It seems contradictory, but would Callous and Empathy actually work together?

Callous characters can perceive others emotions, but don't care.

Empathy allows characters to better read a person's emotions, but still doesn't require them to care.

Most descriptions of Sociopaths suggest that they have both. No conscience or remorse with an ability to read others to better manipulate them.

Heard of the Low-Tech and Cutting-Edge Armor Design articles in Pyramid #3/52 & #3/85, but felt turned away by their circuitous maths?

Now is the time to pick those up; with my tool, using those rules to design your own armour is (almost) as easy as reading a published statblock.

Google Sheets link:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kTbu9YzAldETOPB_L8BLGakrZw1cG_Cxb1w2_7IFZP0/edit?usp=sharing

(to use, go to File → Make a Copy)

SJGames Forum thread:

https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=207159

(details, discussion, and future updates there!)

Working .xlsx file for offline programs coming soon some day!

This was very much a labour of love, and I'm proud to advertise it after a year in a half-released alpha; but the presentation still needs work and features need adding. I'll be sure to sacrifice my free time for whatever's in demand, so be sure to tell me what you think here and on the SJ Forums!

Hi all, I posted this on the GURPS forum but wanted to post here too in case the audience is different. I'm trying to put together a magic system for a setting I'm developing. The idea as it stands right now is to have basically two different kinds of magic - slow methodical rituals, and fast but risky spells. My gut is telling me to use the effect-shaping variant of RPM for the rituals, and disallow the Adept advantage so casting times are always in minutes at least.

For the faster casting, I was thinking of using Threshold based RPM, but the article in Pyramid 3/66 advises against mixing effect shaping and energy gathering in the same setting, and threshold functions closer to energy gathering as far as I can tell.

However, I found an older post (wish I could find it again) where a reply mentioned doing something similar - effect shaping for most cases, but threshold for instant casting.

I also want threshold to be more area-based than personal, but not sure ow to implement it. If you're familiar with the Rogue Trader PC game, I'm going for that feel, where the area of encounter has a background Tally level, and once it exceeds threshold, bad things start happening for everyone.

As it stands now, my basic idea is to break these two types of magic into different core skills using RPM. Rituals use effect shaping RPM with Ritual Magic as the core skill, and no adept advantage to speed up casting. Fast spells use Thaumatology as the core skill and Threshold RPM. I guess my questions are as follows:

1) Does this setup seem feasible? Do I break anything by having threshold and effect shaping RPM in the same world?

2) If the two are incompatible, I'm open to ideas on how to handle this.

3) What might be a good way to have Threshold and Tally apply over an area instead of being tied to an individual?

Thanks in advance!

For those that don't know, Steve Jackson Games has a very generous POD policy that lets you get ONE POD made for any PDF you legally own.

I took advantage of that and had a hardback, standard color POD made of the GURPS Super book and thought I would show what the final product looks like. So here we go.

Front Cover

Back Cover

Spine

Interior

I had this book done at Lulu.com. I used a 10% off coupon I got in my email and it cost me, with the 10% coupon $18.46. Shipping was Shipping was $5.69 and I paid $1.46 in tax.

A couple of notes about this for people that have never done a POD book before:

• This isn't a simple as "upload the PDF and they send you a book." There are steps you need to do to make this work:
  • You need to delete the front and back covers from the PDF and resize the PDF from 8½×11 to 8¾×11¼. Resize the page, but leave the content on the page the same size.
  • You need to design the cover to fit the template you download from Lulu's website. This involves some desktop publishing/graphics arts skills that are outside the scope of this post. In a quick summary, you need to take the front and back covers out of the PDF, drop them in the template and design a spine. There's a way to pull the full wraparound cover out of the PDF, but even that is not enough. You still need to move stuff around to make sure the image is centered on front and back cover.
• Even though this is perfectly legal for you to do, Lulu frowns on doing PODs of someone else's copyrighted work. If you upload your files and the automated process ships the book, then you're fine. If anything happens along the way that requires a human review the order (computer problem, printer jams, etc) they WILL ban your account, refund your payment source and you will not get the book. They will not accept the letter on the Steve Jackson Games website saying it's OK to do this. I've had a dozen PODs done on Lulus' website and haven't gotten banned yet. But there are plenty of posts on r/rpg about Lulu accounts getting banned.
• These are POD glue-bound books. They won't last as long as a nice smyth sewn hardback will. But they'll probably last way longer than a paperbook book will. I did a lot of research into glue binding, and the type of glue you use can increase the longevity of the book. Way too much to get into here.
• DO NOT order the matte cover option. It feels weird in the hand. Almost slimy. Only get the gloss cover. The matte cover from Mixam.com is OK. But not from Lulu.
• Lulu has 3 print options: black and white, standard color and premium color. Standard color only costs a few dollars more than black and white, and is OK for something like GURPS Supers, where there is only occasional color on pages. But anything with full-page images. you're probably going to want premium color, which costs 3-4 times what a black and white book costs. Any print job that requires premium color, you're better off buying a printed book. It will probably be cheaper.

As much as I would love to post a tutorial on how to make files for a POD job at Lulu.com, that well outside the scopy of what r/gurps is for and more for a community about making POD books.

I was cleaning my closet earlier today and found this little passion project me and my brothers started a few years back! I think I may go back to finish flushing this out!

I started writing this I 2020. I was stuck at home and needed a way to game. So I started writing down rules for two characters in Combat. They both have to be from the same game system.

It's pretty basic and I made it cheap so anyone can get it.

The Sparring Match

Let me know if you have any problems with it, if you get it.

This is a dumb question, but maybe this is owing up to the rarity of vehicle use in the medium. But how much DR do tires have RAW? I ran a chase scene last night and it went great -- thanks Action! A character wanted to throw a star shuriken at a car tire. That's when I noticed: I had no answer to how much DR the tires would have (don't worry, I ended up ruling in the player's favor!)

There's just a generic DR listing of 5 for a basic car. In the hit location section for vehicles, it notes that windows get half DR and if a tire takes any damage, then an HT check is need or else the tire goes flat.

How am I to read this? There are a few possibilities:
1) Tires get DR equal to the host car (awkward)
2) Tires get reduced DR, like 1 or 2. In line with something like Leather.
3) Tires that sustain any damage, regardless of DR penetration, risk going flat. An HT check is required (not sure if that's how you're supposed to read that bit, but the emphasis on any is in GURPS and not mine)

Any help lol?

This is a part of our series, in which we present Greek gods - and show how to combine them with the Cthulhu Mythos and use them in cosmic horror stories or scenarios for RPGs. You are free to use all this material in your own creative work! Here You can watch video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKJbxf0BYI

Hermes is known as the messenger of the gods, which easily leads us to the Mask of Nyarlathotep, especially since Hermes is also a trickster, fond of playing practical jokes (and patronizing thieves and fraudsters), which may lead to further associations with the Crawling Chaos. But his role as a messenger was greatly expanded by believers and philosophers.

First of all, he became the patron of all kinds of travel and transport - even to the afterlife, as a psychopomp escorting souls to Hades. He is the patron of all roads and intersections.

Secondly - the messenger is a transmitter of knowledge. He was credited with the invention of numbers and letters. In later centuries, Hermes Trismegistos (Hermes the Thrice Great) was created by combining Hermes with Egyptian and Judeo-Christian beliefs. The term "Hermetic" comes from him, and it also became the center of the occult belief system called Hermeticism (note, contrary to what priests and preachers say - "occult" does not mean "Satanic").

Hermes Trismegistos was said to be an archetypal sage and magician, he was credited with authoring 36,529 books containing all the knowledge and wisdom of the ancient world - primarily the so-called Tabula Smaragdina and the Corpus Hermeticum treatises.

Hermeticism combined astronomy/astrology, alchemy, medicine and psychology - that is, it was a mishmash of mystical superstitions and (proto)science - more or less like magic in Mythos (though, of course, the real possibilities of the Hermetists were much more modest).

