Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just trolling?

[Astromancer]

I haven't read the whole thread, but has anyone thought that Steve Jackson might be working on something assumed to be in the distant future from his perspective? RPGs get new editions. Mr. Jackson might just be working on random ideas with an eye to something inevitable but unlikely to happen anytime soon.

SJ might just be storing up inspirations for a rainy day.

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

I'm still reading through RPM, but so far it looks too me like RPM requires you to gather energy per spell, with multiple Concentrate maneuvers to accumulate enough energy. Even the simple 3d Fireball on RPM pg 42 costs 18 energy, AND it still has to be thrown separately. If a simple Fuego required 3-5 Concentrate maneuvers and an Attack maneuver, I'd call that a failure at emulating Harry's magic. Mana Reserve doesn't look big enough to help.

On top of that, RPM is simultaneously too powerful, because an RPM Harry who can create Fireball evocations is also an RPM Harry who can use Chill (RPM pg 39) and its inverse to chill his icebox and heat his water heater for hot showers, something Harry cannot do.

Off topic, but I will note that Harry is known for having a bigger "battery" then everyone else. This is why he is capable of casting BIG evocations more than once. He is an outlier when it comes to casting spells. Very few people in The Dreseden Files world are capable of casting an evocation to burn down an entire house in seconds without being a power Fae or a powerful wizard over 100 years old.

So as a GURPS Character, he would have something akin to Energy Reserves with some limitation to only be used for evocations.

Plus he had 2 other energy reserves at one point too.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by zoncxs

Off topic, but I will note that Harry is known for having a bigger "battery" then everyone else. This is why he is capable of casting BIG evocations more than once. He is an outlier when it comes to casting spells. Very few people in The Dreseden Files world are capable of casting an evocation to burn down an entire house in seconds without being a power Fae or a powerful wizard over 100 years old.

The Dresdenverse also has the concept of efficiency, for example:

A wave of translucent pale blue energy washed across them and . . .

And they just fell to wet, mushy dust. To their component molecules, maybe, as if the bonds of energy that had held them together had somehow been broken. Taken apart. Disintegrated. I noted, somewhere in the academic vaults of my head, that magic like that was like unbaking a damned cake back into its original components. Where would you even start?

Even more impressive, from an academic standpoint, was that breaking the energy of those bonds must have provided most of the fuel for the spell, because Ramirez never so much as broke limping stride. He could pull that one over and over again.

Ramirez was good. Better than me, on a technical level, by a considerable margin.

He blew them into water and dust. It wasn’t even fair.

If you're going to model the Dresdenverse, it isn't enough to just give certain wizards a bunch of Magery so they can have a big personal battery. There also needs to be a way to give cost reductions for efficiency. GURPS: Magic isn't very similar to Dresdenverse magic but in this respect at least it is closer than RPM seems to be.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Mana Reserve doesn't look big enough to help.

Early books Harry probably has a Reserve in the 50s.

Later books Harry is probably around 100 and has much higher skill levels. And possibly some other benes that cut costs for him.

On top of that, RPM is simultaneously too powerful, because an RPM Harry who can create Fireball evocations is also an RPM Harry who can use Chill (RPM pg 39) and its inverse to chill his icebox and heat his water heater for hot showers, something Harry cannot do.

Admittedly some of this is narrative control, but it can also be "path control", just don't let he PCs buy more than 3-4 paths. If Water, Fire, Air, and Earth are separate "Material" paths...

Edit: oh, I see. Your rules tweak is designed to address point 1 (casting speed) by making everyone destructive cheaper for combat wizards like wardens?

Basically. But it also takes some handwavium and Players who are into reigning themselves in, or being further constrained than teh RPM rules might be. I think I was actually planning a few more tappity-taps than just playing around with Greater and Lesser effects now that we're discussing it more.

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

The Dresdenverse also has the concept of efficiency, for example:

Nah, that's just Ramirez being a cool as all NPC pulling cool as 'f' NPC nonsense.

I mean in early books Harry says that "water magic is unpossible" and here's Ramirez saying "Nah dawg, ya just not kewl enuff".

He blew them into water and dust. It wasn’t even fair.

See, even Harry says it's not fair. Ramirez was playing by different rules than Harry is all... or... Ramirez has extra options.

But, another way might be to run Dresden Magic as a mix of both RPM and Sorcery, so Harry's "big fireballs" and other expenisve nonsense and Ramirez's "efficiency water magic" is all Sorcery powers, but then you've got the RPM to fall back on (at lower power levels) when they need to "do something they haven't already done". Which is my problem with Fred's way of just using Advantages as Powers (aka Sorcery), how do you do that thing they do in the books when Harry reveals a new one-off ritual he's never used before and will never use again? RPM (or Incantation/Effects Shaping, which is "Time Gathering" so to speak).

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I haven't read the whole thread, but has anyone thought that Steve Jackson might be working on something assumed to be in the distant future from his perspective?.

