Dungeons & Sorcery Spells 10

by on October 3, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: GURPS

This is the tenth collection of spells for my GURPS Dungeons & Sorcery project. Which means there’s now over 100 spells for it, which I didn’t initially think I’d do, and this is still finishing off 2nd level spells, and moving into 3rd level, with Fly as the headliner old-time spell.

Earthen Grasp (SC)
Alteration, Somatic, Verbal
9 points
Casting Time: 2 seconds
Casting Roll: Innate Attack (Gaze) to aim.
Range: 20 yards
Duration: 30 seconds

An earthen arm comes up out of the ground and attempts to grasp the leg of the target of the spell. If the target is hit, the arm will hold him in place and keep him from moving away, Changing Posture or facing, and confers a -4 DX penalty.

The target can break free by winning a Quick Contest against ST 15. Each attempt to do so takes one second, and costs 1 FP, but there is no other penalty to trying again. The arm can be attacked, and Innate attacks from the victim will automatically hit, while all others suffer a -4 penalty. Other characters can attempt to attack the arm, but they might hit the character instead (see Striking into Close Combat, B392). The arm can only be damaged by crushing damage, and has DR 5, but each point of damage reduces the arm’s ST by one, and is destroyed when at ST 0.

This spell can only be used when there’s appropriate ground or turf under the character to be grasped. It will not work on stone, or inside a building.

Binding 15 (Environmental, Earth, -20%; One-Shot, -10%; Only Damaged By Crushing, +30%; Reduced Duration, 1/2, -5%; Reduced Range, 1/5, -20%; Requires Gestures, -10%; Requires Magic Words, -10%; Sorcery, -15%; Takes Extra Time, x2, ‑10%) [0.3×30]
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The Weapon Shops of Isher

by on September 29, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Overall, The Weapon Shops of Isher was enjoyable, but it has a number of problems. Some of this is structural leftovers from being a combination of three short stories, but some run deeper.

The novel starts with a prologue that’s as long as any three chapters of the book put together. In it a 1951 reporter is transported approximately 7000 years into the future as an accidental side effect of a struggle happening there. From there, the rest of the novel is concerned with events in that far-distant date, and our reporter doesn’t even come up again for half the book. He becomes a background element for bits of the second half, before getting resolved in a one-page epilogue. That, at least, is big idea SF at its best, and the original consolidated story might have had a lot more punch.

The bulk of the novel actually has three different viewpoint characters, two of which have complete arcs. The third is a typical plot-destroying superman, and is thus immune to having any real character development. He is ‘Earth’s one immortal man’, and has the usual bevy of abilities that a millennias-long life might be expected to convey. Of course, how or why he’s immortal is not gone into at all, nor any real background on him.

Overall, the central conceit of the book is the necessity of an armed (or at least potentially armed) populace to resist tyrannical governmental power. However, it undermines its own message by the use of near-magic guns. They are also themselves capable of protecting their possessor from most things, and can only be used in self-defense (the psionic technology needed for such a feat is not gone into, nor if you could use one to blast open the door of a room you’ve been locked into; not being able to just shoot up the countryside seems to be assumed).

But still, the actual writing is fairly good, and while the main plot has a twist that’s not hard to figure out as it happen at the end, it then has another nice twist to resolve the overall conflict.

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Red Mars

by on September 25, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The structure of Red Mars is in eight parts, with each one using a different viewpoint character (with two of them repeating earlier viewpoints). They cover about 35 years of the early colonization, settlement, and early terraforming of Mars.

The descriptions of the climate and conditions on Mars are probably the best there’s been (I haven’t done extensive reading of fictional portrayals of Mars…), and is obviously one of the primary purposes of the novel. Several of the characters spend time wandering around the surface of Mars, so there’s descriptions of several parts of the surface, though not enough to really give it a ‘travelogue’ feel.

The characters themselves range all over, and the differing viewpoints do a lot to show the strengths and weaknesses of several, though some important ones never do get fleshed out. Most of them aren’t really thrilling reads however, with Nadia being the main likeable character in the lot, mostly because early on she’s having a lot of fun building things and being perpetual troubleshooter.

