Review: How to Be A GURPS GM - Ritual Path Magic

Apparently it's not
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 So, a while back, Steve Jackson Games did an experiment on Kickstarter that involved trying to get enough people to buy in to "unlock" finished products as a stretch goal. If enough people pledged enough money, you could potentially get several short books for a very small amount of money. How to Be a GURPS GM - Ritual Path Magic was among them (when you italicize a title that has an italicized word, do you reverse the italicization of that one word?) Bottom line, I think it's helpful. Coming from an angle that I already have a decent system mastery of RPM, it isn't vital for me, and frankly, I'm neither here nor there on the system for reasons outlined in this post from Mailanka. To be fair, it can be a good system, in my opinion if it's used for the right type of game and setting. However, this isn't supposed to be a post editorializing whether Ritual Path Magic is a good system or not (I hate to say it, but, "it depends.") but whether or not this writing is worth your time. To summarize, I think it can be helpful if you need to get up to speed quickly with the system or if you get hung up on the vagaries of the system; if you are a master though, there is little of value (though "little" is more than "none.") Let's take a closer look.

Overview

Ten Pages!

This is a short, but very inexpensive book. The PDF is 11 pages long, subtracting the "cover," intro, and back matter, that is 8 pages split into 3 chapters. The first chapter covers advice for GMs that can get kinda confused about the ambiguities of the system, and introduces a few refinements of mechanics. These are the bits that a veteran might find useful. The next "chapter" is guidelines for doing ritual path magic in "roll and shout mode" when you don't feel like calculating weights and distances and all the minutiae that can make RPM seem like a slog at the table. The final chapter are formulas for 7 spells created in the system, especially useful for demonstrating some of the content covered in chapter 1.

In terms of publishing quality, Christopher Rice and Sean Punch are well known good qualities, and the art is definitely a few magnitudes better than it has been for a while. There's even coloring and some asides have a gradient! La dee da. It almost goes without saying, but in case it isn't obvious, the book absolutely depends on having a copy of Thaumatology - Ritual Path Magic. Whether or not you should get this one depends on the following:

• Are you a big fan of Ritual Path Magic? Then go ahead.
• Do you ask yourself questions about balance, or what is the difference between lesser and greater? Then go ahead.
• Can you think of anything you'd rather spend a couple of bucks on? Probably do that instead then.

Tips, Tricks, and More

The first chapter, and the great majority of the text walks one through a handful of stumbling blocks. A lot of the mentioned issues are definitely familiar if you've ever played with newer players trying to get a grip on things. The Tricks section has a couple of neat ideas for spell design that is more interesting than just "make the bigger numbers faster and better," so is helpful for even veterans. The Pitfalls section does touch on a few of the issues I have with flexible magic systems (press any key to make the problem go away.) Some of the content seems to be restating of stuff mentioned in Pyramid #3/66 or in Dungeon Fantasy 19, but there is a lot of unique material as well.

Ritual Path Magic Ultra-Lite

A one page guide on how to eyeball spells instead of doing all the algebra to get things exact. I am not sure what to think about it though; on the one hand, it sounds really helpful if your table has a lotta holdups while the magician is counting beans; on the other, mechanically speaking, at normal power levels, even a difference of a few energy points can often have a big impact on magic success rates. For example, an RPM user with skill 14 trying to cast a 30 energy spell has approximately an 80% chance of success with an average of 2 quirks and taking around 50 minutes; trying to cast a 40 energy spell has a 75% chance of success with an average of 5 quirks, and taking around 80 minutes. This kinda thing is upsetting to the little statistics obsessed piece of my brain that screams that eyeballing the numbers has a 1/20 chance of creating a drastically different results. Maybe that's on me, and I just need to let go.

Examples

Nothing particularly outstanding here. The spells are purposefully pedagogical and illuminating, and to that end, are completely effective. Usefulness in an actual game is neither here nor there though; with a little clever thinking, there's probably more efficient ways to do anything here, if not as mechanically interesting.

Other Thoughts and Conclusion

It's fine. I just wanted to write something, you know, to kinda put my money where my mouth is. Make myself commit at least a little bit to the goal of writing one or two times a month. This book was extremely short, and very recently read, so it was no problem to review it. I hope I can keep up the writing.