Games I'm Working On

An overview of all the games I'm currently working on.

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The first, and probably the biggest, project I'm working on currently is Myganos. It's my main homebrew world that I've been working on in fits and starts and in various forms since high school. A lot has changed in it since then though at this point I think it's basically settled into it's final form. It still needs a lot of detail work though the big strokes for the main play area have been figured out for the most part. Currently the plan is to just make the setting and mostly worry about rules after I get the setting parts figured out. Since this isn't always possible for various reasons (mostly stuff like magic that are very rule dependent) I have settled on running it with GURPS so I can help describe bits of the world better. The plan is to run it using base GURPS that I've heavily borrowed from the Dungeon Fantasy RPG to help simplify. If nothing else the Exploits book is a good resource for the normal kind of things that a D&D style group of adventurers get up to rather then combing through the core set and various Pyramid magazines.

The biggest thing here is going to be buckling down and detailing the play area including a map and the various factions that exist within it. Writing up a brief world overview document is going to difficult as well since I know I tend to ramble and if I want people to actually read this thing I'm going to need to pare it down to essential information. I can always give out more stuff if they get interested in it.

Myaganos also exists as a D&D setting though not everything comes across as well if I run it that way. I think it works best as a setting for Adventurer, Conqueror, King System because the differences between the playable races are a bit more pronounced than in a normal D&D setting and the different racial classes help to emphasize that within the core rules.

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Next I'm working on a Shadowrun game set in Denver rather than the default of Seattle. Honestly I'm not sure why I'm making life more difficult for myself by choosing a city other then one of the ones they've spent a lot of ink and paper detailing but I really like how central Denver is to the rest of North America and the interactions between the various signatories of the Treaty of Denver, the Great Dragon Ghostdancer, the Free Spirits that have set up shop there due to his influence, and the various mega-corps make me happy. This'll be set in the same continuity of the last game I ran with the events of that game pushed back a year or so and the new game set almost a year after that and the trouble it stirred up. I still have two of the same people playing so I'll let them play the same PCs if they want to, it'll save me from having to come up with new plotlines for them. :-p

Most of the work here is going to be getting a decent map of the city together that is both detailed enough for both me and the players to use but vague enough so that neither I nor they end up dealing with information overload. I think there's an old City of Denver boxed set for 2nd edition Shadowrun which I should look into despite the fact that I'm going to be running 5th ed and that box is set before the arrival of Ghostdancer. It should at least provide me with some good info that I can use as a base, maybe even a map I can scan and alter to update it. After that I'll need to do at least basic write ups for various gangs and other groups that are in the city and quick overviews of what the various movers and shakers are up to.

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The third game I'm working on is probably going to be a Traveller game set in some version of the default setting. Honestly this is the one that I've done the least amount of thinking on since it's the one that I expect to be voted for the least. I'm going to bill it as playing the game that Firefly was based on and while that would've gotten a lot of support from one of my former players he moved to Philly so that's not really a factor any more. I do know that I want to use the Mongoose version of the game and that the plan is to have the expanded options books (High Guard, Merchant Prince, and the like) other then that I'm not sure. I know I'm planning on doing the "default play style" where the PCs are folks living on the edges of society working to keep their boat afloat beyond that I'm really not sure. I know there's a few different versions of the setting that I need to read up on and that for the most part the default setting is the Spinward Marches but other then that I need to do more reading.

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The last thing I'm working on as a personal project that'll show up here periodically is converting the original setting of Warhammer Fantasy into the RuneQuest 6/Mythras system. It's something I tried to do on the fly years ago and it frankly didn't work. I got some of it to work okay and as long as I wasn't trying to force two different magic systems to work together everything went alright but the game fell apart since I didn't actually have the requisite system knowledge for either system to make it work right.

I still like the idea of running in the Warhammer Fantasy Old World and I still think using RQ6/Mythras to do it is the best option but...well I think I need to actually spend more time converting stuff from the first setting into the other system to make it work. We'll see how this ends up going since to do it I'd like to get the updated Mythras version of the core rules since I've got the older RQ6 version and while they're supposed to be compatible I'd like to work out of the core book that I know my players can buy a copy of if they decide they want to. (Especially since I think they included errata into the newest printings.)

