Tetsujin no Llama

With the 2020 GURPS PDF challenge about to get under way, there's been some talk from some people about spending some of those sweet discounted Backerkit bucks on Pyramid issues. At Kromm's urging (to Pyramid authors in general, not just me), I've suggested some issues with articles I've written as things to look into over on the forum. Here is a somewhat expanded version of that list. First, I'll point out the historical articles: If you want semi-detailed information on agriculture, running or getting income from an agricultural settlement, and building a landscape based on subsistence patterns, get the first two Low Tech issues (33 and 52). Very happy to have been able to use polari in a brief historical, a history of "thieves guilds" (short version: they're fiction, but there are a number of historical models for organizing criminals) in #47. In #56 (Prehistory), I get into gifting economies, where every economic interaction is a social inter...

Time for another one of those posts which, back in the day, might have been a Pyramid article. I've long had an anthropological and historical interest in architecture: how buildings are constructed, why, what it takes to put them up, how they're used, and so on. That's what led me to write multiple versions of architecture rules and a number of locations for Pyramid and as freestanding publications. And in that, I keep coming back to two books: Buildings Without Architects , by John May and Anthony Reid, and Dwellings: The Vernacular House Worldwide , by Paul Oliver. Both of these books address vernacular architecture, which is to say architecture built by non-specialists rather than trained professionals. They're about the homes people build for themselves around the world. There are examples of vernacular buildings from all over: English cob houses, Yemini towers, semi-subterranean Chinese yaodong, Cameroonian ribbed mud-brick tolek, Haida plank houses, Yanomami shab...

As I've mentioned over on the forum, the Pyramid Dungeon Collection contains an article ("The Wellsprings of Creation") which fits most PDF-Pyramid and GURPS 4e fantasy locations and adventure locales not already spoken for (for example, nothing from Yrth is included) into a single game world. Here, for everybody's dining and dancing pleasure, is a list of what those are and which publications they're in. Amadan, Pyramid Dungeon Collection Amanapur, Pyramid Dungeon Collection Aquaclaro, Pyramid #3/40 Aulos, Pyramid Dungeon Collection Caerceol, Pyramid Dungeon Collection Caverntown, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting 1: Caverntown Devouring Lands, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Adventure 1: Mirror of the Fire Demon Echo Wall Mountains, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Adventure 2: Tomb of the Dragon King Empire of Thebor, Pyramid #3/41 Golden Geniza of Ezkali, Pyramid #3/38 Hellsgate, GURPS Locations: Hellsgate Kunruk, Pyramid Dungeon Collection Saroo, Pyramid Dungeon Collec...

Yet another "might have done it for Pyramid": A discussion of libraries on the forum got me thinking about some book-related issues, which in turn got me onto my beloved lists/random tables. These may be used to add more detail to texts produced with GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables. Writing Method Roll 1d for any text where the writing method is not otherwise obvious. 1-3: Manuscript: The text was written by hand, likely with a pen or brush, though potentially with a fingertip or claw dipped in blood or something similarly entertaining. 4: Rubbing: The text was made by pressing the paper or other writing medium on a surface with the writing in relief and a block of a colored substance rubbed over it. 5: Block printed: The text and illustrations were engraved on a block which was then coated with ink and pressed on the writing surface. 6: Type printed: As with block printing but with a panel made up of small pieces of moveable type. Damage and Obfu...

I've remarked elsewhere on the sad demise of Pyramid . And I mentioned that my not writing as much for the third iteration of the magazine was a consequence of moving on to writing longer works. That's certainly a part of it, but another part was that the looser format of the second edition lent itself to a more eclectic, impulsive style of writing. Something which happened quite often is that I'd read a book, realize that there was a gaming angle on it, and write a brief article about it. "Atomic Zombies of the Pacific," for example, was the result of reading a book about recent exploration of the sunken ships of the Bikini Atoll and dashing off a lightweight piece on the topic before moving on. The tighter format of the newer Pyramid made that kind of thing more difficult (whatever I was reading at any given moment might not fit well with any theme Steven might come up with, though given his historical performance, I suppose that's deeply and unfairly unde...

