Fixing the GURPS Magic Framework

Fixing GURPS Magic is a two-part process and this post is merely going to offer ideas for the first step: fixing the general framework. A comprehensive bug-fix for GURPS Magic would have to review every single spell, many of which need more than just a quick once-over.

Cooking It up

There are three main problem areas in GURPS Magic and they’re all interdependent:

1) IQ + Magery beats investing points in spells
Unless you want to build a one-spell-pony, the rules-as-written don’t encourage you to invest more than a single  point per spell. IQ and a level of Magery may cost 30 points, but the number of interesting spells is great enough that most mages will have at least twenty spells in two or three colleges. Add in the general versatility of IQ and in-depth study of a spell will never make sense. Official builds from 3rd Edition supported this method with rare exceptions and 4th Edition’s Dungeon Fantasy follows that trend. Not only does this demote spells from real skills to quasi-perks, it invalidates a lot of interesting archetypes.

2) Generalists beat specialists
Magery is one of the traits with the greatest number of canon special limitations, but the one limitation we often see in fiction or the-other-game sees relatively little use on character sheets: One-College-Only. At -40% it offers a decent discount (and can be combined with other limitations), but reduces versatility by something fierce. Going from 800+ to on average 40 spells is not the main problem. The problem is lacking access to the main utility spells (Recover Energy, Magesight, Armor etc.) offering only measly 4 points / level in exchange. Tying maximum Magery to points invested instead of level alleviates this somewhat, but even then other limitations are the better option.

3) Everybody just aims for skill 15/20/25…
Arguably the biggest problem with GURPS Magic are the “free maintenance” break-points. While it is a cute idea to have an extremely skilled mage maintain spells for free, it does turn the game into “Buffing 101”. Combined with the fact that all spells (barring very hard ones) are likely to be at the same skill level this just makes generalists even more powerful − and boring.

Before I search for possible solutions, let’s look at what GURPS Magic does right − something that’s not done very often, but if it was a whole lot of garbage, why even try to fix it?

1) Spells are skills
This fits a lot of tropes in fantasy fiction. While some wizards are masters of improvisation, many do indeed use spells and invocations learned by rote. Even if they can be varied, that often has strict limits. What could and should be changed, though, is that spells are all based on the same attribute and can never be of easy or average difficulty. Some existing spells could also be changed into techniques based on similar spells.

2) You’ve got to learn to walk before you can run
Prerequisite trees are logical in a way that immediately resonates with players. Of course, you need to learn how to conjure little flames before you start throwing around fireballs. The individual trees might not always be completely logical (or easy to follow), but the concept is sound. This comes to the fore when some spells (especially the Weather college) need solid grounding in two or more colleges. This could be expanded even further

3) Great talent can overcome restrictions
One of the few changes 4th Edition introduced what that a high level of Magery can overcome built-in restrictions of spells − and also limits your damage output. This idea is basically sound, but suffers from the fact that virtually all PC mages will have the maximum allowable Magery level.

4) Competence has its perks
While they weren’t added until many years after the release of GURPS Magic, the addition of Magical styles and style perks offer the GM great tools to make their casters unique.

Tying these together this brings a couple of changes to mind:

1) Fixing attribute costs is a good start.

2) Next is disassociating Magery from its talent bonus. Ten points for +1 to all spells was never balanced and if we make IQ more costly, it’s even worse. Instead Magery costs a flat 10 points per level (including level 0) and does only do two things: It allows you exceed levelled or energy-based limits on spells and it allows you to learn more powerful spells.

3) This new Magery is complemented by Talents for single colleges, which cost either 5 to 15 points per level. Talents act as Magery for their respective colleges, but also give a skill bonus in addition. The combined number of Magery levels and Talent levels has a maximum. You can either have broad access to all spells and little talent or loads of specialised talent and a little access to more powerful spells outside that sphere.

4) Skill level has no influence on ritual requirements and maintenance costs. Instead both are tied to relative level and voluntary penalties. With a relative level of attribute −2 you simply cannot cast a spell without words or gestures, with attribute −1 you can try either at a −4 penalty each. Similar, you can try to save on maintenance costs by taking a −4 to effective skill per point of energy − a chancy thing for resisted spells.

5) Casting costs are reduced according to Margin of Success.

The Finished Dish

GURPS Magic is a complicated beast and therefore the finished rule tweaks are a bit more elaborate than usual.

Magery and Magic Talent

Magery costs ten points per level (including level 0). It allows you to exceed limits on effect as per GURPS Magic p. 9. A certain level of Magery is also part the prerequisites of most advanced spells. Without Magery 0 or a corresponding Magic Talent you cannot cast spells. Magery might or might not allow you to recognise magic items on sight or touch as per B 66, but the GM can treat this as a setting switch. Magery never gives a skill bonus or reduces studying time to learn spells.

Magic Talent costs five to fifteen points per level (excluding level 0) and gives all the benefits of the Magery within its respective college. A mage with Magery 0 does not need to buy any zero-level Magic Talents, but it is possible for a mage to have no Magery whatsoever and only rely on Magic Talents. In that case each Magic Talent +0 costs 4 points. While this is rarely cost-effective for more than two levels it opens up some ways to get more Magic Talent than usual (see below).

Magic Talent Cost by College
Air 10 Light/Darkness 5
Animal 5 Making/Breaking 5
Body Control 15 Meta 5
Communication/Empathy 5 Mind Control 15
Earth 5 Movement 10
Enchantment 10 Necromancy 10
Fire 5 Plant 15
Food 5 Protection/Warning 10
Gate 5 Sound 5
Healing 5 Technology 10
Illusion/Creation 5 Water 15
Knowledge 10 Weather 5

In each campaign there is a maximum cost for combined levels of Magery and Magic Talent. In a typical fantasy campaign like Banestorm this might 50 points. That’s enough to buy for example Magery +3 and Magic Talent: Fire +2. Alternatively it could buy Magery +1, Magic Talent: Food +4 and Magic Talent: Movement +1. Or it could buy Magic Talent: Mind Control +2, Magic Talent: Healing +2 and Magic Talent: Knowledge +1 without any Magery whatsoever.

Limitations and Enhancements affect these costs. All special modifiers for Magery work for both advantages except for Limited Colleges, which is only available for Magery, and One-College Only, which is now superfluous.

Higher and lower maximum costs are possible, but the system starts to breaking down at 80 to 90 points unless you have a considerable number of spells requiring Magery/Magic Talent +4. It’s generally a bad idea to allow any Talent give more than +6 bonus so that sets another limit on how high you want to go. At 20 to 40 points the system still works fine, but requires mages to make some hard choices. Less than 20 points are probably not a good idea.

Ritual, Energy Cost and Casting Time

All three of these are tied to both relative level in a skill and how well he can cast it. Ritual grows less elaborate with higher relative level, but does never vanish unless the mage makes a conscious effort and takes a penalty. Maintenance costs can be lowered by taking a penalty, but only if the mage has a high enough relative level. Casting time can be lowered in the same way. Casting costs are dependent on Margin of Success.

Relative level Standard Ritual1 Reduced Ritual2 Cost Reduction Casting time5
Casting3 Maintenance4
Attribute −3 Extremely Elaborate − −1 per 5 MoS − −
Attribute −2 Elaborate − −1 per 4 MoS − −
Attribute −1 Normal No Words or No Gestures −1 per 4 MoS −5 per energy −5 per second
Attribute +0 Normal No Words and No Gestures −1 per 3 MoS −5 per energy −4 per second
Attribute +1 Subtle No Words and No Gestures −1 per 3 MoS −4 per energy −3 per second
Attribute +2 Subtle No Words and No Gestures −1 per 2 MoS −4 per energy −2 per second

1 The words and movements normally required for casting the spell:
Extremely elaborate: Requires sweeping movements of both arms and legs − both hands must be free − and shouted words (base hearing distance: 6 m), which give a clear indication of the spell being cast. Base casting time is multiplied by five.
Elaborate: Requires movement of both arms and some body full body movement − one hand and both legs must be free − and loudly spoken words (base hearing distance: 4 m), which give some indication of the spell being cast. Base casting time is doubled.
Normal: Requires gestures with one hand and clearly spoken words (base hearing distance: 1 m), that give those with Thaumatology an indication of the spell being cast. Normal casting time.
Subtle: Requires subtle gestures with one hand and whispered words (base hearing distance: ½ m), that give those with Thaumatology an indication of the spell being cast. Normal casting time.
2 Eliminating either ritual words or ritual gestures gives a skill penalty of −4, eliminating both gives a penalty of −8.
3 Every full multiple of the given margin of success reduces casting (but not maintenance) costs by 1 energy. MoS is always figured from effective skill, including penalties from reduced ritual, maintenance or time.
4 Maintenance costs can be reduced by 1 energy for every multiple of the penalty taken.
5 Casting time can be reduced either by one second or 10%, whichever is better. Casting time can also be increased to get a bonus to effective skill: x5 gives +1, x20 gives +2, x60 gives +3.

The Leftovers

That’s the basic framework. You still need to look at every spell and decide whether it should be easy, average or hard − very hard spells can stay that way − and whether it wouldn’t be better served by using Will, Perception, Dexterity, Health or even 10+High Manual Dexterity as the controlling attribute. This will be a long and tedious process, but the results should be worth it. While doing that, spells can be balanced against each other, made compliant with 4th Edition concepts (e.g. no absolutes), tagged with keywords, checked for incongruent prerequisites and maybe put into different colleges. It’s probably also a good idea to reduce the number of spells by declaring some to be techniques based on similar spells, too.

As for tweaking the presented rules further, you could fine-tune the costs of Magic Talent per college to cost one point per 5/6/7 spells (minimum: 5 pts.). Or, going into the opposite direction, even declare all 15-point colleges to cost only 10 points. As it is, they are a bit less attractive at the moment, but be aware that a mage with Magery +0 and Magic Talent: Mind Control +4 can be pretty darn effective.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy

Step-by-Step: DSA GURPS Conversion II – Races & Cultures

Be advised that this and all of the following conversion articles use my house-rules for variant attribute costs, fine-tuned languages and revised technique pricing – most of which make use of the half-point. Also the price of age-related traits is reduced. This isn’t GURPS rules-as-written and I’d argue, that it’s extremely hard to make GURPS DSA work without advised attribute costs, at least (or at the very minimum RPK’s splitting of IQ, WILL and PER).

Last time in step-by-step conversion I stressed how important it is to go for the immediately useful, while still having a general idea of how the big picture should look like. That’s why races and cultures are usually the first thing you decide on in a fantasy campaign (that or the magic system, but more of that next instalment).

So, what to do with the races? The fourth edition of DSA made the controversial choice of introducing traits for human races to the traditional mix of elves, dwarves and half-elves. Not only does that raise some uncomfortable parallels to some other Germans who used to books about “menschliche Rassen”, but it exaggerates differences that most RPGs thankfully sweep under the carpet. Worse, it made min-maxing savage fringe races that got attribute bonuses, cultures and professions quite desirable for munchkins. Human races are best completely disregarded (barring appearance) and the same goes . There are more than enough races to make playing DSA interesting without adding complications.

In this first post I will confine myself to the races Dwarves, Elves, Half-Elves and Humans. If there’s enough interest, I might write up some of the other “playable” races and maybe some of the ones designated “non-playable”. There are also a couple of example cultures, but I’m not aiming for completeness yet. I’ll just showcase what I’ve needed so far. The focus is on Northern Aventuria. I might expand this section later.

Races

Dwarves [+62 pts.]

