Fear in GURPS

Fear in GURPS

Adventurers often encounter things and situations that would terrify a regular person. The rules for fear in GURPS are quite interesting, but at the same time questionable. I would like to discuss this topic in more detail to make sure I understand everything correctly.

Wizardry: Draconomicon Spells II

Wizardry: Draconomicon Spells II

And now let's do the second half of the Draconomicon spells. These ones are intended for dragons, but they can be used by other spellcasters if they meet the prerequisites. The book introduces metabreath feats and also metabreath spells that significantly alter the dragon's breath weapon. And I will simply skip them!

Aura of Terror isn't really a spell for most dragons, because they already have a fear aura, but a spell modeled after dragons. At least that's how I cope with being unable to elegantly build a spell that gives you an aura or expands the existing aura.

Hiss of Sleep is a mass version of Sleep that doesn't require a somatic component, but also only works against those who cannot see the caster.

Maddening Whispers is a similar spell, but with hallucinations instead of sleep.

Mesmerizing Glare fascinates creatures in an area.

Razorfangs gives an armor divisor to your claws or bite.

And that's it. That's all the spells I wanted from the book.

Wizardry: Draconomicon Spells I

Wizardry: Draconomicon Spells I

Draconomicon is one of my favorite D&D 3.5 books, so let's convert some of the spells from it to wizardry. After glancing through the list, I know that I'll have to skip many of them because they just either don't make sense in GURPS or would be inappropriate in my setting. Also, you have to keep in mind that spells in that book are split into two sections - one for player characters, and one for dragons. Let's do the character spells first.

Antimagic Ray is a short-duration spell that dispels ongoing effects, makes the target immune to magic, and suppresses magical abilities. This is a double-edged sword, I like this one.

Cheat is a cantrip based on a Probability Alteration perk from GURPS Psionic Powers.

Cloak of Bravery is, I believe, the first "aura" type effect.

Contingent Energy Resistance gives you DR against the first energy type you are attacked with.

Dragonsight is a buff spell that gives you Infravision and Night Vision 7.

Earthbind is a spell that disables the target's ability to fly. That's actually a very powerful effect.

Entice Gift is a cool spell that forces the subject to give you whatever it is holding.

Flight of the Dragon is cheaper and faster to cast than Overland Flight, but has more limitations.

Hide from Dragons is an expensive spell that is nonetheless powerful in highly specific situations.

Lower Spell Resistance lowers Magic Resistance. The original spell ignores SR, but doing that in GURPS would've made this spell way too expensive to be worth it.

Miser's Envy is another interesting mind control spell that compels the subject to obtain a certain object.

Scale Weakening is a specialized, but reasonably powerful and cheap spell that lowers DR.

Shield of Warding is a very useful spell that uses rules from Shields Up!

Suppress Breath Weapon mentally compels a creature to avoid using its breath weapon.

Review: ACKS Imperial Imprint

Review: ACKS Imperial Imprint

All right, I don’t really know how to go about this review, but I will do my best. If you’re in the TTRPG hobby, you are probably aware of the new major release - ACKS II, which stands for Adventurer Conqueror King System Imperial Imprint. I am primarily a GURPS player, and I admit that most other systems do not interest me, and even most of the recent GURPS releases didn’t pique my interest. This is less of a problem of low quality even though there is a visible decline, but the fact that I find GURPS to be a complete system (aside from lacking GURPS Vehicles). So, why did ACKS II grab my attention and didn’t let it go still? Because it made me feel that there are still people that genuinely care about the hobby; that there are people who go against the modern flow of OSR PDF slop that tells you to Rule Zero everything; that there are people who have the perseverance and work ethics to streamline and perfect the classical concepts. It’s genuinely inspiring and, as people say nowadays, whitepilling.

GURPS BrOSR: The Roadmap

GURPS BrOSR: The Roadmap

Ever since I got introduced to the concept of BrOSR, I got hooked by the idea. It's been more than three months since I wrote my initial thoughts (link), and there hasn't been a day when I didn't have a nagging thought in the back of my head telling me to "go ahead, do it." I've already played around with some of the concepts in the past, such as emergent play and low/zero-prep, and found that they work wonderfully. Now, the biggest problem is that I'm running GURPS and not planning to drop it.

Reading AD&D Player's Handbook

Reading AD&D Player's Handbook

AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide is considered by many an essential book for every DM/GM to read, and while I have skimmed it and found that indeed it's a treasure trove of useful stuff even for my GURPS games, I'm yet to thoroughly read it from cover to cover. So, that's my plan. However, before I do that, I have to read the AD&D Player's Handbook, because parts of the DMG rely on the concepts from the PHB, and I have to be familiar with the PHB to get a more complete understanding. I started playing D&D with D&D 3.0, so whatever I know about AD&D has mostly been picked up via osmosis, as I have no first-hand experience with that edition. Thus, this post will be a directionless stream of observations and comments about the book and possibly the system in general with no real point or goal - I just want to give it a read and point out stuff that I find interesting.

Wizardry: Sandstorm Spells

Wizardry: Sandstorm Spells

Sandstorm is the desert counterpart of Frostburn. While it does have some rather infamous bits, overall it's a decent book. However, the spells section is rather underwhelming, with many spells being spells taken from Frostburn and reversed to be hot instead of cold. Despite that, there are some unique ones that definitely cannot be found anywhere else. So, here's all the spells from that book that I deem worth adapting to my games.