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So there's that. Hopefully I can limit myself to doing these things and keep on point for it rather then harrying off to tilt at other gaming windmills. That's the plan anyway.

A State of the Blog Thing

A lot's changed since the last time I wrote in here.

For one thing that game I was talking about never happened. Stuff kept coming up for everyone involved so it just kept getting postponed until finally I just accepted that we weren't going to play.

So I began retooling it as a free-for-all hexcrawl kind of thing. I was going to pull from the West Marches games and other internet famous hexcrawl and mega dungeon games. The plan was to get it to a playable state and then run it using the new Dungeon Fantasy RPG recently released by Steve Jackson games at my FLGS. It's powered by GURPS and I think it would've been a nice change from the D&D and Pathfinder games that were getting run there. Unfortunately the company that owns the building they operated out of decided to jack their rent up which, when combined with a slow holiday season last year, means that they had to close their doors at the beginning of this past September. RIP The Enchanted Badger, the best damn gaming store that this town's seen in the years that I've been part of the gaming community.

Now I'm back to writing it up to play with a smaller and more consistent pool of players, hopefully with some guest players periodically. I'm back to planning it out in GURPS as well since I'm currently playing in a D&D 5e game run by one of the other members of my group. It's her first time DMing a game (or maybe her second?) and the first time most of us have actually played 5e so things can be...rough sometimes but it's fun. I kinda wish there was a bit more RP at times but to be fair we're all pretty rusty and this is a fairly straight forward dungeon crawl so whatever.

I'm going to try and properly resurrect this blog as well. Right now the plan is to do play reports for the game I'm playing in that'll post every other Monday, since we play every other Saturday. On Wednesdays or Thursdays I'm going to do some game design stuff, mostly geared towards the fantasy game I'm planning on running, though it might be for other games too since I've got system ADD pretty bad and I'm hoping that this'll be a good way to help curb it so I can stay focused.

So that's the plan, hopefully I can maintain output consistently enough that I'll feel comfortable enough to push myself to expand the audience for this thing. Maybe even submit it to the GURPSday Thursday thing that Douglas H Cole does on Gaming Ballistic.

GURPS Island in the Sea of Time [Wall Spaghetti 1]

One of my favorite authors is SM Stirling, he writes really good alternate history/pseudo-historical fantasy books. His currently longest running series is a post apocalyptic series called the "Emberverse" by fans due to the first book being titled Dies the Fire and the world the characters live in being the "embers" of ours. The first trilogy was a fairly hard post-apocalypse story where the end happened because some ASBs (alien space bats) have stopped electricity and high pressure gasses from functioning properly. It's a good series and if this sounds intriguing at all you should go look it up, the audio book is rather well done also if that's more your speed. (I want to run an After the End game based on this premise at some point but that's not really the topic of this post.)

At any rate Dies the Fire starts in 1998, which confused a few critics since he didn't write and publish it until 2004. The reason though is that it's connected to another series of his that he did write in 1998 that started with Island in the Sea of Time. The premise of this trilogy is that the island of Nantucket, along with the nearby Coast Guard cutter Eagle and her crew are all transported to the Bronze Age around 1250 BCE. They got to keep all their cool tech toys though they were limited to what could be produced on the island.

The game I think I want to run functions off of the same premise with a few changes. While in Stirling's book series everything was very hard from a sci-fi point of view, after the initial transportation of course, I want to fold in a bit more fantasy. The biggest change is going to be making the magic of the Bronze Age peoples an actual, practical thing which is it isn't in my source material. I think this'll help even things out a bit between the arriving time travelers and the Bronze Age folks, since one of the biggest conflicts in the books was between the Nantucketers and a wayward Coast Guard lieutenant that decided to carve out his own kingdom from the "savages" of the era he found himself in. While it made for entertaining reading and I'm sure it would make for an interesting game having the technologically advanced Americans and the populous and magically active Bronze Agers be on more of an equal footing at least to start sounds good to me.