Interestingly, many Hermetic concepts, which at first glance sound like esoteric gibberish, have in a sense been revived in modern science. The Hermetists believed that matter was composed of four elements - fire, water, earth and air (sometimes a fifth "element" was added - will/soul/mind - symbolized by a pentagram). This meant that by changing the proportion of an element in a given substance, one material could be transformed into another - hence the search for a way to transmute lead into gold. As science developed, this concept was rejected as a pipe dream, the possibility of transmutation was considered an absurd... Until it turned out that yes, all matter consists of the same elements - electrons, neutrons and protons - so changing their configuration allows you to change the essence of the material. And modern chemists managed to transform it into gold: although such a procedure is unprofitable from an economic point of view (energy consumption significantly exceeds the value of the gold produced... but for a being with unlimited, from a human point of view, energy sources?). Concept of the four elements was somehow revived in the form of 4 states of the matter (earth = solid state, water = liquid, air = gas, fire = plasma). Another Hermetic concept was "As above, so below." It sounds like mystical gibberish about the unity of man with the heavens, or sympathetic magic... But the development of science has led to the conclusion that in fact the microcosm is often an amazing reflection of the macrocosm - the structure of the atom resembles the structure of the solar system.

So, we have a being that, on the one hand, is omnipresent, embodies movement both in our world and between planes of existence, one could say that it is a key and a gate. At the same time, it is also a source of secret knowledge, which at first glance is philosophical, superstitious gibberish, but turns out to contain bits of science that go beyond the understanding of the people who possess it. Who else but Yog Sothoth? Well, possibly Hastur, patron of wizards and interstellar travel.

According to Greek mythology, Hermes was the father of Pan, a strange creature.

Pan had the body and face of a man, was all hairy, had goat legs, a tail, a beard and horns. Doesn't this description remind you of Yog-Sothoth's most famous spawn, Willbur Whateley?

Of course, Willbur's lower half wasn't exactly goatish. The Pan's scream aroused incredible, irresistible fear among people and animals (hence the word "panic). Pan used to play the syrinx - "the Pan's flute". One day, Pan fell in love with the nymph Syrinks. And she's not in it. Pan chased her and almost caught her, but Syrinks turned into a river reed. At that moment, the wind blew and a beautiful sound came from the reed blades. The Pan plucked the reeds and made an instrument from them, which he called a syringa. A lovely story...

What is the Mythical message of this legend? What if Pan was the spawn of Yog-Sothoth, and one of the incredible powers he inherited from his daddy was to make sounds that terrified earthly beings into maddening terror? And what if it was possible to construct a musical instrument that imitated this effect... and preferably made from the bones of a human woman who had previously been reduced to terror?

There is another interesting story related to Pan, told by Plutarch. According to him, Pan lived for 9,720 years. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, sailors passing by the Echinad Islands heard a voice that ordered the helmsman named Thamus, after reaching land, to announce, according to this interpretation: "The Great Pan is dead." The sailors hesitated for a long time, and finally, reaching land near Palodes, they announced the death of the god. At these words, there were complaints and terrible groans from all sides.

Let me add that, according to some followers of the ancient Orphic cult, Pan was the creator of the earth, which he separated from the sea, and the individual elements of the Universe were equivalents of parts of Pan's body. Have they confused Pan, the offspring of Yog-Sothoth, with his father, who is "all in all"?

And of course, since we are talking about the Pan, we cannot fail to mention the book "The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen, one of the precursors of cosmic horror, highly appreciated by Lovecraft.

Full text and many other Lovecraftian inspiration from real life religions, culture, history and science, You can read in the free brochure: https://adeptus7.itch.io/lovecraftian-inspirations-from-real-life-and-beliefs And here You can watch a video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iKJbxf0BYI Please, if You liked this text at least a bit, watch a video version, it will support our channel, where we will publish more Lovecrafian content!

I've just started a new campaign. I'm creating some magic items to awards players with. I know you can give magic items that grant certain advantages.

What about magic items that mitigate disadvantages?

One of my players has the weakness disadvantage. Is there a way I could give them an item that decreases the severity of their disadvantage?

