Empire Skirmish Combat

Empire Skirmish Combat

One and a half years ago, I wrote a review of a D&D 3.0 rulebook called Empire by AEG. In this review, I wrote the following: "After that, there’s an appendix with optional rules that are mostly concerned with skirmish combat, but I don’t really care for that." But now I do care about that, because I'm really struggling with my semi-abstract GURPS combat system, and I am interested in seeing how others have done it. So, let's take a look at these skirmish rules and see if there is anything useful for my GURPS project.

Levels in GURPS - Why and how?

Levels in GURPS - Why and how?

GURPS is a point-buy classless system, so the concept of the character level does not exist. Character points do not measure the character's power. We all know this. The more I lurk within the BrOSR circles, the more I understand why D&D was written the way it was - more and more things begin to make sense. As I think that I get closer and closer to being able to run a proper BrOSR-style game using GURPS, I realize that there's still a lot of work to do, as GURPS is missing some crucial parts for that sort of thing. One of them is character levels, actually. I'm not good with words, but I will try to explain why they are necessary. Once we understand why exactly they are necessary, we will understand what is missing and how to fix it without introducing actual character levels.

Heroic Combat: Iteration 2 Test

Heroic Combat: Iteration 2 Test

Let's use the same examples from Iteration 1 tests to test Iteration 2. This will showcase the differences.

Heroic Combat: Iteration 2

                                Heroic Combat: Iteration 2

All right, after playing around a bit with Iteration 1, I found some aspects to be in need of reworking, primarily with relation to ranged combat. Aside from that, I will add some extra features that were missing, such as grappling. However, I am still leaving spellcasting and most status effects for Iteration 3.

Wizardry: New Summoning Spells

Wizardry: New Summoning Spells

If you've seen my rant about summoning, then you know that I've made some new spells there. The new ones will be repeated here for convenience, and all the old ones that were based on the Ally advantage have been rewritten (including Animate Dead). However, I also needed to make some new ones, and you can find them here. GCS libraries will be updated soon.

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.