Attributes and Secondary Characteristics [+21]: ST +1 [10], HT +1 [15]; Basic Move: Land −1 [−5], Basic Speed −0,25 [−5], FP +2 [6]; SM −1 [0]

Advantages [+51]:
Detect: Secret compartments, doors and other clandestine sone constructions (Takes Extra Time +3 (8 s), −30%) [4]
High Manual Dexterity +1 [5]
Extended Lifespan +2 (Aging Thresholds: 200/280/360 years) [2]
Legal Immunity: Lex Zwergia (Accessibility: Only in Middle Empire, −20%, Fickle (11), −20%) [3]
Lifting ST +1 [3]
Magic Resistance +2 [4]
Night Vision +5 [5]
Perk: Alcohol Tolerance [1]
Perk: Dwarven Gear [1]
Resistant: anorganic poisons (HT +8) [4]
Resistant: disease (HT +8) [4]
Feature: Immunities and Susceptibilities [0]
Feature: Swimming counts as a hard skill (Default: HT −6).

Legal Immunity: Lex Zwergia: For anything more than a misdemeanor dwarves are supposed to be brought before their mountain king for judgement. This applies only in the Middle Empire and not all that consistently at that.
Immunities and Susceptibilities: Dwarves are especially susceptible to seasickness (no bonus from Resistant: Disease). Dumbskull gets the better of the nicest dwarves − during the illness dwarves have Bad Temper (12). If they already have Bad Temper their self-control roll is lower by two levels. Dwarves are immune to lycanthropy and also to the poison Tulmadron.

Dwarves have a long list of modified attributes and smallish advantages. They are a bit toned down compared to most RPG treatments, but that’s just fine for the feeling of the setting. The Legal Immunity is a bit on the weird side and I haven’t seen many groups playing with that, but it is background canon in DSA and so I chose to include it.
Note that dwarves have no disadvantages tied to race. Racial Greed is in the official DSA treatment, but I see this more as socially-conditioned. They might warrant a quirk-level Social Stigma, but I didn’t want to complicate things with too many non-canon traits. They are generally seen as about as trustworthy as the average human.
Feature: Immunities and Susceptibilities is a catch-all term for background stuff that will rarely crop up and mostly evens out. I’m using that for the Elves too.

Elves [+91 pts.]

Attributes and Secondary Characteristics [+33]: ST −1 [−10], DX +1 [25], HP −1 [−2]; Basic Speed +0,5 [10], PER +2 [10]

Advantages [+66]:

Acute Senses: Vision OR Hearing ODER Taste and Smell +3 [6]
Appearance: Attractive (Androgynous, +0%; Racial, +0%) [4]
Less Sleep +2 [4]
Magery +2 [25]
Night Vision +5 [5]
Perk: Distributed Sleep [1]
Perk: Two-voiced Singing [1]
Resistant: Disease (HT +8) [4]
Unaging [6]
Voice [10]
Feature: Immunities and Susceptibilities [0]

Distributed Sleep: While Elves only need 6 hours of sleep a day, they can also re-arrange their sleeping patterns to need only 2 hours a day for 3 days in a row. If they do so, they must catch up missed sleep by sleeping double the missed hours at the end of the three-day period. This is not quite what DSA canon says, but it’s close enough for my taste.
Two-Voiced Singing: Elves can sing with two voices at the same time, which is a requirement for elfsong magic.
Immunities and Susceptibilities: Elves are immune to lycanthropy and rabies. They are especially susceptible to Battleground Fever and Sleeping Disease (no bonus from Resistant: Disease and especially serious). Plants from the garlic family and Stinking Mirble trigger Quirk: Sensitive Sense of Smell (the latter with a −3 penalty). Elves are immune against the poison of Silky Bast, but take extra damage from narcissus poison.

Disadvantages [−8]:
Quirk: Alcohol Intolerance [−1]
Quirk: Horrible Hangovers [−1]
Quirk: Sensitive Sense of Smell [−1]
Social Stigma: Second-class Citizen [−5]

Sensitive Sense of Smell: Elves are extremely susceptible to stench. They resist all attacks based on malodorous smells with a −2 penalty and keep away from bad smells generally. This is mostly negated by putting a clothes-pin on one’s nose.

Elves as a race weren’t very difficult to stat. The attributes and secondary characteristics aren’t terribly different from D&D elves. Because GURPS IQ does include considerably more than just book learning I dropped the penalty from DSA. Magery is on par with a standard DSA mage, but how that works out in the end is extremely dependent on whether the elf grows up in an elven culture or not.
Distributed Sleep is a custom perk and Two-voiced Singing likewise. No need to make things more complicated than that. Alcohol Intolerance and Horrible Hangovers are canon quirks while Sensitive Sense of Smell is a custom one. I was always mystified why DSA 4.1 made this a full-fledged disadvantage. You can pretty much negate it with a clothes-pin.
Social Stigma is tied to the race and not the culture, because the average elf won’t immediately be treated as equal, because he or she grew up among humans. Feel free to delete this if you play a mage or priest who constantly walks around in the readily recognizable dress of his profession.
Everything else is pretty much standard. Note that the template offers a choice which sense to pick for Acute Senses. That’s not a standard GURPS feature for racial templates, but the DSA treatment made sense here.

Half-Elves [+33 pts.]

Attributes and Secondary Characteristics [+23]: ST −1 [−10], DX +1 [25]; HP −1 [−2], Basic Speed +0,25 [5], PER +1 [5]

Advantages [+10]:
Apearance: Attractive (Racial, +0%) [4]
Longevity [1]
Magery +0 [5]

Half-Elves are basically Elves Light. They don’t share most of latter’s bigger advantages and none of their disdavantages, but they are close attribute-wise and also possess Magery. A Social Stigma would have been possible, but it’s already kind of dubious for the Elves as such, so I left it out.

Humans [+0 pts.]

No Modifiers by race.

Humans are nothing special. They are the default and have no traits that differentiate them rules-wise.

Cultures

These were considerably more complicated to stat up than the races. The basic problem anyone doing cultural templates faces is whether to write them up as mandatory or just giving hints to the players. I decided on a middle-of-the-way approach and gave a detailed write-up, but not a mandatory one. Instead there are lists of emblematic traits and skills – things that could reasonably show up on the character sheet of any member of the culture, but wouldn’t be universal. All cultures also list expected language proficiency levels, tech level, status range and a couple of automatic traits. The latter appear mostly for the smaller and more exotic cultures (elves, dwarves, uncivilized peoples).
In each case there are two point costs. One for just the Automatic Languages and Automatic traits and a higher one that also includes all automatic skills – a good basis to start building on.

Dwarves:

Anvil Dwarfs [+3/+15 pts.]:

Cultural Familiarity: Dwarves
Automatic Languages [+2]: Rogolan (Native/Fluent) [−1], Garethi (Fluent/Broken) [3]
Common Languages: rarely Angram
Status: −1 to +5
Tech Level: 4
Automatic Traits [+1]: ST +1 [10]; Talent: Pickaxe Penchant +1 [6]; Odious Racial Habit −1: Use of coal dust ointment [−5], Greed (12) (Dwarven, +0%) [−15]
Emblematic Advantages: 3D Spatial Sense, Fit, Talent: Born Soldier/Dwarven Craftmanship/Mr. Smash/Pickaxe Penchant
Emblematic Disadvantages: Bad Temper, Hidebound, Intolerance: Reptile-Folk, Miserliness, Motion Sickness, Phobia: Open Spaces/Oceans, Stubbornness, Sense of Duty: Clan
Inappropriate Traits: Anti-Talent: Couch Potato/Non-combatant, Faerie Empathy, Fashion Sense, Plant Empathy, Phobia: Enclosed Spaces, Unfit, Xenophilia
Emblematic Skills: Area Knowledge: clan’s tunnels (IQ/E) [2], Axe/Mace (DX/A) [2], Forced Entry (DX/E) [2], Prospecting (IQ/A) [2], Smith: Iron (IQ/A) [2], Wrestling (DX/A) [2]

Pickaxe Penchant can be found in Dungeon Fantasy 3 and Power-Ups 3.
Greed with the Dwarven modifier treats any offer of interesting precious metals or stones (and objects made with them) as giving a -2 penalty on the self-control roll. Any offer that doesn’t involve these gets a +2 bonus on the self-control. Payment in regular coin is at no penalty or bonus.

Anvil Dwarves are one of the few cultures that get a straight-up attribute modifier. All of them are trained for war from childhood and they value strength highly.

Elves:

Lea Elf Clan [−11/+4 pts.]

Cultural Familiarity: Elves
Automatic Languages [−1]: Isdira (Native/None) [−2], Garethi (Fluent/None) [2]
Common Languages: Nivesian, Norbardic, rarely: Rogolan, Thorwalian, Tulamidya
Status: −1 to +2
Tech Level: 3
Automatic Traits [−10]: Arcane Knowledge: Salasandra [1], Code of Honor: Elves [−10], Quirk: Areligious [−1]
Emblematic Advantages: Acute Senses, Animal Empathy, Breath-Holding, Plant Empathy, Perfect Balance, Talent: Animal Friend/Born Sailor/Forest Guardian/Green Thumb/Outdoorsman
Emblematic Disadvantages: Curious, Sense of Duty: Clan, Phobia: Crowds
Inappropriate Traits: Alcoholism, Anti-Talent: Couch Potato, Bad Smell, Berserker, Night Blindness, Social Chameleon, Unfit
Emblematic Skills: Area Knowledge: clan’s hunting grounds (IQ/E) [2], Bow (DX/A) [2], Camouflage (IQ/E) [1], Fishing (PER/E) [2], Musical Instrument: {iama} (IQ/H) [2], Naturalist (IQ/H) [1], Stealth (DX/A) [2], Survival: Plains OR Swampland (PER/A) [2], Swimming (HT/E) [2]

Arcane Knowledge: Salasandra allows members of one clan to open their souls to one another. Treat this as Empathy (Only one Person). Together with Two-voiced Singing it also enables the use of elfsong in the community of the clan.
Code of Honor: Elf is the basis of what it means to be an elf. Elves wouldn’t see it as a code, but just the way they are. Game-wise it’s sufficiently described with: Do not exploit nature, but return something of your own for every gift your receive. Revere your soul animal and do not hunt it. Keep a balance between creation and destruction in your own actions. Heed your dreams. Do not pursue wealth or dominance over others. Truly important things can only be learned in your clan’s salasandra.

Lea Elves are DSA’s “beginner’s elves”. They are easier to roleplay than the more remote Wood or Firn Elves and the fact that they can learn more languages reflects off-the-bat reflects this. Their code of honor can still be a challenge for veteran players, though.

Firn Elf Clan [-10/+9 pts.]

Cultural Familiarity: Elves
Automatic Languages [−2]: Isdira (Native/None) [−3], Garethi (Broken/None) [1]
Common Languages: Nujuka; rarely: Yeti
Status: −1 to +2
Tech Level: 2
Automatic Traits [−10]: Arcane Knowledge: Salasandra [1], Temperature Tolerance +2 (−15 to +25° C); Code of Honor: Elves [−10], Quirk: Areligious [−1]
Emblematic Advantages: Absolute Direction, Acute Senses, Animal Empathy, Danger Sense, Fearlessness, Perfect Balance, Talent: Animal Friend/Born Athlete/Born Sailor/Forest Guardian/Outdoorsman/Stalker/Survivor
Emblematic Disadvantages: Curious, Sense of Duty: Clan, Phobia: Crowds, Shyness
Inappropriate Traits: Alcoholism, Anti-Talent: Couch Potato, Bad Smell, Berserker, Fat, Laziness, Night Blindness, Overweight, Social Chameleon, Unfit
Emblematic Skills: Area Knowledge: clan’s hunting grounds (IQ/E) [2], Boating (DX/A) [2], Bow (DX/A) [2] OR Thrown Weapon: Spear (DX/E) [2], Fishing (PER/E) [2], Musical Instrument: {iama} (IQ/H) [2], Naturalist (IQ/H) [2], Stealth (DX/A) [2], Survival: Arctic (PER/A) [4], Swimming (HT/E) [1]

Not the nicest and most accessible guys in the book, Firn Elves are mainly tough as nails.