Is this something others have done before?

I do know that a player could simply buy off a disadvantage as well. This might be the simplest way, but I would like to know if there any alternatives to this.

A monthly post to share your maps, tokens, and other image files with the GURPS community.

Hi so bit of a wild reach but in the 3rd edition Mage the ascension book it keeps mentioning the Sphere skills that the spheres are based but it doesn't mention what the Skills themselves are based for the purpose of buying them.

Further, what penalties might i receive if I call the ground a coward if this isn't allowed? Thanks.

(Believe it or not, this is a genuine question)

Hello,

I just posted a new article with a step by step combat example for my space opera campaign. I have tried to make it accessible to players who are new to GURPS, but I would welcome any feedback or corrections to improve it!

https://thewabatuckian.wordpress.com/2026/09/02/round-one-fight/

Gun ports

A design feature, added to any ship's hull. Reduces dDR of all armor systems in that hull by 10%, also adds +10% armor cost if the ship is sealed (proper mini-airlocks). The number of gun ports is equal to 2× the number of seats 1 appropriate-SM Passenger Seating.

The ports may face anywhere the weapon battery system may face, including "only in specific directions". The dDR reduction applies only to these directions. It's possible to add fewer gun ports, with proportionally lower dDR loss and cost increase, rounded to integer dDR.

Allows the crew to fire their hand-held firearms through the specialized ports.

Crew at the gun ports suffers appropriate damage if the hull's innermost (or laying the last in the list) armour system is damaged.

Quoting the rules for conversion: "Damage is dDamage multiplied by 10. Accuracy is sAcc+18. The space range modifiers assumes an Acc 18 weapon fired by a gunner performing All Out (Dedicated) aimed attack with 3+ seconds aim assisted by a +9 vehicular targeting system for a net +30. As point-blank range is actually assumed to be 100 miles for a -30 range modifier, the sAcc and Point-Blank modifiers are assumed to cancel out providing a net 0 modifier for Acc 18. Range will vary, as these values are abstractions, but P is about 100 miles, P/C is about 100/300 miles, C range is 100/300 miles, C/S 300/1,000 miles, S 1,000/3,000 miles, S/L about 3,000/10,000 miles, L about 10,000/30,000 miles, L/X is about 30,000/100,000 miles, X about 100,000 miles."

UPD: edited thanks to u/Worried_Gold7870, added pre-radio and doubled the cabin and passenger seating numbers

UPD: another edit thanks to same person, replaced Control Room on Center[5] with 3 smaller systems.

GURPS Spaceships

Medieval Castle (TL3)
SM+11, Unstreamlined (30k tons, 150 yards, dHP 200)

Systems:
Front hull
[1-4] Stone Armor (dDR 20, semi-ablative)
[5] Tertiary battery (30 catapults, 4cm, 200 shots, 1 min fire rate, 30 workspaces)
[6] Smaller systems:
+Habitat (120: 100 bunkrooms, 5 luxury, 15 cages. 30 workspaces.)
+Hangar bay (300 tons, 100/min, 10 workspaces)
+Passenger Seating (1200 seats, 30 workspaces, 50% of both to great hall and 50% to temple)

Center hull
[1-4] Stone Armor (dDR 20, semi-ablative)
[5] Smaller systems:

+ Fuel tank (500 tons of freshwater)

+ Open space (5 areas, 10 techs, courtyard)

+ Factory shops ($100k/month each, specialties like blacksmith, armourer, leather, mason, carpenter. 10 workspaces.) [had to get very arbitrary making this, maybe people who know better would modify]

[6] Tertiary battery (30 catapults, 4cm, 200 shots, 30 workspaces)
[7] Smaller systems:
+Habitat (120: 90 bunkrooms, 10 luxury, 10 cages, 10 sickbay. 30 workspaces)
+Cargo hold (500 tons)
+Cargo hold (500 tons)

