SF GURPS... Chance the One Eyed Dog!

Played GURPS in San Francisco this week with a bunch of my long time gaming friends. I play Chance 'The Once Eyed Dog' a character who started out as a Dungeons and Dragons 4e character and transitioned into a GURPS 4th edition character.

Chance grew up in a monastery as the son of the holy leader. As an adolescence Chance rejected the evil ways of the monastery. During a heated debate Chance murdered his father and fled the monastery. Loyal followers from the monastery vowed to avenge Chance. Out matched and over numbered Chance fled to Zargous where he established himself as a vigilante. Fearing to bring the wrath of the montestary and bounty hunters on any he befriended Chance remained a loner for many painful years.

Fate proved to be a fickle bitch and Chance's desire to avenge the wrongs imposed on innocence led him to join with a posse hunting goblin raiders. Chance got on well with the members of the posse for a while; his bad temper surfaced when Chance caught the members of the party trying to steal from a crypt. Tempers flared and swords were drawn. Chance was sent out of the mausoleum that the party had chased the goblins in to protect some rescued prisoners as well as separate him from the rest of the group. It should be noted that the party did refrain from robbing the crypt in the end.

The members of the posse made quite a name for themselves after rescuing the prisoners and a prominent Lord, one Lord Avery Green of Hempfast, invited the core members of the posse to stay on with him as men at arms. With the Hempfast sigil on their shields the group gained numerous benefits not available to common folk.

Chance fully disclosed his dark history to Lord Avery, who promised to lend his garrison’s full support against the evil monks should they return. Chance felt secure for the first time since learning of his father's evil ways. Chance took on the role of law enforcement for Lord Avery and diligently monitored Hempfast night and day from the roof tops. This annoyed the common folk and proved to be a pain to lord Avery so Chance no longer is allowed on the roof tops in Hempfast.

Lord Avery has sent Chance and his new found friends on many grand and dangerous adventures. Indeed twice Chance has taken blows to the head from melee weapons. The first time left Chance with a wicked scare running from the top of his head down the side of his face to the bottom of his jaw. The hair in the scar area has turned white, and since the scar was field dressed it is a rather large and ugly scare. Chance had never been known as a ladies man, but before women just didn't notice him because he was a bit of a loner. After receiving the scar women began to shudder at the sight of him.

The second blow to the head proved to be more deadly. Chance had traveled to Marsum with Sir O, one of Lord Avery's knights who had been part of the original rescue posse. During the course of escorting a young lady friend of Sir O's the city was invaded by foul Minotaur beasts. One such beast entered the Stony Pony tavern, a tavern frequented by Sir O and many other business men. Chance threw a hand axe and struck the beast directly in the throat. The thick hide left the beast with a glimmer of life left. The beast charged Chance and clubbed him in the face with an axe. The blow sent chance to the floor and his world spun. Chance lay bleeding to death on the floor while Sir O and Tim-Tim, another of the original posse, finished the beast. Sir O saved Chance's life on the floor of the Stony Pony by invoking the healing arts of his god.

This critical blow changed Chance's life forever. First off and undying loyalty to Sir O for saving his life bloomed. While Chance has never pledged himself to Sir O, he is pledged to Lord Avery, Chance is always first to defend Sir O's honor and look out for Sir O's squire. Secondly Chance put his fencing steel down as a hobby weapon and picked up a bastard sword, some heavy armor, and a shield. Whereas Chance used to dance around flipping off of tables and throwing axes, now Chance move methodically slow through the field of battle hacking everything to pieces in a rather brutal manner.