Humans:

Garetian (Middlelandic townsfolk) [−2/+1 pts.]

Cultural Familiarity: Middlelander
Automatic Languages [−2]: Garethi: {possibly a variant dialect} (Native/Broken) [−2]
Common Languages: Tulamidya, Rogolan, Thorwalian
Status: −2 to +7
Tech Level: 4
Automatic Traits: none
Emblematic Advantages: Contact, Social Chameleon, Talent: Craftiness/Street Smarts/Smooth Operator
Emblematic Disadvantages: Anti-Talent: Couch Potato, Curious, Selfish
Inappropriate Traits: Faerie Empathy, Spirit Empathy; Phobia: Crowds
Emblematic Skills: Area Knowledge: home town (IQ/E) [1]

Basic townsfolk in the Middle Empire and elsewhere. They are a pretty varied lot and have few emblematic skills as such.

Middle Empire (Middlelandic country folks) [−3/−1 pts.]

Cultural Familiarity: Middlelander
Automatic Languages [−3]: Garethi: {possibly a variant dialect} (Native/None) [−3]
Common Languages: Tulamidya, Rogolan, Thorwalian
Status: −2 to +7
Tech Level: 3-4
Automatic Traits: none
Emblematic Advantages: Common Sense, Danger Sense, Fit, Talent: Survivor
Emblematic Disadvantages: Delusion: Superstition, Loner, Intolerance: esp. strangers, city-folk, Social Stigma: Serf (Second-class citizen)
Inappropriate Traits: Social Chameleon; Phobia: open spaces
Emblematic Skills: Area Knowledge: home village (IQ/E) [1], Farming (IQ/A) [1] OR Animal Handling: {Farm Animal} (IQ/A) OR Fishing (PER/E) [1]

Country folks need at least one skill to make a living – yes, even if they are merely herding the serfs who do the actual work.

Fountland (Foundlandic countryside and small towns) [−3/−1 pts.]:

Cultural Familiarity: Middlelander
Automatic Languages [−3]: Garethi: Fountlandian (Native/None) [−3]
Common Languages: Alaani, Nujuka
Status: −2 to +6
Tech Level: 3-4
Automatic Traits: none
Emblematic Advantages: Absolute Direction, Common Sense, Fit, Talent: Business Acumen/Outdoorsman/Survivor, Temperature Tolerance (only towards cold)
Emblematic Disadvantages: Inappropriate Traits: Delusions: Superstition, Chummy, Social Chameleon; Phobia: open spaces, Social Stigma: Serf (Second-class citizen)
Emblematic Skills: Area Knowledge: home village (IQ/E) [1], Farming (IQ/A) [1] OR Animal Handling: {Farm Animal} (IQ/A) OR Fishing (PER/E) [1]

Pretty similar to the previous culture Fountlandians also represent the archetype of the clever merchant. That doesn’t mean every second serf has the skill.

Amazon Stronghold (Prerequisite: human woman) [−7/+4 pts.]:

Cultural Familiarity: Amazonian
Automatic Languages [−2]: Garethi: Amazonian OR Tuladmidya: Amazonian (Native/Broken) [−2]
Common Languages: Garethi, Tulamidya
Status: +0 to +4
Tech Level: 3
Automatic Traits [−5]: Fit [5], Social Regard: Respected +1 [5]; Code of Honor: Amazon [−15]
Emblematic Advantages: Combat Reflexes, Danger Sense, Fearlessness, Fit, High Pain Threshold, Rapid Healing, Single-Minded, Talent: Born Athlete/Born War Leader/Devotion
Emblematic Disadvantages: Anti-Talent: Unsubtle, Intolerance: Men, No Sense of Humor, Selfish
Inappropriate Traits: Anti-Talent: Animal Foe/Couch Potato/Non-Combattant, Cowardice, Cultural Adaptability, Faerie Empathy, Fat, Greed, Kobold Empathy, Magery, Pacifism for more than 10 pts., Social Chameleon, Spirit Empathy, Unfit
Emblematic Skills: Area Knowledge: Stronghold and environs (IQ/E) [1], Bow (DX/A) OR Thrown Weapon: Spear (DX/E) [2], Broadsword (DX/A) [2], Climbing (DX/A) [1], Riding (DX/A) [2], Running (HT/A) [1], Soldier (IQ/A) [1], Theology: Rondra (IQ/H) [1]

Code of Honor: Amazon resembles a Knight’s or Rondra Priest’s Code, but with a different focus. Ruleswise it’s the follwing: “Punish each insult to Rondra. Meet each challenge appropriately. Fight honorably, meaning no assassin’s tactics and poison use, ranged weapons and ambushes are permitted. Rebuke weak women and haughty men. Do not evade combat, except when honor demands it. Refrain from relationships with men. Temper your spirit and body and be hard towards yourself and others. Give a monthly blood tithe to Rondra – through combat, your own blood or animal sacrifice. Obey the orders of higher-ranking Amazons.”
“Active” Amazons who are still part of the command structure supplement this with a Duty, but few such PCs will be able to stay with any group of adventurers for long. Playing outcast or lost Amazons will be the norm.

Amazons didn’t have it easy in recent years in canon. They are also notoriously hard to integrate into a group of adventurers, but they do present a nice roleplaying challenge.

Parting Shots

In general, it is not necessary to stat every culture in the book. It is enough for the GM to know which cultural familiarity and languages exist in an area, what kind of status levels are available, what other social traits and skills are very important and what’s the general attitude of the populace. If you know Aventuria well and are familiar with GURPS you can do that on the fly during character creation. That raises an important point: The GM should always be present for the main part of character creation. Even if your players are veterans of both GURPS and DSA, don’t leave them to fend on their own. It’s generally okay for players to submit a draft, but then you should talk it through together. That goes doubly for setting conversions. A new ability or combination of traits that looked perfectly fine toa player can turn out extremely unbalancing when somebody else gives it a once-over. GURPS character creation is not Solitaire.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy

Review: GURPS Thaumatology – Sorcery

As all my other reviews this one will be rated according to meat (rules, stats, game mechanics), cheese (setting, characters, story), sauce (form, writing, style, art) and generic nutritional substance (universal nature, adaptability). At the end you find a weighted average of those components and a value score that also takes into account price per page.

This week’s release was hinted at beforehand, but GURPS Thaumatology – Sorcery wasn’t exactly what I expected. Nevertheless, it’s a welcome addition to the ever-growing list of alternatives to the standard magic system from GURPS Magic.

Cover of GURPS Thaumatology - SorceryAs with last couple of titles in the Thaumatology series, prospective readers don’t actually need GURPS Thaumatology to use this book. Surprising is the fact that they don’t strictly need Powers or Magic either. Don’t let that fool you into thinking that you have an easy alternative magic system for new players here. Sorcery is almost on the level of Ritual Path Magic when it comes to the required rules-savvyness. If a GM is up to snuff, he can use the material to make it easier for inexperienced players to create magic-users, but like Ritual Path Magic the book on its own doesn’t quite provide a ready-to-use system replete with all the spells you could ever need.

Before I dive into the contents, a hint for prospective buyers: The material here is an expansion of the article “The Power of Sorcery” in Pyramid 3.63: Infinite Worlds II. As this wasn’t a magic issue of Pyramid you might have missed it, even if you have a subscription. The material has been greatly expanded from 7 pages to 32, but it’s still based on the same assumptions. If you like the Pyramid article, you will like the stand-alone treatment. The same goes for the opposite.

Facts

Author:  Jason Levine (“Reverend Pee Kitty / PK”)
Date of Publication:  2015/08/06
Format: PDF-only (Warehouse 23-only)
Page Count: 36 (1 title page, 1 content page, 1 index page, 1 page ad)
Price: $7.99 (PDF), $ 0.25 per page of content; Score of 4/10
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Review

The book is almost exclusively concerned with rules, but it does have a few nods to world-building mechanics (like the economics of enchantment) and atmosphere (rules for magical weapons etc.). It’s the first generic treatment of Magic as Powers as a stand-alone volume. Chinese Elemental Powers, while also using this approach, was a lot more setting specific and less comprehensive. Not that the volume at hand tries to present a ready-to-play magic kit, but its scope is much more inclusive.

The book is divided into three chapters. The first one comes in at 8 pages and explains how Sorcery works. This part is pretty exhaustive answering almost every question about the system that could come up. It offers some rules switches that give players more tactical options and explains in detail how the mechanics were arrived at. These “Under the Hood” boxes were always a strength in RPK’s work and they don’t disappoint here. In addition to that there is a discussion of spell types that gives us keywords like “Jet”, “Obvious”, “Buff” and “Weapon Buff” – in short things that really should have been in the fourth-edition treatment of GURPS Magic. This section doesn’t merely describe what the keywords mean, but also how to build spells of these types.

And this brings us to chapter two, which is basically a list of two GURPS Magic spells per college that have been given the Spells as Powers treatment and found a second life as abilities. This section is 15 pages long and takes up the lion’s share of the book. Now, that’s a bit more than three spells a page with ability write-ups, effects, point costs and spell statistics and that makes things a bit cramped. There are definitely a couple of very interesting ways of statting the abilities – my favourite is using Contact! as a base for Awaken Computer – but I can’t help but feel that this is neither very close to the original spells nor all that helpful for beginners. The grimoire in RPK’s Ritual Path Magic was much more  comprehensive and offered enough rituals for novice GMs to tide them over for a while. Maybe it would have been better to not directly mirror Magic in this regard. Readers who also own Pyramid 3.63 can, however, add a hefty dose of fire spells to the mix.

Chapter three brings us enchantment rules for sorcerers and that’s where the book really shines. In 7 pages RPK gives us comprehensive rules from spending character points to spending time (and risking failure) to the intrinsic value needed for enchanted items to the economics of enchantment. We learn why jewellery is so much easier to enchant than swords, why there are no magic clothes in this system (except for cloaks) and even how to make potions.

The book is rounded of with a sample character that shows us how compressed a sorcerer’s character sheet can be.

Meat

As I’ve said above, this book is almost all meat and will be rated accordingly. The heart of the content lies in the new advantage Sorcerous Empowerment. SoEmp works similar to Divine Favor from the eponymous volume in Powers series. Basically you have SoEmp as an enabling advantage that allows you to

a) improvise relatively weak spells (Improvisation)
b) improvise relatively powerful spells, but at a greater cost and risk (Hardcore Improvisation)
c) learn spells that cost less than the points you spent on SoEmp (Learned Spells)

Spells in this are always built as abilities and make use Sorcery Talent. They normally cost 1 FP and take 2 seconds to cast, but don’t usually mandate a skill roll or any ritual – except for hardcore improvisation. These changes make Sorcery feel quite different from Standard Magic, which is good. If you don’t like the psi-like lack of ritual, there’s an optional rule to add it back in. Sorcerers are as a rule less flexible than a fully-trained mage, but given enough power that gap closes. In any case, they have a lot of flexibility when it comes to very low-level effects, which is something that Standard Magic is not so good with.

