When I interviewed GURPS Line Manager Sean "Dr Kromm" Punch back in April, he said something that resonated with me strongly and has stuck with me ever since. Roughly paraphrasing, Sean outlined his belief that the main difference between GURPS and most other roleplaying games revolves around the idea of the prescriptive versus the descriptive. … Continue reading Taking The D100 Prescription
I finished the Fire Gate tower key for the Fire Citadel megadungeon, which I am building for play using GURPS Dungeon Fantasy within a revived rendition of my Mystamyr setting. Finishing the first dungeon key is significant because it marks the beginning for actual play: in other words, from today I have enough to run … Continue reading Megadungeon Mapping
Following on from today's interview with Daniel Jones about Otherworld Immersion, I've been thinking an awful lot about what Daniel calls, "Methodology". This is the stuff of roleplaying gamers that isn't the Rules and isn't the World: it's the methods we use to actually play, to bring those Rules and that World into harmony. One … Continue reading Why Let The Players Create Characters?
Imagine the world, a primal place of raw potential, where the magick is strong and true. The People live within the boundaries of a forest glade below an outcrop of rock, within which the tribal elders say the origin of our village is found. There are shallow caves that sit upon the outcropping, delving into … Continue reading Reconnecting Mykovnia
There’s an inherent tension in my tastes when it comes to adventure gaming. On the one hand, I am drawn to stories of high adventure and pulp action. My favourite novels are high-paced tales of action heroism and somewhat ridiculous feats of James Bond-like derring-do. On the other hand, I tend to gravitate towards low-powered … Continue reading The Call of Pulp Cinematics
A short musing around the awarding of Character Points in play when using the GURPS rules set. As I move away from traditional "level-based" games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, and embrace the GURPS system, I noticed this interesting quotation from Dr. Kromm in the excellent, "How To Be a GURPS GM": Earned character points … Continue reading Learning GURPS: Awarding Character Points
It was the Poetic Map of Harn, itself printed on the back of HarnPlayer, that did it. HarnPlayer is the overview of the World of Harn that covers what any native of that place might well know - a useful tome for any potential player in a Harn campaign. But it was the map, alongside … Continue reading Webster’s Harn
One of the features of the GURPS game system is the concept of variable power level. Because character creation is done using a points buy system, in which players spend a pre-allocated budget of Character Points in order to build exactly the character they are imagining, one of the first questions the Referee has to … Continue reading Choose Your Power Level
Following on from my interview with legendary Game Designer, Steve Jackson, it's my honour this weekend to share the opportunity I was given to interview the GURPS Line Editor, Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch for Roleplay Rescue. Interview Link:Talking GURPS With Dr Kromm Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch set out to become a particle physicist in 1985, … Continue reading Talking GURPS With Dr. Kromm
This post is as much for my players as it is for anyone else. It is also the means by which I am working out how I plan to tackle the challenge of learning to run games of GURPS: the Generic Universal RolePlaying System (Fourth Edition) published by Steve Jackson Games. GURPS was first published … Continue reading Learning GURPS: Play Some Adventures
