Cross-Post: GURPSDay Summary and Reflections

If you do GURPS by me, I'll GURPS until infinity (Rule of 16 permitting.)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's GURPSday, the magical time of the week when we talk about GURPS and GURPS blogs. We do have a new blog this week, Panhumanity's Edge brought to you by Christian Blouin. It seems like it is shaping up to be a campaign chronicle in the official Transhuman Space setting. I'm not especially familiar with it as I don't veer towards the sci-fi side of GURPS (though Bio-Tech and Spaceships are slowly enticing me) but a lot of the blog posts are written very clearly and help a near luddite such as myself understand what is going on, so at least, for better or for worse, the writing is very clear and expository, helpful for anyone interested in exploring the possibility of running a Transhuman Space game.
Update: and this evening, a new blog was added, Michael Lee Viviano's Gaming Blog, and this one is seriously days old. It's got a bit of a thing on some setting building on a somewhat silly sounding, but entertaining space opera world where the players will be members of an intergalactic TL 11 police force meting out justice in the ornery frontier. There is a good amount of detail already, so Michael is either really fast at spinning this stuff up, or has been planning for a few weeks already and just info-dumping. Whatever! The descriptions are all amusing, and for some reason, I feel like this might be an interesting blog to follow more closely, even if Sci-Fi is not my most immediate of bags.

Elsewhere in the more Hoary Blogs

More Spells!

I liked Dungeon Fantastic's post on enemies running away, it made me reflect a little on how I handle retreats in my games. I feel like I wait a bit too long, and then at that point the enemy is basically begging to be mowed down from behind. The GURPS 101 post on fainting, stunning, and falling down is also really good. RogerBW's post about a Social Engineering: Back to School adventure/campaign is also on my radar. I just glanced through it, and I want to take a more thoughtful second pass after p**ping out meticulously editing and quality controlling this post. Every time Rindis posts a review, it is a pleasure to read it, this week is a post on Powers: Enhanced Senses. I'm not saying that they are always positive, but I get a feel of authenticity and a well crafted putting of opinions to words.
Update: One glaring oversight, I forgot to mention that Northport has a preview pdf of the GURPS adventure module Denis is putting together. Got it on my pc and going to read it in a few.
Update: Also, Sorcery: Warning and Protection Spells, an inexpensive expansion grimoire for the Sorcery system in specific, but widely compatible with all Powers systems with a very small tweak of changing the power modifier, came out this week.

Rattling Around in My Own Noodle

I really feel like I'm in a drought in terms of writer's block and lack of good ideas, and traffic is barely creeping upwards still, but I did manage to spit out a few things that people have liked. My comparison of melee weapons for new GURPS players has managed to breach my top ten posts of all time in a single week. However, the ranged weapons counterpart barely misses that honor, but was my second most popular post this week. My review of Caravan to Ein Arris was also pretty popular. Everything else on the other hand came far behind. I'm actually more intrigued personally by my Social Combat and Leveling Up system posts, which do have some rough edges, but I think could be the start of something a bit more interesting. 

Oh, and Facebook has become my top traffic source this week, apparently. Facebook, the GURPS official forum, Google+, and coming in way behind, tumblr. Interestingly, I see a search keyword for "GURPS Shin Megami Tensei," and... GURPS would probably be a really good system to cover that setting... or a generic setting-alike. Contemporary supernatural conspiracies, summoning and contracting demons that usually have a technological bent, parallel worlds, and employing non-lateral problem solving on the regular as you deal with and overcome things far greater than you... which might be the snag of trying to implement it in GURPS; it's hard to think of a satisfying way to implement a do-over mechanic in GURPS to try a different solution to an overwhelming problem in GURPS that doesn't feel like you are reloading a file in a videogame... though you can just say, "ok, everyone died in a horrifying grisly melting pile, next week is take 2 of this session."

This week in the real world I got strep throat. I've never had it before and this stuff is a nightmare. I can barely think straight from the headaches, the coughing, and not getting enough sleep. I also gotta take antibiotics, and I hate antibiotics, messes up my faunas real bad, and I like the little critters. Ah well, at least I can work from home... and there isn't much in the way of "work" to do anyway, so it's a pretty nice sitch in that regard.