first number you're unlucky. If you roll below the first number you're lucky. Any multiple of 5 or 10 is a critical result, otherwise it's a marginal result, so you can have a critical success (CS), a marginal success (MS), a marginal failure (MF) or a critical failure (CF). The CS/MS/MF/CF system is of course standard in all versions of Harnmaster. I believe the original idea for Luck rolls comes from the Pendragon system but Bill Gant adapted it for his Harnmaster II house rules.

[Michael Lewis]

Some of this is going to have to wait until I'm home from work! I can answer some of these questions though. If you're using Harnmaster Gold as your base system, the Harnmaster Gold character sheet should work fine. We had customised character sheets made using MS Excel. They maximised skill slots and allowed more room for some of the pseudo-skills we added as the conversion evolved.

I started using Harnmaster III character sheet but noticed that it does not have the touch stat. That's why I asked

Basically T2K 1st edition vehicle combat rules, but with all the numbers converted to Gunmaster. We used Guns, Guns, Guns (3G) to do all the weapons calculations, converted those numbers to Gunmaster stats (IIRC there are conversion notes in the back of the Gunmaster rules) and also converted all the vehicle armor numbers to Gunmaster as well

That seems like a lot of work. I was afraid of that.

Skill improvement checks. One of the problems is that my group of players all started playing Harnmaster using the original 1st edition rules.

Harnmaster III is different in that regard

Yes. Harnmaster, Gunmaster and especially Gunmaster 2000 do have unusually large numbers of skills.

What scares me is starting the PC's out with too much skill. Did this happen in your experiences

Luck rolls are really cool and can be easily used in pretty much any game system. They go like this: roll a D100, then try to roll under that number on a second D100 roll. If you roll above the first number you're unlucky. If you roll below the first number you're lucky. Any multiple of 5 or 10 is a critical result, otherwise it's a marginal result, so you can have a critical success (CS), a marginal success (MS), a marginal failure (MF) or a critical failure (CF). The CS/MS/MF/CF system is of course standard in all versions of Harnmaster. I believe the original idea for Luck rolls comes from the Pendragon system but Bill Gant adapted it for his Harnmaster II house rules.

This sounds interesting. I thought about using Piety as some sort of luck role.

Thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

[Michael Lewis]

Time zone

It's funny. You are exactly 24 hours and 1 second ahead of me.

Actually no. That's wrong. I'm off by twelve hours and 1 second. It's morning there and night here.

[Targan]

If you're using Harnmaster III you should definitely take a look at Bill Gant's house rules for HM 3rd edition, and also his Harnmaster Advanced houserules, they're designed for Harnmaster III and even more detailed.

What scares me is starting the PC's out with too much skill. Did this happen in your experiences

That can happen but as skills get into the elite levels they become very hard to improve. Also, you could use this option: http://www.warflail.com/downloads/HMG_HR-Skills.pdf
More of Bill's house rules, this time for HM Gold, it truncates very high skills for starting characters to more reasonable levels. It might solve any discomfort you have in that area.

In addition, we were using Bill Gant's ML Decline rules from his Harnmaster II houserules (I'm not sure why but Bill no longer has his HM II houserules available on his website). Under the ML Decline rules, skills which are not used or practiced for some time can slowly decline. This means that a GM can choose to have a PC who has high skill levels in certain skills early in their lifepath generation but change careers and no longer use those skills much, suffer some decline in those skills prior to the campaign commencing. The ML Decline rules work exactly the same during campaigns, should the GM choose to apply them.

[Cdnwolf]

Targan,

I just went to the WarFlail's web site. My Anti Virus program went NUTS as IE tried to open the site. Any Ideas Thoughts

The Kalestia site worked fine.

Just thought you would want to know.

My $0.02

Mike

Same thing here...

[cavtroop]

Same thing here...

The site IS infected. Source: I do information security for a living

After a short period of time, it attempts to redirect to a malicious site at "biezebeize.be"

I would not visit the warflail site, and Kato should probably remove the URL from this thread until it gets cleared up.

If anyone knows the author and wants to contact him, this is the bad part of the page: <div align="left"><a name="top"></a> </div><!--74ed9f--><script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" >

it contains an obfuscated javascript (dunno what it does exactly, but it can't be good).