There are however, two problems with this system. The first is that the more specialised you become the higher your level of SoEmp has to be to use hardcore improvisation and learned spells. While specialisation indeed benefits regular improvisation there aren’t that many spells you can use that way even with a very high SoEmp level. This is unfortunate, since most fictional examples present specialisation as a way to gain power more quickly. This is pretty much impossible under these rules. The other problem is more endemic to the Magic as Powers approach: It shares all the shortcomings of the standard ability system, namely that Innate Attack is very cheap and Affliction and some marginal abilities are very expensive.

For example, the relatively impotent effect of No-Smell costs 63 points, while a Sunbolt inflicting 15 dice of damage costs 60 points. Granted, not giving off any scent can occasionally be a life-saver, but I know which of those my players would choose. With most spells costing only a single fatigue point, the biggest balancing mechanism of Standard Magic is gone and the GM runs into the typical problems of a Supers game. Sure, you can set arbitrary limits on damage or pre-construct a list of of approved spells, but examples like that Sunbolt make things difficult for the GM.

Which brings us to the spell list in chapter two. The spells are not exactly conversions of the versions given in Magic, but more like re-imaginings, which makes them rather hard to compare to what various members of the GURPS community have produced over the years. The good thing about that is that they are often a lot less complicated than the spells in Magic. The bad thing is that they are sometimes really free-form and not quite rules-conforming (e.g. Grease giving only the bad effects of Control: Friction).

Having said that, some of RPK’s solutions to difficult conversion problems are sometimes nothing short of ingenious. I’ve already mentioned Awaken Computer, but any of the following are at least interesting to look at: Repel Animals, Haircut, Tanglefoot, Create Object, Disintegrate, Inspired Creation, Dispel Magic, Remove Curse, Lesser Geas and Reverse Missiles. Of course, they often do change some rather significant parts of the spells they re-build, but if nothing else they are very good studies in how to build abilities.

Chapter three contains a complete enchantment system that is the piece-de-resistance of the book. In contrast to everything that has gone on before, this part is plug-and-play. Instead of arbitrary energy costs for any given spell, it uses its character point cost as the basis then modifies it by the type of object it is cast on. This is similar to gadget limitations, but the implementation shows little of the origins. It is relatively simple and very elegant. Instead of Magic’s quick-and-dirty (less than a day, but low energy) and slow-and-sure (no limits, but taking years), the time used for enchantment is always somewhere in the middle (from days to months). That depends on how many character points the enchanter is willing to spend. The character-point intensive method is called Personal Sacrifice, the time-intensive is called Spectral Forging and is more dangerous. All powerful items need at least some personal sacrifice, though. No matter what kind of method you use, you will make frequent rolls and even if your critically fail there’s always a chance to start over without losing everything.

This excellent core system can be used with any magic system as long as you have the spells statted as abilities. In addition to this core RPK adds extra rules for the inherent value of items, economic considerations and optional rules for attuning items to the wearer if the GM is worried about Sorcery proliferation.

The sample character is nothing special, but rounds off the book nicely.

Meat score: 7.5 (empowered)

Cheese

As I’ve said, there’s little that relates to world-building or matters of atmosphere. That’s not necessarily a bad thing in a rules-focused book. Enchantment takes into consideration some world-building issues and the sample character could be easily be used for a Banestorm session or two.

Cheese score: 3

Sauce

The interior is sparsely illustrated and all the illustrations are relatively simple ones from third-edition sources, but they don’t distract much from the material. The cover, however is extremely uninspired merely combining the interior images into a ribbon. One of the illustrations is cropped in a way that you have no idea what’s going on. I much prefer some abstract styling like in Magical Styles – Dungeon Magic, Powers – Enhanced Senses or Power-Ups 8. That’s more recognisable and prettier at the same time.

The style is very readable and the editing is top-notch – I found one typo, but wouldn’t we happy if that was all we could find in our RPG books? It’s also the first RPG product I know of that has pull quotes from both My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Homestuck. Isn’t that magical enough…

Sauce score: 5.5 (okay art, good writing and editing, lousy cover)

Generic Nutritional Substance

Of course any book about matters magical is not going to be appropriate for settings without supernatural elements. Apart from that, Sorcery is certainly generic enough to be dropped into many settings. You need only add Low-Tech to make up standard S&S, urban fantasy is generally fine with powers you find within your self and even for Science Fantasy it’s a good match.

Generic Nutritional Substance score: 7.5 (pretty generic supernatural upgrade for your campaign)

Summary

Sorcery brings many good things and some that are slightly disappointing. If you’re looking for something that makes your magic-users quick, somewhat flexible and not totally imbalanced, it is the book for you. If you only want a catalogue of GURPS Magic spells as powers, this isn’t it yet. If you’re looking for a good enchantment system and don’t mind the price tag, buy it!

Total score: 6,425  (good, but hampered by some hiccups)
Total score is composed of a weighted average of Meat (50%), Cheese (15%), Sauce (20%) and Generic Nutritional Substance (15%). This is a meat-oriented book. A “cheesy” setting- or drama-orientied book would turn the percentages for cheese and meat around.

Value score: 5.2125 (still average, though among the pricier GURPS PDFs due to its short length)
Value Score is composed of the average of Total and Price.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.

Review: GURPS Social Engineering – Back to School

As all my other reviews this one will be rated according to meat (rules, stats, game mechanics), cheese (setting, characters, story), sauce (form, writing, style, art) and generic nutritional substance (universal nature, adaptability). At the end you find a weighted average of those components and a value score that also takes into account price per page.

While not completely unexpected Social Engineering – Back to School is certainly a welcome addition to William H. Stoddard’s oeuvre. Even more welcome is the fact that it weighs in at the same size as Locations – Worminghall, which it complements nicely without being a bona fide companion volume. It is, however, a bona fide Social Engineering supplement down to the tile (sorry, Boardroom and Curia, but it’s the name that tells).

Cover of GURPS Social Engineering - Back to School

So what does it offer? Back to School is the go-to book for GMs who want to set a campaign at a school, dojo or bootcamp and not just tally the hours spent there. It expands considerably on the rules for learning presented in Characters. Readers of Worminghall will find some familiar titbits like the study roll, but the rules here are far more comprehensive and the tweaks suggest some serious playtesting. Also some of the contents are really unexpected – though always in a good way.

Facts

Author: William H. Stoddard (WHS)
Date of Publication: 2015/07/09
Format: PDF-only (Warehouse 23-only)
Page Count:  41 (1 title page, 1 content page, 2 index pages, 1 page ad)
Price: $7.99 (PDF), $ 0.22 per page of content; Score of 5/10
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Review

Unsurprisingly, the book is very rules-focused. At the same time it does offer considerable insight in common social situations and ways in which teaching and learning might crop up in a game. Like with Social Engineering itself that makes the distinction on whether the book deals mainly with rules or plot ideas a bit fuzzy, but in the end the rules are certainly have the lion’s share.

Readers who liked the mother volume of the series will also like this one, unless they really don’t like learning in their games. As the title suggests rules and ideas for school settings make up a big part of the book, but even if you aren’t running Harry Potter with the serial numbers filed off, you will get quite a bit out of this book. Apart from one-shots there’s hardly a campaign that won’t benefit from at least some of its contents. Okay, there aren’t any gold-for-skill rules like those you find in Dungeon Fantasy, but that’s about it.

The book is divided into four chapters: The first deals with teaching from a student’s perspective and comes in at eleven pages. The second does the same from a teacher’s perspective and is ten pages long. Relevant traits, skills, techniques and methods are split between both these sections. The split is useful for when you have a certain focus in mind for your campaign, but makes it a bit more difficult to find what you were looking for if you want to represent both the students’ and the teachers’ point of view in your campaign. The third chapter deals with schools as organisations and takes up nine pages. This makes use of mechanics taken from Social Engineering itself as well as Boardroom and Curia and Social Engineering – Pulling Rank, though its main focus is on relationships, situations and structures. The final chapter deals with campaign ideas and is only three pages long without any rules.

This is rounded off by a handy two page appendix that lists all the standard learning times and all the traits that affect it, two pages of bibliography and a two-page index, both of which are nice and thorough.

Meat

Practically everything that could concern learning is touched upon. Finding teachers or schools, using unusual teaching situations or materials, the effects of various traits on teaching and learning, but also spells, special abilities, futuristic and realistic drugs, legendary teaching and how to price a school as a patron (and what that means for its facilities, staff etc.). The most useful rule by far is the study which replaces automatic gain of valuable study hours by something that is influenced by each student’s character sheet.

Now that comprehensive treatment is just what you’d expect when Mr. Stoddard tackles a subject, but there’s more. We learn new things about skills in general and how their transmission is affected by tech level, language comprehension and available facilities. The author also manages to plug a couple of annoying holes in the basic set. No longer is it possible to just drop 16 points in a spell “because I used it in game”. Skill use under pressure is certainly one of the nicest rules fix for this very reason. I also appreciate that learning is now affected by Laziness (which used to be free points for mages).

Surprisingly enough you’ll also find comprehensive rules for brainwashing (and -hacking) in the section on “Coercive Teaching” that’s sure to please all the Snape fans. That together with spells and powers for teaching and studying round the subject off in satisfyingly universal way.

Meat score: 9 (A++)

Cheese

For a meaty book there’s certainly a lot of soft cheesy material here. While the first two chapters are certainly rule-focussed they also provide lots of bits to build your own setting. The rules take a back seat in chapter 3, although the rules-conscious social engineer won’t be disappointed there either. The chapter basically covers all the bases when it comes to designing your own base for teaching including the owners and their motivations. True, it’s not exactly the cheese lovers paradise, but it’ll get you far.

Chapter four may be a bit short with only three pages, but more unusual ideas in there (like the invaded house trope) will certainly prove inspiring to GMs. Personally, I will start cribbing for my own magic school campaign as soon as I finish this review.

The bibliography also provides some pointers for inspiration and it is a welcome change of pace that even smaller books like this one get a bibliography now. The only jarring thing is that the only mention of Terry Pratchett is in a pull-quote.

On the whole the book has a lot to offer on the dramatic side of things too. Just what you’d expect from it being part of the Social Engineering series.

Cheese score: 7 (pretty much the perfect cordon bleu if you ask me)

Sauce

Compared to some of the recent GURPS releases (Zombies – Day One I’m looking at you), the art of Back to School is actually pretty good. Not perfect, but fitting and refreshingly non-ugly. While I have the feeling that at least some of the images have been reused I cannot trace them back to specific locations. Most of them are very focused on books and sometimes it’s hard to tell how they’re relevant to the section they’re in, but they’re certainly inspirational. The image on page 36 makes me want to run an illegal education of the masses campaign for a steampunk setting. It’s a bit of a pity that the title page is really uninspiring, but the mass of text in the title excuses that shortcome.

The editing, while still above industry standard is not quite up to GURPS standards. There are a couple of minor errors in grammar and sentence structure that cropped up even on my first reading. They’re most likely due to rearranging text blocks, but they do distract a bit.

Also distracting is that some of student/teacher traits show up in the wrong chapter, for example there are a couple of spells that are clearly geared towards students, but show up under teachers because there is no section for spells in student chapter. Minor, but not perfect.