One of the biggest decisions to make for the game is whether I'm going to make everyone play one of the displaced modern folks doing a "survey" or some such of the Bronze Age world either on a ship or based out of one of the forts that gets set up in lands that Nantucket has claimed or allied itself with; or if I'm going to start the players off as folks from one of a selection of Bronze Age kingdoms and tribes reacting to the arrival of these new "Eagle People" (as the Nantucketers get called by a number of groups in the books) and the upheaval it brings. I think I'm leaning more towards the first idea and letting new PCs come from groups that the PCs have made friendly contact with.

Some other quick notes since I want to actually post this and not let it join my stack of half written posts languishing with an italic "draft" notice next to it in my Blogger dashboard-

• Everyone's human and though people from different countries might have suggestions for skills, advantages and disadvantages due to culture and such none of it is going to be mandatory
• The 1250s BCE are mature Bronze Age which means overall most places are going to TL1 I believe. The Nantucketers are from 1998 so they'll start at TL8, though lack of manufacturing and infrastructure drops them down to a weird TL5-6 in the books. Then the areas with trade to Nantucketer bases or Nantucket itself will end up being a weird schizo-tech level somewhere in between those levels. I'll probably use the tech and scrounging rules from After the End to help cover my ass about that stuff.
• I think I'm going to use Ritual Path Magic with some distinct traditions for the magic. Ritual Adept is either going to be completely unavailable or only something you can get through long and arduous study along with some kind of quest. It'll be so rare as to be completely non-existant. If I do go with Nantucketers PCs to start with if anyone wants to be a mage I'll make them choose a tradition as well as buying up the appropriate Cultural Familiarity and Language up to Native. Even after that I don't think I'll let them start with more then one quarter to one third of their points sunk into magic, Nantucket's big thing is going to be their higher tech level.
• Spirits and monsters will exist as well though they're super rare in Nantucket controlled areas. I think mana levels are going to go down in heavily technological areas. So it won't matter in a battle say, or if a magus is trying to show those upstart Eagle People a thing or two in his king's court but if tries to go to Nantucket to cast spells it'll be much more difficult. 

I'm a little late to the party but...

...there's a Dungeon Fantasy Kickstarter!

I know that probably won't be news to the, like, 3 people that actually read my blog but still I figured I should post about it since I'm dropping $250 on it to get to the "I Want It All" Pledge level and I figure if I even convince one other person to put in for it it's that much closer to getting into the stretch goals. Every little bit helps, right?



(I think I put that embed in right, it's been awhile since I've worried about how HTML interacts with things...)

As of this writing it looks like they're almost to $85k too! That's a few grand higher than it was when I checked yesterday about this time so I'm actually hopeful that they'll get into stretch goals, especially with that last day push that usually happens.

Available Races/Species

Quick post before I have to get ready for work. These are the template write-ups for the various and sundry races that my players picked from when they were making their characters. I ended up with something of an oddball crew but one of the great things about GURPS is that they'll end up dealing with it in a more concrete way then if this were a D&D game.

Dwarves

As enduring as the earth from which they were shaped, the Stout Folk once ruled vast empires that sprawled on and beneath the surface of Faerun. After centuries of decline, most dwarven kingdoms are gone, but the fruits of their labors survive, unbowed by the passage of time.

Gold (Hill, Southern) Dwarf [29]

Attributes: HT +1 [10], DX-1 [-20]Secondary Characteristics: Will +1 [5], HP +2 [4], MV –2 [-10], SM -1Advantages: Lifting ST 4 [12], Extended Lifespan 2 [4], Dark-vision [15], Dwarfsense [12]*, Resistant to poison (+3) [5], Dwarven Craftsmanship 1 [10], Business Acumen 1 [10]Disadvantages: Appearance: Unattractive (To Non-Dwarves only -20%) [-3], Stubbornness [-5], Greed [-15], Odious Racial Habit (Haughty) [-5]Features: Armor isn't interchangeable with human armor

Shield (Mountain, Northern) Dwarf [29]

Attributes: HT +1 [10]Secondary Characteristics: Will +1 [5], HP +2 [4], MV –2 [-10], SM -1Advantages: Lifting ST 4 [12], Extended Lifespan 2 [4], Dark-vision [15], Dwarfsense [12]*, Resistant to poison (+3) [5], Dwarven Craftsmanship 1 [10]
Disadvantages: Appearance: Unattractive (To Non-Dwarves only -20%) [-3], Stubbornness [-5], Greed [-15], Code of Honor (Dwarven) [-10], Intolerance (Traditional Enemies: Orcs, Goblinoids, Ogres, Trolls, and Giants.) [-5]Features: Armor isn't interchangeable with human armor

