GURPSDay Feed

Review: Brozer – Island of War and WinterIn the online TTRPG discussion circles, you may hear the term “Braunstein” being thrown around. You may have heard that Braunstein was the precursor to D&D and tabletop RPGs in general, and that Blackmoor was first labeled “a fantasy Braunstein.” However, it’s much more difficult to understand what it is and how to run one. At least, it… Read more

Inspired by the same post for Arden Vul, here is what we run DF Felltower with. Host: Forge Pricing is quite reasonable – for a year, they charge less than I can make net in a couple hours of work, and hosting would take more than those hours. Win/win. Core VTT software: Foundry VTT version 12 Latest stable version; I upgrade as they come along…. Read more

Food and Supplies in GURPS and ACKSBefore a party of adventurers sets out to clear out a wilderness area or dungeon, they have to buy enough supplies for the trip. The same thing is required when an army marches to war, but on a larger scale. How much do supplies cost in GURPS? This is actually a surprisingly difficult question despite it resource management being… Read more

Lacking Heroic Charge and Feverish Dodge for having bionic legs would really give me pause before taking them — Derrick White Derrick has been running numerous Psi-Wars playtests, particularly combat against the Flesh Monstrosities and he’s come out of it extremely opinionated about Extra Effort, especially in Psi-Wars, for good reasons, and going over his … Continue reading "Robots, Cyborgs, the Gaunt, Extra-Effort and Fatigue"… Read more

Date:Demmasday, 11th of Lucrios, 2993 AEPWeather:Cool, overcast, rainyPlayer Characters:Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)Sister Valya "Basilisk" Hushbreaker, halfling monk (Mercenary) (Archon Shiva)Significant NPCs:Lyssandra Astorion, principal of the Arcane Practitioners' ClubFreydis, steward to Lady Alexia BasilionLady Alexia Basileon, ruler of the town of GosterwickRoskelly Winterleaf, halfling underground toll… Read more

There is more to come. There’s always more to come. In particular, I need to tackle the torso and the head and then, I think, we’ll be done… except, of course, for Traders, Karkadann, Mogwai, Wyrmwerks, Necrotech, Bio-Tech, etc and so on. I’ll be at this awhile. Parallel to each “common-tier” Cybernetics set, I’ve also … Continue reading "Cybernetics Part 2 — Finale"… Read more

Christopher Rice has been very kind to me and knows of my interest in his Meta-Tech rules, so managed to get me into the playtest. It was a disaster though: I was unprepared for the sheer speed of the playtest, and the format/design of it (I never got the mailing group working correctly, and there … Continue reading "Let’s Build Meta-Tech: Bloodshot Armor"… Read more

I think DR costs too much. I certainly think this is true in GURPS RAW, but even with the reduced cost of DR in Psi-Wars, I still find it costs too much. I struggle to justify the cost of, for example, 20 DR on a cybernetic arm. You quickly get to super-hero levels of cost … Continue reading "Cyber-Armor"… Read more

About a month into DFRPG Arden Vul, here is what we're using in Foundry VTT.Core VTT software:Foundry VTT version 12.This is the latest stable version.  I try to avoid updating Foundry in the middle of a campaign, because even though Foundry core tends to be stable, it takes a while for modules to support the new version, so if 13 or 14 or 15 comes… Read more

Abstract Combat Statistics: Heroes on the Mass Scale and ACKSNot long ago, I was thinking about the necessity of abstracted combat resolution and remembered that GURPS Mass Combat exists, and that it probably can be applied to small-scale combat with some minor adjustments. However, one of the questions remains – how do you derive abstract combat statistics from the non-abstract combat… Read more

Grand Federal didn’t change much in this new iteration, though I’ve integrated the “fragility” of Grand Federal Cybernetics, and adjusted the spine slightly, to make it thematically the opposite of Startrodder. For Modules, I’ve included a variation of the House Kain spine customization as a spine module. That’s because I thought some non-Kainians might like … Continue reading "Grand Federal Cybernetics 2 — Modules"… Read more

Startrodder is the cybernetic set most changed in this second iteration. In addition to changes for the modules, Startrodder cybernetics can now be detached by tools, and in keeping with the rough and practical themes of Startrodder, that means one can swap out a hand for tools or a clasper of a cannon. I’ve also … Continue reading "Startrodder Cybernetics 2 — Modules"… Read more