Sauce score: 7 (good art, good writing, imperfect editing)

Generic Nutritional Substance

Now, I know I talked a lot about schools in this review, but this book isn’t just about that. It also deals with dojos, monasteries, universities, on-the-job and vocational training, military boot camps, apprenticeships, tutoring and ‘schools for gifted youngsters’. It’s not only for the Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer crowds.

Back to School has rules for teaching by gesture (“Anybody wants to play pre-verbal stone-age tribesmen?”), by lecturing, by telepresence and by immersion into virtual realities. It gives you a version of Blessed that’s the mythical equivalent of Weapon Master for teachers. It shows you how to rehearse in your dreams, use illusions during teaching, help your students by reading their minds and how to make your own teaching materials. Within the subject matter you cannot be more generic.

Generic Nutritional Substance score: 10 (Gold star!)

Summary

If Back to School were a print-only book, it would get an easily accessible spot on my GURPS book-shelve. You might not need it all the time if you’re running a regular high fantasy, cop drama or space opera, but it will be useful time and again. For campaigns where learning is the actual focus, be they set in some anime universe or in Hogwarts, the book is absolutely invaluable.

Total score: 8.45  (top percentile)
Total score is composed of a weighted average of Meat (50%), Cheese (15%), Sauce (20%) and Generic Nutritional Substance (15%). This is a meat-oriented book. A “cheesy” setting- or drama-orientied book would turn the percentages for cheese and meat around.

Value score: 6.725 (only hampered by its length)
Value Score is composed of the average of Total and Price.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy.

Step-by-Step: DSA GURPS Conversion I – The Basics

Even the most dedicated GURPS fan has to admit that their favourite system is kind of lacking in rich, detailed settings that you can just lose yourself in. However, it offers all the tools needed to make every setting a GURPS setting. This guide shows you one way of doing such a conversion. It uses the German RPG Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) as an example.

1) Take a deep breath and think on why you want to convert this specific setting.

Whether the setting is another RPG system, a novel, a film, a computer game or a TV series you first need to be sure what you’re going for. A novel might be very good on its own, but not lend itself to an RPG experience. A film might not be so much fun if your players can’t think of cool one-liners and you have to imagine all the special effects. The intrigues and relationships that make up a TV series might not be so much fun if your characters never get to see what motivates them, because that happens in NPC-only scenes.

RPG settings are easier in this regard – they already work well for groups of PCs – but they pose an additional question: Why aren’t you just playing the setting using its original rules? Valid answers are lack of realism (D&D, DSA), plain shoddy rules (everything from Palladium), new editions every couple of years (D&D, Shadowrun, DSA), overly complicated rules (DSA), rules that don’t allow certain character concepts (D&D) or unwillingness of your players to try new things. The last point needs to be emphasised. If your players are happy to try the other rule system, at least give it a try. There’s no point in converting a whole setting if you are only doing it for yourself, even if you love converting settings.

I’ve already outlined the reasons why I think converting DSA to GURPS is a good idea here.

2) Start with what you need.

Converting a setting means you’re going to be in for the long haul, but that doesn’t mean you should disregard short-term needs. It’s best to start off with asking your players what they would want to play. Making those starting characters possible should be one of your first goals. But you also need to know what should happen with the rest of the setting.

In the case of our DSA campaign, we actually converted an existing group of characters:

1) Borlox, the dwarven mercenary. Racial stats for dwarves were an obvious start, but also rules for appropriate gear and such.
2) Kalman, the half-elven hunter. Besides racial stats for half-elves, I also needed to decide how to handle ranged weapons. I decided as a more realistic style than in my Forgotten Realms campaign and didn’t hand out Heroic Archer to a starting character. That meant none of the others got Weapon Master either.
3) Stiblet, the human priest of Hesinde. The main thing here was to figure out how to handle divine miracles and fortunately Powers – Divine Favor is a good fit. Apart from a number of custom-made learned miracles and a couple of tiny tweaks to dice rolls the system works fine.
4) Vitus, the human transformation mage. Apart from the two or three new spells there was also the issue of how to arrange the magic system. Nothing Thaumatology and Magical Styles couldn’t solve.
5) Woltan, the warrior. Nothing more than a fighting style for his academy and a decision on how to trade points of equipment was needed.

With the starting characters I knew I needed to flesh out two races, divine influences and standard magic as taught at mages’ academy.

Now all the characters also had an ethnic origin that was somewhat reflected in their disadvantages, language selection and even skills. Should this be converted into hard and fast rules? I am kind of averse to giving different cultures different stats and in the end I decided to use emblematic traits to give some flavour without mandating that every Thorwalian knows how to row a boat.

Some characters also had Special Abilities – DSA’s answer to D&D feats. These are almost exclusively used for combat, magic and supernatural tricks. They can be learned and most of the combat ones make more sense as techniques, manoeuvres and perks. I mean it’s hard to imagine why you have to buy a special ability just to learn how to feint. It’s not hard to just make ad hoc judgements about whether a given combat ability falls into the purview of a perk, technique or manoeuvre.

Magical abilities are harder to pin down and more likely to cause problems. There aren’t very many that are ubiquitous, but every mage starts out with a couple of those, including staff enchantment rituals and arcane meditation, which is a way to gain more magical energy. These were likely to be complicated so I decided to just use DSA rules without setting a cost for the first few sessions. This brings us to step three.

3) Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Not worrying about some aspects of the setting is absolutely fine. Things can work by fiat until you work out more detailed rules. Just don’t skimp on the points necessary to buy the rules-compliant abilities later.

That’s especially the case for minor things that are there mainly for flavour: minor social traits, the exact way some ritual or piece of equipment works, exact spell costs and the final contents of the magical colleges. If it’s not of vital importance for your starting characters, ignore it!

4) Paint with broad strokes.

Related to the previous step, but even more important: While it’s fine to ignore details, you should know where you want to go with the setting as a whole. Even if you don’t plan on using some aspects of the setting any time soon, you should know the general rules you want to work. This is always important for supernatural and exotic powers and abilities, but cinematic conventions and the influence of ultra-tech or superscience bear thinking about.

For a fantasy setting like DSA supernatural stuff far outnumbers all other considerations. The setting’s main kind of magic consists of skill-like spells. Mages, elves, druids, witches, geodes they all use some variant of this. Other ways to work magic exist, but they are far less prominent in the setting. Making this spell magic work well is the bulk of the conversion work. It’s also important to differentiate the different magical traditions from each other without making them completely incompatible. For this reason they will all use a core of GURPS Magic with switches and variants taken from GURPS Thaumatology. They depend on mana level, but those aren’t extremely varied with most of the world being normal mana. Of course, in DSA it is possible to construct low and no mana zones by using certain stones as building material, so this evens out.

Other magical traditions and the less common rituals of the traditions mentioned above will use other magic systems taken from other sources. One thing that is clear though is that the “Magic as Powers” approach will be used only sparingly. All magic uses up energy sources and powers don’t mix very well with a “spells as skills” approach in this case.

Divine powers on the other hand will be common, but fickle. Those don’t use energy pools and depend on sanctity instead of mana. Basically the system presented in GURPS Powers: Divine Favor is used.

There are some kinds of powers that seem to stand in between those two groups like shamans, the Gjalskerlander Beast-Warrior or the Ferkina Possessed. These special cases are set aside for a consideration at a later time. There might be a space for spirit-based or chi-based powers in DSA, even if the setting calls everything magic or divine agency.

Apart from the supernatural, there isn’t all that much out of the ordinary. Combat-oriented characters can be distinguished by skills, weapons, armour and martial styles. Social structures can be easily described with GURPS terminology, especially if you’re using GURPS Social Engineering. Races are rather straightforward to convert, even though their special legal statuses are often hidden in other publications (DSA doesn’t care for assigning points even to pretty hefty cases of Legal Immunity). Technology is an eclectic mix of TL 0-4 as is typical for fantasy settings, but nothing a base TL can’t handle.

The next part of this series will deal with how to handle the conversion of a setting’s races and give examples for the most important ones in DSA.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy

GURPS DSA – Wirklich eine gute Idee?

This is a German variant of the English article. There isn’t much here that isn’t in the English version.

In der irrigen Annahme, dass jemand aus Deutschland daran interessiert sein könnte, hier noch eine Version des letzten Artikels in der Originalsprache des Schwarzen Auges.

Als langjähriger Freund und Playtester von GURPS habe ich schon manche Konversion unternommen, aber von DSA hatte ich mich immer ferngehalten bis alter Freund mal wieder spielen wollte und wir nach zwei Abenteuern feststellen mussten, dass niemand die Regeln mochte.

Für den geneigten deutschen Leser – d.h. jemanden, dem Pen & Paper Rollenspiele bekannt sind – brauche ich nicht viele Worte um DSA zu machen, aber ein paar Stichpunkte zu den Eigenschaften des Settings sind natürlich nützlich.

Gutes

1) DSA ist ein dichtes Setting. Nicht jeder Spielleiter – auch nicht jeder GURPS-SL – ist gut im Worlbuilding und DSA hat genug Material, dass so ein Makel nie auffallen wird. Die Welt ist – für eine Fantasywelt – auch nicht zu unlogisch (jaja, die Klimazonen, ich weiß).

2) Der Support mit neuem Material ist sichergestellt. Alte Abenteuer sind auch gut als PDF zu erhalten. Insgesamt ist der Support vergleichbar mit GURPS, wenn auch mit anderer Stoßrichtung (Setting, Abenteuer) und etwas schwankender Qualität.

3) Durch die Abenteuer und das sehr ausgestaltete Setting nimmt DSA dem Spielleiter viel ab. Wer keine vorgefertigten Abenteuer mag, ist natürlich falsch beraten DSA oder eine GURPS-Variante zu seinem System zu erküren.

4) Es gibt jede Menge originelle Charakterkonzepte. Nicht nur vermeidet man den Standard-Krieger und -Magier, Charaktere wie Schelm, Zibilja, Kristallomant oder Geweihter laden zum etwas anderen Rollenspiel ein. Abstimmung mit Gruppe und SL ist dabei natürlich immer wichtig.

5) Die große Fangemeinde macht das Finden von Spielern recht einfach. Ob das auch für die GURPS-Variante zutrifft kann ich nicht sagen, aber eine bestehende DSA-Gruppe zu überzeugen, die GURPS-Regeln auszuprobieren war bei mir machbar.

Schlechtes

1) Das Setting kann überwältigend sein. Der prospektive SL sollte sich klar machen, wie nahe er am “offiziellen” Aventurien bleiben will und wie fanatisch seine Spieler auf dem Kanon beharren. Abenteuer sind besonders schlimm in dieser Hinsicht mit ihren Orts- und Zeitbeschränkungen. Jedoch ist es häufig möglich letztere zu umgehen, wenn man den Kleinkram überliest. Ortsbeschränkungen sind dagegen oft nicht zu ändern, auch wenn die Abenteuer es manchmal übertreiben. Hier könnte eine gute Liste Abhilfe schaffen, aber bislang konnte ich noch nichts finden.

2) Über die Regeln kann man einiges sagen, aber viel Gutes ist nicht dabei. Ohne Automatisierung ist die Charaktererstellung ein einziger Horror, die Talent-Probe ist ein schlechter Witz, der aber für 50% des Spiels verantwortlich ist, Sonderfertigkeiten machen aus realistischer Perspektive selten Sinn und Beschränkungen wie Elfische Weltsicht sind einfach blöd. Vieles was an der vierten Edition gut ist (echte Vor- und Nachteile, mehr Kampfoptionen, Variation von Zaubern) wurde von anderen Systeme (v.a. GURPS) mehr schlecht als recht übernommen. Schwer wiegt auch die Tatsache, dass vieles einfach nicht so zum Hintergrund passt wie man ihn aus Romanen und Zitaten kennt.

