GURPS Fantasy
arrived today. It has the same cover style as the GURPS Basic Set --
four pictures arranged in a square over a black background. It looks
very nice next to Basic Set and on a bookshelf. A basic black with the
titles in different colors. Much better than the full color pictures
SJG had before people voted against it. Not that the old pictures were
bad, but the current style looks more professional to me.
Fantasy is more of a toolkit book. It's more of a lot of notes and
essays on creating and running a fantasy world and campaign. The book
uses a definition of fantasy that is more or less equivalent to magic:
a fantasy world is a normal world with magic either overt or covert,
whether the fantasy world is prehistoric or futuristic.
There's not that much GURPS specific. Sample creatures and races (the
included examples are to illustrate various points rather than provide
a comprehensive list) have GURPS stats. Various effects have
suggestions of how to portray them with GURPS advantages,
disadvantages, or skills. And the book does tend to focus on
pre-industrial fantasy of Tech Levels 0 to 3.
I'm impressed with the book. I don't know if this is what the original
GURPS Fantasy should have been in the first place. Back then there were
few generic world building books which is why older editions of Fantasy
are actually GURPS Yrth (or GURPS Banestorm which is an upcoming book).
A universal system should have basic books on world building, much like
Hero 5th edition does.
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I just read
through this long SFB thread about ECM drones. Some people really hate
them (one person especially so) and everybody else thinks they're not
unbalancing enough to change the rules. And as all such arguments go,
people listen to selected things, people say things but mean something
else, tempers are flared and some rather derogatory remarks are made.
I've been seeing the same thing on the SJG Forums (the new ones),
especially in regard to GURPS 4E which is brand new. People complain
about Strength or this or that rule or ability. Kromm has to eventually
step in and explain why things are the way they are. Mostly it's that
people don't have the experience with the new rules to consider the big
picture, or they are used to 3E rules and don't understand why 4E is
slightly different.
It's kind of strange that people get so worked out about things. If I
have a problem with a rule I change it for my campaign. But I never
think that the published rules should be changed to satisfy my whims.
Not every house rule makes it into a future edition of the rules.
Though I suppose if you lobby hard enough there may be a greater chance
of your pet rule to make it into the official rules. Still, it's a lot
of trouble to go through for a game.
As a player I think a bit differently in that I don't like GMs tweaking
the rules. Not all of the time, not even half the time, but sometimes I
just ignore the campaign house rules and use the official game rules.
I'm especially more likely to do this if it would hurt me to do that.
Switching rules to get extra advantages is munchkiny, doing it for an
extra disadvantage is roleplaying (though that's not actually the case).
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