From February 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023, I posted an entry a day to the @gamesdiner Twitter account, using the hashtags #TRPG, #GURPS, and #DailyHouserule. The concept: Make tweets out of a bunch of minor GURPS houserule items, GM/player advice tidbits, and other tips & tricks, to have a bit of fun engaging with other gamers and get the #GURPS tag out there more. (See the initial announcement here.) The year is up! I’m now posting those tweets to this site, a month per page. Links to all 12 months are below. Do forgive the overly abbreviated and janky writing. These were tweets, so the text is full of…
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Daily Houserule tweets: June 2022
From February 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023, I posted an entry a day to the @gamesdiner Twitter account, using the hashtags #TRPG, #GURPS, and #DailyHouserule. The concept: Make tweets out of a bunch of minor GURPS houserule items, GM/player advice tidbits, and other tips & tricks, to have a bit of fun engaging with other gamers and get the #GURPS tag out there more. (See the initial announcement here.) The year is up! I’m now posting those tweets to this site, a month per page. Links to all 12 months are below. Do forgive the overly abbreviated and janky writing. These were tweets, so the text is full of…
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Daily Houserule tweets: May 2022
From February 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023, I posted an entry a day to the @gamesdiner Twitter account, using the hashtags #TRPG, #GURPS, and #DailyHouserule. The concept: Make tweets out of a bunch of minor GURPS houserule items, GM/player advice tidbits, and other tips & tricks, to have a bit of fun engaging with other gamers and get the #GURPS tag out there more. (See the initial announcement here.) The year is up! I’m now posting those tweets to this site, a month per page. Links to all 12 months are below. Do forgive the overly abbreviated and janky writing. These were tweets, so the text is full of…
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Daily Houserule tweets: April 2022
From February 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023, I posted an entry a day to the @gamesdiner Twitter account, using the hashtags #TRPG, #GURPS, and #DailyHouserule. The concept: Make tweets out of a bunch of minor GURPS houserule items, GM/player advice tidbits, and other tips & tricks, to have a bit of fun engaging with other gamers and get the #GURPS tag out there more. (See the initial announcement here.) The year is up! I’m now posting those tweets to this site, a month per page. Links to all 12 months are below. Do forgive the overly abbreviated and janky writing. These were tweets, so the text is full of…
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Daily Houserule tweets: March 2022
From February 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023, I posted an entry a day to the @gamesdiner Twitter account, using the hashtags #TRPG, #GURPS, and #DailyHouserule. The concept: Make tweets out of a bunch of minor GURPS houserule items, GM/player advice tidbits, and other tips & tricks, to have a bit of fun engaging with other gamers and get the #GURPS tag out there more. (See the initial announcement here.) The year is up! I’m now posting those tweets to this site, a month per page. Links to all 12 months are below. Do forgive the overly abbreviated and janky writing. These were tweets, so the text is full of…
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Daily Houserule tweets: February 2022
From February 1, 2022 to January 31, 2023, I posted an entry a day to the @gamesdiner Twitter account, using the hashtags #TRPG, #GURPS, and #DailyHouserule. The concept: Make tweets out of a bunch of minor GURPS houserule items, GM/player advice tidbits, and other tips & tricks, to have a bit of fun engaging with other gamers and get the #GURPS tag out there more. (See the initial announcement here.) The year is up! I’m now posting those tweets to this site, a month per page. Links to all 12 months are below. Do forgive the overly abbreviated and janky writing. These were tweets, so the text is full of…
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What’s interesting about roleplaying games
We interrupt this site’s regularly scheduled posts about weapon stat trivia and other simulationist drivel to bring you long-simmered higher-level thoughts on gaming itself. The following likely offers nothing you haven’t thought yourself or heard before, but that’s okay. For the interested, here are a few things that I’ve always found particularly interesting about RPGs. They’re a whole new type of game That’s a rarity. Think of the types of games you play at a table. Not specific games, but broad, top-level categories. There are card games, of course, in a zillion variations. Countless board games, too. To avoid getting too broad, we can consider strategy games like go and…
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A year of daily GURPS tweets: #DailyHouserule (GURPS/DFRPG)
I’ve been assembling a collection of bite-sized house rules, tips, and tricks for GURPS and DFRPG, with the intent of tweeting one a day for a year. I’ve got enough entries now for nearly three-quarters of the year; the rest are falling in line smoothly. When to launch these daily tidbits? January 1 would make all kinds of sense… I realized one day in late January. So I launched on February 1, the Chinese Lunar New Year. That works too. I’ve got over a week of house rules and tips posted now, and it’s going fine, so here’s the blog announcement. Interested? Just follow @gamesdiner on Twitter, or follow my…
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Game design musing: Simplifying ST-based thrust and swing damage (GURPS)
Here’s a small simplification GURPS could make: Replace the two damage scores (thrust and swing) attached to ST with one damage score. Huh? You mean do away with GURPS’ distinctive difference between a weapon’s swing and thrust damage scores? No, nothing of the sort! That thrust-vs-swing distinction adds fun considerations to the choice and use of weapons. It’s one of my favorite features of the game’s combat system, right up there with defense rolls. Let’s keep it! But I think the game could remove the small complication of two damage scores if it wanted – not from combat, but from character stats. I’ve made mention of this somewhere in the…
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Game design musing: Swing vs thrust damage: What’s the difference? (GURPS)
Welcome back to Dork Labs (a name you can count on to mean “spreadsheets will follow”). In writing an upcoming post involving strength and damage, I had reason to revisit an old question of mine: in an ideal GURPS, how much should ST-based swing and thrust damage differ? It’s by no means a pressing matter at anyone’s game table, but on the off chance that someone finds this of interest, and continuing this site’s hallowed tradition of yammering incessantly about all things ST for reasons only Yog-Sothoth can divine, here’s what the numbers show. Swing vs thrust, by the numbers The table below is self-explanatory. At left are ST-based thrust…