3) DSA-Fans sind oft recht fanatisch. Einerseits ist das gut, da die Spieler dann nicht schnell die Lust verlieren, andererseits muss man sich als SL oft mal auf die Finger klopfen lassen. Und es ist auch nicht witzig sich von realweltlichen Praioten runterputzen zu lassen, nur weil man eine Hexe in der Gruppe hat.

4) Die Kosten für die Materialien sind hoch. Auch wenn man sich als GURPS-SL auf die Basics beschränken kann wird man doch an Schwerter & Helden, Zauberei & Hexenwerk, Götter & Dämonen und einigen Hintergrundwerken nicht vorbei kommen. Selbst als PDF laufen diese drei veralteten “Grund”regelwerke auf 60€ heraus. Das (gerade noch) aktuelle Wege-Paket schlägt sohar mit 90€ zu Buche. Und damit sind noch nicht die Hintergrüne und Abenteuer abgedeckt. Okay, GURPS ist auch nicht gerade billig, aber die Vielzahl von DSA-Regionalbänden kann den Erwerb recht teuer machen (zumal nicht alle als PDF vorhanden sind).

5) Der Sprach-Mix macht’s schwer. Die vierte Edition von GURPS gibt es nur auf Englisch und DSA gibt es praktisch nur auf Deutsch. Ich muss tatsächlich mal nachfragen, ob es legal ist Übersetzungen zu posten. DSA mit englischen Skills und Disadvantages zu spielen macht jedenfalls nicht soviel Spaß.

Schönes

Warum sollte man sich überhaupt an einer Konversion versuchen? Da gibt es durchaus Gründe dafür:

1) Etwas, das GURPS immer wieder Probleme bereitet, ist das Fehlen detaillierter Settings. Ja, es gibt die Infinite Worlds, in die man jedes Setting einbetten kann. Sowohl für Infinite Worlds als auch für Banestorm gibt es sogar eine kleine Quellenbücher, aber das war’s dann auch schon, wenn man sich nicht auf Transhuman Space und dessen Übergang von 3. auf 4. Edition einlassen will. GURPS ist nichts für SLs, die ein komplettes Setting mit allen wichtigen NSCs, detaillierten Stadtbeschreibungen und einer fortlaufenden Timeline erwarten. Das heisst aber nicht, dass jeder GURPS-SL ständig nur eigene Sachen erfinden will. Manchmal ist es auch einfach schön sich einfach auf eine existierende Welt einzulassen.

2) DSA ist, im Gegensatz zu Spaßvögeln wie D&D und Rifts, einfach zu konvertieren. Ja, es gibt viel Material, aber vieles davon braucht keine Spielwerte. Es gibt nicht in jedem dritten Buch zwanzig neue Rassen und Monster. Das Regelsystem versucht realistisch zu sein (Attacken und Paraden, Rüstungen, die tatsächlich Schaden aufhalten, keine arbiträren “3 x pro Tag”-Kräfte, energiebasierte Zauber und so weiter und so fort. Wenn man sich von der inneraventurischen Wirklichkeit leiten lässt, so muss man nicht alle Heldentypen konvertieren, sondern kann sich auf den gesunden Menschenverstand der Spieler verlassen. Natürlich sind Magie und Götterwirken eine Ausnahme. Natürlich müssen Rassen und Kreaturen Stats haben, aber das ist kein unüberwindliches Problem.

3) GURPS macht DSA tatsächlich besser. Techlevel, Vertrautheiten, Martial-Arts-Stile, Göttliche Gnade, detaillierte Rüstungen, Regeln für Höhlenforschung, ausgewogene Vor- und Nachteile, realistische Fertigkeiten, Start mit erfahrenen Charakteren und vieles mehr.

Nicht so schönes

Einige Sachen komplizieren die Konversion:

1) GURPS Magic braucht nach all den Jahren immer noch ein Patch. Eines der wenigen Büchern, bei denen die Qualität auf der Strecke blieb.

2) Es gibt immer noch kein aktuelles GURPS Bestiarium. Man kann aber auf andere Publikationen und die alte Version zurückgreifen.

3) Gibt es überhaupt ein Interesse daran. Klar mache ich das sowieso für meine Gruppe, aber es wäre schon schön zu wissen, dass andere auch daran Interesse hätten. Warum sollte man’s sonst posten? Kommentare sind also sehr willkommen.

Für’s Erste wird das der letzte GURPS DSA Artikel in deutscher Sprache sein. Vielleicht schreibe ich ja noch Übersetzungen für die folgenden Artikel, wenn ich ein paar Hits aus Deutschland kriege. Bei Kommentaren schreib ich definitiv was.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy

GURPS DSA – A Good Idea?

You can find a German variant of this article here.

Das Schwarze Auge / The Dark Eye, commonly known as DSA among fans and detractors alike, ranks among the top three RPGs in Germany, but has never quite managed to gain a foothold anywhere else. Americans are most likely to recognize it as the engine that ran the three PC games released under the name “Realms of Arkania” in the nineties.

Now, there’s a couple of reasons why DSA has a very loyal following in Germany and also why it never made much headway anywhere else. And some of these make you really wish for a comprehensive GURPS conversion of the setting.

The Good

1) The setting is extremely dense. There are hidden secrets in every other town. History stretches back to reptilian precursor races. Named NPCs interact in a complex political web. Current events are very detailed and reported from multiple points of view. There’s a host of academies, holy orders, army units and fighting instructors for your characters to learn from and interact with. There are complete libraries of books to look for, ancient evils to defeat and countless causes to fight for.
If your players want to get involved in their campaign world, they’ll find hooks aplenty. Even if they don’t want to do a lot of work themselves, you can easily provide them with connections that have the right flavour.

2) The system is extremely well-supported. You want to game in a certain part of the world? There’s a regional module for you. You want to know more about secret societies or mage academies? Three modules each. Need to know more about elves or dwarves? Of course, there’s a supplement! Want to play in another time period? There’s limited support even for that. Need more info on magical artefacts? Of course, there’s a book on that. Want to read in-universe tracts about your chosen deity? The last ones will be out within the year. Maps? There are detailed posters of every spot on the continent; major cities are also mapped. Adventure modules? 250 and counting. You need an official in-universe newspaper? That was revamped a bit and now includes more scenarios than news, but there’s 150 back issues you can peruse if you prefer the straight dope.
Imagine the Forgotten Realms and cram all that detail into its western coast from Icewind Dale to Calimshan. Then multiply the number of relevant supplements by five and the number of adventure modules by fifteen. Then you come close the level of support DSA offers to the GM with deeper pockets. Note that there are PDF versions and second-hand copies that offer much cheaper alternatives.

3) The system takes a lot of work off the GM’s shoulders. I know not everybody likes adventure modules, but for the GM with a full-time job they often spell the difference between running a game or not. For everyone else they are at least a nice diversion or useful for mining for ideas. In contrast to the usual D20 dungeon the last two and a half decades of DSA has seen a varied mix ranging from intrigue and detective stories, to war, exploration and mystic themes, to more traditional dungeons, but ones that actually make sense. The same goes for much of the support supplements. DSA is pretty much the anti-GURPS in this regard. There’s very little world-building and system-tuning required by the GM.

4) The system helps players who have trouble coming up with original character concepts. The use of archetypes and the extremely dense background material are helpful for  players and GMs alike. You won’t end playing a level one fighter that is only distinguished through his random attributes, race selection and starting feat. You will have disadvantages that define you, a place ore unit where you learned your trade, ready-made connections and antipathies and even a reason to go adventuring.

5) There’s a huge fan following in Germany, which makes it very easy to get new players. Everybody plays in the same world and there aren’t all that many ways to tweak the system and world, so you can even introduce characters from other GMs’ campaigns. Of course, that also means there’s quite a lot of unofficial material readily available. A lot of it is quite good and actually on par with D20 titles.

The Bad

1) The setting can be overwhelming. There’s a myriad of details to take into account. For example, you need a very clear idea of when and where to start your campaign, because there are metaplots that will radically change your world. If you decide to leave them out, a large amount of the support elements will become unusable or take a considerable amount of work to adapt. Worst of all are the adventure modules – a significant number of which thrust the characters into the limelight of politics and unfolding supernatural events. Many players are aware of those and will want to take part in them. They might object if you change the world too much.
In the end player and GM freedom are often restricted by the burgeoning realms of the writers’ imagination. Take into account that the early generation of writers were German literature and anthropology students and you get deliberate restrictions that railroad you into a direction the writers thought proper for your game.

2) The rules show a a truly Teutonic obsession with details: For example every skill roll sees three twenty-sided dice rolled to beat three different attributes with skill points used to make up the difference. Where GURPS has four skill difficulties with everyday names (cost progression 1-2-4-8-12…), DSA sports nine difficulties from A* to H (cost progression a convenient 1-1-2-3-4-6-7-8-10-11-13-14-16-17-19-21-22-24-26-27-29 – for type A that is). The system did not use to be so complicated, but in the current edition it is virtually impossible to make a character without using a spreadsheet. Granted, spreadsheets are a good idea for every point-build system, but DSA takes complications to unhealthy heights. It used to be a half-way beginner-friendly system, but it shed that with its 4th Edition.
At the same time the system makes it very hard for beginning characters to succeed at anything. An average character who has spent years training in a skill has less than half a chance to beat an unmodified skill roll – and few skill rolls in adventures and examples are unmodified, most carry a penalty. A trained warrior who has spent six years or more doing weapons training has less than half a chance to hit an opponent before they get a chance to defend. Combat takes forever, especially since characters can often take three or four sword hits without much of an effect.Part of these problems stem from marrying what was originally a D&D-esque random roll system with a point-based system (that incidentally steals a lot of small details from GURPS). The effect isn’t very pretty in play and encourages players to invest heavily in attributes and take the maximum disadvantages before start of play. Attributes are even more important than in GURPS, but at the same time there are so many and all are important for spells that the average player is easily lured into munchkinny builds.

3) The fan base has a large number of fanatics. Even in the good old times before the internet you could post a notice in the game shop and have people ring you up only to tell you about how the Praiotian inquisition was the best thing ever and that you were a disgusting heretic for having a witch in your group. The internet hasn’t made things easier. It’s probably a good idea to never invite more than one unknown player into your group. DSA players are often defensive, because their system is often to maligned by others. DSA has a bit of a reputation as simplistic, illogical, goody-two-shoes system and if you like it very much that can hurt.

4) The system is huge and can be costly. It also tends to reinvent itself every eight years on average. Thankfully these reinventions don’t really introduce huge world-sweeping changes on their own (like in the Forgotten Realms), but you still need to shell out for new basic rules and all the extras you need to make your characters work. This is all the more infuriating, because the changes are often very subtle (4th Edition to 4.1 to 5 for example didn’t change the basic mechanics at all). On the whole this a system to sink a lot money in if you want to cover all eventualities.

5) All the nice things can only be had in German. Sure, there’s an English version consisting of like three books and there used to be versions in French and Dutch, but basically you need to either be a German native speaker or somebody with a degree in German and a huge interest in translating this stuff.

The Beautiful

Now, most of what I said serves only to whet the appetite of the average GURPS GM. Why?

1) The one huge drawback of GURPS is the lack of detailed settings. The only exception is Transhuman Space and that has to deal with an awkward 3rd/4th Edition split. Sure, GURPS attracts GMs who want to stat their own settings or run real-world campaigns, but when you’re short on players you tend to run back to vaguely Tolkieneque fantasy. DSA nicely fills that gap in GURPS.