EDIT: after some more research, that malicious javascript redirects users to the infamous Blackhole Exploit Kit: http://labs.sucuri.net/db/malware/ma...blackhole2v403

You need to avoid that Warflail site at all costs until it's cleaned up.

[Targan]

If anyone knows the author and wants to contact him...

I'm proud to say that Bill Gant's been my friend for nearly 25 years and I was in the original play testing group for Gunmaster.

I'll talk to him ASAP.

[kato13]

The site IS infected. Source: I do information security for a living

After a short period of time, it attempts to redirect to a malicious site at "biezebeize.be"

I would not visit the warflail site, and Kato should probably remove the URL from this thread until it gets cleared up.

If anyone knows the author and wants to contact him, this is the bad part of the page: <div align="left"><a name="top"></a> </div><!--74ed9f--><script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" >

it contains an obfuscated javascript (dunno what it does exactly, but it can't be good).

EDIT: after some more research, that malicious javascript redirects users to the infamous Blackhole Exploit Kit: http://labs.sucuri.net/db/malware/ma...blackhole2v403

You need to avoid that Warflail site at all costs until it's cleaned up.

I agree that obfuscated code is weird. While the page tests clean on 5 different webbased tests (Norton, MCAfee, Google, etc) it is VERY suspicious. I am going to modify the link so the user needs to make a conscious choice to visit the site. I never like removing information, but if the clicker makes an informed choice to see the information it is in their hands.

[Targan]

Bill Gant has investigated overnight and found that in the last week or two someone has thoroughly infected the WarFlail site. He's taking the whole thing offline for the time being and it's likely the site will never be active again. I feel terrible but there's no point having an infected site remaining active. It saddens me as the site's been running for more than a decade I think.

[kato13]

That stinks. Cleaning a site is a colossal pain. Since I am the goto guy for my circle of friends for all things web I have cleaned up about a half a dozen sites. You are right usually throwing the whole thing out and starting from scratch is the easiest thing to do.

Since it looked like the site had a lot of stuff they were giving away, might I suggest using a file locker site, or even generating a torrent if the owner is willing to do so.

Torrents can be useful and totally legal for this kind of stuff if the owner is willing to share.

Getting back to the hack. I will never understand the full on black hat hackers. I will admit to a lot of "grey" stuff in my past, but rendering sites useless using an automated insertion program (little skill or innovation required) for marginal returns makes zero sense to me. Some people just want to watch the world burn I guess.

[cavtroop]

Bill Gant has investigated overnight and found that in the last week or two someone has thoroughly infected the WarFlail site. He's taking the whole thing offline for the time being and it's likely the site will never be active again. I feel terrible but there's no point having an infected site remaining active. It saddens me as the site's been running for more than a decade I think.

Wow, that sucks He should investigate putting the material up on a Google Pages (or Sites, or whatever they call it) - that way he doesn't have to worry much about security or cpanel exploits etc etc, and the data stays online Though transferring all that info could be a PITA

[Cdnwolf]

Ummm some of the articles I found on Scribd.

[Michael Lewis]

Crap!

This sucks! I guess I'll have to find another system.

[ducatidon]

Long time HarnMaster fan here....Ive a copy of GunMaster, and Id be very interested in any Traveller conversions.

For myself, Ive found that the damage charts actually translate rather closely to T2K and/or traveller. For example, i just use Traveller/striker to T2K wound levels and convert to Harnmaster (3rd) Injury difficulties.

For example, you are shot by an AK47, and after armor, only 5 points remain. an impact of >5 is a M1 injury. Saves actually having to calculate impacts for firearms and crazy high armor protection values.

Ive also found that skill levels can port over pretty easily as well. For example, 2 levels of firearms becomes +2 OML. I actually use Traveller or T2K character generation (Mechmarrior is close enough to the same too) roll the additional stats (3D6) and add an additional D6 to Traveller stats. (for % stats just divide by 5)

The biggest part of difficulty is assigning attributes to each skill. Many modern skills are identical to ancient skills in HarnMaster.

I dont use Piety or Aura. Instead I add Education and Social Standing as stats.

I also assign technical skills under Tech, using EDU/EDU/EDU as the governing stats.

Anyway, thats the basics. It allows more attributes, a wider range of skills, and a better wound system.