So the magic expansion says that you can buy the formulas themselves but it doesnt list the cost anywhere?

So I've been looking into mounted combat a bit and was thinking about the following situation: an mounted enemy charges my players, they brace with spears. They are able to evade the enemy lance point with a dodge roll and manage to land a spear hit on the charging enemy.

What's the damage? Do I calculate slam damage as if the enemy slammed into a wall or something and add the spear's imp damage on top? Or is there another formula?

Also: does a lance charge on a horse count as move and attack with the associated -4 penalty?

Steve Jackson Games has a very generous personal POD policy. If you buy the PDF, you can get ONE POD made for personal use. I'm sure this polict stems from a period of time when most of the GURPS books were out of print. Now that most of the line is available as a POD from Amazon, it's nice to see that they still allow you to get a POD made.

One challege with getting a print-on-demand book made from a printer that supports getting just one book made is the cover. You need to design a full wraparound cover. Most PDFs only come with a front and back cover and no spine. As someone who's been a "typography nerd" since the late 80s, when I got my first Macintosh, I call pull this off, even thought I don't do it professionally.

This involes pulling down their template, and thex extracting the front and back covers from the PDF, dropping them into the template and designing the spine (typing the text, picking a color, rotating it 90 degress, dropping it in place and lining it all up).

To make sure you get the spine right, you really need to see a picture of an actual spine. And guess what nobody ever really photographs and posts online? The spine of the GURPS book they're showing off or trying to sell.

I learned last week that any of the PDFs of books that are/were available for print actually have the full wrap-around cover in the PDF. It's just cropped to only show the front cover. But the data is there.

I'm still tryng to figure out the best way to extract it. For my GURPS Supers POD, I let an LLM extract it for me. Here is an example of what I found:

This is the cover as viewed in any standard PDF Viewer/Editor:

With the assistance of an LLM, I got it to pull this out of the PDF:

That being said, getting a personal POD made of a book available through Amazon isn't really going to save you any money. I'd buy a POD from Amazon or DTRPG to help support SJG.

Just neat that I found this.

Another note, any GURPS PDF that is only available as a PDF does not have a wrapround cover "hidden" in the PDF. No need for SJG to create a full wraparound cover for something they don't plan to offer physical copies of.

I'm going to see if I can vibe-code a script that can pull this image out. We can't distribute covers we pull out. That would be a copyright violation. But creating a tool that can do this from your legally owned PDF is fair use.

That full wraparound cover is way too low a resolution to use for a POD job. It's just here for demonstration purposes.

I haven’t GURPS’d in quite a few years and I’m having a bit of a mental block while trying to relearn the systems.

The thing is, the very first few pages of the character book define the thesis of the project as it being a preservative effort for the full scope of what story telling through roleplaying is fundamentally, to preserve the explorative experience via defining things in a modular code base.

However, because that code base defines everything: The structures within are very rigid for a roleplaying experience due to the fact that roleplaying lives best within the creativity of improvisation, which rigid structures oft do not allow.

From reading the thesis, having played it myself, and reading other tales I know this is a mental block due to the fact that the actual rigidity and fluidity of the experience is all up to the individual GM.

As a newborn GM that understands the fundamental philosophy, is there any advice that I should take in from the community to enable myself to not get so caught up on… what is essentially “rules lawyering”, so that I can enable and nurture free-thought that is evoked by the systems? I don’t want to use the systems as a prison.

The only one I've read cover to cover is the Basic Set...

Got my copy of 4th Edition Basic Set Revised. It's a big chonker of a book. My front lower left corner is slightly dinged from the shipping but not enough to complain about.

I guess I know what my weekend will be all about!

I’m curious when and why you’ve chosen to use GURPS over a bespoke game for a genre or setting, except when it otherwise doesn’t exist. Is it just because of familiarity with the system?

(Eyeing the revised basic set hardcover as a newcomer…)

I'm looking to pick up a physical copy of GURPS Supers. The POD on Amazon is completely black and white. The PDF I own has some color in the headers. Do older copies have any color in them or are they also completely black and white?

I have recently noticed that Unnatural Features comes in levels.

What's the difference between each of the different levels of Unnatural Features?

Does anyone have an example of what "Unnatural Features 1" would look like compared to "Unnatural Features 2"?

I'll be referring to GURPS as "The System" now. Who's with me?

edit: I’ll be willing to compromise with “The RPG formerly known as GURPS.”

