GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: GURPS Action Adventure 1: Templar's Gold

 So, here we are, the PDF challenge completed!

This has one chapter;

• The Adventure: which is the adventure.

I was really looking forward to this adventure, and delighted to see it unlocked. The actual thing didn't quite live up to my expectations (I liked Green Madonna better), but it's not bad. The adventure is somewhat barebones, you'll need a good knowledge of Action to make it work, and the adventure suffers from an incomplete understanding of Action's core mechanics, but there's nothing really deal breaking here, and it makes up for it in rich historical context and detail that, I think, really sells the adventure. Recommend

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: DF 23: Twists

 This is the last PDF unlocked by moolah.  The other one needed to be unlocked with total backers.

This has one chapter, Strands in the Braid, but the one chapter is pretty cleanly broken into three parts to the point that I thought it had three chapters.

• Lords and Ladies: Titles and Status in DF
• Demons and Darkness: Horror DF
• Sufficiently Advanced: So I heard you wanted guns?

It's a good book. It tackles the things it needs to tackle in a very DF way, and you'll walk away with more knowledge of how GURPS works, and how to expand your DF game. I think you're better off having it than not having it.  That said, I get the sense a lot of people had higher hopes for this than it could match.  It will not give you courtly games out of the box, or DF Monster Hunters, or DF: Galtar.  It will point you in the right direction to make those yourself! But you'll still have to make them yourself, you'll just have a little more guidance in doing so.  I think that's going to disappoint some DF fans.  I found it okay, but I have very high proficiency levels with GURPS that a lot of people in the DF community don't (as DF is often a gateway into GURPS). I still think its worth getting, as I said, but modify your expectations.

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: DF 22: Gates

In the home stretch now! Only two left to go after this.

This has an actual chapter structure!

• Gates and the Campaign: How to use Gates in a DF Campaign
• Gate Rules: The metaphysics and game mechanics of Gates
• Sample Destinations: Some places the gates could lead.

All in all this book was better than I expected. I went into it with some trepidation, as I've not had an especially good experience with GURPS and portal realms. This largely seems a working of Portal Realms material into DF and it covers what it needs to.  I walked away concluding that I probably wouldn't use Gates in a DF game, but more thoughtful about thinking about gates in Psi-Wars.  It's a very niche product, and I doubt most DF games would use it, but if you're interested in portals, it's actually a very good companion to Portal Realms, and I'm glad I have it.

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: GURPS Encounters: the Mysterious Airfield

We're nearing the end! Only three more to go!

This book has two chapters:

• The Venus Field Air Force Base: which details the base, its history, and ends with a map
• Base Personnel: Which briefly sketches a few personalities, little more than a name and a little snippet on personality.

I love this book! It's not the sort of book I would have expected to love. It's not the sort of thing that makes me cry "I need to use this right away!" but it will almost certainly see some use eventually and it's made me rethink how I write particular things.  I still quibble that the PDF challenge is sucking a lot of oxygen out of the idea of a revived, kickstarted pyramid, so I think it's debatable if this would have been better as a pyramid article or a Challenge PDF, but the authors really made the most of the extra breathing room given to them by being a Challenge PDF.  I think it wouldn't have been as nice as a pyramid article.  In either case, this is the sort of thing I want to see in  Pyramid or Challenge PDFs: something I didn't know I wanted. If I know I want a thing, I want to just buy it. If I'm going to buy a bundle, I want to find rare treasures in it, and the Mysterious Airfield is a rare treasure.

Recommend.

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: How to GM GURPS: High Powered Origins

 Next we have the next in the series of How to GM GURPS, and it's the second time Christopher Rice has tried his hand at it.

This has one chapter:

• Great Power which offers said advice.

I think I've managed to pick up a reputation for being a harsh critic.  I don't actually like giving negative reviews.  See, other than a few dedicated fans, I don't think most people bother to read extensive reviews of an RPG book, not unless it's put right in front of your face.  But authors read them, because they want that feedback, and nobody likes to have a negative review. I've noticed even a crack about an otherwise good book will frustrate an author.  I feel that, man. An author puts their heart and soul into a work, often spending months on it, and then some guy reads it in a day and says "Ugh, garbage." I don't want to give the impression that I feel that way, or that I'm dismissing someone's hard labor.  So if I'm going to complain about a book, know that I'm not doing it callously.