Stellar Dynamics remains the corporation in whom I entrust only the most generic of cybernetics. Their modules represent fairly standard, middle of the road options that I expect to be inherently generic. When I shared the preview over on the Inner Temple, I got the question of if these were intended to be shared across … Continue reading "Stellar Dynamics Cybernetics 2: Modules"… Read more

“A lich is the physical embodiment of black magic’s first goal: the quest to achieve immortality. Though a great deal is sacrificed in the rebirth, in becoming a lich one cheats death of that which truly gives it terror. For it is the mind that is retained, and the spirit which follows, though the bodyContinue reading "The Possession Lich"… Read more

Oaths and interrogations. An infestation of undead. Investigations and ambush among the bamboo. A demonstration of advanced wrestling technique. A new friend. Who’s Who What Happened As promised last time, Wang Wan showed our heroes to rooms in the monastery for the night. The next morning, at breakfast, he arrived with news, interrupting a discussion […]… Read more

Wizardry: Magic of Incarnum SpellsThe almighty random number generator told me to take a look at the spells from Magic of Incarnum. Not that long ago (not even two years), I reworked the way incarnum works in my games, because my first attempt was… the first attempt indeed. The Incarnum power modifier includes the existence of anti-powers, and magic spells are one of them. Thus,… Read more

I’ve made a lot of progress on Cybernetics, so I have quite some material to share with you, and I’m rather excited, so I’m going to do it early. You may notice, dear reader, as you go over much of this material, that you’ve read much of it before. That’s because I got quite some … Continue reading "Cybernetic Framework Iteration 2: Modules"… Read more

Date:Demmasday, 5th of Lucrios, 2993 AEPWeather:Cool, overcast, rainyPlayer Characters:Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)Michael J Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)Lacrymosa Merenuithiel Armaris, Elven archer (mercenary) (Archon Shiva)Significant NPCs:3 small ball-shaped demons2 Ibis-headed gargoylesAbout 6 small flying jellyfish2 patrols of beastmenDog-headed beastman sergeantVoice of Thoth, one of the Twelve ancient greater godsAlleged huge ball-shaped demonRoskelly Winterleaf,… Read more

GURPS Monstrous Compendium II WIPRemember my Monstrous Compendium? Not long ago, I started another volume, and now you can check out the first WIP version here…. Read more

"GM, I don't know what to spend money on"“I don’t know what to spend money on.” How many times have you heard this complaint from players? How many times have you seen GMs asking for advice on how to deprive the player characters from money? How many times have you seen the game devolve into the characters scrounging for copper coins just because otherwise they… Read more

There are a bunch of rules about spellstones in this post – I'll duplicate them here, to save clicking around when my players search. Spellstones Crushing a spellstone takes the Concentrate maneuver. However, unlike most spells, you can crush a spellstone while grappled if you have it ready and the hand holding it can potentially crush the stone given the circumstances (which is usually the… Read more

A reader, AutumnRaine, asked how common particular archetypes were. In particular, if we encounter someone carrying a force sword, how many points on average do we actually expect them to be? Are they really 300 points, or are 125 point versions of them more common? And how does this generalize to other templates? I thought … Continue reading "How Common Are Space Knights?"… Read more

For DF Felltower, when a magic item gives or has a disadvantage, the PC that wield it/owns it suffers from the disadvantage but their point total is not decreased. For example, Percy is 318 points and carries Agar's Wand, which is a Weirdness Magnet. Percy suffers the effects of the disadvantage, but does drop to 303 points in value. This is done so that PCs… Read more

Download This month, Mike and Roger talk about magic and allied systems. (Apologies for quality, we had to use a backup recording for Mike.)… Read more

I’ve been busy with family and distracted by my work on cybernetics (I’m very pleased with how it’s coming along). I did get some Wiki material up, especially with help from Jose, who has been trying to help with the tedium of actually formatting, so I got some extra things in. Here’s a quick overview. … Continue reading "A March Wiki Update"… Read more

As mentioned in a recent post, the Seek Earth spell is great for treasure-hunting wizards but can be hard on the GM, especially in a megadungeon with hundreds or thousands of locations.  "Which of these 117 rooms with gold is the closest, and what's the direction and distance to it?" is a hard question to answer in realtime.  And you really don't want to bog… Read more

