Over the years, I have to say that I've spent more time in the Star Wars universe than in any other, watching movies, playing video games, and reading books. Something about the combination of intense action and epic scope, perhaps.
When I learned that there was a Star Wars conversion for GURPS in the works, I was naturally quite excited. But then I began delving into it, and what I discovered was something far more interesting than a mere conversion.
Psi Wars, by Daniel Dover (aka Mailanka), is an ambitious project to take the tropes and conventions of Star Wars, existing GURPS material, and his own experience to build a space opera campaign framework perfect for high action roleplaying and mythic world building. And while it is still a work in progress, it succeeds admirably at these goals.
The core gameplay is based on GURPS Action, adapted for the advanced technology of a Star Wars-like setting, with twelve character templates perfectly suited for the larger than life adventures. But this is just the foundation, and Mailanka quickly expands from that beginning to touch on just about every element of setting design.
To better model the World War II-esque combat of Star Wars space battles, Mailanka revamps the combat system introduced in GURPS Spaceships. Now you can have grand capital ships engaging in stately duels while clouds of fighters swarm around them. Fighter aces square off as bombers dive in to cripple engines and weapons, and officers bark orders from the bridge of their ships, commanding it as if it were an extension of their own body.
On the ground, you have teams of commandos going up against Imperial soldiers using top of the line equipment, while out on the rim you frontier marshals, smugglers, and bounty hunters clashing, where law and order run headlong into the demands of survival. And all of these use combat styles carefully devised or modified for Psi Wars.
Naturally, you'll also find Space Knights, force sword wielding champions of either righteousness or villainy, while Mystics serve as guides in their mysterious ways. But it is here that you find the biggest divergence from Star Wars, for they do not draw on the Force, but psionics drawn from GURPS Psionic Powers. And these abilities are not the sole purview of mysterious, secretive orders, for anyone can unlock the powers of the mind.
No, the true mysterious power of Psi Wars is that of Communion, the gestalt super-consciousness that embodies the wishes, dreams, desires, and fears of sapient life. Those who learn its ways may petition it for miracles, from minor and subtle guidance to the history shaping primordial avatars.
These avatars are linked to another manifestation of Communion, the recurring stories and archetypes known as paths. Whether it be the Righteous Crusader bringing justice to the world on behalf of their community or the transgression of the Mystic Tyrant in search of forbidden power, those who follow the strictures of these paths gain power, for the collective will of sapient life is to see these stories told again and again.
Not only does Psi Wars give you these frameworks for capturing key elements of the Star Wars genre, there's also a wealth of game and setting design notes captured in Mailanka's blog. In my view, these represent the most valuable part of Psi Wars, for it explains the philosophy behind his design, how he adapted GURPS to capture his vision for Psi Wars, and and then lays the groundwork for building your own organizations, worlds, and cultures.
The one drawback of Psi Wars is that, as a third party project, it cannot be used on its own. At a mimimum, you'll need GURPS Basic Set, Ultra-Tech, Action 2, Psionic Powers, Divine Favor, and Spaceships to make use of 90% of its material, and there are many references to other books. However, with just the books I listed, you can pick up the Psi Wars Primer and start running it.
Of course, I also have to repeat that Psi Wars is a work in progress, and there are many points for editing to clean up. But as of Iteration 5, it is a solid reference, and Mailanka is not only working diligently on improving it, he is also very receptive to feedback and suggestions. So, go take a look at Psi Wars. It's free, and even if you never play it, you can learn a lot about designing games for GURPS, how to build a space opera setting, and more.
If you like it, consider supporting Mailanka on Patreon. You can get access to behind-the-scenes looks at design notes, early access to Psi Wars material, or even the opportunity to contribute your own ideas to the setting.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Monday, February 20, 2017
Review: Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
Star Wars holds a special place in my heart, since I loved the movies and the expanded universe when I was rather young. Naturally, I also played many Star Wars video games, and in total I've probably played more Star Wars games than games set in any other universe.
Recently, Humble Bundle offered their Star Wars III bundle, and as it contained some of the games I played growing up, along with many that I hadn't played, I was quick to snap it up. Among those games was Shadows of the Empire, which is one of the leading candidates for the first Star Wars game I ever played.
How did this childhood memory stack up after all these years? Well...my experience was decidedly mixed. It was nice to revisit Shadows of the Empire, but the game has aged poorly, and I'm forced to admit that it probably wasn't all that great a game even back in its day. But, let's break it down:
Graphics
These have obviously not held up well over the course of time. Textures are simplistic, models are low polygon count, there's heavy use of fog to reduce draw distances, and lighting is strictly ambient. But for their simplicity, they are functional, and you'll never have any trouble distinguishing enemies, terrain, and the various pick-ups.
The repetitive textures have the potential to contribute to disorientation in some of the more maze like levels, but since none are very large, you won't get lost for long.
Controls
If you come into this game expecting it to play like a modern FPS, you will be in for a rude awakening. The controls are, to be generous, quirky. Most notably, under the default controls, your mouse both moves your character forward and backwards and rotates the camera side to side. But wait! What about looking up and down? For that, you have to press and hold a button to enable the mouse to shift your view up and down. By default, your camera will return to the default position when you release the key. I suggest switching the controls to one with view lock, since there's a few sections where looking up or down is important.
The other major quirk with the controls is that the game autoaims for you to a certain extent, which partially compensates for the difficulty in adjusting your viewpoint. This causes problems when it's trying to hit the wrong target, or if it locks onto an enemy that's just out view instead of one you can see. Since you generally only face one or two enemies at a time, this isn't too much of a problem.
Quirks aside, the controls are largely solid once you've gotten used to them, though you have to take care not to move when you're simply trying to look to one side. Jumps are floaty, but that's also something you can adapt to.
The biggest actual problem I had with the controls was in the early section of the Gall Spaceport level. There, I found some of the ledges you have to traverse to be rather slippery, and downward slopes were treachorous. Since this level also takes place in a canyon with steep drops, this led to many unnecssary depths. Take it slow, make sure you're moving directly to your destinations, and you'll mostly be okay.
Finally, there's no in-game tutorial for the controls, so you'll have to consult the pause menu frequently until you memorize them.
Gameplay
For all the faults I just mentioned, Shadows of the Empire is actually fun to play. It offers a good mix of level types, with some having you piloting vehicles, while others have you making your way through facilities on foot.
The first level has you piloting a speeder in the Battle of Hoth, facing four increasingly difficult waves of Imperial forces. You even get a chance to trip up AT-ATs with a tow cable, which is the first time you could do this in a Star Wars game. In fact, this level was so popular that it led to the creation of the Rogue Squadron game, which remains one of my favorites. The only weird thing is that, despite destroying all Imperial forces sent against you, the shield generator is still destroyed through the power of plot.
