Big Subject—Big Book

by on October 24, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Posted In: GURPS

GURPS books from SJG have undergone a steady case of page inflation. This is largely because they can charge more for bigger books, while the cost of printing only goes up a moderate amount. (The cost of producing the material is more linear.)

The first GURPS books were saddle-stitched at 96 pages. Then came GURPS Space (First Edition) at 128 pages, perfect bound, and $15. And well worth it, being one of the best tool-kit/advice supplements ever. SJG tried keeping costs down with $8, 68-page perfect-bound supplements like GURPS Space Unnight, but the margins were too low to work without a greater sales volume than they were generating.

So the GURPS line settled on 128-page books, with the prices slowly rising with inflation. In 1994, the next jump in size occurred with the release of GURPS Religion at 196 pages.

Once again, SJG put its best foot forward with the new format. It never became the line-standard this time, but it did see further use (GURPS Compendium I, GURPS Compendium II, GURPS Traveller, and GURPS Space (Third Edition)).

Like GURPS Space, GURPS Religion is centered around advice more than any campaign-centric material. It is divided into eight chapters, which range from a general talk about the structure of religions, to general system-related discussions, to working examples.

Comparative Religions 101
The first four chapters are “Cosmology”, “Deities”, “Development”, and “Symbols” and together would make an excellent introductory unit for a comparative religions class. Given the 87-pages it’s crammed into, it is a very wide-ranging and well done study of the nature of existing religions. The general idea is to present the various recurring structural themes and give the reader some direction to setting up a religion for his game world.

It achieves this quite well, and while a well-read person will have seen most, if not all of it before (there’s likely to be at least a couple mythologies referenced that any particular reader hasn’t studied), it’s still very nice to see it all in one place and sorted out, topic by topic. The book is worth the price of entry right here.

Give me that old time religion…
The next two chapters move out of general world-building and into more system-related materials. However, the ‘crunch’ is still kept light, and it is still world-building oriented. “Clerics” presents general character types, and gives GURPS-specific advice for fine-tuning the Clerical Investment and Patron (Church) advantages, as well as new material for being Blessed or Cursed, and Power Investiture (the clerical version of Magical Aptitude), or even being Excommunicated.

All of this is specifically pointed at GURPS, but there’s still some food for thought for other systems. Especially pointed is the split between Clerical Investiture (which measures how far up the church hierarchy the character is), and Power Investiture (which affects the character’s ability to channel power from a god), and the fact that the GM will need to decide whether the two are directly linked or not.

“Divine Magic” is the most disappointing section of the book, as the main mechanics boil down to ‘use the existing skill-based Magic system, and substitute Power Investiture for Magical Aptitude’. A discussion of an enforced split between the abilities of the two types (like, say, locking Mages out of healing magics…) would have been good, but is barely mentioned. However, there is good system material in the subtleties, with discussion of holy places, how such are created/consecrated, etc. There is some good generic discussion of shamanistic magic, though the less generic/more detailed version in GURPS Old West (Second Edition) is a bit better.

Working examples
The last two chapters are dedicated to actual examples of religions. “Traditions” actually doesn’t give any detailed setting examples, but rather talks about actual Earth traditions, first going back into generalities with discussions of animism, nonhuman spirts, and so on, before moving on to a whirlwind tour the things that typify Earth religions in various parts of the globe. The last chapter gives actual sample religions for use in SF or fantasy campaigns. There’s one typical D&Dish medieval pantheon (which gets the most space), one animistic religion that obviously borrows several cues from Shinto (including a multi-island based setting), and four SF-setting religions. My guess is that the emphasis on the last is to help stir the imagination as to the possibilities of religion in a genre that has typically ignored the subject.

When it comes to such concrete examples, several GURPS products have left me flat. However, I actually like the examples given here. None of them are stellar, but they are good examples, and I’d at least think about using/adapting them if I was running a setting compatible with their backgrounds.

Overall, I consider GURPS Religion to be another of the greats of the GURPS 3rd Edition line. Short on system mechanics, long on general advice, and packed full of things to get you thinking about the subject; it really was GURPS Space all over again, and is highly recommended for anyone doing world-building, even if that’s for a writing project, as opposed to running an RPG.

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Archon!

by on October 12, 2009 at 8:27 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had Mark over yesterday for gaming.

This time, at long last, we did a playtest game of Archon. It’s designed by Richard Berg, and is scheduled to be included as a separate game in The Glory That Was Greece, Volume III of the Ancient World series.

