December 29, 2011: GURPS And Kenneth Hite In 2011

Today's Daily Illuminator is brought to you by game designer extraordinaire Kenneth Hite.

If you're running a game about chasing Nazi werewolves through alternate histories, this was a pretty good year for you. Not only did you have all that great Monster Hunters goodness from PK, you also got some mileage out of all three of my releases for GURPS in 2011.

Back in May, the Third Edition anthology I helmed, GURPS WWII: Weird War II, came out in GURPS Classic PDF from e23! That book came out eight years ago, in 2003, and it's still just as ridiculously over-stuffed with 1940s-vintage nonsense as it was then! Much of that nonsense is free of statistics (just like all other books about Nazi occultism!) and so, like the Secret of Vril, it can power GURPS games of any vintage.

In August, the new edition of GURPS Horror Fourth Edition dropped in PDF format, and shipped the next month in glorious black and white hardback form. At one point or another, I think that book nearly killed everyone it came into contact with, like one of those sexy shirtless werewolves the kids all love so much. But like the kids who love those werewolves, I think we can agree that it was worth the risk. The werewolves in the book (both the original-recipe medieval werewolf and the modern wolf-man), sadly, are not sexy and shirtless. But here you go: just add Appearance (Beautiful) [12] and Quirk (Shirts can't contain the beast within) [-1], and you're good. Make him a shirtless sexy Nazi werewolf with Intolerance (Total, Non-Aryans) [-10] and Quirk (Thinks Himmler smells nice) [-1] and it's a point-neutral package!

Where was I? Oh, yes. My GURPS books. In September, we all got to see GURPS Infinite Worlds: Worlds of Horror in PDF. This one was, if I recall correctly, e23 Dark Lord Steven Marsh's idea. Having seen me crank out alternate histories by the carload in "Suppressed Transmission" back in the day, he got the brainstorm to commission six horror-themed AHs to support two books at once! Nice going, say I. There are werewolves mentioned in Duzakh (a world where vampirized Etruscans menace the Persian Empire), and they're strangely attracted to world-jumpers in Tsarevich (jumbled 19th-century Russian politics -- and a big old meteoric reality shard in Central Europe -- eventually creates a modern world strangely similar to the backdrop of all Hammer Films). Plus zombies, Frankensteinian monsters, killer robots, and Stalin! Stalin is not a werewolf. He's much, much worse.

What's that? You're not running a game about chasing Nazi werewolves through alternate histories? Hmmm. How about a game of insane bushido cultists (warped by the Corruption rules in GURPS Horror Fourth Edition) using Mass Magic from GURPS WWII: Weird War II to blow open a gate between worlds? (Imperial Japan is the world's leading power in Reality Gotha-Z! Admittedly, the rest of the world is pretty much overrun by zombies -- but still.) Who knows what could emerge? (See pp. 72, 79, and 97 of GURPS Horror Fourth Edition for what could emerge. And p. 126 for some hints on how to reveal it.) There you go! Glad I could help.

See you all in 2012!