Grimoire: Elemental Melee Spells

GURPS Magic lacks a lot of the 'traditional' spells that games like D&D have. This is probably by design; most damage-dealing spells in D&D are variations upon "you do fire damage" or "you do lightning damage" and so on for each element. GURPS takes a more basic approach, with one or two spells per school that deal damage with an amount you can choose.

That said, there are still some gaps. One of the things that was conspicuous was the lack of sword spells, so that mages could brandish blades of pure fire. Lightning Whip is a great spell... but why not do the same for other elements or colleges? After the jump are a few simple spells that fill these gaps.

Cross-Post: First GURPSday 2017

I always dutifully read through the GURPSday listings, as I prefer it to using the content threads on the forums. I find much it more digestible, an easy way to get an overview of what the GURPS-o-sphere is doing recently without being bombarded with huge amounts of content. So here are a few of my stand-out blogs and posts from the first week of 2017!

Ars Mundi: Coldfire

The Great Archmage Talistandra Orvalus XII is credited with the discovery – posthumously, of course. Her death baffled the College for months before enough of the event was reconstructed using divination and scrying magic. Orvalus' remains were found in her tower, along with the burnt remnants of her books, clothes, bookshelves, wands, staves, cat, owl and collection of novelty tea cosies, all scorched and clearly destroyed by flames. Yet when her apprentice arrived later that day, he found the entire tower covered in a thick layer of frost, even though it was a pleasantly balmy day in early spring.

Like any true academic, Orvalus was absolutely delighted about her discovery, even as it burnt her alive.

Dramatis Personae: Monica Harmann, Street Speedster

If you're in downtown Manhattan at the right time of night, and you look in the right direction at the right time, you might see it. The hobos have seen it, but they also say they've seen lizard people and UFOs. But everyone who's seen it describes it the same way. A blur of blue, black and gold, streaking across the sides of the high skyscrapers. If you're really lucky, they say, you might see it take to the air, where it slows down as it reaches the apex of its long arc, crossing two city blocks in one leap. If you look closely, it looks like a young woman, her long blonde hair flying free in the breeze as she soars twenty stories in the air.

But that's impossible, right?

Equipment Locker: Prismatic Muskets

One of my earliest posts was about redpowder, a weird science alternative to gunpowder that produces lasers instead of explosions. I gave some instructions for how to convert the statistics for ordinary gunpowder weapons into prismatic weapons, though it always felt a bit awkward explaining how to do it rather than showing you.

Since the first post on redpowder was largely talking about it as a setting element, this will be a much more equipment-focused post, with the intent to make the rules easier to follow. I'll present some sample prismatic arms, and restate and update the rules for redpowder weapons, and include some brand new options.

Meta: New Look and Christmas Break

I'm visiting family for the Christmas holiday now and have decided that "But it's Christmas!" is an excuse for me to shirk all responsibilities, not just work and healthy eating. As such I won't be keeping to my twice-weekly schedule until the New Year. The first GURPSday pull of 2017 will be on 5th January, so I intend to have two posts for it and then back on the schedule afterwards.

I've also finally overhauled the look of the blog. A few weeks ago I realised I'd been on a totally unmodified default layout and colour scheme the entire time – having just picked one when I started up to satisfy the requirement and forgetting about it – and I've now got around to changing it to something more unique. I'm well aware the colours on the mobile version are a bit janky but overall I think it looks better. If you have any issues or critique, let me know.

Playbook: Armour Damage Threshold

Long before I started this blog or joined the GURPS Discord, me and Jose of Blogging At Default, Taking Extra Time have regularly bounced ideas back and forth, discussed things and come up with some new rules to handle situations. One of the things we had both run into is that, especially at high TLs, weapons can't keep up with armour, especially not military-grade examples. Someone in a combat hardsuit is all but invincible to any handheld weapons of the same TL. This presents an annoying combat balance problem if other players aren't wearing the same armour, as anything that might seriously threaten the hardsuited character will simply turn the rest of the party into red mist.