With that in mind, I say: This is not a good book.  In fact, I spent most of the time after reading the book coming up with counter advice and poking holes in the advice, and then being flummoxed that it was written the way it was and analyzing how this happened.  Of course, that sounds dramatic, like this is a trainwreck of a book.  I promise you, if you have this book in your collection, it will not give you cancer.  I have read worse advice than this. But it's not worth your $3. Give it a miss.

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: Space Atlas: Grissom

 

Next in our challenge round-up, I have Grissom, the latest (first?) addition to our Space Atlas (for 4e, at least).

It has one chapter:

• Why So Stubborn? Which details Grissom. It includes a map.

I like it.  I would welcome more books like this. In fact, I suspect it's probably the most underrated development of the PDF challenge.  That said, it's not setting my world on fire.  I'm not having mad dreams about trying to write up an entire set of campaign framework around it.  On the other hand, I would absolutely use it. Is it a recommend? Yes.

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: 2-Page Dungeons

This very tightly designed work has, unsurprisingly, 5 dungeons:

• From a Sinking Ship: Get the magic medallion from a terrified rat before the ship sinks into the sea, or the skeletons get it.
• The Blasphemed Shrine: Fight some demons, I guess.
• A Cold Day In: Fight a dragon in a fragile ice cavern
• All Along the Watchtower: Kill the orcs and seize the tower before they can raise alarm
• The Floor is Lava: THE FLOOR IS LAVA!

Each dungeon comes with a detailed map.

I think this is actually a neat concept, and if you run DF, my guess is you'll almost certainly get some use out of them.  The actual execution of several of these dungeons is off, though, and I'll get into ways they could be improved. Is this a buy? Well, for the price, sure!

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: Renaissance Venice: Spies of Venice

 So Spies of Venice is the latest  in what looks intended to be an ongoing series given that we have a new series tag associated with it. It has 5, count them 5, chapters in this 10-page book:

• The Secret History: The Origins of Renaissance spycraft
• Agencies and Agents: Details on Venice's spies were organized
• Techniques and Missions: What they spied on, and how.
• The Post: How Venice facilitated communication throughout renaissance Europe
• Characters and Campaigns: So you wanna play a spy, huh?

I'm not going to do a big breakdown of the book, because I feel about this book the way I feel about most  Matt Riggsby books: it's good, it's niche, I'd like to use it but probably won't, and when I do use it, I'll find it useful, but also wish there was more material to cover the specific thing I wanted.

I always get a nagging sense that I could work out most of this on Wikipedia, but Matt collates it all just enough, and integrated GURPS just enough, that you feel it's worth buying, especially at the very cheap price tag. The real benefit to me of a Riggsby work is more that he, like Kenneth Hite, points out an element of history that's especially worthy of further investigation into as a gamer, gives lots of pointers for expanding it, and integrates just enough that you could probably run it out of the box (even though you won't).

Despite being quite interesting, it's rather dry: more la Carre than Fleming, though there's a whole paragraph for if you want James Bond in the Renaissance!  Of course, there's nothing wrong with pointing out that spycraft in the Renaissance mostly consisted of being in someone else's court, listening to what people said, and sending messages back to your king while worrying that people might read your mail. But the whole of "This is what you do with it" is less than a page.  This is a report for a history teacher with a one-page "oh and you can run this in an RPG too" tacked on at the end to justify it as a gaming supplement.  I would really appreciate more thought put into how to integrate these sorts of things into a campaign, both serious and cinematic, but where would you cut page-count for it? Once again, I feel like 10 pages is too small unless just the historical information is enough... which is a bit of an open question, because I bet you if you doubled page count, Matt would fill it with more history, because there's always more history.

A friend commented on Renaissance Venice "being doled out piecemeal." I checked, there is no other Renaissance Venice books I can find or even more Pyramid Articles, so it seems to be this + Hotspots: Renaissance Venice.  Are we going to get more? Do we want more? If we want more, would it be better as a single volume? Would you buy a big book on just Renaissance Venice? I'll be honest, I'm not sure I would.  But I feel like between Green Madonna and this, there's surely some hunger for an historically-authentic-if-improbable cinematic swashbuckling GURPS campaign framework, and such a series would make a great springboard for books like this, because you could point to that specific work and specific templates, the way Osiris Worlds was able to point to Steampunk.  There's a lot of works that sort of thing would make more useful, and it would expand the GURPS framework line in a good direction that fits what a lot of people seem to want to use GURPS to do (ie, historically-authentic-but-somewhat-improbable cinematic historical gaming).

