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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.

announcement

GURPS Range Ruler launched on e23!

Posted Fri, 2009-11-06 16:42 by tbone

It's here! Steve Jackson Games' e23 Store now offers the Range Ruler, a tool for finding battle map combat ranges without counting hexes. It's based on a design I submitted to SJG, and after a kind reworking by the pros there, maintains pretty much the same look, down to the the corny text and this site's URL.

(About the only thing not there is my requisite attempt at an abbreviation. The best I could do was GURPS Range Indicator Plank (GRIP), to which Dr Kromm sagely suggested the much better GURPS Range Increment Plotter, before someone apparently nixed abbreviations altogether. Probably for darn good reason!)

Best of all for you, the GURPS Range Ruler (GRR?) is FREE! It won't cost you a shekel. (If you'd like to offer a kind word or other token in thanks, please do so!) So print some out, arm the table, and get down and tactical on any surface, with or without battle maps. Oh, and while you're on e23, buy GURPS stuff. It's fun!

GURPS Range Ruler

Anouncing MERC: Make Every Roll Count

Posted Wed, 2009-10-07 19:27 by tbone

Make Every Roll Count (MERC) by Ben Finney is a set of gaming guidelines for placing story first and making the most of gamers' time at the table. More narrowly, it homes in on a key question at the heart of all RPGs: When should the dice be used at all, and toward what end? The answer involves a change from the too-common focus on resolving tasks, to a focus on resolving players' intent.

While MERC includes specific guidelines for use with GURPS, it's applicable to RPGs in general. I think it offers good advice to GMs both new and experienced, and am pleased to see it here at the Diner. What do you think?

MERC: Make Every Roll Count

Minor update for GULLIVER Mini: Links fixed

Posted Tue, 2009-06-16 22:28 by tbone

Whoops. An earlier post announcing a minor update to GULLIVER Mini had broken links. (My own dumb fault, not the software's.) The break probably didn't throw off many people, but for new visitors, here are the proper links:

To the GULLIVER page

Straight to the download links

Site organized! Now you can find stuff!

Posted Mon, 2009-06-01 12:39 by tbone

Baker Street Station Bakerloo Line platform motif

Finally, a long-postponed task is done. I've organized rules-related content on this site for easier browsing. You'll see categories on the right, under "Content Stuff". Here's the quick guide:

New menu

blog

All posts coming under the arbitrary heading of "blog post". Not a particularly meaningful category, but there it is.

The GURPS Diner

Still a hand-made list of article links. It's convenient for quickly picking out key GURPS articles, but see the categories below for more.

rules articles

The main courses: big, meaty articles on rules, play aids, or other gaming topics. Mostly the acronymed stuff (GULLIVER, FEND, DECIDE, etc.), with goodies like GURPS Metric too.

rules nuggets

Simple rules ideas that are too short for a big article. More are on the way!

rules adds

Supplementary info for specific rules published on this site: clarifications, commentary, other notes. Stuff like update announcements for GULLIVER, added notes for GLAIVE, etc.

rules talk

Miscellaneous talk about rules or gaming: rules questions, examples of use, design ideas, connections to real life, comments on gaming, more. Pretty much all content not in one of the above.

reviews

Reviews of games, books, or whatever strikes the gamer fancy. Not much there yet; contributions would be great!

Other navigation notes

There. That change doesn't add any new content, but should re-introduce some items that weren't easy to find.

Finally, note that at the end of each full article are tags applying to that article. Click on any of those to get all articles with that tag. For example, the tag "GLAIVE" will return all articles tagged with "GLAIVE".

Next cleanup tasks

Other menu groupings may still call for some fixes. Please let me know if you see anything broken!

There is one annoyance still plaguing me: a "More..." link that appears at the end of posts in lists, even when the whole post is already displayed and there is no more. I hope to have that fixed soon.

Thanks always for your visits and comments. (And if you see a "More..." link after this sentence, please ignore it.)

