Addendum to GURPS Meta-Tech Review

Addendum to GURPS Meta-Tech Review

Earlier this morning, a wrote a review of GURPS Meta-Tech with my first impressions. Almost all my free time today was spent thinking about the book and reading some parts more thoroughly. And you know what? My opinion actually worsened.

Review: GURPS Meta-Tech

Review: GURPS Meta-Tech

GURPS Meta-Tech is finally out! I was excited for this book, but I did have my worries. In short, I’m both pleasantly surprised and disappointed. The book was written by Christopher Rice who has a broad range of writing quality – he wrote some of the best Pyramid articles but he also wrote GURPS Realm Management. The book also had the same questionable “marketing strategy” as GURPS Realm Management, which was one of my reasons to start worrying – I’ve already got burned once. So, let’s actually open the book and see what it is about.

Metatronic Scrolls

Metatronic Scrolls

I have always felt that scrolls are often overlooked in tabletop RPGs. In D&D, they usually were used to free up a spell slot for a wizard or for very situational spells. I have not had any experience with scrolls in GURPS, however, but in my opinion, the lack of Vancian casting makes scrolls even more situational.

Metatronic Enchanting

Metatronic Enchanting

After I had a long discussion about Sorcery and enchanted items in general, I decided to try to adapt my Metatronic Alchemy to generic enchanting. The goal here is to adapt the enchanting mechanics and find a simple formula that would dictate how long the enchantment takes. This all will be based around Metatronic Generators from Pyramid #3-46.

Metatronic Alchemy

Metatronic Alchemy

Standard alchemy rules from GURPS Magic look okay, but they seem to be inconsistent with the rest of the system. There are no guidelines on how to create new elixirs and how to price them, and the vanilla pricing seems to assume a TL 3 setting. I have tried sorcerous alchemy from GURPS Thaumatology – Sorcery, but the elixirs end up being unreasonably expensive for one-use items. Thus, I decided to work out a way to base alchemy around Metatronic Generators from Pyramid #3-46. A similar approach to scrolls is described in Metatronic Scrolls.