Mechanics: Encumbrance

Someone else's
opinion.

Encumbrance is a thing that can be annoying to track, and extremely deleterious when tracked; a constant enemy of the low-tech combatant. Here's a small rundown of ways that people can defeat it.

Editorial: Sometimes It's OK If Someone Does Something Wrong

Good book, GURPS coming soon.

It's a thing I see, and whether you love the community or not, I think it's a problem that might scare new people away or stop them from doing something. Imagine this scene, someone mentions something about GURPS, a game they want to run, or a character they want to play, or maybe it is going on even as they speak. Someone chimes in with a way to fix things.
And that's really weird. Did anyone ask for any help with any problem? Maybe they groused about something, maybe they spoke about a weak point, but... did they say "this thing is broken and I can't repair it on my own?" Then why is someone trying to fix it?

Editorial: Help Me Help You Make A Character That's Fun To Play

That's a Character.

It's a weird, not really a system specific problem for GURPS or anything, but it seems a problem that I have difficulty solving. The problem that I need to solve is that I am having a lot of troubles spontaneously developing the power to read minds. I've talked about something in a similar vein before, but today, I'll try working on this in a subtly different way. Let's talk about how GURPS (but also, probably every RPG?) is not a one man show, and when everyone works together, it makes for a better game.

Campaign Preparation: Things I think I Need To Do Better

Epic for the win, buddy.

What are things to consider when planning a campaign? I've got a lot of lessons learned from all the campaigns I've planned and didn't work out, so let's take a look at what is needed to make a campaign work out.

Editorial: I Like Reading Lots of Rules, But That Doesn't Mean I Use Them All

GURPS Asparagus.

I imagine more GURPS fans than neophytes visit this blog, and so maybe I'm preaching to the choir a bit, but I'm just going to put my thoughts to words, because, why not? Because I could post something useful instead? Oh, you card! So, what thoughts of these am I to encode? That I think having a ton of rules is a good thing. It's a thing that makes GURPS fun and useful and one of my favorite systems. The thing is though, this can be a bit overwhelming to newcomers, so let's clarify a few things while I talk about why I like GURPS.

Editorial: Meta-Challenges are fun, Even if They Are Not GURPS

Would you like to play a game? - Dobby

I'm not even sure if the title is accurate, and this post is a little system agnostic, and I don't even really know if it is a question that anyone is asking, but I've been thinking about certain types of meta-challenges and how there is something of an idea that incorporating them can ruin a game for numerous reasons. I don't even think the arguments are really wrong. What I do disagree with is that it is or can be bad for the game. Let me explain myself further.

Editorial: Dungeon Fantasy Negotiations With Neutral Parties

Intimidating at first blush, but quite
friendly indeed.

This is a slightly weird niche that I don't see addressed specifically by a lot of Dungeon Fantasy negotiation posts, and that is how to handle a confrontation with... a non-confrontational subject. I feel like negotiation skills are something that I am a bit swingy on, either a) turning players into deities because it is too effective, or b) turning them useless because I make everyone invulnerable to negotiation because I'm afraid of turning them into deities. So I says to myself, maybe if I do a little brainstorm of all the things that might be important to consider in a negotiation with a creature who's sole raison d'etre is to eat guys that get close enough, it might help me also consider the more dangerous and nervous situations.

Cross-Post/Editorial: "Fair Pricing"

This guy!

So, it's a bit of a thought that has appeared in a few places, being discussed by people that are probably much more qualified to speak to it than I, but I thought I'd like to speak to it as well, so you can get a complete dumb-dumb's take on the issue.

Fundamental: Quirks

Sure, wearing a horse mask is pretty
quirky, but can you bring it to life
at the gaming table?

It seems weird that I need to say something about this, but I feel like I need to say something about this. Welcome to the opinion zone, and today's topic is the inscrutable and wholly subjective quirk. What is a quirk? Why do I want them? Why is it so difficult to come up with them? I don't know where to begin with all these questions, but I'll try to speak to why I think you should care about them, and why they matter to me in the games I GM, and how I think you might be overthinking it if you find coming up with quirks to be difficult.

