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Age of Gold
TM
Written by PHIL MASTERS Edited by NIKOLA VRTIS
Illustrated by PAUL DALY, RAMÓN PÉREZ,
DOUG SHULER, and DAN SMITH
An e23 Sourcebook for GURPS
®
STEVE JACKSON
GAMES
Stock #37-1651
®
Version 1.0 – November 2008
C
ONTENTS
I
NTRODUCTION
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
About
GURPS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Useful
GURPS
Supplements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. C
HARACTERS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
S
TARTING
P
OINTS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Basic Conditions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
“Leader and Assistants” Teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
C
HARACTER
T
RAITS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Perks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Disadvantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Martial Arts
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Wildcard Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
E
XAMPLE
A
DVERSARIES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
The Secret Pharaoh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Madame Jasmine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
The Jungle Madness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
1. T
HE
S
ETTING
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
B
ACKGROUND
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Magic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
M
AGICAL
W
ORLD
H
ISTORY
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Ancient Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
India. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The Victorian Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
The Great Depression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
T
HE
S
TATE OF THE
W
ORLD
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
The Americas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Occult Nazis
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Shambhala
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Shanghai
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The Black Dragon Society
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4. C
AMPAIGNS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
P
OWER
L
EVEL AND
E
NEMIES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Pulp Adventurers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Mystery Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
G
AME
T
HEMES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Crime Fighting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Espionage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Exotic Places. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Arcane Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
I
NFINITE
W
ORLDS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Exotic Mana and Impure Alchemy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
“The Futuremen” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
History. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2. T
HE
M
AGIC
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
P
ATH
/B
OOK
M
AGIC
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Widespread Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Conversion Between Traditions
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Known Diabolism Books
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
A
LCHEMY
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Laboratory Alchemy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Magical “Herbalism”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Weird Science
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Personal Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
M
AGICAL
“S
UPERS
” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
The Alchemically Transformed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Ancient Artifacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Game Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
S
PIRIT
-A
SSISTED
S
PELL
M
AGIC
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
“Cooperative” Spirits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Spells Granted and Cast . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
D
EMONS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
True Faith
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
F
URTHER
R
EADING
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
I
NDEX
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
It is the spirit and not the form
of law that keeps justice alive.
– Earl Warren
GURPS
System Design
❚
STEVE JACKSON
Managing Editor
❚
PHILIP REED
Marketing Director
❚
PAUL CHAPMAN
GURPS
Line Editor
❚
SEAN PUNCH
WILL SCHOONOVER
Production Artist
❚
Director of Sales
❚
ROSS JEPSON
e23 Manager
❚
STEVEN MARSH
❚
NIKOLA VRTIS
FADE MANLEY
GURPS
FAQ Maintainer
❚
Page Design
❚
PHIL REED and
JUSTIN DE WITT
Indexer
❚
NIKOLA VRTIS
–––––––
VICKY “MOLOKH” KOLENKO
❚
Prepress Checker
❚
MONICA STEPHENS
Playtesters:
Frederick Brackin, C. Lee Davis, Emily Smirle
GURPS
, Warehouse 23, and the all-seeing pyramid are registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated.
Pyramid
,
Thaumatology, Age of Gold
, e23, and the names
of all products published by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated are registered trademarks or trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated, or used under license.
GURPS Thaumatology: Age of Gold
is copyright © 2008 by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated. Some art © 2008 JupiterImages Corporation. All rights reserved.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this material via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal,
and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage
the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
C
ONTENTS
2
Art Director
Errata Coordinator
It was when he saw two winged demons come howling down
Fifth Avenue that Professor Blake realized that the Secret
Kingdom was deadly serious about its threats.
He had received a series of demands, first subtle, then increas-
ingly sinister, from that clandestine organization, but he had
laughed at all of them. He was a man who still doubted all those
claims that he had heard about magic – even though some of
them came from respectable scholars these days – and the so-
called Secret Pharaoh seemed to him a joke in very poor taste.
But on the night before his great discoveries were due to be
unveiled to the public, he left the Metropolitan Museum of Art
just in time to hear the screaming start, and what he saw swoop-
ing toward him banished his doubts completely.