Is it a good book? Sure. It's a Matt Riggsby book.  I don't feel like I wasted my money.  Is it probably going to rot on my shelf? Hmm... I'm not sure. I don't think I'll run Venice anytime soon, and I suspect I won't dive in to reference it anytime soon, but just reading through it made me think about things that will influence what I write moving forward.  Should you buy it? Well, if you like historical stuff, then sure, it's good. I wouldn't call it a must have, or beg you to petition SJGames for more, as I would with Greed Madonna, but I don't think you're wasting your money either. It's solid.

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: Infinite Earths - Osiris Worlds

 Next on our list, we have Infinite Earths: Osiris Worlds, a collection of Egyptian-inspired Alternate Earths.

This has two chapters:

• Ancient Egypt in the Infinite Worlds: which discusses general concerns, such as interesting dates, cultural familiarity and languages
• Three Key Worldlines: This is what you're here for.  The worlds are:
• Osiris-6: Aliens built the pyramids!
• Osiris-3: Akhenaten and his ghoul armies ravage the world.
• Osiris-7: If you put a woman in charge, you get a  world of clockwork swashbuckling.

I wasn't really interested in this going into it, and after reading it, I'm modestly impressed at the quality.  At least, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Is it good? I don't know.  I think it angles more towards "It's fine." It does the job it sets out to do and I see no major holes.  The book does amount more to "writing prompts" than "detailed worlds" but at least they point you in the right direction. Would I recommend buying it? No. But to be fair, I wouldn't recommend most Alternate Earth books.  I'm also not particular into that genre; I get the sense a lot of that comes down to reading the timeline and then arguing about the plausibility of a particular extrapolation and if that's what you see, only really Osiris-7 is interesting.  The other two are more "interesting adventure ideas" more than detailed worlds.  You can live without this book, but at the price, you're probably not wasting your money either.

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: the Green Madonna

 

So, I don't buy adventures, generally speaking. I just make my own. I've been making my own for ages, and thus I underestimate the value of an adventure for acting as a good worked example, or for even grabbing me by my belt and shouting "I am awesome, run me!"

That's what The Green Madonna did. It's amazing. I could wax poetic in so many ways about this book. If you like Swashbuckling at all, you should get it.  The only downside is that, surprise surprise, it's too short.  I read through it, enrapt, and then it suddenly just cuts off and I was left flipping back and forth through the book to figure out where the next part was.  Presumably, you're supposed to do it yourself? But if I were Pulver, I'd just make the Green Madonna part 2, but I suspect that won't happen, because this one won't receive any attention, because nobody buys adventures.

I Heard You Like Swashbuckling?

The first reason to get this book is because swashbuckling is awesome.  I used to play lots of 7th Sea, and I still play it today, but the problem with 7th Sea is that it's a crap system set in a funhouse-mirror of Europe that makes you want to dig out your research of the era, but you can't, because it may or may not fit into the funhouse mirror version, so you end up just researching more of Theah, which is useless geek knowledge, rather than real history, which is useful nerd knowledge.

I always thought GURPS would make for a more satisfying swashbuckling experience.  The combat system plays well with swashbuckling action-by-action duels.  There's often a criticism that GURPS is too realistic for Swashbuckling, but that stems from a misconception that swashbucklers swung on chandeliers and slid on banisters just because it was cool, but most of my experience with swashbuckling adventure was that they were closer to the modern Action genre: high-flying action grounded in a gritty foundation.  If someone was swinging on a chandelier, it wasn't just for kicks, but because he needed to get across a gap and the chandelier was the only means he could see. And also, 7th Sea doesn't actually encourage this either, and GURPS actually does, if you dig around enough in GURPS Martial Arts, which you should be doing anyway because you need fencing to make your adventure work.

But GURPS also grounds itself in history in a way that 7th Sea doesn't, and in a way that swashbuckling adventures really need to.  Mind you, it's a somewhat silly history, full of improbably conspiracy theories and implausible shoutouts to real life people made larger than life.  This features an interpretation of Isaac Newton that crosses action cinema with GURPS Cabal and keeps just enough realism to make you wonder just how plausible it is.

This book makes excellent use of existing works to show you where the skeleton of a swashbuckling framework exists, which is another reason it's a great book: if you run this, the problems you'll need to solve to make the adventure work can largely be solved by works that exist, which this book mostly references, and once you've figured out how to make decent swashbuckling characters and how to handle them in a game, you can run any swashbuckling game you want.

Or Maybe a Little Raymond Chandler?

