That GURPS Thread (Also Includes The Fantasy Trip)

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Damn you...:wink:...I had to pre-order some goodies: The Fantasy Trip: In the Labyrinth (Hardcover), The Fantasy Trip: Melee/Wizard Pocket Box, The Fantasy Trip Adventures, and The Fantasy Trip Companion. Expected delivery is in August 2019. I will amortize the cost and chalk up my game budget for 2019 as having been spent already. :money::dice:

You are most welcome. SJ Games please send my cut directly to me.:drink::thumbsup:
 
You are most welcome. SJ Games please send my cut directly to me.:drink::thumbsup:
This is actually the most excited I've been for a "new" game in aeons. I'm always afraid my old copies will fall apart, they're so flimsily made to begin with, adding age and usage to the mix only hurts. Can't wait to get a hardcover of The Fantasy Trip that I don't have to worry about destroying by taking it out to play it.
 
This is actually the most excited I've been for a "new" game in aeons. I'm always afraid my old copies will fall apart, they're so flimsily made to begin with, adding age and usage to the mix only hurts. Can't wait to get a hardcover of The Fantasy Trip that I don't have to worry about destroying by taking it out to play it.
I didn't own "back in the day" then I scored a copy of Melee, Wizard, and both Death Tests in a Library Book sale in the mid 2000s. Then with the money from my book sales, I decided I would get the three ITL books on eBay and by the fall of 2017 had copies of all three at a decent price.
 
I'm interested to see what people new to TFT make of the Legacy edition. It's been my core game system since shortly after Melee was published (so, almost exactly 40 years), so I feel like I understand its merits and how widely applicable it is. But it is unusual in a couple of ways that may take people a couple of sessions to 'grok'. I've seen posts from people who 'found' something they didn't like because they played a couple of combats using incorrect readings of the rules. I suspect the people who enjoy it most will take the time to play Melee and Wizard for a couple of evenings, getting a feel for all the nuances and tactics associated with the board-game-like combat system before they move to playing full blown rpg campaigns.
 
Yeah the In the Labyrinth book is really all anyone needs to have the full RPG, if they are going to make their own campaign (it does start with one map, which is where I started when I was 11), AND hexmaps and counters or miniatures (which the book does not come with), but many gamers already have something suitable for those, or could make their own with computer, Internet & printer, and/or user Roll20 and play online, or whatever.

But I would not recommend theatre of the the mind (so much of the fun is about the tactical situation on the map, and it also determines whether you get killed or not - if the GM says three orcs are in reach to attack you in a turn, that may well mean you get hacked to pieces and die - you're supposed to be maneuvering to not have that happen).

And I definitely second the recommendation that the GM at least should start by playing several melee combats with himself to learn what combat is like. You might want to start players with some melee combats to learn that too, and/or tell them the game is a "funnel" and to expect to have PCs die. And/or play/fail Death Test a few times before playing a campaign.
 
You can certainly play TFT as 'theater of the mind' combat, particularly if the GM understands the game well. But I only do this when playing by Skype, where it's tough to really get everyone seeing the board well, and its a pain to have people verbally dictate the details of their moves. If you are able to play in person definitely use a hex map. If you don't buy one from SJG, just get a Chessex battle mat or print out some hex map sheets of paper. The board-game-like combat might seem intimidating before you've played, but it is a really fun system for resolving skirmishes involving ~3-10 figures, and you'll pick it up in less than an hour if you just play through a couple of fights. I recommend starting with two on two fights in spaces with a couple o terrain features, as 1-1 duels in open arenas don't really show off the interesting features of the system
 
I am reading that the adventures work with the Fantasy Trip: Legacy Edition. But that is crazy expensive for an RPG:

....

Do you need all the cut out figures, hex maps, and doo dads to play? Seems really expensive to get into the game.

You don’t need any of that to get into a game. We used dice or miniatures for figures and you can even use a square grid instead of hexes with a little interpolation.
 
