December 31, 2008: Designer's Note: GURPS Thaumatology

GURPS Thaumatology is finally out. That's always a nice feeling when it happens with any book, of course, but this one . . . has quite a history. I won't bore anyone with the details -- I think most people who are interested have heard them already -- but words like "jinx" did sometimes come up. Plus, I have 4,658 messages in the book's playtest folder.

Anyway, what is it? It's the Bumper Book of GURPS Magic Systems. Or rather, magic system construction systems. A lot of it is stuff that previously appeared in GURPS Third Edition books or articles -- but integrated, polished, and revised for Fourth Edition. And other parts are brand new. So now, you can (say) work Ogham-alphabet symbol magic, using threshold effects (previously known as "Unlimited Mana") instead of FP costs, and rolling comedy-oriented critical failure effects -- and you only need the one book.

Of course, with this much included, nobody is going to use all of it in a single campaign (I rather hope), although I imagine that a lot of people will use many different bits of it in different games over the years. It'll be interesting to watch.

--Phil Masters

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