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

Apparently it's not
for sale yet, so the
link 404s.

 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.

Ritual Path Magic: Some Path of Mind spells

The other kinda monk.

Continuing on the theme of Ritual Path Magic and monks, my player also has Path of Mind. So, I decided to try to think of one thematically appropriate spell for each of the verbs. Let's see what we can do when we flex that gray matter. Bonus, also includes Incantation Magic versions of most. One spell is incompatible with incantation magic.

Ritual Path Magic: Some Path of Body Focused Rituals

Goku doing Aeroga or something.

I have a player that has something of a monk character that has ritual path magic, so just to get him started with a handful of ideas, here we go. As a special bonus, I am going to try to make example stats using both the classic RPM system and the new Incantation system.

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.

Ritual Path Magic: Cheat Sheet

Over the last night and this morning, I made a cheat sheet for ritual path magic. It uses a lot of tables from the GURPS Basic Set and from

Ritual Path Magic. None of it is original material, but it has everything that is scattered across multiple pages in the book without requiring rapid page flipping. You can get the pdf here. And besides this page, the only thing you might still want from the Ritual Path Magic book is the table on p.35. I figure this is a safe thing to publish online because it presents the information from this web app (Which is really cool by the way,) but in a different way.

Also, here's some fun legal boilerplate:

GURPS is a trademark of Steve Jackson Games, and its rules and art are copyrighted by Steve Jackson Games . All rights are reserved by Steve Jackson Games. This game aid is the original creation of Patricia Gauronskas and is released for free distribution, and not for resale, under the permissions granted in the Steve Jackson Games Online Policy (http://www.sjgames.com/general/online_policy.html)
If this is breaking any rules, please let me know right away so I can modify the document or take it down.

UPDATE:
Here's a metric version of the same sheet.

Ritual Path Magic: Necromancer Spells

It's not particularly similar to the
character or player, but oh well!

So I have a player that wants a Necromancer character. I already made a Sorcery spell for this character, but we are shifting gears to Ritual Path Magic. Let's look at a few conversions of some useful spells for Necromancy and for undertaking.

Ritual Path Magic: Martial Artist...?

The cartoon wasn't terrible I think.
Not great, but not terrible.

First off, I like Ritual Path Magic. Second off, I do think it can work for a high paced game. Thirdly, it can work, but I'm slightly wary of recommending it for that purpose. However, I have a player that is considering it for a martial artist type of character, so here we are. Let's see what kind of abilities might behoove such a character.

Review: Pyramid #3/66 The Laws of Magic

Good issue.

This issue of Pyramid, from April, 2014, speaks a lot to Ritual Path Magic and to a few bits of updated mechanics from the 3rd edition of GURPS, and little bits of odds and ends that deal with, of course, magic systems. The RPM content alone makes this issue a must-buy for fans of that system, but the rest of the content is a decent bonus too. Let's take a closer look.

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.

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.

Ritual Path Magic: Vancian Style Casting

Ritual Path Magic

Ritual Path Magic is among, in my opinion, the most innovative systems to come out of GURPS. It is a smart evolution of Noun/Verb style casting and energy gathering combined into something slightly more compact, with none of the flexibility lost. If you've read the supplement, and you really cared about having a Vancian system, you'd realize you are probably 80% there with Ritual Path Magic, but here I'd like to spell out a few simple calculations that solve for the remaining 20%.

Also very helpful