A later level has you chasing speeder bikes through a city and out into a canyon, and while I found the controls for the swoop to be very sensitive and difficult to control, it has the potential to be a lot of fun once you've gotten a handle on them. Also, I remember this being the hardest level for me when I played it years ago, so finally getting it and successfully pushing enemy speeder bikes into walls and such was a great experience.
The foot levels are, on the whole, less interesting. If you take your time, attack enemies as soon as you can see them, and make sure to grab health pick ups, there's little challenge to them. The exception is the high speed train level running through the Ord Mantell junkyard, where you have to leap from car to car as you run through a landscape littered with the detritus of the Empire. The floaty controls make it more difficult than it strictly needs to be, but it's still a fast paced, intense experience that contrasts nicely with the other foot levels.
Each foot level has one or more bosses, and these represet a real challenge. You'll need to learn and respond to their patterns if you want to stand a chance of surviving, let alone defeating them. It's immensely satisfying the first time you bring down an AT-ST without damage, too, and the challenge only grows from there. You end up facing two of the bounty hunters from Empire Strikes Back, two different combat droids, and a giant sewer monster the size of a building.
The game is also short, with only ten levels in total. This is something of a mixed bag on its own, since while it means that you can get through the game in a few hours of dedicated play, it also means that it doesn't overstay its welcome.
That said, Shadows of the Empire does offer you reasons to go back and replay each level, since there's a number of Challenge Points hidden in them, and it can take some real thorough exploration to get them all. Also, your starting lives on a level depends on how you did on the previous one, so the fewer times you die and the more Challenge Points you collect, the more you'll have for the next level. This can help make some of the later levels easier, too.
Music
Shadows of the Empire has an excellent soundtrack, and consists of tracks taken from the films with new ones composed specifically for Shadows of the Empire. They're all well suited for the levels they appear in, and help set the mood of each appropriately.
Story
I've left this for last because, while Shadows of the Empire does have a story, it's fairly thin. The player character, Dash Rendar, is essentially meant to be a cooler stand-in for Han Solo while the latter is frozen in carbonite following the events of Empire Strikes Back. There's also glimpses of a plot by the crime lord Prince Xizor to kill Luke Skywalker and discredit Darth Vader in the eyes of the emperor, but it comes up so briefly that it's hard to make sense of what he's trying to do.
Also, there's a weird moment where you chase down and defat Boba Fett, the bounty hunter that takes Han Solo to Jaba the Hutt. But because the canon requires that Han get to Jabba's palace, Fett somehow gets away with the aid of local Imperial forces. Oh well.
Summary
So, would I recommend this game to people? The answer is, unfortunately, an unequivocal no. Between the dated graphics, quirky controls, generally lackluster levels, and excuse of a story, Shadows of the Empire has little to offer today. If you played the game and want to revisit it, or if you want to see a glimpse into this era of Star Wars game design, it might be worth a quick playthrough. But otherwise, there are better games, both in the action/FPS genre and in Star Wars in general.
However, there's some interesting moments and ideas in the game, and I plan to make use of them in the future.
Recently, Humble Bundle offered their Star Wars III bundle, and as it contained some of the games I played growing up, along with many that I hadn't played, I was quick to snap it up. Among those games was Shadows of the Empire, which is one of the leading candidates for the first Star Wars game I ever played.
How did this childhood memory stack up after all these years? Well...my experience was decidedly mixed. It was nice to revisit Shadows of the Empire, but the game has aged poorly, and I'm forced to admit that it probably wasn't all that great a game even back in its day. But, let's break it down:
Graphics
These have obviously not held up well over the course of time. Textures are simplistic, models are low polygon count, there's heavy use of fog to reduce draw distances, and lighting is strictly ambient. But for their simplicity, they are functional, and you'll never have any trouble distinguishing enemies, terrain, and the various pick-ups.
The repetitive textures have the potential to contribute to disorientation in some of the more maze like levels, but since none are very large, you won't get lost for long.
Controls
If you come into this game expecting it to play like a modern FPS, you will be in for a rude awakening. The controls are, to be generous, quirky. Most notably, under the default controls, your mouse both moves your character forward and backwards and rotates the camera side to side. But wait! What about looking up and down? For that, you have to press and hold a button to enable the mouse to shift your view up and down. By default, your camera will return to the default position when you release the key. I suggest switching the controls to one with view lock, since there's a few sections where looking up or down is important.
The other major quirk with the controls is that the game autoaims for you to a certain extent, which partially compensates for the difficulty in adjusting your viewpoint. This causes problems when it's trying to hit the wrong target, or if it locks onto an enemy that's just out view instead of one you can see. Since you generally only face one or two enemies at a time, this isn't too much of a problem.
Quirks aside, the controls are largely solid once you've gotten used to them, though you have to take care not to move when you're simply trying to look to one side. Jumps are floaty, but that's also something you can adapt to.
The biggest actual problem I had with the controls was in the early section of the Gall Spaceport level. There, I found some of the ledges you have to traverse to be rather slippery, and downward slopes were treachorous. Since this level also takes place in a canyon with steep drops, this led to many unnecssary depths. Take it slow, make sure you're moving directly to your destinations, and you'll mostly be okay.
Finally, there's no in-game tutorial for the controls, so you'll have to consult the pause menu frequently until you memorize them.
Gameplay
For all the faults I just mentioned, Shadows of the Empire is actually fun to play. It offers a good mix of level types, with some having you piloting vehicles, while others have you making your way through facilities on foot.
The first level has you piloting a speeder in the Battle of Hoth, facing four increasingly difficult waves of Imperial forces. You even get a chance to trip up AT-ATs with a tow cable, which is the first time you could do this in a Star Wars game. In fact, this level was so popular that it led to the creation of the Rogue Squadron game, which remains one of my favorites. The only weird thing is that, despite destroying all Imperial forces sent against you, the shield generator is still destroyed through the power of plot.
A later level has you chasing speeder bikes through a city and out into a canyon, and while I found the controls for the swoop to be very sensitive and difficult to control, it has the potential to be a lot of fun once you've gotten a handle on them. Also, I remember this being the hardest level for me when I played it years ago, so finally getting it and successfully pushing enemy speeder bikes into walls and such was a great experience.
The foot levels are, on the whole, less interesting. If you take your time, attack enemies as soon as you can see them, and make sure to grab health pick ups, there's little challenge to them. The exception is the high speed train level running through the Ord Mantell junkyard, where you have to leap from car to car as you run through a landscape littered with the detritus of the Empire. The floaty controls make it more difficult than it strictly needs to be, but it's still a fast paced, intense experience that contrasts nicely with the other foot levels.
