A very particular set of (sub-) skills This article offers a rather unnecessary thing: a number of skill techniques bought to their maximum level and slapped with a new name, turning the techniques into quick-pick advantages. These came about when I concocted a technique-based bunch of parkour- and thievery-related power-ups during the playtest for Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves. They didn’t appear in the book, so in the spirit of waste not, want not, I leave you with those power-ups here, along with a few more that I created later. Such technique-based advantages – I’ll call them “TBAs” – aren’t a new thing. Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups (p. 7) gives them…
-
-
Dumping out the loot sack: More rules and tools for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy thieves
As promised in my mini review of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves, I'm rounding up and presenting ideas and content that I had suggested for the book during its playtest but that didn't end up between its pages.
-
A bunch of new content for GURPS, etc.
I’ve added a lot of new content over the past few months. “Yeah, I can see that. I mean, I’m here, on the site…” Right. And thank you. But I’m posting this for the benefit of the RSS feed. A few words about the feed, for the interested only, follow the header below. For now, here’s an update in the form of a TL; DR version, as of late September 2023: The normal, expected RSS feed for this site, http://www.gamesdiner.com/feed/ , should work fine now. That’s all. The rest of this page might be of modest interest to blog managers only. The gripe! Out of old habit, I use the…
-
Game design musing: Easiest-ever, zero-math “weight-to-power” factor for characters (GURPS)
The last thing I posted to this site was a book review, and before that, a notice of a Kickstarter campaign. That’s two posts in a row that aren’t overly nerdy (as RPG hobbyist stuff goes). So I’m overdue to post something really dorky. You: “Uh, no, that’s okay, you don’t have to, really…” Say you want to set a weight-to-power ratio, or level of weight-to-ST, however you style it, for characters in your games. “O-o-o-kay, I think we’ve seen this before, and we know how it goes. This is why we got you those meds.” Hold on. There are two parts to a discussion: That second is the big…
-
A mini review: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves
Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves is a new entry in the Denizens sub-series of the Dungeon Fantasy series for GURPS. It joins the earlier Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Barbarians and Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Swashbucklers as the third work to explore and expand a Dungeon Fantasy profession. (Or the fourth if you count Dungeon Fantasy 7 Clerics, but that’s a different sort of entry.) What’s in there Like its sub-series predecessors, Thieves aims for completeness in detailing its profession. The main text compiles lots of new and old information: In short, it’s a catalog of traits and gear for thievish characters. Which on its own would feel incomplete, but call-out boxes add thoughts…
-
Coming for DFRPG: Artifacts of Legend
Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game, the powered-by-GURPS adventure RPG that out-dungeons and out-dragons them all, is getting powered up again. Artifacts of Legend and Artifacts of Saga, written by Marko Vujnovic and Christopher R. Rice and brought to you by Gaming Ballistic, will deliver over 70 new god-bestowed artifacts, fell weapons of darkness, and other weird wonders. The Kickstarter campaign’s sneak peek teases some good stuff, including Legendary Possessions: divinely granted items that grow in power as heroes complete great deeds. This sounds very good. (And needless to say, magic item write-ups are usually easy to port to any game system. You don’t have to be a DFRPG or GURPS player…
-
Update to new damage for ST
The old article “Rules Bit: New Damage for ST” was a fairly well-visited piece on this site, exploring the topic of a ST-based damage that scales linearly with ST – like “1d per 10 ST”. It’s a change that no one needs but that a lot of rues tinkerers like. I’ve revised the article considerably to cover additional considerations, remove unimportant cruft, and offer a spiffier Damage Table. I’ve also renamed the article, as it’s much more an exercise in system hacking than a mere rules tweak. I invite you to give the renewed version a look:
-
Update to alternate cost progression for ST
Rules Bit (GURPS): A Better Cost for ST and HP is an old but relatively popular piece that places ST on an ever-decreasing logarithmic cost progression (the brainchild of D. Weber). A replacement for existing schemes to reduce the cost of high ST, it drastically reduces the cost to build a mountain-cracking jotun or bus-hurling super – and can even make designing such beings easier. I’ve heard nice things over the years from GMs who have put his to use. Give the newly polished old article a read, grab its prettier new Tables, and see whether its cost progression works better for the supes in your games.
-
The Least of Kickstarters: DFRPG Monster Seeds
If you read this quickly, you’ve still got a short window to get in on a Kickstarter campaign for a mini-sized product: Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Monster Seeds, a collection of adventure ideas starring demons and lurching dead and other evil from DFRPG‘s original Monsters book. (See additional announcements here and here.) This will be a short book, apparently with only 12 entries, two per page. And you don’t even need to buy it! As the campaign page cheerfully notes, the entries are already collected on this forum thread. So it’s a packaging of freely available material, and just a few pages of it – buy hey, it’s one dollar.…
-
Update to rules for grazes
Rules Bit (GURPS): Grazes is an old house rule that stretches back to the 3e days. It details the effects of a graze: the bullet that only scores a character’s shoulder as it whizzes past, the punch that almost gets dodged but still clips the target, all the scrapes and scratches that heroes accumulate in fiction while escaping serious harm. I’ve given the work a good-sized overhaul. I made the conditions for a graze cleaner and easier, reflecting my experiments and experiences. I simplified the effects of a graze to just two basics (or even one), with other effects made clearly optional. I clarified how the rule’s intent and effects…
