Pyramid 4/3 Sci-Fi/Tech Review

 Last, but definitely not least, we have the Sci-Fi issue of the Kickstarted Pyramid Trio.  As usual, I'll give a TL;DR of my final thoughts first, and then a break down of each article.

Overview

Rating: 5 stars

Look, this shouldn't be a surprise; I like SF, so the SF pyramid gets the best score, right? Well, it's more than that.  First, there were several articles that spoke to precisely what I've been working on recently and so are directly relevant to me.  That's sort of unfair, as you're working on something else and so different things will be pertinent to you, but it's still relevant, because if one person is working on something, chances are more people are working on something similar.  Second, a lot of this stuff is just good.  There are two I've noted as NA.  Perhaps they should be one star, I don't know, but it feels more like a deep interest mismatch than necessarily a quality problem.  But in my opinion, this had the best material, and some of the most engrossing articles, of the three pyramids, so it's my favorite.

My only complaint is we FINALLY have a new tech pyramid with no new Ultra-Tech. What's up with that?

Pyramid 4/2 Modern Action Review

Having finished Pyramid 4/1, let's move on to Pyramid #4/2.  As before, I'll give you a TL;DR summary first, which I'll write after I've written my review of everything else.  Then, after that TL;DR review, I'll break every article down.

Overview

Rating: 4 stars

There's no articles here, unlike Fantasy, that I just won't read because I won't use the underlying system.  There were several articles that I found immediately useful and/or very well written.  There were, however, several "useless" articles, and a one that I would consider badly written (though it still had value).

As with the Fantasy/Magic issue, there's more than enough good material in here to justify your $5 or whatever its final price will be.  Particualrly stand-out articles include the Checkpoint and Highway Stars, which I think anyone running a modern (or even only "modernish") campaign will find useful.

Pyramid #4/1 Fantasy/Magic I

 

I didn't review Pyramid when it was out, but maybe I should have.  Still, it would have been a constant process, while this new Kickstarter version is more of a one-off deal, which makes reviewing it a more reasonable proposition, though I don't know how useful that will be to you, dear reader: either you backed it and you have it, in which case the only point of reading this will be to see whether I agree with you or not, or you didn't, in which case you have no access to it, but presumably you'll be able to access it later, in which case this review might be useful to you.

I'll review each article separately and then collect everything together in a single TL;DR review.

Overview

Rating: 4 stars

So, if I go over each article, I find there are none that I actively disliked.  I didn't really look over the RPM one, as I don't use RPM (I'm also rather skeptical of the need to write up so many spells for a system that's supposed to be flexible and free-form), so I didn't count that in my average as a "zero"; if I did, then the issue drops to about 3 stars, but that feels unfair.  I found at least three "I will use or look into this immediately" articles, and 3 more I would strongly consider using, or would strongly recommend to others.

I don't know what the final price of this issue will be, but given its size, it's almost certainly worth your time. It's obviously more worth your time if you're into fantasy, but I'm not running any fantasy at the moment, and I still found a lot of useful stuff.  This is up there with some of the top Pyramid issues from #3, and I definitely recommend it.

Pyramid Kickstarter!

 

In case you're unaware, the next GURPS kickstarter is up, this time for three new issues of Pyramid. Yes, I've backed it, and you should too.

I'll be honest, this kickstarter makes more sense to me than the last one.  Pyramid was always the ideal place for little "mini-supplements" like we got in the last Kickstarter.  A grab-bag of wild and woolly ideas that wouldn't quite fit into a full book is exactly what I look for in Pyramid, and it's what we'll be getting.  Given the material I cover on this blog, I'm naturally looking forward to the Sci-Fi pyramid (though I'm a little surprised nobody took the time to write up yet more ultra-tech!), but there's a lot of stuff in all of the pyramid issues.  There are several of the already-unlocked articles that I'm looking forward to.

Toxic Grimoire: I have some issues with GURPS Magic, but it's a good old standby, and it's often filled with neat ideas.  An expansion of it with additional spells is always fun.

The Secret Masters: Psi-Wars tends to focus on conspiratorial play even at the more modest Action levels, so having more support for that will be nice.

Reign of Action: Reign of Steel is one of those GURPS settings that I desperately want to love, but feels unplayable.  Combining it with Action already looks like a no brainer: rather than playing desperate survivors slowly and horrifically dying to genocidal robots, why not play cigar-chomping badasses that are slowly reclaiming earth? Sure, less realistic, but much more satisfying!  Roger Burton West already proved his skill with the excellent Read the Sky supplement, so this looks like a marriage made in heaven.  It will also likely prove a valuable resource for when I start to explore the Cybernetic Union.

Three Steampunk Monsters: Phil has been on a steampunk kick lately, and while I panned his Broken Clockwork World, there's a part of me hoping that at least some of these monsters are from his BCW, because the problem with that work was that it lacked crucial details necessary to make it playable.  A few monsters would fix that.  Of course, even if they're not, steampunk is definitely the sort of setting that could do with a few horrific creations.

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes: It's always nice to see a Sean Punch article, but I salivate at the thought of this one.  I'm literally working on cultural elements for Psi-Wars right now, so the thing I want more than anything is stupid sports and games for space opera. Don't disappoint me!

The Demonic Temple of Felltower: Peter Dell'Orto writing for Pyramid instead of his blog? I'm game.