Each foot level has one or more bosses, and these represet a real challenge. You'll need to learn and respond to their patterns if you want to stand a chance of surviving, let alone defeating them. It's immensely satisfying the first time you bring down an AT-ST without damage, too, and the challenge only grows from there. You end up facing two of the bounty hunters from Empire Strikes Back, two different combat droids, and a giant sewer monster the size of a building.
The game is also short, with only ten levels in total. This is something of a mixed bag on its own, since while it means that you can get through the game in a few hours of dedicated play, it also means that it doesn't overstay its welcome.
That said, Shadows of the Empire does offer you reasons to go back and replay each level, since there's a number of Challenge Points hidden in them, and it can take some real thorough exploration to get them all. Also, your starting lives on a level depends on how you did on the previous one, so the fewer times you die and the more Challenge Points you collect, the more you'll have for the next level. This can help make some of the later levels easier, too.
Music
Shadows of the Empire has an excellent soundtrack, and consists of tracks taken from the films with new ones composed specifically for Shadows of the Empire. They're all well suited for the levels they appear in, and help set the mood of each appropriately.
Story
I've left this for last because, while Shadows of the Empire does have a story, it's fairly thin. The player character, Dash Rendar, is essentially meant to be a cooler stand-in for Han Solo while the latter is frozen in carbonite following the events of Empire Strikes Back. There's also glimpses of a plot by the crime lord Prince Xizor to kill Luke Skywalker and discredit Darth Vader in the eyes of the emperor, but it comes up so briefly that it's hard to make sense of what he's trying to do.
Also, there's a weird moment where you chase down and defat Boba Fett, the bounty hunter that takes Han Solo to Jaba the Hutt. But because the canon requires that Han get to Jabba's palace, Fett somehow gets away with the aid of local Imperial forces. Oh well.
Summary
So, would I recommend this game to people? The answer is, unfortunately, an unequivocal no. Between the dated graphics, quirky controls, generally lackluster levels, and excuse of a story, Shadows of the Empire has little to offer today. If you played the game and want to revisit it, or if you want to see a glimpse into this era of Star Wars game design, it might be worth a quick playthrough. But otherwise, there are better games, both in the action/FPS genre and in Star Wars in general.
However, there's some interesting moments and ideas in the game, and I plan to make use of them in the future.
Sunday, February 19, 2017
Review: Pyramid #3/100: Pyramid Secrets
February marks the 100th issue of Pyramid magazine's, which is a major milestone. Congratulations to the Pyramid team, and good luck on the next hundred issues!
But just what does one find in an issue that marks such a momentous occasion? An intriguing sampling of offerings from across the board, from the decidedly crunchy, to the details of a secret operations group of a far future government.
Impulse Control
By Christopher R. Rice
Disclaimer: I had the pleasure of reviewing a playtest version of this article, and some of my feedback made it into the final version.
This excellent article expands on the system of Impulse Buys introduced in Power-Ups 5 [link], and not only extends its uses, but unifies with other metagame mechanics like Luck, Serendipity, and Destiny. If you're running a cinematic game, this is a great way of representing the conventions of heroes pulling off desparate feats at dramatic moments, bad stuff befalling them at the worst time, and so many others.
The core of the system is a regenerating pool of Impulse Points, which can be spent on effects outlined in Power-Ups 5 and the article, like scene alterations, buying criticals, and many others. The article also introduces Villainous Points, which is the dark twin of Impulse Points, and gives the GM a pool of points to spend on effects that cause the character trouble. Watch out!
My favorite part of this article is the way that it brings together Luck, Destiny, Serendipity, Unluckiness, and other traits into a single system. The Buck Stops Here explains how to represent these traits as combinations of Impulse Points/Villainous Points, with appropriate modifications. So, not only do you know just how Unlucky you are, you also know that your specific kind of Unlucky is always looking like a fool in front of an audience. And if you take advantage of Going Cosmic, you can readily represent godlike entities that can dictate events around them.
It also introduces some new uses for Impulse Points, like adding flat bonuses to rolls, moving faster, and temporarily adding enhancements to skills. This is an excellent way of representing heroes (or villains!) pulling out some new trick when needed, but that they can't repeat later on.
Some other useful aspects are the outlines for breaking down stretches of time, like actions, scenes, and adventures, using Impulse Points to modify BAD from Action, and rewarding characters for in-genre actions.
I'd normally go into ideas on how to vary the system, but Impulse Control is already so flexible that it's unnecssary. Instead, I'll provide a few ideas for aspected Impulse Points:
* Per Christopher R. Rice, this is a fair way to represent the limits of Destiny.
Infinite Weapons
By Hans-Christian Vortisch
In this article, you'll find a selection of real world firearms that never made it, ranging from the early days of guns up to the modern day. Many of these have interesting features, which often contributed to unreliability and their ultimate failure, but for a campaign set in the Infinite Worlds, you could find variants on other timelines where their kinks were worked out.
Sadly, I'm not much into firearms myself, but if that's your thing, this article will provide plenty of fodder for ideas for unusual designs.
The Galactic Operations Directorate
By David L. Pulver
This article was one that I was really excited to see, since throughout Ultra-Tech, you're given tantalizing glimpses of a far future civilization and the clandestine Galactic Operations Directorate that protects it from the gravest of threats. Now, the curtain has finally been drawn back, and we're given a glimpse into this secretive organization.
It starts off with a brief history of the GOD, and offers an interesting insight into the minds of the elite in this world. The idea that one's most trusted operatives are androids speaks of paranoia, and a desire to have definitively loyal agents.
The organization itself would make for an excellent Patron for player characters, since the agency's mandate is to predict, investigate, and countering ultratechnological threats to the Emperor and the Empire as a whole. It even comes with a set of brief statistics that let you assess its capabilities at a glance.
Typical agents of GOD are teams of combat androids, all named after angels or angelic beings from Earth myth. However, while the article gives you a basline for these characters, it sadly doesn't include a template for any. Since it also suggests that these are 1,000 point (!) characters, you're given a lot of wiggle room for design.
The section on GOD is then followed up with the Yezendi Antimatter Syndicate, another organization that appears in the Ultra-Tech vignettes as an antagonist organization. As their name suggests, they deal in antimatter, smuggling it through Imperial territory as a way of bypassing the restrictions the Empire places on its manufacture and sale.
While the presence of antimatter in quantity raises concerns about the setting for me, the organization itself is nicely set up to be a foe for the GOD. They're certainly an ultratechnological threat, and their layers of middlemen means that they're hard to shut down and the leaders are insulated from Imperial retaliation, both by distance from the operations and their presence outside Imperial space. Player characters trying to roll up this organization have their work cut out for them.
The Yezendi race itself gets a brief overview, and so could be adapted to other roles in the setting, if you'd like. The existence of castes and the Questioners who challenge those caste roles give plot hooks of their own, and the internal tensions of the Yezendi could serve as a focus in a campaign.
