It's Printed

[Bob Schroeck]

I just received a comp copy of Shapeshifters by Fedex last night, direct from the printer. It looks pretty good, except for a number of errata I'm going to have to send off to SJG. Some of those are probably my fault, but there are several which were clearly caused in-house: dropped words in heavily-edited passages, a couple internal cross-references to the the wrong pages, things like that. I'm still making my way through the final book, but overall I'm very pleased -- so far.

-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Morgan Champion]

So how does GURPS Shapeshifters handle characters that have multiple forms,like A.E. VanVogt's Silkies?I'm planning on creating an updated version of Were,one of your old villains from GURPS SUPERS Adventures."There's only one kind of monster that uses bullets"

[Bob Schroeck]

I don't know Van Vogt's Silkies, but if all their forms are preset -- like Were, or the WOD Garou and their five different bodies -- then it's just a collection of wereforms; each additional shape after the first is bought at a significant discount, which makes this much cheaper than it would appear at first look. Were might actually work out cheaper now than he did originally; I'd have to check.
Does this mean you're going to be running those old Supers adventures, then?

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Ace Dreamer]

The AEvV Silkies have a number of forms, and it is arguable what their base one is.
They have a human form, the only power this might have being a restricted form of telepathy. Rather vulnerable.
They have an purely aquatic merman form, that can chuck around big electrical discharges, and maybe has some other tricks. Somewhat tougher.
The kicker is their space form, which can handle hard vacuum, fly in space (and atmosphere), has all sorts of strange senses and some energy attacks.
It is never completely clear where their shapeshifting comes from, though it is implied it was engineered, starting from the space form.
The hero of the story runs into shapeshifting aliens, god like beings with the power of a sun, and beings who can completely mess up reality. As he meets these he bootstraps himself up, learning new shapes and tricks, and going seriously cosmic by the story's end.
I recommend this and a number of other A.E.van Vogt books if you are an SF fan, as even ignoring the philosophical sub texts they can be a really good read.
I am not too clear how you would engineer a shapeshifting power that gave you all the powers that the form implied, and enabled you to aquire further forms, without a massive increase in the rate that GURPS experience points are handed out.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[Bob Schroeck]

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I recommend this and a number of other A.E.van Vogt books if you are an SF fan, as even ignoring the philosophical sub texts they can be a really good read.

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One of these days... I've got a couple van Vogt books in my library, but it's been years since I read them...

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I am not too clear how you would engineer a shapeshifting power that gave you all the powers that the form implied, and enabled you to aquire further forms, without a massive increase in the rate that GURPS experience points are handed out.

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Okay, quickly. The Silkies are going to use the were mechanism. Quite simply, for 15 points + the cost of a specific racial template, you can replace your normal racial template with the new one. (Cost is for the first form; for the second and subsequent were forms, it's 15 + one quarter of the template cost.) This can be modified by a large raft of enhancements and limitations specific to shapeshifters which I provide in the book. Each wereform is basically a separate advantage.
You figure out what's considered the "base" form; put that aside for the moment. Build a racial template for each other form as if it were a separate creature type. The most expensive one gets the full cost advantage; the others are discounted as noted above. Now build the base form with its specifics as a racial template, only you include the other forms in it as advantages. And that's all there is to it.

-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.