I’d originally conceived Eastern Adventures as a one-stop-shopping for Dungeon Fantasy GMs who wanted to run games in “the Mysterious East”, but that quickly became nothing but wishful thinking. I was effectively trying to squeeze three books into one article. That just was not happening. I quickly trimmed my outline down to templates, races, a few power-ups, and […]
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Designer’s Notes: Heroes on the Mass Scale
This one was a fairly quick put together, but revisions were hellish in the extreme. Even the editing (the part I always have the hardest time with) took less time than the near constant revisions I did to make this thing work. Considering its progenitor system (“It’s a Threat!” from Pyramid #3/77: Combat) was specific […]
Continue readingDesigner’s Notes: Magical Tradecraft
This one was another one of those things that was a blast to write. I mainlined Burn Notice for several days, while taking notes for cool feats of skill or times when magic would have just been insanely useful to have. I then watched a few spy movies, made a few more notes, and then […]
Continue readingDesigner’s Notes: A Song of Many Worlds
Another article that started out a campaign material and then I whipped into shape to become something more publishable. Like most of the articles I pull directly from my campaigns I had very few pieces to cut because it was so concentrated. This was also the article where I fixed what I viewed as a […]
Continue readingDesigner’s Notes: May the Shadows Guide You
With “May the Shadows Guide You” I began to hit my stride. I’d half a dozen articles under my belt and a hit in Metatronic Generators (which is still fairly popular years later). The meat of this article actually hailed from a defunct fantasy campaign I ran. My significant other wanted to use GURPS Powers: […]
Continue readingDesigner’s Notes: The Wild Hunt
I don’t remember if I asked PK about it or if he asked me, but somehow we got to talking about GURPS Monster Hunters and faerie. I remember when I was playtesting the series originally that I raised this question and he told me he just didn’t have room. I asked if I could work the […]
Continue readingDesigner’s Notes: Magic Bullets
This rather light article should have been quick to write. It wasn’t. It was like giving birth to a baby that had bone spikes on it. Really, I probably should have skipped writing anything for this issue, but when your broke you’ll do whatever you need to to make some money. All that aside it […]
Continue readingDesigner’s Notes: Purveyors of the Priceless
Purveyors of the Priceless originally started out as “What the heck do I write for Low-Tech III?” I didn’t get involved in the previous Low-Tech issue because I felt it was extremely far out of my comfort zone (which led to issues with Purveyors itself – I felt I needed to come up with some […]
Continue readingDesigner’s Notes: Vehicle Imbuements
GURPS Power-Ups 1: Imbuments is one of those books that is so simple and yet so ridiculously complex. It lends itself quite well to just about any campaign frame as it can be easily explained as belonging to whatever supernatural or cinematic abilities are available in the setting. What’s more Imbuements are extremely easy to expand […]
Continue readingDesigner’s Notes: What’s In a Lair?
I haven’t exactly kept it a secret that I dislike the current rules for bases in GURPS Supers. The concept overall is sound – which is why I kept some elements of it – I dislike the idea of paying points for gear generally, but I especially dislike it in this instance because in just about […]
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