5too

I laughed here as well; but I just cracked up when the Enterprise posed over Riker, Worf, and Picard and Jack!

The next morning, I resume my trek, (Undertake an Expedition, (Navigation-14), 12 - weak hit, and I've got an idea for an obstacle) moving towards what looks like an Edge on my route - one of the places where the world was stitched back together after it shattered. Overnight I was able to see the stars shift as they crossed it near the horizon, and now the occasional cloud vanishes or appears as it crosses an invisible line in the sky.

When the world was stitched back together, whoever did the stitching made a token effort to keep the ground close to the same height at the joins, but you can still see the seams. The sky is cracked, for one thing. Some places have old roads that suddenly end at an Edge, others have expanses of flat rock or sand that run up into deep forest. And in some places, like this, the ground below the Edge on one side or the other has collapsed, leaving a deep ravine miles long.

I peeked over the edge of the ravine, and saw mud mixed with dirt going down several dozen feet. Not easily climbed, especially without any gear... But, looking across, I was pretty sure I could see a village on the horizon, about where I expected Highwick to be. (Face Danger, Navigation (14), 7 - Strong Hit, I'm up to 9 boxes on the progress track) With a few extra hours, I'm able to follow the ravine to it's end and safely cross the Edge. (Finish an Expedition, 9 Progress, I roll 1 & 6 - Strong hit, journey is done! +1 tick on the Discoveries track, and finding civilization lets me mark 2 boxes on the "Replace My Ride and Gear" vow) And with a few more hours' walking, I made it to the village.

(I've rolled TL 3 on a custom oracle for this town's general tech level, and rolled that it's populated primarily by Neanderthals - likely relatively civil ones to be at TL 3 already; borne out by the initial reaction roll for the town: 12 - neutral) The village appears to be built mostly out of local stone or sod, but most of the villagers are distinctly 'Thal; with tall, broad builds and distinctive faces. Still, they don't seem alarmed or overly interested in me, and let me enter their village without challenge when they see I'm alone. A polite question gets me directions to the home of Caldas, the local trader I had been planning to deliver my herbs to, before my ill-fated hard-back encounter.

I decided to slip away while the beast was eating my cargo (Face Danger (Stealth-12) once more, 7 for another Strong Hit! I've been leaning on my strengths so far, we'll see how long the good rolls last). I had been just a few hours from Highwick, but now it looked like I'd be walking for a day or two... but I swore to myself: a better ride, and better gear, and I'll keep them this time! (With my Inciting Event done, I Swear an Iron Vow for the starting vow, with a Weak Hit. I decide I haven't heard of anything available nearby, so I'll get to Highwick first, then see what I can do, since I have no funds. I'll set the walk to Highwick as a Troublesome journey).

Once I was comfortably far from the hungry hard-back, I stood up and started the long walk to my original destination. Hiking really puts me on edge... we used to be the top of the food chain; but since the world shattered, the ancient beasts have come back to reclaim that title. On wheels, I defy anything to catch me; but on foot? I'm back to being prey. (Undertake an Expedition (Navigation-14), rolled 12 - weak hit. No water on hand, so I'll say I need to fix that, but I still get to mark progress.) Still, the rest of the day is pretty uneventful. (Resupply (Survival (Plains)) - 12, got 7 for a strong hit - "You find what you need, +1 Momentum".) I did spot a grove of prickle-bushes; digging into the ground near them let me get some much needed water. (Undertake an Expedition (Navigation-14), 9 - Strong Hit, more progress). I was pretty confident in my direction, but the sun was getting low; so (Make Camp (Survival-12), 15 for a Miss!) I found a secluded spot to bed down for the night. That night was... not restful. Like I said, I hate not having wheels, and here I was alone and lightly defended as well. Nothing bothered me, but I slept poorly all the same (Endure Stress (Will-12), 10 for a Weak Hit - I'll just press on).

Looking back, I really shouldn't have made the run to Highwick alone.

