Herb Gathering

Herb Gathering

One of my players wanted his character to use his Naturalist skill to find some valuable herbs to earn some money. This prompted me to investigate the rules and finding that there's no out-of-the-box solution to this somewhat simple request. As a temporary ruling, I ruled that this is similar to a job roll for the gatherer - this worked for that purpose, but what if the character wanted to find something more concrete? Let's see.

GACKS AAR: Session 1

GACKS AAR: Session 1

All right, now that the groundwork is all done, I began my in-person GURPS game that borrows a lot of ACKS procedures to see if GURPS can support a BrOSR-style game. It has been a long journey (that still isn't complete), and I've been very excited to give it all a try. I have five players whose only TTRPG experience is D&D 5e and one GURPS game that I ran for them to showcase the system. Despite this, they seem to have had zero problems understanding how 1:1 time works, and all the other BrOSR concepts as well. So, it's time to bring receipts!

BrOSR Game Preparations

BrOSR Game Preparations

I've been rambling about BrOSR for quite a while already, mostly about how such games could work in GURPS, and what is required to run one. At this point, between existing GURPS books, my own blogposts, and posts by the Addled Antillectual, there isn't that much left to do. Right now, I'm running a faction in a D&D 5e Braunstein game - the Shattered Skies (the sequel to Drakonheim) - and it's been a great experience. While I am enjoying the game, I'm also taking notes and studying the way Serious DM is running the game, because this is extremely important to me, as I'm planning to run something similar in the future, but on a lower scale (probably within 2 or 3 months from now). In the meantime, I found an in-person GURPS group in my backwater for whom I ran a short conventional game to familiarize the players with the system. And now we are preparing to play an in-person BrOSR-style GURPS game. This forced me to come down from the hypothetical scenarios that the system would need to cover and think about what I really need to at least start. Starting is the most important thing - I should be able to patch any holes as we go along. This is doubly important because aside from the aforementioned short conventional game I ran, I have no experience running GURPS in person. Thus, I decided to document my preparation process, because it might be helpful to others (yes, you) and to myself as well. It's very likely that I will get some things wrong, but I'll learn from my own mistakes.

Sorcerous Enchantment Gripes

Sorcerous Enchantment Gripes

Not that long ago, I wrote a huge post about enchanting. Now, it has become more relevant to me, as I've begun writing Enchanted Item Compendium. However, as soon as I started it, I immediately encountered problems, and I'd like to write another rambly post that, hopefully, will help me fix the situation.

Domain Trial Run (ACKS II -> GURPS)

Domain Trial Run (ACKS II -> GURPS)

As I get closer and closer to being able to run a game that might feature domains, I realize that there is no way to understand everything better than simply doing a trial run. Thus, I'm going to go through the ACKS II domain management rules step-by-step and see if anything needs adjustment for GURPS games. In addition, its going to help me decide what rules I actually want to use, because sometimes what looks good on paper doesn't play that well. There are people who claim that ACKS II domain rules are not suitable for Braunstein scenarios, but I still would like to see it myself and compare to what AD&D (and UMBROS) rules have to offer.

Heroic Combat: Iteration 4

                                 Heroic Combat: Iteration 4

All right, let's try again. This time I'll combine the rules and the test fights into a single post.

GURPS Expanded Grappling

GURPS Expanded Grappling

Last year, the largest project on this blog was Expanded ANTOG, where I (with lots of help from Nate) turned ANTOG into a grappling system that can do everything the others can. Before doing all that, I conducted an analysis of what it can and cannot do. However, ANTOG is a somewhat radically different grappling system, and it's not everyone's cup of tea. While I do like it, I also admit that there are some shortcomings to it, especially when it comes to the speed of resolution. So, here's a document that should turn your vanilla grappling system into something much more complete.

LINK