Cross-Post: GURPSDay Summary and Reflections

GURPS!

The weekly post is up, and that means time for some reflection and meta!

No new blogs again this week, so let's jump into the interesting happenings.

What's up in Blog-o-blong

This week had a few themes it feels like, and my favorite was the bit about henchmen and hirelings. It started out on Dungeon Fantastic, with the guy who wrote the book on henchmen, and then spread to at least two other blogs including my own.

Another big thing that cropped up was the way that GURPS handled languages. The Collaborative Gamer started with a few words, and then Game in the Brain followed up. It's a funny thing, because I don't think the way that GURPS handles languages is that bad, but for the benefit it provides in the pretty cinematic style games I run, 400 hours of self study to get a point in a new language is way too long, and 6 points to be competent in something that might not be useful for long is a pretty hard sell. I'd still be interested in hearing other ways people might solve this.

Finally, I liked this post. It's a weird question, "Why GURPS?" To me, it just seems to be the right choice in an objective way, 9 times out of 10. I mean I might be biased, but there are a great number of setting specific or genre specific games that GURPS can easily implement one way or another. There are a few things every now and again, like games with heavy meta-mechanics (Ryuutama having the GM control a dragon who can make wishes to make a more interesting and tasty story), or exotic resolution mechanisms (Dread using a Jenga Generic Tower Block Stacking Game instead of dice providing a complicated mix of attrition and dexterity to the resolution) but for games where players control characters and where GMs manage the scenery, scenarios, and NPCs, the vast majority of games, GURPS feels like it does it best to me.

Self Reflection

Got X-Rays on my knee, and the doctor says it is only painful soft tissue damage, nothing broken, and it should heal fine. I feel like going jogging again soon.

I feel like mixing things up. I dunno if I'm photogenic, but I remember in a thread somewhere on the GURPS official forums that the best way to communicate with neophytes and those with an inkling of interest is through more visual mediums, like YouTube or video broadcasts, and maybe audio content. It might be interesting, but I have difficulty wrapping my head around what might be useful to show in a video that wouldn't just be me reading a bunch of text that I would normally blog, while hemming and hawing over the words.

I'm trying to think of ways to get my blog more publicized. Some people update the official GURPS forum for each blog post they make with a thread all their own. Maybe I should make something similar.

I almost feel like doing CERs for a bestiary is cheating. It is straight number crunching. It's not fast and it is a lot of work, but it's not a lot of "nourishment" or whatever you'd like to call it.

I got permission to put my monsters on the GURPS Wiki and include links back to my own blog, but I haven't gotten started on that yet. That might be a good way to a) put my number crunching in a place where it is more useful, and b) get some more people looking at the blog.