The general idea is a simple card-driven game of the rise of the Greek city-states, and their colonization of much of the Mediterranean Basin. Each player starts with control of two city states, and tries to gain control of other ones and/or colonize and control Ionia, the Dardanelles/Bosphorous, Crete, the Nile delta, southern Italy and Sicily (the Greeks also reached much of the Black Sea coast and France, but these are deliberately left out of the game). Somewhat like Berg’s recent Blackbeard, the game consists of a single run-through of the deck, which certainly keeps the length down.

Mark and I had read the rules many moons ago, but had forgotten pretty much all of it by this point, so it was the blind leading the blind. Still, it wasn’t too bad, and the game actually went about the predicted amount of time (4 1/2 hours for the first play—it should drop to 3).

We started with fairly basic choices for city-states. I took Attica for the resources, population and navy (and supplemented it with Argolis for it’s navy), while Mark took Laconia (for the home defense, it took a bit to realize that wasn’t going to be starting armies) and Boeotia.

This was technically the start of a resource imbalance that wouldn’t show up for a bit. Shuffling didn’t go so well, so a lot of card pairs were still clumped together. I expect that’ll sort itself out next time. We got drought for the first couple turns of the game, which seriously cut short our available resources. In fact, a couple of cards that demanded naval maintenance wiped out my treasury, and then the navy. So much for that advantage.

However, once the long drought was over, I quickly started getting resources faster than I could spend them. It’s not that there was nothing to spend them on, just that spending them takes actions, which are very precious. Much of the middle game was spent trying to figure out how to actually be able to take a neutral city state (purposefully made difficult). We each managed one (Corinth for me, and Phokis for Mark).

The main driving force in the game is population. It grows steadily, if randomly, through the game, and having too much can be as much of a problem as too little. The die rolls really favored me, with Argolis gaining population faster than anywhere else. Of course, this ‘forced my hand’ somewhat, as I needed to found colonies and maintain a standing army to take up all the spare people.

We only really understood some bits in the rules about controlling colonies for VPs very late, and the end of the game was a scramble to establish control of what we had established. Overall, Mark did somewhat better than I. I abused the fact that I went last to get more than he did, but he was a bit better organized and burned some of my colonies, whereas I never did return the favor. With an extra turn, he would have done much better.

By strict VPs, it was a blowout: 91 to 49 in my favor. Much of that was the middle part of the game where I was consistently drawing 13 to 17 RPs a turn (RPs left over at the end become VPs). I horded them at first, and then realized I couldn’t spend them fast enough anyway…. Without the RPs, it was much closer, 17 to 16 in my favor, and again that was mostly because I went last.

Anyway, we think it shows some real promise, and we hope to try a multiplayer session of it soon!

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A Grand Old Time Out West

by on October 6, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Posted In: GURPS

GURPS has been known for its historical supplements. GURPS Old West was a relatively early one, coming out in 1991. This rewritten edition came out nine years later in 2000. Given the amount of GURPS material that came in between, I imagine the book saw a lot of changes.

In fact, I flipped through the first edition once when it came out, so I’m aware of one general difference: This one is a bit more tightly focused. The original actually covered from the creation of the Old Northwest Territory in 1787, whereas this one really doesn’t pick up until 1800. The shift is subtle, but there. I don’t know about the focus of the previous book, but this one is emphatically dedicated to the ‘classic’ period of the Old West, 1865-1885.

As usual for a GURPS historical product, it is full of fun tidbits as well as general historical and role-playing info. There is a nice run down of the general terrain and flora and fauna from the Great Plains all the way west to the Pacific coast. Some miniature floor plans of typical railroad cars, and even advice on ‘how to rob a train’ (face it, it’s going to come up).

In general, I found this to be one of the better historical books GURPS has done, and on reflection, I believe that it is because the West is a genre just as much as it is a setting, and the book pays attention to both.

Beyond the usual history, characters, campaigning, etc, chapters, there’s also one on the Indians, which can be a bit depressing (which means they do a decent job). It’s a very quick overview of the major groups of tribes, but a good one, that serves as a good basic grounding. Also, the second half of the chapter is dedicated to a magic system based on Indian beliefs. It looks pretty good, if a little sparse, and would be enough for anything short of a ‘high magic’ version where it not only works, but can be quite spectacular. As it is, it’s plenty for either representing how the Indians believed it worked, or a world where some things just can’t be explained by reason alone…. (and there are some thoughts on how to handle the various possibilities).

