#GURPS Fantasy

[oldschoolfrp]

Undead wizards have more than a lifetime of study and experience (Eric Richards, GURPS Fantasy, Steve Jackson Games, 1986)

[mr-groovyart]

Had such a fun GURPS session that it fuelled me into sketching these.

Only context i'll provide is the girl by the wall is a 500pt legendary NPC we have no chance to fight. She may be able to parry bullets but she can't parry rizz.

[silvercompassmaps]

Rise of the Undead - graves are torn open as the walking dead flood the earth…

The rumored night has come. According to the legend, the dead will begin to rise on the full moon. Graves will be torn open by emaciated fingers, tombs will be shattered by maleficent forces, and the land will be flooded with undead. That is, unless our heroes manage to stop it...

This map depicts graves being torn open as undead rise and flood the graveyard. This could serve as a "last stand" for the players, or even a survival encounter if the undead become too numerous.

You can download all 8 phases for free here.

[swedebeast]

[theoutcastrogue]

Rogues in fantasy TTRPGs that aren't Dungeons & Dragons

Sometimes it's called Rogue, sometimes it's called Thief. It can be a class, or a template, or a sample build for a classless system. It can be pigeonholed to a couple of roles and specialties, or wide open to interpretations and extensive customisation.

But any self-respecting fantasy game, chock-full as it may be with mighty warriors and powerful wizards, needs a disreputable little shit: the rogue, the thief, the scoundrel, the one who strays. And it's a truly universal archetype. The people in the margins are the salt of the earth, and a setting without them is just… unseasoned.

"The thief gives us a chance to play someone closer to heart, someone who's not strong or possessed of magical talents, someone who has to rely on wit and stealth to survive. Someone, we can imagine, who might very well be just like us. And in being more like us, it's clear that the thief is not just a column of percentile chances to pick locks and disarm traps; she is blessed with as many different skills and appearances as there are crimes to be committed. And that's quite a lot." [x]

So here's a sneak peek at the Thief/Rogue in:

Shadowdark (2023) - gridmark and rules-light dungeoncrawl

Tales of the Valiant (2024) - a D&D 5e variant

Rolemaster Unified (2022) - famously crunchy and customisable

GURPS 4e Dungeon Fantasy (2007) - classic classless system

Ars Magica 5th Edition (2004) - the historically grounded one (in Europe 1200 AD), very customisable

Four Against Darkness (2017) - solo dungeoncrawl

Blades in the Dark (2017) - where everyone's a rogue!

Pathfinder 2e (2024) - a million rules and it's all 3.5's fault

Lankhmar: City of Thieves (2015) - the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser setting, with the Savage Worlds system

[2minutetabletop]

The Kingdom of Scalecrown, Part 1 – The Capital

The people of Scalecrown have allied with a dragon in a desperate attempt to prevent further attacks, but not everyone is happy under the rule of their scaly overlord...

→ Read the full article here!

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Gurp's Fantasy Folk Cover Art by Ken Kelly

[kaybeangel]

GURPS is by far my favorite TTRPG system. It isn't right for every type of campaign that I would like to run, and sometimes the simulation aspect is heavier than I want for a given campaign, but I love it all the same.

The flexibility in character creation is a big part of what I love about it. No classes, no levels, just points to allocate to exactly what matters to me and my character. And the ability to create any power or ability that I can imagine through enhancements and limitations on the various Advantages and Disadvantages gives incomparable flexibility in character design. If you can imagine it in the world, then you can probably build it in GURPS.

But I also love the combat system, especially for low tech games. A sword fight in GURPS is way more tense and exciting than in any d20 system I've played. The blow by blow action, the detailed armor, the hit locations, the various manueveurs that you can take to try and control the battle, if you are good at it, it is so much more than just "I Attack."

What is your favorite system, and why?

[starwardking]

I had a brilliant Idea for like DND or any Ttrpg lore

So we all know Sphinx right the riddle loving hyper intelligent beast with face of men and bodies of felines and wings of Falcons....you know how their always found guardian something well I had a brilliant idea

What if it was only Domesticated Sphinx capable of complete sentences because think about where you normally find these Creatures. those dungeons had to be built and those treasures had to be put there and those Sphinx had to be trained to guard it

Now this train of thought led me to what would Feral Sphinx be like... Like what if they're native to the desert and savannahs and hunt alone and these things are still very smart so what if they set traps for their pray to fall into. And Maybe instead of speaking a Feral Sphinx is capable of flawlessly mimicing human speech and what do they use that for...for hunting down intelligent pray like Human

And their look is totally different, like instead of the well groomed head of hair domesticated Sphinx have these feral Sphinx have wild Maines and narled teeth

And I know like Sphinx can do spells and what not but what if that's saved to combat other invading Sphinx and rather Rowdy people who refuse to go down

[rodrickheffley]

being into the idea of tabletop rpgs but not being into fantasy at all.....no one suffers like me

[oldschoolfrp]

"Elementals are spirits embodying an element -- Earth, Air, Fire, or Water." (George "Speed" Webber, GURPS Fantasy, Steve Jackson Games, 1986)

[of-gods-and-gamemasters]

Necromancy: Why is it Evil?

Today's blog post is a deeper exploration of Necromancy, and why it is seen as more evil than other schools of magic. In fact, from most perspectives, it simply is more evil. In most worlds. Read the article, then argue with me in the comments, here or on my site.:)

[silvercompassmaps]

Rumble in the Jungle - Something enormous is charging through the canopy, bulldozing trees and damaging the tree fort. Will the players be able to stop it before it escapes, leaving a path of destruction?

Hello everyone, welcome to my newest phased Battlemap! It comes in 8 phases, which depict a tree fort being sieged and destroyed by something that moves underneath.

This can be a monster, magical effect, or whatever you want it to be! Prepare your players for a dynamic encounter that features shaking platforms, falling bridges, and holes that give way!

You can download all 8 phases for free here.

Check out my entire map archive here.

[swedebeast]

[prokopetz]

Essential genres of webcomics, updated for 2024:

Gag-a-day strip with the art and writing of a forgettable newspaper comic, but which inexplicably has 25 years worth of intricate setting lore and requires a day-long archive binge to fully understand the context of a grade-school pun.

Self-proclaimed deconstruction of superhero comics or giant robot anime or magical girls or something that has the exact same plot beats as every other self-proclaimed deconstruction of superhero comics or giant robot anime or magical girls or something. If you support the artist's Patreon you can download alternate versions of selected pages where the protagonist has their tits out.

Webtoon that sprang into existence complete with a hundred thousand followers at some point in the last week; the art displays immense technical mastery of figure drawing, but absolutely no grasp of panel layout, and the writing's gender politics are weirdly reactionary for something whose official synopsis manages to use the word "queer" three times in the space of two paragraphs.

Long-form narrative which hasn't received regular updates in several years due to the author's incredibly demanding real-life obligations, but instead of cancelling the comic or going on hiatus, they continue to publish one page roughly every four months with the kind of grim determination normally associated with historical anecdotes about the Battle of Stalingrad.

Fantasy adventure comic which you strongly suspect, but cannot prove, is a direct adaptation of somebody's high school GURPS campaign. The story is so elaborately and discursively plotted that you need to keep the fandom wiki open in a separate tab simply to remember who the fuck any of these people are.

Chicken-scratch parody comic about, like, Rainbow Brite fighting the Care Bears or some shit that somehow has better writing than anything on Netflix.

Semi-autobiographical slice of life comic, except with robots.