Pyramid is the monthly GURPS supplement containing short articles with
a loose linking theme. This time it's about alternative framings of
the dungeon again.
Havens and Hells (Sean Punch) is a development of a post on the
SJ Games forums from some years ago, a world in which video-game-style
respawning is a way of life. There are towns ("havens") which are
magically protected from the monsters of chaos outside, and when
someone dies he's automatically brought back to life (for player
characters, at the nearest haven). The good-vs-evil approach and
limitation to tiny settlements means that this is strictly a game of
humans against monsters, with no factionalisation possible. PCs are
Collectors, who go out to gather resources to keep the havens working.
There's no money or social status, and many of the other elements of
the traditional fantasy campaign are stripped away in order to keep
the focus on the lone heroes. I can't see myself running this any time
soon, though it's a good example of building a different fantasy
setting.
Eastern Adventures (Christopher R. Rice) is the Oriental
Adventures of Dungeon Fantasy. It's not quite wholeheartedly
Dungeon Fantasy, though, as it does suggest the possibility of buying
non-DF traits such as Games, Artist, Social Regard and so on. There
are tweaks to all the standard templates, a Samurai lens to add to the
Knight or Swashbuckler templates, and various notes on tweaking DF for
a Chinese/Japanese background. The main thing missing is monsters and
adventures, in other words ways of making your game feel Eastern as
opposed to just dropping samurai into a generic fantasyland the way
ninja have already been dropped. This article does rather point up the
limitations of DF (one of the things about a samurai is that he is an
important person in his society, and stock DF can't do that), and I
was never much of a fan of OA in the first place; I don't think I'm
likely to use this. Designer's notes
here.
Eidetic Memory: The Titan's House (David L. Pulver) is, well, a
dungeon, but one built to roughly 5× scale – complete with giant
chickens and bees. For people looking for a dungeon, well, this is a
dungeon.
Random Thought Table: The Secret of the Explorers (Steven Marsh)
twists the basis of dungeon-bashing: there's a general agreement
between humanity and monsters to leave each other alone, and player
characters threaten that by kick down doors, killing monsters and
taking loot. Adventuring becomes a covert activity, because fellow
humans will try to stop them, and if they succeed the monsters will
come back and kill other humans.
Short Bursts: Five Best Places to Nearly Get Killed Before You Die!
(Matt Riggsby) is more tie-in material for Car Wars (it gives short
descriptions of five arenas). Author's notes
here.
This is all competently done, and I like the experimental format of
fewer and more substantial articles, but the dungeon bash isn't my
preferred style of play. If I do ever run The Turbulent Century I
may use some of the Random Thought Table, but that's not on my
schedule for the immediate future. Pyramid 89 is available from
Warehouse 23.
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