Gamma World in the Real World

Here are two things for your Gamma World file.

This one I stumbled across back when the Ukraine news was protests and street violence not impending World War III.

Wired: The Brutal DIY Weapons of the Ukrainian Revolution

This next one the artist and my sometime DF gamer andi jones passed on to some of us by email and I had to share.

Artist Coby Kennedy Transforms Brooklyn Street Signs into Post-Apocalyptic Weaponry

This artist is very much showing the Jim Holloway influence, there:


I figured I'd share them but they're really inspiration for when we eventually foray into Gamma World.

For even more post-apoc art, check out andi's tumblr, Black Ray Gun.

I do (or andi does) need to get a Gamma World game going with GURPS.

How I did on the Warehouse23 sale

I filled a few holes in my collection. Basically, I cashed in some gift cards and some extra money I didn't expect to have in my play budget*. With this, I'm tapped for a while, but I have a lot to read:

GURPS Action 1: Heroes (I had the others)
GURPS Gun Fu (I'm playing in a gun-heavy game)
GURPS Monsters Hunters 3: The Enemy (for modified use as DF monsters!)
GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys (it sounds like an interesting concept)
GURPS Powers: Divine Favor (so I finally understand Cadmus's powers)
GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path Magic (because all the cool kids love it)
GURPS Ultra-Tech (for potential post-apoc play)

and a few issues of Pyramid with items of special interest to me as a DF author and GM.

All of those have to wait as I re-read GURPS Banestorm: Abydos, though, for a review here.

There is still time (sale ends tomorrow) if you want something.

* Which basically consists of what I get as writing royalties and selling stuff on eBay. I like to keep my hobby self-contained.

Revised GURPS Magic: Body of Wind

Here is another spell we changed in my game.

Body of Wind, as it stands, is Body of Air with none of the vulnerability to wind, removal of the Fixed ST and ST 0 limitations, and with the addition of a ST multiplier and becoming a human Windstorm spell.

Oh, and it's 2 seconds to cast, 5 minutes duration, unaffected by the SM of the subject.

No, no, no.

Let's go top to bottom:

Effects: Body of Air minus the vulnerability to wind, and a storm ST equal to 2x the ST of the subject is really impressive. But the ST of a Windstorm is a fixed effect. Hmmm. How about just allowing the subject to keep his ST? That's a big advantage over Body of Air.
The other option is ST 0, but you're a Windstorm spell in effect. No punching people or what have you, but you can knock them over with force of wind. No blowing doors down by getting a 2x ST Barbarian to kick doors down with No Fine Manipulators hardly limiting him. I'm leaning toward "You're a Windstorm spell."

The oddly specific 2-4 yard radius, no change in cost, has to go. By default you should be area equal to SM +1, Min 2, so a pixie or a human is Area 2 (SM 0, +2) and a SM+3 giant is Area 5.

Duration - 5 minutes is too long, especially since all the other Body Of spells are 1 minute - and Body of Wind is 1 minute in the back of the book but 5 minutes in the description. One is in error - my vote is the 5 minutes is the error.

Cost - 8/4 is fine, but not with an exception for ignoring SM. With the nerfing of its effects, though, the cost should drop. I think 6/3 is fair.

Time to Cast. 2 seconds is short, especially since Windstorm takes so long to come up to full power and most "Body of" spells are 5 seconds.

Prerequisites - I'm not sure the 16+ is needed for the prereqs. Magery 3, Body of Air, Windstorm, and 1 spell from each of 5 other colleges is fine on its own.

Here are the revised stats:

Body of Wind
Regular, Resisted by HT

The subject gains Body of Air, but without the vulnerability to wind or air spells but is still subject to the vulnerability to vacuum. In addition, the subject is equal to a Windstorm spell with no safe "eye." The windstorm has an area equal to (Subjects SM +2, min 2). Thrown and low-tech missile weapons, and physical spells, against the subject (or through the subject's hex) are at -10 to hit.

Duration: 1 minute
Cost: 6 to cast, 3 to maintain. For double cost, the character is a Tornado-strength Windstorm.[Note the deletion of the not affected by SM clause]
Time to Cast: 5 seconds
Prerequisites: Magery 3, Body of Air, Windstorm, and 1 spell from each of 5 other colleges.

One spell at a time, we're cleaning up the ones we don't like so much.

If you're wondering how I find these - one of my players has Wild Talent (Spells Only), and comes to me with the spells he's decided must be broken. We talk it over and either I rule on the spot or I take it off to think it over. Whatever you can say about my group, you can say this - we've established a culture of spotting problems and solving them collectively before they disrupt the game. I've got rules lawyers who use their powers for good.

Warehouse 23 Sale - 23% off

Steve Jackson Games and Atlas Games are having a 23% off sale until May 3rd. This is rare and also pretty excellent, since it includes physical goods and PDFs.

I (finally) picked up GURPS Ultra-Tech for under $20 and I'm eying some others. But here are some steals for you:

My books, for one, such as GURPS Martial Arts for $21.55, or GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling or GURPS Martial Arts: Gladiators for $7.69.

A 12-month Pyramid subscription for $53.90 (that's just under $4.50 an issue.)

Dungeon Fantasy 1 and most of the DF line for around $6.15 each (actually they range from a low of $3.84 to $7.61)

GURPS Conan and its four solo adventures - all 3rd edition, but easily adaptable - for under $25 for the lot.

