Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS 2020 PDF Challenge

The Steve Jackson Games’ GURPS 2020 PDF Challenge is live! The first stretch goal unlocked not shortly after! 12 pdf challenge. For a minimum of $3.00 USD you can get up to 12, ten page pdf’s for GURPS! I’ll attempt to edit the blog entry as it progresses.

UPDATE: All 12 pdf’s unlocked! 2,781 backers pledged $57,663 to help bring this project to life.

GURPS Action 6 – Tricked Out Rides: This 10-page PDF, written by Sean Punch, is a quick-and-dirty toolkit for adventures where sports cars pack more gadgetry than fighter jets, and miniguns fit behind headlights!

GURPS Hot Spots: The Incense Trail: Adventure and intrigue are on the Incense Trail, one of the earliest trade routes between disparate civilizations. Hostile terrain, magnificent treasures, political plots, and more await those who venture across the Arabian Peninsula.

Template Toolkit 3: Starship Crew: This PDF offers a set of character templates consistent with how space opera and soft sci-fi depict voyages to the stars, with roles spanning command, helm, ops, tactical, engineering, medical, science, and security, plus staff to look after cargo and passengers.

Dungeon Fantasy Adventure 3: Deep Night and the Star: This stand-alone adventure features the background, maps, and new monsters needed to bring it to life. It’s designed to scale for any number of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy heroes, ranging in ability from standard adventurers to more-seasoned heroes.

How to Be a GURPS GM: Ritual Path Magic offers tips and tricks,points out pitfalls, and provides new mechanics to handle trouble situations.

GURPS Steampunk Adventure: The Broken Clockwork World: This campaign setting presents a GURPS Steampunk framework featuring cross-world travelers in a world where reality is falling apart. Can the heroes escape, thrive, or even put things right?

Reign of Steel Read the Sky: The tiny Welsh village of Tenby has dropped out of vidcom contact. Two teams were sent to investigate; neither has returned. Time to send in the SAS!

GURPS Monster Hunters Encounters 1: GURPS Monster Hunters champions are among the best in the world at what they do…but there’s always more that needs doing. GURPS Monster Hunters Encounters 1 presents two encounters ready to use in any Monster Hunters campaign.

GURPS Action 7: Mercenaries: GURPS Action 7 provides players with guidelines and a new lens for creating mercenary PCs. It offers GMs advice and tables for setting up mercenary adventures and campaigns.

Boardroom and Curia: Tomorrow Rides: Tomorrow Rides presents the background, history, and stats for this organization. It also includes quick-and-easy rules for how to modify GURPS vehicles to reflect the quirky offerings of Tomorrow Rides.

GURPS Horror: Beyond the Pale: Beyond the Pale is a GURPS Horror adventure for four to six seasoned 150- to 200-point characters.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 21: Megadungeons: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy provides extensive resources for “Old School” hack ‘n’ slash gaming, but one thing has been missing up until now: support for dungeons big enough to be the location of an entire campaign. For dungeons with dozens of levels and hundreds of rooms. For megadungeons.

GURPS News

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/warehouse23/steve-jackson-games-gurps-2020-pdf-challenge

So probably not news to everyone but a new KickStarter for SJG is coming up and this one is GURPS related. ” Can we unlock all twelve PDFs before the clock runs out? ” So we have the titles to four of them and I’m excited about the Aciton 6: Tricked out Rides for my Monster Hunters game and How to be a GURPS GM Ritual Path Magic for my fantasy settings. Will there be a Dungeon Fantasy or DFRPG pdf in that lot? I dont’ know yet. This is to be a short run KickStarter so make sure you subscribe for an update when it launches!

Edit 28/06/2020

News from Dungeon Fantastic including the titles for the first 6 of 12 pdf’s!

GURPS Action 6: Tricked-Out Rides
GURPS Hot Spots: The Incense Trail
GURPS How to Be a GURPS GM: Ritual Path Magic
GURPS Steampunk Setting: The Broken Clockwork World
GURPS Action 7: Mercenaries
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 21: Megadungeons

Look that the sixth title! Dungeon Fantasy 21: Megadungeons!! I’m really looking forward to this one!

GURPS ON DEMAND

Despite my constant bitching and moaning they still have not added UK or CA links for their print on demand, but that aside there are eight DFRPG titles and plenty of regular GURPS titles like Psionic Powers which I missed out on back in the day. These are all soft cover but the PoD is much better than it was originally so I’m not as hesitant to purchase them now.

