On Three Strands: Fridays, Newbies & Hackmastery

This is something of a news post from the wondrous world of my hobby head.

It's been a weird week or so since my last post. I've had a period of holiday and then a return to regular. During this time, however, my butterfly-head has fluttered over myriad points of interest.

There are, however, three main things to talk about.

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Infinite Worlds Reborn

Following on from my post last week about Group Dynamics, this week I wanted to bring you an update about what we did as a group last night. What we didn't do, however, is start a new mission.

During the week, using two online surveys, we found out quite a few things about what the group enjoys (and doesn't), allowing me as GM to suggest that we returned to the Infinite Worlds campaign using GURPS.

As we sat down last night, we were able to take part in a series of creative activities which were aimed to fulfill one of the key messages from the survey, leading us to some group decisions about altering the style of the campaign missions and the power level of the game (ever-so-slightly).

After one night of reasonably entertaining discussion and thinking I feel ready to GM the campaign with new gusto. Here's why...

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Dark Trek

Today I began to watch the one Star Trek series that I have, as yet, never really got my head around: Voyager.

Whilst viewing the spurious antics of Janeway's crew in the pilot twin-episode, Caretaker, I was once again reminded of the one-off idea we had a while ago for gaming Trek-style.

Dark Trek was born after the most recent Star Trek movie. The key inspiration was the idea that the Star Trek universe could contain multiple alternate realities... of which the latest movie is but one. From this humble idea sprang the one-off game played in 2009 within our own alternate Trek universe... and since then the idea has stuck.

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Teasing Your Mind

"Asperance regarded the young woman in front of him coolly, his brown shiny eyes trying to penetrate the layer of colourful cosmetics that she had applied to her pale human flesh. Was she really legally old enough to hire onto his crew? She looked very young to his eyes, but then he wasn't really an expert on female human growth patterns. If her skills were as she claimed on her resume then he would certainly find her useful on board the 'Astral Tease'. And what was this about an 'Institute for Higher Learning'?"

Yesterday, as I began to imagine the crew that would accompany Asperance upon his adventures in the Traveller setting, I decided that I'd like to look over the Psi rules and see how they might fit into my campaign. As those of you who know me probably realise, I have a great interest in esoteric knowledge and beliefs and, so naturally, I like to draw such elements into my gaming.

Guess what I found? Yes, the new Traveller rules have Psi BUT... it's a Psi chapter written by a person who clearly does not believe in the possibility of such powers and who, with the best will in the world, has codified and structured the rules for such things in an almost completely "scientific" and over-organised manner. In seconds I was turned off from the rules and turned back to the reality that my own vision for Traveller can be more readily realised using GURPS.

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Three Lessons From Friday

Friday was the first session in our new Infinite Worlds campaign, using the GURPS 4th edition rules. From my perspective it was a good evening well-spent. There were three major lessons that it turns out I needed reminding about.

Lesson 1: Go With It
Way back when, before we got into D&D 4th edition and even before we started butterflying our way between settings and systems, I used to GM our campaigns in a free-form and largely improvised style. These games represent, at least for me, a golden age of roleplaying within our group. The players were different (only one is still at the table) and so, for a long time, I had merely assumed that those days were past: the chemistry of the group, the game, the system was past. How wrong can you be?

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Last Contact

When humanity first engaged the prototype Gateway Drive they took their first steps into a wider galaxy, filled with possibility. Little did the fledgling star travellers suspect that, early on in their exploration and colonisation of other star systems, they would discover that they were not alone…

Inspired by both my run through with GURPS using Uglok and revisiting SF themes over the last week or so, I have begun to draft an introductory adventure entitled, 'Last Contact'.

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Talking SF

Science-fiction. Long have I been a fan of SF. As long as I have been roleplaying there have been SF RPGs: Traveller was the first and, as a hobby, we have never looked back since. It's natural, then, that as I ponder what roleplaying dreams I might have nestling away in my heart, that my mind turns to SF.

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Say Hello to Uglok

Getting into an RPG system can be daunting. That's made worse when the system allows you loads of cool choices, like GURPS does. For me, the way into any game has always been to build a hero and take the playing from there.

This article builds upon the idea from my last, which outlined a Neanderthal fantasy, and recounts my attempt to begin gaming with the birth of Uglok. If you're interested in how to get going in GURPS or are curious about the setting, read on...

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Why GURPS?

One of the reasons I love blogging is that it allows me the chance to offload and work out my thinking. I'm pretty sure that I've written about this before somewhere, perhaps on an old and defunct website, but today's thinking is probably quite different from the thinking back then. Let's find out...

What is GURPS?
GURPS is Steve Jackson Games' award-winning roleplaying game system. Without getting into a whole big product review, the name started out as a kind of joke and stands for "Generic Universal Role Playing System".

The game has two core rulebooks, which are really two halves of one whole - so much so that they actually cross-reference one-another, and the second volume starts with Chapter 10.

Book One is GURPS: Characters and Book Two is GURPS: Campaigns.

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