Game Date: 3/30/2025 Weather: Cold, clear, dry. Characters Chop, human cleric (362 points) Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points) Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points) Thor Halfskepna, human knight (358 points) Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (318 points) Before the PCs headed out, Hannari and Duncan went looking for Black Jans to sell him some things they'd found. No luck, though – his tower wasn't… Read more

  Authorial Highlights No fiction was written, but I’m going to catch up this month! I already have some stuff outlined and ready to go. The Fantasy Trip Quick Quest “The Gallery of Hands” remains in the hands of Steve Jackson. Still considering on bringing it back to my side. No work done on the […] The post Carpe Blogiem: Author, Patreon, and Blog Highlights… Read more

Date:Demmasday, 28th of Toternios, 2993 AEPWeather:Cool, overcast, light rainPlayer Characters:Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)Michael J Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)Coinbase Ethereum Thuringwador, Elven Shield Bro (mercenary) (Archon Shiva)Significant NPCs:WyvernCraastonistorex, green dragonRoskelly Winterleaf, halfling underground toll collector lieutenantSeveral halfling toll collectorsSeveral large albino baboonsTwo huge four-armed baboonsWeird guy who hangs out with baboonsDwarf prisonerSkeleton, possibly… Read more

 GURPS Characters p. B11 suggests limiting disadvantages by total number of points in order to keep the game from becoming a "circus". This is at best a blunt instrument. Consider a character with IQ 16 [120], Will 10 [-30] and Per 10 [-30] compared to a character with Trickster (12) [-15], On The Edge (12) [-15] and Enemy (League of Evil Super Assassins; Hunter, 9… Read more

For all of my recent talk about the desire to go deeper into the roleplay within my roleplaying games, a curious excitement surfaces every time I contemplate the pros and cons of detailed tactical combat. While working on an forthcoming episode about the benefits of Classic GURPS, I found myself digging back into Man-to-Man. The […]… Read more

Some of my players seem to enjoy shopping for equipment a bit too much.  "What can we buy here?" is a common question.  Here's what they've visited so far in the town of Gosterwick:Torunn the Smith.  Torunn, a large Wiskin woman, seems to be the best smith in town, or at least the best smith they've met.  She showed samples of good, fine, balanced, and… Read more

Vael, one of the PC wizards in DFRPG: Arden Vul, started with the Seek Earth spell.  For 3 mana, Seek Earth lets you find the direction and approximate distance to the nearest significant amount of any one type of earth, metal, or stone.  It also lets you exclude known quantities of the item.  It uses the Long-Distance Modifiers, which mean no range penalty for up… Read more

 Date:Demmasday, 21st of Toternios, 2993 AEPWeather:Cool, cloudyPlayer Characters:Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)Vallium Halcyon, Archontean fighter (Greybrown)Thorne Lasselanta Ashcroft, Half-Elven monk (mercenary) (Archon Shiva)Significant NPCs:Margot the Red, innkeeper at the Yellow Cloak InnBricwine, bartender at the Yellow Cloak InnTasha, tailorCreon, pawnbrokerUnidentified huge flying reptilian beastRoskelly Winterleaf, halfling underground toll collector lieutenantSeveral… Read more

A Thorough Look at Bards in D&D and GURPSBard is one of the core D&D classes that has been present in every edition since AD&D 1e. The D&D community sure likes its bard memes about seducing dragons that totally didn’t get old twenty years ago. My personal D&D experience begins with 3.0 and I have to say that I’ve never seen a bard PC or… Read more

Are you a person who wishes there was a way to run combat in GURPS that was super simple? One even simpler than the Combat Lite chapter of GURPS Characters (pp, B324-328)? What if I told you this system exists in an often overlooked GURPS book and that even if you are aware of it, you might have missed that you could just use it… Read more

Blood Magic: More SpellsIt's time to expand the spell repertoire of the blood mages. In this post, I will list all already existing spells that are appropriate to the blood magic tradition, adjusted accordingly. Agitate WoundsKeywords: Resisted (HT).Full Cost: 5 points.Casting Roll: Will.Cost: 1 HP.Casting Time: 1 second.Range: Unlimited (standard).Duration: Instantaneous. By means of… Read more

Is Sorcery even a system?In the comments, I've been asked why I dislike Sorcery despite having written hundreds of spells for it, and it made me realize that I forgot to post a transcript of one of my videos here on this topic. Here's my rant about why I think Sorcery isn't a system and isn't good, and I don't even talk about people ignoring… Read more