The vast bulk of the book is not really dedicated to system-specific material, so anyone wanting to take a game into the Old West (or something resembling it), can find some good value here. This was written for GURPS 3rd Edition, and I can’t say exactly how easily most of the system content goes to 4th Ed, but:

  • The guns (biggest problem, system re-write wise) are taken straight out of High Tech, so dropping in the stats for the current edition of HT will solve that. The rest of the equipment isn’t system-dependent enough to be a concern.
  • The characters section was written before templates became a big deal, so there’s none here, it’s all advice, and no real costs to translate.
  • I have no idea if the magic system is already redone in GURPS Thaumatology, or if it’s related to anything in there, or what.
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Lighting Strikes Twice!

by on September 28, 2009 at 10:31 am
Posted In: GURPS

GURPS generally enjoys a reputation for good reference supplements. One that caught me particularly by surprise was when I borrowed a friend’s copy of GURPS High-Tech. I’m not really into guns, but I was impressed by broad-based historical info on all subjects from ~1450 to the present as well as for the historical interest given on the guns themselves.

Low-Tech, to cover from the Stone Age through the Middle Ages was an actively requested book in the mid-’90s (when I was on the GURPSnet mailing list). Sadly, I missed it when it did come out (I was in a non-RPG cycle by that time). I have just recently gotten a copy and gone through it.

Get the Bad out of the way: The cover
It’s not exactly bad concept, or composition, but the color intensity of most of the cover art elements are about the same, and just blend into each other. Uninspired at best, muddy at worst. Worse, is the use of Avalon for the title logo, done too big, and massively scaled to make font that is naturally very wide fit into the available space. I’m not a big fan of the font (sure, it can be nice once in a while… Diablo is about my personal limit), and I could have done with a different choice on the cover and all the major section headings.

Also, while I thought the binding was holding up, the bulk of the book separated from the spine about the time I finished a read-through of it. This seems to be a very common problem of SJG books of the time, and I’ve gotten used to being prepared to just use some Elmer’s to put it back together, which generally works fine.

Defining Technology
Thankfully, while it is nice for a cover to look good, that’s not why I got the book. It is divided into 5 chapters; a beginning section that lays out the common precepts of the book, one chapter each on Tech Levels 0-3, and an appendix that gives arms and armor details. In addition, there’s a good 2-page glossary, and a very nice 3-page bibliography. I don’t know most of the books in it, but the ones I do know are very good.

The introductory chapter focuses on the GURPS Tech Level system itself, and talks about the fact that some societies won’t show a consistent TL across all categories. Reasonably obvious stuff, but it needed saying somewhere. In addition, there’s a two-page job table suitable for the entire period covered in the book (pretty well done, considering the broad subject).

Through the Ages
The bulk of the book is discussions of technology and capabilities at various tech levels. I’m something of a history nut, and much of my reading over the last decade has focused around the Roman Empire, so there’s not a lot that was completely new to me. However, the highlights of a very broad subject are covered very well, including discussions of how nomadic cultures fall into the TL scheme, and other anomalies.

Since there is relatively little technology to cover, the section on the Stone Age works out fairly well, covering just about all the high points. Skills needed for various tasks, just how much food can be gathered, and how much meat can be gotten from game. Since adventurers are likely to be hunting for themselves in any setting up to TL5 (19th century), this has some good figures for a lot of campaigns.

The Bronze Age chapter has a good example of the type of data that can make GURPS books good references, a sidebar that gives the energy output (in kWs) of burning different general types of wood. Beyond any further utility of hard numbers, it’s a good way to compare them against each other. There’s also a couple of GURPS Martial Arts-style maneuvers for use with chariots.

The Iron Age chapter gave me a couple of problems since I’m so used to thinking of the heyday of Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire as two very different periods, even though they’re both Iron Age cultures. So I was fighting my instincts while they did the only thing they could in an overview this broad.

The Middle Ages feels like even more of an overview to me, though there’s no real reason why that is so. Certainly, there’s a good sidebar on how to judge a flame catching something on fire that could be used almost anywhere (mostly meant for fire arrows and Greek fire here). There’s also a table detailing the various components of horse barding.

Equipment
The final appendix supplements all the general equipment given at each TL with hard stats for various weapons, armor, and vehicles. There’s also a page talking about various materials weapons can be made from and how that affects quality and the chance of the weapon breaking, in an enhancement of the rules in Basic Set. Another page deals with customizing weapons from the standard types given with things like flanges and butt-spikes. It is claimed that this allows construction just about any type of polearm that has a meaningful in-game difference. Sadly, I can’t find my copy of Unearthed Arcana to take them up on it. 😉 The armor table also includes some optional rules for more detail with head protection from helmets.

A nice thing about the weapons tables is that in the sections it covers, it includes the original Basic Set weapons, as well as the new ones, so you don’t need to refer to both places. However, there are a few things that aren’t in the new set (generally post-medieval), so you may need to go back to the original sometimes. Similarly, the armor tables are a much more detailed look at the equipment given in Basic Set, plus new items. There’s also about a page and a half of vehicle statistics (‘vehicle’ includes things like dog sleds…), mostly worked out with GURPS Vehicles (Second Edtion), but with speeds figured using statistics for harnesses given in the text of the book.

But what’s it worth?
For someone GMing a low-tech campaign in GURPS 3rd Edition, this is a very handy resource. Even if you have a more specific world book (say, GURPS Greece), there’s a lot of context here that can help out. Similarly, there’s a lot of little bits that can be handy in the oddest places. Most of it can be done off the cuff, but if you want something a little more consistent, and thought-through ahead of time, as usual, GURPS delivers. I was wowed by the original High-Tech, and it’s successor does just as good a job.

For someone not using GURPS, it is much harder to say. A lot will depend on the person. If you don’t have a lot of grounding in the period, then it definitely is a good primer on the subject. Even if you do, it can be handy to have it all put into one place like this. Also, some of the pure data that crops up can be very handy on occasion.

GURPS 4th Edition doesn’t have an equivalent book, and the SJG website does point people to this book as a related item to GURPS High-Tech (Fourth Edition). I haven’t made the jump to 4th Ed myself, so I don’t know how much some things have changed, though I know there have been some changes. Assuming that actual damage and DR numbers for weapons and armor in Basic Set stayed the same, then that should convert over well, and Low-Tech as a whole should do very well under the 4th Ed rules.

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Cunning Crete

by on September 27, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had the gang over for gaming yesterday. We played the ever-popular Advanced Civilization with five players, and had a good time of it.

The mix of powers was the same as last time, though who took what was different. I decided to take Crete this time, and got Barbarian Hordes (which Crete is immune to) twice during the game.

For some reason, we went a bit slower this time, only getting about as far as the first time we played. I found this a little disappointing, but still a very good day as everyone was in good reach of the lead at the end.

Jason played Egypt, and nearly knocked himself out of the game by building two cities early, one of them away from a city site, reducing his population to just enough to support the cities. He made the Early Bronze Age barrier, and didn’t build on the flood plain, but the lack of population kept him from doing anything else until the first Civil War calamity hit, and he inherited some territory in eastern Asia Minor.

As Crete, I didn’t have my best start ever, mostly because I bounced off the Early Bronze Age twice. I built my first city the first time, and planned to build the second the turn after, but forgot about it when the time came, putting me a turn behind where I planned to be. However, I managed to escape most of the first and second round of calamities (including being the one to trade away an Epidemic, rendering me immune), and overall was in the best position, though Patch’s Thracians had also been doing well.

Mark was surprisingly aggressive during the game, with his Assyrians on the border of Babylon’s (Dave’s) start areas for pretty much the entire game (with an interruption by the Egyptian pocket empire). Between that and Egypt’s late start, the Levant wasn’t truly colonized until reasonably late, and most of North Africa was never occupied. I had gotten Astronomy towards the end of the day, and was hoping to colonize Carthage once the third round of calamities (which was hitting me) settled out.

Thanks to a couple of nasty calamities on the last two turns, I only finished with three cities (I had rebuilt up to six after a Civil War handed a fair chunk of property to Thrace, but Slave Revolt reduced me back to three). And that cost me the victory. For the third time in three games, I was in second. Now, this is a much better average than anyone other than Patch (who has been first twice, and third once; average 1 2/3), but I’d like to get an actual win….

Final Scores:

Side Player AST Cities Civ Cards Cards Treasury Total Place
Thrace Patch 1000 350 280 27 10 1667 1
Crete Rindis 1000 150 440 0 0 1593 2
Assyria Mark 900 350 300 0 0 1550 3
Babylon Dave 900 200 390 0 0 1490 4
Egypt Jason 900 300 280 0 8 1488 5

The spread between first and second was less than 100 points, and I had a definite edge on Civilization cards, so not only was I likely to have broken the Early Iron Age barrier first (up to five cards, and some nice bonuses starting to add up), but I probably would have had the victory on any turn other than this one. But, we were all happy at how tight the game was staying.

We need to sort out who’s available when, since it looks like we have some crowded schedules next month. Not sure what we’ll play, though my playtest copy of Metropolis Archon has finally arrived….

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