GURPS China 1556341806

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Empire of the Dragon With 5,000 years of history and a quarter of the world’s population, China is the perfect adventure setting . . . whether your campaign is magical or purely historical. From the Great Wall to Tiananmen Square, from the Imperial Wars to the Boxer Rebellion, from Marco Polo to Mao, no fictional roleplaying setting can equal the scope and grandeur of China! GURPS China also includes complete rules for translating the GURPS Third Edition magic system into a mythically accurate Chinese campaign. The Bestiary chapter describes the traditional ghosts, spirits, and monsters of Chinese legend, including Oriental dragons! Finally, GURPS China includes over a dozen detailed maps and tables for your journey through the Empire of the Dragon!

This PDF is a scanned copy of the last printed edition of GURPS China. No changes or updates from that edition were made, but we have appended all known errata to the end of the document. GURPS, Warehouse 23, and the all-seeing pyramid are registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated. Pyramid, GURPS China, 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. All rights reserved. GURPS China is copyright © 1991, 2005 by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated.

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Version 1.0 February 11, 2005

Errata To handle scholarly and arcane materials, a separate M/A language skill, Chinese Ideographs, is required. The Civil Service examination requires a Chinese Ideographs skill level of at least 12. A literate character can scrawl ideographs, but those who wish to write gracefully must learn the Calligraphy skill. Characters with a knowledge of a foreign language, such as Buddhist monks who know Sanskrit, will know its script at their level of literacy for game purposes.

This is the known errata for the print version of GURPS China when this PDF was created: 1– Mike Naylor should have been credited for the maps. 3 and 25 – In the illustration on these two pages, the magistrate is shown writing with a quill pen. Of course, he should be using a brush! 30 – Replace the Literacy entry with: Literacy See p. B21 The Chinese script contains many thousands of characters. Scholars keep it hard to learn on purpose, to maintain their monopoly on learning. Furthermore, early China had many different scripts, and a scholar needed several. Emperor Shih-Huang eliminated all but one. Variant scripts appeared again after his death, but they were not as difficult. Therefore, literacy has different costs and permutations in different ages. One can always learn an earlier form of writing as a separate skill for interpreting ancient manuscripts. Up to the early 1900s, Literacy is a 10 point advantage, although many people will have 5-point Semi-Literacy, which the GM can consider as full Literacy within one's linguistic region (see the Dialects of China map, p. 32). Full Literacy allows one to read clearly written things from anywhere in the Empire, although more arcane tracts remain illegible. After 1930 or so, China becomes a Semi-Literate society (p. CI29), making full Literacy a 5-point advantage and Illiteracy a -5-point disadvantage.

33 – Change Writing (Mental/Varies) to "Calligraphy (Physical/Average) see p. B47". The various script skills become familiarities. Add the following under New Skills: Chinese Ideographs (M/A) Defaults to Language (Japanese, Korean, Okinawan or any Chinese)-3 Prerequisite: Literacy This is the knowledge of the kanji beyond those encountered in day-to-day writing. Old manuscripts, academic texts, flowery literature and scrolls of secret knowledge might require the use of this skill for full comprehension and appreciation. If this skill exceeds the appropriate language skill, it is even possible to discern the meaning of a text without being able to read it aloud (although many ideographs include a pronunciation cue). This will also enable communication between, say, a Japanese speaker and a Mandarin speaker if they can trace the characters on the ground, for instance. 111 – The prerequisites for the I Ching Divination spell are Literacy and two spells from each of the four elements.

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