GURPS Lite in the Classroom, Session #2

I ran another, very short, bit of GURPS Lite for my speaking-skills student.

First, though, I needed to give him two bits of information about the game.

Skills - I told my student that skills are just what you are especially good at. You can try anything, given the right situation, but your listed skills are just what you do well.

Criticals - I told him 3-4 always works, usually especially well. 17-18 usually means a really bad failure - it doesn't work plus something goes really wrong. That came up his first roll when he rolled two out of three dice and could see he'd failed. Yes, 6 and 5 versus an 11 fails . . . but what if you roll another 6?

Next, we picked up with his character in the dark room.

He carefully searched the room, and eventually found a broken-off wooden handle from what used to be a wooden spoon. (This wasn't planned, but I figured, he searched carefully - I used this Search roll to determine how long it took to find anything, with only a critical failure meaning he'd missed this in his cautious feeling around in the dimness.)

Then he tried to scrape a hole in the door. The door was much too thick for that.

Next he tried to pick the lock with his broken wooden spoon handle. It didn't work; in fact it got stuck. (He missed his default Lockpicking roll by 10.)

All of this woke up the orc guard, who saw the door jammed. Not realizing in his just-woken state that this was a bad idea, he jammed in a key and opened the door. Instead of a shackled prisoner, my student's PC jumped out the door with his wooden shiv to attack.

We stopped there, and agreed to extend the time for GURPS a little next time.

Next up, a simple combat.

And even more chances to explain actions in English, which is practice he needs.