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GLAIVE Mini: Weapon Builder System for GURPS

Weapon rack png

Don't just settle for off-the-rack weapons from the local blacksmith. Build your own! T Bone's Games Diner is proud to present GLAIVE Mini, your super simple, single page weapon builder system for GURPS. Read more...

Minor GLAIVE for 3e update

crier.png

I've made a very minor update of the GLAIVE system for detailed low-tech weapon design, to v2.1. It's a minor clean-up of writing, including friendlier compatibility with GURPS 4e. The end product is still GLAIVE for 3e, not 4e, but with the minor changes noted should play nicely with 4e. (Sorry for not being more ambitious, but I say there's no sense in undertaking a full reworking for 4e until we see what the coming GURPS Low-Tech will bring to the weapon design arena!)

(EDIT: Oops, title should be "...GLAIVE for 3e...", not "...4e...". Fixed.)

Sports throwing skills in COSH

Discus throw

The old GULLIVER for GURPS 3e details throwing skills for use in sports, not combat. Generally, these gain a hefty distance bonus in exchange for several drawbacks: encumbrance penalties, a Ready requirement, and a big TH penalty. (Yes, a TH penalty. Track-and-field javelin, hammer, discus, and so on never require the thrower to actually hit something. What the heck? Let's get some man-sized targets out there, and go Spartan on the next Olympiad!)

Come to think of it, perhaps these special skills can be built nicely using COSH, the system for modifying and building combat skills in 3e. Hmm, it's worth a try! If this sort of thing piques your rarified interests, break out the COSH page along with a copy of GULLIVER LITE for 3e and read along: Read more...

GURPS Range Ruler launched on e23!

GURPS Range Ruler

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

Very tiny GULLIVER LITE for 3e update

Crier

The old GULLIVER LITE distillation of my GULLIVER for GURPS 3e rules is still available for all the retro 3e players out there. I noticed an embarrassing boo-boo in the text, though: long-outdated URL and email info. I updated those, took the opportunity to improve wording in a few more spots, and, despite no changes even worth noting, upgraded the version number from 1.1 to 1.2 just for the cheap rush of power. It's downloadable now, should anyone actually need it.

(Unrelated tech tangent: I'm pleased to see that ol' AppleWorks 6 still chugs along in OS X.) 

Oh, and an added note for the masses playing GURPS 4e: Don't forget that GULLIVER Mini now exists as a nice, free one-page expansion for building and playing critters of any size in GURPS 4e. If you haven't downloaded it, go get it now; if you have a gaming website, please let your readers know about it!

"Magic" Skill for GURPS

wizard

GURPS was long funny in that it offered skills for each and every specific application of magic (i.e., hundreds of spells), but no skill to cover a mage's overall understanding of magic itself.

Such a skill – name it Magic for simplicity – both fills that gap and lets you fine-tune magic in your campaign, in at least 10 fun ways. This old article was written for GURPS 3e and its Magic skill is at least partially duplicated by the Thaumatology skill that later appeared in GURPS Grimoire and then 4e Basic Set, but the notes may hold a new idea or two for your 4e games. Read more...

T Bone's Miscellaneous Old House Rules (GURPS 3e)

old house

Most old house rules have been absorbed into other works on this site. On this page are a few miscellaneous 3e tweaks – some much used, others tasted and soon forgotten – that didn't fit elsewhere. (A few now have some sort of simulacrum in GURPS 4e.)

It's all ramshackle old stuff (1997 or earlier!), but might contain something of interest for your modern GURPS game. Read more...

Rules Nugget (GURPS): New Damage for ST

Thor for the win

Intro: Refinishing the table

What's wrong with GURPS' table linking ST scores to thrust and swing damage? Nothing! It's done its job for over 20 years, and so far no one's gotten hurt. (Except all those on the target end of ST 14, 2d swings, of course.)

But a little thing like "it works well enough" never thwarts the compulsive rules hacker! Nay, the tinkerer's quibbles must out.

First, wouldn't it be swell if damage followed ST in a neat, linear relationship? (Necessary, no; nice, yes.) That's certainly not the case now, where neither thrust nor swing damage follows any observable pattern connecting it to ST. 

Second, what's with the relationship (or lack thereof) between thrust and swing values? For a while, swing damage is roughly twice thrust damage (clearly so at ST 14 and ST 22), but then begins to increase more slowly, until it tops out at only thrust + 2d for very high ST scores. That means the higher the ST, the more that thrust and swing become effectively the same thing.

Below is an optional reworking of the damage table that addresses both of those quirks with clean, easy-to-remember damage values. The progression is so regular that you'll only need a small subset of the table on paper or in your head, with all other values computable on the fly! Read more...

Rules Nugget (GURPS): Revised Toughness

Cannonball in the gut

Intro: "Go ahead, runt, punch me in the gut."

Imagine that's the growl of a hulking bully with an Olympic wrestler's build. And imagine that your physique is more that of... er, a guy who once gamed a wrestler PC. (Did you have to imagine hard?)

It's easy to imagine that your best punch to his gut – or just about anywhere beefy – simply won't hurt the guy. At all. Oh, maybe a few dozen punches would start some bruising, sure, but you don't get that chance; his first punch has you coughing up the lunch money as soon as your limbs start working again.

Using GURPS' or most any RPG's combat system, the mismatch won't quite play out as described above. It will when the bully's high damage meets your puny Hit Points; no problem there. But as long as your punch is capable of dealing some damage, you will hurt the bully – at least a point of hurt, which in GURPS is not trivial. (If your punch can roll zero damage, then you might not hurt him, true – but that roll won't hurt a weakling, either.) Most RPGs have no mechanism that lets a strong fellow shrug off minor impacts without damage.

Below is a revised Toughness trait for GURPS that represents resilience from thick muscles. It's as good as DR against crushing damage, letting a hero laugh off weak punches. Yet Toughness isn't DR; a weak knife slash will still cut you, and a stab to the heart can kill. Read more...

MERC: Make Every Roll Count

Lots of dice

Intro: Keep it interesting!

RPGs evolve. New games don't just invent snazzy new mechanics; they poke deep into questions of what game-table play is about.

MERC stems from author Ben Finney's interest in the innovations of recent games, and ways to strengthen those concepts in the now-classic RPG GURPS. Broadly speaking, MERC is a set of 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? 

From the GURPS perspective, that often equates to "When should we make success checks?" The general answer to that is clear to gamers with minimal experience: "Roll where the outcome is meaningful and interesting. Roll to have the PCs survive a dangerous car chase, not to eat breakfast without spilling the orange juice." We all know that, and MERC doesn't contradict this truism.

But that said, a beginning GM won't hurt for a more contemplative look at when to roll dice; even an experienced GM might freshen his games through a reexamination. More importantly, what MERC suggests actually may represent a new take on play for some gamers: A shift from many games' focus on resolving tasks, to a focus on resolving players' intent (with some crunchy GURPS-flavored dice-rolling guidelines to aid in that). Read more...

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