RogerBW's Blog

GURPS Encounters: The Harrowed Hearts Club, Jon Black 15 June 2018

This first GURPS Encounters book is a tavern/bar/club sourcebook combined with four short adventures.

The idea, I think, is to straddle the line between specific and generic: the default assumptions are broadly American, for the mid 19th century or later, but the ideas can be readily transplanted to other times and worlds.

The first half of the book is dedicated to the idea of the club – oddly lacking in any maps, which may score points for genericity but means more work for the GM. (I still value my copy of the Millennium's End GM's Companion for its selection of floor plans of modern locations.) Rather, the various elements likely to appear (bar, storeroom, green room, emergency exits) are listed, with some minimal GURPS stats for things like breaking in through emergency exits; there's a box suggesting how to pick a total size, and suggestions as to how much space each area should have. (And yes, it lets you map floor area to maximum occupancy, legal or otherwise.) For supernatural games, there's also some consideration of the "spirit of the club" as a ghost in its own right, perhaps controlling other club ghosts; and loose (uncosted) templates are given for bartenders, bouncers, musicians, patrons, and so on.

The second half consists of the history of a specific club, and four short adventures that can happen there. A femme fatale offers an opportunity to get rich quick; a apparition provides a glimpse into history; a poker game is much more serious than it appears; and a supernatural incident gets filmed, but someone doesn't want that video getting out.

GURPS has always suffered from a lack of adventures, because there are so many incompatible campaigns being run that any individual adventure won't be useful to most players. This book doesn't really try to remedy that, with three of the four encounters having explicitly supernatural components, but the material on laying out and populating a bar/club is solid (and could even be used for a pub, with the addition of a beer cellar). GURPS Encounters: The Harrowed Hearts Club is available from Warehouse 23.

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 aviation 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 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 2022 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