I picked up the latest edition of GURPS Horror on Tuesday and have been happily devouring it since. Like all GURPS books worth their salt, it has broad applicability to anyone wanting to run a horror game, not just GURPS players. This edition (like the last one) is primarily authored by Ken Hite (although some passages from earlier editions remain; it's been amusing picking them out - I wasn't joking when I said I practically memorized the 2nd edition!); Hite is easily my favorite gaming author working today. He never disappoints, and GURPS Horror 4th edition is no exception.
Chris Kutalik of the likewise always-excellent Hill Cantons blog posted yesterday about the disappearance of the idiosyncratic authorial voice from RPG products, a major pet peeve of mine as well. A couple commenters rightly, I think, identified a big part of the problem as the "design by committee" approach to RPG writing that has come to dominate the industry since sometime in the 90s. One of the reasons I enjoy Ken Hite's work as much as I do (other than the fact that he's an amazing font of gamable inspiration) is that he's one of the few "mainstream" authors who has managed to retain a distinctive and entertaining authorial voice reminiscent of games of old (like my beloved 2nd edition GURPS Horror) or indie games today.
By way of example, here are a couple of my favorite passages so far:
Flare Pistol (TL6): This single-shot, break-open weapon is the best thing to shoot at mummies. Ever. Inflicts 1d burn per second for 10 seconds after impact while merrily illuminating the whole tomb - or at least a 5-yard radius.
[From the section describing how to stat up an animal horde.] Example: A jilted vampire fills a football stadium with bats.... [The swarm is] dispersed after losing 800 HP - by which time the vampire will have absconded with her unrequited quarterback love.I love it when an RPG book inspires me, fills my head with visions of how cool a game could be. Hite's writing is full of these sort of throwaway brilliant ideas, and hardly a page goes by without one cropping up. By way of other examples, I'm now dying to run a short campaign set in a Roman border fort, the PCs dealing with a druid-cum-manitou reaping vengeance for the displacement of the local Celtic tribe; a medieval procedural investigative one-shot featuring a werewolf-as-serial killer; a good old fashioned psycho killer romp (taking advantage of the Psycho Killer template that features the awesome Ghostly Movement ability - turn your head and he's gone!)...and I haven't even gotten through the bestiary chapter or made a start on the campaigning chapter.
::sigh:: So many ideas, so little time. If you want to be as gleefully frustrated as I, GURPS Horror 4th edition comes highly recommended.
What, you want more? Uh, here's a cool movie trailer:
No! Not the woman in the red dress! What a waste. Le sigh.
ReplyDeleteI need to NetFlix that movie ASAP!
Alas, the site that hosts the badass Michael Whelan cover objects to your linking that cover directly, without jumping through their own navigational hoops. Because they don't like traffic being driven their way by curious and/or admiring bloggers. Shitheads.
ReplyDeletechristian: Yes. Yes you do. We'll wait 75 minutes while you go and watch it.
ReplyDeleterichard: Man, some people. Thanks for the heads up. Link changed to another, non-commercial site that should work now.
I sent them a note to tell them how their obstructive image-of-text gave me a bad impression of their site and company.
ReplyDeletePeople should know, when they look like asses and it could be harming their commercial interests.
Totally agree about Hite's work. I mentioned him on the Google+ thread related to Chris's post. I haven't picked up Horror 4th ed. yet, but I'll have to correct that oversight.
ReplyDeleteGhostly Movement sounds like what review sites call Offscreen Teleportation.
ReplyDeleteAlways a fan of Hite's work. Picked this up but have only scanned it so far, but even that has revealed useful and amusing bits.
ReplyDeleteHrm... I usually prefer substance over style. The first quoted passage is a bit too flip for my tastes. The second though is pitch perfect.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the mention (though I maybe quibble and not in a false modest way about "always-excellent").
ReplyDeleteOne thing I love about blogging is the constant discovery thanks to the people around you. Honestly I was ignorant of Hite's work now I am going to rustle me up some copies. Thanks for the tip-off.
How different is this edition from the previous one?
ReplyDeleteckutalik: Very well, how about "always excellent except for that one post...you know the one I mean"?
ReplyDeleteHappy to turn you on to Ken Hite! I agree--I've picked up so much from my fellow bloggers over the past 3+ years. I'd particularly recommend you check out The Day After Ragnarok; it's a great mash-up of 30s pulp fantasy, 70s spy thrillers, and British adventure tales.
Lisa: If you have the 3rd edition, this one builds off of that so there's a fair amount of repeat material. However, pretty much every section has been expanded; both of those quotes I supplied above were pulled from sections that don't exist in previous editions. This edition is about 50 pages longer and it shows. The official page says, "Its time-tested advice on running scary campaigns has been expanded to include current trends and tropes, showing you how to run everything from old-fashioned Gothic and supernatural horror to the latest J-horror, survival horror, and torture horror. The famous bibliography of unspeakable tomes and frightening films has grown to match. And the monsters return with unpleasant friends, as monsters inevitably do – all with GURPS Fourth Edition racial templates that let you use them as foes, as sinister Allies and cursed Alternate Forms, and even as PCs! Add the new and disturbing powers, the expanded rules for madness and corruption, and countless other updates..."
Ken Hite is the most consistently interesting, readable designer I know of in RPGs today. I kept a subscription to Pyramid through the mid 90s solely for his Suppressed Transmission columns (should still be available on sjgames' website). His Tour de Lovecraft is both a really nice bit of literary criticism and a font of campaign ideas. So yeah, I say look out his stuff.
ReplyDeleteHite and/or Laws are my marks of quality on a game. I agree about the watering down of the authorial voice, too.
ReplyDeleteTo combine the two points, one of my favourite authorial interpolations is in Laws' "Rune," an RPG based on a computer game. There is a mechanism for "save games," that Laws tries manfully to rationalise within a paper RPG milieu as being the favour of the gods, or a crack in space/time or... and then gives up and says, "Look, it's a save game position, okay?"