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GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 2: Epic Treasures, Matt Riggsby 04 June 2016

This Dungeon Fantasy supplement deals with "special" treasures: not just the big hauls, but something truly unique.

Disclaimer: I received playtest credit in this book and therefore did not pay for it.

The point of this volume is that, after a certain point, just getting more gold is boring (if sometimes an interesting logistical challenge). These treasures are game-changing: allowing fast long-distance movement, or removing resource management or other limits from the game.

The first of four parts is Weapons: a blade with built-in Luck for the user, a bow that will let the user always strike his target, undetectable daggers, and so on – as well as rules for solid gold, platinum, and platinum-coated weapons. (Mostly useful if you're huge and want a heavier weapon to do more damage with, mind.) Armour is next, with variations that protect against environmental hazards, turn the wearer temporarilt into an armoured centaur, burn constantly, and so on. (The Vinesheld, a suit of woven living vines, is perhaps the most interesting here.)

Next are Vehicles, which frankly go a bit beyond what I think of as reasonable dungeon-bashing fare. There's an armoured crab which the occupants have to pedal: the idea is to make them proof against most environmental hazards, while not being able to treat it as an armoured fighting vehicle. There's a burrowing "torpedo", a (mundane, but impressive) royal carriage, and a phaeton that can travel through the Nightmare Dimension. (Hey, it's dungeon fantasy, who cares if the Nightmare Dimension has never been mentioned before – it's cool!) Finally we have Fabulous Artifacts, a grab-bag of things that didn't fit the other three categories: mushrooms to turn someone into a super-berserker, a non-magical flying harness, a boardgame that acts as an early warning system, and that cartoon classic the removable gap (don't call it a portable hole).

This is a short supplement that doesn't have room to do much with the items: it's a great source of ideas for treasures, and tested stats for them too, but it's really only usable as-is in a fairly free-wheeling fantasy setting that doesn't worry too much about things like where magic comes from or what specific other worlds are out there. Which Dungeon Fantasy is, of course, but if I were to drop these into another setting I'd need to do a fair bit of work on them. Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 2: Epic Treasures is available from Warehouse 23 and the designer's notes are here.

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