Or a bunch of Ars Magica and Feng Shui stuff from Atlas Games. Or even this oddity I spotted: Cthulhu 500. What the-?

Kromm on Artificers in GURPS DF

I haven't been lurking or posting on the SJG Forums as much recently. But I do poke in to check if something especially interesting popped up.

This thread on the DF4 Artificer features three posts by Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch.

- this one on the DF11 Spellsmith perk and the importance of the GM/player agreement for the artificer to work.

- this breakdown of type of niches for the various DF templates.

I'm posting it here so I don't lose track of it, and hopefully help others, too.

Four D&D Magic Items I Handed Out Every Game

. . . well, not necessarily every game, but certainly close to every game if they weren't every game. The other day was my top four items I never handed out, and why. Today, four I handed out more often than their power level or utility might indicate. I'm sure +1 weapons outnumbered these, but still, from the standpoint of interesting stuff, these came up a lot:

Nolzur's Wondrous Pigments - these show up in one of the Giants series modules, and I ran them more than once, so my AD&D groups kept finding them but then not using them. My friend Steve's M-U Presto had a bunch for a while but never used them up. I put a version of them into my Rolemaster game, and I put some in my last GURPS game, too. No one ever used them that I can recall except for something minor in my most recent completed GURPS campaign.

Figurines of Wondrous Power. I can't remember a game where these or something like these wasn't around, not in my adult gaming life. AD&D, Rolemaster, and GURPS - all had them show up. Mostly people wanted figurines that turned into combatants, but especially in GURPS the utility type ones had more actual usefulness.

No one should be surprised if they appear again.

Horns of Valhalla - I know for a fact one of my players had one of these in two different AD&D games of mine and one GURPS game. He wasn't the only one with one. Mostly Iron horns, but one Silver horn came up once, too.

Rings of Water Walking - Geez, too many to count! We often had multiples of those in parties in every game. Modules seemed full of them, and they came up a lot in my own placements and random rolling, too. D&D, AD&D, Rolemaster, GURPS - these were everywhere. If you count Horseshoes of the Zephyr, well, add two more to that. They were used often, too, to ride out over water! My DF game is probably the only one so far where it hasn't made an appearance. But it's not like all of my games needed people running around on the water. But the rings just kept on coming . . .

An honorable mention should go to the Ring of the Ram, which showed up in my AD&D game and then in my 1st edition GURPS game, too. Folding Boats, too - many of them have appeared in my games, and will again. But not all of them. The ones above - every game. Every single game for all of them. I'll probably break that streak with this game, my DF game, but you never know . . .

What items came up every game in your games?

Four D&D Magic Items I Never Handed Out

Four is my favorite number, which is why this is four not five.

What are the four magic items you've never, ever handed out in a game? Not "I put one in, but no one found it" but just "no, no, no, not in my game."

Rod of Lordly Might - never put one in. I still don't quite get the appeal of a Swiss Army Rod that is all sorts of magic weapons at once, plus acts as a battering ram. It's just too odd, to me - it doesn't lack for uniqueness but it sure lacks in appeal to me. It feels like a truly weird item thrown in to get a laugh out of players at the expense of that guy they know who surely inspired it.

Hammer of Thunderbolts - too many stipulations on what you need to use this, plus all sorts of stackable powers if you did have the 6' in height, Girdle of Storm Giant Strength, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, etc. to use it. Basically, too restricted followed by too powerful once you unleashed the restrictions. There was no happy medium.

Sword +5, Holy Avenger - the paladin we had, the one real paladin we had - was a Unearthed Arcana-era one and I gave him a Broadsword of Intercession (from Dragon #91, I think), instead, which let him use his Paladin powers but not get quite such a powerful weapon so early. It felt like too much, and so a truly great weapon like this never quite appeared. I can't really say why - maybe just because +5 seemed so incredible that it was something that only fit with high-level play, and so I essentially pushed it off to the end like dessert but never quite got there.

Helm of Brilliance - too much, just too much. Like the Rod of Lordly Might, it seemed like a crazy gimme item that couldn't settle on what it was. I do think it's a lot cooler when I look at it now, but still, I have a hard time seeing me putting something like this in a dungeon early enough to matter in any campaign. It's another item, though, like the Rod of Lordly Might that just seems like a grab-bag of powers.


There are others I never used, of course. I can't remember a single magical Scarab of anything in my games, or gave anyone a Sphere of Annihilation (not sure I knew what it was really good for, except as a trap), or Instrument of the Bards (only a tiny handful of bards in my games.) I don't think Daern's Instant Fortress showed up in a game, or a Ring of Boccob or an Apparatus of Kwalish or a Cubic Gate. No Anything Swords, either, or Swords of Sharpness. The one vorpal blade anyone got was from a Gygax module. I only ever handed out one Cube of Force that I remember. The sole Ring of Spell Turning I remember I didn't give out but it came with an NPC. The Staff of the Magi showed up twice (once providing a memorable end to Q1 in the form of a retributive strike to destroy Lolth.)

But some stick out as ones I made a conscious decision to not hand out or make available, or shied away from. And there are ones I handed out like free candy - which is another post in an of itself.

What are your four? If you blog on it, let me know and I'll link it here!