(Might be used for the dark magical settings, either as another necromancer device, or other dark or "savage" schools of magic)

Ritual sacrifice engine (Interplanetary): [any], TL2^ Cost: $1M for SM+7 (I'm too lazy to scale the rest)

Instead of fuel, it uses bloody sacrificial rituals, binding the souls of victims to haunt and pull (or push) the ship until they're exhausted and leave this realm.

Once appeared in space, it requires sacrifice of living people equal to amount of cabins in a habitat 1 SM smaller, to reach 0,1g acceleration for 1 hour (meaning getting total delta-v of 2,2 mps). A larger (or smaller) sacrifice will proportionally increase (or decrease) the acceleration throughout these 24 hours, thus also changing the delta-v gain, but no more than 1,5g per engine system! There are no rocket equation bonuses from additional "fuel tanks": the "fuel" mass stays in the ship!

Workspaces are filled by TL-relevant engineers, priests and mediums who command the souls for maneuvering.

Optional rules:

1. Usage of volunteers for sacrifice increases the soul's resource 3 times (to 72 hours), makes the engine system require 1 SM fewer workspaces, and complicates the boarding missions against the ship. ("When country orders us to be the heroes...")

2. At TL6 or above, and +100% cost, and instead of engine, priests may make souls toil the machinery, and serve as TL-appropriate factory unit (and source of 1 Power Point), if sacrificed souls at the moment are worth 1g (scales). Cosmic version uses powerful demons, demigods, especially horrid rituals with no less horrifying price, or something else appropriate in the setting. ("Still better than hell...")

3. The working engine leaves unholy signatures, +4 to detection rolls for observers with supernatural senses, and becoming a Beacon for paranormal encounters. ("Hey Great Judge of the Underworld! You suck!")

4. Light-hearted: It might be suited for using specific animals instead, which increases the system cost and habitat places expenditure by 1 SM. ("And now to marinate all these pigeons for the next year of travel... Trust me, you'll get used.")

5. System might refill or get refilled from the Soulburner reactor.

I am not new to GURPS but kinda avoided gadget-limited advantages as clunky. Likely my next campaign would absolutely need them.

What is commonly understood as "Unique"? The naive reading of the Basic Set suggests that it is "when the item is gone the points are gone" akin to a dead Ally. But application in books left me confused - Thaumatology clearly states that most "magic items" have Unique when statted as advantages unless they twist fate to return to you akin to Signature Gear, or Powers FAQ where it is stated "if power comes from the sword itself, add Unique" - supporting my naive reading - but RPM and Sorcery books provide discounts to point cost of abilities when enchanted into items without accounting for Unique - and yet provide no indication those gadgets are long-term protected investment. I understand that it is a small GMing headache - if you don't try to deprive players of Unique gadgets they get free points, if you do there is a possibility of resentment for screwing up with the character - but assuming people are sensible do you slap Unique on most magic items or not?

This thing is big, beefy, and beautiful (not the art).

Every physical 4e book I have is a black and white Amazon Print on Demand, and they’re functional, but not super pleasant to use. This thing though…silky smooth, colorful, durable, lays open flat.

Anyway, if anyone is on the fence, go for it. This beast feels like it’ll last a lifetime.

In this post (link) I put out that I have a Utility that automates Chapters 4 and 5 of GURPS Space, as well as a lot of functions that help support a Space GM.

I have just cut version 0.9.5 beta of it, and it adds a bunch of stuff, and fixes a longstanding headache.

First the big thing: I've figured out how to print the RTF from the descriptions properly (without having to write my own RTF parser). On top of that, the hex maps now print with edge and vertex hexes split, and the poles highlighted.

The other big thing is that now trade routes and distance finding can follow jump lines, or even follow "reachability", where travel from system to system is only possible up to a certain distance (like having a Jump-N drive in Traveler). This can also show systems that are "unreachable", though the astrometrics dialog will still show the direct distance to a system.

Also in this version is a much improved search dialog, which can catalogue objects in the database and export them to csv files.

(I'm including three images of the three pages of Earth's PRS, since I can't include the PDF)

Link to the program here.

Based on how it is written. I only have GURPS Basics, Powers, Martial Arts and TG in addition to FDG. There is also GURPS Expanded Grappling that DOES. But it isn't TG or FDG so I'm not sure how it would work in FDG. Provided you had a TK-like ability ala Ms All Sunday/Nico Robin. Thanks!

