Another week in the life of GURPS

[dr_kromm]

Ah, Friday! (As opposed to "Argh! Friday?!") Time to update the world on the secret life of GURPS. As has often been the case lately, there was much progress on releases that are too far in the future for me to leak news of them, as well as boring administrative headway on things in past reports, so I'm just going to present a short list of the genuinely interesting stuff:

• We released Pyramid #3/13: Thaumatology. If you like any of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, GURPS Power-Ups 1: Imbuements, or (to state the obvious) GURPS Thaumatology, then you'll probably want this issue. If you're into two or all three of those, then you'll love this issue!

• We started our review of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables, by Matt Riggsby (wombattery). Yes, "started." At 70+ pages, it's a big one that will take two afternoons to review. Matt wasn't exaggerating when he estimated trillions of possible combinations . . .

• I'm editing GURPS Low-Tech Companion 1-3 as a lump because that makes ensuring internal consistency much easier. So far, I'm at around the 11% mark by total page count. The first part of the first volume – the book subtitled Philosophers and Kings – treats politics, economics, etc. as de facto technologies, which I think is quite cool. Reminds me of the Civilization games!

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That part was fun to do. I'd love to do a High-Tech Companion in the same spirit. Or even take part in a series of them. Parliamentary democracy, the limited liability corporation, the general staff, and the think tank are technologies, too . . . not to mention the modern symphony orchestra or film studio.

[snooness2]

That would be really cool IMO. I'm rather fond of the companions for Low-tech, and sort of wished something like that had been done to expand some of the other tech books.

Hightech, and biotech both come to mind as having bits that had to be cut out or were significantly shortened... and lord knows there was probably enough stuff in Space that could have been expanded in select companions.

I suspect in the future e23 will be my financial nemesis.

[wombattery.livejournal.com]

Though one rarely thinks of Richard Wagner and Mack Sennett as inventors, I'd buy that book. I wonder what social innovations one could come up with for an ultra-tech companion? Niven-style flash mobs, network-enabled 100% participatory democracy and harnessed schizophrenia like in Aristoi come to mind.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Wagner not only was an innovator in boosting the scale of the symphony orchestra, but made use in doing so of an innovation in physical technology: The invention of the valved brass instrument, which let a single trumpet or horn play a complete chromatic scale, rather than just its natural harmonic series. The valved trumpet and horn were upgrades; the tuba, which he more or less introduced into the orchestra, was a new invention.