Most recently, SF this week, Chance and his band of adventures stumbled on a tribe of barbarians in the Sea of Grass. The barbarian tribe respected Chances battle wounds, even revered them, and was awe struck by his fire eating skills. Chance drank enough for four men, and smoked until his eye stung. Lost in merriment, something he had not known since childhood, Chance blacked out with glee. In the morning chance found himself to be lying with a stunningly beautiful tribal woman. Upon stumbling out into the morning light the chief announced that Chance and Tim-Tim had married into the tribe the night before. Tim-Tim hadn't a clue what was happening. Chance looked to see if his way more beautiful wife than he deserved was happy with the marriage. She revered his scares and broad shoulders. Chance learned she was the envy of the tribe for having married such a seasoned and exotic warrior. Chance would have planted stacks and lived the rest of his life within the community were it not for his current assignment and pledge to Lord Avery.

Indeed, luck stayed with Chance's side yet again for as chance and his new wife began to set up camp one night after five nights of travel, distant war fires signaled the tribe had been besieged. Knowing that the group had multiple parties pursuing them, Lord Avery's banner men and their new wives pressed their horses hard the next day. All for not though as a small scouting party found Chance and the party. A battle ensued, during which a signal horn was sent. Sir Hughes swung his sword right before the gnoll breathed air into the horn, but the blow came up short, and the sound echoed through the sea of grass. Within minutes more gnolls swarmed out of nowhere. The fight proved to be brutal for the group. Sir Hughes nearly got his throat ripped out by a hound, and Tim-Tim lost his riding horse and almost lost his consciousness while being swarmed by gnolls and hounds.

Now the group is on the run. Half the party is already out of breath from the quick bit of divine healing the party did after the skirmish. Out of breath, out of time, and nowhere to hide the group is now rushing through the sea of grass hoping to reach the great elven forest of the northwest (that is seriously what it is called!) before the gnolls can track them down.

GURPS 4th Edition

GURPS 4^th Edition: Characters

Generic Universal Role Playing System… or GURPS is an amazing table top game. GURPS is a “pen and paper” system for table top role playing. If you are not familiar with what that means here is how it works. You have a character, the Game Master narrates a story, and you roll dice to see if your character succeeds at the challenges in the story. At its core GURPS is the same game as Dungeons and Dragons and many other table top games such as Robotech, Fate, Shadow Run, ect.

There are more pen and paper table top games than you can shake a stick at these days. The success D&D has had propelled many game designers to come up with alternate versions. I am a hardcore D&D player and always will be. That being said, I am a passionate GURPS player, and right now GURPS 4^th edition is my favorite table top game.

GURPS can be played in any genre, and the core rule books have rules for every genre (fantasy, western, sci fi, ect). I play fantasy so my examples below will relate to that, but keep in mind you can play GURPS during any time period.

Why GURPS?

GURPS does several things that I love. First off GURPS is extremely lethal. Your Hit Points are equal to your strength score which is typically between 10 and 14. Your hit points do not automatically go up at each new level like they do in other games. This means the fear of god (the GM) is with you every time you roll the dice to dodge block or parry.

That’s right I said it, you roll to dodge, block, or parry. That is the second thing I love. An enemy attacks you and if their attack is successful then you have to roll to see if you dodge, block or parry. The mechanic is so much fun I wish more game designers would structure their games this way. This mechanic makes GURPS amazing.

The last aspect that I will bring up with respect to what makes GURPS my favorite game to play is the character creation process. Players build their characters with a point buy system. This means that you start with a total number of points, 150 for example, and purchase skills and abilities. There are not preset character classes that railroad you into set roles. In GURPS you can have the healing powers of a cleric, the ability to sneak like a thief, and the strength of a fighter. You create the character you want to play, and… you guessed it… it’s amazing.

 Pros or Cons

There are aspects to GURPS that you may or may not appreciate. GURPS is a game that is structured to be as realistic as possible without killing the flow of the game. This means that there are a lot of rules. Take the ones you like and leave off the ones you don’t. I play in one group that is very interested in making the game follow the rules and I GM another group where we focus on the cinema of the game more than the realism. Both groups are a lot of fun.