Elves

Moon (Gray, Silver) Elf [40]

Attributes: DX+1 [20]Secondary Characteristics: HP -1 [-2], Will +1 [5], and Per +2 [10]Advantages: Night-vision 7 [7], Attractive (andro) [4], Magery 0 [5], Voice [10], Extended Lifespan 3 (normal maturity) [6]Disadvantages: Code of Honor (Elven) [-10], Sense of Duty (Elven Nation) [-15]Features: none

Sun (Gold, High) Elf [44]

Attributes: IQ +1 [20]Secondary Characteristics: HP -1 [-2], Will +1 [5], and Per +2 [10]Advantages: Night-vision 7 [7], Attractive (andro) [4], Magery 0 [5], Voice [10], Extended Lifespan 5 (normal maturity) [10], Artificer 1 [10]Disadvantages: Code of Honor (Elven) [-10], Sense of Duty (Evermeet) [-15], Odious Racial Habit (Haughty) [-10]Features: none

Half-Elf [15]

Attributes: noneSecondary Characteristics: Will +1 [5]Advantages: Attractive [4], Extended Lifespan 1 (normal maturity) [2], Charisma +2 [10], Night Vision 3 [3], Acute Vision +2 [4], Acute Hearing +1 [2]Disadvantages: Social Stigma (Half-Breed) [-5], Impulsiveness (12) [-10]

Features: Elf Blood: For all effects related to race a half-elf is considered to be an elf.

Gnomes

Rock Gnome [5]

Attributes: HT+1 [10], ST-1 [-10]Secondary Characteristics: MV -2 [-10], SM -2Advantages: Acute Hearing 2 [4], Acute Smell 2 [4], Night vision 7 [7], Extended Lifespan 2 [4], Magery 0 (Illusion College) [3], Widget-Worker 1 [5], Speak w burrowing mammals [10]Disadvantages: Curious (6) [-10], Intolerance (Orcs, Kobolds, and Goblins) [-5], Trickster (15) [-7]Features: none

Halflings

Lightfoot Halfling [23]

Attributes: DX+1 [20], ST-2 [-20]Secondary Characteristics: MV -2 [-10], SM -2Advantages: Acute Hearing 2 [4], Fearlessness 2 [4], Luck 2 (Defensive) [24], Silence 1 [5], Honest Face [1]Disadvantages: Chummy [-5]Features: none

Strongheart Halfling [23]

Attributes: DX+1 [20], ST-2 [-20]Secondary Characteristics: MV -2 [-10], Will +2 [10], HP +1 [2] , SM -2Advantages: Acute Hearing 2 [4], Fearlessness 2 [4], Luck 1 (Defensive) [12], Silence 1 [5],Honest Face [1]Disadvantages: Chummy [-5]Features: none

Humans

Humanity is the default from which all other races are judged, at least by a human's standards. As such they don't have any defining traits beyond those given to the individual character.

Planetouched

Aasimar [23]

Attributes: No changesSecondary Characteristics: Will+2 [10]Advantages: Charisma 2 [10];DR 2 (Acid, Cold, Electricity, -20%) [8]; Honest Face [1]; Sanitized Metabolism [1]

Perks: Illumination (Torch) [1]
Disadvantages: Divine Curse (Demons go after you first and worst, no matter who else is nearby) [-5]; Unnatural Features 2 [-2]Features: None

Air Genasi [60]

Attributes: DX +1 [20], IQ+1 [20]Secondary Characteristics: No changesAdvantages: Doesn’t Breathe [20], Levitation (One-Spell Magery 1, -80% + skill at IQ) [8], Vibration Sense [10]

Perks: Air Jet [1]
Disadvantages: Overconfidence [-5]; Short Attention Span [-10], Unnatural Features 2 [-2],

Quirks: Cares little for personal appearance or clothing [-1]Features: Receives +1 reaction bonus with air elementals, but a -1 reaction penalty with earth elementals