Blake had served in the Great War, and he had spent most of
the 15 years since it ended on expeditions to remote areas of
Egypt; he was used to danger. He instantly turned on his heel and
fled, without the hesitation that would have killed other men. But
he could hear great wings behind him. At any moment, he
expected to feel barbed claws in his flesh. Someone stepped out
into his path, and he veered around the person, shouting at him
to flee. But the other man stood his ground, hefting something in
both hands . . .
Professor Blake heard a dull thud behind him – and the lead-
ing demon’s cry was cut short. Blake risked a glance backward,
and then he spun around in astonishment. He was just in time
to see the second demon struck square in the ribs with a great
two-handed mace. The creature lurched to the ground, but it was
still fighting, and it leaped for its opponent’s throat. Its claws
found no purchase, and a second mace-blow finished the fight.
The demon vanished like a bad dream, leaving only a foul stench.
The newcomer turned to Professor Blake, who recognized a
description from stories in the press. “Doc Mudra!” he exclaimed.
The masked mystery man nodded. “Professor Blake?” he
inquired, and Blake nodded in turn. “I’m pleased that I found
you in time. The Secret Pharaoh evidently believes that you dis-
covered a new form of the Philosopher’s Stone in Karnak last
year, and this won’t be his last attempt to get hold of it.”
Age of Gold
is a
GURPS
game setting that showcases many
of the options and rules in
GURPS Thaumatology.
Specifi-
cally, it is a world based on the 1930s of our own history – but
it’s a version of that past era in which magic of several kinds
works
and is being exploited with increasing enthusiasm by
those few gifted folk who can get it to function or who’ve been
imbued with supernatural power by destiny or blind chance.
The 1930s correspond to the latter part of the “pulp era” and
the very early days of the “Golden Age” of superhero comics,
and that’s very relevant here.
Age of Gold
is an age of pulp
magic and arcane superheroics. Adventurers in this setting may
be two-fisted pulp-style heroes – battling evil masterminds with
grit, skill, and scholarship – or masked “mystery men” –
alchemically transformed into something more than human.
Most of the background will be familiar to anyone who knows
the history of our own world in the era, but foreground charac-
ters and plots should be wildly dramatic and melodramatic.
Magic, it seems, does this to those who encounter it. Some of
this magic is ritualistic or alchemical and stylish, while some
of it is focused and powerful; the rules from
Thaumatology
allow it to be represented in all its diversity.
About
GURPS
Steve Jackson Games is committed to full support of
GURPS
players. Our address is SJ Games, P.O. Box 18957,
Austin, TX 78760. Please include a self-addressed, stamped
envelope (SASE) any time you write us! We can also be
reached by e-mail:
info@sjgames.com
. Resources include:
Pyramid
(
www.sjgames.com/pyramid
)
. Our online
magazine includes new
GURPS
rules and articles. It also
covers the
d20
system
, Ars Magica, BESM, Call of
Cthulhu,
and many more top games – and other Steve
Jackson Games releases like
Illuminati, Car Wars, Tran-
shuman Space,
and more.
Pyramid
subscribers also get
opportunities to playtest new
GURPS
books!
New supplements and adventures.
GURPS
continues to
grow, and we’ll be happy to let you know what’s new. For a
current catalog, send us a legal-sized SASE, or just visit
www.warehouse23.com
.
e23.
Our e-publishing division offers
GURPS
adven-
tures, play aids, and support not available anywhere else!
Just head over to
e23.sjgames.com
.
Errata.
Everyone makes mistakes, including us – but we
do our best to fix our errors. Up-to-date errata sheets for all
GURPS
releases, including this book, are available on our
website – see below.
Internet.
Visit us on the World Wide Web at
www.sjgames.com
for errata, updates, Q&A, and much
more. To discuss
GURPS
with SJ Games staff and fellow
gamers, come to our forums at
forums.sjgames.com
.
The
web page for
GURPS Thaumatology: Age of Gold
is at
www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/ageofgold
.
Bibliographies.
