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.

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.

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.

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Just briefly - the final draft of my little (okay, not that little) project for Pelgrane Press has gone in and been accepted, so now it's out of my hands. It may even see literal, physical print in due course, which always feels nice. Nothing against PDFs, but they're weightless.

So now, well, there's so scenarios to work on that should in due course see use at conventions (yes, initially online conventions, I had noticed the state of the world). Then it's over to the project for Iron Crown...

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.

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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.)

More Regarding That Book

A second review of the Discworld RPG is now up at http://www.letthedicefall.com/2017/01/the-discworld-roleplaying-game-review.html.

Also, the book will be hitting retail in the UK this week. British gamers who lack a friendly local game store may wish to mail order; I thoroughly recommend Leisure Games for this. See https://leisuregames.com/collections/new-releases-week-commencing-9-january/products/gurps-discworld.

Discworld Reviewed

The first (gratifyingly positive) review that I've seen of the Discworld Roleplaying Game has now appeared on the Web, at http://justroll3d6.com/discworld-roleplaying-game-review/.