Earth Genasi [25]

Attributes: ST+1 [10], HT+1 [10]Secondary Characteristics: No changesAdvantages: Detect (Terrestrial Movement) [10], Hit Points+1 [2], Light Tread (One-Spell Magery 1, -80% + skill at IQ) [10]

Perks: Burrower [1]
Disadvantages: Hidebound [-5]; Oblivious [-5]; Stubbornness [-5], Unnatural Features 2 [-2]

Quirks: Clothing and person seems to attract dirt and dust [-1] Features: Receives +1 reaction bonus with earth elementals, but a -1 reaction penalty with air elementals

Fire Genasi [36]

Attributes: IQ+1 [20]Secondary Characteristics: No changesAdvantages: Control 2 (Fire) [40], DR 5 (Fire Heat only, -40%) [15]; Infravision [10], Temperature Tolerance 3 (heat only) [3]

Perks: Ignition [1]
Disadvantages: Bad Temper [-10]; Impulsiveness [-10]; Unnatural Features 2 [-2], Vulnerability (Cold x2) [-30]

Quirks: Prefers warm climates [-1]Features: Normal temperature “comfort zone” is between 50 and 105 degrees before adjustments, Receives +1 reaction bonus with fire elementals, but a -1 reaction penalty with water elementals

Tiefling [54]

Attributes: DX+1 [20], IQ+1 [20]Secondary Characteristics: No changesAdvantages: Dark Vision [15], DR 5 (Cold, Fire, Electricity, -20%) [20]

Perks: Gathered Shadows [1]
Disadvantages: Social Stigma (Diabolic Half-Breed) [-10], Unnatural Features 2 [-2]; Supernatural Feature (Eerie Presence) [-10]Features: None

Water Genasi [24]

Attributes: HT+1 [10]Secondary Characteristics: No changesAdvantages: Amphibious [10]; Doesn’t Breathe (Breathe Water, -50%) [10]; Nictitating Membrane 2 [2]; Pressure Support 2 [10]; Temperature Tolerance 3 (cold only) [3]

Perks: Rinse [1]
Disadvantages: Unnatural Features 2 [-2], Low-Empathy [-20]; Features: Receives +1 reaction bonus with water elementals, but a -1 reaction penalty with fire elementals

Wemics [38]

Attributes: ST +3 [27], DX +1 [20], IQ -1 [-20]**, HT +1 [+10]

Secondary Characteristics: SZ +1, Per +1 [5]

Advantages: Acute Senses 2 (Hearing) [4], Acutes Senses 2 (Taste and Smell) [4], Claws (Sharp) [5], Discriminatory Smell [15], Night-vision 5 [5], Outdoorsman +1 [10] Teeth (Sharp) [1]

Perks: Deep Sleeper, Fur

Disadvantages: Code of Honor (Wemic) [-10], Increased Consumption 1 [-10], Phobia 15- (Oceans) [-10], Sleepy (½ the time, need 10 hours of sleep) -8, Social Stigma (Beastman) -2/+2 [-10]

Quirks: Strong Accent

Features: Born Biter +1 (see Martial arts p 115), Tail

Footnotes:

*Dwarfsense Meta-trait [12] Absolute Direction: 3D Spatial Sense (Indoors and Underground Only -20%) [8]; Eye for Distance (Indoors and Underground Only -20%) [0]; Detect (Grade slope, New tunnel passage construction, sliding shifting walls and rooms, stonework traps; Indoors and Underground Only) [4]

** All penalties to IQ from racial templates do not affect derived attributes or traits.

Game Prep

Short post while I take a break from formatting. I finally settled on running my first GURPS game in the Forgotten Realms pre-Time of Troubles. I'm not sure that I'll include the ToT in my game because even though the setting I'm most familiar with is the 3rd edition version and thus post-ToT I like the more sword and sorcery vibe I'm getting from reading the old 1st edition Realms lore.

As for the actual game it got a fair start two weeks ago. We all met up and three of the four players started making characters, my wife held off because she'd just gotten done with an 8 hour work day on what was supposed to be a day off so she was fairly burnt out. She did come up with a concept though and since then we've worked out some of the traits she'll have. Everyone else is mostly done, they just need to buy equipment which depends on me getting it ready for presentation.

