Review of GURPS Sorcery: Sound Spells

The Sorcery system gets another worked lis of spells in this volume!

GURPS Sorcery: Sound Spells

This book has 35 spells designed as powers, specifically for the Sorcery system. Converting them for use with any other system is trivial and the introduction even tells you how. That lets even those who do not have sorcery know all they need to make the conversion so it could work for any GURPS powers system or individual builds.

This is I think, the first book edited by Christopher Rice.

I have been looking forward to this one for awhile now, most sound spells are obvious in how to design them if your familiar with GURPS Powers. However a few might require more creativity, and certainly worked examples make life easier on GM and player alike!

This is a concise book and easy to read. I like the usage of Telesend for a few spells, have minor nitpicks with one or two spells in that I would have done them differently, and overall liked the builds.

Summary

As a short worked list of spells as powers the $5 price point makes this book a great value. Building all these spells yourself would take more time than that, even if your good at building powers. And if your not good at powers builds its worth a lot more!  It also gives a few ideas you may not have thought of, or done differently while giving the reader a base for designing new abilities.

Certain rules it uses are kind of obscure (alternative enhancements), certain applications are nice to have in cannon or precedent (helps curb arguments at the table), and a few new modifiers such as uses of Cosmic or limitation values are also highly useful to have in print.

This is the second supplement to the Sorcery line, the other being Protection and Warning Spells.

For those interested in this series the GURPS Wiki has a category for them and the blog Generic Universal Eggplant has a bunch of writeups, an index is here

Mantles, Supernatural Titles

In the Harry Dresden series of books the author introduces something called "Mantles". The concept is not original to that series (Piers Anthony's Incarnations series is another example) but I credit it for giving a good example of the concept.
A Mantle is a unique title that can be given to an individual, granting powers and personality changes. Examples are Mother Winter, Winter Queen, Winter Lady, and the Winter Knight with corresponding versions for the Summer Court.
These can actually be built in GURPS using the Spirit Vessel rules from GURPS Thaumatology, or the Totem-Bearer rules from GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits.
Some tweaking of the power modifiers may be needed but this ability is well represented by the Alternate Form advantage.
The Winter Knight mantle for example can be removed for ignoring or violating "Winters Law" and grants several traits and personality changes. Since the personality changes over time I would probably use the Spiritual Distortion rules from GURPS Thaumatology or the Corruption rules from GURPS Horror which are essentially a refined variant of the distortion rules from Thaumatology.
As a mantle is designed to be worn most, if not all the time it fits Totem-Bearer better than the more exhausting Totem advantage from GURPS Horror: The Madness Dossier or GURPS Monster Hunters: Holy Warriors which add an ongoing FP cost. However the Requires Skill Roll is inappropriate for Dresden Mantles  (though might work for other concepts), and Shamanic, Mediated works but might be renamed.
Mantle Modifiers

• Shamanic, Mediated, -5%
• Corrupting, -20%
• Reduced Time 5. +100%
• Total +75%

Thus a Mantle costs 27 points plus it's pool cost.

The granted abilities of the new form are not entirely known but for the Winter Knight probably include High Pain Threshold, Heroic Reserves, a magical ER limited to winter powers and perhaps other toughness related traits. Note that it does not need to include a healing ability as he seems to heal normally (though Wizards heal a little faster in the setting) and as an Alternate Form it swaps out the paralysis he has in his normal form.

Unionizing America

Listening to various talking heads I had this thought. What Senator Sanders is trying to do is unionize America.
Labor unions helped the workers by uniting large numbers of workers so they could fight for better pay, benefits, and safety as a group rather than individuals,  As individual employers would simply fire them and the status quo remain. The corporations had all the power.
But by uniting and working together unions led to substantive changes, We enacted child labor laws, shortened the work week, raised pay, increased health benefits, and improved worker safety, among many other improvements.
Of course since the 80's the Republican party has rolled some of that back and virtually destroyed the power of unions, and in large part due to corporate influence the Democrats allowed it. But still a lot of those changes are lasting ones.

What Sanders is talking about is effectively unionizing Americans.
The situation is much the same corporations hold most of the power and control most politicians through large campaign donations and promises of cushy jobs when a congress person retires.
The average American citizen has little power, districts are divvied up with gerrymandering to minimize our votes (If your in a safe district both sides can ignore you as your vote doesn't not typically matter), voter suppression laws and purging of the rolls, and other in my view flat out Anti-American tactics but even more so the ruling that money is free speech and corporations count as people (even if they are owned in whole or in part by non Americans).


The fact is that American citizens have little effective power as individuals but when we unite we do have power. Senator Sanders plan is to give voters something worth fighting for, not more of the same or incremental change that may benefit us a little bit and our grand kids a little more (if not rolled back). Are his ideas bold? Will they be hard to push though Congress? Absolutely!!!
But Freedom isn't free, and anything worth having is worth fighting for. His plan to use the Bully pulpit to bring issues to the voter is a powerful one, little used by previous Presidents.
Trump understands that power and uses it to stir up his base to protect him even when he does things that would have resulted in any other Presidents impeachment and removal from office.

