The spy creeps through the building, making no noise whatsoever. Even ninjas would have marveled at his stealth, cunning, and patience. At last, he enters the room containing his prey. He extracts his silenced pistol, levels it at his target’s head. He will destroy the man, and sneak out the way he came, no one…
I speculate that GURPS (and maybe The Fantasy Trip; I wasn’t around for that one) started with a fairly generic view of damage that incorporated penetration, blunt trauma, injury, and a certain amount of gamist fun. GURPS High Tech introduced the dependence on the square root of kinetic energy as a “damage” scale by giving…
Over at the GURPS Forums, there’s a really interesting (well, interesting to me) thread asking the question if basic melee weapon damage is too high (what you look up on p. 16 of the GURPS Basic Set). I think the answer is “yes.” In fact, as part of my “Armor Revisited” article I had originally written…