On the whole, I rather like this article, and hope that we get another look into the world of Ultra-Tech at some point in the future.
Using This Article
As written: The player characters are agents of GOD, going up against the sinister Yezendi Syndicate. Can they stop it before a reign of antimatter fueled terror and destruction descends upon the Empire?
Alternatively, the player characters could be renegades, who defected from GOD with technology that the organization planned to turn to sinister ends. Can they elude the Archangel teams long enough to bring the agency's plans to the attention of the Emperor?
There's many other possibilities, of course, but no matter what you choose, you'll have to fill in other aspects of the setting. I suggest going through the Ultra-Tech vignettes first, and expand on them. Also, since this is an unrestricted TL12^ setting, don't try to make complete sense of it. Rule of Cool is the order of the day.
Variants: By toning down the setting, you could use both organizations in a less cinematic Ultra-Tech setting. GOD's teams are still highly trained agents, but their scope is more focused, and Yezendi deal in more conventional weapons and fuels.
Fashion Forward
By Matt Riggsby
What would fashion look like in the far future? Unfortunately, there's no pictures, but the article still offers rules on how to dress to impress, including how much you have to spend to get reaction bonuses for the quality of your clothing.
While I've seen objections to letting clothing provide more than a +1 bonus, there's another way to use these rules: for you to claim the reaction bonuses from high relative status, you need to be wearing clothing with a bonus equal to or greater than your status.
There's also interesting tidbits on how high technology might affect the ways we approach fashion and what's considered impressive. The section on new materials for clothing could also provide inspiration.
On the whole, this is a fairly functional article, but it's also dry.
For variants on this article, simply change the underlying basis of fashion from technology to whatever suits your setting. You could reuse this with magic, for example.
Gods of Commerce
By Christoper Conrad and Jason "PK" Levine
Delvers are greedy folks interested in making as much coin as possible, and now their gods can get in on the action! Variant clerics and holy warriors serving gods of commerce, wealth, and prosperity are the focus of this article.
In Dungeon Fantasy's minimalist fashion, the article focuses on how the attitudes of gods of commerce affect the delver, with holy gods expecting fair dealings, while unholy gods care only about money at any cost, but will desert you if you get caught.
There's also a nice list of new Holy Might powers suitable for the faithful, and they're quite useful, even in areas beyond the commercial. They're good for making money, yes, but they also make you quite personable, and lend to an additional roll as a face for the party (assuming that they're willing to try talking!)
Using this Article
As Written: If you're running Dungeon Fantasy, it's plug and play. Everything you need to know is in the article.
Monster Hunters: Gods of commerce per se don't really suit the genre, but you could reuse the Holy Might abilities as powers for a Crusader serving a god of prosperity and good fortune.
Realistic Injury, Expanded
By Peter V. Dell'Orto
This is a quick article that's exactly what it says on the tin. It's focused on the lingering effects of injury, and offers some new details for how lasting injuries to various parts of a character affect them. It's solid work, and even if the detail isn't appropriate to your campaign, there's a simplified set of rules you can use instead.
Briefly, An Adventure
By Steven Marsh
Another short article, this time on how to building a short adventure. It's well worth the read, and even if you run longer adventures, the advice is still useful in figuring out what the important elements are.
But just what does one find in an issue that marks such a momentous occasion? An intriguing sampling of offerings from across the board, from the decidedly crunchy, to the details of a secret operations group of a far future government.
Impulse Control
By Christopher R. Rice
Disclaimer: I had the pleasure of reviewing a playtest version of this article, and some of my feedback made it into the final version.
This excellent article expands on the system of Impulse Buys introduced in Power-Ups 5 [link], and not only extends its uses, but unifies with other metagame mechanics like Luck, Serendipity, and Destiny. If you're running a cinematic game, this is a great way of representing the conventions of heroes pulling off desparate feats at dramatic moments, bad stuff befalling them at the worst time, and so many others.
The core of the system is a regenerating pool of Impulse Points, which can be spent on effects outlined in Power-Ups 5 and the article, like scene alterations, buying criticals, and many others. The article also introduces Villainous Points, which is the dark twin of Impulse Points, and gives the GM a pool of points to spend on effects that cause the character trouble. Watch out!
My favorite part of this article is the way that it brings together Luck, Destiny, Serendipity, Unluckiness, and other traits into a single system. The Buck Stops Here explains how to represent these traits as combinations of Impulse Points/Villainous Points, with appropriate modifications. So, not only do you know just how Unlucky you are, you also know that your specific kind of Unlucky is always looking like a fool in front of an audience. And if you take advantage of Going Cosmic, you can readily represent godlike entities that can dictate events around them.
It also introduces some new uses for Impulse Points, like adding flat bonuses to rolls, moving faster, and temporarily adding enhancements to skills. This is an excellent way of representing heroes (or villains!) pulling out some new trick when needed, but that they can't repeat later on.
Some other useful aspects are the outlines for breaking down stretches of time, like actions, scenes, and adventures, using Impulse Points to modify BAD from Action, and rewarding characters for in-genre actions.
I'd normally go into ideas on how to vary the system, but Impulse Control is already so flexible that it's unnecssary. Instead, I'll provide a few ideas for aspected Impulse Points:
- Destiny (The One True King): Impulse Points 3 (Aspected, "Acts of a king", -5%*) [15], Enhanced IP Refresh 2 [20]
- Divine Power: Impulse Points 20 (Cosmic, +300%) [400], Enhanced IP Refresh (Per Five Minutes) [240]
- Untouchable in Combat: Impulse Points 1 (Aspected, Defense Rerolls Only, -40%) [3]
- Weirdness Magnet: Villainous Points 4 (Aspected, Attracting Weird Stuff or Occurrences Only, -20%) [-16]
* Per Christopher R. Rice, this is a fair way to represent the limits of Destiny.
Infinite Weapons
By Hans-Christian Vortisch
In this article, you'll find a selection of real world firearms that never made it, ranging from the early days of guns up to the modern day. Many of these have interesting features, which often contributed to unreliability and their ultimate failure, but for a campaign set in the Infinite Worlds, you could find variants on other timelines where their kinks were worked out.
Sadly, I'm not much into firearms myself, but if that's your thing, this article will provide plenty of fodder for ideas for unusual designs.
The Galactic Operations Directorate
By David L. Pulver
This article was one that I was really excited to see, since throughout Ultra-Tech, you're given tantalizing glimpses of a far future civilization and the clandestine Galactic Operations Directorate that protects it from the gravest of threats. Now, the curtain has finally been drawn back, and we're given a glimpse into this secretive organization.
It starts off with a brief history of the GOD, and offers an interesting insight into the minds of the elite in this world. The idea that one's most trusted operatives are androids speaks of paranoia, and a desire to have definitively loyal agents.
