To celebrate GURPS's 10 for 10 pyramid illuminator, I thought I'd bring up 10 Pyramid #3 articles I've
actually used.
In no particular order:
1. Are Humans a Renewable Resource by Geffery Brent in
Pyramid #3-3, Post-Apocalypse. The excel sheet that came with this article often served as the basis for my quick calculations when it came to space colonies. It wasn't a perfect substitute, but it allowed me to get an idea of what kind of timelines I needed, and what scale of colonies might exist out there, in more detail than GURPS Space allowed.
2. Pulp Action! by Sean Punch in
Pyramid #3-8 Cliffhangers. I've long been an unabashed fan of Action, and Pulp Action! showed just how flexible it could be. It served as the basis for a more noir-oriented one shot.
3. Doomsday Weapons by Steven Marsh in
Pyramid #3-9 Space Opera. This is probably my favorite issue of all time, as it's the issue that keeps on giving. But I'm singling this out because the Madness Bomb essentially kicked off all of G-verse, one of my more successful (though yet unfinished) GURPS settings, with the Cold War adventure.
4. More Ultra! More Tech! by Demi Benson in
Pyramid #3-12 Tech and Toys. Every Tech and Toys has an article in it that I love, so I just picked one, and this is the one that lucked out. In particular, the Comphone, the Vid Glasses, the Translator Disk, the Electromagnetic Piton Launcher, the Hardshell armor, and Stickskin have all found their way into my various games.
5. The Magic of Stories by Kelly Pedersen in
Pyramid #3-13 ("I see what you did there!") Thaumatology. A friend of mine and I were discussing a magical realism game, and the Magic of Stories ended up being the core conceit, though it was an unconscious magic that characters of the appropriate archetype called upon after fulfilling certain requirements.
6. Console Cowboys and Cyberpsace Kung Fu by W.A. Frick in
Pyramid #3-21 Cyberpunk. Because Cyberpunk. I spent hours poring over this, and then broke out the original Cyberpunk and found that the two of them together were even better. A modified version of all this made it into my Cyberscape short-run.
7. Alternate Spaceships by David Pulver in
Pyramid #3-34 Alternate GURPS. Another issue that keeps on giving, this one is a natural because I often turn to it whenever I want to implement slightly alternative rules. I consider it a supplement on par with any Spaceships supplement.
8. The Last Gasp by Douglas Cole in
Pyramid #3-44 Alternate GURPS II. Anyone who has followed my campaigns knows that this fit exactly into the niche I had been looking for in my chambara game. I won't run kung-fu games without it, now.
9. Hunting the Cabal by W.A. Frick in
Pyramid #3-58 Urban Fantasy II. I want to run a Cabal game, and while I
generally find Monster Hunters and Cabal a bad fit (Monster Hunters is ultimately about kicking butt, while Cabal is ultimately about hiding and outsmarting butt), this article mostly just sets up Cabal as a possible enemy, a potential cross-over ally into a larger Monster Hunters game, and showed me where I had gotten things wrong in my campaign design. Naturally, when I ran a Monster Hunters one shot, a cabalist found her way into my character line-up.
10. Team Up! by Christopher R. Rice and Antoni Ten Monrós in
Pyramid #3-65 Alternate GURPS III. Alternate GURPS issues seem popular with me. In any case, I was working on Captain-style characters for a Space Opera (and I have long pondered working out a Hannibal-style "Team Planner/Tactician" for Action), when I stumbled across this article. The perk list in particular proved fruitful.
(This is not an exhaustive list of all articles I have ever found useful, just ten selected articles).