GURPS101: Expanded Long-Term Fatigue Rules

So the wildly anticipated and long awaited GURPS After the End by +Pk Levine is finally out. +Douglas Cole has a review up here that’s rather good. But I want to concentrate on one particular aspect of the book: Long-Term Fatigue Points. The concept is simple: don’t eat, don’t sleep, don’t drink, etc. and you lose the ability to properly use all of your FP. The sheer stunningly brilliant effect of this mechanic allows you to do something that can be somewhat onerous in GURPS (tracking FP missed to starvation, dehydration, etc.) and making it simple. I have instantly instituted this rule for my Aeon campaign and all future campaigns. But after looking at it – I had some more thoughts about it. So I talked to the author a bit and hashed out a few more rules:

More Associated Effects of Long-Term Fatigue Points
A few more things that can affect LFP:

• In particularly thin or dense air environments (p. B429-B430) such as high altitudes, every hour spent in such an environment that you are not acclimated to reduces your LFP by 1. You recover such gained LFP when you are in an environment you can breath more easily in.
• In particularly cold environments (p. B430) you gain 1 LFP per hour without adequate shelter or a heat source (flame, electric heat, body warmth, etc.). You recover 1 LFP per day if you are in both a adequate shelter and near a heat source.
• In particularly hot environments (p. B434) you gain 1 LFP per hour without shade or water. This becomes 1 LFP per minute in areas where the temperature is 30° or more above your temperature range. You recover 1 LFP per day if you have both shade and water.

Additional Long-Term Fatigue Points
Additional levels of LFP might be available at the GM’s decision. If this is the case, each level costs 2 points and you can purchase at most 30% of your total FP score (round up). For example, if you have a FP of 15 then you could purchase 4.5 LFP, or 5 LFP at most. Notate this as a negative number (e.g., -5 LFP) on your character sheet. Immunity to Long-Term Fatigue may be available, in such cases it’s worth 30 points (it’s effectively Doesn’t Eat or Drink and Doesn’t Sleep put together).

Fit Affects Long-Term Fatigue
Normally, Fit and Very Fit only affect normal Fatigue Points, if the GM wishes the following enhancement may be allowed:

Scrappy: You’re used to starving, being without water, and going on almost no sleep. At the end of each day you automatically get back 1 LFP if you make a HT roll (2 LFP if you critically succeed). If you eat and sleep properly there is no need to make a HT roll – you automatically get back an additional LFP. If you do nothing but eat and rest you automatically get back 2 LFP. +50% if you only gain back LFP, +100% if you get the normal effects of Fit or Very Fit.

Supernatural Loss of Long-Term Fatigue
A few modifiers for other traits in games using LFP.

Costs Fatigue

If you gain LFP instead of FP when you use an ability this increases the value of this limitation by -5%. This is akin to losing HP since in order to recover LFP you must rest – though you needed make HT rolls to recover an increased amount, just spend the day resting.

Steals Long-Term Fatigue

This modifiers for Leech (GURPS Powers, p. 96-97) allows you to increase the LFP of a subject. This costs +20%. If you can choose to drain LFP or HP then this is worth +50%. If you can only drain LFP this is worth -10%.

Picking Over the Bones
I really like this new rule – it totally suits how I tend to run games and allows me to track intangibles like lack of sleep or food with a simple and easy to use mechanic. As I started in the beginning it’s a brilliantly simple rule that can be used in any sort of game where the GM wants to track some realistic effects, but doesn’t want super detailed rules. If you haven’t gone out and bought GURPS After the End yet you really should – it’s worth the $8. Go freaking get it.