Trading on Trad

 

I seem to get a GURPS supplement out approximately once a year these days, and 2025's has just come around. GURPS Magical Styles: Traditional Styles is 22 pages of "how to use the standard GURPS spell-based magic system to represent traditional conceptions of magic". Well, five such more-or-less traditional conceptions that I found interesting, anyway. (Bodily, Dream, Spoken Word, Theurgic, and Mystical Assassin magic, specifically.) Available now from Warehouse 23, for a mere $7.

Weighed in the Scales

Another new PDF of mine is out: GURPS Fantasy Folk: The Reptilian Races. Available now from Warehouse 23. 

Me on Video!

Hey, I've been interviewed by Really Dicey, so now you can see me on YouTube!

Catching Up on Publications

 Oops, it's been a little while since I posted here - which wouldn't matter much if I hadn't had experienced an outburst of productivity.

To begin with, Steve Jackson Games published my second "Fantasy Folk" creation - the short and sweet (well, not too unsavoury) GURPS Fantasy Folk: Kobolds. Yes, the mild annoying little guys. Except that GURPS Banestorm kobolds aren't that small, when you look at them, and I'm also covering more folkloric kobolds, which came in at 245 GURPS points. Then there's the question of the myth's possible roots in Greek myth... the project was slightly more fun than I might have expected.

And then, just a little later, I released a couple more books that collect characters who I originally created for volume 2 of Pyramid magazine (i.e. the Web-based version). Pyramid Characters: Fantasy Foes and Friends has characters for a variety of fantasy settings, while Pyramid Characters: Crosstimers and Other Oddities mostly features characters for the GURPS Infinite Worlds milieu, plus a couple of others who sort-of fit with that concept.

 

(Both of those latter two are currently only available from DriveThruRPG, as Warehouse23 seems to be having some technical issues with third party sales at the moment.)

Goblin Mode

 After a bit of a lag (for, as I understand it, administrative reasons), my latest effort is now out (in PDF form) from Steve Jackson games: GURPS Fantasy Folk: Goblins and Hobgoblins. It's a generalised sort of guide to playing and GM'ing the creatures known by those names in RPGs - and not just genre fantasy games. (I'm rather pleased with the goblin template for Monster Hunters.) It walks the line between "very generic RPG fantasy" and "what words actually originally meant", and I hope avoids falling off.

Transhuman Space: What is Old is New Again

 Oh yes, this blog still exists.

Well. I have a new (small) roleplaying book out - self-published, even. (Though some people would doubtless quibble with "new", because some people are born to quibble.) Transhuman Space: The Pyramid Personnel brings back half-a-dozen NPCs for the Transhuman Space setting which I originally wrote up as short articles in Pyramid magazine volume 2 (the Web page version), but which haven't been available to new readers since that went offline. So I negotiated a deal with Steve Jackson Games, put together a 30-page compilation, and am now selling this. It's available as a PDF from Warehouse 23, and as the same PDF or in print on demand form from DriveThruRPG:

The Pyramid Personnel on Warehouse 23.

The Pyramid Personnel on DriveThruRPG.

(One note; some people seem to be under the impression that DriveThru do all their print-on-demand printing in the USA, with ensuing exorbitant shipping costs to Europe. This is out of date; they now have printing options on this side of the Atlantic.)

Back in Print (on Demand)

The Discworld Roleplaying Game went out of print a while back, but the thing about modern technology is that "Out of Print" no longer means quite what it used to — at least sometimes. The book is now available through Amazon's Print on Demand service — just follow that link.

(I've not seen a copy of this version; it's paperback, of course, and I'll be interested to see what the quality is like.)

Unleashing Osiris (for just $3)

The latest Steve Jackson Games GURPS Kickstarter project again offers the possibility of acquiring a PDF of my creation -- in this case, GURPS Infinite Worlds: The Osiris Worlds, a brief collection of alternate history settings centered on alternate versions of Ancient Egypt. Actually, it offers the definite possibility of getting twelve GURPS mini-supplements for just $3, if you act in the next few days.

Kicked to Start

I find myself on Kickstarter for the first time. Sort of.