GURPS Combat Cards in Print coming as well. I’m pretty excited to see those! They are only available for pre-order for those that backed the t-shirt KickStarter and only for the U.S. but once all the backers get their shirts they will be made available on Warehouse 23! So that is very cool! Something I’ve been asking for for over five years!

EDIT June 26th 2020

Literally a day after posting this blog, Gaming Ballistic reports on some additional information pertaining to this post.

I plan on doing a review of Dungeon Fantasy Planner in the next month or so depending on how much time I have to hand draw and write in this planner. I went ahead and purchased the pdf and a PoD copy from Amazon. Anything to support GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and DFRPG!

Dungeon Fantasy RPG

I’m playing a weekly game of Dungeon Fantasy RPG powered by GURPS. We are using Roll20 to play the game and it has been a learning experience as I’ve not played GURPS in some time.

I decided to try something that I’ve never done before and I’m playing a Cleric. However I wanted to do something unique so I’m playing a Half-Ogre Cleric that uses a Bec de corbin, a type of Pole Axe (permission granted from the GM to switch Staff with Poleaxe). I’ve selected it to be Dwarven, Fine, Silver plated, Power Item with 7 FP. This will offset the unbalanced penalty allowing the character to attack and defend normally.

It has been years and years since I have been able to play GURPS as a player and it took some getting used to. That and playing with new people meant learning how to interact with their specific play styles, characters, and tactics. It has been a fun experience and has sparked a renewed interest in gaming.

It has been over five years since I used Roll20 and there have been a few upgrades since I last used it. One thing I am particularly fond of is the GURPS character sheet which really speeds up the gaming.

Once the information is filled out it is just a matter of clicking a button to run a macros of your dice rolls including modifiers

Of course I still much prefer to play in person as you don’t have audio issues, drop of internet, and other technical glitches. However with Covid-19, lockdown, self isolation it really is the best option. Plus there are not that many players in my location so being able to play with people at least in the same time zone is helpful! The plus side with the lockdown is more people are home and they are happy to find days to play when I have a day off as I’m still doing shift work and don’t always have the same days off from week to week.

Other news

I’ve received my Kickstarter pledge from Gaming Balistic’s “Nordlond Sagas for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG” and I’m very pleased with the resuts. I’ll make a different post about those books.

I finally broke down and ordered Amazon PoD copies of Companions 2 and Magic Items 2. Now I was extremely critical about the first Companions PoD book (read it HERE). I stick by what I said and I’m still annoyed that SJG do not even attempt to find an EU and South American publisher for easier distribution of their printed products, but I’m not an expert in these things I’m just a customer.

That being said Companions 2 and Magic Items 2 were much better quality then Companions was by a long shot. Full colour pages, better quality paper, much more what I have come to expect from Steve Jackson Games in the past.

Much better quality print

Now the content is of both books are great resources for those playing Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Companion 2 gives 16 magical items, 6 new monsters which includes Adventure Seed ideas and the option to play a Centaur as a delver! Also 14 NPC villains with optional new Racial Templates, Advantages, Traits and a Spell. Certainly makes it worth having in your library. Magic Items 2 has 48 pages and 44 different magic items to entice or harass your players with.

Combining both books together opens a world of possibilities. I was very inspired to use Lady Aimara DFC2(50) and possibly the sword Xingyung (DFMI2 46) in a Wuxia inspired adventure.

I certainly hope we will see more Dungeon Fantasy RPG powered by GURPS in the future!

DoubleSix Dice

Another Kickstarter that got my attention. DoubleSix Dice are twelve sided dice with six sided pips on them twice. Just a bit of fun!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mattfleming/doublesix-dice-generation-two?ref=user_menu

2 DFRPG Kickstarter Successes

Both Steve Jackson Games and Gaming Ballistic had successful KickStarters this month! SJG had the Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 & Game Reprint with 1,019 backers pledged $54,741 getting one stretch goal allowing for 4 more pages and a journal. There were many add-ons as well which I took advantage of.

Gaming Ballistic had The Citadel at Norðvorn600 backers pledged $26,030, hitting four stretch goals! Each one expanding the page count and the final stretch goal for an offset print run! Plenty of add-ons for this KickStarter as well!

I think the message is clear that there is enough interest in DFRPG and GURPS to keep things moving forward. Douglas Cole from Gaming Ballistic has already hinted at the next installment! I wonder what will be next from SJG?