After saying that I’ll buy it for the coolness and nostalgia factor, but once it is out. No pre-order for me.
 
Honestly, when I look at all the hundreds of dollars of crap on my gaming shelf I'd say 120 for the boxed set is one of the better deals I've run across in the last 10 years.
 
<snip> 'theater of the mind' combat <snip>
[derail] Can I just say, I really don't like that phrase. So pretentious and reeking of a certain purple place. I prefer to say the much more evocative and less condescending 'without minis.' And it takes less letters, too!

[/derail]
 
Huh. I think Steve Allen would be amused at being called "pretentious" :smile: I've always found the phrase "theater of the mind" to be the clearest, most concise expression of what it's describing ("without minis, grid, or other physical props," really), but clearly ymmv.

Maybe it doesn't bother me because it reminds me of WW's old 'Mind's Eye Theater' for LARPing, so I have zero connection between it and any specific RPG site.
 
Huh. I think Steve Allen would be amused at being called "pretentious" :smile: I've always found the phrase "theater of the mind" to be the clearest, most concise expression of what it's describing ("without minis, grid, or other physical props," really), but clearly ymmv.

Maybe it doesn't bother me because it reminds me of WW's old 'Mind's Eye Theater' for LARPing, so I have zero connection between it and any specific RPG site.
I also find WW to be incredibly pretentious. And WW LARP to be almost as pretentious as L5R LARPs.
 
I will second, or is it third, that using a map and figures/counters really is what TFT is about, and does well. I've played briefly TFT on-line with play-by-post but a selling point to me of TFT is the maneuver in combat.

Yet, I've also played TFT without the map and used things like contested DX rolls to determine favorable or unfavorable positioning. Because a another cool thing about TFT to me is it's conciseness and elegant Talent system.

On theater of the mind, not familiar with it's use by sites or LARPs so it has a whole other connotation (mostly positive and descriptive) to me. Amazing that, the power of connotation. I found the idea you could do all this combat without hex and counters refreshing...given cut my teeth on such war games. Now if you do use a grid, what irks me is using square grids instead of hex or offset squares...the latter providing both mapping ease and same distance in any direction movement.
 
I grew up playing TotM, none of my friends were into minis, although we never used the term and I never knew it until I started to visit RPG forums. I think it concisely captures the playstyle though.

I've only read TFT, haven't had a chance to play yet but I was taken enough with the system that I KS'ed the Legacy Edition. I realize fans of the system are attracted to the minis but I'd say the simpilicty of the core mechanics lend the system well to theatre of the mind play as well.
 
I actually met Steve Jackson in person and got to talk to him at MystiCon (a local convention here in Roanoke) and long story short, Steve Jackson is a cool guy and the new version of The Fantasy Trip is due for a release in April.
 
Two final points on this 'to hex map or not to hex map' topic:

1) it's obviously fine to play TFT just as you would abstract movement in D+D, but you owe it to yourself to try the real thing simply because the hex map tactical combat system is a great little 'game within a game', and you'll definitely enjoy it. Its simpler than you might be imagining and does not really slow play.

2) some of the new materials (adventures and the tessellated hex sheets) seem to signal that SJG has a specific plan to enable groups to play out dungeon crawls like you would if you had a 100 % complete Dwarven Forge diorama of your dungeon - except with 2D sheets instead of 3D models. The idea of lowering the price point for such an experience is really clever and I think will be a big success. There is something very engaging about having play seamlessly flow from exploration to combat and back while the map gradually reveals itself to you.
 
You don't need to not use a map when playing TFT/GURPS by post.

Examples from my recent TFT PBP for fun:
HydraLedge001.gif


The following map was made out of pieces created by 2-Minute Table Top ( www.patreon.com/2minutetabletop ) (and nonetheless took me more like two hours to assemble into this map in Roll20 with the help of PhotoShop), under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ).
Hunting004.gif
 
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You don't need to not use a map when playing TFT/GURPS by post.

