Pyramid 4/1 - Fantasy/Magic I

This is a quick look at Pyramid 4/1 - Fantasy/Magic I


Here are the articles you get:

Toxic Grimoire - a college of spells in a poison-focused college using GURPS Magic. I'm responsible for a few of the spells - you can see the list in the About the Author section. Alexei had a lot of spells, and I had a handful of ones from my Felltower game, and we collaborated on adding mine to his. And that let me connect them up to my article.

Utatsumi - Japanese poem-based magic.* It's an in-depth look at the in-game and in-game-world necessaries for using such. I like David Chart's stuff.

The Demonic Temple of Felltower - also known as the Epic Player's Handbook Fight. Mostly. I ret-conned in the poisons pells my later long-jawed lizardmen used, and I revised how I ran the Bless effects to be more rules compliant. Well, more rules standard.

Healing and Purification Ritual Path Magic - I don't use ritual path magic, but Chris Rice does an excellent job creating a solid "college" of healing spells.

Fraxinetum - Matt Riggsby found a really good historical setting for a fantasy (or even historical) game. It's a good setting for a "borderlands" adventure, and is a setting that could make a good place for dungeons, a plausible reason for a winner-take-all situation, and a limit on time . . . you know eventually it's going to end, and you can either establish yourself as part of the establishment or get while the getting is good.

Tactical Looting - Answers the question, "How long does that take?" Sadly, it demolishes a good chunk of an article I was writing (and rules I use in my own game), so I'm a little chagrined at this one. But Sean Punch does put a good spin on time things take and how to do adventurers where time matters . . . where you can't just, oh, systematically demolish a dungeon one monster at a time while you rest in between (cough, cough, spoiler alert for the Black Company book series.)

Stilpnotita, The City of Lamps - a high-fantasy city within the Elemental Plane of Earth.

Supernatural Energy - Advantages-based spells and a breakdown of Magery. Interesting stuff and useful for a variation of magic for a fantasy game.

Pandemonium - So, what if demons rampaged over and around everything on Earth? This happens.

Fusion Alchemy - A Chris Rice article on variant alchemy. I'll admit I need to go through this one again to see what to do with it . . . it's both external alchemy (make an elixir!) or internal (mix up an elixir inside someone!)

The Cube - A puzzle encounter for GURPS DF.

Random Thought Table: (Lack of) Speed Kills - An editorial by Steven Marsh. Basically, GM advice for running a game a bit quicker, with the tradeoffs necessary to get some speed into the game.

Overall: Good stuff. A steal at $2. Still worth it at $5-6. Hopefully it'll be up for regular sale soon!

I'll post about what's valid in Felltower another day. Short version: If my players start making Toxi-Mages, they'll be wasting some time.



* The illustrations for this one are nice, but don't Japanese women have hands and faces? It's weirdly all very long hair and long flowing kimono from behind.