That's just what it is: a simple summary of ways to handle this matter in character/creature design. Short and sweet.

Two notes:

1) A recent tech upgrade borked all links to ancient (static HTML) GURPS Diner material. Should be working again now.

2) The site's new graphic theme offers a lot more potential for content placement and other customizations than the previous one. But, yes, it needs some clean-up first. It looks very... busy. Will improve things.

THE TAKEOUT MENU: Flyaway Missives from T Bone's Games Diner
#005, March 20 2008

== POSTED TO MAIN SITE MARCH 31 2008==

There's been a big outpouring of thoughts and sadness over the passing of D&D creator Gary Gygax. The words put down by other writers are far better than I can summon, so I'll add a very short note:

As the RPG world moved beyond the foundations Gary built, it's been all too easy to cast stones at the "clunky" rules and strictures of his original creations and their direct descendants. "THAC0? Alignments? Classes? Ha, that stuff's crazy..."

I, too, like today's more modern, streamlined games. But I've always kept respect for the D&D world, whether I play the game any more or not. Like so many, many others, I point to D&D as my start as a gamer. And throughout any temptation to poke fun at the game's outdated points, I've always returned to one key thought:

Question: Did we have fun with the game?

Answer: Hell, yeah, we did.

That single truth trumps any and all dismissal of the game, and is the highest form of thanks that a game's players can return to its maker.

To have turned a clever idea into a whole new genre of gaming – wow, few of us messing with game-related design or writing will ever make a smidgen of that impact.

I never met Gary, despite a couple visits to GenCon and even a trip to the original TSR store in Wisconsin. I wish I had. He did great things.

How do you milk a fish? A milkfish, of course, the semi-aquatic Yrth mammal that offers meat, oil, and milk to its medieval domesticators. The brief description in GURPS Banestorm suggests a cross between a seal and a manatee. Plausible enough... but how do you get the milk out?

Some time back, D. Weber offered an interesting alternate suggestion for ST cost. It was a good idea when originally shoehorned into 3e's ST rules, and works even better under 4e. Take a look:

I'm glad that 4e now incorporates something as simple and basic as a size for characters! SM, what took you so long?

My friendly little quibbles with SM as s/he stands (Basic Set p 19) are as follows:

Ogres. Hulking Trolls. Tree-sized Giants. Mountain-sized Jotun. If they're defined by a size bigger than us, then for this article, they're all Giants. Because whatever the specifics, they all have one thing in common: "TARG SMASH PUNY HUMAN!"

I'm liberating the Big Games notes on gaming Giants from my old GULLIVER rules for GURPS, to give them a proper new home within the Diner (with a little freshening-up too, including a pinch or two of content from other sections).

Although I've got some GURPS 4e-specific notes at the end, the general overview is useful with any game system. Yet it's all pretty brief; sorry, I haven't witten The Complete Guide to Gaming Giants. I'd love to add your notes and ideas here, if you too have played oversized PCs, NPCs, or even just "monsters".

Up the beanstalk we go, then:

"Uhn... too weak... passing out..."

That's fine for battle-battered heroes, but do we want dumb monsters conked out in combat? Here's a simple way to have beseiged beasts raise bloody hell – and then properly die – like good monsters should.

BS 431 offers a nice table for putting falling distance together with velocity. But did you know you've already got a tool for generating those numbers? You guessed it: that ever-handy Size and Speed/Range Table. It'll even tell you how long it takes your PC to plummet off a cliff. Or calculate spacecraft travel statistics. And other fun stuff.