Tuesday, February 16, 2021

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.

11 comments:

  1. Sorry to lay waste to your idea, Peter! I wrote that piece in a vacuum, largely to meet the need for . . . well, another article to fill out the issue. Hopefully you can publish yours anyway, and then one of these days we can write GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: No Rest for the Wicked.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No worries. I'll comb through mine and see what's not covered in yours and try to expand it out! Time in a megadungeon is a big thing. I should have just talked you guys into letting me do 14 pages in DF 21 and put mine out then. ;)

      And you're on. We need to co-author something again, it's always the most fun writing that I have.

      Delete
    2. OMG seriously do co-author something. Martial Arts, DF Monsters 1, and DF 15 are all extremely good content.

      Delete
    3. I'm quite sure that some people would like to spend money on another Denizens book, or three! DFD: Barbarians is great, and so is Swashbucklers. They get a lot of use. I know Christopher Rice is working on a top-secret to-be-released book (no idea what it is on), but I would think that the Thief would really benefit from such a book. Maybe the Martial Artist (is the Wrestler from Pyramid a variant Martial Artist? Clearly no from a template perspective, but they do similar things). Clerics kind of have DF7 already, and that applies to Holy Warriors as well (and people can also use Gaming Ballistic's Hand of Asgard, too). Druids? Scouts? The possibilities are not quite endless, but ... yeah. Let's have more of those books! :)

      Delete
    4. I don't think Wrestlers are Martial Artists, any more than Barbarians are Knights. They're just adjacent to each other on the hexmap.

      Delete
  2. I assume it's all long hair and no hands because they're not really Japanese women, but rather three Japanese badgers in a kimono

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Three Japanese badgers in a kimono sounds like the intro to a joke.
      "Three Japanese badgers in a kimono walk into an izakaya."

      Delete
    2. My guess is that it has something to do with artists not being great with hands and faces. ;)

      Delete
    3. Its no joke from Wikipedia "In Japanese mythology, badgers are shapeshifters known as mujina. In the Nihon Shoki, mujina were known to sing and shapeshift into other humans."
      Its obviously shapeshifted badgers in the articles

      Delete
    4. Can't draw hands and faces . . . Rob Lielfeld?

      Delete
  3. I could have really used Toxic Grimoire 4 years ago... but that's okay, I'll have it now for the next time I need it.

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...