GURPS Fantasy / Dungeon Fantasy (and beyond)

[Thomas Shey]

But speaking of GURPS and granularity - at least one genre book went against the trend. Their 50's B-moive atomic monster book (called Atomic Monster, iirc) had the Science! skill. Capital s and exclamation point required. It covered all science.

Atomic Horror. I'm a lifetime fan of 50's SF movies, so its my favorite GURPS product.

 

[Voidmoji]

But speaking of GURPS and granularity - at least one genre book went against the trend. Their 50's B-moive atomic monster book (called Atomic Monster, iirc) had the Science! skill. Capital s and exclamation point required. It covered all science.

Those are wildcard skills. There is an entire book on using wildcard skills to reduce the size of the GURPS skill list.

 

[thullgrim]

On the subject of Magic Systems I lean towards Sorcery myself. I find RPM to be theoretically better but harder to adjudicate in play. I tried in my Musketeer Monster Hunter campaign. It is entirely possible I didn't give it enough time. I have not read the GURPS Gamemaster RPM book yet maybe there's something in there that would help.

With Sorcery at least the spells/powers line up against other advantages and with various limitations and modifiers you can get to exact spell/effect/power you want. What I like about it as well is that you can reproduce the idea of spellbooks, unique spells, hidden knowledge, and other tropes pretty easily. Also pretty easy to get a combat mage going, something a little harder with the default system.

The default spell system is robust enough but it didn't get much of a glow up moving from 3rd to 4th. There's a number of articles around the help with prerequisites, and school organization that do help some. If you are running the default system you have to be pretty careful about some spells.

 

[Voidmoji]

On the subject of Magic Systems I lean towards Sorcery myself.

With Sorcery at least the spells/powers line up against other advantages and with various limitations and modifiers you can get to exact spell/effect/power you want. What I like about it as well is that you can reproduce the idea of spellbooks, unique spells, hidden knowledge, and other tropes pretty easily. Also pretty easy to get a combat mage going, something a little harder with the default system.

I used to really love the default spells as skills magic system for GURPS, back in the 2e and 3e days. Coming back to GURPS via 4e, I find the system hasn't aged as well as I'dve liked. It doesn't help that it was a rush job not properly aligned with other 4e rules.

I still like it, and can see using it for something, but I fell in love with magic as powers, and Sorcery is the reason why. Like you say, there is a lot of flexibility. This is especially true if you use Sorcery as a springboard, layer on your own ideas. It's easy to add things like requiring a skill check, or traditional fantasy concepts like requiring words and gestures.

Working with the sorcery system really made me learn how powers are made in GURPS 4e. Enraged Eggplant's massive list of sorcery spells helped immensely. I think I mostly understand how Affliction works...

 

[Autumnal]

No you don’t, I assure you. Understanding of Affliction recedes like like when you’re trying to escape a black hole.