GURPSDay Feed

Wizardry: Sandstorm SpellsSandstorm is the desert counterpart of Frostburn. While it does have some rather infamous bits, overall it's a decent book. However, the spells section is rather underwhelming, with many spells being spells taken from Frostburn and reversed to be hot instead of cold. Despite that, there are some unique ones that definitely cannot be found anywhere else. So, here's… Read more

Felltower I spent today doing maps – not in the VTT, but on paper, for a few areas of Felltower and it's connected regions that I hadn't mapped out yet. I also have a nice binder of graph paper that I am using to do small-scale maps I could potentially put in a VTT for when certain areas get explored. It's quite enjoyable, although I… Read more

I’m looking for another player for my fantasy campaign Aersalus. So here we go – I’m recruiting again. I’m going to break this down for teams available, benefits, and drawbacks. Teams and Game First, a bit about the game itself. The world of Aersalus has seen more than its share of warfare, violence, and death […] The post Carpe Blogiem: GURPS GM seeking GURPS Player… Read more

This week has seen some moments of significance to me in my roleplaying games hobby. It’s not that you expect the next game to be one which is so strongly meaningful but it’s hard to deny those moments when they strike home. Three different events have transpired to change where I am at the end […]… Read more

SJG is doing 15% on $20 or more of electronic goods: Solstice Sale If you need suggestions, I wrote a bunch of stuff. I highly recommend DFT3 if you're trying to figure out the magic items I hand out. Enjoy…. Read more

Quite out of the blue, Fernando Salvaterra sent me a colour version of the Fellmyr “poetic” map which I have used to give players a rough sense of this sandbox fantasy world. Coming a year after the original version was first launched into play, this was a moment which brought me back to Fellmyr with […]… Read more

End of another busy week. – Computer RPG as a training device, perhaps? This 1979 CRPG has you play a doctor and prescribe treatment for patients. Pretty neat. Part of me feels like this is what were doing for nuclear reactors playing SCRAM! It didn't come up in my line of work, though. Probably for the better. – Beowulf, as a DF Wrestler template GURPS… Read more

Now that we have our basic premise, we can start to dive deeper into major elements, at least enough for our more complete treatment, and a few adventure hooks. I’d also like to take the opporunity to discuss some feedback and musings I’ve had on world design, particularly in regards to population. But first, some … Continue reading "LBAW Zephyr 2: World Details"… Read more

    Here we have our first session summary from the player of Violetta, the human "barbarian" from another world. This picks up from partway through the previous session, as Violetta recaps from when they (re-)encountered the slime.     Note that these thoughts represent something like an inner monologue for our female warrior. Violetta sounds nowhere as intelligible as this when speaking to other people; having not… Read more

I am Ripper… Tearer… Slasher… Gouger. I am the teeth in the darkness, the talons in the Night. Mine is Strength… and Lust… and Power! I AM BEOWULF!… Read more

Another month, another LBAW. As I said with Mintaka, the point of this series is to make this a regular habit, to gain the ability to rapidly build out some worlds in greater detail so you, dear reader, have more details, and so that I can build up the habit and skill of rapidly writing … Continue reading "LBAW: Zephyr, Iteration 1"… Read more

Yesterday was session 201. More notes! Mocking their best option. At one point, Thor moved up into the guards vs. cultists fray, and a cultist stepped up from 2 hexes away to adjacent to Thor. Thor's player said, "Are you seriously stepping close to the human Quisinart?" and I said, "Yes." I mean, what an idiot. This fool was stepping from 2 hexes away from… Read more

Actual Date: 12/8/2024 Game Date: 12/12/2024 Weather: Cool, clear, dry. Characters Chop, human cleric (301 points)      Brother Quinn, human initiate (125 points) Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (316 points)      Amlaric, human squire (125 points) Thor Halfskepna, human knight (306 points)      Leon the Eye, human archer (125 points)      Aaron, Brandon, Cedric, Dortmund, Ernie, Ferd, Grunlark, and Hansel, human guards (62 points)      Bullworth and Oxford, human laborers… Read more

A very dry dry-dock. Too dangerous to keep. Embedded. “We’re not all wanted fugitives!” Sorting legend from truth. A friend on the force. A visit to an oracle – expected, of course. Team effort. Spooky things in orbit, even spookier things on the ground. One big cave. Marching order. Sudden death in the mists. An […]… Read more