Today saw the publication of the final issue of Steve Jackson Games's Pyramid magazine, as was announced several months ago. Broadly speaking, it was the victim of generally rough times within the gaming industry. I'm one of what is surely a small number of people who have been published in all three iterations of Pyramid . I'd had some previous contact with SJ Games--some stuff I helped with ended up in GURPS Cyberpunk , which in turn has doubtless gotten my name on the Federal Register of Dangerous Hoodlums--but it wasn't until the later days of the paper version of Pyramid that I finally got up the nerve to try my hand at writing an article. The result was a short piece on low-tech (mostly Medieval) economies, which became my first professionally published work . This, apparently, was enough encouragement. Having seen how painless the process actually was, I started thinking in terms of writing for publication. It didn't hurt that around this time I went t...

This is the sort of thing which happens when you write gaming material based on real-world sources. Back in Pyramid #38 , I had an adventure the goal of which was a geniza full of scattered but useful information. This was based on the Cairo geniza , essentially a massive waste paper basket which has turned out to be one of the most important source we've got on life and Jewish history in Medieval Egypt. And while it's already been immensely valuable to modern scholars, it's still incompletely investigated. It contains many scraps of documents which haven't even been categorized by language, let alone translated. But now there's a project on zooniverse where you can get involved in research. They're crowdsourcing the identification of fragments of texts based on some fairly simple criteria. This is pointing to a phase two where stuff actually gets translated. There's absolutely no telling what will come out of this (lost chapters of important commentarie...

There's nothing particularly mechanically innovative in my article in this issue of Pyramid . It is, though, chock full of historical inaccuracies! But they were put there on purpose. Given my work on other projects , I thought it might be worth issuing a disclaimer. This was not written with my Very Serious Historian Indeed hat on. Consequently, as the introduction indicates, considerable liberties have been taken, specifically to make units fit into size classes of about a squad and a few hundred troops. The faux-Bronze Age Mesopotamian chariot units, for example, are essentially made up. There are records of garrisons or other smallish units combining a body of infantry with a handful of chariots. That handful allowed me to rationalize a nine-person unit. The chariot kirsu is far from a standardized unit, and the one presented here is very much on the small side when it comes to real ones. While one might find historical examples of the Greco-Roman and Medieval units as lis...

Turns out I've got rather a lot to say about a rather short piece. Specifically, the Car Wars vignette in Pyramid #89 . It's all in general pursuit of world-building, but there's probably as much world-building going on in this one as all of my previous vignettes put together. Four out of the five locations make glancing reference to notable aspects of the world of the new Car Wars , so there are some significant bits of history and culture to tease out there. The fifth...well, that was mostly just me amusing myself. There's also a certain amount of--pardon the expression--reality in there. In figuring out where to put the various arenas, I looked at a lot of maps, lists of roadside attractions, locations of current sports venues, and other such materials. Each place has a definite location in the real world, sometimes to the point of using existing buildings. Here's where everything came from: Big Swede Arena: Parking garage at the Emeryville Ikea. We went the...

So, yeah, I found the imperial Chinese civil service interesting enough to write a substantial article about it . This is very much about a social technology: the cultivation and staffing of a bureaucracy capable of administering a major empire. For China, this involved several prerequisite and accompanying technologies: a well-developed body of philosophy to serve as the basis for exams, a population wealthy enough to support a population of scholars providing the necessary human resources, reasonably inexpensive writing media, and a physical infrastructure of dedicated testing facilities.  I wrote a couple of paragraphs which I ultimately cut, partly for space (I went rather longer than projected on this one) and partly because I didn't think they quite fit. But for anyone interested, here they are: Senior Scholars Persistence in the face of repeated failure in the exams posed certain problems for administrators. The nominal age of retirement from the civil service was 7...

Not quite a cat/bag situation, but I've gotten involved in writing some material around the edges of the new edition of Car Wars . My first piece for this came out today , a vignette about a biker queen in the wasteland that was once Nevada, with accompanying art by Brandon Moore . He nails it. Really, seriously nails it. I'm just sad that bit isn't part of the preview.

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 spectacul...