06-04-2023, 07:30 AM | #151 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just troll
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.
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06-04-2023, 07:30 AM | #152 | |
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: earth....I think.
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Re: Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just troll
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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. |
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06-04-2023, 09:59 AM | #153 | |
Join Date: Jan 2008
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Re: Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just troll
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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. |
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06-04-2023, 06:19 PM | #154 | |||||
Join Date: Jun 2022
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Re: Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just troll
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. Quote:
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I mean in early books Harry says that "water magic is unpossible" and here's Ramirez saying "Nah dawg, ya just not kewl enuff". Quote:
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). Quote:
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. |
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06-04-2023, 07:16 PM | #155 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just troll
Well, I knew about his connection with Brin, because I've long owned the first edition of Tribes . . .
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06-04-2023, 07:25 PM | #156 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Yukon, OK
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Re: Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just troll
It also helps explain the GURPS Uplift license.
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06-04-2023, 08:45 PM | #157 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just troll
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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.
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06-06-2023, 08:16 AM | #158 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just troll
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. |
06-06-2023, 09:30 AM | #159 | |
Join Date: Jan 2008
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Re: Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just troll
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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. Last edited by sjmdw45; 06-06-2023 at 09:39 AM. |
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06-06-2023, 10:32 AM | #160 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Has SJGames been working on GURPS 5th edition for 2 years, or is Steve just troll
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