Small GURPS entries on the way

Posted Tue, 2009-05-12 11:40 by tbone

Over the next few days, expect some new entries in the "Rules Nuggets" category of short-ish rules articles.

Or not-so-new entries. The first pair on the way are halves of a previous entry on shields, now cloven into two separate items: one on Shields and Size, the other on Shields and Cover. Two topics that play well together, but they are independent all the same, and each deserves its own entry.

While recycling old stuff isn't too exciting, it is a chance to further polish things and keep them up to date with GURPS 4e. (Note: Some of these entries will link to each other; forgive any non-working links to items that are still in the post queue.)

Other entries will include more bits liberated from old pages, plus some fresher stuff. Among the latter, there are a couple of topics that I'm still working out; I expect to post a forum topic or two asking for help in hammering out the ideas.

Minor update for GULLIVER Mini

Posted Wed, 2009-04-01 17:27 by tbone

I'm calling it v1.1, though even that's a stretch. There's no new content in the updated GULLIVER Mini ('cause, hey, none's needed!). The changes are:

Some wording changes
Row order in Agility Table reversed (not sure why I had it as I did)
More legible serif font (hey, the designer types were right!)
Better PDF output

Give your old copy a little refresh!

To the GULLIVER page

Straight to the download links

Site update

Posted Wed, 2009-03-25 13:04 by tbone

Partially rebooted with an upgrade to the content management system. It'll allow some new and improved functions, including benefits for registered users.

First, more clean-up to do:

The graphic theme may or may not be temporary. If I keep it, it needs some improvements in text headers etc.
Yikes, those gamer-y graphics at top and bottom... Yes, this is a site about gaming, but those graphics just aren't me. They must go.
Organization of content, especially rules-related content, is a mess. That's a holdover from old, not a bug of new. It's on top of the to-do list.

And then, by the Elder Gods, new stuff!

ESCARGO for 3e cleaned up

Posted Thu, 2008-11-27 12:27 by tbone

ESCARGO for GURPS 3e is now cleaned up as well; it should be much easier to read.

ESCARGO is a look at an unusual option for GURPS: skill and attribute costs that just go up, up, up. It looks odd, but offers a surprising number of nifty benefits.

If you have any interest in RPG design, or even just a deeper-than-average interest as a player, ESCARGO may provide some interesting ideas applicable to a number of game systems. Have a look!

COSH for 3e and other site updates

Posted Wed, 2008-11-26 15:50 by tbone

A little spring cleaning sure feels good!

Huh? You mean spring was, like... back in spring? Oh. Well, spring cleaning in late fall still counts as cleaning, so I don't care about getting the season wrong. (Probably shouldn't have sown my fields yesterday, though.)

Anyway, I brought over the COSH combat skill design system from the old static site to a proper new page. Yes, it's for GURPS 3e, but it's still a hoot to modify and create combat skills, and create a martial art that's just so you. And there's a freebie in the new COSH page: handy PDF downloads for the key tables! Discover (or rediscover) COSH today.

At the same time, I performed some cleanup of the GLAIVE weapon design system for 3e, the GULLIVER page, and the GURPS Diner list of links.

There's more to do: I started this site without full understanding of the underlying CMS's capabilities, and my content organization is a bit haphazard (as are some details like download file names and links). That'll all get cleaned up, though priority remains on in-progress new projects.

Introducing New Bite-Sized Rules Nuggets

Posted Fri, 2007-10-05 10:54 by tbone

Is that "nuggets" as in gold, or as in mystery poultry parts? You be the judge. (I'll admit, the latter better fits the "diner" theme. And possibly the writing quality.)

One-off ideas, pocket-sized tweaks, house rules no bigger than a bird's nest... They're too small for a Big Article of their own, and they'll languish forever if they wait to be grouped into a Mega Supplement. So here they are, in their little Pekinese-like cuteness. (Not that the Diner would ever put Pekinese in its nuggets. *cough* Never!)

Rules Nuggets

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