GURPS, in my opinion, is a role playing game and should be played as such. I find that “min maxing” isn’t as fun in GURPS as it is in other games. GURPS is all about character development and role playing. Can it be a hack and slash? Sure. The combat mechanic is amazing (I get paid by amazing.com every time I use that word), but so is the character development process. Reputation scores, status modifiers, and reaction roles make developing your character as more than a combat machine fun and rewarding.

I love GURPS and if you are able to get a group together it is well worth reading the rules and learning the game. It takes a little work up front, but once you get rolling the combat and role playing aspects of the game are… I’ll let you finish that sentence.

If you are in the Bay Area and are having trouble getting the game down, drop me a line and I will come visit and teach you guys the game. Obviously the beer is on you (assuming you’re 21… if not then iced tea will do!), but that is a small investment considering the amount of fun you will have when your gaming group makes the leap to hyperspace!

Buy the book here: GURPS 4th Edition Characters
Check out SJ Games here: http://www.sjgames.com/
Check out the e23 store for some more GURPS Crack! e23

Pyramid Magazine

Pyramid Magazine: March 2012

I like to create. That may be why I made three babies… or that may have something to do with hormones. Nonetheless, traditionally I scoff at publications that, as I once said, “help the unimaginative stumble their way through role playing adventures.” Yet I stumbled upon a copy of Pyramid and was surprised. So surprised I thought it worth mentioning here. The copy I downloaded from the e23 web site (available here: e23) was Pyramid #3_41: Fantasy World Building (March 2012). I’ve played in my homebrew world since I was ten and it has evolved constantly since then. That’s twenty three years of ignoring loved ones to make my world perfect. Needless to say, I am passionate about world building so I opened the magazine with equal parts skepticism and excitement. Yet, as I said before I was pleasantly surprised and impressed right off the bat.

My assertion that fantasy roleplaying publications offer ideas for the unimaginative could not be further from the truth. The pyramid magazine offered structure for my own creativity. I stopped about a quarter of the way through and started writing notes and coming up with ideas for my world. Ideas that you will hopefully read about in one of my stories some day! The publication took a macro and micro approach to world building which I appreciated and proved to be very useful.

I typically avoid specifics and spoilers in reviews as I think you should experience them as the author intended but I will brag about some of the components. The history construction was immediately useful and had some great charts. There was a section that involved the effects of a failed theology, which has been a topic in two of the last three campaigns I played in, so I found that very interesting. Yet my favorite aspects were the twist on the jungle campaign setting and a singular mafia concept. Both articles were great and gave me some great ideas for stuff that I want to create down the road. The jungle setting actually inspired me to design an adobe canyon setting with similar mechanics.

I found the Pyramid Magazine to be a synergy to my creative energy rather than a crutch. I am very curious to see what other topics are on e23 and how many I can download before my wife turns off my credit card. I would gladly pay $8 bucks for another dose of inspiration like that. I pay the caffeine man a good ten bucks a day so what is eight a month for a spinal tap of fantasy inspiration?!?

Check out the core GURPS books you need to get started here
Check out Steve Jackson Games here

New table top game.

Cordel has been designing a brand new table top game. It is similar in style to GURPS only more user friendly. It will be extensively play tested by our core gaming group. I am actually very excited to test it out as I will be the GM for the first few sessions I think. I cant wait to set these new rules to a small little adventure based in our world of Kaelist.

I am thinking that I will take what rules Cordel has designed so far, ask my players what type of character they would like to play and what advantages/personality traits they would like (gonna hold off on implementing magic straight off) then build them a character. I'll design a little one off session with 2-3 small encounters and a role playing scenario. Then see how it all goes. 

We are going to audio record the session so we can tweak the rules after our session and have a record of and any 'fly by the seat of our pants' ruling that need to be tossed out. Super excited to have a stable role playing game for our unique world!

We won't be giving up GURPS or D&D. Never that! Just wan tto try our own hand at creating a stable and flexible role playing game