So the GURPS
4th Edition Deluxe Set arrived today. Very nice. Two faux-leather-bound
hardcover books with cover jackets and a slipcase. I would have liked
to have the marketing spiel on the back of the books. Instead it's just
more pictures. The interior should be the same as the regular
hardcovers. Glossy full-color pages with lots of brand new
illustrations. Check lists seem to be in red, examples in blue, and
modifiers in purple. There are other colors too. Actually, I think that
the highlight color is the same as the border color for the section.
The three column format is very readable. The different sections are
color-coded on the top and bottom edges, extending a bit to the sides
for easy lookup. I've read the first 30 pages and the text is almost
all new, so it's not just a bunch of copy and paste with small
additions. I don't particularly like the new-book smell of them, but
that will go away. All in all trés cool.
There are lots of advantages and disadvantages. And they're
customizable too making for lots and lots of variety. Nowhere near as
many skills in contrast. In fact, there are a lot less skills than I
thought there would be. Probably skill consolidation accounts for a lot
of the compactness.
There seem to be more examples and better explanations all around.
Optional rules and detail are clearly marked. Dai Blackthorn is used as
the example character. Modifiers to advantages and disadvantages are
now percentage based which means they scale better and you can also
have a bunch of generic modifiers instead of specific modifiers for
each attribute.
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Dave, Woo and
I went to Babies-R-Us to buy presents for Pick's kid Vincent. Frankly,
I wasn't going to get him a gift. Perhaps rather morbid, but I'd rather
wait to make sure the kid survives before showering presents on him.
Naturally I tend to pick something on the upper end of the scale
because that's just the way that I am. I don't know. Most baby stuff
seems to be a waste of money since they grow up quick.
We then ate at Chevy's. RJ was there too and he was not too bad. A bit
shrill but usually fairly well behaved for a baby, or is he a toddler
now? I ate way too much because I had already eaten dinner when
Dave called me to go shopping. I had the shrimp ceviche. Good ceviche
is good, not so good ceviche is too tangy. This was not so good. The
lemon/rose chicken caesar salad was better, though once again I could
have used less lemon.
Tomorrow Dave and I and two other people are flying to Redding for
steak. In a light airplane. I'm quite apprehensive about this.
Intellectually I know we'll probably be fine but emotionally I'm
scared. And all that stuff about flying being safer than driving?
Naturally I assume I'm a good driver and that light planes are more
dangerous, so I don't think that aphorism applies in this case.
I placed an order for the Griffin iTalk. Taping stuff to an analog
recorder and then capturing it to Garage Band and then exporting to
iTunes and then converting to MP3 all take too long. I have btter
things to do with my computer and $40 is a small price to pay as I
finally figured out. That and since I'm low on disk space Garage Band
is getting temperamental.
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