Randomly Aware – Fast Situational Awareness

One of the tricks about GURPS with its one-second time scale and tactical-map resolution is that in many cases you get really, really good situational awareness just by looking at the map or VTT.

This can offset the fact that the character isn’t aware of all the things the PC is aware of, but mostly in my experience it gives too much information. Peter has run into this too in Felltower, as players spend far too long determining what the perfect hex to retreat into would be.

On Mook’s GURPS Discord, while I was simultaneously writing some for Mission X, the question was raised about situational awareness and whether any given mook or PC would know whether they’re being shot at, or if the person they’re shooting at is hit and is reacting passively (they’re KO’d from a bullet to the spleen) or actively (they have dodge-and-dropped and will be shooting back next turn).

A thought occurred, which would be to munge the awareness into the die rolls for hit and defense. Something like “pick one die of the three you usually roll for attack and defense, and make it a different color.”

Map odds of seeing an effect as:

Die is 1: Per of about 7 or less, 16% or worse chance of seeing stuff.
Die is 1-2: Per-8 or Per-9 or less. about one chance in three.
Die is 1-3: Per-10
Die is 1-4: That’s 66%, which maps to roughly Per-11, but since the next one is Per-13, might as well make this result stand in for Per-11 and Per-12
Die is 1-5: That’s 86% which would work for Per-13
Die is 1-6 is “you can see the results of your hit, always.” I’d probably use this for Per-15 or even Per-16 and higher.

Could use this in a few ways.

• Shooting: Obviously you know if you roll well enough to hit or not if you’re doing the rolling. The shooter has to front-load all that decision-making. So this could stand in for “does the shooter see the result?”
• Being Shot at: If Mook is shooting at ME, and I have Per-11, maybe if that off-color die is 1-4 I have enough situational awareness to actually get an active defense.
• Actively Defending: If the off-color die is in the success range, the shooter gets to know whether the active defense succeeded or not. So they’ll see a splash of mist or a bullet impact, or see the target drop in a way that says “nope, they dodged-and-dropped to behind cover” instead of dropping because you eliminated them.

Obviously if you’re rolling for an active defense, you know that the incoming shot was good enough to hit and what you’re declaring to deal with it, so that’s not a useful case.

I’m not saying “let me write this into Mission X” because I’m not saying that. It’s also true that if you are playing on a VTT like Foundry VTT, you could easily use actual Perception rolls as long as your program can identify the shooter and target’s Per scores: just make a macro that determines the shot, and whether or not the Perception checks succeed for shooter (do I get info on the result?) or defender (did I see him shooting at me)?

But at a physical table with physical dice, or non-macro-enabled play of any sort, getting a two-fer without slowing down the game for extra rolls might be spiffy.