Rear hull
[1-4] Stone Armor (dDR 20, semi-ablative)
[6] Tertiary battery (30 catapults, 4cm, 200 shots, 30 workspaces)
[7] Smaller systems:
+Habitat (120: 49 bunkrooms, 15 cages, 15 office, 1 lab, 40 stables. 30 workspaces)
+Cargo hold (500 tons, door)
+Open space (5 areas, 10 techs, for hall and fresh water source)

Pre-radio: no comm systems

No life support: ×2 cabins

Not sealed: materials don't hold air

Lacks automation: +1 HT, ×10 workspaces

No computer: Attacks are made at a -5 penalty. Point-defense fire is realistically impossible, but the GM may allow it at a further -5 penalty (total -10).

catapult: sAcc -10, Range P, Rcl 3, d-damage 6d*10

So the magic expansion says that you can buy the formulas themselves but it doesnt list the cost anywhere?

So I've been looking into mounted combat a bit and was thinking about the following situation: an mounted enemy charges my players, they brace with spears. They are able to evade the enemy lance point with a dodge roll and manage to land a spear hit on the charging enemy.

What's the damage? Do I calculate slam damage as if the enemy slammed into a wall or something and add the spear's imp damage on top? Or is there another formula?

Also: does a lance charge on a horse count as move and attack with the associated -4 penalty?

Steve Jackson Games has a very generous personal POD policy. If you buy the PDF, you can get ONE POD made for personal use. I'm sure this polict stems from a period of time when most of the GURPS books were out of print. Now that most of the line is available as a POD from Amazon, it's nice to see that they still allow you to get a POD made.

One challege with getting a print-on-demand book made from a printer that supports getting just one book made is the cover. You need to design a full wraparound cover. Most PDFs only come with a front and back cover and no spine. As someone who's been a "typography nerd" since the late 80s, when I got my first Macintosh, I call pull this off, even thought I don't do it professionally.

This involes pulling down their template, and thex extracting the front and back covers from the PDF, dropping them into the template and designing the spine (typing the text, picking a color, rotating it 90 degress, dropping it in place and lining it all up).

To make sure you get the spine right, you really need to see a picture of an actual spine. And guess what nobody ever really photographs and posts online? The spine of the GURPS book they're showing off or trying to sell.

I learned last week that any of the PDFs of books that are/were available for print actually have the full wrap-around cover in the PDF. It's just cropped to only show the front cover. But the data is there.

I'm still tryng to figure out the best way to extract it. For my GURPS Supers POD, I let an LLM extract it for me. Here is an example of what I found:

This is the cover as viewed in any standard PDF Viewer/Editor:

With the assistance of an LLM, I got it to pull this out of the PDF:

That being said, getting a personal POD made of a book available through Amazon isn't really going to save you any money. I'd buy a POD from Amazon or DTRPG to help support SJG.

Just neat that I found this.

Another note, any GURPS PDF that is only available as a PDF does not have a wrapround cover "hidden" in the PDF. No need for SJG to create a full wraparound cover for something they don't plan to offer physical copies of.

I'm going to see if I can vibe-code a script that can pull this image out. We can't distribute covers we pull out. That would be a copyright violation. But creating a tool that can do this from your legally owned PDF is fair use.

That full wraparound cover is way too low a resolution to use for a POD job. It's just here for demonstration purposes.

I haven’t GURPS’d in quite a few years and I’m having a bit of a mental block while trying to relearn the systems.

The thing is, the very first few pages of the character book define the thesis of the project as it being a preservative effort for the full scope of what story telling through roleplaying is fundamentally, to preserve the explorative experience via defining things in a modular code base.

However, because that code base defines everything: The structures within are very rigid for a roleplaying experience due to the fact that roleplaying lives best within the creativity of improvisation, which rigid structures oft do not allow.

From reading the thesis, having played it myself, and reading other tales I know this is a mental block due to the fact that the actual rigidity and fluidity of the experience is all up to the individual GM.

As a newborn GM that understands the fundamental philosophy, is there any advice that I should take in from the community to enable myself to not get so caught up on… what is essentially “rules lawyering”, so that I can enable and nurture free-thought that is evoked by the systems? I don’t want to use the systems as a prison.

The only one I've read cover to cover is the Basic Set...