I'm reading through Ultra-Tech/High-Tech in preparation for a Cyberpunk game, and I have a question regarding targeting programs/laser sights and how they interact with the Accuracy cap detailed in the Aim maneuver.

My gut says that the way they are worded in High-Tech and Ultra-Tech, that Targeting Software and Laser Sights are somewhat of a passive bonus to Guns/Gunner directly which work as long you can see the output of the software/laser beam, while scopes, rangefinders, etc, are active bonuses that you need to Aim to get.

So with that assumption, the Target Software and Laser Sights are not capped by Acc (in other words, added directly to skill), while Scopes and the like are (the bonus you get is at most equal to Acc).

Is this correct? Or am I missing something?

I am very new to GURPS, as I am still learning the systems and everything else. That being said I am trying to think of a game to introduce my close friends and fiancé to the system to see if they would be interested in it as well. They are at least familiar with TTRPGs to very experienced with them.

I did have an interesting idea for a story based off some interesting inspirations I won't go into too much detail about. But the plot synopsis follows as such;

1940-60's Setting, Fantastical elements such as fantasy & anthro races among normal humans. Magic is more or less conjoined into science as part of every day life and technology (Lightening magic to power light bulbs, Guns fire magic bullets, ect. Nothing too crazy.) Think 'Low Fantasy' with a focus on the time period itself.

The party (Unknown number, though probably a very small one of 2-3, maybe 4?) is a company of Freelance detectives who've had trouble securing work recently. But hit a break when they get called into investigate a very Hush-Hush crime scene by City Officials that leads to them being pulled into a Conspiracy by a Criminal Organization to take over the city using a type of magical item that can transport weapons and contraband without any kind of detection.

The Magic item in question was also an idea I had a fun idea for, sort of a interesting way to handle expanded inventory for the party. Magic rings that could summon any container from a Steamer trunk, to a functioning Fridge, to even a covered wagon. Not meant to really be balanced but give players a fun magical item each that has certain rules they'd need to work with. The certain rules in place such as;

- The Summoned containers require the adequate amount of space to be summoned, and can only be unsummoned when closed.

- The Space inside the container is finite to what it would actually hold, can only fit things that could logically fit within the dimensions of the container.

- The Container each player will receive will be rolled randomly from a list by them, and no player will have the same container as any other in the party.

- Living beings such as animals, people, creatures, cannot be stored inside a container. But Plants can, and held in a state of statis while the container is summoned again

Hey Y'all, I'm going to be gming a campaign in a short while for the first time and I'm wondering if you have any tips on creating cursed items or other types of macguffins with clear downsides.

For some background, the campaign will be mostly realistic (being based in 1950's New York) with a Persona-series like other world which warps and affects the real world in subtle ways. The items will be mostly mundane while in the real world, but will gain powers while in the other plane.

The thing is, the more "cinematic" powers are easily able to be handled through flavor and a bit of mechanical and story based handwaving, but Gurps being Gurps, there seems to be a million different ways to make the actual mechanical effects of them.

My current plan is to make items that when used in the designated way grant their wielders a set of Advantages and Disadvantages. The point cost shouldn't matter since there's no reason to charge the players for an item I'm giving them, but should I still design the abilities with the logical limitations? Preparing for when an item gets stolen, should I mark down that the Advantage has the "Can be stolen" and "Breakable" limitations? Is there a reason to beyond just wanting to make sure everything goes as by the books as possible? (Thinking about it, this could be handled pretty easily with an Item template that just has every limitation like that listed already.) The players probably won't have access to the exact descriptions of these so I'm just wondering what you guys do with GM only stuff.

Also, are there any interesting limitations to make traits partially nullifiable?

I'm also barely versed in how psionics and spells interact with item creation so should I look into those or is my advantage idea good enough. I do know that those are more meant for players wanting to create items. (Some spells do have unique effects that advantages can't cover completely so I shouldn't wholly shut them down though.)

Also, if you have any supplement books to recommend for this it would really help.

Realizing that the best way to get a GURPS group together is for me to be the GM.

I am asking what the best way is to become a good GM for GURPS? But I want to take it one step further; I am willing to meet with or correspond with anybody here about how to become a better GM. I also have a small budget and am willing to pay for classes or other resources.

Many years ago, I tried to GM a “Supers” game, but I ran into the newbie problem of a player putting all of his points into one skill and one-shotting every foe, which ruined the game for the rest of us.

For years now, I have been collecting GURPS books, and I actually want to play GURPS to justify my collection!