    This session was last Tuesday. There have been more roster changes. Let me explain.     We recently lost the player of Eleanor indefinitely, after a period of intermittent attendance. This was a massive blow, as both player and character had been with the campaign from the very beginning, and in many ways she was the leader of the group (at first, de facto; later… Read more

For a long time, I’ve maintained that GURPS, despite its reputation for complexity, is actually pretty simple in play. I was thinking recently that I should see if I can express the fundamentals of playing GURPS in a short, easily digested form, and so here I am. This does not address a more general “how to play rpgs” for those who know nothing on the topic…. Read more

It was a good week for reading: – Echoes from the Geekcave has a post about why he uses the 1 gp = 1/10 lb standard. I don't love it, but I understand his arguments for keeping it. – Tom Van Winkle wrote "The Historical Argument about Racial Diversity in D&D." I present it mostly as a post of interest – I stay out of… Read more

The fifth issue of the GURPS fanzine The Path of Cunning is out…. Read more

Next game of Felltower is 12/8, so today I: – finished some VTT work – tried out some mapping software for battlemaps – updated a few monsters – did a final update pass on the Brotherhood Complex as of 12/7/24, so it'll be ready to go next Sunday. Should be fun!… Read more

     I have been ill this week, and had to cancel the session. Gaming will hopefully be resumed next week…. Read more

The universal system, the one RPG that could handle any setting you could throw at it, was a popular idea in the 1980s. Why then, and where has it gone since?… Read more

“Won’t you be my neighbor?” This article details a set piece you can insert into a general modern day American campaign, the titular Deerborne Apartment Complex. It’s a moderately upscale small apartment building in a nice neighborhood, the adult residents are typically Comfortable Wealth and Status 1, the building was finished and opened to rentersContinue reading "Deerborne Apartments"… Read more

 The Cast of B-Team (Aersalus)Listens to Ocean aka Osprey (Rory) Halfling Magistrate, mage, healer, priest, historian.Rhum Kaldalsson (Curtis) Minotaur artist.Trapper (Chris D) Gremian, artificer, hunter, Armsmaster.Unit 7 (Brice) A Cog, magical construct golem.NPC'sAltan ru Chuulaii the tax collectorRaitoTesseikai Watersinger, healerMurk the Lurk, spirit crabSkeleton ManAre We Ready?After locking up the latest batch of prisoners we finish up the day doing minor odds and ends and… Read more

Monstrous Compendium ISee all the crappy monsters was writing up over the years? What a lame statblock, right? Wouldn't it be great to have a more extensive tome with all the flavor information, revised rules, and lots of additional stuff? I've been working on it for quite a while, and the first volume is ready for public release. This version is final in the sense… Read more

I just felt like writing this right now. It overlaps some other posts I've written, which I'll back-link to when I have a bit of time to pull them up. A few of my players are very fond of "hit them in the hit points;" in other words, torso attacks. -0 to hit, no "wasted" damage, and pushing foes to -5 x HP is a… Read more

 The Cast of B-Team (Aersalus)Listens to Ocean aka Osprey (Rory) Halfling Magistrate, mage, healer, priest, historian.Rhum Kaldalsson (Curtis) Minotaur artist.Trapper (Chris D) Gremian, artificer, hunter, Armsmaster.Unit 7 (Brice) A Cog, magical construct golem.NPC'sAltan ru Chuulaii the tax collectorRaitoTesseikai Watersinger, healerMurk the Lurk, spirit crabSkeleton ManBack at WolfTrapListens arrives at his body to find Unit 7 and Murk playing a game of Lejune over his body…. Read more

    It has been nine (9!) sessions since our last update. I have been lax. The longer I leave it the worse it gets. In that time, the campaign has reached the arbitrary landmark of 100 sessions in a little over two years. Unfortunately we have also lost a player (boo!), but thankfully gained another (hurrah!). Here is a brief summation of events.Session Dates:   … Read more

Henry Williams, a hunter in 1773, learned his craft from his father.Born in 1752 as the only child of Martin Williams in the family cabin near the town of Hingham, Massachusetts, the death of his mother when he was only four necessitated that Henry accompanied his father working from a very young age. From there on out, Henry would watch and learn how to track,… Read more

