More Articles!
Over the years, I've written a large handful of articles for GURPS,
ranging from expansions on the concepts in the Basic Set to whole-cloth
rules variants. This list is constantly growing . . .
- The GURPS Library: Rated
is just what it sounds like: Written to help the many newcomers who ask
me "Is GURPS book X worth getting?" this is my
quick-rating guide to just about every GURPS book there is.
- The Carmaker's Cribsheet is a quick (but
oh-so-helpful) resource for making your GURPS Autoduel cars
easier to build, and more like their Car Wars counterparts.
- And speaking of GURPS Autoduel, this Car Wars
item of mine, the Sonic
Cannon, has GURPS stats provided by master gizmomancer
David Pulver. It's Official Car Wars, AADA-approved.
- When I was asked to write some notes on the design of GURPS Russia,
I could only call it Medieval
Moscow Blues.
- The Whimsey Magic
rules bring the old W.O.W. (Wand of Whimsey or Wand of Wonder, depending
on which game you're talking about) to GURPS. How did you
get along without this before?
- The Fighting With Your Hands Full article
is a brief collection of combat maneuvers for fightes who prefer weapons
and shields to bare-handed shenanigans. Why should the judoka have all
the fun? Clearly, the
Italians agree.
- The page of Unsorted Advantages and Disadvantages
isn't really an article at all, just a kind of random bin of stuff. It
will change periodically as I toss in things from my local games. And while
we're on the subject, click
here for one of my smallest contributions to Roleplayer, the
Favor advantage (now in the GURPS Basic Set).
- The Elemental Magic article is a simple improv-only
magic system for GURPS; it hasn't appeared anywhere except
my local campaign (and, naturally, in Italy),
but it's been playtested to be fully cross-compatible with normal GURPS magic
and Unlimited Mana.
- The In
Nomine to GURPS Conversions were contracted,
written, and approved as an appendix in the In Nomine core
book, but at the last minute they were cut for space. These are (contrary
to recent errors on the SJ Games website) official, but they are no longer
the current standard, having been supplanted by the newer (more complex)
GURPS In Nomine rulebook.
- This article, A
Matter of Principle, is one of my favorite old Roleplayer articles.
It stands up after a few years of dust, and I still use this for character
creation a good deal.
- Originally written for AOTA (see below), my Book
Rules For GURPS were done as a test of my own writing.
I figured if I could write some REALLY dry rules and make them readable,
I was okay. Whether I succeeded, of course, is subjective!
- The
Custom Spellcasting article was submitted to Roleplayer in the
Olden Days. You can SMELL the dust on this foul thing. It still has it's
adherents, though, and that's heartwarming. Especially since it's traveled
the globe, netted me tons of email and comment, and has never generated
a single penny from SJ Games. Alas.
- Elixirs
of Utility is short and sweet. More fun for alchemists. They deserve
some.
- Like
the Back of My Hand is another Roleplayer piece. This was written
as one of a batch of one-page articles, submitted on the theory that Roleplayer
would at some point need filler pieces to round out the pages. This particular
one was submitted when GURPS Time Travel was being finished,
since I hoped it would make it into the rules. The Filler Theory worked.
The Time Travel theory didn't. But now these rules are in
the Compendium, so all is cool!
- New
Methods of Divination was my first work ever published by SJ Games,
and was later absorbed into GURPS Magic, 2nd Edition. Steve
Jackson typed it by hand into a computer for publication (I submitted it
typewritten!) and less than two months later announced publicly that he'd
never do that again, and that all submissions to Roleplayer had
to be electronic! Whew! Just under the wire.
- The Rules
for Herb-Hunting are [blush] my GURPS
conversion of an article Dragon magazine rejected when it was an
AD&D piece. They're rules for . . . well, herb-hunting.
- I'm very happy with these rules for Second
Sight, a collection of new advantages for mages. They add a good deal
of variety and "zip" to magical campaigns where there are a few
extra points to play with, or where mage-players like taking ST and HT
at 8 to get more advantages. La
Seconda Vista is the ever-popular Italian translation.
- Here are two
quick optional rules for magic that I use in my own campaigns at home.
- If the rules for lycanthropes in GURPS Bestiary,
2nd Edition are a little much for you, you might like my variant
rules, instead. They're pretty much as brain-dead simple as you can
get and still use ads and disads in the building process.
- These Designer's
Notes for Warehouse 23 were assembled late at night in
a single sitting, while I was tired. This is ALWAYS the best time for me
to write, and the popularity of this article seems to have borne this out
as true once again!
GURPS Adventures
I've actually written very few of these for publication; most of my
adventure-work has been for other games. The 23rd issue of Pyramid
Magazine featured PawnShop,
an adventure based around a real-life friend of mine, an affable madman
named Karl Boxely.
My only other GURPS adventure in print is Cray
Canyon Cold Snap, a Horror Western which appeared in an ancient
issue of White Wolf Magazine, back before they went all black-lipstick
and coffee-shop on us.
Best of all, though, Craig Roth has done an HTML conversion of my GURPS
Fantasy solo adventure, Partners,
another item which originally appeared in AOTA. Go try it out! And
no cheating the first time through, okay?
ApaZine Excerpts
These articles, excerpted from my 'zines in All of the Above,
the GURPS APA,
are presented in their original, unedited form [with occasional comments
in brackets]. This means that many of the ideas are rough, dated (in terms
of rules canon), or just loopy. But they're unique, and otherwise unavailable
to the general public (the original "print run" was about 20),
so I figured it was appropriate to place them here.
Note that only complete, GURPS-related (or RPG-related)
articles and material have been included, so you won't have to wade through
my old Mailer Comments and the like.
- The Mighty Frood'Zine, Number One This
installment - "The Wrong Lizard Might Get In" featured
the One Buttock disad. Need I say more? Also, my stats (as of 1992) in
GURPS terms. I'm more interesting, these days.
- The Mighty Frood'Zine, Number Two is
the same thing once I'd gotten my feet wet and was no longer wet behind
the ears (experience is all about the slow migration of moisture on the
body, you know). It features the infamous Pentagon article, and a much
earlier version of Unlimited Mana.
- The Mighty Frood'Zine, Number Three
is jam-packed and fun-filled. Expanded alchohol rules, the early version
of the Barbie from Warehouse 23, wierd rants and so much more. And this
one is as poorly converted to HTML as the others. Time is so precious,
you know . . . The cover for this issue of AotA (#13) was drawn
by Yours Truly (well, if you can call it "drawing" - I'm a writer,
not an illustrator!) . . . You can see the cover by
clicking here (it's a big file).
- For Daws to Peck At, Number One features
"You Can Be Scott Maykrantz," my guide to re-creating the almost-criminal
genius behind GURPS Creatures of the Night! It also includes
Nyekundu Mkate, one of my all-time favorite GURPS Supers
characters from the local games.
- For Daws to Peck At, Number Two has
the library rules that make the Book
Rules work! This one includes my writeup on GenCon '93 - what there
is of it! Also more of the usual junk.
- For Daws to Peck At, Number Three was
where the afforementioned Book
Rules (as well as Partners)
first appeared. Here at last is (some!) of the other GURPS
stuff that was in that issue of Daws, including variant rules for Solar
Power and a new way of pricing "striker" advantages. Also: MORNING FOG,
and one of the best characters I never played. You've been warned.
- STILL More to come! Stay tuned!
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