Examples from my recent TFT PBP for fun:
HydraLedge001.gif


Hunting004.gif

That thing has five heads. There are six adventurers. You should add another head to the next one.
 
Those are really cool maps! How are you making them? Do you create hard copies and move figure markers around on them, or do you do it all on your computer screen?
 
That thing has five heads. There are six adventurers. You should add another head to the next one.
Funny.

It was the closest I found to a good top-down seven-hex hydra counter.

And I feel compelled to point out, even though it was a joke, that:

1. It has enough heads, but TFT hydras could use some thicker skin and/or a higher threshold of falling down. In practice they got lucky and barely managed to knock it down before it was about to attack, and then finished it off while it was down. But if they get a chance to attack you with all those heads...

2. I almost always GM encounters by putting whatever the situation and/or dice say is there, and then playing it out. I feel it's up to the players to try to detect and avoid things that are the level of risk/reward they're willing to go after, and my job to give them the information their characters would get that might help them do that, but sometimes a hydra just ends up cornering you anyway (actually , this is the first time I've rolled a 7-hex hydra on that table, which I made circa 1983 :-D ).


Those are really cool maps! How are you making them? Do you create hard copies and move figure markers around on them, or do you do it all on your computer screen?
Thanks.

They were all done on the computer, and I've been making and playing with various tools. The first one was done with the drawing tools on the Roll20 web site, which can work ok but can also be frustrating, especially with large maps and dealing with many layers. The second one was done with a combination of Roll20 (tree trunks, hex grid, arrangement), Photoshop, and some nice free-if-you-acknowledge map artwork from 2-Minute Table Top.

Which I should repeat here:
The following map was made out of pieces created by 2-Minute Table Top ( www.patreon.com/2minutetabletop ) (and nonetheless took me more like two hours to assemble into this map in Roll20 with the help of PhotoShop), under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ).


I've also been using a map tool a player created for TFT ( http://shadekeep.com/shamat/shamat.html ), which can make hex maps quite quickly, and then uploading them into Roll20. Here are a couple of examples of that:
HuntingB001.gif


Here's one where I used Photoshop to blur the areas the PCs could sort of see what the distant terrain was probably like but not the details:
Lions2_overview.gif



And of course you can also just use a digital camera (e.g. smartphone) and photograph an actual physical map without using any tools.
 
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[derail] Can I just say, I really don't like that phrase. So pretentious and reeking of a certain purple place. I prefer to say the much more evocative and less condescending 'without minis.' And it takes less letters, too!

[/derail]
Yes, you can say that. In fact, from now on it shall be "without minis," and the other phrase is dead!
 
I like "mapless", so it's a contrast not just to minis but to counters and to any non-imaginary means of tracking the detailed positions of figures.
 
Once again we are being asked to pledge or see GURPS abandoned on the scrap heap of history. It's funny how this box that SJG pre-emptively declared a failure and cut the print run by 1/3 needs a kickstarter for a re-print. And yeah, I'll probably put down for a retailer level and an extra copy of characters and magic because, this is a game where you need extra copies of those books. But, I do wish they'd throw a little more fresh meat on the plate. More monsters is fun. I expect we'll see some from Pyramid and the Companion in there. I'd really like to see the whole cardboard heroes range on the nice thick cardstock. But most of all I'd like to see a promise of a supers or space opera box kickstarter as a pledge goal. I mean, I would pledge for GURPS Vehicles for 4e in a heart beat but we're never going to see that.
 
Once again we are being asked to pledge or see GURPS abandoned on the scrap heap of history. It's funny how this box that SJG pre-emptively declared a failure and cut the print run by 1/3 needs a kickstarter for a re-print. And yeah, I'll probably put down for a retailer level and an extra copy of characters and magic because, this is a game where you need extra copies of those books. But, I do wish they'd throw a little more fresh meat on the plate. More monsters is fun. I expect we'll see some from Pyramid and the Companion in there. I'd really like to see the whole cardboard heroes range on the nice thick cardstock. But most of all I'd like to see a promise of a supers or space opera box kickstarter as a pledge goal. I mean, I would pledge for GURPS Vehicles for 4e in a heart beat but we're never going to see that.
After Vehicles for 3e, which needed a spreadsheet and failed to model real world vehicles, you'd want a 4e version?

