“A 12 or less? That’s good… right?” If you come from one of those popular games that uses a twenty-sided die to whack monsters and roll other checks, and you step up to one of several games that uses three six-sided dice instead… you might feel a little lost. We deal with percentage-based probabilities every day: “30% chance of rain” and all that. So given the obvious fact that each number on that twenty-sided die has a 5% chance of occurring, it’s easy to mentally convert “Roll 19 or higher to succeed” into “10% chance of success”, or to understand “You shrug off the poison on a 12 or higher”…
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Get religion with Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics
Who’s your sky daddy? If you’ve got dungeons and you’ve got clerics, then you want GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics by Phil Masters. At just 37 pages, this supplement lets you trade in your bland and no-brand McPriest for a uniquely devoted servant of… Wait a second, why do clerics get their own special book? I mean, sure, there are dedicated books for Barbarians and Swashbucklers, but those are part of the offshoot GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens sub-series that will (I presume) eventually showcase all of the adventurer archetypes. But of the PC types in the main Dungeon Fantasy series’ Adventurers book, why do clerics alone get the splatbook spotlight…
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Delving dungeons four ways with GURPS
The Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game, powered by GURPS, is coming! It promises everything you need to game tales of monsters, melee, and magic. You know, the kind of story where a half-dozen pseudo-medieval adventurers sneak into a medusa’s lair, then stumble out the next day to hammer out a five-way divvy of gold pieces, jewels, and . . . uh, a super-cool bard statue they, er, found. (Tough break, Cailean Keen-Eyes! We’ll get a good price fo– I mean, take care of – your lute.) You don’t need to wait for DFRPG to tackle monsters in abandoned ruins, though. There’s already the growing GURPS Dungeon Fantasy series of books, which…
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GURPS’ next big release gears up to tackle… the dungeon!?
At the end of August 2016, Steve Jackson Games (SJG) announced its next big thing: a Kickstarter campaign for the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. No one reading this site needs to hear this news from me – in fact, you, Reader, most likely backed the game on Kickstarter and are now counting down the days (or months, anyway; the shipping date isn’t exact yet) until its maps and original Cardboard Heroes figures adorn your table. But here it is in a nutshell anyway: Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (DFRPG) is an upcoming boxed game from SJG that bundles a complete “dungeon fantasy” roleplaying set into one box, with everything you…
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Cardboard Heroes artist hard at work on new figures for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy boxed set?
Hey, GURPSters! Eager to scry even one more crumb of information and/or rumor about the in-development, powered-by-GURPS, and eagerly-awaited Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game from Steve Jackson Games? Crumb ahoy! Here’s a tiny (and speculative) morsel from – of all places – recent The Non Prophets podcast episode 16.02. Hm? A GURPS tidbit – in a podcast focused on religion and gods and related topics? It’s not so surprising, given that the podcast is based in the home town of GURPS – and that it’s hosted by two bona fide gaming art gods. Just around 5 minutes into the episode, regular host and Art God #1 Denis Loubet reports that he’s…
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Updated: GLAIVE Mini weapon builder system hits v2.0!
It’s out: v2.0 of GLAIVE Mini, my super-short, home-made system for building weapons in GURPS. (That’s “GLAIVE” as in “GURPS Light Arms Invention Expansion”.) GLAIVE Mini remains what it’s always been: A one-page system for generating GURPS damage and required ST for most any melee weapon. (There’s a bonus second page, too, with an option for semibalanced weapons falling between GURPS’ balanced and unbalanced weapons, along with system customization notes and a couple of odds and ends.) What’s new in GLAIVE Mini v2.0: Notes addressing new weapon stats and options in GURPS Low-Tech. (Spoiler: GLAIVE Mini works even better with Low-Tech’s revised stats!) A new mod: Poor Stabber, good for…
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Bad medicine: Tiny tweak for Unusual Biochemistry effects
Here’s a really tiny idea of the type I try to relegate to Twitter, but I just couldn’t smush it into the character limit. So here it is, at languid non-abbreviated length. Shake it up Unusual Biochememistry (B160) is a nice disadvantage for alien or other exotic bodies. The effect is simple: standard drugs, if not tailored at high cost for your oddball chemistry, may have the expected effects, or no effect, or expected effects with added bad side effects. Those effects are simple to determine too: there’s just a little 1d6 table with those three outcomes (some imagination required). There’s nothing wrong with that at all! But some imaginable…
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A blogger’s dozen (Part III): 13 ideas for RPG articles
Installment no. 3 from a sweeping-out of an attic full of junk – specifically, ideas of the “Hey, this would make for a good blog post or magazine article” persuasion. For your consideration, the latest batch of 13: 27. “I’ll show them all! With this Helmet of Funny Helium Voices…” Write up the sort of ridiculous cursed item so beloved of dungeon fantasy games – together with an explanation of why a wizard put so much effort and money into creating it. The curse could of course be unintentional, the result of a botched enchantment. Even then, a write-up of who the enchanter was, and what she was attempting to…
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A blogger’s dozen (Part II): 13 ideas for RPG articles
Hi again! Following up from Part I, here’s another ladling of goo from my big, mouldering pot of ideas for gaming-related articles. I go heavy on the Fantasy-oriented ideas this time; sorry, it’s the mindset my latest game play has left me in. Most can be easily sliced and diced into fare for Sci-Fi and other backgrounds. Diving in: 14. Stings ‘n’ Things GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2 offers fun general rules for harvesting valuable parts from defeated dungeon monsters. Take the idea and go a step further: write up specific salvageable bits, with prices, for common game monsters. (Don’t forget weights, too; that matters for dungeon delves.) Examples: What’s the value…
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Tweeting tiny ideas: Tactical Hand Signals and Acrobatic Jump
Hey, check out that slick new feed of Games Diner tweets on the left side of the front page. Scroll down a bit if you have to… ah, there they are. Just like on the actual Games Diner Twitter page. Mmm, pithy. (As I note in one tweet: “Twitter: 30 seconds to write the tweet, 3 minutes to mangle it into 140 characters.”) I mention this as a reminder that the feed exists, and to note that I’m starting to use it for a bit more than “hey, look at something I found.” First, it’s a good tool for announcing minor web site updates (bug fixes, article brush-ups, etc.), as…