I've been using this rule, or close to it, since my 3rd edition GURPS games. I remember my friend Fred's brother Dave benefiting from this in his very first session, which would have been 1992-3, maybe? It came up in our most recent DF session, Session 200. It also came up in Total Party Teleport II, as well. Here is the proper writeup for 4th… Read more

I think we’re done. I’m pretty satisfied with Mintaka at this point, and because I’ve required myself to post the result, we have said result ready and in place, which means it’s finished. Is it good enough? I hope so. It’s more than I usually post, and it has its own page! So I have … Continue reading "LBAW Mintaka 3: Questions and Flourishes"… Read more

One of the PCs is on the verge of Move 9, which is a Haste spellstone away from Move 11. Per DFRPG Exploits, p. 33, this means he can get a two-hex step. A few questions arose related to it and indirectly connected to it. Does this net a two-hex Retreat? No. My ruling is no. Although Retreat says "one step (p. 33)" and "normally… Read more

 The Cast of B-Team (Aersalus)Listens to Ocean aka Osprey (Rory) Halfling Magistrate, mage, healer, priest, historian.Rhum Kaldalsson (Curtis) Minotaur artist.Trapper (Chris D) Gremian, artificer, hunter, Armsmaster.Unit 7 (Brice) A Cog, magical construct golem.NPC'sAltan ru Chuulaii the tax collectorRaitoTesseikai Watersinger, healerMurk the Lurk, spirit crabBandit CampListens is taken to the bandit camp by Snaffles. It is surrounded by a magical barrier and they seem to be… Read more

Game Date: 11/17/2024 Weather: Cool, clear, dry. Characters Chop, human cleric (301 points)      Brother Quinn, human initiate (125 points) Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (300 points) Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (316 points)      Amlaric, human squire (125 points) Persistance Montgomery (303 point knight)      Leon the Eye, human archer (125 points)      Aaron, Brandon, Cedric, and Dortmund, human guards (62 points)      Bullworth and Oxford, human laborers (62 points)… Read more

I saw a comment on a YouTube video the other day about GURPS which stated the Number One problem with GURPS – of the two given – was that you “roll dice too often”. My face scrunched up and I thought, “Really? Isn’t that more of a play style thing?” I mean, GURPS doesn’t mandate […]… Read more

My new (new) job is settling into place, and seems to be rather relaxed (despite, or perhaps because of, being such stressful work?) and I’m recovering from the seasonal flu, but all told, I think I’m hitting my stride again. Knock on wood, but I think next month we can go back to the usual … Continue reading "Wiki Update: Relic Knights!"… Read more

I’ve recently started a new GURPS Play-by-Post campaign on the SJ Games forum. The basic campaign concept is; a modern day mega-corp managed to build an arcology on a series of artificial islands off the coast of Greece. This “company town” operated on the edge of national law, and has a population of a bigContinue reading "Campaign Journal: Anarchy in Atlantis"… Read more

Wizardry: Fun with PrestidigitationD&D, being a combat-focused system, combines all the minor utility spells that wizards would likely to learn to make their day-to-day lives easier into a single spell – Prestidigitation. GURPS is an entirely different beast, with plenty of spells in GURPS Magic that a D&D player would call useless. Then, we even have GURPS Magic: The Least of Spells that… Read more

Wizardry: Miscellaneous Spells IHere, we have not spells from a specific D&D book, but some miscellaneous spells I made as sorcery spells before and that I'd like to rework for wizardry.Censure is a clerical spell that marks the subject as an outcast.Death Link is a unique spell that binds two souls together so that whatever happens to one creature also happens to another one.Disarm… Read more

Mission X Streamlined Modern Action Roleplaying Powered by GURPS Mission X  is focused on modern action, with inspiration from Stargate SG-1, Aliens, XCOM, and the like. A streamlined, rebuilt engine focusing getting new and experienced players to the table. Fast and smooth character generation and gameplay in the genre GURPS does better than just about… The post Mission X: Coming in 2025 appeared first on… Read more

Wizardry: Complete Divine Spells IIIMurderous Mist is a non-incendiary version of Incendiary Cloud.Probe Thoughts lets you retrieve memories from another creature.Sandblast is a weak cone attack with a blinding side effect that I basically bullshitted into existence instead of doing things RAW. I based it on the Sand Blast spell from GURPS Magic: Artillery Spells.Scent is a simple… Read more

