Another week in the life of GURPS

[dr_kromm]

What's new with GURPS? Stuff. You know, things. Oh, you want details? Geez . . .

• We uploaded Stefan Jones' weird-and-wonderful GURPS Alphabet Arcane. You could use this for far more than GURPS games. The ideas would be easy to adapt to any game system (or shoot, a novel).

• We reviewed the penultimate draft of the really super Pyramid 3/2 (December 2008) this week.

• We reviewed rough PDFs of not one but two e23 promo items. Free stuff! Look for these soon-ish.

• Shawn Fisher and Hans-Christian Vortisch's GURPS Loadouts: Monster Hunters moved into Nikki's editing queue.

• GURPS Hot Spots: Renaissance Florence – the latest from Matt Riggsby (wombattery) – is out of playtesting and back to Matt for the final draft.

• The first draft of the inaugural volume of the GURPS Supporting Cast series is in.

• I finished the first draft of my crunchy e23 item. All I'll say for now is "around 32 pages" and "concerns magic" (including necromancy).

• I wrote half of a Pyramid 3/3 (January 2009) article with Peter Dell'Orto (peterdellorto) and edited it for Steven (waitingforgo). Two words: dog skull (and nothing to do with necromancy).

Comments

[martinl-00.livejournal.com]

We should be drinking and ... um ... you know ... by now.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

"What if you're wrong?"
"You find out."

It was only one inspiration of many, but it was inspiring to the work.

[peterdellorto.livejournal.com]

"Pretty soon you're going to be all thread. If it was white thread..."

[xambrius.livejournal.com]

> We uploaded Stefan Jones' weird-and-wonderful GURPS Alphabet Arcane.

Wish list increments to 4. <sigh>

> We reviewed rough PDFs of not one but two e23 promo items. Free stuff!

Is one of these your master reference list of combat skills and the techniques that default from them?

--
Tim Harris
The Seeker
Time Lord

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Is one of these your master reference list of combat skills and the techniques that default from them?

Ah, I did draft up a techniques "cheat sheet" (no combat skills, just the defaults, effects, etc. for techniques), but that wasn't one of the two items we reviewed. That would be a third item, although it has yet to go through layout.

[czarzhan.livejournal.com]

> I wrote half of a Pyramid 3/3 (January 2009) article with Peter Dell'Orto ([info]peterdellorto) and edited it for Steven ([info]waitingforgo). Two words: dog skull (and nothing to do with necromancy).

This wouldn't happen to be a reference to a certain Rutger Hauer film, would it? :)

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Maybe . . .

All of Pyramid 3/3 is going to have a post-apocalypse theme (see here). Peter and I are just making sure that it has more dog skull.

[peterdellorto.livejournal.com]

Hmm...necromancy, eh? I'll have to pick that up. I have a PC running around with a baby-skull topped staff that throws curses and zombie spells, and a powerstone that is recharged by sacrificing victims. Can't have enough toys for a guy like that.

That supers issue of Pyramid is why I didn't subscribe. I like Pyramid, but I don't play super hero games...so it's a wasted issue for me. I'm inclined to wait it out and see if it looks like we'll get a good long run of stuff I do like before I subscribe.

[philreed.livejournal.com]

I still think Sean should just admit that he has no self-control and go ahead and write GURPS Necromancy.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the PDF I recently finished writing isn't GURPS Necromancy and mostly not about necromancy . . . although GURPS Necromancy would be cool. The item I just wrote is much more general than that; I'll even admit that it's a support item for GURPS Thaumatology. However, it needed a worked example, and necromancers came readily to mind.

[jerril]

That supers issue of Pyramid is why I didn't subscribe. I like Pyramid, but I don't play super hero games...so it's a wasted issue for me. I'm inclined to wait it out and see if it looks like we'll get a good long run of stuff I do like before I subscribe.

I understand the subscriptions work out to being cheaper than just buying everything a-la-carte. I'm a bit unsure about the details because I'm coasting on my old Pyramid 2.0 sub for 6 months, but surely you can afford to have one or two issues that don't look like they'll be your cup of tea? It's rare that I can't find SOMETHING to take away, even if the basic idea seems irrelevant to my games (I'm currently only playing and running in Dungeon Fantasy. Exclusively. Doesn't look to change either.)

[peterdellorto.livejournal.com]

I know ala carte will be more expensive, but only if I buy a lot of issues. I don't expect I will. 3/1 was good, but it wasn't $7.95 good. Out of all of the stuff there, I think the gemstones article was nice, so was the guild (with maps, even), and the Necromantic Tools article was excellent. Otherwise...it just wasn't stuff I need. If I'd previewed the magazine first, say, in a store, I wouldn't have bought it.

I'd actually prefer a model I've seen elsewhere:

Issues cost $7.95 each. A year costs $70. Individual articles cost $2.50 each. That way, you are still better off with a sub than individual issues, and issues instead of articles, but if you want just one article you can get that.

That's how, for example, Performance Menu magazine operates. I've gotten individual issues, individual articles, and now I maintain a subscription to it.