Many of our books have extensive bibli-
ographies, and we’re putting them online – with links to let
you buy the books that interest you! Go to the book’s web
page and look for the “Bibliography” link.
Rules and statistics in this book are specifically for the
GURPS Basic Set,
Fourth Edition.
Page references that
begin with B refer to that book, not this one.
I
NTRODUCTION
3
I
NTRODUCTION
Why “
Age of Gold
”? What better name for a setting that not
only draws on the Golden Age of comics, but features
alchemists seeking to transform lead into precious metal?
Some e23
GURPS
products contain highly rele-
vant information.
GURPS Martial Arts: Fairbairn
Close Combat Systems
describes fighting styles
that developed in the 1930s and that were used in
Shanghai in particular (see p. 13); it also discusses
their creator (himself something of a real-life pulp
hero figure). The two volumes of
GURPS High-
Tech: Pulp Guns
provide many more options for
adventurer firepower (or for their opponents’
weaponry). Meanwhile,
GURPS Lands Out of
Time
could be useful for a “lost world” setting and
its monsters. Visit the e23 site often to discover
more handy material.
There are also a number of older
Third Edition
books that may be relevant. Some of these are still
available in paper form, and some can be obtained
as PDFs from e23. They
definitely
include
GURPS
Cliffhangers,
which contains extensive information
on the world in the 1930s, and more on the pulp
mode of adventure.
GURPS WWII
and its accompa-
nying line of books mostly cover the next decade, of
course, but they provide quite a bit on the 1930s by way of con-
text – and World War II is where the world is headed in
Age of
Gold,
unless things diverge radically from our history.
GURPS
WWII: Weird War II
is especially useful for its coverage of the
lead-up to the war from a weird history/conspiracy theory
point of view. Furthermore, some of the equipment and mili-
tary information in these books may be significant. Lastly,
GURPS China
and
GURPS Egypt
can offer cultural context
for some
Age of Gold
games,
GURPS Places of Mystery
can
exist as a source of stylish scenario locations, and the
GURPS
Magic Items
series might suggest a few interesting artifacts for
mystery men to employ.
U
SEFUL
GURPS
S
UPPLEMENTS
This supplement is linked to
GURPS Thaumatology;
games will need that in addition to the
Basic Set.
Some GMs
and players may find
GURPS Magic
worth referencing,
although “spell-based” wizardry and the sort of alchemy that
produces handy potions are only small parts of the setting.
They can easily enough be downplayed, ignored altogether, or
restricted to those spells described in the
GURPS Basic Set.
Likewise,
GURPS Powers
and
GURPS Supers
may be useful
when designing and playing high-powered “mystery men,” but
they aren’t mandatory.
In addition, other
GURPS
books may help, although they’re
strictly optional.
GURPS High-Tech
includes information on
the sort of TL6 equipment that adventurers may well want,
including especially a range of firearms.
GURPS Martial Arts
may be useful for
Age of Gold
campaigns featuring lots of
melee combat (see p. 31).
GURPS Infinite Worlds
could pro-
vide a wider context for all this (see p. 43).
A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR
Phil Masters, the author of this book and
GURPS
Thaumatology,
is also the author or co-author of such
GURPS
products as
Places of Mystery, Atlantis, Dragons,
and
Banestorm,
along with the
Discworld Roleplaying Game
and
the
Hellboy Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game.
He likewise
edited some recent pulp-era-related products for the line. In his
hilltop lair far across the ocean, he plots further arcane contor-
tions in the universe of roleplaying games,
even as you read
these words.
We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a
“metamorphosis of the gods,” i.e., of the fundamental principles
and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not
of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious
man within us who is changing.
– Carl Jung
I
NTRODUCTION
4
T
HE
S
ETTING
Vultures were circling high in the cloudless African sky. But
when a shadow fell on them from even higher, they scattered
nervously. The pride of lions far below would take its time about
its kill, after all.
Aboard the amazing helix-plane, its inventor and pilot
adjusted the controls and turned to his passenger. “So, monsieur
le commandant – this is the land where you served in the past
unpleasantness, n’est-pas?”
Major George Gregory, late of the British Army, nodded briefly.
