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Old 03-11-2021, 01:57 PM   #19
SolemnGolem
 
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: The Hall of Fallen Columns
Default Re: Pyramid #4, thoughts?

I now have downloaded all three and I'm doing a close reading of the Fantasy volume, mostly for inspiration of my DFRPG campaign. The others will be read in coming weeks as time allows, since I'm not currently running any adventures or campaigns in those.

Toxic Grimoire: Always nice to get some extra Magic goodness, especially for Nasty Villain Colleges. Coupled with GURPS Magic: Death Spells (Dr. Kromm, 2014) and perhaps GURPS Magical Styles: Horror Magic (Dr. Kromm, 2020), this can give a GM both some dangerous NPC powers, as well as the angle of temptation for PC casters as well. Especially dangerous with undead, constructs, demons etc. which can use these at will against PCs (and also potentially makes Air College spells, Healing spells, and Poison College's own counterspells very useful).

Utatsumi: Beautifully written article, though I'm doubtful I'll get to use it unless my campaign takes a Far East flavored turn. (And given that I and one of my players are ethnic Chinese, this is entirely possible.) File this under "potential future flavor".

The Demonic Temple of Felltower: Very useful, especially for a GM relatively new to DFRPG (though experienced with D&D) and looking for worked examples of a cohesive, coherent compound. I've found it's much easier to adapt existing DFRPG/GURPS Fantasy encounters to my own campaign's flavor (see the many adventure outlines in Pyramid). This adventure location continues the N calculus pioneered in Dungeon Fantasy Adventures 1: Mirror of the Fire Demon (Matt Rigsby, 2017) and it provides useful worked examples of lizard folk and their slorn variant servitor species, as well as a strong poison theme (with potential crossover with the Poison College spells, above). A handy sidebar of special environmental effects on p.15 is a helpful aid to GMs trying to come up with similar plans for their dungeons and battlefields. The author's introduction describing his own Felltower campaign hints darkly at the mystery of the hidden treasure, which I failed to crack while reading this article. Could well be used wholesale, or possibly repurposed as a dragon cult or similar mighty reptilian-themed low-tech organization.

Healing and Purification RPM: My campaign does not use RPM, but one of my older campaigns did, and the players liked the flexibility, though they felt the Spells-As-Skills option was more familiar. My current DFRPG group is getting their feet wet with GURPS' flexibility, so for now we're using the more-familiar S-A-S Magic. Potential future crunch.

Fraxinetum: An inspiring (and delightfully weird) chapter of medieval history, this could serve both as a setting for a grand battle, PC keep, or campaign base camp. Likelihood of use in my campaign is high.

Tactical Looting: Perhaps a familiar trope to fans of Gloomhaven and other "race against the clock" challenges, my gaming group probably won't use the main concept of this article. However, its rules can apply well to any time sensitive encounter (sudden hostage situations in battle, timed traps, etc.). Dr.Kromm goes into excellent "rules you can use" analysis in pp. 27-28 for common PC actions, so it's definitely useful even if you're not running a Gloomhaven style "dungeon in a hurry" adventure.

Stilpnotita: An intriguing setting with a strong emphasis on underground/earth-aspected society for literal beings of stone, and with a deft subversion of the anthropocentric assumptions of many fantasy settings. The cultural and geographic conceits of this article are as far-out as the Sigil setting of Planescape, and the section on dealing with The Deep King's consulate is an enjoyable mix of the fantastic and the logical.

Supernatural Energy: This article starts with a breakdown of the Spells-As-Skills default components of the Magery advantage, providing extra granularity for PCs and NPCs who need it. The rest of the article is more focused on Spells-As-Powers (aka Sorcery), which takes it beyond the immediate realm of my campaign's assumptions. (Part of this may be due to the fact that Sorcery's CP costs are fairly high... or conversely, the standard GURPS Magic Spells-As-Skills system has CP costs that are generously low.) As an editorial aside, it's gratifying to see how GURPS as a system is scrupulously balanced at its initial design assumptions, such that "back calculating" the separate components of a bundled base advantage like Magery is eminently doable, as proven by this article. Roundabout 3.5 Ed of D&D, me and my friends decided to try to make it a points buy system, attempting to balance the levels and base classes, and that was not a rewarding or fun experience (though it directly led to my entry to GURPS so it ended well for me at least).

Pandemonium: An intriguing concept - 1000 CE Earth has experienced an outbreak of demons, which have manifested differently worldwide. It also translates rather nicely to "each culture makes its own gods and demons", something that Judeo-Christian-exclusive dramas like Constantine and The Prophecy struggle with somewhat (an Asian society may be less culturally resonant to a manifestation of the Archangel Gabriel than a European or Middle Easterner, for example). Potential future crunch.

Fusion Alchemy: This feels like a Powers- or Sorcery-equivalent meta-approach to the alchemy system, i.e. taking points values of traits and pricing the cost and difficulty of alchemical elixirs accordingly. Although my campaign does not (yet) use elixirs, I'm toying with having one of my high level campaign NPCs do so. It also occurs to me that the "External/Internal" divide of these elixirs could also lend themselves very well to GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers (William Stoddard, 2013) as well. Combined with the Utatsumi article above, this could enrich a Far Eastern style element of a DFRPG campaign.

The Cube: A short but sweet Portal-esque "weird locale" article, this pairs up well with Dr. Kromm's Dungeon Fantasy Encounters 2: The Room dungeon encounter (in fact, this crossover is acknowledged in-article). Great concept for an out-there mind-bending quirky challenge for a maniac's lair or demigod's playpen.

The artwork is once again top notch, too. It's the equal of the art commissions done for the Summer 2020 Kickstarter campaign, and given the current environment of Virtual Tabletop gaming, I'm finding plenty of inspiration and thumbnails that could be pushed into service in my online DFRPG games.

Last edited by SolemnGolem; 03-11-2021 at 02:19 PM. Reason: Somehow omitted Demonic Temple of Felltower, now restored. Faulty Gate magic suspected.
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