Pyramid, edited by Steven Marsh, is the monthly GURPS supplement
containing short articles with a loose linking theme. This time it's
the combination of magic and imagination. Will that be different from
the Thaumatology issues we've had before?
The Incanter's Grimoire (Christopher R. Rice) extends the
freeform magic system from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 19:
Incantation Magic (to allow the player to have more spells worked
out in advance). Side notes cover the process of spell creation: what
tends to work, and what should be disallowed. This isn't a system I've
used; perhaps I should look into it.
Names Have Power (Rory Fansler) is a system for implementing True
Names: how to discover them, how to represent that knowledge in game
terms, and the advantages of using them (in a variety of GURPS's
magical systems). I'd have added a mention of the Selectivity
enhancement (to allow a power to be used both with and without the
true name bonus), but this is still good solid stuff.
Eidetic Memory: Glass Magic and the Specularii (David L. Pulver)
adds a Glass school to the standard GURPS magic system: nothing
particularly revolutionary there, though it might be handy. The more
interesting side of the article covers the Specularii, an order of
diviners, spies and assassins who are built round these spells and
some unique ones of their own.
Artifacts of Evil (Paul Stefko) gives some worked examples of
enchanted items using the system in GURPS Thaumatology: Ritual Path
Magic; there are full stats, rituals to produce a similar effect
without the artefact, and notes on the hazards of handling the things
– and how to destroy them. Some of the stats don't entirely match up
with the descriptions but there are interesting ideas here.
The Carnie (Sean Punch) is a variant of the Bard for Dungeon
Fantasy, a travelling entertainer with powers driven by (and
inflicting) madness. I'm not sure I see this working well in a dungeon
crawl, but it could be quite fun in a high-powered fantasy game.
Random Thought Table: Zero-Sum Game (Steven Marsh) looks at
zero-point packages combining an advantage with a disadvantage such as
a Patron and an Enemy; it also looks at a partial version of Amnesia
to account for abilities being unknown. This is more game-mechanical
than usual for an RTT, and it works rather well.
All right, this is Thaumatology VI in all but name. The magic is
generally less subtle and better-understood than it is in the magical
games I'm running at the moment, but there are definitely ideas here
that I'll pinch. Pyramid 114 is available from
Warehouse 23.
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