It is a fact that the candidate with the most money usually wins. But what the media and establishment politicians are not really publicly acknowledging is that in 2018 a lot of candidates who were massively out spent won their races.  The trick is to win those seats they had to speak to their voters in clear and inspirational messages that made a stronger impression than the paid for advertising.
Also old fashioned methods like town halls and door to door campaigns as well as reaching people through the internet more than television.
Senator Sanders inspired these grassroots movements by his efforts in 2016. He had the powerful message that he would work for voters, not corporations and put his money where his mouth was by refusing corporate super pac money.

Imagine That Integrity and Powerful Messaging in the White House!

With the bully pulpit of the Presidency he can get air time by simply making a speech. His plan is to put issues to Congress or promote ones he favors in his speeches and get the word out to us, the American voter.
It will be up to us to band together, as we have in the past and tell Congress what We The People think. If he makes a good case we tell that to them, likewise if we disagree.
But by uniting and bringing his case directly to you and me he is helping us gather our power and use it effectively to serve us.  Instead of the current back room politics he will haul it onto the front lawn where we can all see what is really going on.
Like the unions and civil rights movements of the past we can, under President Sanders leadership take back our country and make it work for Americans. This is a powerful opportunity we may not have again if we allow it to slip by.

An interesting Kickstarter for RPGs

The Book of Unusual Potions and Spooky Hats Kickstarter.
This is one of the more interesting Kickstarters for an RPG, though not for everyone it is system agnostic so works for most fantasy RPGs,

The book of Potions is now at 28 pages by my count and is a PDF and printed book by a noted person in the RPG field. Provided are art and descriptions for various potions.
The Book of Spooky Hats is slightly smaller and available not as an add on but comes with the PDF or printed Potions book.
This is because of the stretch goals that have already been met.
The art is nice for any game, the creative thoughts and ideas they can inspire are especially good for GMs who want to add a personal touch to their games.
I backed it and recommend you do too!

Vanity/Status Post

Just got word that GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits sold enough copies to get another check!  That short tail thing where sales quickly drop off due to most interested buyers buying it early is definitely a thing. We need more GURPS players!
Still its a niche of a niche so I'm pretty happy and hoping that sales are high enough that they accept my next proposal which I'm scheduled to make in Oct.
I have two more spirit related books and three different magic systems in mind to pitch and hope I get to write them for SJG. If not I may just blog them,but better for everyone if they see the full book treatment.

The Cunning Path, a fanzine for GURPS

I've been waiting for this to come out! Available now as PDF or epub
Its a fanzine by two GURPS old timers who have written some articles and such but their real activity probably goes largely unrecognized but noticed just the same.
John Dallman is active on the forums and has a couple of long running series of threads describing various traits in GURPS that covers how thy have been used in games and references to additional information and where such can be found besides GURPS Basic.
Roger Bell West is less visible but created a Pyramid Vol 3 index on the forums that inspired my magic focused one and I used to helped me update the GURPS Wiki. Additionally he runs a script that has been used by several people to maintain the W23 Digital Speculation threads which has been going on for several years now.
I was happy when approached to post a Designers note for my GURPS Powers: Totems and Nature Spirits book since it came out after the end of the venerable Pyramid magazine where that would normally be published.

So check it out as I am about too!

It Should Have Been Obvious...

On the forums someone posted a note about the cost of FTL spaceflight vs. the cost of Warp. It got me to thinking and I provided a significantly cheaper and RAW build.
 Flight (Space, +50%) [60]
Enhanced Move 30 (Space, Instant Acceleration, +50%) [180] (900/5)
Enhanced Move 6 (Flight, Instant Acceleration, +50%) [36] for atmospheric travel, bought as a alternative ability of EM (Space) with a travel speed of 1,280 MPH.
Impulse Point Pool Cap 2, recover 2 points session [30].
Total 306 points to be able to travel anywhere and back in the Milky Way in about an hour if the GM rules its a good off screen or especially appropriate use once per game session. And to take it a step further, thats really only an extra 210 points towards a really nifty player controlled plot device.
Not bad IMHO.

This got me thinking about how comic book supers often have powers that are extraordinary in one issue but greatly scaled down in other issues.  Basically the character is as powerful as the story demands and the author desires. The advantage is that a character can have immense cool powers but for some reason they are not normally used and thus do not easily override normal problems.
This is actually a large part of what GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys is about. A steep discount for abilities that are rarely used, and especially if that use helps the story.

So for a Supers, High Fantasy, or any narrative type campaign we can use Impulse Buys to allow the characters abilities that will see limited or off screen use. This really was brought up in the book, but I do not recall making this connection. It really fits a Four Color supers campaign!  For that matter it also fits a GURPS Toon campaign, just call Impulse Points "Comedy Points" or something.