RogerBW's Blog

Pyramid 113: Dungeon Fantasies 24 March 2018

Pyramid, edited by Steven Marsh, is the monthly GURPS supplement containing short articles with a loose linking theme. This time it's back to the dungeon, looking at both the Dungeon Fantasy RPG and the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy series. OK, not really an exciting theme for me, but let's see how it goes.

Five Easy Pieces (Sean Punch) allows the construction of DFRPG characters by assembling five 50-point modules – much in the manner of the excellent GURPS Action 4: Specialists. Several of these can be selected multiple times, to add bonuses in a particular area. If I were playing the DFRPG I'd welcome this degree of customisation, even if I don't find the individual packages particularly inspiring; they're more like a Bézier curve, allowing characters who blend together elements of the various existing archetypes rather than adding anything particularly new.

Simple Spell Components (Peter V. Dell'Orto) is a deliberately lightweight system for allowing power boosts from expendable (and expensive) spell components, while not getting into finicky tracking of just how many spiders' legs you're carrying. You buy a "single-spell component", a "college component", or a "general component" (druid or wizard or priest), with increasing generality but also increasing cost. It's a good worked example of a GURPS rules extension.

Eidetic Memory: Monsters as Treasures (David L. Pulver) gives writeups for seven monsters that have some value beyond their treasure: their corpses, their eggs, and so on. This mostly means that they need to be killed carefully.

All Wet (Charles Saeger) gives writeups for ten underwater monsters. Yay, more stuff to kill.

Designer's Notes: Dungeon Fantasy Traps (Christopher R. Rice with Jason "PK" Levine) is a description of how the book was written, and a few more traps cut for space.

Random Thought Table: Can You Spell Thrills With No Hill? (Steven Marsh) is a plea to signify the end of the dungeon with an escalation of tension and a big battle, rather than to have a succession of similar challenges and a "that's all folks" – and a series of suggestions on how to do it.

Well, if I were playing a dungeon bash, or planning to, I'd like this, particularly Simple Spell Components. But I'm not, and there's not much here for games that aren't based on the traditional fantasy violence model. Pyramid 113 is available from Warehouse 23.

See also:
GURPS Action 4: Specialists, Sean Punch


  1. Posted by Peter Dell'Orto at 01:54am on 28 March 2018

    Thanks for your comments on my article.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime crystal cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2021 hugo 2022 hugo 2023 hugo 2024 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1