Ambience

Last night and this morning were not good times for sleeping, it seems. I was very, very tired on Saturday and fell asleep sometime in the afternoon. This, of course, meant that I couldn't get to sleep most of Saturday night until four in the morning. Or was that Friday?

Regardless, I had my sleeping pattern fixed by Sunday, but come ten-o'-clock there was some infernal racket going on outside. People talking, cars racing up and down the street. Mostly people staggering home from a night's drinking I suspect, at least that's what it sounded like. Sometimes there are couples or rivals who argue right across from my window.

After I got to sleep I was awoken at two in the morning by some very loud drunks who were making their way very slowly up the hill. Sometimes they would wander around in circles and delay their progress away from my open window. I had to close it eventually, which made the room unbearably warm. If it's like this now, what will it be like in July?

I suppose I should be grateful of our pleasant weather. I much prefer riding to work, the shops, Hawkhurst, etc. when it's a bright and sunny day rather than when storm clouds gather around and pelt the countryside and towns alike with wind and rain. The problem comes from this bloody office being so stuffy and so stuffed with computers (and technicians, I suppose). There's no ventilation and... well to be perfectly honest I tire of the same complaint over and over again. It's too damned warm and I can't bloody-well breath!

After the revellers had left the road opposite my window and I fell back to sleep, all was well. Until half an hour before my alarm was due to go off when a street cleaner, lawnmower, or hedge trimmer stirred me from slumber.

I was just too tired to be irritated any more.

In other news, I'm going through the 4th edition GURPS (bet you thought I was going to say Dungeons and Dragons for a second there, eh?) basic set books. One focuses on character creation and the other on campaigns. In fact, they're named appropriately (GURPS Characters and GURPS Campaigns respectively).

If you are unfamiliar with GURPS, it's an acronym for Generic Universal Role Playing System. It allows you to create characters, NPCs, adventures, campaigns, and settings for any sort of role-playing game you can imagine. You can create a gun-slinging cowboy for a wild-western game, or a psychic four-headed serpentine alien for a space-borne science-fiction game, or a spell-casting wraith (the ghost of a once-dead wizard?) for a fantasy game, or a low-down criminal android for a futuristic horror-survival game; all using the same system.

Not only that, but those characters would all be compatible with one another in the same setting if they were to meet (there is a setting, Infinite Worlds, provided which allows Rifts-esque time-and-space hopping adventures).

It seems to do well as a jack-of-all-trades as the rules are really quite modular and can be expanded, or limited, to fit the sort of game you want to play. So far I haven't found the system's limitation. But I've only just finished reading a few of the character creation chapters and there is a lot to take in. I would guess that one limitation might be that, pandering to such a large crowd and such a wide range of settings, adventures, and characters, a fairly large amount of preparation might be required from the GM to make sure that things fit.

For example, the basic magic system provided for GURPS might not be the one you want to use. Instead of burning mana to cast spells, you might want a Dungeons & Dragons style prepare-and-forget spell system. I, for example, want a system based on casting individual runes in a certain order to provoke specific effects. There are source books such as GURPS Magic and GURPS Thaumatology that can help with these, and I should think I'll be getting a fair few of them.

After I've gotten my head around the rules, run a handful of short adventures with my players, and implemented the rules, I'll try going for a fantasy campaign. If it's successful then the possibilities are endless. The wild west (Deadlands!), space travel, science fiction, super heroes, aliens, ghosts, fiends, time travel. The list goes on.

I don't think GURPS will be the only system I'll use though. Like I said, there may be limitations within its massive scope. There are systems out there that specialise, and with specialisation comes focus.