Ooh, look! Yet another “They oughta write a book” article from me! Because it’s so darn easy to lay out the work that someone else should do for my amusement! You know the still-nascent Dungeon Fantasy: Denizens sub-series of books, each showcasing an adventurer archetype? The next installment ought to be Bards. Actually, when the sub-series first launched with Denizens: Barbarians, I thought Bards would be next. You see, I drew on my knowledge of game industry publishing, brought the full breadth of my intellect and reasoning skills to bear, examined and analyzed all relevant factors, and arrived at a deduction: “Bard” comes after “Barbarian” alphabetically, so that should be…
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Books we want: How to Be a GURPS Player
The first time I suggested “There oughta be a book” was here, with a suggestion for more mini-books on Yrth cultures and societies (because, hey, I like Banestorm). Time for another suggestion! How to Be a GURPS GM by Warren “Mook” Wilson is a great book. It’s packed with invaluable advice and insights for gamemastering GURPS. Well, with the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game set to ignite (?) an explosion (??) of demand (???) for our favorite game system, perhaps it’s time to release a dedicated guide to playing GURPS. A book that would fill three roles: In short: Let’s have How to Be a GURPS Player! (Sounds like a fine new idea…
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Tiny GURPS/DFRPG idea: A better Outdoorsman
While we’re on the topic of back-to-nature barbarians: GURPS offers the nifty Outdoorsman Talent (B91) that boosts seven relevant skills for 10 points/level. That’s a great bargain over buying up the individual skills at high levels. Yet it feels expensive to some gamers, especially in any genre that prioritizes success in combat or social dealings over competence at the campsite. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Barbarians even calls out the issue on p. 21, suggesting two fixes: Both are fine ideas. But why stop there? It seems to me any of the following skills could also join the nature-boy jamboree: That’s a lot of skills! In fact, you could toss in the…
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Gaming Tips: Taking your chances on 3d6
“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…