Wizardry: Tome and Blood SpellsComplete Arcane is widely considered to be Tome and Blood (a 3.0 book) updated to 3.5, but people who claim that haven't read the books or have only read the game mechanical parts and did that poorly as well. Aside from lots of different non-mechanical information, Tome and Blood has some spells and prestige classes that didn't make it into the… Read more

“A few hours’ mountain climbing make of a rogue and a saint two fairly equal creatures.” This is my third article for hexcrawl locations, this one is called Acid Mountain. I don’t think I’ll do another hexcrawl location for my next post, or any other time soon. This hex could fit into a Desert orContinue reading "Locations For Hexcrawls 3: Acid Mountain"… Read more

Lately I've been watching a lot of anime with my sons, and something occurred to me. There is a genre of anime called "Isekai" where normal folks get transported into a fantasy world. So I wondered how well that idea overlaps with Banestorm's Yrth which is a fantasy parallel world where occasionally people from our world are teleported into it. Here are some thoughts:Yrth: The Isekai… Read more

After the Barbarian Skill Trees on this and this post, I'll keep doing the easy templates first. So, instead of the Bard, I will do the Knight. Iteration 1 – The Basic Knight The Knight template has 61 points between primary and secondary skills, plus Born War Leader Talent. Those 61 points are divided as:…… Continue reading Knight Trunk Skill Tree… Read more

Wizardry: Miscellaneous Spells IIIInitially, I was planning to make a post with some cheap spells, but then I thought that I'd rather adapt some spells from the Lords of Darkness book, but then I found that there are too few of them there and opened the Wizard's Spell Compendium for 2e and found some interesting spells. So, this post is a mishmash of multiple ideas.Acid Bolt is an… Read more

I discussed using a template trunk for DF Barbarians in the last post. Now, let's see how it goes if we use the trunks from PU10. Iteration 1 – The Basic One The Barbarian template has 52 points distributed between Camouflage 1, Fishing 1, Hiking 1,  Naturalist† 1, Navigation† 2, Survival† 1, Swimming 1, Tracking…… Continue reading Barbarian Trunk Skill Tree II – The Destroyer… Read more

Massive Setting Document UpdateThe last couple of months were almost completely devoted to reworking my own setting documents (link). While the setting itself is something few people will care about, the Races of Karilan and Powers of Karilan documents may be more widely useful. The way I do races, monsters, powers, and magic in my games often isn't the same as you can see it… Read more

Since my attempt to create my own WoD setting, I've been messing around with Skill Trees, but since my playtest player dropped out, the WoD setting will be on hold. But that left me with an itching about skill trees. Let's analyze them a bit. Per UP10:16, Kromm suggests creating Template trunks by creating a…… Continue reading Power Ups 10: Barbarian Trunk Skill Tree… Read more

Date:Demmasday, 14th of Toternios, 2993 AEPWeather:Unseasonably warm, sunnyPlayer Characters:Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)Michael J Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)Ashe Maykum, Imperial Goblin druid (mercenary) (Archon Shiva)Significant NPCs:6 Knights of the Azure Shield6 Huge SpidersAshe's summoned goats, bat swarms, and rat swarmsThe PCs all came to Gosterwick from various places around the… Read more

 Yet more options for David Pulver’s Modular Mecha (Pyramid volume 3 issue 51).Reactionless Thrusters (TL 10^, 1 DP): Allow flight as for jump jets, but do not require fuel. Instead, each second of use consumed energy equivalent to one shot from a beam weapon.Force Screen (TL 10^, 1 DP, can be taken twice): Gives ablative DR equal to the lower DR for the mecha’s base… Read more

Yes, we’re still playing and yes, I have to get a lot of logs up. Those are as much for me to have a reference as anything else, and I feel lazy. But this isn’t about that. Dave Ripton posted that one of his players asked about the Archontean Calendar in his game, and it will come as no surprise to any of my players… Read more

Combat Scaling and AbstractionBack in the day, I made a video about why I love crunchy tabletop RPG systems, where I explained why I enjoy such intricacies as weapon composition, partial armor coverage, optional hit locations, one-second turns, and other game mechanical intricacies that make GURPS so fun for me. However, I do understand that, in certain ways, granularity can limit you and… Read more