Another week in the life of GURPS

[dr_kromm]

This week is named Antony. The news:

• We released Pyramid #3/105: Cinematic Magic. More on that here.

• I worked on a whole bunch of Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game-related matters.

• I started revising my little writing project in response to reviewer feedback.

• I reviewed a number of queries and outlines from freelancers.

Comments

Happy Birthday!

[benjamin ng (from livejournal.com)]

Kromm, I just want to express my admiration for you and your work. Without GURPS, my daily life would mostly be a tedious grind. Gratitude!

Happy 50th

[daniel cathey (from livejournal.com)]

You have brought immeasurable fun, joy and satisfaction to a huge number of people; several dozen of whom I've been directly involved with. Your hard work, creativity, thoughtfulness and patience shine through in not just your work, but the way you interface with the people you work with and the readers of your content. Though we're not even passing acquaintances, every one of my interactions with you has been pleasant, rewarding and thought-provoking.

Happy Birthday, from myself and all people who are very happy you are still around doing what you do.

GURPS Vehicle Design?

[jesse roberge (from livejournal.com)]

GURPS Vehicle Design die off? No updates about it in three years.

One thing I learned with Dungeon Fantasy, I grew a strong preference of the 250-300 character point range. I have a preference to un-pedigreed, late-discovered prodigy older teenagers or younger young adults - either ace pilot & gifted athlete (rogue for fantasy), a tech genius, or a divine-ancestor fractional-celestial (Aasimar, partial template of half-celestial in Dungeon Fantasy) cleric

Been playing a lot of GURPS in the past 2 years.

[jesse roberge (from livejournal.com)]

A TL12 high-superscience where the dominant race was the Anari in their huge dyson sphere (though it vanished for 10,000 years being caught in a time loop). The big bad was a extradimensional spider-like let in by humans. Earth is around a hundred light years from the dyson sphere, and earth is a tomb world. Campaign ended at 350 points about. GM: Bronze

A TL10 high-superscience game where there were no humans or earth at all. Just aliens. Settled on a planet called Delcora. Learned, that even at just level 1, Gadgeteer is VERY POWERFUL. The party grew to late TL11 / prototype TL12 by the end of the campaign. Campaign started at 100 points and ended at 325 points about. GM: Musical GMs Bronze/Red/Raine

A TL4 high fantasy game, with gunpowder (Reminisces of Pathfinder RPG or cRPG Pillars of Eternity). Principalities of the southern seas early TL4 magic unregulated, The Fre Islands Federation mid-late TL4 magic regulated & licensed, Great Northern Technocracy early TL5 magic banned, Empire of the fallen sun late TL5 with magitek. Campaign started at 100 points, ended at 225 points. GM: Red

Another TL4 high fantasy game. Started at 100 points, currently at 160 points. GM: Raine

A TL3+1 (Gantri Isles TL3+2) / no gunpowder high fantasy game with one of the deities (patron deity of the Gantri Isles) being a hidden TL12 AI-run city ship from the Delcora Sector game. One of the PCs was a servant robotic-body (cybershell in THS) AI of the Gantri city ship (deprived of high-tech equipment, regarded as a 'golem'). The elite of one of the nations had access to TL10 technology, including nuclear weapons, but has no idea how to repair or use it. Campaign started at 75 points (25 disadvantage limit) and ended at 117 points. GM: Bronze

A short-term campaign one-year time jump party-reset in the same above world as Bronze is not yet ready with his next campaign. Started at 117 points. GM: Bronze.

A TL10 hard-science game reminiscent of Transhuman Space and the Expanse. Campaign started at 137 points with 37 points of mandatory spending (with additional mandatory spending for Orbit Guard). Because of long spaceflight times with only NTR, orion drive, or reactionless Em Drive (performance worse than Spaceships Dean drive; 0.005G), already gained over 50 points via training (because of dream teachers). GM: Red

A TL8/10 limited superscience corporate-syndicate dystopian game taking place 200 years after global thermonuclear war. This game is start soon and starting at 150 points with a 40 point disadvantage limit. GM: Bronze

House rules in the above games

[jesse roberge (from livejournal.com)]

Planar summons and Pentagram as prerequisite spells and a 5 point pseudo-patron advantage (angelic, demonic, or elder thing) for the contract to have free-for-all access to all spells in GURPS magic, else healing, plant, weather, and animal colleges were locked out. Dungeon Fantasy Route via Power Investiture was permitted. Either power investiture or having the True Faith advantage (for contractors) was required to be considered (and detected as) a cleric.

It was not permitted to have a Dungeon Fantasy power investiture cleric/druid spell count as fulfilling prerequisite for a spell learned via magery (mixing cleric/druid with magery was better off done via being a angelic/demonic/elder-thing contractor and using straight GURPS Magic).

Primary Attributes were limited to +/- 30% of racial template base, round down / unfavorably. This was only enforced at character creation.

Secondary attributes were limited to +/- 30% of base attribute, round down / unfavorably. Enforced both at and after character creation, though extra fatigue (magic-only) was exempt.

Half-races / partial and combined racial templates are permitted but must take all the disadvantages. Two of the three who GMed were fairly conscientious with inflicting disadvantages (mana dependency, divine curse, weirdness magnet, etc..)

All skills were capped at SL 20, but two chosen skills were exempted from this and could go to SL 26.

Earlier games allowed reduction of attributes without counting toward disadvantage limit but this house rule allowance was cut out in recent campaigns. In addition, recent campaigns curb-stomped the disadvantage limit from 50 to 25 or 40.

The Gantri Isles campaign gave out two character points per session, of which one had to be spent improving a skill that was used in that session. The other games gave out between one and six points (typically 2-4) per session with no spending restrictions other than the training house rule.

The first point of a new skill, new spell (Dungeon Fantasy power investiture spells were exempt), or any primary attribute increase, or magery or power investiture increase had to be acquired via training. Bonus points can only be spent on existing skills, secondary attributes (still subject to +/-30% limit), and cost beyond the first point of primary attribute increases and magery increase.

Magery and Power investiture were limited to 3 at character creation, but can be improved up to 6. It was mandatory to have a teacher for the first-point training required to improve beyond level 3 magery / power investiture, and finding a NPC teacher especially for level 5+ was difficult.