Summoning in D&D and GURPS

Summoning in D&D and GURPS

Summoning is an iconic area of magic that is present in many TTRPG systems and fantasy stories. Evil cultists summon fiends, priests call upon extraplanar divine allies, wizards summon spirits of the dead to learn forbidden knowledge, and adventuring spellcasters summon things like… celestial badgers to fight off goblins. While I do not have experience with many different TTRPG systems, the experience I have with D&D 3.0/3.5/PF tells me that people often considered summoning wonky and/or broken, usually referring to “breaking” action economy and allowing the summoner to gain access to certain spells and abilities he wasn’t supposed to have. Right now, I’m running a test GURPS game where the only player character is a summoner with the various wizardry summoning spells (and teleportation too, but that’s another topic). Even though there has been barely any action, the game raised lots of questions in terms of game mechanics, in-universe metaphysics, and game design. This calls for an in-depth analysis of summoning in D&D, GURPS, and possibly even other systems to untangle this mess.

Review: BMD - First Blood

Review: BMD - First Blood

These days, few TTRPG products spark any excitement in me. Aside from ACKS II, Brozer, and UMBROS, there were only two things on the horizon that I've been looking for - BMD and Mission X. While the latter remains on the indefinite horizon, the first version of the former has been released. So, what is BMD? It is a tabletop RPG that aims to be a proper, complete game, something akin to AD&D 1e or ACKS II. You get the book, you have everything you need to run the game in it. BMD is a game about galactic warfare between humans and aliens by RuleOfThule, the host of the Primeval Patterns substack (check it out, it's full of good stuff). The concept is very appealing to me. A few years ago I tried to wrangle GURPS into this with my semi-stillborn Galactic Havoc project, but I found that the system doesn't really work too well for that sort of stuff without some kind of abstracted combat (See? It all ties back to my current project). Thus, BMD is something that was on my radar. So, let's say #ThankYouRuleOfThule and read the actual book.

Heroic Combat: Iteration 1 Test Group Battle

Heroic Combat: Iteration 1 Test Group Battle

Let's continue testing the abstract combat system. This time, we will have a group-vs-group fight.

Heroic Combat: Iteration 1 Test Duel

Heroic Combat: Iteration 1 Test Duel

Let's give abstract combat a test drive. I'll try to play out battles of different scales to see how the system works (if it even works at all), but tonight we're having a duel.

AD&D Roots of Might and Magic

AD&D Roots of Might and Magic

Let's have a short post before I delve into testing my abstract combat system. Might and Magic is one of my favorite video game series that affected my view of fantasy settings and roleplaying games in my childhood, and I'm feeling these effects to this day. For the most part, I'm talking about Might and Magic VI-VIII, although I am familiar with the earlier (and latter, unfortunately) installments of the series, but to a lesser degree. The games do certain things differently when compared to other CRPGs. And as someone who has read the AD&D rulebooks only relatively recently, now I look at these games and think "Oh... now I understand where it came from." In some other posts, I already mentioned this partially, but I'd like to reiterate and expand it here.

Heroic Combat: Iteration 1

Heroic Combat: Iteration 1

All right, real life got relatively less busy, and now I can devote some time to Heroic Combat. I mulled this over, and I think that it would be best to use an iterative approach (something akin to what Mailanka did with his Psi-Wars). In the first iteration, I will write up the very basic framework - movement, attacking, defending, casualties, engagement, etc. without complicating things with status effects, magic, and other things. Once this base framework is functional, I'll add other things.
 
The intent of the Heroic Combat is to have a way to resolve a combat quickly between large numbers of combatants with or without a map, preferably with few rolls, but to retain some tactical depth. This may be a complete mess, but I need to get something out the door, playtest it, and then change/expand the ruleset.

Review: UMBROS

Review: UMBROS

I'm not dead, I was busy. Busy writing some stuff to make GURPS playable on all scales, but also busy thinking about running a strategic-level Braunstein to resolve a military conflict between two nations in my setting. It's been set up a couple of years ago, but due to games happening in other regions of the world, nothing was happening on that front. There was just an eternal "upcoming war that is about to happen." No, I'm not just rambling and telling you about my games, this is just a segue into the topic of this blogpost, which is a review of UMBROS: A Braunstein of Dinosaurs & Treachery at the Earth's Core. You see, my ramblings highlight a problem with conventional play - the world is static no matter how hard the referee tries to maintain the illusion of it being alive.