“I had a colonial posting out here in ’14,” he confirmed, “and they
kept me here while we chased that old fox Lettow-Vorbeck for
next four years.”
“So this is a place with many ghosts for you . . . ah, I am sorry,
my friend – that was a jest of a poor sort.”
“No offense taken, old chap. Yes, this is a land with a lot of
ghosts, going a very long way back. But they aren’t as unhappy as
the ones you’d find in Flanders.”
“I can comprehend that, I think. How does India compare,
though? Or China?”
Gregory frowned and gazed out of the helix-plane’s windscreen.
“Every nation’s ghosts are a little different, in my experience . . .”
But before he could explain further, his eyes widened. “Look out!”
he barked. Pierre de Rocheford understood his comrade’s super-
human awareness too well to question the warning. He cut
power to one rotor, and the helix-plane slipped sharply down and
sideways – just in time to avoid the claws of a great winged mon-
ster that had appeared seemingly from nowhere.
“Sacrebleu!” exclaimed the Frenchman.
“Just so,” murmured Gregory, as he swiftly extracted his hunt-
ing rifle from its traveling case. “Now, hold this thing steady a
moment, old chap. It looks like we’ll have a little shooting today!”
Age of Gold
is a world-wide game setting – and with 20th-
century transport technology and the adventurous pulp ethos
both very much to the fore, PCs should know that they have a
whole
world
to play with. Nonetheless, mystery, drama, and
deadly threats fill this world. Not everything is known as yet,
and some of the unknown regions of the planet are stuffed full
of strangeness and deathtraps. Supernatural power exists and
can very definitely be used for evil as much as for good.
Meanwhile, even in the most “civilized” corners of the known
world, utterly mundane evils are emerging that threaten to
drag the planet down into darkness.
B
ACKGROUND
The 1930s are a time of instability and widespread public
uncertainty. Since the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the world
plunged into the Great Depression – a period of economic
decline and mass unemployment. With the democratic capital-
ist system seemingly in crisis, rival political systems – totalitar-
ian mass movements such as Fascism, Nazism, and Soviet
Communism – appear to offer powerful alternatives.
Meanwhile, new scientific and medical ideas such as
Einsteinian relativity and Freudian psychology shake the very
foundations of human belief, while astronomers discover just
how huge the universe really is.
This much echoes our own history. In the world of
Age of
Gold,
though, another, older challenge to conventional think-
ing is also on the rise: the power of the supernatural.
However, the Victorian age, with its global European-domi-
nated empires and increasing ease of travel, saw a lot of com-
munication between different magical traditions, each with
small fragments of useful knowledge and power. This lead to
scholarly cross-fertilization, while the growth of scientific
archaeology brought important ancient material to the atten-
tion of intellectuals. This process peaked with the discovery of
a sample of the Philosopher’s Stone in an Egyptian New
Kingdom tomb by noted archaeologist Flinders Petrie in 1919.
With the key to alchemy, the most scientific of the magical
arts, now available, broad-minded scientists began to probe
the truth behind the old wives’ tales and superstitions. Marie
Curie investigated the relationship between the elements in the
light of alchemical theory, and Albert Einstein theorized about
the nature of alchemical forces. Unfortunately, despite the best
efforts of such geniuses, magic still keeps many of its secrets,
driving investigators crazy with its elusiveness – but a few
researchers have achieved useful results, mostly by not trying
too hard to work out
why
magic works, but just
using
it; the
fusion of alchemy and modern science sometimes produces
especially dramatic effects. In game terms, the results of
applied alchemy, as it were, tend to take the form of seriously
weird, pulpy “superscience,” which sometimes only works for
the crazy genius who invented it.
M
AGIC
Magic, it seems, has existed throughout history, and many
of the usual suspects (Merlin, Michael Scot, John Dee, Faust,
Cagliostro, etc.) were probably genuine wizards – but magic
was often unreliable, and wizards tended to be autodidactic
loners, so its effects on history were limited at best. Events
transpired much as in our past, and indeed, many sensible
pundits could and did deny the very existence of magic.
T
HE
S
ETTING
5
C
HAPTER
O
NE
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