Scattershot – September 2016

And BAM, just like that GURPSDay is upon us, showering the world with gaming goodness!

It’s been another fantastic week for GURPS. Driven by the success of the “Powered by GURPS” Dungeon Fantasy RPG, I’ve seen a definite increase in discussion and questions about GURPS in nearly every RPG community I hang in. It’s a wonderful thing to see, and I hope it continues for a looong time.

This week’s post is another Scattershot, noting some of the random GURPS goings-on that have been on my mind.

More Reader Questions Needed

Last month’s audio post was a much bigger success than I expected! I got a lot of positive feedback and requests to do more, so… in order to do that, I need more questions to answer from you, the loyal and — by all accounts — exceedingly good-looking and sweet-smelling Game Geekery readers. Ask me about GURPS, RPGs, what I ate for breakfast, how many times I’ve broken a bone, whatever. Send ’em in and I’ll pick three or four to answer. Thanks!

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG Kickstarter

I hope you’ve been following this! Steve Jackson Games keep sweetening the pot, and it’s reached a point where I’m seriously considering going on a Ramen diet for a few weeks/years to up my pledge at the “Want It All!” level.

I started out just wanting the core boxed set. But then there was a new GM screen, so I went in on that. Then they added a softcover hardcopy of “How to Be a GURPS GM,” so obviously I had to up my pledge for that! After that, it was multicolored, hex-shaped figure stands. Figure in the year’s subscription to Pyramid magazine, which I would be getting anyway, and the metric truckload of original Dungeon Fantasy PDFs (only a few of which I already own), and it’s really looking like a crazy good value.

With any luck this Kickstarter will be a huge success for the company, will prove to them that there is a solid market for physical GURPS releases, and will lead to a new golden age of GURPS books that I can hold in my misshapen claws.

Real Time GURPS Communities

I posted a few RPG communities that I frequent in the first scattershot (“Daily Sources of RPG Goodness”), but they’re all asynchronous forums. Sometimes you want immediate, real-time scratches of your RPG itches. Over the past few days I’ve been hanging out in a couple of live RPG chat groups and enjoyed a bit of gamer geek conversation as I go about my day.

The first is the #GURPS channel on Sorcery.net, using good old-fashioned IRC, i.e., text chat. It’s like a little group of GURPS fanatics just waiting for you to pop in and ask for advice, rules help, or just to post your latest custom “Seek Anchovies” spell. In addition to being up for GURPS conversations of any stripe, they also try to organize online games.

The second is the Tabletop channel on Discord. This is a fairly new chat app, but it seems super stable and easy to use. It also offers voice chat and text chat, so not only can you hang out and shoot the breeze with other gamers, you can use it to voice chat while you’re playing with a geographically dispersed group. There are multiple sub-channels too, with tighter focus (“board games,” “looking to play,” “GM discussion,” etc.)

I didn’t see a Discord channel yet for GURPS specifically, so I’ve started one called “GURPS (UNofficial).” Swing on by and say howdy! (Because of my work schedule, I’m usually on in the mornings and afternoon Pacific time, then on the weekend whenever I happen to be conscious. No guarantees that I will be sober and/or not sleep-deprived if you catch me on a Saturday night!)

Bonus Community: It isn’t real time, exactly, but if you have any interest in using Roll20 online for your GURPing needs, friend-of-the-blog Tony D. has got you covered! (“Open to everyone… For new players to come and learn the system, for GURPS players/GM’s to meet one another, for running/playing one-shots.”)

Sweet GURPS Resources

Lastly, here are a few of my favorite GURPS items from the last week or two.

First, Douglas Cole continues his excellent interviews with this video chat with Kromm talking all about the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. If 90+ minutes of Kromm and Douglas chatting about GURPS is wrong, I don’t want to be right!

If that’s still not enough Dungeon Fantasy RPG for you, check out Kromm’s four Designer’s Notes posts!

And finally, thanks to Reddit, I found my way to a fan’s write-ups of a ton of vehicles for GURPS 4th. They’re a work in progress, but even as-is they are a great resource for a lot of games. There’s a volume one, volume two, and a formula guide. Enjoy!

 

There’s been a lot of GURPS buzz this week, and a lot of gamers giving the system a first, second, or third look. I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of new GURPSers!

 

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