Today Gets Magical

I seem to have established a pattern of having one GURPS supplement appear per year (though I don't have anything lined up for 2027 yet), and this year's is GURPS Magical Styles: Modern Magic. This is something of a follow-up to last year's Traditional Styles, being a collection of spell-based magical styles that owe more to modernity in various forms than to old-school concepts of magic.

Specifically, you get magical librarians, demagogues, punks, rock'n'rollers, and trenchcoat wearers. I suspect that most gamers will be geeky enough to identify my inspirations. It was another interesting exercise in showing how GURPS rules can be fine-tuned for flavour - well, interesting for me. I hope that others agree.

Harping on Steampunk

Every now and again, I actually get a writing gig for a company other than Steve Jackson Games. However, this being the roleplaying games writing business, I may then have to wait a little while for my work to be published... Something I should mention here because people may have heard me talking about this one for a little while now. But that's by the by.

The important thing is that HARP Steampunk, my supplement adapting Iron Crown Enterprises's "HARP" ruleset to the steampunk genre, is now available through DriveThruRPG (in PDF form; I believe that a print option will follow in due course).

I'm quite fond of this one, as it's a long while since I wrote for any kind of class-and-level ruleset. In this case, that meant coming up with Professions (i.e. classes) such as Detective, Pilot, and Engineer, cultural Backgrounds based on the Victorian class system, and creature stats for black dogs, dinosaurs, and theosophical root races. Not to mention steam-powered power armour and ornithopters. I got to flex a few odd creative muscles with this one; I hope that people enjoy it.

And by the way, I've put up the wherewithal for a demo scenario on my Web site, and I'll try to get a second up in the near future.