OSSR: GURPS Fantasy II

[JigokuBosatsu]

Thousands of years ago, before the mad gods arrived, the Mad Lands were dominated by a race of 'malevolent jade trapezoids.'

Whatever shit Laws is on, I want some.

Malevolent jade trapezoids, you say?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Concluding Thoughts...

The Mad Lands are something like World Tree: a great deal of imagination and thought put into a unique and intriguing setting that winds up being better as inspiration fodder than as the game it was written to be. World Tree is mostly failed by its system, but the Mad Lands are mostly failed by the question 'what do we do and why do we do it?' If the Campaigns chapter replaced its one-shot adventure seeds with the actual foundation and structure of a campaign, I probably would have run a game of it ever. I have used the Mad Lands material in a game, but it involved the PCs being the leaders of a big pile of Vikings who attempted to colonize the place without properly researching it first. That was good times.

But I still crack it every so often to soak up the cool anthropology of the natives, the horrorcraft of the monsters, and the gods' weird mix of terror, humor, and sympathy. It really helps to kick my imagination out of old ruts and that's worth what I paid for the book all by itself.

[tussock]

Just caught this, thanks, nice stuff. You trailed off under Gakox Pezep, BTW.


The Campaign thing in GURPS writes itself when players make their PCs. Duty to the village buys you the village as a Patron, and then a fleshless turning up both mechanically forces you to act and punishes you for failing by making your Patron weaker as folks die. GURPS disadvantages are generally pretty solid like that, players will take them even if they don't get points for them, because it directs the problems they will face through the game.

Which is why they have to give GM veto over character design. That and you could just start with a star destroyer and vape the place from orbit.

[angelfromanotherpin]

The Campaign thing in GURPS writes itself when players make their PCs. Duty to the village buys you the village as a Patron, and then a fleshless turning up both mechanically forces you to act and punishes you for failing by making your Patron weaker as folks die.

Right, right, except that the book doesn't tell you to do that. In fact half of that it specifically tells you not to do.

As the Mad Lands have a non-hierarchical, tribal society, there are no large organizations available to act as patrons for PCs. Neither is there the sort of factional competition that would lead powerful individuals to seek followers. The communal property ethic makes the question of Patron-supplied equipment irrelevant. This limits the use of the Patron advantage, but does not rule it out completely.

And then it goes on about how your uncle can be a low-grade Patron.

Also, exactly zero of the sample characters have a Duty to the village of any kind. So it seems like that's not really a thing that people have.

[tussock]

Right you are, then. So it's a fallback to the motivation being that you want to be the bestest hunter and fisher (or grower and crafter, respectively), and the main trick with a fleshless is having a high enough willpower to make whatever check the GM asks for to ignore it.

All rather nihilistic, really. I guess that's what he was going for: don't mention the dead, don't do anything the same way twice, don't fight the monsters, just ignore things and go fishing with the survivors (but BEWARE THE RIVERS!). I guess at some point you have to act so that you don't lose the character, and then forget about it, and don't do it the same way twice.

So the play dynamic is being minimally responsive to the GM waving their dick in your face. Just walk away and ignore it, over and over again, and when you eventually freak out and try to say or do something the gods come and turn you inside-out, so the GM can wave the corpse at any remaining PCs. Also, be super-creative about it. That's not abusive at all, then.