More Footnotes (Pyramid #74)

My brief ramblings on "Ashiwi Country" in Pyramid #74 aren't even a little game-useful, but:

It's oddly appropriate for me that this article shows up in the around-Christmas issue. After getting married and earning his PhD, my father was in the Air Force for a while, a consequence of going to school on Uncle Sam's bill via ROTC. He was stationed at Kirtland AFB (next door to a Navy base, apparently, which has always seemed a bit odd to me) near Albuquerque and absolutely loved the place. My parents moved away shortly before I was born, but my father retained a certain amount of New Mexican bric-a-brac, which was most visible in the form of Christmas ornaments. As a result, I've always associated Christmas, to some extent, with the desert Southwest.
I didn't get to see the Southwest until many years later, when I was part of a summer of archaeological work on the Zuni reservation. I gotta say, the people are lovely and the scenery is pretty spectacular, if you like that sort of thing. And it really is a dry heat.
I didn't get into it in the article, but I should mention that Frank Hamilton Cushing is a bit of a controversial character among the Zuni. He was an important and useful bridge between the Zuni and the white world, but publishing all that stuff about their religious practices was a huge betrayal of trust.
In the introduction, Steven says of the article "This meaty guide in the vein of Riggsby’s GURPS Hot Spots series..." DO YOU HEAR THAT? IT'S OFFICIAL! HOT SPOTS IS MINE! MINE, YOU BASTARDS!

Comments

Peter D said…

There goes GURPS Hot Spots: Riggsby's House. May as well delete all that "research video" I had taken.

December 19, 2014 at 6:03 PM

Ferrous Metal Food Fighting Guy!

(This is something I wrote up some years back. I'm putting it here so I can find it more easily when I want to. Though it's rather silly, it's also where I came up with the idea of high-quality materials which don't provide a bonus to the craftsman's skill, but do add to the margin of success, a mechanism which later appeared in the crafting rules in GURPS Low-Tech Companion 3 .) One of the things not to be found in GURPS 4e is extensive rules for competitive cooking. If two cooks of steely resolve rise up to face one another across a cooking coliseum, the GM can only fall back on hand-waving and contests of skill. This article fills that much-needed gap. GURPS chefs can now stage furious contests wherein they construct fanciful dishes, the more elaborate the better, and prove whose cooking rules the day. To the kitchen! Procedure These rules provide guidance for attempting to cook complex dishes and comparing their quality when the cooking is done. A che

Car Wars Minis, Third Batch

Still having a go at these, trying out some new ideas. The short version is that having the right tools and materials is still key, but I've got a way to go with some other stuff. I think this one looks better in person than as a picture. A couple of shades of blue here with a blue wash and drybrushed metallic blue on some components. Oh, and purple spikes. I didn't even try to figure out something clever to do with the windshield. I'm finding that it's hard to make yellow work, but this one wasn't too bad. I initially tried masking the area for the blue stripe with tape, but it pulled off the paint instead. Had to do a swipe with a broad brush, which isn't great but worked better than I expected. Another one that looks better in person than on film. Tried to do a few different shades of green, which wasn't entirely successful. Probably my best out of this batch. I credit the red wash, which ended up being kind of glossy and goes well with the copper accents

Charcuterie Bard

A few days ago, I dropped this random gag: I shall make a character for an RPG who has powers related to artistic creativity, but instead of music and song, they come from arranging cheeses and cured meats. A charcuterie bard. — Turhan's Bey Company (@turhansbeycmpny) December 21, 2021 But then I remembered that there's absolutely precedent for food-based magic: So, then, obviously we can have food-based bards in GURPS, right? The best approach I see is modifying the Enthrallment skills (p. B191). However, rather than requiring Public Speaking at 12+ as a prerequisite, a charcuterie bard requires Cooking and Professional Skill (Food Stylist) at 12+; see Ferrous Metal Food Fighting Guy for a bit on the latter. The skills are used by preparing and feeding an audience with tasty, tasty foods. The elements of food in question cost a minimum of 1% of COL per target, though higher quality ingredients provide a bonus (use costs and reaction bonuses for styling, GURPS Low-Tech

Tetsujin no Llama

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