Intro This tiny little rules tweak that I use is one so small that I can’t come up with any clever-ish title or subtitle. It’s so trivial that I tend to forget it’s a house rule, not official rules-as-written. With that lack of ado, here it is: The rule Change the TH bonus for the Aim maneuver to +1 per second of aiming (up to +3 for 3 seconds). Reworded, that’s nothing more than “add +1 to the Aim bonus”. Do that, and the bonus now ranges from +1 to +3 instead of the official +0 to +2, before the addition of weapon Acc. Notes By the book (Basic Set…
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GURPS has three kinds of rolls (and they’re not success, reaction, and damage)
Discussions of GURPS often mention that the game has only "three types of dice rolls": success rolls (made on 3d; roll low to succeed), reaction rolls (made on 3d; roll high to get a good reaction), and damage rolls (roll as many dice as indicated; a higher total is more damage).
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RPG reality check: Are falls deadly enough in GURPS?
Are falls properly deadly in GURPS? Over a wide range of fall distances, impact surfaces, character sizes, etc.? I dunno. But here’s one interesting piece of data – an expert’s claim, anyway – that we can use to match one real-life situation against the results generated by an RPG simulation, and see how the two compare. So go get some favorite GURPS characters, nonchalantly lead them to the rooftop of a four-story building, and push them off! Let’s see how many survive. Falls and the LD50 The AV Club article “Allow this trauma surgeon to ruin a few of your favorite action scenes” introduces a video in which trauma physician…
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Three new Talents for GURPS/DFRPG: Graceful, Lithe, and Life of the Party
For your character-building pleasure, and apropos of nothing in particular, here are three new Talents for GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy Releplaying Game. Two Talents are variants on a single physical concept and the other Talent social, but they’re all good for PCs who like to entertain or just stir up fun. (They’re also pretty simple and obvious ideas; maybe you’ve already come up with similar Talents for your own games?) Edit 2019-07-15: This article originally had two Talents, Graceful and Life of the Party. Now there are three, as one was a poor buy in DFRPG (containing several skills not found in the game). With that split into two versions, here are three Talents for…
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A blogger’s dozen (Part V): 13 ideas for RPG articles
Hi, RPG fans who write stuff for fun! Do you like to create gaming content for your blog, favorite forum, or RPG magazine (even if no longer Pyramid *sniff*)? Sure! That describes a lot of you! But do you sometimes run short of ideas for stuff to write about? Nope! That describes none of you! Well. Although RPG bloggers/writers never have an empty list of writing topics, I earlier tossed up a handful of posts on ideas for RPG articles: suggestions for GM resources, player advice, or any other fun topics that I myself have written a bit about, or that I’d like to tackle if I had the time,…
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31 reasons why you want to pick up Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (and fast!)
Gamers! If you missed the first appearance of Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (DFRPG), fate and Steve Jackson games (SJG) have granted you a second – but fleeting – chance to pick up a box. It’s happening through a successful Kickstarter campaign that will reprint the boxed set, launch a new Monsters 2 book, and offer a bunch of add-ons. (The campaign ends Sat, March 23 2019 7:13 AM UTC!) Why do you want this game? There are as many reasons as there are flavors at that one ice cream chain. There are so many reasons, in fact, that only a logorrheic hack blogger could list them all. That’s my cue! Updates 2019-03-16: Added…
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What happens when you read Dungeon Fantasy RPG books just before going to bed
I’m writing this for my own amusement (having resolved long ago to write down remembered dreams in the morning, but almost never doing so). I’m posting it here as a bit of gaming comes into the story. (Barely. Don’t expect much.) It happened after perusing Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game books before sleeping. Hmm, if I do that more often, maybe I’ll have some proper gaming dreams – say, a dream of me as a PC, descending into a dungeon. (That’d be worth writing about!) Or more realistically, maybe a dream of prepping for a convention session, and heading into the room to GM for a crowd of excited players. (Of course,…
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Why GURPS defenses use half skill: A half-baked idea
Continuing the Games Diner’s fine tradition of bringing you the most inconsequential gaming gab out there… Why does a Parry or Block in GURPS – figured as 3 + half your skill with your weapon or shield, respectively – use half skill, something seen pretty much nowhere else in the game? I asked that question in FEND, a bit of fun with rolling defenses like anything else, using full, normal skill. There, I opine that GURPS‘ use of half skill is simply a matter of making defenses play well: with their range flattened by the halving and the resulting too-low score boosted by the +3, the final defense scores are not…
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Dungeon Fantasy RPG character: Leonidas of Nemea, Cat-Folk barbarian
Hey, look! It’s a fully-fledged character for Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game—or GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, with maybe a small tweak or two. Yes, you’re looking at a cat-folk—a lion-folk, that is!—with He-Man’s goofy pageboy haircut instead of a noble mane. There’s a reason for that… Leonidas of Nemea 250-Point Cat-Folk Barbarian The dry plains of far-away Nemea are home to cat-folk—fierce, strapping lion-folk, in fact. And at six and a half feet in height and 250 pounds, the lion-boy Leonidas stands tall even among… Wait a second. Isn’t “Leonidas” just too twee a name for a warrior lion? Yes, it would seem so—but this young pride-leader has taken the name for…
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Unasked-for silliness: A GURPS logo
Over on the forums, a player ponders whether GURPS should have its own logo mark – something more graphical than just the word “GURPS” in a beveled box. A crude image immediately came to my mind, which I can now show off via an even cruder abuse of “graphic design” <cough>. The shape is obviously the d6 that is core to the game; its angle creates a six-sided silhouette (highlighted with a bit of color) that also evokes a map hex. The two graphic elements are the famous SJG monocular pyramid and the classic GURPS logo. The four spots, meanwhile, reinforce the image of a die, while also indicating the…