Math: Incremental Improvement from Raising a Skill by One Level

PDF in blue, using the axis on the left
CDF in orange, using the axis on the right.

I was thinking about something last night about the way we generally present the bell curve for a roll of 3d6 as a way to distinguish it from the flatline of a single d20. We then take that probability density function and integrate to get the cumulative density function, or the graph that shows our success of rolling "x or under." These visualizations, I think, are useful, and they aren't wrong, but I don't think the information it conveys to a player in helping making strategic decisions about spending points is showing the whole picture, so I made a new graph that shows different information.

Advantage: Serendipity

I've never seen this,
but I've always liked the title.

Serendipity is a pretty difficult advantage for me to wrap my head around. I mean, compare the advantage very similar in concept and theme Luck, and it is a whole different ballpark. Luck has a very hard coded mechanical specific benefit to it, and Serendipity has a really wibbly wobbly soft and mushy benefit. Which kinda stinks, because I really like the concept of Serendipity, explaining the idea of lucky coincidences as a component of what defines a character is pretty swell, and there are a lot of characters in fiction that are repeatedly saved by Deus Ex Machina, so it is not an unusual element either. Today, I'm going to dissect this advantage and try to make sense of it so I can make it consistent.

Character Build: Backstory and Motivation

The only book you kinda need
today!

Good afternoon, friends, and welcome to another fascinating episode of the blind leading the blind, or Blind (Mitigator, Patron). Today, I'm going to be talking about something that has all the hardness of special sensitive gum formula Jello: backstories. I have opinions about backstories, and I think I've never exactly explained it just right to my players, so I often get things that are technically backstories, and they might even be written well, but it misses the mark entirely of what I really am asking for when I ask for a backstory. So today, I am going to wax extremely editorial on a topic I didn't see much advice for, and I encourage anyone else who has opinions, whether they are in a vehement opposition to mine, or they are in adamant agreement, to give me your thoughts.

Cross-Post: Hirelings

Don't be like Red Luigi.

So it's a thing that is going around. Two posts at Dungeon Fantastic, and one at Gaming Ballistic. I think they have already said a bunch of interesting stuff on the topic, but in any case, I decided to gather up my thoughts on the subject.

Cross-Post: How'd it Go?

Like this? I haven't read the books in
a while... now I feel like reading them
again.

This blog post from the Red Mouser came up in my feed reader, and it is relevant to my interests. I prefer playing a type of meta-game when GMing, where, like Chekhov's gun, things don't exist unless they are necessary. I take it a step further, and like Haruhi Suzumiya, things that are necessary don't exist until the players hint that they want them to exist.

Mechanics: Metagame

Not this kind, and I don't even want to
know what it is.

Metagame. It is a supremely overloaded word, that has definitions that place it anywhere from subjectively bad, to objectively neutral, to subjectively good, so before I begin this post, I need to make sure we are singing from the hymn sheet.
Today, when I say metagame, I speak to mechanics that have an impact on the game via the interface of player and game, rather than character and game. By that I mean... normally, the player interacts with the GM's world by speaking and working through his character. The player can therefore only do something that his character can do. Metagame mechanics subvert this usual contract, for better or for worse, to the benefit or detriment of the player by allowing the player some sort of agency that doesn't come from his character. GURPS doesn't have as many metagame mechanics built in as a lot of other systems, but there are still some, and even among those, some are so important, major elements are predicated and built upon them as a foundation. Let's investigate further.

Cross-Post: Create, Don't Convert

Create, Don't Convert.
Interesting advice on creating new material. Honestly, a lot of content from my blog uses ideas from existing games and media, but here's a secret that I probably don't make explicit enough: for the sake of communicating with people, I use names and concepts from popular media, but I absolutely never play with any of the things I have made up on this blog without a bit of personalized dressing.