First hint I had that there was trouble, I was already airborne; my dirt bike below me twisted and broken. Lucky for me, I landed well, and collapsed "comfortably" into a heap (literally lucky - this was Face Danger (Acrobatics-11), rolled 17, a critical fail! The Luck advantage let me reroll for a 12 and a 6 - enough for a Strong Hit). I stayed still, hoping to avoid any attention (Face Danger (Stealth-12) now, got 8 for another Strong Hit), and was ignored while a huge, club-ended tail slammed down on my bike twice more. As I watched, what I had taken for a small hill near the game trail stood up from the prairie grass; revealing a massive armored back sloping down to an armored head, flanked by a fringe of bony spines around the sides of the creature. Satisfied that it had disabled my bike, the hard-back turned slowly around to tear open the saddlebags. So much for my ride, and everything on it... the dino seemed to have a hankering for the medicinal herbs I'd been hauling. All I had left was my riding clothes, a revolver in my pocket, and three extra rounds for it.

Note: I'm jumping in with a 150 CP character (Nomad, from AtE) rather than my suggested 200-300 CP to see how the rules perform when things go wrong; and to see how advancement goes. I also focused on skills and abilities over spending more on equipment, so I wanted a reason to start out empty handed - so; an ankylosaur broke everything!

Mandalorian didn't really click for me until several episodes in. I feel like Pedro Pascal took a typical, surface-level Star Wars script and made the character amazing, though - I watch mostly for him, rather than the writing.

For a fairly meaty swords and sorcery system, have you looked at Dungeon Fantasy RPG? It's GURPS distilled down to just the bits relevant to this kind of setting; so it'll definitely have the meat you're after.

I find I tend to get sucked into the minutiae of the rules, and then get frustrated by the length of time things take. So, I typically stick to rules-light until something dramatically important happens, where more details can add to the story and it's worth going more slo-mo for the action. Similar to the idea of using mooks for the most part, but the lieutenants and the boss get full combat options.

I don't know that they're false, but they're misleading. Not only was it traffic for June, but the thing Spez will care about is advertising dollars - and as others have said, the more communities are flagged NSFW, the fewer ad spaces can be sold.

I don't think something like this would be hard to write, technically - I just get the impression the people in charge aren't terribly comfortable with online tabletop tools. Look at Starforged - all the assets, the oracles, all that stuff is available via an online API, without bothering with any kind of customer verification. Which means fans can put together something like the Stargazer app (https://nboughton.uk/apps/stargazer/#/), which lets you play the full game. And it doesn't sound like Shawn Tomkin is hurting for sales.

But even without SJG making everything available online, I think this could be done - you'd just need to put in the page offsets that correspond to each chunk of rules, similar to what GURPS Character Sheet does for its components. (I'd have to look, but I think the Foundry plugin for GURPS supports this too). Then let the user point the app to the relevant PDFs locally.

What I'd really like are preset groupings you can adjust - if you pick Action and Post-Apocalytpic, it'd pull in those sources and the corresponding bits from Basic Set. Then you could chop out, say, Invention if nobody's going that route. Or set up a Dungeon Fantasy game, and select just the relevant additional books from that series. Maybe with a nice editor to adjust the resulting output...

I have a copy of my digital collection stored on my google drive; so while it's loosely organized, it's also searchable! Makes it a lot easier to read in general, too - I've got two little kids and a full-time job, so it's hard to just pull one of my hard copies out for a while!

I agree, but I've also always been tickled by the parallel images between a player with multiple sourcebooks open figuring out how to advance their spellcaster; and a spellcaster poring over tomes for their next spell!

(Edit) Personally, I've got a little over a dozen sourcebooks; and a lot more PDFs. I like browsing books better, but PDFs integrate with other tools so much more nicely...

I've seen people successfully using ChatGPT in conjunction with solo resources as well. It seems like the main thing is you have to keep an eye on the details, as ChatGPT can play fast and loose with things it established before; similarly to how you have to factcheck any kind of summary you ask it for - it's great at conversation and ideas, but internal consistency is still spotty.