We’ve been there before – two skills both alike in utility…GM, do I really have to purchase both? Yes, that’s RAW of course…although… So that was my thought a couple of hours ago, well that in anthropomorphizing Shakespeare characters as GURPS traits. In this post I’m going to do something weird and radical and not something […] The post GURPS101: Merging Autohypnosis and Meditation appeared first… Read more

Wizardry: Complete Divine Spells IICrown of Glory is a character point-powered spell that gives you an awesome aura and lets you be understood universally. You also glow.Crumble is a character point-powered attack spell that can be used if you need to get rid of something fast. 20d on average deals 70 damage, which is enough to crumble a 6"-thick brick wall, 1"-thich mild steel wall or… Read more

Patron Simon asked me, quite some time ago, to discuss ship modification. I had been quite busy, so I didn’t get around to it, but I have a few spare moments, and I have been tinkering on the request behind the scenes, and I thought I could at least lay out some basic thoughts. Do … Continue reading "A Brief Word on Ship Modification"… Read more

Dramatis Personae Allison Bell aka Apex (played by Devin): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.” Billy Ray Husley aka Hux (played by Nose): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.” Connor Bell aka Boombox (played by Owen): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.” Jack A. “JR” Richards, Jr. aka Electro (played by Scott F.): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.” Neuron-134899 aka Nero (played by Merlin): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.” Hannah “Hot Lips” Hayes (NPC): TBA. Tagline: “TBA.” Li “Cookie” […] The post AEON E1-Team: Season 1, Session 1 –… Read more

Dramatis Personae Felicity E. “Flit” Chou (Played by Randy): Talks to fast. Hopeless romantic. Musician. Loves to skateboard. Power: Teleportation. Tagline: “Here. There. Everywhere.” Fiona A. Egan (Played by Chepe): A budding society girl and star athlete who keeps getting distracted by both civil and social engineering; also a hydromancer slowly uncovering her powers. Power: Water […] The post AEON C3-Team: Season 2, Session 21 –… Read more

Dramatis Personae Felicity E. “Flit” Chou (Played by Randy): Talks to fast. Hopeless romantic. Musician. Loves to skateboard. Power: Teleportation. Tagline: “Here. There. Everywhere.” Fiona A. Egan (Played by Chepe): A budding society girl and star athlete who keeps getting distracted by both civil and social engineering; also a hydromancer slowly uncovering her powers. Power: Water […] The post AEON C3-Team: Season 2, Session 20 –… Read more

So, we have an absolute minimum sort of system description with Mintaka. It’s out. It exists. We’ve achieved our goal. Can we cycle again and improve it? Sure, but the question is, what should we improve? What do we need? What should a “standard world write-up” have? Well, let’s look at our resources. GURPS Space … Continue reading "LBAW Mintaka 2: A Minimal Template"… Read more

This article is part of a series! Click here to see the other entries. We’re firmly in the wrap-up stage now. If you’re here, the PCs have succeeded at dismantling the powerful magical defenses of the Temple of Asmodeus and disrupted a dire summoning ritual that was Barzilai Thrune’s last attempt at squashing the Silver Raven rebellion. They made it out with a literal dragon’s… Read more

Dramatis Personae Felicity E. “Flit” Chou (Played by Randy): Talks to fast. Hopeless romantic. Musician. Loves to skateboard. Power: Teleportation. Tagline: “Here. There. Everywhere.” Fiona A. Egan (Played by Chepe): A budding society girl and star athlete who keeps getting distracted by both civil and social engineering; also a hydromancer slowly uncovering her powers. Power: Water […] The post AEON C3-Team: Season 2, Session 19 –… Read more

 The Cast of B-Team (Aersalus)Listens to Ocean aka Osprey (Rory) Halfling Magistrate, mage, healer, priest, historian.Rhum Kaldalsson (Curtis) Minotaur artist.Trapper (Chris D) Gremian, artificer, hunter, Armsmaster.Unit 7 (Brice) A Cog, magical construct golem.NPC'sAltan ru Chuulaii the tax collectorRaitoTesseikai Watersinger, healerMurk the Lurk, spirit crabWe make it back to town and put the loot in the cellar. The team is entitled to 10%, the town another… Read more