That's certainly more than possible. I'm pretty sure Evil Stevie said something about having been working on bringing back TFT for almost a decade before they revealed they were bringing it back. Ans I'd lay good money that he's always working on something. Always.

I mean just look at the new boardgame drive he's pushing, who knew he even knew David Brin, let alone was good friends, let alone was working on bringing Tribes to print? Or the reprint of Sergio Leone's Groo?

Evil Steve always has something on the backburner. But GURPS 5e? It's a ways off is my bet.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

I mean just look at the new boardgame drive he's pushing, who knew he even knew David Brin, let alone was good friends, let alone was working on bringing Tribes to print?

Well, I knew about his connection with Brin, because I've long owned the first edition of Tribes . . .

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Well, I knew about his connection with Brin, because I've long owned the first edition of Tribes . . .

It also helps explain the GURPS Uplift license.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Which is my problem with Fred's way of just using Advantages as Powers (aka Sorcery), t.

I left out the part about having "highly ritual" magic capabilities for general things as needed. An early example would be Harry's way of making potions and then later there's that Chicago replica. There are reasons he has to have a lab.

It's actually a fairly common set up in fiction ranging from both versions of the "Charmed" TV series to Katherine Kurtz' Adept novels. The character gets one or two "powers" they can freely use but need to do rituals for anything else.

[Anaraxes]

If I did Dresden, I'd say Harry has Advantage-based abilities for his "Evocation" combat spells ("magic as powers"). Note how few of those spells there really are, even in later books where Harry draws on multiple sources of power. You might build that set much like Sorcery, but without the SE ability for improvising little spells. And he also knows RPM for all that stuff that looks and feels like ritual magic ("Thaumatology"), including drawing circles on the ground (simple enough that he can do it in a few seconds) to divination via summoning or creating potions (in RPM terms, a charm for the effect that the potion applies). It's not necessary for a single system to describe every effect in every book. Even Harry thinks of the two types of magic as different things. (For what it's worth, the FATE version of Dresden also uses a dual magic system.)

Harry does get tired, so the combat spells have Costs FP and some sort of Energy Reserve (possibly a fractional split between both sources, so he can get physically tired, but not at the rate pure Costs FP will generally take him out). Those spells are probably all in one big AA group, so they won't actually be terribly expensive.

Shield charm is either a Gadget supplying the forcefield or an RPM enchanted item, whichever way you'd prefer to do it. His mother's pentacle necklace is probably just 1 pt Sig Gear / Accessory Perk (replacing a flashlight). The jewel with knowledge of the Ways he acquires later would be another Gadget / enchantment bought with earned CP; the fact that it attaches to the necklace is just a cute detail, rather than something I'd charge Secret Advantage points for at character creation.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

If I did Dresden, I'd say Harry has Advantage-based abilities for his "Evocation" combat spells ("magic as powers"). Note how few of those spells there really are, even in later books where Harry draws on multiple sources of power.

That's partly because, in Harry's own estimation, he stinks at evocation. But even so there's more than you might realize. There's fire blasts (ubiquitous),
shielding (note that this eventually stops requiring verbal components), force blasts (ubiquitous after early books), freezing (used frequently post-Changes), ripping away heat to both freeze and burn (Changes only although Proven Guilty and White Night both use the same concept with fire blasts), opening Ways (by Changes has gotten fast enough to use as a blocking technique), object telekinesis (used only in Small Favor AFAIK, against Tessa), wind control (used mostly early on but used to counter acid globes in Battle Ground, as well as against fire in Skin Game), creating walls of fire (Ghost Story), creating walls of ice (Skin Game, Battle Ground), lightning (Storm Front and Battle Ground), using ice for bullets and explosions (Skin Game only).

I may have missed a few, but that's enough to be quite expensive in GURPS terms if modeled via Powers, and Harry isn't even particularly good at magic, only strong. (In Jim Butcher's own words Harry is currently the equivalent of an Intelligence 16 AD&D wizard around level 9-11, just barely smart enough to be a first-rank wizard and almost roughly at the point to theoretically be able to learn Teleport, although he hasn't yet.)

P.S. I don't even know how you'd model Harry's wind defense against Hannah Ascher's fire, especially the second time where he focuses the rebound to take her out.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

But, another way might be to run Dresden Magic as a mix of both RPM and Sorcery, so Harry's "big fireballs" and other expenisve nonsense and Ramirez's "efficiency water magic" is all Sorcery powers, but then you've got the RPM to fall back on (at lower power levels) when they need to "do something they haven't already done". Which is my problem with Fred's way of just using Advantages as Powers (aka Sorcery), how do you do that thing they do in the books when Harry reveals a new one-off ritual he's never used before and will never use again? RPM (or Incantation/Effects Shaping, which is "Time Gathering" so to speak).

Sorcery does improvised magic just fine, though you might need to change the FP cost to a time cost to get the feel right. In fact, as I mentioned in another thread, in my experience improvisation is the main thing sorcery has going for it - having a few near-instant tricks up their sleeve is a bonus, not their main gimmick.