GURPS Magical Styles: Horror Magic

[Kromm]

The lodge had no clue
The soothsayer saw nothing
The books showed too much

— Graffiti on an asylum wall

In many genres and settings, magic is a secret – often a dark one, entangled with curses, forbidden knowledge, and monsters up to and including demons. GURPS offers several magic systems expressly for this purpose, including most of those in GURPS Thaumatology and its supplements, particularly Ritual Path magic (which appears in GURPS Monster Hunters for this very reason). Unfortunately, such approaches are themselves a little entangled . . . in this case, with spell-creation mini-games.

GURPS Magical Styles: Horror Magic takes a completely different tack. It uses the tricks and tools of GURPS Thaumatology: Magical Styles to "re-skin" the flashy, fantasy-oriented magic system of GURPS Magic to better suit games of mystery, horror, and the occult. Gone is the excessive showiness – allowing use in hidden-magic settings – but the clear, quick, ready-to-use spells remain, avoiding the overhead and arguments associated with spell design.

The question is, what will you choose: the ceremonies of Cult Secrets, the fast-but-forbidden Dark Path, or the traditional worldview of Forgotten Wisdom?

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Store Link: http://www.warehouse23.com/products/SJG37-1659

[Anders]

Nice. On p. 7 it says that Greater Summons requires itself as a prerequisite. Is this a typo or a reflection of the fractal nature of the universe?

I mostly use Path magic, but I can definitely draw inspiration from this one.

Edit: Ah. Ok. It requires the perk. I see.

[Yako]

I admit I am a bit on the fence since I very rarely use the standard magic system, but I might perhaps give it a try, especially if I see some good points about the contents popping up here.^^

[Christopher R. Rice]

I don't use standard magic all that much, but I liked it. :-)

[Kromm]

To be clear: This exists in part because a lot of people don't use "standard" magic.

If what you don't like about the basic magic system is the lack of rules for spell creation (whether via modifiers or actual point-build), this won't change your mind. If what you don't like is that it isn't balanced against powers because it isn't based on advantages, this still won't change your mind. It's still about fiat spell effects hard-linked to IQ-based skills enhanced by Magery and paid for with FP.

But if your problem with the basic magic system is more along the lines of it having an unabashed hack 'n' slash fantasy bias with zero subtlety, or lacking of a framing structure that links it to anything called "magic" in the real world, or having no brakes to keep PCs from turning into gods . . . you might like this. (And even if you hate the underlying system, you might find the magical worldviews and ideas for nonmagical skills of value.)

And if you really like magical styles but have trouble figuring out how they're supposed to work, you'll love this. It provides more fully worked examples, no two of which are alike.

[b-dog]

Cool book. I really like the cult magic. Hopefully some cult material will make it into Dungeon Fantasy books. I always loved Gygax’s modules that have dark cults like the Drow series and the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun. Lots of interesting ideas for horror fantasy!

[cultureulterior]

I liked this, and I would buy more like it, but for what it's worth, I would suggest some paragraphs about example cults and example characters, e.g one example cultist, one example magic nerd, and one example witch.

Also, I really like defining more spells into the system- sacrifice was good, but modifying the regular spells to be more idiosyncratic (like instead of Repel animals, perhaps "repel those with hearts that beat", or "repel those with claws that scratch") would be even better.

[Michael Thayne]

Great little book. A must-buy for anyone thinking of using standard magic for a game where magic is secret.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by cultureulterior

I liked this, and I would buy more like it, but for what it's worth, I would suggest some paragraphs about example cults and example characters, e.g one example cultist, one example magic nerd, and one example witch.

Also, I really like defining more spells into the system- sacrifice was good, but modifying the regular spells to be more idiosyncratic (like instead of Repel animals, perhaps "repel those with hearts that beat", or "repel those with claws that scratch") would be even better.

Noted. That said, the results had a lot to do with page count. Hitting the price point meant hitting the page count, and hitting the page count meant hard decisions about what to include and what not to include. My original thoughts were more along the lines of "like GURPS Magical Styles: Dungeon Magic, but with sample characters instead of templates," but that would've meant the next price point.

[sparcipx]

I loved the cult magic section. I've been outlining a secret society for my Fantasy campaign, and was leaning toward a tiered approach to spell use but wasn't sure how to pull it off (I'm pretty new to GURPS, btw). Think the cult magic section has what I was looking for.