Steve Jackson Games are currently running a Kickstarter promotion in which a bunch of short PDFs are made available to anyone who backs it -- exactly how many depends on how much the Kickstarter raises, but it's currently nine, and will probably rise to twelve by the time things are done. And one of the nine is my "Broken Clockwork World" steampunk setting.

And the good news is that one can get this material for just $3. (There are also larger backer levels which add other GURPS material in PDF form, making this a good deal for anyone who wants to buy a bunch of such stuff.) So if anyone is interested in any of this, the cost really is quite negligible.

The URL for this is https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/warehouse23/steve-jackson-games-gurps-2020-pdf-challenge .

Platonic Solidification

A small note, but - my old book GURPS Atlantis is now available in print-on-demand form from Amazon.

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I now have a new short-ish GURPS PDF up on Warehouse 23:

GURPS Vehicles: Transports of Fantasy

(Yeah, it seems to have been a little while. Been doing other things. Still, I’m quite fond of this one, even at just 32 pages.)

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GURPS Steampunk 3: Soldiers and Scientists

http://www.warehouse23.com/products/gurps-steampunk-3-soldiers-and-scientists

Which completes the starting set of GURPS 4th edition steampunk PDFs (along with 1 and 2 and Conveyances); to put it another way, put those four books together and you'd have approximately the book I'd have written if SJ Games had been willing to do a new-edition GURPS Steampunk.

This one is the characters book, which means a lot of templates, but I tried to add more interest with variant skills and disadvantages and martial arts styles and so on.

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GURPS Steampunk 2: Steam and Shellfire:

http://www.warehouse23.com/products/gurps-steampunk-2-steam-and-shellfire

The latest in the little line of steampunk supplements I’m doing for SJGames, and oh so very much the highly necessary gear book.

Sound

I was at Athena Games, in Norwich, the other weekend, running some Discworld demonstrations at their fifth anniversary event (nice people), and while I was there, the Draw & Discard podcast interviewed me.

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Occasionally, my work leads to something getting published...

GURPS Vehicles: Steampunk Conveyances is now available from Warehouse 23. It's technically the first book in the GURPS Fourth Edition "Vehicles" line, but it's also, of course, the second book in the 4e "Steampunk" line, supporting my past discursions on settings and style with notes and game mechanics for some very steampunk hardware... A remarkable amount of it historical.

(Of course, just because it really existed doesn't make it automatically a good idea. Pre-dreadnought battleships and giant balloons had their little problems, and that "torpedo ram" that gets the one big heroic moment in The War of the Worlds? Only a geek like Wells could think it was a cool idea.)

But there's also some fantastical stuff, some of it courtesy Jules Verne, though I also raided third edition GURPS books along with dubious dime novels. So there y'go; thirty-plus vehicles, covering land, sea, air, and space.

EDITED TO ADD: Roger Bell_West has reviewed the book on his blog.

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A very brief but somewhat significant note: The Discworld Roleplaying Game is now available for purchase in electronic (PDF) format, for those who no longer like making shelf space.

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For those keeping score -- the GURPS production process seems to be coming back to life now, as one of my PDF projects heads to production review, and another comes back to me after its first draft has been exhaustively reviewed by the line editor.

I can't say much more than that for now, but it's a start.

Discworld RPG Overflow

Despite the 408 pages, some stuff got squeezed out of the Discworld RPG. So I've now made some of that material available online:

• https://www.philmasters.org.uk/RPGs/More-Discworld-Characters-from-the-Books.pdf - game stats for assorted characters from the novels.
• https://www.philmasters.org.uk/RPGs/More-Discworld-Occupational-Templates.pdf - some extra occupational templates.
• https://www.philmasters.org.uk/RPGs/More-Discworld-Spells.pdf - more sample spells.

Another Review

I guess with all the blogs and stuff there are in the world, I should expect a fair number of non-professional reviews. It's nice, though.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2017/01/rpg-review-discworld-2nd-edition-gurps.html

The Continuing Saga of the Discworld RPG

Aaaand another review...

• http://oneyardhex.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/discworld-rpg-review.html

The book is definitely in UK shops now. There've been reports of limited supply in some outlets - apparently the distributors underestimated demand - but restocks appear to be coming in. So if your shop claims that they can't get hold of the thing, tell them to press their distributor, hard.

(Amazon UK still don't seem to have it, though.)