The organization itself would make for an excellent Patron for player characters, since the agency's mandate is to predict, investigate, and countering ultratechnological threats to the Emperor and the Empire as a whole. It even comes with a set of brief statistics that let you assess its capabilities at a glance.
Typical agents of GOD are teams of combat androids, all named after angels or angelic beings from Earth myth. However, while the article gives you a basline for these characters, it sadly doesn't include a template for any. Since it also suggests that these are 1,000 point (!) characters, you're given a lot of wiggle room for design.
The section on GOD is then followed up with the Yezendi Antimatter Syndicate, another organization that appears in the Ultra-Tech vignettes as an antagonist organization. As their name suggests, they deal in antimatter, smuggling it through Imperial territory as a way of bypassing the restrictions the Empire places on its manufacture and sale.
While the presence of antimatter in quantity raises concerns about the setting for me, the organization itself is nicely set up to be a foe for the GOD. They're certainly an ultratechnological threat, and their layers of middlemen means that they're hard to shut down and the leaders are insulated from Imperial retaliation, both by distance from the operations and their presence outside Imperial space. Player characters trying to roll up this organization have their work cut out for them.
The Yezendi race itself gets a brief overview, and so could be adapted to other roles in the setting, if you'd like. The existence of castes and the Questioners who challenge those caste roles give plot hooks of their own, and the internal tensions of the Yezendi could serve as a focus in a campaign.
On the whole, I rather like this article, and hope that we get another look into the world of Ultra-Tech at some point in the future.
Using This Article
As written: The player characters are agents of GOD, going up against the sinister Yezendi Syndicate. Can they stop it before a reign of antimatter fueled terror and destruction descends upon the Empire?
Alternatively, the player characters could be renegades, who defected from GOD with technology that the organization planned to turn to sinister ends. Can they elude the Archangel teams long enough to bring the agency's plans to the attention of the Emperor?
There's many other possibilities, of course, but no matter what you choose, you'll have to fill in other aspects of the setting. I suggest going through the Ultra-Tech vignettes first, and expand on them. Also, since this is an unrestricted TL12^ setting, don't try to make complete sense of it. Rule of Cool is the order of the day.
Variants: By toning down the setting, you could use both organizations in a less cinematic Ultra-Tech setting. GOD's teams are still highly trained agents, but their scope is more focused, and Yezendi deal in more conventional weapons and fuels.
Fashion Forward
By Matt Riggsby
What would fashion look like in the far future? Unfortunately, there's no pictures, but the article still offers rules on how to dress to impress, including how much you have to spend to get reaction bonuses for the quality of your clothing.
While I've seen objections to letting clothing provide more than a +1 bonus, there's another way to use these rules: for you to claim the reaction bonuses from high relative status, you need to be wearing clothing with a bonus equal to or greater than your status.
There's also interesting tidbits on how high technology might affect the ways we approach fashion and what's considered impressive. The section on new materials for clothing could also provide inspiration.
On the whole, this is a fairly functional article, but it's also dry.
For variants on this article, simply change the underlying basis of fashion from technology to whatever suits your setting. You could reuse this with magic, for example.
Gods of Commerce
By Christoper Conrad and Jason "PK" Levine
Delvers are greedy folks interested in making as much coin as possible, and now their gods can get in on the action! Variant clerics and holy warriors serving gods of commerce, wealth, and prosperity are the focus of this article.
In Dungeon Fantasy's minimalist fashion, the article focuses on how the attitudes of gods of commerce affect the delver, with holy gods expecting fair dealings, while unholy gods care only about money at any cost, but will desert you if you get caught.
There's also a nice list of new Holy Might powers suitable for the faithful, and they're quite useful, even in areas beyond the commercial. They're good for making money, yes, but they also make you quite personable, and lend to an additional roll as a face for the party (assuming that they're willing to try talking!)
Using this Article
As Written: If you're running Dungeon Fantasy, it's plug and play. Everything you need to know is in the article.
Monster Hunters: Gods of commerce per se don't really suit the genre, but you could reuse the Holy Might abilities as powers for a Crusader serving a god of prosperity and good fortune.
Realistic Injury, Expanded
By Peter V. Dell'Orto
This is a quick article that's exactly what it says on the tin. It's focused on the lingering effects of injury, and offers some new details for how lasting injuries to various parts of a character affect them. It's solid work, and even if the detail isn't appropriate to your campaign, there's a simplified set of rules you can use instead.
Briefly, An Adventure
By Steven Marsh
Another short article, this time on how to building a short adventure. It's well worth the read, and even if you run longer adventures, the advice is still useful in figuring out what the important elements are.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Review: Pyramid #3/99: Death and Beyond
January is a month of beginnings and ends, for as it marks the beginning of one year, it marks the end of another. Fittingly, January's issue of Pyramid is all about the ultimate end: death. In it, you find a variety of death and death-themed articles, including death oriented psionics, a location built with necromancy, and a setting switch for how severe death is.
Like most issues of Pyramid, Death and Beyond is a grab bag of ideas, and while they are all individually excellent, they cover a wide enough range that only one or two might be useful at a time. Since Pyramid is meant to be a showcase for ideas, this isn't a flaw, and the variety can be a way of getting inspiration.
Now, without further ado, let's dive into the articles themselves.
Necro-Psi
By Christopher R. Rice
Here we have a collection of psionic powers focused on death, souls, and darkness, made to give psis abilities similar to necromancers. For that purpose, they succeed wonderfully. You have three groups of abilities, Animakinesis for interacting with souls, Thanatokinesis for manipulating death and the dead, and Umbrakinesis for controlling shadows and darkness.
They are all wonderfully thematic, giving psis a good selection of abilities in each area. The highlight is the Thanatokinesis powers, with the ability to animate the dead, see the last thing someone saw before death, and use deathly psionic power to inflict harm. You can even make your undead puppets explode! Combine this with the Umbrakinesis powers to obscure the senses, and you have the makings of a very creepy psi.
They're all built using the framework established in Psionic Powers, making that book very useful in making use of this article. However, you can also use the Basic Set rules for psionics instead, with the loss of some detail that Psionic Powers offers and the inability to make full use of the techniques.
Using this article
As written: If you're already running a game using Psionic Powers, you can drop this in and go.
Dungeon Fantasy: Replace the Psionic Powers rules with those in DF14 and swap out the Necrokinesis PM for the DF Psionics PM. Ignore the techniques.
Monster Hunters: You can use it as written, but like using Psionic Powers in general, you have increased complexity and may need to tweak the Psi template. Alternatively, use the powers under the Basic Set rules and simply omit the techniques.
Remix: Swap the Necrokinesis power modifier out for a Mana Sensitive limitation and you have powers befitting a necromancer. I believe you could also adapt this to Sorcery, but I'm unsure how much more work that would entail.
