Tag: gurps

New GURPS Martial Art: The Five-Fold Dance. [GURPS 4e]

The Five-Fold Dance (10pt)

This is a martial art that is in the process of breaking out from ‘workaday combat school’ mode to enter into ‘cinematic fighting style’ status. The core teachings are a fairly straightforward unarmed / melee combat style, with an emphasis on misdirection and movement. The non-cinematic style is perfectly serviceable, and well-suited for an adventurer, but not otherwise noteworthy.

It’s the cinematic version that’s crucial here, though. There are five advanced schools, which very much do require Trained By A Master to join (adepts only have to buy it once, though). Mountain School teaches toughness, Kite School teaches movement, Shears School teaches advanced unarmed combat techniques, Sage School teaches body awareness, and Worm School teaches melee weapon combat techniques. Adepts in all five Schools constantly spar and compete with each other – Shears and Worm in particular both feel that the other School has stolen their rightful name – but the only way to become a full acolyte to a Master is to learn the secrets of at least three Schools, and to achieve the level of Master itself requires the mastery of all five. Adepts are thus tacitly expected to be able to balance competition and cooperation; this works… remarkably well, considering that highly-disciplined, yet spirited, martial artists are involved. Continue reading New GURPS Martial Art: The Five-Fold Dance. [GURPS 4e]

GURPS Martial Art: Umbrella-Fighting [GURPS 4E]

Umbrella-Fighting (7pt)

This style is not really suited for realistic campaigns, but it should work fine in urban magical or steampunk ones.  It need hardly be said that anyone planning to use this style should invest in a specially-reinforced umbrella (or a weapon that simply looks like an umbrella).  Still, as a fighting weapon the classic unfolding umbrella has its charms.  Adepts typically use a long, heavy umbrella (Staff) with a pointy ferrule (Rapier) and a curved handle (Axe/Mace); sudden switches and reversals of grip and stance are practiced until they become second nature. Note that the umbrella must be reversed in order to use it as a mace.

Continue reading GURPS Martial Art: Umbrella-Fighting [GURPS 4E]

Pouch of Wind [GURPS 4e]

Pouch of Wind  (Regular)

This spell pushes air into an inverted container with enough force to cause it to take flight. The exact angle of the thrust can be altered at will by the spellcaster, allowing for directed flight.  Lifted objects have a Move of 3; add 1 Move for every point of mana spent above the base cost.  This spell explicitly can be used on a parachute, parasail, or umbrella.

This spell is part of the Air College, not Movement.

Continue reading Pouch of Wind [GURPS 4e]

Umbrella-chute [GURPS 4E]

You ever have one of those days where you just had three ideas at once?  Today mine was on umbrellas.  Happy GURPS Day!

 

Umbrella-chute   (DX/Easy)

Defaults: DX-4, Parachuting -2

This is the ability to maneuver and land while using an umbrella as an improvised parachute.  This skill does absolutely nothing to reduce velocity; use an appropriate spell or power for that.  What it can do is allow the user to aim for a precise landing zone on the ground, and to avoid injuries from a bad controlled landing.

New Martial Art: Full-Contact Wellness Care [GURPS 4e]

Full-Contact Wellness Care (17pt)

This is absolutely, explicitly, and without a doubt a cinematic style. Full-Contact Wellness Care was invented by an eccentric martial arts master who also happened to be a physician: it takes pressure point and chi flow theories to their logical conclusion by seeking to manipulate a patient’s health via the use of precise applications of kinetic energy. The style is a jumbled mishmash of various esoteric and mundane theories on physiology, but you can use it to kick kidney stones out of a patient’s body without lasting harm and/or permanent pain, so who cares?

Note that all legitimate practitioners of Full-Contact Wellness Care swear to follow the Hippocratic Oath. In the original Greek.  Illegitimate practitioners typically buy a few points in Poison and don’t bother holding back on their attacks.

Continue reading New Martial Art: Full-Contact Wellness Care [GURPS 4e]

GURPS Advantage/Package: Shoggie-Ridden [GURPS 4e]

Shoggie-Ridden [12 pt]

This particular… affliction? Condition? Situation? …is one for the xenobiology books. There is a particular planet in human space where the dominant sentient species (called ‘Shoggies,’ for reasons known only to its discoverer) is a protoplasmic pile of protean goo with an unique life cycle. Shoggies reproduce by injecting reproductive material into the living bodies of large – say, human sized – animals. The injected material then permeates the host body, fortifying its blood, repurposing its vital organs, and… does nothing else for the remainder of the host’s natural life, beyond helping to keep it alive. Once the host dies (for whatever reason), the material consumes the rest of the host body within 12 hours, transforming it into a baby Shoggie. Most adult Shoggies have a reasonable analogue to human nurturing instincts; the ‘infant’ typically has no problem with finding ‘parents’ to raise it. Continue reading GURPS Advantage/Package: Shoggie-Ridden [GURPS 4e]

GURPS Discworld [4E] and Mars Attacks! now on pre-order.

The GURPS Discworld Roleplaying Game and GURPS Mars Attacks, to be precise. They’re doing pre-orders this month and counting all the sales as counting towards the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Kickstarter stretch goals, which means if you buy the books now I may eventually get free shipping.  That’s reasonable all around, I think: I’m not likely to do another pledge drive this year, but if you’re going to buy the books anyway you might as well pre-order them, right? Continue reading GURPS Discworld [4E] and Mars Attacks! now on pre-order.

GURPS Martial Art: Python Strike Thesis Defense Kung Fu [GURPS 4E]

Blame this.

Python Strike Thesis Defense Kung Fu [8/11 pt]

In that room, in that place, it is either you, or it is the snake.  The snake knows its purpose. Do you? – Pat Whittaker, PhD. (Botany)

It was perhaps inevitable that the venerable Western practice of requiring PhD. candidates to wrestle a snake as part of their doctoral thesis defense would eventually spawn its own martial art. Python Strike Thesis Defense Kung Fu is a fairly brutal discipline, in its way: much like graduate school, it is uncompromising about – and uncaring of – weakness.  Adepts in the art obviously prefer to train on snakes, but the hard truth of the matter is that snakes are expensive.  Anonymous brawling in campus bars and illegal tournaments in the steam tunnels are typically cheaper… or, at least the costs don’t come out of department budgets, which is really the important thing.

There is a rumored cinematic version that is supposedly used to endure the legendary Actinic Marriage of Pain ritual (and thus obtain tenure), but few hard details exist.

Continue reading GURPS Martial Art: Python Strike Thesis Defense Kung Fu [GURPS 4E]