The problem with GURPS is simply that 4e is aimed exclusively at gams of the game. It's got almost zero appeal to new players because it's so dense and press.ted to badly.
 
I'd settle for a fully integrated spaceships variant. But I definitely want a more comprehensive treatment of vehicles. I really like Spacemaster Privateers' vehicles rules because somebody realized that the focus of the game is on the player characters and gave vehicles a lighter treatment. Personally GURPS Vehicles was fun, but it was too tight, partly because the tech levels are too broad, partly because SJG leaned towards realism and didn't seem to think people would want to model vehicles from movies and television. Admittedly I didn't use it for anything below TL 9 and wished they'd built about a hundred more sample vehicles.
 
Vehicle rules should be things like what are stats for typical cars and trucks, what are their HEX COUNTERS like and rules for moving them, attacking them, crashing them into things, trying to do maneuvers, and figures having combat while inside them and trying to move from seat to seat or crawl in/out/on/under them. i.e. Rules like were made, playtested and developed for man to man combat in Man To Man, which is still 90% of the combat system and the best-done part of the game.

Instead, Vehicles gave us rules for designing and calculating stats for all sorts of vehicles from primitive to super-tech, but more complex than most people want, and without enough good examples, and without very good combat or driving rules. It's both too complicated and too generic and almost useless for most people.

And then there are the various lite mapless chase rules and dogfight rules, which are something but don't really help me resolve driving a wagon through a GURPS melee on a hex map.

At least Hexagram #1 just came out with an article on ships and boats in TFT. :-)
 
Today is an unusual “GURPSDay.” Unusual because there are two Kickstarters going on that influence the future of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG specifically, and GURPS more broadly.

So this is going to be a bit of “rah, rah” and a tetch of hard sell.

Let’s start with the big one.
Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2/Boxed Set Reprint

This one’s important. It’s being used to judge latent demand for the game, and the boxed set does that. The Monsters book is something that we’ve all been asking for. For a long while. If you’re neither following the campaign nor pledged, please do one or both.

The Citadel at Norðvorn

Thanks to beautiful synergies with the DFM2/DFRPG campaign, we got a much-needed and much appreciated kick in the pants these last few days, and are only $1800 from funding. There are 275 folks following the campaign who have not yet pledged. If 60 come in and pledge, we fund. If you ALL came in and pledged, we’d hit two stretch goals and the book would be 128 pages. We’d need 150 people past that to hit the offset print run goal.

The common denominator for both campaigns is (a) they haven’t funded yet, and (b) early funding is actually really important. Once you fund, you can start confidently writing checks for things.

In my case: while I took a financial risk (but not a competency one!) doing so, I hired an editor last night. More on her in an update later today. But for my art, which is the lion’s share of the cost of my book, I am not reaching out to artists, and committing their time, until we’re funded. If we funded tomorrow, I’d start talking with my artists – and especially my cartographer! – immediately.

From SJG’s perspective: I can’t say. But once it funds, I have to assume that there’s a bunch of folks that can be put on duty making the game happen. For now, they’re working other things. Or so I speculate.

In either case: early funding is always important, and if you can manage to throw in early, please do so.