What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
By Scott Rochat
In the vein of classic dungeon crawlers, Rochat offers something that every right-thinking delver wants: Experience Points! Well, Kill Points, specifically, but the effect is much the same. By going out and killing monsters, player characters grow stronger.
Taken as a whole, this article is very much a switch on the kind of Dungeon Fantasy you want to run. The Kill Point system encourages actions, since in addition to killing monsters, disarming traps and outwitting foes can also award KPs. It also incentivizes the players to take risks, since threats more powerful than the PCs offer significantly more KPs.
And what exactly are these KPs good for? You can use them to negate incoming damage, recover FP, and add bonuses to various rolls. Or you can save them, and at the end of the adventure, unspent KPs get converted to character points for permanent increases in power. This adds another resource management game to Dungeon Fantasy, since you can try and hold on to KPs to increase your long term power, or you can spend them right here, right now to keep your delver from becoming monster chow.
The downside is that assigning KP values to monsters and traps requires some number crunching, and it's probably a good idea to make a spreadsheet to streamline the process. Fortunately, the article comes with a list of KP values for the monsters in DF2, DF5, DF9, DF14, and DFM1.
Using this Article
As written: Are you playing Dungeon Fantasy? Then take this, turn on the switches you want to use, and go to town. Or rather, go to the dungeon. You get no KPs for townspeople, only monsters.
If you're not playing Dungeon Fantasy, use this system with caution, and only if an old school RPG "Kill all the monsters" approach is appropriate for your game.
Variants: A similar system could be used anywhere a running score makes sense. The amount of energy gathered from ritual sacrifices, legendary feats for increasing reputation, and solving problems in a domain game all come to mind.
Soul Reapers
By David L. Pulver
Not all souls pass on peacefully, and when they don't, it's the job of a reaper to ensure that they do. As variant Crusaders or Inhumans, they join monster hunting teams to seek out these restless dead and ensure that they move on.
This is as thorough an exploration of the concept as one can ask for, with a brief discussion of the culutural background behind reapers, a list of powers, several new Inhuman templates, and an exploration of the roles they can fill in a Monster Hunters campaign all included.
The Reaper powers are all very focused, dealing with finding the dead, fighting them, and helping them pass on. The iconic scythe even puts in an appearance, which is a nice touch. The drawback is that while these abilities are all nicely thematic, they do make a reaper something of a one trick pony. If ghosts and the dying don't show up, their powers are mostly useless.
The Inhuman templates represent a selection of reapers and psychopomps from around the world, with the skeletal Grim Reaper from Western tradition, the Irish Dullahan, the Japanese Shinigami, and the Norse Valkyrie putting in appearances. They serve well in making these incarnations of death mechanically distinct and flavorful, and could easily be reused in non-Monster Hunter settings.
Using this Article
As written: If you're running Monster Hunters, the article itself offers all the advice you could want. I would suggest adding a few more powers so that the reapers don't feel cheated when facing something other than ghosts, though.
For Dungeon Fantasy: Some of the Reaper powers would be suitable for clerics and holy warriros of death gods (see Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics), particularly Ectoplasmic Ropes and Soul Scythe. The Inhuman templates are far too expensive for the standard DF campaign, but they could serve as inspiration for a more modest half-spirit template, similar to Celestials and Infernals.
Variants: You could take much of the information on reapers and how to use them and apply it to a lower powered campaign, particularly ones influenced by Japanese anime.
The Slaughterealm
By J. Edward Tremlett
Take a gameshow where the host is a powerful necromancer, the contestants are unwilling abductees, and the challenges include gauntlets of the undead, and you have the Slaughterealm. This is a systemless setting that can be added to any campaign, though you're on your own for stats and mechanics.
All aspects of the Slaughterealm are covered in detail, giving you plenty of information to use in a campaign. The experience of the contestants is laid clearly enough that I came away with a vivid image of what it would be like for the player characters. It starts with how contestants are "recruited", then covers the rules of the contests. This includes the ones for contestants, and for the Patrons of the Slaughterealm that devise these challenges.
The Patrons are appropriately loathsome and creepy, with each bringing their own flavor of contestants, challenges, and foes to the Slaughterealm. There's an world-conquering warlord, a monster-collecting hunter, a vampire queen of the undead, and a trapmaster baron.
At the end, there's a few ways to use this in your campaign, but there's so many possibilities that you're never likely to run out of ideas. If there's room in your campaign for a creepy, undead themed gameshow realm that draws its challenges and participants from across worlds, then you can keep coming back to the Slaughterealm with a fresh approach each time.
Using this Article
As written: No matter what, you're on your own for stats, so you'll have to do the legwork of finding suitable ones to drop in or make up your own. But if you're willing to put in the effort, there's so many possible ways to use the Slaughterealm.
Death and How to Avoid It
By Steven Marsh
This is a short little article that discusses what kind of an impact that death might have on a setting, ranging from it being an absolute final end to something completely meaningless or even unknown entirely. It's primarily useful as a GM tool for thinking about how big a role they want death to play in their campaign setting, and it can also be used to let players know how easy it is to come back from the dead in the campaign.
Like most issues of Pyramid, Death and Beyond is a grab bag of ideas, and while they are all individually excellent, they cover a wide enough range that only one or two might be useful at a time. Since Pyramid is meant to be a showcase for ideas, this isn't a flaw, and the variety can be a way of getting inspiration.
Now, without further ado, let's dive into the articles themselves.
Necro-Psi
By Christopher R. Rice
Here we have a collection of psionic powers focused on death, souls, and darkness, made to give psis abilities similar to necromancers. For that purpose, they succeed wonderfully. You have three groups of abilities, Animakinesis for interacting with souls, Thanatokinesis for manipulating death and the dead, and Umbrakinesis for controlling shadows and darkness.
They are all wonderfully thematic, giving psis a good selection of abilities in each area. The highlight is the Thanatokinesis powers, with the ability to animate the dead, see the last thing someone saw before death, and use deathly psionic power to inflict harm. You can even make your undead puppets explode! Combine this with the Umbrakinesis powers to obscure the senses, and you have the makings of a very creepy psi.
They're all built using the framework established in Psionic Powers, making that book very useful in making use of this article. However, you can also use the Basic Set rules for psionics instead, with the loss of some detail that Psionic Powers offers and the inability to make full use of the techniques.
Using this article
As written: If you're already running a game using Psionic Powers, you can drop this in and go.
Dungeon Fantasy: Replace the Psionic Powers rules with those in DF14 and swap out the Necrokinesis PM for the DF Psionics PM. Ignore the techniques.
Monster Hunters: You can use it as written, but like using Psionic Powers in general, you have increased complexity and may need to tweak the Psi template. Alternatively, use the powers under the Basic Set rules and simply omit the techniques.