2) There’s nothing in the setting that makes it very hard to convert. DSA tries to be realistic even if falls far short of this goal. The system is already skill-based, combat is more or less realistic with parries, dodging and armour that stops damage. Most non-supernatural stuff works on a somewhat logical basis and spell magic is skill-based, differentiated by spell traits and uses energy points.
There are a limited number of creatures, cultures, races and magics and most of the latter can be given more flavour by representing them as different GURPS variants. The same goes for DSA adventures. Instead of a different monster with three dozen modifiers per room, you’ll mainly face humanoids, animals and maybe a monster or two with at most a couple of special abilities each.
Compared to other RPG settings like D&D, Rifts or Star Trek (any incarnation) converting the DSA setting isn’t much of a chore.

3) GURPS actually makes DSA better. Tech levels, familiarities, martial arts and magical styles, divine favour, detailed armour, spelunking rules, supernatural abilities, a balanced disadvantage system, the possibility to start with experienced characters…
The possibilities are staggering.

The Not So Beautiful

There are still some things that complicate a GURPS DSA conversion:

1) The GURPS Magic spell system is still in bad need of a fix.
2) There’s no bestiary yet and that slows down creature conversion.
3) Is there even any interest in this? American GURPS players might be interested in the setting, but can’t take advantage of the German material, while German DSA players might be interested in better rules, but don’t want to buy a minimum of six English rulebooks (Characters, Campaigns, Powers, Low-Tech, Magic, Thaumatology and Martial Arts). I mean obviously I’m doing this for my own group anyway, but is there any interest online? Feedback is very welcome, especially on whether this should be German-only or English-only content or something both could appreciate.

The first part of my step-by-step conversion guide for DSA is available here.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy

Lest It Become a Hereditary Affliction

House rule articles contain a short intro, a rambling section on how to come up with a solution to a problem called “Cooking It up“, just the plain rules in a section called “The Finished Dish” and some musings about what else you could do with that in the final section: The Leftovers“.

One of the things most people agree on is that Affliction is overpriced in the current rules-as-written. That is, what we actually agree on is that effective Afflictions are overpriced. The first level gives a straight HT roll to resist. For that price it’s probably fair that the average Joe can shake it off with a 50/50 chance. The second level costs the same as the first… and makes that a chance of 37.5% – for the average Joe. In short, there’s a low chance to take out important adversaries or monsters with a straight-up Affliction. It’s clearly one of the half-dozen or so things that would be changed, should we ever see another edition of GURPS. There are some ways around this, though.

Cooking It up

The rules-based approach around this problem is taking Malediction 1, which turns the resistance roll into a quick contest between your WILL and the target’s HT +1 minus the level of the Affliction. Unless your Affliction is so heavily limited it costs less than 5 points there is never a reason to buy a second level of this – and even with an end cost of 3 points it would be a debatable investment.

Most official treatments of this, like Psionic Powers, have combined this with a “Skills for Everyone” approach (Powers p. 162). This is extremely advisable if the PCs are expected to have more than one Affliction and even if they don’t. Basically it replaces your WILL roll with a unique hard skill roll. You might even waive the requirement that the Affliction must be part of a power.

Sean Punch suggests two ways to change the costs here:
1) 10 points for the first level + 3 points for the following ones.
2) Give each level 1d6 virtual damage dice that need to overcome armour in the normal way and penalise resistance rolls according to how much damage gets through.

Number 1) solves most problems, but has limits where Afflictions have lots of enhancements and not enough limitations to bring the cost of the later levels down to 3 points. Also an Affliction could be a Malediction 1/2/3 for another 10/15/20 points minus limitations and therefore liable to a much greater discount in cases of high WILL or skill.

Number 2) is a good alternative for most Afflictions that should realistically interact with armour.

What other rules-compliant options are there? You could use Follow-Up for an Affliction that needs less levels to succeed because it ignores armour. You could also choose not to use an Affliction. If you don’t mind doing damage at the same time Side Effect and Symptoms do add explicit Affliction states for a reasonable cost that is not measured in actual levels of Affliction. Indeed, Side Effect is already very similar to the second of Kromm’s suggestions.

You could also rebuild Affliction as follows: It has only ever one level, but you can take a new special enhancement called Hard to Resist that is priced at +40% for each -1 it gives to the target’s resistance roll (or +1 for beneficial afflictions). This works both for normal Afflictions and for those modified by Malediction, though in the latter case it might be more cost-effective to just raise your WILL/skill. You’ll note that this is close to Kromm’s suggestion no. 1 above, but making the lowered resistance an enhancement takes away the danger of inflated costs for the more extreme Afflictions.

The Finished Dish

Rules-compliant ways to effectively use Afflictions:

  • Modify it with Malediction and use a unique skill.
  • Modify it with Malediction and use straight WILL. This is likely too powerful!
  • Modify it with Armour Divisor to get rid of part of the bonus armour provides.
  • Use a carrier attack and modify the Affliction with Follow-Up to do damage and ignore armour if the carrier attack overcomes it.
  • Modify an Innate Attack with Side Effect to afflict negative states on a target – at a penalty according to penetrating damage.
  • Modify an Innate Attack with Symptoms to automatically afflict negative states on a target once damage exceeds certain thresholds.

Variants that change the rules-as-written:

  • Kromm’s two ideas.
  • Affliction only ever has one level. A special levelled enhancement called Hard to Resist gives a -1  penalty (+1 bonus for beneficial Afflictions) per level to resist the Affliction. It costs +40% per level and works with Malediction.

The Leftovers

All the old rules-compliant ways to make your Affliction cost-effective still work with the new Affliction pricing. Kromm’s second suggestion works as an alternative. In that case Afflictions retain their old cost structure.

Now, what if you think it’s too cheap to make a heavily modified killing curse? After all,  Affliction (Heart Attack, +300%; Hard to Resist +8, +320%; Costs 8 FP, -40%;  Limited Use: 1 time / day, -40%) is only 15 points if you use multiplicative modifiers. The easy solution is to make the different effects change the base cost instead of being enhancements. So Attribute Penalty ST -2 would only cost 12 points as base, while Heart Attack would be 40 points. The aforementioned ability would then cost 26 points, which seems appropriate for its limitations.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy

Skills vs. Attributes

House rule articles contain a short intro, a rambling section on how to come up with a solution to a problem called “Cooking It up“, just the plain rules in a section called “The Finished Dish” and some musings about what else you could do with that in the final section: The Leftovers“.

One problem I’ve often faced when it comes to character creation is the fact that it’s just more effective to take yet another level in a controlling attribute than raising a skill above attribute level. This happens most often with mages who raise their IQ sky-high after taking however much Magery the GM allows.

It’s less common with fighters and other characters who need more than one attribute to fulfil most of their functions, but the fact remains: There’s little point to raise more than one or two skills above attribute level. Most often these are the one main combat skill and another to get into position (Driving, Riding etc.).

Cooking It up

There are many who say that the attribute/skill pricing is working as designed and that a highly-skilled character should have high attributes to show this, but I think that over-simplifies things. Skills also represent experience in a subject and can float to other attributes and even a flat base 10. Having DX 16 doesn’t help you maintain your gun, care for your horse or remember to buy fuel.

That’s ancillary to the two main points, however. The first is character concept: There are many times where you want to have a character that is brilliant in three or even four unrelated fields without being an overall genius. That’s a legitimate and realistic concept, but in GURPS you are forced to accept that this is going to waste a lot of points. The GM could make up a special 5-point Talent just for you, but that’s it, as far as options go. The second point is niche-protection. With high DX and IQ (HT, PER and WILL are less of a problem) characters easily encroach on each others’ terrain. The face man has been taken out? No, problem: Let the mage do it. He has two points in Diplomacy and one in Fast-Talk that gives him 16 and 15 respectively. You can mitigate that problem by not letting your characters buy certain skills, but then you’re in Dungeon Fantasy territory again and that’s a problem when the rest of your campaign follows a realistic pattern.

Just to make myself clear: I do not subscribe to the view that all characters should have attributes in the 10-12 range and high competence should be modelled by having half a dozen skills at attribute +5 level. We do, however, need a little more wriggling room.

Now, what to do about that? A solution for half of the main problem can be found among Reverend Pee Kitty’s house rules: PER and WILL are separate from IQ and IQ costs 20 points a level. Personally I’d adjust the price of IQ to 25 points a level. Sure that sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that you can always adjust your starting point level accordingly.

The other main half of the problem is, of course, DX. Instead of separating out both Basic Speed and Basic Move, there is a strong point to be made for keeping coordination (plain DX) tied to reaction speed (Basic Speed). Now running/flying/swimming fast is a completely different kind of beast and it should rightly be separated out. But there’s a third one, isn’t there? Tasks where High Manual Dexterity (HMD) comes into play still profit from a high base DX that represents mainly gross motor skills.

Separating HMD out is a bit of a problem. We don’t want to turn it into a full attribute, because the drawbacks of a low level (rightly represented by Ham-Fisted) are by far not as dramatic as the benefits of a high level. It’s probably best to keep in mind that in certain cases it makes sense to float the relevant skills to a flat base + HMD that makes sense. Keep in mind that a flat base can still be modified by task difficulty.

So, how much should the end product of DX + Basic Speed cost? I’d put it at an even 25 points per level. That makes it come out slightly ahead of IQ, whichlost both its secondary characteristics. However, there are no skills based on Basic Speed and there’s a lot more overlap in skills covered by DX (and relevant talents). Nobody needs more than at most ten combat skills, but even twenty IQ-based skills can cover wildly disparate subjects.

Now, there’s also the problem of HT. There the problem is less the existence of too many HT-based skills, but that the stat is darn useful overall. I hardly ever see an adventurer-type character with less than HT 11 (12 for fighters). Douglas H. Cole has covered this in a very readable article called “The Price of Fitness“. He comes up with a final price of 20-25 points per level. That is a bit high compared to my other attributes, so I suggest a final price of 15 points per level, but with FP separated out. The connection to Basic Speed stays as it is.

The last part of the puzzle is ST. While there are no ST-based skills and only two techniques based on it (Wrench (Limb) and Neck Snap), it still needs to be on par with the other attributes. Now does ST 20 pack the same punch as DX 14, IQ 14 or HT 16 and FP 13? Well, it does and then some. The base damage along with the increased carrying capacity is already more than enough. So, let’s at least separate out HP as a newly independent stat. After all, fat is not necessarily worse at absorbing damage than muscle. Indeed muscle might be more problematic since it fulfils an innate function. We end up with ST as the cheapest attribute at 10 points a level. Smarter minds than me might think about an appropriate way to rescale damage that makes this price a bit more reasonable. For now just keep in mind that – like HT – it’s relatively cheap compared to DX and IQ.

The Finished Dish

Attributes and secondary characteristics are changed as following:

ST (10 points/level): Does no longer affect HP. But HP are still limited to +/- 30% of ST. Damage and Basic Lift are unchanged.

DX (25 points/level): Does no longer affect Basic Move, which is now completely independent from DX and HT. Still has its normal effect on Basic Speed.

IQ (25 points/level): Does no longer affect PER and WILL at all, both are completely independent from IQ.

HT (15 points/level): Does no longer affect FP, which are still limited to +/-30% of HT (including HT bonuses from Fit and Very Fit).

