What have I written?
I am a fan of GURPS, put out by Steve Jackson Games. Because of that, I've done a bit of playtesting, made some contributions to a couple of GURPS books, and collected a god-awful amount of email from Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch into a number of HTML documents - the aforementioned Krommnotes.
In order, then:
Playtesting
I've been a credited playtester on a number of 3rd Edition GURPS books. They include (listing the ones I can remember)
GURPS Age of Napoleon
GURPS Alternate Earths
2
GURPS Atlantis
GURPS Castle
Falkenstein
GURPS Cliffhangers
GURPS Covert Ops
GURPS Dragons
GURPS Deadlands
GURPS Japan (2nd edition)
GURPS Low-Tech
GURPS Magic Items
3
GURPS Modern Firepower
GURPS Monsters
GURPS New Sun
GURPS Ogre
GURPS Planet
of Adventure
GURPS Rogues
GURPS Spirits (along
with everyone else, so don't be impressed)
GURPS Steampunk
(Lead Playtester)
GURPS Swashbucklers
(3rd edition)
GURPS SWAT
GURPS Transhuman Space:
Personnel Files
GURPS Traveller:
Ground Forces
GURPS Traveller: Star
Mercs
GURPS Traveller:
Starports
GURPS Traveller:
Sworld Worlds
GURPS Traveller:
Far Trader
GURPS Undead
GURPS Villains
GURPS Warriors
GURPS Who's Who 1
GURPS Who's Who 2
GURPS World War II
GURPS World
War II: All the King's Men
GURPS World War II: Dogfaces
GURPS World War II: Frozen
Hell
GURPS World War
II: Return to Honor
GURPS World War II: Iron
Cross
GURPS World War II:
Hand of Steel
I was also "Master at Arms" on GURPS Low-Tech, which is a glorified way of saying that I went from Backup Lead Playtester (to the very able Shawn Fisher, also Dogfaces author) to being in charge of handling the weapons and armor appendixes. How does one do that? One writes endless, huge posts and emails on every single weapon entry until the author decides one may as well keep track of the changes as well. So yes, I'm to blame for the changes and for including stuff like the Bagh Kakh on the weapons list. I couldn't have done it without the help of the playtesters and the backing of Bill Stoddard, Shawn Fisher, and Sean Punch, though. It was fun, but a lot of work to do. I'm glad I was able to get the Long Knife into the book. :)
Playtesting is hard work, though. I had to do something like 350 or 400 Back Strikes for the GURPS Japan playtest to test the idea that the maneuver was not cinematic. I used to be proud of that, until Thomas Barnes tested the GURPS rules for fire arrows by making and shooting some in his yard. Well, pyromania beats martial reality checking anyway.
For 4th Edition GURPS:
GURPS Fantasy (Lead Playtester)
Author Credits
Books
GURPS Who's Who 1 - I wrote Julius Caesar, Peter the Great, Ben Franklin, Bartholomew Roberts, and co-wrote Shaka Zulu.
GURPS Who's Who 2 - I wrote Oda Nobunaga, John Wesley Hardin, Erwin Rommel, Sid Vicious and co-wrote Napoleon.
A clarification on co-wrote - that means both myself and someone else submitted the same character. Phil Masters then combined the two entries into one.
I'm not sure which entry I'm most proud of - they all came out well and I'm satisfied with them. Ben Franklin I knew the least about when I started; Peter the Great and Rommel the most. But it was Sid Vicious that I'm most proud got accepted - how many game systems have official stats for Sid? Not too many, I expect. But GURPS does....
GURPS Monsters - I wrote Ixis, the diplomorph. Basically, a doppelganger, but not the spirit-switching kind. Ixis was based on some shapeshifters in my current game, which in turn borrowed from both fantasy gaming, fiction (mostly Glen Cook), and some 'what if?' thinking I did while looking at GURPS's various shapeshifting advantages.
