Additional Totems

What follow are three totems that were cut from Totem Spirits for the sake of word count. These were held in reserve just in case they were requested, but since they won't be going into Pyramid, they are presented here.

Totem Spirits

by Timothy Ponce

Totem spirits are powerful spirits who choose to patronize an individual by granting him supernatural powers, aiding him in his endeavors, infusing him with a piece of their power, or otherwise answering prayers. Where many gods are distant or removed from the world, totem spirits are a real and constant presence in the lives of those with whom they ally themselves – referred to here as "spirit vessels" or simply "vessels."

This article seeks to expand the rules presented in Spirit Vessels from GURPS Thaumatology (p. 211). Other useful supplements include GURPS Fantasy, GURPS Horror, GURPS Powers, GURPS Powers: Divine Favor, and GURPS Social Engineering.

End of Pyramid Magazine

I just learned today that Pyramid Magazine, is closing down after the December issue this year. You can read the official announcement and discussion here, but I'll summarize:

• Pyramid Magazine was expensive to produce.
• It took up a great deal of SJGames' staff time to produce.
• It didn't earn enough money to support itself.
• It didn't benefit from collectors who wanted to get every issue.
• It wasn't perceived as providing official rules despite SJGames's intent.
• Money and staff efforts will be redirected toward putting out more official GURPS books.
• There are plans for re-releasing old GURPS products on print-on-demand.
• There are plans to update articles from old editions of Pyramid to 4th edition.

From this, it appears that GURPS itself is still going strong and will continue to be supported for the foreseeable future. This is good news. SJGames is simply streamlining their operation to produce more GURPS books - something I, for one, have wanted more than Pyramid issues as of late.

This isn't a knock against the authors in Pyramid so much as me finding it rare that there is an issue with more than one immediately useful article in it. And depending on the topic of the issue, none of them are useful. It would be more valuable to me as a consumer for an entire book on that one issue than six useful pages and 24 pages might never use. That way I can buy the books I need and know they go as far in depth into the subject as is necessary, as opposed to being constrained by word count and the need to leave space for other articles.

Naturally, your idea of a useful article differs from mine, and which ones should be turned into books differs, and therein lies the issue with Pyramid Magazine. I need issues about science fiction, and you need them about, for example, true crime drama. So if an article can be used for science fiction, I'm happy and you don't want to buy the issue. If it is about true crime drama, you want the issue, and I don't care about it. But if a GURPS Drama book is released, that would appeal to both of us, since you can apply it to true crime games and I can apply it to space opera.

Now you might say, "Hey! If Pyramid can have an article about true crime drama and space opera in the same issue, wouldn't you both buy it?" But consider this: a Pyramid issue cost 7.99 USD . That's 7.9 9USD for maybe 6 pages of useful content, on average. Compare that to Action 1 - Heroes, Action 4 - Specialists, Boardroom and Curia, City Stats, Crusades, etc. All of these cost 7.99 USD or less, and if you need information on that topic, these go into some serious depth. So you have to ask yourself, do I spend 7.99 USD on 6 pages of useful content or an entire book on a subject?

I guess what I'm getting at with this rambling prose is that while losing Pyramid is sad, it's not the end, and in many ways, it paves the road for more, better GURPS content. I optimistically look forward to seeing what SJGames does with the funds and manhours freed up by canceling Pyramid. 

Review: The Tome of the Black Island

I like worldbuilding. I like it more than rules tinkering (sorry Doug). I like it more than GMing. I like it more than playing. I say this to explain why I generally shy away from “fluff” articles and books that present premade world material. That’s the stuff I love to create, and those publications are taking that away from me! Interesting rules tweaks? Yes, please! Advice on how to run my creation in a game? Certainly! Options for playing a character in my world? Hell yeah! Hand me a world already made? No thank you. Keep this in mind as you read my review of The Tome of the Black Island by J. Edward Tremlett.

This month, I got a bit blindsided by one article in GURPS Pyramid#3/91 – Thaumatology IV. As usual, I gave the issue a cursory perusal to see where I wanted to begin. I helped review C.R.’s Codex Duello, so I marked that for last. W. A. Frick’s Technomysticism doesn’t cover a topic I, personally, care for, so that got bumped down the list, too. Ted Brock’s The Thaumaturgy of Metallurgy looked specific to standard spell magic, and being an RPM guy, I set that aside for later idea-mining. This month’s Random Thought Table had some interesting thoughts, as usual, but is a small offering. That brought me to The Tome of the Black Island, a systemless article about the mad writings of a depraved and corrupted wizard. I was intrigued.

I started reading it, expecting to find it far too fluff-heavy. I thought I’d get turned off pretty early on, but after about one sentence, I couldn’t put it down. It drew me into the story the way H.P. Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe did when I first starting reading them. Heck, it read like something out of the Cthulhu mythos. And as the plot twisted and turned, I couldn’t help but keep reading about Maldrick Udelholfen’s lust for power and how it ultimately destroyed him. The mad sorcerer’s tale perfectly married the sublime with the grotesque in an orgiastic display of gothic horror. I loved it.

But Tremlett’s real accomplishment lay in what he held back. Why didn’t those servants try to escape the fire? Why did Udelholfen return so disfigured? He waits until you think the story is over and you’ve dropped your guard. It’s time to read how to use the Tome in your game, what it contains, where it might pop up, – the crunchy bits. And as you examine those spell descriptions and possibilities, he hits you with another wave of horror. Now everything makes a little too much sense. Did I really want to know that? Oh god.

So when I say this article is excellent, take it as coming from someone who generally doesn’t want this sort of thing in his monthly issues. I feel like I might have missed out by dismissing some of Tremlett's past articles, too. I will say, I plan on going back and rereading them all. I’m going to check out his blog, Spygod, too.