“Ten Tweaks to Customize Combat” in Pyramid #3/34: Alternate GURPS is Your Author’s first article for Pyramid, Steve Jackson Games’ digital magazine for serious gamers, by serious gamers. (It’s the second SJG offering with my handle on it, following the GURPS Range Ruler.) The article gathers 10 simple GURPS combat-related rules from the Games Diner, polishes them shiny, and pares them down to their sweetest essence. If you’ve read the Pyramid article, this post offers a bonus aid: links to the rules’ original write-ups on this site. “Ten Tweaks to Customize Combat” gives you all you need to drop the rules into a game, so don’t think that you need…
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Updated DECIDE defense tweak
I’ve made an update to DECIDE, the suggestion that combatants make defense decisions without unnatural prior knowledge of whether attacks will succeed or not. It’s a GURPS article, but could be applied to any game handling defenses in a similar manner. On the topic of whether to use DECIDE with melee as well as ranged attacks, I’ve changed the article’s options from 1, 2a, and 2b, to 1, 2, and 3. For Option 3, I’ve made a change first discussed in DECIDE implementation notes: a change from -1 to 0 for “last-second defense” penalty vs melee weapons, and a blanket +1 to all “immediate defense” rolls that don’t wait to check…
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GURPS Range Ruler launched on e23!
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…
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Anouncing MERC: Make Every Roll Count
Make Every Roll Count (MERC) by Ben Finney is a set of gaming 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? The answer involves a change from the too-common focus on resolving tasks, to a focus on resolving players’ intent. While MERC includes specific guidelines for use with GURPS, it’s applicable to RPGs in general. I think it offers good advice to GMs both new and experienced, and am pleased to see it here at the Diner. What do you think? MERC: Make…
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It’s here! GULLIVER Mini for GURPS 4e!
We interrupt your browsing for a special infomercial from T Bone’s GURPS Diner. Hmm. Well, since we can’t run actual infomercials here, I can at least show you the script. (Cue T Bone [TB], in cheap suit before polyester-curtained background. Flashes slick grin and points at camera.) “GURPS gamers! Need to lay on the Leprechauns, but don’t know where to start? Do your Ogres lack oomph? Are you loving 4e’s new-found support for all creatures big and small, but frustrated by scattered rules?” “Help is on the way! Introducing a big new game aid in a tiny package: GULLIVER Mini for GURPS 4e! “ (Cheesy video effect of a…