The structure of this story, and the characters within it, are amazing.  Whomever wrote it clearly has a solid grasp of how to make adventures work, and likely has studied the classics. 

It starts with a burning dwarf pirate bursting into a tavern room shouting for help and then is followed up by gang of ruffians bursting in to finish the job on the dwarf and kill everyone. FIGHT ENSUES!  You've immediately got the Raymond Chandler solution of "Burst into the room with two guys with guns." There are two reasons for this: the first is because everyone likes action, but the other is to trigger the "ball of yarn" mystery: these two guys have clues which will lead you to the next clue, which will lead you to the next clue.  This adventure is very much structured like a ball-of-yarn mystery.

It also features a great cast, such as the aforementioned Isaac Newton, but also Lady Champagne, the  beautiful, tragic, one-eyed femme-fatale who will bedevil the party.  Or she would, if the adventure continued. She, of course, needs to be rescued from sinister, torturous Spaniards. But will the players regret rescuing the dangerous damsel? They'll probably have mixed feelings on it.

There's also a lot of backstory that goes into the adventure. While not explicitly mentioned, this context will allow the GM to improvise more information drops and clues as necessary, as the players will start only with the knowledge of someone killing a poor, burning dwarf and the nebulous promise of treasure somewhere at the end of this adventure, and everything else they'll have to pick up along the way.  All told, the adventure is written in a very dense way that will naturally pull the players from encounter to encounter following a Hitean pulse of thriller adventure: the reward for facing danger is information; the price of learning information is more danger. So the players will face a challenge, then learn something new, then suddenly face another challenge, which will lead them to some new information, and so on.  It's an excellent structure for an RPG.  And it has the information density beneath it to allow the GM to dribble along those interesting clues.

The Good, the Bad and the One-Eyed Damsel

I suspect that David Pulver is as much a fan of Jack of All Trades as I am.  If you've never heard of it, you should watch it for the intro alone, but also because Bruce Campbell is awesome and its a great piece of 90s camp. But it's exactly the sort of story that would feature a burning dwarf, a beautiful one-eyed lady, and lots and lots of sword play.  It has a similar energy and it winks at you with some of its weirder elements.  It's fun. But it layers this with the additional research and depth that we'd expect from a great GURPS work.  This is amazing and I want to run it right now.

Some nitpicks.  The first set of guys who start a fight in the bar justify their actions by claiming the person who hired them said "No Witnesses." When the players interrogate him later, the book suggests that he thought the lady who hired them was just a jilted lover; they didn't actually know why she hired them. Like... wow. You were going to kill an entire room of innocent people over a lover's spat? I'm actually okay with that, but guy, put Bloodlust in their character write-up! I suppose that was the intent of giving them Bad Temper.  Second, at some point, a spanish officer refers to Lady Champagne as senorita. First, that should actually be señorita but I'm not going to knock 'im for that.  But I'm pretty sure a señorita is unmarried, and Lady Champagne is referenced as a widow or a married woman several times, which would make her a señora. There's a modern trend to refer to all older women as señora and younger women as señorita but this is not set in modern times, and also, I'm pretty sure Lady Champagne isn't a teenager.  Maybe she's just super-cute? But again, this is a minor nitpick.

What is a real detriment to the book is how it just cuts off.  I remember thinking "This is too good to be true, there's no way they can fit all of this goodness into a single 10-page supplement" and indeed they couldn't.  The adventure is:

1. Encounter the burning dwarf and fight the pirate brigade
2. Go to the Sloop Zion, encounter Isaac Newton, fight the inquisition
3. Go to the plantation of Lady Champagne, rescue her from Spanish officers
   
4. Find the map in the Green Madonna that points you towards the lost treasure on a far off island that's the remnant of Atlantis, and Lady Champagne offers to join you
5. Roll credits

Like... what? I flipped and saw the advert on the back. Like, one more page! Give me the map! Give me something! Don't leave me like that! I suppose the idea here is that the players now have the Green Madonna, which is the treasure and it's a clue to "the next adventure!" but it's so obviously tied together that if this happened in a theater, the audience would riot! I rioted! Point 1 is Act I; points 2-4 are Act II, where we set up the big payoff.  Going off to find the treasure is clearly Act III.  So why is it missing?

Because they ran out of room, obviously.