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The Citadel at Norðvorn

It has been a really good month for Dungeon Fantasy RPG powered by GURPS! Not only are we getting Monsters 2 but Douglas Cole of Gaming Ballistic, the man who brought us “Hall of Judgment – a Dungeon Fantasy RPG Supplement” has his second book that has been funded “The Citadel at Norðvorn”. It is time to sharpen your sword and return to Norðvorn!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gamingballistic/the-citadel-at-norvorn?ref=user_menu

GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy RPG kickstarter has been underway and with a week to go we really need to push to get this through. The future of GURPS products may hang in the balance of this kickstarter!

Now is the time to get the DFRPG box set if you missed the original Kickstarter and some other goodies too!

*EDIT* Now fully funded!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/warehouse23/powered-by-gurps-dungeon-fantasy-monsters-2-and-ga?ref=thanks_share&fbclid=IwAR3Dipdf3MwOQ0QLY_hsloe3voTgGXhpm4mSYqT_jWRpgYWyIQwOA-OydmY

Printing and Binding your pdf

Part One HERE

The one thing I forgot about EPSON printers (I used to use them exclusively in the 00’s) is they only let you select EPSON brand paper.  This is understandable as when using Epson products which are specifically made to be used with Epson inks the end results are stunning.  However you may want to use water colour paper, or in my case Silk (which is like a semi gloss).  What you need is ICC Profiles that will work with your paper.  I emailed EPSON Technical support and hope I actually get a response.

Before printing I added a Table of Contents with the new page numbers in MS Word then saved it as a pdf then using Soda PDF I merged the contents with the rest of the document.

Then after experimenting with the limited paper options I chose to go with telling the computer I’m using plain paper but I told the printer I loaded semi-gloss.

Once your print is done make sure they are in order, I added test sheets to the front and back to protect the main book.  I will carefully tear or cut them out when the main part of the book is done. Then joj the pages so the are squared at each corner.

Cut guides for the spine

The string will be placed in the groves

I found this saw in my garage, it is absolutely perfect for this job!

Pres back and fan the pages out

Then apply glue. It was very hot and I had issues with accelerated drying.

Bring it up and get it back into normal position before fanning the pages the opposite way

Now glue the other side, the scribbles on the sheet is because that was a test print page

Press the book between two boards

Leave the top of the spine sticking out

 

Add the string to the spine cuts

You can either loop them back and forth or cut strips.

Add some glue to the spine then stretch Muslin cloth over the spine

Add a bit more glue. I was adding a fair bit due to the heat and the glue drying quickly

Let it dry for about an hour to be safe, or even overnight.

Carefully cut away the board and spare sheet. Make sure you use a sharp knife and take your time.

A Double Fan Bind lays flat

Do you even lift?

Project on hold until new clamp can be acquired.

So far I would say it was a success! Next time I might glue when it is cooler out.  They heat caused me to have to hurry a bit on the gluing which made it a bit sloppy.

I’m not sure I have the print quality down yet.  I thought having a nice paper like Silk would give me a great finish but there are some ink smears on some of the pages.  However in my haste I purchased a lot of silk paper because I thought I new better so I will have to make do with what I have.

Now the question is Soft Cover or Hard Cover?  Either way I will need a clamp before I continue.

PART THREE

Reason for Hiatus

Fighting my own dragon named life.

I must apologise for the hiatus on the site and of my hobbies as well.  In the last twelve months I’ve lost my father and my uncle, changed jobs, wife changed jobs, and just moved house.  I’m unsure if I made the right choice with my new job so I’ve that added stress as well.

Back on topic

Things I’d like to do in the near future

  • Finish the series of short encounters
  • An article on the cost of printing and binding your pdf books from home (I’ve signed up for a bookbinding course this autumn)
  • Finish physical dungeon geomorph tiles (new printer on its way)
  • Ritual Path editable, printable cards

I hope to slowly get more done once I’ve settled in to my new house.

Hall of Judgment – a Dungeon Fantasy RPG Supplement

Hall of Judgement – a Dungeon Fantasy RPG Supplement is a conversion and expansion of the adventure Lost Hall of Tyr for the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (Powered by GURPS) written by Douglas Cole (of Gaming Ballistic). With four days to go it has exceeded its goal of £2,226 and currently sits at £9,246.  This is a win for us GURPS fans as it may open the doors to third party material.  Much like 4e D&D back in the day, which I think only strengthened WotC’s fan base.

Full colour print run in soft cover is very exciting and Douglas Cole is certainly dedicated to getting the best product he can while staying realistic to his goals.  That is always a win-win when it comes to Kickstarters in my opinion. So check it out, back the project and we may get to see more like it!

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