GURPS Steam-Tech - I wrote the Phrenological Career Office. Honestly, that was inspired by someone else's idea and it was extensively re-touched by William Stoddard. I didn't get a comp copy for it, and frankly even had I been offered one I wouldn't have deserved it for such a small entry. It was, however, amusing to write and I'm glad Bill used it.
Right now, I am contracted for one GURPS book:
GURPS Martial Arts (co-author with Sean M. Punch)
Articles
So far, all of my articles have been in Pyramid magazine. This is probably because I write mostly GURPS-related articles, and because I was a subscriber. I have had snippets of my writing used in publications for work-work, but that was most definately work-for-hire and not creative work so I won't list it here.
Slow and Steady Experience Spending on 7/30/99. Overwritten; my first accepted article. It should be redone and punched up; it could be half as long as twice as helpful if it was written better. Andrew Byers asked me how I'd revise it. My overview of revisions is here.
Digging Yourself Out of a Corner on 6/9/00. A terrible name for an article, but it was a joke based on the mixed-up metaphors an old boss used. In retrospect, I should have called it Using GM Fiat. I was told, during a discussion about GM advice, that I should put up or shut up - literaly, I should not complain about someone else's advice unless I could prove that I could write some myself. I banged this out after watching the Spaghetti Westerns of Leone and Eastwood. I'm rather proud of this one, and it was my most rated article - 477 subscribed rated it.
Stay Down: Two Alternate Combat Rules for GURPS on 1/5/01. A request for brief articles prompted me to combine two house rules I have been using for years into one article.
Armor Damage in GURPS on 9/7/01. Armor Damage rules have been requested for GURPS for years, so I wrote my own. I didn't like the complicated methods that always seemed to be suggested, so I extrapolated from the simple ones in GURPS Magic relating to damaging enchantments on armor. This article is far, far from its original state - unlike my previous three articles this one was extensively re-written after comments by Dan Howard, Bob Huss, Shawn Fisher, and Sean Punch. Dan Howard was especially helpful - he basically ran me down and clubbed me into re-writing this and re-submitting it. Another one I'm proud of.
GURPS Combat Tactics: The Basics on 6/4/02. I was inspired to write this primarily by Ralph Melton. I had been a fixture for a while on .gurps, usually arguing combat rules with people. Although I eventually lost interest in that board* I never lost interest in GURPS combat. Running an action-heavy game, and with a high proportion of the action being combat, I know a lot about the combat rules. Anyway, Ralph Melton started emailing me years ago asking for combat tactics for his ST 16 bronze-age warrior Meat. I found myself repeating this advice to lots of people...and found my newest player needed some grounding in the basics fast if he wanted to keep up with my combat-savy group. So, I wrote this one up. It was pretty popular - it got 264 subscribers rating it a 4.09. Wowzers.
Supporting Cast: Sargent Emmet Wilson on 1/24/03. Man, nobody liked this guy. He was my first GURPS Monsters submission, but rejected because Hunter Johnson wanted really mythic monsters. Fair enough, he is not mythic. So, I submitted him to Pyramid to cash in on a pre-written guy. First, I have no idea why Sargent is misspelled. Oops. Second, yes, he's a pretty generic villain. That was deliberate - I prefer NPCs I can just drop in anywhere, with no extra work to adapt him. Most Supporting Cast characters are more like Starring Role characters, usually major allies or major villains....or require a complicated background to support them. I like guys I can drop in and use now. A difference of opinion, to be sure, but I wanted to demonstrate what I like to see rather than just ask for it. And, as I said, I had the guy pre-written. Not my best work, but not bad and it paid for a lot of Ogre minis.
Martial Arts Styles for Mages on 6/6/03. This is my current favorite article. I was statting up some fighter-wizard types for a game and realized mages need magic-centric martial arts styles. People had done martial arts for magical races but they never included magic. I figured, why not? And so I got to work. This was a popular article, and it inspired its own spinoff...inspired by Chad Underkoffler and suggestions from the Pyramid message boards during comments on this article.