Share Early, Share Often

As noted above, the key to success for both campaigns is new folks. In particular, retail stores and bulk orders are really key. They are more likely to bring in new players, and they tend to order many copies, which helps push up the numbers for print runs, and large print runs are better on a marginal cost basis. That means more financial success for the line, which means we want to do more, better, and faster.
So, what can you do?
  • Reshare this post. Please.
  • Jump over to this thread on rpg.net, and let folks know about Citadel (the new set discussion starts on p. 88). Tell them about Hall of Judgment, if you have it or have played it, or point them to reviews if you haven’t.
  • Share this Facebook or this tweet. The more folks see it, the more attention, and the more backers we can get. This has knock-on effects! More than one site, like Kicktraq, uses the number of comments and the general buzz about a project to decide how to feature it.
  • Do the same thing for the Boxed Set. I can’t stress this enough: without the Boxed Set and continued interest and support from both backers and Steve Jackson Games, there’s no product line for me to support. Share play stories. Talk to your local game stores this weekend. Both the Boxed Set and Nordvorn have retail levels where you can get more than one copy of the game at a significant discount.
 
Today is an unusual “GURPSDay.” Unusual because there are two Kickstarters going on that influence the future of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG specifically, and GURPS more broadly.

So this is going to be a bit of “rah, rah” and a tetch of hard sell.

Let’s start with the big one.
Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2/Boxed Set Reprint

This one’s important. It’s being used to judge latent demand for the game, and the boxed set does that. The Monsters book is something that we’ve all been asking for. For a long while. If you’re neither following the campaign nor pledged, please do one or both.

The Citadel at Norðvorn

Thanks to beautiful synergies with the DFM2/DFRPG campaign, we got a much-needed and much appreciated kick in the pants these last few days, and are only $1800 from funding. There are 275 folks following the campaign who have not yet pledged. If 60 come in and pledge, we fund. If you ALL came in and pledged, we’d hit two stretch goals and the book would be 128 pages. We’d need 150 people past that to hit the offset print run goal.

The common denominator for both campaigns is (a) they haven’t funded yet, and (b) early funding is actually really important. Once you fund, you can start confidently writing checks for things.

In my case: while I took a financial risk (but not a competency one!) doing so, I hired an editor last night. More on her in an update later today. But for my art, which is the lion’s share of the cost of my book, I am not reaching out to artists, and committing their time, until we’re funded. If we funded tomorrow, I’d start talking with my artists – and especially my cartographer! – immediately.

From SJG’s perspective: I can’t say. But once it funds, I have to assume that there’s a bunch of folks that can be put on duty making the game happen. For now, they’re working other things. Or so I speculate.

In either case: early funding is always important, and if you can manage to throw in early, please do so.

Share Early, Share Often

As noted above, the key to success for both campaigns is new folks. In particular, retail stores and bulk orders are really key. They are more likely to bring in new players, and they tend to order many copies, which helps push up the numbers for print runs, and large print runs are better on a marginal cost basis. That means more financial success for the line, which means we want to do more, better, and faster.
So, what can you do?
  • Reshare this post. Please.
  • Jump over to this thread on rpg.net, and let folks know about Citadel (the new set discussion starts on p. 88). Tell them about Hall of Judgment, if you have it or have played it, or point them to reviews if you haven’t.
  • Share this Facebook or this tweet. The more folks see it, the more attention, and the more backers we can get. This has knock-on effects! More than one site, like Kicktraq, uses the number of comments and the general buzz about a project to decide how to feature it.
  • Do the same thing for the Boxed Set. I can’t stress this enough: without the Boxed Set and continued interest and support from both backers and Steve Jackson Games, there’s no product line for me to support. Share play stories. Talk to your local game stores this weekend. Both the Boxed Set and Nordvorn have retail levels where you can get more than one copy of the game at a significant discount.
There's really not much poi t at us Brits backing this past the pdf level. I can see the shipping being murder.
 
There's really not much poi t at us Brits backing this past the pdf level. I can see the shipping being murder.

For what it's worth, Hall of Judgment shipped for $6 to the USA and UK, $9 to the EU, and $12 to everywhere else. For not-the-US books, I try and print in the UK and then they're shipped to a company in Crediton (UK) for fulfillment via Royal Mail. While I can't promise that Citadel will be as inexpensive as Hall of Judgment was, the weight of the book will be about the same, will the printer and fulfillment process. Hopefully for Brits, at least, $6 might grow to £6, but not much more.
 