What are we supposed to do with these 10-page supplements if they don't give us what we need to run things? It's frustrating.  I'm not going to disrecommend this over it, because holy crap, what is there is awesome and uses those 10 pages as gloriously as it could.  I wouldn't actually trim down on anything to make the room for a third act.  Given a choice between those two options, I choose for what we have here.  But why do we have to have these artificially limited page counts? They're not saving on paper and ink.  If Pulver knows what happens in the third act, let him write it!  How is this a good model.

If it were up to me, I'd go ahead and create a full campaign framework for swashbuckling (though you can certainly stretch and bend Action to cover a lot of it) and include the finished version of this as the main adventure.  What we have no is a piecemeal where we can gather up individual little bits and stitch them into a campaign which is... well, that's just how people who don't run frameworks run GURPS, so that's fine. I just wouldn't have expected a piecemeal adventure where I have to write the third act on my own. I can! I was just surprised to see that it expected me too.

I would definitely pay for a part 2.  Are you listening Pulver? Punch? Evil Stevie? Give me a $10 version of this adventure, I'll plunk down for it, I promise.

EDIT: Or $20.  Or, like, kickstart it and offer a deluxe, signed version for $50.  I'll pay.  Give me part 2. I'm serious.

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: DF Encounters: the Ring Fort

 Carrying on with the PDF 2021 special in order of how they unlocked, we come to DF Encounters 4: the Ring Fort, which I almost missed for some reason.

DF Ring Fort is a very simple book with one chapter:

• Hlifborg Ring Fort: which details the ring fort.

That's it.

I have mixed feelings about the Ring Fort.  When I saw it, I had no idea what it was doing in the DF line.  After reading it, I'm still not sure what it's doing there. Does this mean I don't like it? No, not at all.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  It feels like a strange book that doesn't remotely fit in the line as the line currently stands, and I think it undermines a lot of the conceits of DF. If I used this in DF, I would end up reorienting DF around how this book is designed.  I think I'd have a better experience for it! But what you end up with is a realization that GURPS Low-Tech with Magic is an awesome way to run GURPS, and that DF isn't the only way to run GURPS.  In a DF book.  But would anyone have bought or used this if it wasn't a DF book?  Well, it's in a freaking package deal with a book on the spies of Venice, so yes, I think people would have acquired it, more than a thousand people, in fact.  So why is this DF?

I have some theories, but the core takeaway is that this book is worth your time even for a DF campaign. But you should definitely, definitely consider getting this one even if you don't like DF. It's up there with Wilderness Adventures for broad usefulness.  It's a definite recommend.

GURPS PDF Challenge 2021: Action 8 Twists

 I've not been feeling well, and I'm not actually all that excited about the GURPS 2021 challenge, if I'm honest.  I said it before and I'll say it again: this is a better model for Pyramid articles than for GURPS supplements, and you'll doubtless hear that over and over again: I would be happier for half as many books with twice the length.

The art is nice, though.

So we can break out GURPS Action 8: Twists into three sections

• Part of Something Bigger: Higher wealth, status, and social adventures in Action. This is the reason I wanted the supplement.
• Things Just Got Weird: Genre-bending Action. This one is bad, a false promise.
• No-Tech Thriller: Removing all that sweet tech from GURPS Action. Surprisingly good!

It's a decent work, but each of these sections needed to be three times their size. Worth your money.

GURPS PDF Challenge: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 21: Megadungeons

 So, here we are.  We've made it through the total line up and reached "the cream of the crop," the ultimate release of the PDF Challenge.  Was it worth it?

In short: yes, it's worth your money.  I should clarify up front that at the end of the day, this is a "GM Advice" book more than a resource, though it does include some tables in it. Maybe I'm not the best person to judge a dungeon fantasy book, and I'm not generally a fan of "GM Advice" books, but I legitimately found this useful and it's made me reconsider some of my hesitations towards the genre.  I think if the rest of the DF line began to follow the logic laid out by Dell'Orto, it would only profit from it. That said, I think after you've read it and digested the information within, I doubt you'll read it again (perhaps to use a few of the tables).

GURPS PDF Challenge Reviews: Horror: Beyond the Pale

We're almost done.  This is the penultimate release from the PDF challenge, and it's unique in that it's an adventure that isn't for a framework, but for "vanilla" horror itself.

The executive summary is this: This doesn't work as an adventure.  It's alright as a "Creatures of the Night" entry, though I'm not the biggest fan of the monsters, but as an adventure, the book puts too much attention on the introduction and the resolution, gives you details you don't need, and shrugs at getting the players from point A to point B.

I would skip this one.

