From: bkoike@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Bryce Koike)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: GURPS Fantasy II
Date: 25 Jan 93 18:02:43 GMT
Organization: University of California, San Diego

In article <C18oHB.C8E@csugrad.cs.vt.edu> dripton@csugrad.cs.vt.edu (David Ripton) writes:
>
>I just read Fantasy II and I'm curious what people think of it and 
>whether anybody's using it yet.

	$17 was a lot for a game world that I didn't know if I could
use.  I regret not buying it, really.  Judging from the discussion
on the Illuminati BBS, it sounded extremely interesting, although a
bit difficult to run a game in.
	(Actually, that discussion influenced parts of the game
world I'm fiddling with...)

>I like the low-tech, no-money (read: low maintenance) idea and the 
>dark and scary background, but I just can't see how a 100-point 

	While I like poor characters (read: no swords...), no-money
is a little extreme for my own tastes.  Dark and scary is a very
good thing!

>campaign can use such severe enemies without turning into Paranoia.
>You've got Soulless, which are your average 500-point death machines.
>There are assorted extra-tough monsters, and then there're the gods
>just in case you're bored. The book rules against actually using all
>this frequenyly, but then why is it all there?

Reason #1:	If you're running 500-point characters
Reason #2:	Use them occasionally to spice up the game, but you
don't want to annihilate the party, now do you?  (Did anyone
question Demogorgon from AD&D?  He's certainly too powerful for some
weakling 1st level party...)

	Also, there's ALWAYS a lot that can happen in a game.  Can't
parties have human adversaries?  Etc.  They're there, I'm assuming,
because the author considered them pertinent and important to the
game world.  Not everything in a game is designed to be there for
the players to beat up on.  For an example, there's the Snow Serpent
in my own world which paralyzes/kills/petrifies with a glance (based
on GM preference and how evil she chooses to be), is incredibly
strong, has a bite which can kill instantly...
	Why have it?  Because it happens to belong there, that's
why.  To leave something like that out just because the players
wouldn't be able to beat up on it unless they had major magic items
and were 500 points is a little silly, I think.
	Personally, I can think of many uses for a 500-point single
adversary, whether it is intelligent or not, and not all of them
center around hacking it into little pieces...

>Actually, I kind of like the idea of GURPS Paranoia...

	Having played Paranoia, I would never buy it, but I wouldn't
mind.  Teenagers From Outer Space is more along my line of humorous
role-playing and I seriously doubt that it could translate to GURPS
well (in fact, I think that it's fine the way it is...)

	Plus, (still on the line of major-nasty baddies and whatnot)
they add a great atmosphere.  If the players are idiots enough to
think that they can take on anything because the GM would save them
if they got in over their heads, then their characters should die
violently and quickly.  They'd deserve it.  They should base their
actions on their own strengths and the dangers involved.  In my
world there's a ravine down which a deadly wind known as the Reaver
blows which carries along with it shards of ice and rock sheared
away from the walls of the ravine.  To enter the wind is literally
deadly as your skin is stripped from bone, but if my players want to
go leaping in there, they're welcome.  I'd give those with the
common sense advantage a chance to do something more intelligent...

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