Remix: Swap the Necrokinesis power modifier out for a Mana Sensitive limitation and you have powers befitting a necromancer. I believe you could also adapt this to Sorcery, but I'm unsure how much more work that would entail.
What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
By Scott Rochat
In the vein of classic dungeon crawlers, Rochat offers something that every right-thinking delver wants: Experience Points! Well, Kill Points, specifically, but the effect is much the same. By going out and killing monsters, player characters grow stronger.
Taken as a whole, this article is very much a switch on the kind of Dungeon Fantasy you want to run. The Kill Point system encourages actions, since in addition to killing monsters, disarming traps and outwitting foes can also award KPs. It also incentivizes the players to take risks, since threats more powerful than the PCs offer significantly more KPs.
And what exactly are these KPs good for? You can use them to negate incoming damage, recover FP, and add bonuses to various rolls. Or you can save them, and at the end of the adventure, unspent KPs get converted to character points for permanent increases in power. This adds another resource management game to Dungeon Fantasy, since you can try and hold on to KPs to increase your long term power, or you can spend them right here, right now to keep your delver from becoming monster chow.
The downside is that assigning KP values to monsters and traps requires some number crunching, and it's probably a good idea to make a spreadsheet to streamline the process. Fortunately, the article comes with a list of KP values for the monsters in DF2, DF5, DF9, DF14, and DFM1.
Using this Article
As written: Are you playing Dungeon Fantasy? Then take this, turn on the switches you want to use, and go to town. Or rather, go to the dungeon. You get no KPs for townspeople, only monsters.
If you're not playing Dungeon Fantasy, use this system with caution, and only if an old school RPG "Kill all the monsters" approach is appropriate for your game.
Variants: A similar system could be used anywhere a running score makes sense. The amount of energy gathered from ritual sacrifices, legendary feats for increasing reputation, and solving problems in a domain game all come to mind.
Soul Reapers
By David L. Pulver
Not all souls pass on peacefully, and when they don't, it's the job of a reaper to ensure that they do. As variant Crusaders or Inhumans, they join monster hunting teams to seek out these restless dead and ensure that they move on.
This is as thorough an exploration of the concept as one can ask for, with a brief discussion of the culutural background behind reapers, a list of powers, several new Inhuman templates, and an exploration of the roles they can fill in a Monster Hunters campaign all included.
The Reaper powers are all very focused, dealing with finding the dead, fighting them, and helping them pass on. The iconic scythe even puts in an appearance, which is a nice touch. The drawback is that while these abilities are all nicely thematic, they do make a reaper something of a one trick pony. If ghosts and the dying don't show up, their powers are mostly useless.
The Inhuman templates represent a selection of reapers and psychopomps from around the world, with the skeletal Grim Reaper from Western tradition, the Irish Dullahan, the Japanese Shinigami, and the Norse Valkyrie putting in appearances. They serve well in making these incarnations of death mechanically distinct and flavorful, and could easily be reused in non-Monster Hunter settings.
Using this Article
As written: If you're running Monster Hunters, the article itself offers all the advice you could want. I would suggest adding a few more powers so that the reapers don't feel cheated when facing something other than ghosts, though.
For Dungeon Fantasy: Some of the Reaper powers would be suitable for clerics and holy warriros of death gods (see Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics), particularly Ectoplasmic Ropes and Soul Scythe. The Inhuman templates are far too expensive for the standard DF campaign, but they could serve as inspiration for a more modest half-spirit template, similar to Celestials and Infernals.
Variants: You could take much of the information on reapers and how to use them and apply it to a lower powered campaign, particularly ones influenced by Japanese anime.
The Slaughterealm
By J. Edward Tremlett
Take a gameshow where the host is a powerful necromancer, the contestants are unwilling abductees, and the challenges include gauntlets of the undead, and you have the Slaughterealm. This is a systemless setting that can be added to any campaign, though you're on your own for stats and mechanics.
All aspects of the Slaughterealm are covered in detail, giving you plenty of information to use in a campaign. The experience of the contestants is laid clearly enough that I came away with a vivid image of what it would be like for the player characters. It starts with how contestants are "recruited", then covers the rules of the contests. This includes the ones for contestants, and for the Patrons of the Slaughterealm that devise these challenges.
The Patrons are appropriately loathsome and creepy, with each bringing their own flavor of contestants, challenges, and foes to the Slaughterealm. There's an world-conquering warlord, a monster-collecting hunter, a vampire queen of the undead, and a trapmaster baron.
At the end, there's a few ways to use this in your campaign, but there's so many possibilities that you're never likely to run out of ideas. If there's room in your campaign for a creepy, undead themed gameshow realm that draws its challenges and participants from across worlds, then you can keep coming back to the Slaughterealm with a fresh approach each time.
Using this Article
As written: No matter what, you're on your own for stats, so you'll have to do the legwork of finding suitable ones to drop in or make up your own. But if you're willing to put in the effort, there's so many possible ways to use the Slaughterealm.
- As a One Shot: The player characters have been abducted and must survive one of the Slaughterealm's infamous challenges. Will they make it out alive? Alternatively, they might be hired to crash the party and rescue contestants that have been abducted from their world.
- As a Recurring Location: The Patrons of the Slaughterealm are powerful individuals, and their reach extends across worlds. It's quite possible that the players will clash with their agents on multiple occasions. Or they might even end up working for one of the Patrons, whether temporarily or on a permanent basis.
- As a Campaign Setting: Leaving aside the obvious possibility of a "dungeon of the week" type camapign, there's plenty of room for intrigue and doubledealing among the Slaughterealm's Patrons. They may be forbidden from directly fighting in the realm itself, but that doesn't stop their agents from trying to sabotage the other, and the player characters could easily get drawn into these intrigues.
Death and How to Avoid It
By Steven Marsh
This is a short little article that discusses what kind of an impact that death might have on a setting, ranging from it being an absolute final end to something completely meaningless or even unknown entirely. It's primarily useful as a GM tool for thinking about how big a role they want death to play in their campaign setting, and it can also be used to let players know how easy it is to come back from the dead in the campaign.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Musings on Ultra-Tech
Among GURPS books, there are a few that come up time and again as being problematic. GURPS Ultra-Tech is one such book, and as the name suggests, it's a catalog of speculative advanced technology, ranging from conservative advancements on existing technology at Technology Level 9 (TL9) to miraculous technologies requiring a whole new understanding of physics at TL12. Sprinkled among these are the superscience technologies which, while existing at specific TLs, are almost certainly impossible given what we know about the universe. Still, they show up in many science fiction works, and so make an appearance here.