Oh right, the presentation. Did I explain this before? I'm going through and copy-pasting all the relevant rules into various documents to then be reformatted and printed off for my players. I've been assured by people on the forums that this isn't illegal as long as I don't disseminate the final document in any way beyond letting my players use it for game. Which I'm not and I honestly hadn't even thought to do. Though when I get it into a final format I may get a hard bound copy from Lulu or something since SJ Games seems to be alright with getting copies of the books done up that way for personal use as well. 

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Did I mention I'm compiling, editing and formatting information from almost a dozen GURPS books into one set of documents for my players? It's a project that's already taken more than a month of mornings before work and periodically a hour or two afterwards before I crash. I'm through most of the stuff needed to make characters, though I'm only just finishing the F's for the skill descriptions and I haven't even gotten to equipment or magic yet. I think I'm just going to print a copy of the GURPS magic book for my players to use and copy things out of, it'll be quicker and easier than my reformatting everything and since I can already remove entire chapters (Technology college of magic anyone?) it shouldn't be too bad to print. Equipment's going to be killer though.

Alrighty, back to it and I promise I'll have actual content again soon since we should actually be playing game in a week or two.

Resources

This post is going to be mostly for my own use but it's good to have it out where I can see it and hopefully it can help someone down the road. I'm just going to list all the resources I'm going to be using to build my hexcrawl game split up between a few categories.

Campaign Guide:
     This is going to be where most of the player facing stuff comes from though obviously I'll be making some of it and I'll probably pull more from other places. Also unless I call it out this stuff is all going to be GURPS books.

• Basic Set: Duh, it's hard to play a game without the core rules.
• Martial Arts: Cherry picking from here mostly. Maneuvers, martial arts, some weapon and campaign options.
• Martial Arts- Technical Grappling: I'm going to try and use a pared down and simplified version of these rules. I don't want to do everything exactly by the book but I've always hated the binary way grappling works in RPGs and from reading Dungeon Fantastic, and Gaming Ballistic (among other examples) it looks like this will work well.
• Martial Arts- Yrth Fighting Styles: The plan is to use this mostly for worked examples of martial arts for things other then humans. Though using it to give examples for martial arts adapted to fighting things other then humans as well (or against magic using opponents) will be useful as well.
• Thaumatology: For lots of rules but primarily because mages are going to use Threshold Magic and druids are going to use the alternate schools for their magic labeled as "Tree Magic" or whatever it's called.
• Thaumatology- Magical Styles: I really like the idea of magical styles and schools being a thing like martial arts are in GURPS. I'm hoping that it'll even lead to in game rivalry that the players will act on.
• Low Tech: The rules for weapons, armor, and various sundry goods are going to take precedence over those in the Basic Set and in Dungeon Fantasy for the most part due to the desire for an increase in verisimilitude in the game.
• Low Tech Companions: A lot of this stuff will be useful to me to work out player facing information but I'm not sure how much they'll be used by my players.
• Powers: I've been told often enough that it's the third part of the Basic Set that I'll probably end up using it, if only as a reference document when my players or I want something random and off the wall.
• Powers- Divine Favor: How I'm going to be running most of the the priestly and clericy types in my game.
• Most of the Dungeon Fantasy series: I was going to list them all out but it would be quicker to list the ones I won't be using and I'm not even sure which ones those will be. I'm obviously not really going to be using the templates in them but I am going to use the play guidelines for a bunch of stuff because while my game will be more flexible then the beer'n'pretzels style that Dungeon Fantasy espouses it will still follow many of the same tropes. *
• Fantasy: For obvious reasons though not as much as I'd thought.
• Various and sundry Pyramids: Mostly individual articles like "It's a Trap" & "Mystic Power-Ups" from 3/60, "It's a Threat!" from 3/77 *

World Building and Hexcrawl Planning:

     This is mostly behind the scenes stuff that I'm going to be the only really aware of for the most part. This is going to be much more widely varied then the stuff from the Campaign Guide so I'll list the complete title and links if available for everything.

