August 1, 2017: Every Hero Loves Powering Up

It's no accident that most GURPS Dungeon Fantasy books focus on character creation and advancement. While interesting plots and dangerous foes are integral to a good dungeon-crawling campaign, the only thing that gets players more excited than creating an amazing adventurer is finding new ways to power that hero up! Because of this, we've released dozens of official power-ups in Pyramid articles and GURPS books (particularly GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-Ups) - but there's no reason to limit yourself to those.

One of the easiest ways for the GM to keep a delving game fresh and exciting is to create new, custom power-ups. What sort of things do the players love doing? If the bard always uses her Diplomacy to pump bar patrons for rumors, make that into a technique and let her buy it up! What restrictions do the players find annoying? If the scholar's Wild Talent feels unimpressive compared to his regular skills, take a peek in GURPS Powers to see if there's a way to beef it up!

If the GM doesn't feel up to composing new crunchy bits, he can draw on the knowledge of others, from rules-savvy players to members of our forums. For example, in the Dungeon Fantasy game I'm playing, the GM regularly takes advantage of my Games skill to help create new power-ups, lenses, and more - both for our PCs and for his own NPCs. I've posted these on my LiveJournal for anyone who wants to use them; hopefully, they'll inspire you to create (and share) your own unique creations!

-- PK