Week in Gaming

  This is a weekly entry on my RPG activities and related news. The purpose is to track and organize my thoughts. I also hope to inspire people by showing them different ideas and possibilities with GURPS, an option I have at the moment as I am in 3 GURPS campaigns.

Games

Monday (Hylen)

The last session was mostly background stuff, only one player really got to do much, the rest of us being busy with the more routine stuff about building New Widdershins. The one character is an oddball character and seems to prefers to do things by himself so he had the bulk of the evening doing things only he could do. When one player gets the bulk of the screen time it can be a problem as everyone wants their time in the sun and especially to have fun. The GM and player thus need to at the least put on a good show, preferably with stakes the other players have an interest in (though not without taking away their agency) and trying to manage the time. It can be a difficult task for any GM and most of us slip into letting some players dominate the game at various points. Sometimes this cant be helped, other times the GM needs to manage things better.  But when it happens that does not necessarily mean a boring game for everyone. For example the player brought up certain ideas that were overall useful and the GM had him find some interesting items, crystals that expand into walls with various shapes and prosperities; and an ancient supply cach we have yet to figure out. Everyone had a stake in the new find as it could help with the town building and the byplay between player and GM was entertaining.

One player got to capture some goats and we already had pens. Another managed to dodge the amorous attention of an NPC (I think that was about it for his screen time) and Dan was mostly organizing the building - meaning I told the GM what I thought all the NPCs should be working on.

We also did a lot of background number crunching, mostly using GURPS Realm Management and GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics.

GURPS Low-Tech and its companions continually surprise me with just how much is in there, you don't use them often in most campaigns so tend to forget all the stuff they have. People often talk about using Harn to help world build but the Low-Tech series is more portable to various settings whereas Harn is very medieval Europe focused.

As for building the town? We got a surprising amount done.  Dan had some pushback on some of his priorities, the GM even making the remark that he though Dan was trying to rush things but I pointed out we have only a few months of gasoline left and little more than half a year on Diesel. Wanting to get the big stuff done while we have fuel as after that a lot of our tasks will get much more labor intensive.

Next game might be a feast and the GM has done a LOT of number crunching and we should be able to gloss over most of the background stuff. Still most players will not have much free time and that limits his opportunities for running an entertaining game for everyone.

Friday (GURPS Technomancer)

We did a restart as the GM felt his initial idea wasn't going to work out very well so rebuilt our characters. The two of us are now playing field agents for the FBI in the generic 1980s.

We did the character building during the week and this was a short couple of roleplaying scenes of our characters getting to know each other.

Saturday (Dresden Files, Fate)

Our off week for that campaign.

Sunday (MagicVegas, GURPS Thaumatology and Political Intrigue)

My character Dr. Wu got to meet the remaining PC and had more screen time, though still not really a part of the group yet. It felt like half the game was the Druid delegation working on their pet project of building a Other Worlds gate network for exploiting resources.  As next session Dr. Wu is supposed to meet with their lead delegate (already met his assistants, one of which is a PC) and I think her magic tradition has a world they would like access to this could be a hook for her getting more involved.

This is a tricky campaign to run as everyone is from a different magical tradition and we all are looking to push forward conflicting agendas.  Most campaigns players are a team, here were more rivals that sometimes have to work together.

I made some work on updating my tradition (Taoism) for Book/Path but spent most of the time for that campaign on learning more about its magic system (Book/Path from GURPS Thaumatology) which has a lot of house rules and tweaks.

I also need to figure out more about what fetishes' (special magic items) she has and hope to have that all done by next game.

Writing

My GURPS published material (plus some Kickstarter stuff not showing up there)

GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits had a bump in sales this past month which was nice.

The friend I am trying to help with his Shadowrun and Earth Dawn conversion has ben exploring Sorcery, Book/Path, Ritual Path Magic, and my Affinity magic system and seems to be settling in on Affinity magic. I did not update the grimoire (Chapter 3 of my personal players draft) but did come up with a few ideas in trying to tweak it for him.  One of those ideas is adding Threshold Magic from GURPS Thaumatology blended with Corruption and a custom backlash or soak mechanic.

Also got a bit of inspiration for my Social Magic system that was originally inspired by the Dragon Knight series by Gordon R. Dickinson but which has taken on a life far beyond my initial concept.

Magic

Speaking of my magic systems, I now have at various stages of development: Affinity Magic, Symbol Enchantment, Sigil Magic, Social Magic, Spirit Magic, Shamanic Powers, and Faerie Magic, 

Hopefully you will get to see all of them someday!

General GURPS Stuff

Not much new this week, but Gaming Ballistic has released early copies of its Bestiary to backers. It is REALLY nice!