• Welsh Piper's series on building a hexcrawl is very in depth and while I won't follow it exactly I will definitely be using it as a guideline.
• I know Troll Smyth has a hexcrawl guide in his blog somewhere as well though I can't find it to give a direct link to it at the moment. It's unfinished and following it exactly won't mesh with the kind of crawl I plan on running but there are good ideas in the series and elsewhere in the blog for all that he isn't a GURPS GM and I think he might be vaguely bemused at inspiring someone's GURPS game. (Then again I could be completely off base with that evaluation.)
• Bat in the Attic for me is the grandaddy of the "How to..." guides for sandbox and hexcrawl gaming online if only because it's the first one I really remember reading so I think Mr Conley's ideas have influenced me more then others. He does run GURPS as well (I think his Majestic Wilderlands were designed with it in mind at least to some degree) so I may end up shooting him questions too at some point. Hopefully that'll be okay, not weird and out of left field.
• The West Marches at ars ludi are a big influence on my game as well. While I'm not going to detail this game with such a fine focus as Mr Robbins did making things a bit more in depth than the 0-2 things per 6 mile hex has definitely given me something to think about. Other ideas like the consideration of having different encounter tables per area and changing them up as the players do things are having influence on my game. I may run a game with closer fidelity to the West Marches but I don't think it'll be this one.
• The rules found in the world building chapters of the Adventurer, Conqueror, King System from Autarch's fine game are also going to be used extensively. Especially to get some semblance of commerce going in my world. This game has actually come close to being played in ACKS on a number of occasions both because my players already grok D&D and just because this is one of my favorite iterations of it.

*While writing this I decided that I'm going to make posts regarding what bits from Pyramid and the Dungeon Fantasy series I'll be using with my game. It'll be good for me and it'll provide more info for anyone else that happens to stumble across this.

Free Build

In my last post (gods, two months ago?) I discussed the pros and cons of going for templates versus free build for my characters and I think I've figured out what I'm going to do. I actually settled on this awhile ago but between work and getting sick, and then taking care of my sick wife, I didn't think to actually write this down here.

I'm going to go with free build for the most part. I think it'll really highlight the differences between GURPS and other games we've played. Which has been mostly various flavors of D&D though most recently was the IKRPG. It'll also free my time up to actually putting stuff for the game down on paper and make it so I don't have to spend time making a couple dozen 25-50 point lenses for characters which was the other things I was thinking of doing. While that means my players will end up asking me more questions about how to build things it also works out that I'll end up knowing more about the PCs since I'll be helping build them all as well.

This isn't to say there won't be any templates at all. The non-human races available are all going to be represented with templates and I think I'll make some basic templates as examples for the spell casters just because those subsystems can be complicated and I don't want one of my players to make a wizard and find out later that he forgot to buy Thaumatology or something. Also I'm going to make up some "prestige class" templates for use when and if the PCs join up with a secret society or cult or something. Though those will be strictly optional and will probably be more useful as examples of members of those groups then anything else.

Templates vs. Free Build

Like I said in my last post I'm in the middle of writing a setting book for my gaming group to play GURPS from. I'm going to be including all the basic stuff (attributes, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages, etc) though in a much shorter format than is actually in the Basic Set and the other books I decide to take stuff from. This is partially because I only own one set of the books and I'm not going to make my players buy a game that they aren't sure about, and partially because the last time I tried to run GURPS I set the stack of books down and no matter how much I said "Don't worry, we aren't using much from any of these for actual play," they couldn't get over just how many books are available. So I figure if I can link them a pdf or word document with bare bones write ups and page references to the actual books they may be able to swallow it a bit better.

This leads me to my first conundrum though. Whether I should provide them all with templates from Dungeon Fantasy and make them stick to those templates, or if I should have the players do free build their characters with my help. Both have pros and cons though, and I'm going to list them out for my own benefit at least.

Templates
Pros:

• Easier character building
• More independence when building characters
• Niche protection
• Easier identification of character types; frex: "Oh you're a wizard and I'm a thief, we need a healer and a fighter then..."

Cons:

• DF doesn't allow for much in the way of social skills, advantages, or disadvantages and since I want an almost completely open sandbox that may cause some issues
• Power level might be too high for the kind of game I want to run and using the low point total 
• Could induce not just niche protection but the idea that you have to stay inside your role 100%, which isn't what I want. (One of the reasons I want to run with GURPS is I want my mage's player to decide it's bullshit that he can't use a sword and spend the points to learn how, or the fighter to do the same thing but the other way around.)
• Allowing for non human PCs is trickier. Not impossible though, obviously.