So the solution we came up with was a system to gradually degrade the DR of armours, based on the attacks that are hitting it.

Dramatis Personae: Arilith, Demon-Touched Sellsword

This post contains a small amount of content that might be disturbing. If implied sexual assault disturbs you, skip the first paragraph.

To say Arilith went to the school of hard knocks would be the understatement to end all understatements. Her mother, violated by a demon nine months earlier, abandoned her mere minutes after birth, naked and crying on the cobblestones of an alleyway in a pool of uterine fluid.

Looking back on it, Arilith figured it wasn't too bad a start in life. From there, the only way to go was up.

A good samaritan followed the sound of crying and picked the newborn baby up. Arilith was left at a temple in the city, where the monks and nuns raised her, always with barely-concealed distaste at her demonic heritage. Other orphans lived in the temple, too, but Arilith was always treated more harshly than them – with her fiendish taint so visible, the monks considered it their duty to straighten her out and make sure she didn't follow her blood, doling out tougher punishments and harsher penalties for rule-breaking and misbehaviour. Of no great surprise to experience parents, it didn't work, and Arilith ran away from the temple at thirteen.

Her life from there on out was a litany of pain and struggle. Forced to beat, lie, cheat and steal for her bread, she become harsh and hard as iron. Eventually she found employment as a thug and strongman for local criminals, years later legitimising into a caravan guard. With combat experience under her belt, she joined a mercenary company for a few years, taking part in two separate campaigns when her host was hired by the sitting duke. After interpersonal conflicts made life with the company impossible, she struck out on her own, renting her services as a guard, mercenary and sellsword.

Utility Closet: Spaceship Character Sheet

The last campaign I ran was space opera, set in the Endless Space universe. Being space opera, the players had a starship of their very own. It was more than a means of transportation – it was where they hung their hats and charged their power cells, where they slept and kept their stuff, and where they brought their prisoners (my players were quite sensible about not fighting to the death). The main problem of starships is that they have all sorts of statistics and resources to keep track of; power, fuel, reaction mass, rations, weapons, ammunition, etc. It got confusing for me to keep track of these on separate papers or files, so after the campaign ended I drew up plans for a record sheet to use if I ran another space opera game.

I posted it a while ago on the official GURPS forums, with minimal interest shown, though the one person who replied had some very useful input. Now that I have a blog that people seem to read, I thought I'd share it to a wider audience. This is only the second iteration, so I'm mostly looking for feedback, critique and improvements at this point; what more would you want in a spaceships' character sheet? Tables for quick references? More empty boxes for keeping track of miscellaneous things? Have I left out something huge? Obviously there's lots of empty space; my hope is to be able to fill it while keeping the sheet both attractive, simple and clean, and useful. Please let me know in the comments!

Meta: Dude, Where's My Shield (Design System)?

So one of the things I mentioned in a previous post is the shield design system I've been working on. I've also talked a bit about it in the GURPS Discord if you've been lurking there at the right times. It's something I'm very proud of because of it's elegance – it encapsulates what could be a very complex problem in a simple and direct way. But the reason it's not shown up on this blog yet is because last weekend I sent a query letter to Steve Jackson Games for writing it as a GURPS Pyramid article.

When I started this blog it was always one of my intentions to hold myself to a professional standard, as well as to use a similar voice and tone to Pyramid articles. Writing for Pyramid is something that I've thought about for at least the last year. I had the ideas, for sure, but the writing itself was the issue. But beginning this blog and setting my two-per-week goal has really helped me refine my writing, both in terms of quality and speed. After some unexpected but glowing feedback on the Discord, I decided to pitch the shield design article to SJG. I got quite a positive response, so if all goes well and it's accepted, it won't be appearing here. But, as Bob Ross says, it'll put a happy buck in my pocket. But if it's not accepted, I'll post it here!

EDIT: To clarify, nothing has been decided yet; the query I sent got a good response but there's no guarantee of publication implied in that. I did point them at this blog but I have no idea whether reading what I've posted here was part of the decision or not. I'll talk more about it when there's something to talk about.