Into the Forbidden Zone: Shades of Places of Mystery, one of my favorite 3e supplements, as my well-worn copy can attest.

More Options for Metatronic Generators: Unsurprisingly, I'm happiest with Christopher Rice's work when he's writing stuff I'll use in Psi-Wars, as a lot of Psi-Wars comes from him.  I suspect I'm one of the few people to make regular use of psychotronics, which are one example of metatronic generators, so I have no doubt this will expand the technological repertoire of ancient Ranathim technology and frightening Eldothic toys.

While I backed the GURPS Challenge to the hilt, I think it's format hurt several of it's works, and there's only been a couple of those PDFs that I've actually, practically used.  This feels like a better format, if this is the direction they want to go, so I hope this is a success (and it looks like it will be), and that they do more like this, but I really miss Pyramid.  It released some of the best GURPS material to dat and the GURPS lost some of its luster when Pyramid closed its doors for the third time. So it's nice to see it come back for at least one more hurrah!

Abstract Wealth in Psi-Wars - Wisdom of the Pyramids

So, recently I touched on Gear in GURPS, wherein I discussed my thoughts on how genre and gear interact.  This matters because Psi-Wars is a different sort of genre than what GURPS, by default, handles well with its gear.  This isn't a problem.  One of the reasons we build campaign frameworks is to adjust the rules of the game to better support our genre.  This is why GURPS is generic and universal because it offers support for a variety of play-styles, but we need to highlight what those differences are.

Psi-Wars emphasizes social status and wealth. Like many Space Opera settings, it revels in the travails of the poor and emphasizes the grandeur of the wealthy.  It has a positively feudal wealth disparity!  Thus wealth should matter.  However, it tends to matter narratively.  Both sorts of characters have interesting story hooks that arise from their position.  The wealthy often don't have to deal with things that poor characters do need to deal with (such as where their next meal is coming from, or how to afford a gift for that girl whose eye you want to catch), but these problems can usually be overcome with clever gameplay or good skills.  Skill, broadly, should matter more than wealth: yes, the wealthy can access better gear than the poor, but not so much better that they can "pay to win:" a knight can be defeated by a farmer with a staff, so to speak.  The differences in station tend to also manifest superficially and symbolically: the poor can expect to look "more street" than the rich while the rich can expect to look "classy," and both can expect rough treatment in the world of the other, but both can contribute to a group.

Psi-Wars allows characters to access cool stuff regardless of wealth level, and the coolest stuff tends to a character signature.  Almost everyone who wants one has a spaceship, and the space knight always has his force sword and, if appropriate, his armor.  Soldiers have whatever weaponry they've been issued, and even the most poverty-stricken, indebted smuggler has a totally sweet gun.  Characters often pursue ancient relics, and those who make regular use of them tend to be drawn into their symbolism.  Characters do not "trade up" with such gear: the character with his grandfather's Valiant starfighter doesn't "upgrade" to a Valiant 2.0 at the first opportunity, nor does the space knight go through a selection of force swords at every space port to see if he can find one better than the one currently equipped.

Psi-Wars doesn't really care about gear beyond this; player characters generally have what they need unless the narrative requires otherwise. Gear in Psi-Wars is largely about what your character looks like and their niche in the story.  A poverty-stricken space knight has a force sword and never upgrades it, and has a particular look (say, a rough jacket and boots and a low-slung belt over a simple battleweave garment) and needs to deal with hassles from richer space knights who look down on him for his lack of "proper breeding."  If it comes to checking to see if characters have rations or if they have proper lockpicks, then the GM shouldn't demand to know what the player characters have on their sheets.  Saying something like "I'm sure I have something like that in my utility belt" should be enough, unless the scenario calls for deprivation ("You're stuck in a dying space station with no food and only the air you have in your vacc suit").  At the same time, this shouldn't allow players to have infinite gear: after all, being poor should have some sort of consequence!

Does GURPS have the tools to handle this? Yes it does!  But most of it is in various Pyramid Articles.

Psi Wars: Spaceships!

Seldon Crisis: Battle by AdamBurn

You seem to want a system for whooshing space opera battles between fighters and capital ships.  GURPS Spaceships is not that system.

-Ulzgoroth, paraphrased

I've held off on dealing with Spaceships for as long as I could, not because I dislike the book, but because I knew how much work it would be, and boy was I right. This was a doozy.  Ulzgoroth, above, is not wrong. GURPS tends to trend towards the realistic and Star Wars is, to put it lightly, not realistic.  That said, GURPS Spaceships actually does address whooshy spaceships at great length, especially in  Spaceships 4: Fighers, Carriers and Mecha, but we're going to have to parse all of that, understand all of it, and then pull out all the pieces and put them back together to get the game we want.  Unsurprisingly, I can't find much material on this sort of thing.  Most people I find who actually use GURPS Spaceships use the tactical system out of Spaceships 3, because it works pretty well out of the box.  We'll take a look at that too, but by the time we're done, we'll have a combat system that's as unique to Psi-Wars as the Chase System is to Action.

I'll be posting Spaceships stuff all week. And all of next week too.  Like I said, a doozy.  Today, I'll take a look at what's wrong with the actual Star Wars paradigm and why it's so hard to model in Spaceships, and we'll take a glance at alternate GURPS models that might work better.