Be social
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General
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Registration and login
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* If you're a registered user but haven't logged in and want to post a quick comment as Esteemed Visitor, that's fine; see above.
* If you're a registered user but haven't logged in, and enter your user name under "Your name" when posting, you'll get an error saying that's the name of a registered user. That's a good thing; it means strangers can't make posts under your user name! But as above, there's a chance of losing your post text. It's best to log in first here, and then start your posting.
Final
All the above is standard stuff for community web sites, but reminders are good; I hate post-related glitches, and hate to see people run into them on this site. On this or any site, it's a good practice to do a quick "Select All" and "Copy" on your post text before hitting "Preview comment" or "Post comment" – just in case.
For more on the whole topic of interaction with the site, please see User Interaction (opens in new window).
Patron advantage
How's everything?
Enjoying your Games Diner meal? Is the wait staff attentive? Is the chef bathed? (Then it must be a Sunday.) You do know that a little eggshell in the French toast adds calcium, right?
If the cramps haven't set in yet, I hope you'll say Hi to the chef or check out the many ways you can contribute to the Diner.
Now eat. Eat up! You're as thin as a rail.
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For collaborators, contributors, or the curious. Notice of site updates; project announcements; calls for playtesting; etc.
GURPS Points of Light
Easier to do the one-point NPC overviews for D&D (or similar games) than for GURPS, of course. "Paladin 12" instantly lays out 90% of what the character is and what he can do. For GURPS, I don't know what could be done; "300-point fighter" only takes us 10% of the way to a ready-to-use character. (I'm just making up silly numbers, of course.) Characters will have to be statted pretty fully. (And fully-statted GURPS character or monsters take up so much more text than D&D equivalents, a bit of GURPS weakness at times.)
Standarized Templates perhaps. When you think about it for level based games a level is just a chunk of skills and powers. In GURPS you go up point by point but in D&D you go up say 20 points a crack.
The way to do it is have a compendium of templates, a 20 pt fighter, 50 pt fighter, 100 pt fighter and so on. 50 pt Mage, 100 pt mage, and so on. While it make the stats a bit cookie cutter you can personalize the NPCs in the descriptions and the possessions.
It's interesting that Points of Light actually is based on GURPS. A GURPS-specific version of it would be a great tool to get fantasy GMs up and running, if you and SJG were to collaborate on that!
The Swamps of Acheron is directly pulled from my GURPS game translated into D&D terms. Borderlands best represents what my fantasy game feels like. Lots of intrique and politics involving mostly human and not a lot of monsters.
Hopefully this fall I will get some time to work up a Points of Lights style for GURPS Fantasy. Using the SJ Games Internet policy. If that generate interests then maybe SJ Games will commission one for themselves.