Abjuration in GURPS - Making Protection Fun

Abjuration in GURPS - Making Protection Fun

In games with magic, you are bound to encounter magical protections. Perhaps, you’d like to use magic to protect yourself against damage or other hazards, or you try to strike down an enemy wizard only to find your sword bounce off with no effect. Magic of protection is undoubtedly useful, but it might be boring, so let’s talk about it in more detail and see if it’s possible to make it more fun and interactive.

Sorcery: Urban Druid Spellcasting

Sorcery: Urban Druid Spellcasting

The urban druid was a very obscure class in D&D 3.5, but also one that intrigued me a lot - I feel that it has a lot of potential. I wrote this thing up a very long time ago but for some reason did not post it on the blog, so there you have it.

Low posting activity, or not?

Low posting activity, or not?

Recently, I haven't been posting much here, but that doesn't mean that I'm not working. While there are no new posts, I'm currently busy with a massive project - I am revising/reworking all monsters that I've posted here. It's been several years, and I have accumulated more than 1,700 of them, it's time to give them another look with fresh eyes. During all these years, I've learned a lot, got rid of some bad conversion habits, so now I'm fixing mistakes and reworking monsters that I do not like to make them more interesting and/or easy to use. So far, I'm about 7% done, but the progress is going faster than I expected. After that (or during, as a change of pace), I also want to rework my old adaptation of the D&D incarnum system. So, I'm still here, but most of the work is behind the scenes!

Is GURPS old-school? - GURPS and OSR

Is GURPS old-school? - GURPS and OSR

If you are following the tabletop RPG hobby, then you probably have heard about the OSR movement. In case you have not – OSR stands for Old School Renaissance – a movement that strives to bring back the old school playstyle of the early D&D incarnation. This trend is popular nowadays, and you can find many retroclone systems, publications, and blogs out there. In this post, I am going to explain how and why OSR can be useful for GURPS games, and why I like OSR.

Powers: Pact Magic Revised

Powers: Pact Magic Revised

One of the coolest D&D 3.5 classes was the binder - it was oozing with flavor, and mechanically it had just the right amount of power. I have converted pact magic to GURPS a very long time ago, but looking at it all these years later, I see that it simply isn't appealing compared to other powers I'm using in my games, and that it suffers too much from being a one-to-one conversion from D&D. So, it's time to rework it, and make it cheaper and more appealing. Also, a much more appropriate advantage exists now - Loa!

Powers: Photokinesis

Powers: Photokinesis

In GURPS Psionic Powers, the Ergokinesis powers contains three subpowers - Cyberpsi, Electrokinesis, and Photokinesis. Since I'm mostly running D&D-style games, Cyberpsi is practically useless, and while in modern or sci-fi games Ergokinesis and Photokinesis do work well together, in a more fantasy setting, they feel like separate powers - that why I actually made Electrokinesis a separate power, and that leaves just Photokinesis. D&D doesn't have a photokineticist class, but it does have some light-based powers that one can use for inspiration. Also, I decided to merge Photokinesis with the Umbrakinesis subpower of Necropsi (Pyramid #3-99), as that would make sense, but I removed the Silhouette ability - this is too much even for a fantasy game (and I hate "variable" costs).

Powers: Sonokinesis

Powers: Sonokinesis

Sonokinesis was introduced as a subcategory of Psychokinesis in Pyramid #3-29. However, I would like to excise it from Psychokinesis and turn it into a separate power. I will probably write up new abilities and rework some of the existing ones to get a more D&D feel. I reworked Muffle, because not only I do not want it to be useable at range, but also the writeup has some mistakes. Due to the rework, the Muted Movement technique became more expensive and one part of it had to be cut. I decided to remove the Sonic Dampening technique and turn it into a separate ability to ease access to the DR aspect of the power against screaming monsters.