HP (2 points/level): Are unaffected by ST, but limited to to +/- 30% of ST. The GM might rule that certain builds might modify that limit (+/- 10% for Skinny, +/- 40% for Overweight, +/- 50% for Fat and +/- 60% for Fat), but keep in mind that heavier builds generally have somewhat higher ST to compensate.

Basic Speed (5 points/0,25 levels): Unchanged from RAW.

Basic Move (5 points/level): Starts at 5 for native environment. All other rules referring to Basic Move or full move use the final level bought up or down from 5.

WILL (5 points/level): Is completely unrelated to IQ. Even mentally handicapped people might have great resistance to influence and genetically engineered slave races might have next to none.

PER (5 points/level): Is completely unrelated to IQ, but should rarely go below 7 for characters who are able to lead a relatively independent life.

FP (3 points/level): Are unaffected by HT, but still limited to +/-30% of HT.

Hard to Kill (4 points/level) and Hard to Subdue (4 points/level): No change apart from the costs. Are still included in HT.

Arm ST (4, 6, 9 points/level), Lifting ST (4 points/level) and Striking ST (6 points/level): No change apart from the costs. Lifting ST and Striking ST together literally are ST. Don’t buy both of them, simply buy ST!

The Leftovers

I haven’t yet said how this affects starting point values. Some character types are, of course, more affected than others. The all-rounder with 12 in all attributes and secondary characteristics comes in at 185 points in this system, compared to 120 in the rules-as-written. The brute with ST 18, DX 12, HT 13 and the secondary characteristics to match costs 205 points in the new system and 150 in the old. The genius with IQ 16 costs 210 points and 120 respectively. All in all, you should probably make sure to use a 30-50% higher starting point total if you want to make all these concepts possible. So your standard 150 point campaign should at least go up to 200 points now, possibly even to 225 points.

As a side-effect of this change characters built on raw physical strength and endurance become more viable compared to technical specialist fighters that always go for the eyes or vitals. Personally, I think this is a worthwhile outcome of the change. Also players might consider using 15-point talents now – especially ones that cover IQ-, PER- and WILL-based skills (Smooth Talent Cost from Power-Ups 5 is still advisable though).

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. Creations of other GURPS fans are clearly attributed. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy

Fine-Tuning Languages

House rule articles contain a short intro, a rambling section on how to come up with a solution to a problem called “Cooking It up“, just the plain rules in a section called “The Finished Dish” and some musings about what else you could do with that in the final section: The Leftovers“.

In GURPS problems with languages go two ways: how to handle having many languages and how to handle not being completely proficient. I’ve yet to deal with the former problem. I usually tell my players beforehand what languages might be useful and throw the occasional bone in the direction of players who took one that wasn’t usually cropping up. But proficiency was a problem we often had to deal with. Even having broken proficiency lets you communicate rather freely. Only in stressful situations does it require an IQ roll to understand someone or get your meaning across. Everybody who has ever visited Paris with nothing but their rusty school French can attest that this is overly optimistic – though admittedly most situations will become rather stressful fast.

Cooking It up

What’s needed are more finely-grained levels of proficiency and better rules for operating at that proficiency. Now, it makes little sense to inflate the price of languages any further. They’re already pricier than having decent skills. So, the intermediate levels could either use half-points (I know I start sounding like a half-trick-pony) or link spoken and written comprehension levels together. I am going to present both options below.

Now, there’s nothing really difficult about coming up with the rest of the rules, but I’d like to throw in a couple thoughts about language defaults. For most languages these should realistically be at a level below broken, but there are some exceptions concerning bona fide languages (e.g. Norwegian and Swedish). Having a smoother progression of proficiency levels helps in this regard.

The Finished Dish

Instead of the three comprehension levels for spoken and written language in Basic Set, there are six (not counting None).
All IQ rolls are modified by how stressful the situation is and how well the participants can perceive the statements made. The modifiers given on B24 for broken comprehension apply for spoken conversation. Written conversation seldom takes penalties here, though online chats can be stressful and writing can be defaced, smeared or hard to read. Also you won’t get immediate feedback during most written communication. Time Spent modifiers (B346) apply.If you are making use of half-points, use the rules as written. If not, either make sure the total sum of points invested into a language is not a fraction or pay another half point to round it up.

Spoken Comprehension Levels

Rudimentary (0.5 points): You are only able to express the most basic concepts (“I need food”, “I surrender”, “I have money” etc.) and even these require an IQ by both participants to get across.
Using skills dependent on language is mostly impossible or at least takes a -12 penalty (doubled for skills dependent on the beauty of the language).
Those predisposed to dislike the character react at an additional -5. Those intolerant towards the character’s nationality won’t react at a better level than bad.
This level is mainly useful for travellers who have a tiny chance of encountering native speakers, but a large chance of those being hostile. On the discworld Rincewind was known for being able to beg for mercy in dozens of languages.

Broken (1 point): You are able to express slightly more complex concepts (e.g. “I need medicine for my sick daughter. I have the money to pay for it.”), but your grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation are very bad. Communicating all but the simplest concepts requires you to make an IQ roll.
Using skills dependent on language takes a -6 penalty (doubled for skills dependent on the beauty of the language).
Those predisposed to dislike you react at an additional -3. Those intolerant towards your nationality won’t react at a better level than poor.
This is the level most pupils manage to reach after three years of foreign language education.

Limited (1.5 points): You are able to express moderately complex concepts in fields he is familiar with (e.g. “If you want to remove the blockage, you need to open the outflow valve an increase water pressure”). Treat everyday knowledge and the subject of every skill in which you have invested at least two points as a familiar field. Your grammar is simple, but correct more often than not. Your pronunciation is still moderately bad, but generally comprehensibly. Vocabulary varies according to subject matter. There is normally no IQ roll for communicating, but in stressful situations the GM might require one.
Using skills dependent on language takes a -3 penalty (doubled for skills dependent on the beauty of the language).
Those predisposed to dislike you react at an additional -2. Those intolerant towards your nationality won’t react at a better level than poor.
All but the worst pupils should reach the level after six years of being taught the language at school.

Fluent (2 points): You are able to express complex concepts and you generally use correct grammar, vocabulary and more-or-less correct pronunciation. False cognates are still a source of problems as is using words of the wrong register or with the wrong connotation. The GM might assess a penalty of -1 or (in extreme cases) of -2 to a skill roll where applicable.
Using skills dependent on language generally takes a -1 penalty (doubled for skills dependent on the beauty of the language).
Only those intolerant towards your nationality react at an additional -1.
This is the level usually expected of students who want to enrol for a major – at least in countries where this language is commonly taught in school.

Near-native (2.5 points): You are able to express even the most complex concepts. You make very few mistakes in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, but are usually not quite good enough to pass as a native speaker when talking to actual native speakers.
There is only a penalty of -1 for using skills dependent on the beauty of the language.
Even those intolerant towards your nationality won’t react worse than their intolerance dictates.
This level is acceptable for somebody who has completed a major degree in the language.

Native (3 points): Even if you aren’t a native speaker, a regular native speaker won’t be able to glean that fact just from hearing you talk. A master linguist might be able to tell after talking to you at length and making a PER-based Linguistics roll.
You can converse in the standard language and a dialect of your choice (free of charge). This can be a dialect that is very far from the standard language. If you choose such a dialect, be aware that others will treat you as if that were your native dialect – unless you keep it completely secret. They might congratulate you on learning the standard language or despise you for giving up your roots.
This level isn’t very common among mere students of a language. You normally need full-time immersion to get there and even then many non-native speakers never reach this level.

Written Comprehension Levels

Written comprehension levels work exactly as spoken ones, though your handwriting does not necessarily give you away if you have a higher proficiency in another language that uses the same script (e.g. Latin or Cyrillic Script). Self-study by using books works as follows.

Rudimentary (0.5 points): Self-study using books is impossible.

Broken (1 point): Self-study using books takes triple the usual amount of time (1200 hours for exclusively book-taught skills)  if it is possible at all.

Limited (1.5 points): Self-study using books takes double the usual amount of time (800 hours for exclusively book-taught skills) .

Fluent (2 points): Self-study using books takes 1.5 times the usual amount of time (600 hours for exclusively book-taught skills) .

Near-native (2.5 points): Self-study using books takes no penalty.

Native (3 points): As above, in addition you may acquire a handwriting style uniquely associated with this language at no extra cost.

Language Talent

With these rules Language Talent works slightly different. Instead of giving you comprehension one level higher it gives you comprehension two levels higher than what you pay for, e.g. Limited spoken proficiency at 0.5 points and Native spoken proficiency at 2 points.

Default Use of Languages

In most cases it’s convenient to treat most languages that show differences, but are still for the largest part mutually intelligible as dialects – especially when they share the same written form. That does not necessarily reflect a reality where Chinese speakers from the north cannot understand the southern speakers and East Frisians cannot make sense of speakers of Swizerdüütsch, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Genuinely different languages might, however, be closely enough related like German and Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian or Ukranian und Russian. These give a character proficient in one language an automatic default in the related language without having to pay points for that. Quite often conversations between two such speakers do take quite a while longer, though. The GM can require an IQ roll when time is of the essence and rule that the information takes up to thrice as long to convey if that roll fails.
They can then buy up their proficiency from that default without having to pay the points needed to reach that level (similar to skill defaults). Should a character buy the language without having the other one at a sufficiently high level to get a default, they still get points back if they ever reach the level needed to get that default. The following table gives the levels needed for defaults and the defaults provided:

Mutual Intelligibility Proficiency Level Needed Default Provided
Significant Fluent 2 levels lower
Partial Near-Native 3 levels lower
Limited Near-Native 4 levels lower

Examples: Norwegian and Swedish are significantly mutually intelligible. Native speakers of one language can converse with native speaker of the other as if they both had fluent comprehension. Mutual intelligibility of German and Dutch is limited. A near-native speaker of German will have only a rudimentary comprehension of Dutch and even a native speaker won’t have better than Broken comprehension.

Instead of listing all the languages with relevant levels of mutual intelligibility, I just link to the relevant wikipedia article, which completely incidentally uses the same terms for the three levels above. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give the direction of intelligibility when it is asymmetrical. You’ll have to do a bit more research in these cases.

The Leftovers

I haven’t yet touched on the subject of pidgins and creoles. The former are simplified languages often used as a means of communications between members of different languages. They don’t as a rule have any speakers who use them as their first language. The latter are complete languages that developed from a mixing of languages. Most creoles should be treated as regular languages, although the might have a rate of mutual intelligibility.

Pidgins are most often used as a means for facilitating communication. They don’t have a written language of their own (but can usually make use of one of the parent languages’ written system) and often cannot express all the concepts available in a complete language. The GM sets the highest proficiency level that exists in the spoken and written form of the pidgin. Often this is the fluent level for the spoken form and none for the written form. It is however perfectly possible for a pidgin to go up to near-native or end with broken – the latter will probably develop further if they remain in use.

Pidgins are easy to use and have a simplified structure. Whenever there’s the question of an IQ roll the GM assigns a bonus to that for every comprehension level missing at the top. For example a pidgin that goes up to fluent gives +2 to to all IQ rolls for comprehension at lower levels. Skill penalties are even reduced by twice that number. There are normally no reaction penalties associated with a low proficiency in a pidgin as it is nobody’s mother tongue. They may however be called for in special situations, e.g. when a person sent for important negotiations shows low proficiency in the pidgin that would be commonly used.

The GM should also keep in mind that pidgins might develop into full-blown creole languages and that might even happen within the space of a character’s life.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

GURPS is a registered trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and the art here is copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy