This is a monthly r/GURPS thread for anything and everything related to your own campaigns. Tell us how you and your friends are making out. Update us on the progress of your game. Tell us about any issues you've run into and maybe we can help. Make suggestions for other players and GMs.

This is a monthly r/GURPS thread for anything and everything related to your own campaigns. Tell us how you and your friends are making out. Update us on the progress of your game. Tell us about any issues you've run into and maybe we can help. Make suggestions for other players and GMs.

Hi all, I posted this on the GURPS forum but wanted to post here too in case the audience is different. I'm trying to put together a magic system for a setting I'm developing. The idea as it stands right now is to have basically two different kinds of magic - slow methodical rituals, and fast but risky spells. My gut is telling me to use the effect-shaping variant of RPM for the rituals, and disallow the Adept advantage so casting times are always in minutes at least.

For the faster casting, I was thinking of using Threshold based RPM, but the article in Pyramid 3/66 advises against mixing effect shaping and energy gathering in the same setting, and threshold functions closer to energy gathering as far as I can tell.

However, I found an older post (wish I could find it again) where a reply mentioned doing something similar - effect shaping for most cases, but threshold for instant casting.

I also want threshold to be more area-based than personal, but not sure ow to implement it. If you're familiar with the Rogue Trader PC game, I'm going for that feel, where the area of encounter has a background Tally level, and once it exceeds threshold, bad things start happening for everyone.

As it stands now, my basic idea is to break these two types of magic into different core skills using RPM. Rituals use effect shaping RPM with Ritual Magic as the core skill, and no adept advantage to speed up casting. Fast spells use Thaumatology as the core skill and Threshold RPM. I guess my questions are as follows:

1) Does this setup seem feasible? Do I break anything by having threshold and effect shaping RPM in the same world?

2) If the two are incompatible, I'm open to ideas on how to handle this.

3) What might be a good way to have Threshold and Tally apply over an area instead of being tied to an individual?

Thanks in advance!

I started writing this I 2020. I was stuck at home and needed a way to game. So I started writing down rules for two characters in Combat. They both have to be from the same game system.

It's pretty basic and I made it cheap so anyone can get it.

The Sparring Match

Let me know if you have any problems with it, if you get it.

This is a dumb question, but maybe this is owing up to the rarity of vehicle use in the medium. But how much DR do tires have RAW? I ran a chase scene last night and it went great -- thanks Action! A character wanted to throw a star shuriken at a car tire. That's when I noticed: I had no answer to how much DR the tires would have (don't worry, I ended up ruling in the player's favor!)

There's just a generic DR listing of 5 for a basic car. In the hit location section for vehicles, it notes that windows get half DR and if a tire takes any damage, then an HT check is need or else the tire goes flat.

How am I to read this? There are a few possibilities:
1) Tires get DR equal to the host car (awkward)
2) Tires get reduced DR, like 1 or 2. In line with something like Leather.
3) Tires that sustain any damage, regardless of DR penetration, risk going flat. An HT check is required (not sure if that's how you're supposed to read that bit, but the emphasis on any is in GURPS and not mine)

Any help lol?

This is a part of our series, in which we present Greek gods - and show how to combine them with the Cthulhu Mythos and use them in cosmic horror stories or scenarios for RPGs. You are free to use all this material in your own creative work! Here You can watch video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKJbxf0BYI

Hermes is known as the messenger of the gods, which easily leads us to the Mask of Nyarlathotep, especially since Hermes is also a trickster, fond of playing practical jokes (and patronizing thieves and fraudsters), which may lead to further associations with the Crawling Chaos. But his role as a messenger was greatly expanded by believers and philosophers.

First of all, he became the patron of all kinds of travel and transport - even to the afterlife, as a psychopomp escorting souls to Hades. He is the patron of all roads and intersections.

Secondly - the messenger is a transmitter of knowledge. He was credited with the invention of numbers and letters. In later centuries, Hermes Trismegistos (Hermes the Thrice Great) was created by combining Hermes with Egyptian and Judeo-Christian beliefs. The term "Hermetic" comes from him, and it also became the center of the occult belief system called Hermeticism (note, contrary to what priests and preachers say - "occult" does not mean "Satanic").

Hermes Trismegistos was said to be an archetypal sage and magician, he was credited with authoring 36,529 books containing all the knowledge and wisdom of the ancient world - primarily the so-called Tabula Smaragdina and the Corpus Hermeticum treatises.

Hermeticism combined astronomy/astrology, alchemy, medicine and psychology - that is, it was a mishmash of mystical superstitions and (proto)science - more or less like magic in Mythos (though, of course, the real possibilities of the Hermetists were much more modest).

Interestingly, many Hermetic concepts, which at first glance sound like esoteric gibberish, have in a sense been revived in modern science. The Hermetists believed that matter was composed of four elements - fire, water, earth and air (sometimes a fifth "element" was added - will/soul/mind - symbolized by a pentagram). This meant that by changing the proportion of an element in a given substance, one material could be transformed into another - hence the search for a way to transmute lead into gold. As science developed, this concept was rejected as a pipe dream, the possibility of transmutation was considered an absurd... Until it turned out that yes, all matter consists of the same elements - electrons, neutrons and protons - so changing their configuration allows you to change the essence of the material. And modern chemists managed to transform it into gold: although such a procedure is unprofitable from an economic point of view (energy consumption significantly exceeds the value of the gold produced... but for a being with unlimited, from a human point of view, energy sources?). Concept of the four elements was somehow revived in the form of 4 states of the matter (earth = solid state, water = liquid, air = gas, fire = plasma). Another Hermetic concept was "As above, so below." It sounds like mystical gibberish about the unity of man with the heavens, or sympathetic magic... But the development of science has led to the conclusion that in fact the microcosm is often an amazing reflection of the macrocosm - the structure of the atom resembles the structure of the solar system.

So, we have a being that, on the one hand, is omnipresent, embodies movement both in our world and between planes of existence, one could say that it is a key and a gate. At the same time, it is also a source of secret knowledge, which at first glance is philosophical, superstitious gibberish, but turns out to contain bits of science that go beyond the understanding of the people who possess it. Who else but Yog Sothoth? Well, possibly Hastur, patron of wizards and interstellar travel.

According to Greek mythology, Hermes was the father of Pan, a strange creature.

Pan had the body and face of a man, was all hairy, had goat legs, a tail, a beard and horns. Doesn't this description remind you of Yog-Sothoth's most famous spawn, Willbur Whateley?

Of course, Willbur's lower half wasn't exactly goatish. The Pan's scream aroused incredible, irresistible fear among people and animals (hence the word "panic). Pan used to play the syrinx - "the Pan's flute". One day, Pan fell in love with the nymph Syrinks. And she's not in it. Pan chased her and almost caught her, but Syrinks turned into a river reed. At that moment, the wind blew and a beautiful sound came from the reed blades. The Pan plucked the reeds and made an instrument from them, which he called a syringa. A lovely story...

What is the Mythical message of this legend? What if Pan was the spawn of Yog-Sothoth, and one of the incredible powers he inherited from his daddy was to make sounds that terrified earthly beings into maddening terror? And what if it was possible to construct a musical instrument that imitated this effect... and preferably made from the bones of a human woman who had previously been reduced to terror?

There is another interesting story related to Pan, told by Plutarch. According to him, Pan lived for 9,720 years. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, sailors passing by the Echinad Islands heard a voice that ordered the helmsman named Thamus, after reaching land, to announce, according to this interpretation: "The Great Pan is dead." The sailors hesitated for a long time, and finally, reaching land near Palodes, they announced the death of the god. At these words, there were complaints and terrible groans from all sides.

Let me add that, according to some followers of the ancient Orphic cult, Pan was the creator of the earth, which he separated from the sea, and the individual elements of the Universe were equivalents of parts of Pan's body. Have they confused Pan, the offspring of Yog-Sothoth, with his father, who is "all in all"?

And of course, since we are talking about the Pan, we cannot fail to mention the book "The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen, one of the precursors of cosmic horror, highly appreciated by Lovecraft.

Full text and many other Lovecraftian inspiration from real life religions, culture, history and science, You can read in the free brochure: https://adeptus7.itch.io/lovecraftian-inspirations-from-real-life-and-beliefs And here You can watch a video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKJbxf0BYI Please, if You liked this text at least a bit, watch a video version, it will support our channel, where we will publish more Lovecrafian content!

I've just started a new campaign. I'm creating some magic items to awards players with. I know you can give magic items that grant certain advantages.

What about magic items that mitigate disadvantages?

One of my players has the weakness disadvantage. Is there a way I could give them an item that decreases the severity of their disadvantage?

Is this something others have done before?

I do know that a player could simply buy off a disadvantage as well. This might be the simplest way, but I would like to know if there any alternatives to this.

A monthly post to share your maps, tokens, and other image files with the GURPS community.

Hi so bit of a wild reach but in the 3rd edition Mage the ascension book it keeps mentioning the Sphere skills that the spheres are based but it doesn't mention what the Skills themselves are based for the purpose of buying them.

Further, what penalties might i receive if I call the ground a coward if this isn't allowed? Thanks.

(Believe it or not, this is a genuine question)