For what it's worth, Hall of Judgment shipped for $6 to the USA and UK, $9 to the EU, and $12 to everywhere else. For not-the-US books, I try and print in the UK and then they're shipped to a company in Crediton (UK) for fulfillment via Royal Mail. While I can't promise that Citadel will be as inexpensive as Hall of Judgment was, the weight of the book will be about the same, will the printer and fulfillment process. Hopefully for Brits, at least, $6 might grow to £6, but not much more.
That's not so bad. I did get a box of DF from te Shop on the borderlands, so having something to run with it might be good. And more monsters is always a good thing. Even if there's a million of them at the Repository.
 
After backing all the TFT stuff, I’m pretty tapped out. Posted links to the Kickstarter in a Swedish rpg-group on Facebook though, and at least one fan of Dungeon Fantasy didn’t know about them.
 
Hexagram is a zine dedicated to the new TFT. Issue 1 just went out in pdf form to its kickstarter backers. It is hard to say whether more like it will be published because SJG's is using frequent, overlapping kickstarters to fund this game system. But, evidence to-date is that all the kickstarters related to this system have quickly exceeded target funding levels. So, I'm guessing they will do another Hexagram in a few months. On other fronts, they'll ship the huge boxed set that launches the system revival in the coming weeks, a book of adventures was just funded and will go out pretty soon thereafter, and they are gearing up to do another signifiant kickstarter for table-top play aids. So, if you are interested in the game you should start watching SJG's site and forums.

p.s., all the material they've shown to backers so far is excellent. This is gearing up to be a really good run of gaming material. I'm a long time fan of the system so I'm a biassed audience; nevetheless, I think this is one of the funnest and most interesting going on in broadly OSR-inspired games.
 
Issue #1 was a Kickstarter that they're strangely not planning to offer outside the Kickstarter. To me that seems like an error, because it means if they put anything really good in a Hexagram, then people can't legitimately buy it... seems like a pitfall of the Kickstarter approach.
 
Did anyone else have a problem of not getting Hexagram in their Warehouse 23 account? I use different email addresses on Kickstarter and warehouse 23, but for the other TFT kickstarters they've always asked for my Warehouse 23 address or username, and then the stuff has showed up there. Did I miss a link somewhere?
 
Hexagram is not a Warehouse23 thing - it's a Kickstarter Backerkit thing. I got an email from
"Warehouse 23 (Steve Jackson Games)" <no-reply@s.backerkit.com> on Thursday afternoon with the subject: "
New Digital Content for Hexagram #1, an Old-School RPG Zine for The Fantasy Trip on BackerKit", which had a link to a page on the Backerkit web site with a download link. It doesn't show up in Warehouse23.
 
Hexagram is not a Warehouse23 thing - it's a Kickstarter Backerkit thing. I got an email from
"Warehouse 23 (Steve Jackson Games)" <no-reply@s.backerkit.com> on Thursday afternoon with the subject: "
New Digital Content for Hexagram #1, an Old-School RPG Zine for The Fantasy Trip on BackerKit", which had a link to a page on the Backerkit web site with a download link. It doesn't show up in Warehouse23.
Hmm, Someone on the Discord server for TFT mentioned it showing up in Warehouse 23. I did get the download link, but I prefer to have everything in my Warehouse 23 account also just in case. I’ve asked on the Kickstarter, no response yet.
 
I like "mapless", so it's a contrast not just to minis but to counters and to any non-imaginary means of tracking the detailed positions of figures.

I like mapless but both options are defining the play by what they are not as if map and mini play is the standard. But I believe that at least before 3e the majority of players didn't play with minis. Mapless could be a bit confusing as lots of games use maps to indicate regions, travel and dungeons without using them for detailed position of figures. A bit pedantic but something to think about.
 
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