Even in campaigns that don’t allow methods to resurrect the dead, the very thought of bringing the dead back to life is a compelling hook. Mythology has many places, things, or people that bring back the dead to life, but one of the most interesting is the so-called Shroud of Turin. Supposedly the burial shroud […]
Continue readingDesigner’s Notes: The Gryndel Menace
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with complete rule sets in my head. I’m talking down to the last perk. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night screaming because my eyes were just eaten by a monster and now I need to write it up in GURPS or describe […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: Dungeon Fantasy CER-based Treasure
When I wrote “It’s a Threat!” for Pyramid #3/77: Combat one of the things I had in mind was to have a lengthy box explaining how you can turn the CER of a monster into a way to determine what treasure it might have on it. I talked about it a bit here, but didn’t really […]
Continue readingBoil and Bubble: Air Spells for Sorcery
Jason “PK” Levine came up with this clever magic system in Pyramid #3/63: Infinite Worlds II. It garnered some attention when it came out, but hasn’t really seen much then. I think it comes as close as you possibly can to a working powers-based magic system that doesn’t feel like comic-book supers magic. It’s ranked […]
Continue readingGURPS101: More Human Than the Humans
GURPS Monster Hunters is one of my favorite gaming series of all time – and not just because I got to playtest or have wrote a bunch about it – I genuinely love the premise. I’ve always been partial to the horror genre, especially the kind where the protagonist knock some heads. I still regret not […]
Continue readingMelee Academy: The Feats of Samson
The Biblical figure of Samson (or “Sampson”) from the Book of Judges (chapters 13 to 16) is an interesting guy. Basically, he’s the Christian version of Heracles (and has interesting ties to that particular mythological figure as well). He did some pretty cool things, things which any PC in any campaign would love to do. […]
Continue readingBoil and Bubble: How to Build a Spell Thief
Recently, Shieldbunny from the Steve Jackson Games forums asked: I’ve been kicking around the idea of building a character based off of the spellthief class in That Other Game. For those of you that don’t know, the idea is a stealthy character that steals the spells from her enemies minds to cast herself. After some […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: Monster Hunters Campaign – The Broken Night
Today’s Gamemaster’s Guidepost is yet another departure from the standard fare I’ve been producing. In fact, it’s a radical from anything I’ve ever posted on my blog. This is something that I’d normally held in reserve for a Pyramid article. But I decided that I have so much already in that grouping that it was […]
Continue readingDesigner’s Notes: The Vanishing Sun
“The Vanishing Sun” was one of those articles that I’d been thinking about for a while. Something peculating in the back of my skull for about a year. I’d gotten the idea while working on some private commissions for a fantasy campaign and thought “Man, wouldn’t it be cool if this was kind of like […]
Continue readingGamemaster’s Guidepost: You Need a +2 or Better Weapon
…I used to hate hearing my DM tell me that phrase. What do you mean this awesome weapon I’ve worked hard for can’t do diddly and squat (and diddly left town with Bo). Oh, it used to make me so mad. I remember actually keeping weapons I’d never use if they were a +3 or better weapon […]
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