The colonization aspect runs into trouble though. The initial ship arrives, and they land in the midst of lots of supplies that had been shipped and landed by remote ahead of time. And then… they start uncrating and using the supplies to improvise a basic settlement, and figure out what everyone is going to do. There is no way that the first few months would not have an extremely detailed plan of what was to be done, and what the initial settlement layout would be. Sure, there would be unexpected problems that arise and have to be improvised around, but that would be within the confines of a plan to get everyone into working living arrangements, instead of arriving, and then debating problems with radiation exposure.

Earth is never shown up-close in the novel, but its made clear that the political situation is disintegrating. Presumably, things were well enough in 2026 that a major effort could be made for one hundred people and a lot of equipment to be sent to Mars. But there’s talk of things going downhill from the start. By the end, apparently Earth is having major problems, and Mars is the ‘new frontier’, where people are being sent in horrible conditions to mine for resources.

At this point we’re closer to the beginning date of the novel than 1992 when it was written. I’ll note that it’s also part of an early ’90s trend to see business taking over everything by accumulating more power than most governments in the near future. Of course, here it is assumed to be manufacturing and aerospace that form the core of the ‘transnationals’, instead of the communication and media conglomerates that tend to be on top today. In another couple decades, it’ll probably be something else ‘on top’ of the business world.

Overall, its an ambitious book, that delivers well on the focus of its ambitions, and I can see why it got the Hugo and Nebula, but it falls short in places, making it merely an okay read.

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The Glorious Cause

by on September 21, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

As a one volume history of the American Revolution, The Glorious Cause is nicely complete, but seems to assume some prior knowledge. Now, as there’s plenty of ‘everyone knows’ bits about the American Revolution, that’s not awful here, but this is definitely an introductory book, and I think it assumes too much on occasion.

It is at its best in the early chapters, which deal with the decade or more of political problems that lead up to the outbreak of hostilities. After that, it feels like Middlekauff’s attention gets to split up, with important parts being handwaved aside, as it’s just one too many things to handle at once. There’s some interesting thoughts on how British efforts inevitably hurt the Loyalist cause, and then never really came to it’s aid. Too little time is spent on it, but the major problem with the Loyalists would seem to be that they never got organized like the Patriots, and Pennsylvania is looked at in particular to show why they could not organize. The British are shown as never coming up with a coherent plan for how to conduct the war, but he never examines if the British ever formed a coherent idea of who they were fighting. Afterward, the drafting of the Constitution is examined… in comparatively speaking exhausting detail.

The book in microcosm: Good backgrounds given for many of the familiar names of the Revolution. They are quite informative, but this is also where Middlekauff seems to rely on ‘everyone knows’ information, as a few people like Benjamin Franklin are never examined. I wonder if it might skip over important information for someone truly unfamiliar with the war, even if it seems like such a person might not exist among people reading in English.

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Dilvish the Damned

by on September 17, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This… is pretty classic Zelazny. Well-written stories with a somewhat overpowered protagonist, and often a zany twist to them.

Not to say that Dilvish has it easy. Most of the stories put him in real danger, and he gets pretty beaten up during the longest short story of the set. But his constant companion is a demon in the form of a metal horse that is untiring, fast and nearly invulnerable. Dilvish has a supremely high pain tolerance (from having spent a couple centuries in the House of Pain in hell), boots of catfall, and of course is very good in a fight. But, the running thread of the series of short stories here is his hunt for revenge on the most powerful evil sorcerer in the world, so he’s going to need some advantages in the long run.

The chronology of the stories is fairly loose, but mostly consistent. Dilvish picks up an invisible sword early on, which is important in the next story… and then disappears. Some time passes in here, and other events outside the focus of the stories are put to rest, but I don’t see any reference to what happened to his special sword.

Past that nitpick, the stories are all good, though drift some in style, as they were written over a two decade period. The longer stories, near the end of the volume, are particularly good.

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