Psi-Wars Report Card: August 2020

So, while the rest of you were distracted by my month of PDF Challenge reviews, I've been busy at work behind the scenes updating quite a bit of the Psi-Wars Wiki and, finally, moving past some big blocks and making some real progress.

A quick look at the highlights:

Traders

Art by Kriz Villacis; property of Daniel Dover

AGES ago, back in Iteration 5, we ran a "create an alien" poll. It was one of my more successful polls, and set a lot of the tone for future polls.  The result of the poll was the "Traders," a race of alien wanderers who live in vast Arks, excel at technology and join the Shinjurai in their love of Neo-Rationalism.

• You can read up on their culture and character information here
• You can read up on their technology here
• You can read up on their Guildfleets here

Maradonian Tech

Because you guys seem unable to get enough of the space nobility, I've created a page that compiles all Maradonian technology into a single page.  This was mostly a "prototype" for "Trader Tech" to see what it would need, but I also used it to showcase a new armor: the Chevalier, a pilot suit for wealthy nobles who like to play at being fighter aces (a highly requested feature during Tall Tales of the Orochi Belt).  You can check out it here.

Yes, I do intend to do that with other culture groups.

The Call to Adventure and Crossing the Threshold

I had been asked by some of my backers to prioritize the "Call to Adventure," or how to get a Psi-Wars adventure started.  I've been building my rules around the concepts outlined in the monomyth, thus these rules focused on: how to start an adventure, and how to actually get to the adventure.

The first isn't so different from what we see in Action, but I've put greater emphasis on "slice of life."  People don't much care about the daily lives of most characters in an Action setting: whether a sniper has a wife and kids is worth, at most, a brief nod, as we can imagine that.  But in a sci-fi setting, we might want to linger on the daily lives of characters: we want to see Luke tend to the Moisture Farm, and we want to see K get home from work and be greeted by his holographic girlfriend.  It helps show us how the setting works and grounds the rest of the story.  You can read up on it here.

Second, another longtime backer complained about his inability to grasp navigation details; he understood what it looked like on "the micro", as in what it took to get from one star to another star, but he had questions about "the macro," what a particular journey might look like and, he correctly pointed out, most journeys across the galaxy will look like "macro" journeys.  I've already hit this with a post, but if you missed it, you can read up on the details here.

Spaceships, Spaceships, Spaceships

The lionshare of the work on Traders focused on spaceships, and while I was there, I thought I might as well get caught up on the starships of the rest of the Galaxy.  I've included all the rest of the Imperial and ARC capital ships and updated a few more Redjack Corvettes (only two remain off the wiki).  You can check out the complete (current) list of vehicles here.

INTO THE FUTURE

I'm beginning to lay the basic groundwork for the next playtest which will focus on Civilian Tech, but in the meantime, I've dropped some polls on what people would like to see me focus on next.  The winners are:

• Orion Tech, the second-rate weaponry of the powers of the Umbral Rim, who pretend to be as effective as the Empire, while using their drugged-up slave-armies to conquer worlds.
• The Frontier Marshal: the break-out winner (and somehow longtime favorite) of our latest Template poll

Further, I'd like to work on the Outcast Lens, and round off some material to get us our fourth Bounty Hunter Lodge, the Manticore Initiative, which involves delving into the complex biomedical world of Xen.  I don't know how far I'll get with all of these, but I've already made some good progress, so with luck we'll have quite some things to show in the coming month.  For Backers, I've created a project report, so you can track the status of smaller elements

• For Subscribers
• For Patrons

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.

Psi-Wars Wiki Highlight: Navigation Revised

 A Backer, Mavrick, had many questions and complaints about how Navigation was handled in Psi-Wars.  This might seem like a small complaint, something easily handwaved away... right up until you have those questions! So I've tried to address it in a new update to the wiki, found here.

 EDIT: I've been reorganizing the wiki a bit.  It's actually here now.

If you're a backer, I have a design diary that outlines how I came to the conclusions that I did, including tables and a discussion of outdated, historical hyperdrives.  This is available for Fellow Travelers ($3+) Backers.

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• Patreon Link
  

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.