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The Minimum Viable Session
"This is the sort of thing that kills my campaigns."I growled that comment over IM to Raoul Roulaux. As one of my Nobilis players, I think he had a suspicion as to what I was talking about. We have a...
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Azrael, Angel of Death, Games, Void, Truth and Bridges
"Not so," the eager Poet said;"At least, not so before I tellThe story of my Azrael,An angel mortal as ourselves,Which in an ancient tome I foundUpon a convent's dusty shelves,Chained with an iron...
View ArticleMartial Arts Analysis: Breaking down Psi-Wars Tactics
Ultimately, if a player is going to invest points into it, a martial art needs to be effective. Whether it's "authentic" matters less than if it doesn't work, because the last thing we want is to...
View ArticleTactical Analysis: Military Conflict
We've had Troopers since Psi-Wars began, back in Iteration 1, and they've been very thoroughly refined. We have a solid idea of how they'd operate together on a battlefield.Standard TroopersThe...
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Tactical Analysis: Civilian Conflict
I have a draft back in Iteration 3 that never got published, nor finished, for Thug mooks. So far, we've limited ourselves to military-scale opponents, because the most common opponent in Star Wars is...
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Tactical Analysis: Monstrous Conflict
The previous two tactical analyses shouldn't read like anything new if you've ever run an Action game. They only differ in the technologies offered, and even then, those have obvious parallels to...
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Deadwood, Marquis of Death
Walter "Deadwood" Fitch was a good-fer-nuthin' low-life, good at poker and bad with whiskey until he met a good christian woman who refused to back down when faced with his nonsense, so naturally he...
View ArticleRewriting Combat: The Intent
GURPS is a toolbox. It brims with alternate rules that could work, depending on what you want out of your game. Some games need to be ruthlessly realistic, or depressingly gory, or heroically...
View ArticleRewriting Combat: Advantages, Skills and Techniques
Character traits serve as the basis for everything we do in GURPS. If we're going to look at the new options from Martial Arts, it's a good idea to start by looking at the new traits it gives us, and...
View ArticleRewriting Combat: Optional Rules
Martial Arts brims with optional rules, some of which we already have, but we also have plenty of new ones to tangle with. I've gone through the book and examined each in turn, and selected the...
View ArticleRewriting Combat: The Cheat Sheet
It is my opinion and experience that if you're going to modify the combat system, and you want players to take advantage of that system, then you need to provide them with a solid understanding of the...
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Zee, the Marquesssa of Gaming
Ada McQueen had little time for life, preferring to lose herself in her beloved video games. Then she died. The aneurism struck her in the midst of an epic, record-breaking gaming marathon. As her...
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Zee's Achievements
Zee fundamentally views the world as one would view a game. She would even argue that she, and all other powers, are but characters in a larger game, and if the whole world is nothing but a game, then...
View ArticleDesigning New Martial Arts
Now that we know more-or-less how combat will work in the game, and we've collected enough material to know what Star Wars combat (and Psi-Wars combat) looks like, we can re-evaluate existing martial...
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New Styles: Force-Swordsmanship
The Destructive Form (3 points)Alternate Names: The Way of the Reaper, The Seven Killing StrokesDarth Vader at BespinForce-Swordsmanship,as written, includes a considerable emphasis on using your force...
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New Styles: Force-Swordsmanship 2
The Swift Form 2 pointsAlternate Names: The Way of the Duelist, The Pure TechniquesForce-Swordmanship includes dual weapon techniques as standard, but most lightsaber combat I've seen focuses on a...
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Alternate Force Swords
Star Wars includes a lot more than just generic lightsabers, and GURPS follows suit with a surprisingly rich variety of force swords, if you know where to look, and it also includes options for...
View ArticleNew Styles: Military Tactics
As noted before, the purpose of designing martial arts is not just to create a style for someone to use in combat, but also to provide interesting tactics that unimportant NPCs can use: You just grab a...
View ArticleNew Styles: Outlaw Tactics
Following up yesterday's post on ranged martial arts appropriate to military type characters, I have a series on "Outlaw"tactics, which represent the sort of tactics that criminals, bandits or lawmen...
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Armed Styles: The Vibro-Blade
Back in Iteration 3, we halved the cost of of vibro-blades, but let’s go further: Let’s say that TL 11 weapons are super-fine for free, which means that a vibro-blade is “just” CF 9, rather than CF...
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