Some of the flak that Ultra-Tech receives is deserved. It was released early in GURPS 4e's life cycle, at a time when Steve Jackson Games was trying to keep up with their promise to release one hard cover book a month. As a result of this rushed schedule, it never received the editing it needed, and there are minor issues throughout as a result. It also lacks the refinements that later books would introduce, like Cost Factors for easily calculating the effect of various modifications on price.
However, the main controversy is over balance, like how lasers stack up against gauss weapons, how the weapons fare against different armor types, and, well...it's mostly about how the combat element stack up against each other. Such is the nature of RPGs, where resolving problems with force is a favorite strategy. Less commonly discussed are the lack of discussion on how the various technologies would affect a society, why the prices don't make sense, and so on.
The core of this problem is very simple: Ultra-Tech is about speculative technology, not settings based on those technologies. Unfortunately, the book explicitly states that its default assumption is that all of the technologies at a given technology level coexist, and so people expect that it will all work together nicely. This is a fundamentally flawed assumption, for two main reasons. One, the authors of a catalog of speculative technology cannot possibly take into account all the implications and ramifications of those technologies, because there's simply not enough space.
The second is more insidious: there is no Ultra-Tech setting. The book hints at four, one for each tech level, and could become many, many more depending on which superscience technologies are included. Beyond that, there are many, many settings in literature, film, and roleplaying games that feature advanced technology, each of which has its own distinct assumptions. Some people might want to play in the near-future world of cyberpunk, others the highly advanced but still familiar world of Star Wars and space opera, and still others want to delve into radical transhumanism.
GURPS Ultra-Tech makes a token effort at supporting this diversity by giving a few brief entries on how to pick appropriate technologies for each. This is nowhere near enough, since it offers little to no advice on how to tailor availability, pricing, stats, and other information to suit the setting. Instead, each item is given but one set of statistics, presented as it were the definitive answer for all possible worlds.
But if taking Ultra-Tech as as if it represented one cohesive setting is the wrong approach, how should one use this book? Use it as a baseline. After you've decided on what you want your setting to look like, pick the TL that best fits your setting, then discard anything that isn't appropriate, tweak anything that remains, and add in technologies from other TLs until you have the results you like.
For one example of how to do this, take a look at Mailanka's Psi-Wars series, starting at this post.
What if space opera isn't your thing? Fear not, in the coming weeks I'll take you through my own efforts to build a setting. The basic concept right now is a star-faring society, with influences taken from Shadowrun and Dragonstar.
And if that's still not your thing? Well, I highly encourage you to write your own! GURPS Ultra-Tech is an excellent source of ideas to build off of, and the more examples of how to use it we have, the better.
Some of the flak that Ultra-Tech receives is deserved. It was released early in GURPS 4e's life cycle, at a time when Steve Jackson Games was trying to keep up with their promise to release one hard cover book a month. As a result of this rushed schedule, it never received the editing it needed, and there are minor issues throughout as a result. It also lacks the refinements that later books would introduce, like Cost Factors for easily calculating the effect of various modifications on price.
However, the main controversy is over balance, like how lasers stack up against gauss weapons, how the weapons fare against different armor types, and, well...it's mostly about how the combat element stack up against each other. Such is the nature of RPGs, where resolving problems with force is a favorite strategy. Less commonly discussed are the lack of discussion on how the various technologies would affect a society, why the prices don't make sense, and so on.
The core of this problem is very simple: Ultra-Tech is about speculative technology, not settings based on those technologies. Unfortunately, the book explicitly states that its default assumption is that all of the technologies at a given technology level coexist, and so people expect that it will all work together nicely. This is a fundamentally flawed assumption, for two main reasons. One, the authors of a catalog of speculative technology cannot possibly take into account all the implications and ramifications of those technologies, because there's simply not enough space.
The second is more insidious: there is no Ultra-Tech setting. The book hints at four, one for each tech level, and could become many, many more depending on which superscience technologies are included. Beyond that, there are many, many settings in literature, film, and roleplaying games that feature advanced technology, each of which has its own distinct assumptions. Some people might want to play in the near-future world of cyberpunk, others the highly advanced but still familiar world of Star Wars and space opera, and still others want to delve into radical transhumanism.
GURPS Ultra-Tech makes a token effort at supporting this diversity by giving a few brief entries on how to pick appropriate technologies for each. This is nowhere near enough, since it offers little to no advice on how to tailor availability, pricing, stats, and other information to suit the setting. Instead, each item is given but one set of statistics, presented as it were the definitive answer for all possible worlds.
But if taking Ultra-Tech as as if it represented one cohesive setting is the wrong approach, how should one use this book? Use it as a baseline. After you've decided on what you want your setting to look like, pick the TL that best fits your setting, then discard anything that isn't appropriate, tweak anything that remains, and add in technologies from other TLs until you have the results you like.
For one example of how to do this, take a look at Mailanka's Psi-Wars series, starting at this post.
What if space opera isn't your thing? Fear not, in the coming weeks I'll take you through my own efforts to build a setting. The basic concept right now is a star-faring society, with influences taken from Shadowrun and Dragonstar.
And if that's still not your thing? Well, I highly encourage you to write your own! GURPS Ultra-Tech is an excellent source of ideas to build off of, and the more examples of how to use it we have, the better.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
An Introduction
Welcome to the Libris Ludorum, the Book of Games. I am Nemoricus, and I have always been an avid reader, voraciously devouring just about any book I could get my hands on. For fiction, I focused primarily on science fiction and fantasy, while in non-fiction I enjoyed reading about the sciences, with a particular interest in astronomy and biology.
I got my start with tabletop gaming with Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 back in 2008, and while I have yet to play a game, it's sparked an interest that has continued ever since. Over the years, I've branched off into exploring other games, among them Fireborn, Dragonstar, Pathfinder, and Eclipse Phase. Lately, most of my attention has been on GURPS, and the sheer flexibility and broad base of support it has drew me in. After getting involved with the Discord server for GURPS, I ran into a number of other blog authors, and those interactions led to the decision to create my own blog.
The purpose of Libris Ludorum is primarily to serve as a repository for my notes on books, especially tabletop games. In the coming weeks, expect me to post reviews, my notes on how to use a book in a game, and perhaps some original creations based on what I've read.
I got my start with tabletop gaming with Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 back in 2008, and while I have yet to play a game, it's sparked an interest that has continued ever since. Over the years, I've branched off into exploring other games, among them Fireborn, Dragonstar, Pathfinder, and Eclipse Phase. Lately, most of my attention has been on GURPS, and the sheer flexibility and broad base of support it has drew me in. After getting involved with the Discord server for GURPS, I ran into a number of other blog authors, and those interactions led to the decision to create my own blog.
The purpose of Libris Ludorum is primarily to serve as a repository for my notes on books, especially tabletop games. In the coming weeks, expect me to post reviews, my notes on how to use a book in a game, and perhaps some original creations based on what I've read.
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