GURPS PDF Challenge: Boardoom and Curia: Tomorrow Rides

 We're entering the final stretch.  Only three left to go!  And today, we have the maddest of the bunch: Tomorrow Rides!

The executive summary is this: you can skip this. I like it, but that's more a matter of personal taste.  It's not a bad book, by any stretch, and it's quite a creative work that will interface well with Action 6, but there's nothing in here that you need, and it won't do much for any game but offer a bit of flavor and background on a couple of things.

GURPS PDF Challenge Review: Action 7: Mercenaries

Mercenaries unlocked ninth in the GURPS PDF Challenge.  This continues the Action series by offering a "campaign lens" to further customize your Action campaign.

My executive summary is: this is good! It wasn't what I expected, but I really enjoyed it nonetheless.  It's chock-full of ideas, and if you're at a loss as to what to do with GURPS Action, this makes a great entry-way into a campaign. I would very much welcome a variety of books like this for action, even at this word count.  Like GURPS Action 6: this is a very economical book that squeezes everything it can out of its word count, and at $3, you'll feel like you underpaid for it.

 Have you ever wanted to run the Expendables in GURPS? This is the book for you.

GURPS PDF Challenge Review: Monster Hunters Encounter 1

8th in our series comes a Monster Hunters book, the second most supported series of campaign frameworks.  This is, in essence, an adventure book, but it actually manages to contain not one, but two adventures for the same page count.  How is it able to do this?

My TL;DR summary is: This is fine.  It feels rather by-the-numbers, and I'd end up fleshing them out a lot, but unlike some other works I've panned, the skeleton provided by Rice is actually quite useful.  Of the two, the second is definitely better than the first. The more I work with them and dive in, the more I like them, but neither of them are going to "wow" anyone.  They're work-horse with some decent design.  For $3, you could do worse than this set of adventures, and it's a decent illustration as to how Monster Hunters should work, but I would have preferred the first one to be more innovative.  All that said, this is worth your $3.

GURPS PDF Challenge Review: Reign of Steel: Read the Sky

Next in our series, we come to Reign of Steel: Read the Sky, an adventure for Reign of Steel, a GURPS setting about a post-apocalyptic world conquered by murderous, super-intelligent AI.

The executive summary: this is good.  Very good.  I will definitely use it.  I also think it's the best work to utilize the space given to it out of any of the GURPS PDF Challenge books I've read so far.  It's not great. It won't blow your mind, and it has some issues, but it definitely has a place in your library as a work-a-day adventure for introducing people to Reign of Steel. It also provides some useful ideas for other games (especially GURPS Action).

GURPS PDF Challenge Review: The Broken Clockwork World

Let's do the TL;DR first.  Hey, do you like Isekai anime? Or Stranger Things? Have you considered a story where characters go from our world into another, or things from another world spill into ours? Have you considered making the other world a broken, clockwork, steampunk work with some sumerian elements?

That's it. That's the book. You literally have all the support the game offers you (aside from a couple of steampunk robot-monsters, and a very deep discussion of portals) in the above paragraph.

I'm exaggerating a little, but that was definitely my first impression and it barely got better on a deeper reading. It's not good. It's frustrating because I want it to be good, but it let me down completely.  This book fails as a setting book.  It's passable as a "campaign elevator pitch," which you shouldn't be paying $3 for.  I would give this one a miss.

GURPS PDF Challenge Reviews: How to GM: Ritual Path Magic

 Even before we start, this book comes at two disadvantages.  First, its title starts with the letter "H" rather than "G" which messes with my alphabetical ordering of my folder. Second, I don't use RPM for a variety of reasons. Thus, for me, this was definitely in the camp of "I got it in a bundle" rather than something I would buy if it showed up on Warehouse 23. This will doubtlessly color my review and make it hard for me to objectively judge the quality of this book, but I'll do my best!

The book breaks down into

• Tips, Tricks and More, which covers what you'd actually expect the book to be about
• Ritual Path Magic Ultra-Lite, which was quite a surprise, but not an unwelcome one
• Examples, a list of pre-rendered spells.

Overall, from my biased, uninformed perspective, it looks like a pretty good book.  I  mean, I've looked into RPM, and I had questions and concerns, and this book addressed those.  It didn't make me rethink my position on RPM, but that wasn't its purpose.  So I'd call this work a success: If you actually do want to use RPM, but you find you struggle with it, this may well be a book for you, if you don't mind paying $3 for some GM advice (which, we must admit, is a pretty small asking fee.)