Transhuman Martial Arts on 3/5/04, co-authored with Werner H. Hartmann. Werner and I had riffed off of each other's comments during the Transhuman Space playtest and came up with a selection of martial arts styles for THS and some equipment. We agreed we should develop it futher, and then let it sit. Eventually, I realized we never followed up on this and emailed Werner. He was enthusiastic about the article, so off we went. This is one of those articles where I recognize that I wrote some cool stuff, but I like Werner's stuff more than my own.
The Hunter's Society on 4/30/04 was another "on the hard drive" article. I wrote most of this for my own game, then re-wrote it for length, generic usefulness, and so on before submitting it. There had been a call for dual-statted articles, and I saw this as a good opportunity. So, I asked Bob Huss, GURPS and D&D 3e nut, to write some d20 stats for the article. My game world is very D&D-like in many ways, so this seemed like a good way to recycle something I wrote already into an article with broad potential usage.
Magic in the Crucible on 5/28/04 is my most recent article. It was a planned followup to Magical Martial Arts, and was inspired by Chad Underkoffler's brilliant Campaign in a Box article called Kung Fu Crucible. I had been struggling with a wuxia text box for my Magical Martial Arts article when Chad said something like "Make it a followup and set it in The Crucible." Well, done and done. Add in a suggestion from Adam Solis on the message boards for "One Style Magery" and I was off. I'm very proud of this article, and I'm very pleased Chad provided such a useful springboard. And thanks again to Adam for letting me use his idea, it works very well. This article actually got extremely high praise from Brian Rogers, too, which makes me very happy. Amusingly, this is not my highest rated article either in number (only 118 votes) or rating (3.62). Oh well. :)
* I get really wound up arguing rules, and I found that board was giving me a lot of self-generated stress. So, goodbye board, hello more free time.
Reviews
All in Pyramid, like the articles.
Return to White Plume Mountain
Ork! The Roleplaying Game - I was actually mailed a review copy of this, free of charge. Upon playing it, I can tell you I would have paid for it. Update - I met the author of this game at a bachelor's party, and forgot to tell him I liked the game! D'oh! My excuse is that I was halfway through a Booker's, neat. I had things to do, you see...
Hundred Kingdoms: Official Boxed Game - great miniatures wargame, with great miniatures.
Editor Credits
Eventually, my reputation for being a GURPS rules wonk caught up to me - I got referred to Alain Dawson and Loren Wiseman at SJG for some editorial work on GURPS Traveller: Alien Races 4. It sounded like cake work, so I took it. It turned out to be really involved work - not just fixing coding, but fixing entire races out of sync with canonical GURPS. Of course, I had Sean Punch to lean on, which is why this turned out so well - this is not false modesty, either. I can look back on AR4 and find inconsistancies in my application of coding (semi-colons and commas mixed up, reversals of order listing for Reputation descriptions, etc.) but overall I think I did a good job. I know Loren did as well, because I later had a contract for another editing job just show up at my house unexpectedly. Gift horse, and all of that - I signed it and sent it back.
All I can say is, please follow the SJG Coding Guide. Please. I cannot tell you how much easier that makes everyone's life.
GURPS Traveller: Alien Races 4 - listed under Additional Editing.
GURPS Traveller: Humaniti - listed under Aditional Editing.
Krommnotes
Last, but certainly my first claim to fame in the world of GURPS, are the Krommnotes. I have collected some of the rulings made by Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch, GURPS Line Editor. The Krommnotes link page also has links to some other gaming articles I have written.
Assorted Writings
A few assorted folks have done me the honor of posting stuff I've written in various places to the web. Here's one:
Sabledrake magazine published some silly movie combinations some folks and I posted on a message board.
Berislav Lopac decided he liked one of my posts on a Pyramid message board and put it up on his web page. It concerns gaming with your Significant Other, and I am very proud of it. I am glad Berislav saved it from /dev/nul.
Go back home.