Magical Style: Royal Firefighter

Interesting article on historic
fire fighting.

I was thinking the other day about doing a series on over-the-top cinematic representations of everyday heroes and how they might be represented in GURPS. I've never done a full magic style before, and though there is a firefighter in Urban Magic, it is a very meager background character of a firefighter, rather than a PC, or even, an important NPC. So, this is my first attempt at building up a style, let's see how far I can take it.

Review: Dungeon Styles

I'm not even sure if this
counts as a cover illustration
at all at this point.

Magical Styles. Neither here nor there for me. I almost completely exclude the regular magic system from play, but that doesn't mean this book isn't even then a little helpful. In fact, irrelevantly, I never gave the regular magic system a fair good ol' college try, so I think maybe I should give it a go and see where I can go with it someday. Let's see what we get with this book.

Perk: Named Possession

Ah, nothing lends scholarly credence
like an animated GIF.

Named Possession is a perk that can be fun and helpful in a maniacal rise to power... or a fairy tale setting too, that too. It allows a weapon to grow alongside its owner with a style of character points. Let's examine some fun ways to utilize this.

Mechanics: Ritual Path Magic versus Incantation

A fun system

Also fun.

A while ago, I compared Ritual Path Magic to the effect-shaping spinoff in Pyramid #3/66. A few days ago, a fully formed system based on the two materials was released for Dungeon Fantasy in the form of Dungeon Fantasy 19: Incantation. I have read some discussions that make me feel like some people have the wrong idea about the system - that it is a limited version of the original. I know it is just semantics, but I think a better word would be specialized rather than limited, but the system proper does have some interesting deviations from the ancestor, and while it is not the night and day difference of say, Sorcery and the original magic system, it is bigger than the difference between the original magic system and threshold limited magic, and anyone that knows what I'm talking about knows that they are really similar, but the differences are big enough to make you feel like you are playing a whole new ball game. Let's take a look at the differences.

Treasure: Berserker Armor

Edge.

I was asked to stat this out, and I'm not an expert at Berserk so I don't know exactly how accurate this is, but what the heck, let's try it out.

Review: Thaumatology - Magical Styles

Unique art style.

So, yesterday I reviewed GURPS Magic, the fundamental tome for GURPS. Besides that book, Magical Styles is a critical expansion that adds some interesting detail, flavor, and mechanics to the otherwise overwhelming list of spells. It takes the concept of martial arts styles from the Martial Arts book and modifies it to work with magic instead by massaging the framework to accommodate large lists of spells instead of oodles of advanced techniques. This book comes in handy if you, the GM are looking for guidance on directing a magic-using player's character growth by putting some limitations in place. The book comes in handy for you, the player, if you have a focused image of what your magic-using character should be, and would like some system support in building that character efficiently and being rewarded for sticking to a plan. Let's take a closer look at this supplement for GURPS Magic.

Review: GURPS Magic

Too bad the art inside doesn't
match the cover.

GURPS Magic is the tome for GURPS games that use the vanilla magic system. Without changing very much, this book is a gigantic catalog of tons of spells that have been (lightly) touched up for 4th edition. People who read this blog know it is not my preferred magic system, but I do like having a huge catalog of spells just for the creative inspiration for my more preferred systems, and as I do enjoy Dungeon Fantasy, usage of the system is somewhat unavoidable as it is a little tightly coupled to the foundation. My intent here is to, regardless of my feelings for the magic system itself, approach the content of the book as objectively as possible, so let's take a look.

Treasure: Ring of Disease Resistance

In Game Art.

Kinda a writer's block, so a simple treasure, a ring that makes one immune to disease.

Sorcery: Dancing Object

Like this.

It's a popular trope in movies with magic to make servants out of objects. Like Merlin in The Sword in the Stone, or the Sorcerer in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Dancing Object is the ability to make a normally inanimate object able to do one repetitive task for one hour. Let's put together a spell to emulate this spell from GURPS: Magic, p. 144

Treasure: Mind Control Ring

Uh, thanks Harvard ◔̯◔

Let's wander down an unusual path today, I'm gonna use the vanilla magic system to highlight an easy way to make some new magic items for Dungeon Fantasy in an easy way. Specifically, let's make a mind control ring, because someone asked me how to do it.

