A Long Strange Trip: The Life of a Weirdness Magnet

by Joel Sparks

Art by Phil Foglio

The Weirdness Magnet disadvantage (p. CI100) can add spice and humor to a GURPS campaign. It's also a great adventure hook; there's nothing like the impossible to jolt players out of a rut. But it can be hard on overworked GMs to come up with sufficiently oddball occurrences on the spur of the moment. Many ideas will be trivial (unexplained stains on the clothes), too silly (a movie star appears out of thin air to give the character a big kiss), or disturbing to the campaign (the character solves important mysteries due to supernatural advice). Incidents of Weirdness should be unusual enough to provide amusement and inconvenience, but not so significant as to change the course of events -- unless the GM wants them to.

This article provides guidelines and incidents that can be used as-is in any GURPS setting, or as inspiration for other appropriately weird ideas. The character with the Weirdness Magnet disadvantage is called "the Magnet."

Rest Them Bones!

First, some guidelines for day-to-day play.

  1. Never roll for a random party member for anything, good or bad. It happens to the Magnet. (If there's a good reason why it should happen to someone else, it shouldn't be left to the dice anyway.)
  2. Instead of rolling, try making up results whenever the Magnet gets (or is subject to) a critical success or failure. For example, tie all magical backfires in the Magnet's life together with a theme. Choose a semi-random . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.




Article publication date: March 31, 2000


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