{"id":4092,"date":"2017-07-05T23:10:25","date_gmt":"2017-07-06T06:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/?p=4092"},"modified":"2018-01-12T23:51:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T07:51:55","slug":"scattershot-july-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/scattershot-july-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Scattershot – July 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hail, hello, and happy\u00a0GURPSDay<\/a><\/em>, all!<\/p>\n

It’s been a few months<\/a> since the last Scattershot post, and today I have a bunch of little tidbits to share that might not otherwise warrant their own blog post.<\/p>\n

GURPS and Fantasy Grounds\/Roll20<\/h2>\n

First off, the bad news: the Roll20 quick encounter I posted<\/a> about before<\/a> didn’t end up happening due to player postponement, but we’re still hoping to do it in the future. The\u00a0good news is, I spent some time on the holiday weekend poking around with Fantasy Grounds<\/a> instead and finding that it, too, rocks for running GURPS games online!<\/p>\n

After experimenting on my own a little bit, I ended up chatting with Saithan, the author of one of the GURPS Rulesets for Fantasy Grounds. He showed me around his personal GURPS setup — it’s more advanced than his latest publicly-available build<\/a>\u00a0and it’s fantastic<\/em>, something he’s built up over like 8 years of work. Very impressive!<\/p>\n

I would probably start off using Ronnke’s latest GURPS ruleset myself, as it is current with the latest Fantasy Grounds “Core RPG” upgrade (which added a lot of tweaks and features). Here you can find<\/a> the Ruleset itself, the GURPS Theme by Gigermann (which gives the UI a more modern, “GURPS-y” feel than the standard fantasy-themed FG theme), and a GCA exporter file from Andraax for importing GCA characters directly into Fantasy Grounds (I haven’t actually used this yet, but that would be a huge<\/em> time saver!)<\/p>\n

Again, I was just messing around for an hour or two, but this should give you some idea of what the program looks like.<\/p>\n

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The left monitor (portrait) has GURPS Character Assistant and the GURPS Basic Set PDF open, with Fantasy Grounds dragged over the middle (landscape) and right (portrait) monitors along with a browser window (currently opened to GURPS Calculator<\/a>. Fantasy Grounds is showing the chat window with some of the automatic rolls, a character sheet, village map (with token and fog of war), and a few GURPS-specific tables I’ve started working on. Everything at the GM’s fingertips!<\/p>\n

Here, though, is the biggest drawback to Fantasy Grounds, Roll20, and all the other Virtual TableTops out there: there is no official GURPS support<\/strong>. With Fantasy Grounds, you can purchase the actual, official D&D 5E books and immediately have all their content available inside the VTT. Or buy adventures for D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Savage Worlds and others that come with tokens, pre-made NPC sheets, maps, all the materials you need to run that adventure for a group. Roll20 also has a license with Wizards of the Coast, offering official versions of those products for their own VTT.<\/p>\n

Seeing these marketplaces just flooded with all this official content for games I don’t play is crushing<\/em>, and I hope against hope that one day GURPS will have an official VTT presence\u00a0somewhere<\/em>. I would support the hell out of that, and I know I’m not alone.<\/p>\n

For the moment, though, I’m going to be doing a\u00a0lot<\/strong> of typing and copy\/pasting if I want anything resembling a barebones GURPS setup. Naturally, I’m not going to type in entire chapters of, say, skill or advantage\/disadvantage descriptions. But as characters get created, slowly over time I should build up a database of material. I do want to get started on things like tables for Random Hit Location, Crit Hits\/Misses, Fright Checks, etc.<\/p>\n

I’m going to keep experimenting with Fantasy Grounds when I have time. To learn more, I’d recommend reading this forum thread<\/a> and maybe watching a couple of videos (like an overview<\/a> of the ruleset features, or an actual play<\/a> of a one-shot).<\/p>\n

New GURPS Dry-Erase Battlemat<\/h2>\n

Okay, getting back to running GURPS games in the non-virtual world, I found yet another product that I think a lot of GMs will dig. It’s a folding dry-erase gameboard<\/a> with hexes on one side and squares on the other! Here it is folded up (with a character sheet for scale), and unfolded with some cheapo Alien\/Colonial Marine figs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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It is very sturdy, compact when folded, large enough for the majority of battles I run when not, and seems to clean off the dry-erase markers nicely (though I haven’t yet left them on for any appreciable time before wiping off). Perfect for GURPSin’ out!<\/p>\n

TV Bits and Pieces<\/h2>\n

Finally, as I had a long holiday this past weekend, I caught up on a few TV shows.<\/p>\n