GULLIVER

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 I noticed an embarrassing boo-boo in the text, though: long-outdated URL and email info.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!

Dinosaurs may not have been as heavy as previously thought. Those are the words of scientists who found flaws in the models used to estimate weight:

"Palaeontologists have for 25 years used a statistical model to estimate the body weight of giant dinosaurs and other extraordinarily large extinct animals,” said Gary Packard, from Colorado State University, whose research will appear in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology this week.

“We have found that the statistical model is seriously flawed and the giant dinosaurs probably were only about half as heavy as is generally believed.”

In other words, dinosaurs are just as big – long and tall, that is – as the fossils have always told us, but the flesh on those bones may have been far less bulky than thought. To make that distinction in movie terms, an Allosaur at the cinema would cheer the speedy new Godzilla over the lumbering old one as a better depiction of saurian kind. (Well, as a vastly oversized saurian, anyway.)

This is welcome news to me, as massive weight has been the bane of GULLIVER's attempts to apply "natural encumbrance" rules to dino designs. Read more...

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

Responding to this thread on the SJG forums, I started listing the different ways to handle the design issue of power-vs-weight in creatures. But my would-be post was getting farther from the focus of the thread (handling of armor and creature size), so I'll place it here instead. Read more...

Well, sure, you knew that. But how much stronger?

I was browsing John Woodward's nifty GURPS Godzilla page. His is no mere lazy stab at a handful of stats (like... well, this post is), but is a thorough guide to roleplaying the the Toho cinematic universe. Characters, monsters, history, plots, and more. A campaign in a box, if you will.

http://www.io.com/~woodward/d7/ggodzilla.html

How big a box? To hold the Big G, at least 300 feet high – that appears to be the canonical height of Godzilla, despite some variance throughout his storied career.

And how tough is our radioactive pal? ST 7500, says John, with DR 3000, HT 20, 50,000 HP, 10 kilotons of weight, and a physical attack dealing at least 750d damage. Whew! That's gotta hurt.

But those stats are for GURPS 3e, and some changes are in order; in particular, ST can likely be much less under 4e. Unfortunately, John says he doesn't have time now for a 4e upgrade. So while we all look forward to that someday, I'll ponder 4e statistics. Read more...