Shiny RPG fun

I'm having fun with GURPS rulebooks, making up a character I doubt I'll ever play.
... it's weird and partially maths based fun, but, I like it when things have rules and order and neat little boxes, so I like turning things into GURPS sheets.
Today I am playing with magic users, because I finally got GURPS Thaumatology and it's full of all sorts of fun, but I haven't read the basic rules in a while and I haven't followed the maths through lately, so I wasn't real clear on what it was they were modifying. Working out a character sheet can fix that.

I concentrate on the roleplay aspects, the characters that the numbers could imply. or the numbers that a character could imply, depending. ( Read more... )

Social food

I went and ate a meal with some people from the NSFG.
We went to the Thai Dragon in Norwich and had the all you can eat buffet.
See I look at that and think "£12.99? Hmmm. Am I really going to eat that much?" and end up eating a starter and being happy with that.
But today everyone was all eating all everything. First there were big plates of starters (I liked the triangles) with the vegetarians at one end of the table (me and A and new person Chris) and the meat eaters at the other, and then there was main course, and then there was main course, and then there was main course, and then there was main course, and then there was dessert. And some people were looking at another round of dessert but we had by then been eating for about three hours and I'd got the background music memorised (quite against my will) and someone else's pain meds were wearing off and so we stopped for the night.

That was a lot of eating.

I had starters and main course (three different sorts of vegetable and sauce, all of them probably nice, but when I try new things I think 'hmmm, new' and it takes a while to form other opinions), and then I had starter triangles again because I liked them best. They were crunchy on the outside and squooshy in the middle.

Also there was talking. I said some random things. Talking with no topic is harder. Talking with no topic and a full Thai restaurant and the music and the bar and the bubbles from the decorative plastic fish in tubes and the doors and the cooking and all is, well, harder a bunch.

But it was fun.

Also I know for sure which weeks are NSFG at the Ribs of Beef pub now, so I can turn up again. Probably. If I stay in Norwich after class.
So that will be fun.


:-)

Math is less fun when you're ignorant

I'm reading the GURPS Magic rules, specifically the Technology spells.
It says

The default assumption is that one kilowatt-hour (kWh) is equal to 10 energy;
thus, 360 kilowatts (kW) is equal to 1 energy/second,
and 360 kilowatt-seconds (kWs) or kilojoules (kJ) is equal to 1 energy.

... and I realise all I know about electricity is you plugs things into the wall and it makes them go.
... GCSE Science was a long long time ago. Also, it would not have covered this specific question.

So now I want to know, if I plugs my spells into the wall, how much does it make them go?
If magic is mains powered, do I get 1 energy/second, or a bazillion, or what?

It has a formula for figuring out how much energy a particular mage can channel safely (18 megawatts, for my mage. Which is again greek to me.)

It talks about carrying your own portable fusion generator. Would my mage need her own generator? Could she use a wall socket? How about overhead power cables? Underground cables would have penalties for not being able to see them.

GURPS has rules for all kinds of everything so it is likely that somewhere this is written down. But GURPS has rules for all kinds of everything, so it is unlikely that any given thing can be found unless you have an actual clue where to look.

Lacking a GURPS rule to do the math for me I could work it out from the actual knowing of things, but, well, I have not the knowing of these things.


... I like it better when I can figure out how many fireballs I can make go boom before my character has to have a lie down. For that all the numbers are in front of me. Also, boom!

... the energy spells give the possibility of really big kaboom. I likes...