Review: GURPS Powers: Divine Favor

Powers with a
Social Engineering bent.

One of the weird things out of the box for me was that magic and miracles are basically the same thing with different names. GURPS is the first RPG I ever played, so I thought maybe it was a peculiarity of GURPS brand Dungeon Fantasy. I recently played D&D 5e over a weekend, and found to my dismay, the "de-facto" system plays like this as well. To me, this is a little jarring, but I can get that some people don't like learning how to do the same thing in two ways.
For people like me with such a hang-up though, we have the short, not especially expensive, and somehow unique-even-when-reusing-existing-mechanics system of Divine Favor. Let' take a look at this supplement that I very much enjoyed.

Sorcery: Silver Tongue

Because you might not be able to find this.

I've got nothing today. So... let's go with trying to get my Sorcery formatting up to scratch with an easy spell today, Silver Tongue. It makes you talk good. Let's take a look.

Mechanics: Syntactic Magic

Magic!

The final post in my on-going series at looking at different magic systems and mechanics in depth. This time, I am looking at a system that is somewhat of a horse of a different color. Syntactic Magic is a very open-ended system. It is not constrained to any feeble spell lists or monkey business like that. If you can imagine it, and it makes sense that a wizard with your skills can do it, then you can try it. That doesn't mean that it is free-form willy-nilly either. There are a lot of complexities rules of thumb and subjective judgement required to make the system work right, so let's see what Syntactic Magic is.

Mechanics: Sorcery

You'll need this.

Today I'm only going to be covering one system, because there is no sister system for Sorcery. Well, it is a magic system that uses advantages as spells, so technically, there are a lot of compatible systems. No matter, what I am discussing today is *The* Powers-As-Magic system. Sorcery is probably one of the most mechanically simple of all the main magical systems with mechanically consistent rules that stick to fundamental core concepts of GURPS. Let's look at it closer then.

Mechanics: Energy Accumulation Ritual Path Magic and Effect Shaping Ritual Path Magic

Main book needed

Required for Effect Shaping
Highly Recommended for
Energy Accumulation

Similar to yesterday, this is a deep dive into two flavors of ritual path magic that I found interesting and worth exploring on a mechanical basis. The previous posts featuring these systems were an information light overview meant to communicate feel and complexity and give you infossrmation to start researching a desired system, whereas today, the focus is to provide interested people with a deeper look at two of the systems.

Mechanics: Vanilla Magic and Threshold-Limited Magic

First not-so-scary and on-topic
GIS result for vanilla and overload.

Earlier this week I did a very shallow look at various magic systems I either actually used and like or pontificated they would be good systems to run. Today, I'll discuss the similar, but different default systems and the threshold-limited system from Thaumatology. The systems do have some big differences that make them interesting enough to definitely consider them two different things, but they share so much, I'd probably be copying and pasting paragraphs if I did this twice. Now that we've seen things in very broad strokes I am going to drill down into more mechanical explanations. Hold onto your coats and mittens, as we enter the wild world of rules rules rules!

Comparison: Other Magic Systems

Aside: Fun book

Yesterday-ish.... three hours ago I wrote about the main three magic systems for GURPS. Note, these systems aren't the only popular ones. Indeed, there are a few very important ones I left out.GURPS Thaumatology is the handbook for customizing magic as you see fit for a campaign and a lot of the systems straight from that book are in use. Let's take a look at a few of the ones I find interesting.

Comparison: Popular Magic Systems

I ain't gotta explain p*op!

GURPS prides itself on being modular. There is more than one way to cast magic, and GURPS implements several and gives tools for creating others. Today I'm going to be dissecting a few of the more popular systems and hopefully give a fair shake with a respect to perceptions of balance, creating new spells, and mental strain during the game. Let's dive in.

Sorcery: Solidify

Hey kid, want some "boo"-tiful polish? ;)

I can't think of anything so, here we are, working out the solidify spell, an ability by which an insubstantial caster may become substantial. Should be simple, so let's figure it out.

Sorcery: Animate Plant

Weird Dance

 Choosing a spell to work out completely at random, it seems like today's spell is animate plant. Animate plant allows a caster to bring a plant to life for some reason. Well, it calls an IQ 9 spirit to inhabit a plant. Let's see how that works.