True power lies in
The juncture of "Where You Are"
And "Where You Have Been"— The nameless wizened woman you just met
Few fantasy tropes are as tried and true as the outsider, cast into a new and astonishing world. From Oz to Narnia, "portal fantasy" has long provided a way for authors to juxtapose real-world viewpoints with exotic, magical lands. But it's easy for the GM to become overwhelmed with having to do twice the work -- at least, it was before William H. Stoddard's
GURPS Fantasy: Portal Realms.
This new expansion to
GURPS Fantasy starts by taking you through everything that makes otherworldly adventures so interesting. Why send the heroes to another world instead of just having them start there? What themes does it let you explore? How do they get there? Are they trapped? The answers depend on the kind of campaign you want to run -- and if you weren't sure, this is the perfect way to figure it out!
Enjoy the three sample campaigns, chosen to illustrate those differences.
The Barrens are a low-fantasy gauntlet, a proving ground where the heroes can come of age or find self-actualization.
Gerontomachia is a one-way trip into a land of xia and wu ritualists fighting off terrifying cosmic forces. And
Seihou is a more light-hearted land, where your spirit and heart are challenged as you seek enlightenment.
Once you have a setting in mind,
GURPS Fantasy: Portal Realms walks you through creating heroes ready to stumble across it. Learn which character traits change radically when someone passes through a magic mirror, and how to deal with this. One of the trickiest, Wealth, receives a heavy revision to encompass the idea of multiple worlds. And new meta-traits and templates make it easy to create heroes in minutes, from precocious children to lionhearted saviors.
Finally, you get the extra help you'll need to launch and run your campaign. Learn how navigation changes when the landmarks -- and even the very stars -- are different. Explore different options for social customs, from laws to languages, and how traders with the ability to travel freely can turn a
tidy profit in doing so. And discover how unlikely heroes with no understanding of combat or magic can learn to master both.
You know you want to do it. Rip the party out of their home world! Toss them into the deep end of a land with new rules for everything from culture to physics! Maybe they'll save the day . . . maybe they'll die horribly. Either way, it'll be a blast.
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Store Link: http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-1691
Preview PDF: http://www.warehouse23.com/media/SJG37-1691_preview.pdf