Free Build

Pros:

• More freedom in character building
• Gives me a bit more room to define the power level as far as how many points I give the players to use
• "Cross classing" will almost definitely be a thing, who doesn't want to be a good fighter that casts spells, can sneak, and track, etc.
• Allowing for non human PCs is much easier.
• Easier to introduce social skills, advantages, and disadvantages; they're there from the beginning!

Cons:

• No "class" templates means more hand holding on my part and more likely that my players (all new to GURPS) will build underpowered or "useless" characters. It also means much more time spent making the characters as everyone reads over all the skills, advantages, and disadvantages and agonizes over their decisions.
• The almost certainty of "cross class" characters might also mean that PCs end up stepping on each other's toes a lot.
• They may also end up with a fairly glaring hole in their capabilities, hopefully I'll be able to spot it before play started but there's no guarantee

So there we go. I'd like to run a good game for these guys and one of the biggest things I want out of GURPS (and why I want to run with this system instead of ACKS like I'd originally planned) is I want the flexibility and openness of the system and I'm afraid I won't get that if I run straight Dungeon Fantasy despite the fact that that would probably be the easiest option. Especially since all my players are brand new to the system. I'll have to think on this more and discuss it with my group a bit. 

Quickly, Before I Pass Out

Quick post before I pass out since it's almost 3am, I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night and I've been up since 7am or so. Basically this is just an update to declare my intentions of returning to this and hopefully make a better go of it. It's also going to be very stream of consciousness so it might not make a whole lot of coherent sense.

One of my players (temporarily my GM) is running an IKRPG game for the group. When we started out we had a large Protectorate of Menoth paladin, a dwarven arcane mechanic and his "pet" Warjack, and an inquisitive sharpshooter from a merc company full of pirates. Because I thought of something a bit more in-line with the game premise I switched from my pseudo-Arabic paladin to a commando working for Cygnar's intelligence organization. The guy playing the dwarf switch to an ogrun (think civilized orc/ogre that hails from dwarven lands) because I jokingly told him his character had heroically sacrificed himself in battle to save the lives of myself and the other PC. He thought I was serious and erased his character sheet and started making his ogrun ironhead.

Of course now that we're starting to get in the swing of things the guy running the game switched positions at the school we work at and he's now working weekends. Hopefully this won't interfere with game too much. As it stands though game's on indefinite hiatus until he gets used to his new schedule and figures out if and when he's going to be working past five on Saturdays since that's our optimal start time.

On the plus side a friend of ours messaged me saying he had more free time so he could start gaming again. This unfortunately is because him and his wife are splitting up however so I'm very conflicted about how happy to be about this news. I really need to actually take the time to grab lunch with him at some point.

I'm now planning on using this blog (I know, I've said that before) to help me plan out games I want to run. When and if I ever get to run them who knows but at least I'll have something down in case. So, really quick without any real explanation:

• RuneQuest 6 translation of 2nd edition era Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay with some influences pulled from 1st WFRP and early editions of the wargame
• GURPS Fantasy hexcrawl set in my own home brew setting
• further defining my "Ithaca by Night" setting thing for new World of Darkness (That's Ithaca New York not Ithaca Greece. Sorry all you Grecophiles out there. Also does anyone call it the "new" World of Darkness anymore except people that played in "old/classic" World of Darkness?)
• translate Forgotten Realms to ACKS, with most of the work going into custom divine casters and other classes though defining either the Sea of Fallen Stars or The Sword Coast with the economic rules in ACKS sounds interesting.
• Mapping out a few sectors for Mongoose Traveller.
• Further defining the collaborative map my gaming group made for a Burning Wheel game a few years back.

There I think that's all of it. I'm supposed to be planning something for some out of town friends for when they're here at some point. Only problem is I don't know when "at some point" is so it's hard to build up the drive to start planning. I'm thinking I might print off the D&D 5e starter rules and run the two people left in my group through something basic though to fill up time while our GM settles into his schedule.