Notes from the GM

I created the World of Lia in late 1982 as a setting for the DragonQuest™ RPG.  The RoachKings Campaign started in mid-1983 and continues to this day.  Back in the early 1980s, I often wrote new rules for DQ, mostly adding new spells & rituals for the magic colleges.  However, after about 4 years of nearly constant gaming, the RoachKings Campaign outgrew the sword & sorcery limitations of DQ and I started borrowing rules & charts from other RPGs like Aftermath™, Traveller™, Star Trek - The RPG™, Marvel Superheroes RPG™, etc, and converting them to DQ.  This made for a lot of work converting things and writing new rules, but I did it for several years because the DQ book simply was no longer sufficient to challenge the RoachKings. 

In 1988, Doug Miers wrote down a bunch of the spells we had devised, and he even wrote a couple of all-new colleges - Shaping Magics & Slime Magics.  Although we didn't know it at the time, the colleges of Shaping Magics had already been written by the DQ creators and was included in their "Arcan Wisdom"supplement.  So Doug's version is quite different and is a completely separate college.

Then, in 1999, Matthew Schiernbeck introduced me to the GURPS® system, which was in its Third Edition at the time.  I took a look at it and immediately liked the cross-genre nature of the system.  Here was a single set of rules that could be used for fantasy, modern, superhero, sci-fi, or any other type of RPG scenario.  Although I was a little apprehensive about converting my whole campaign world to a new rules system, the long-term advantages for me as a GM were undeniable.  So, over the course of the next few years (and an ongoing campaign plot arc that involved a "cosmic reset" of the World of Lia,) I switched to GURPS.  Within a year or so of my conversion, Steve Jackson Games released GURPS Fourth Edition, which is the system we use now.

In recent years, I've had occasion to do some research into a few subjects that are relevant to Medieval Fantasy campaigns in general and I've written some articles on subjects like gold & silver coins & value ratios.  Although not specific to any one gaming system, these articles are still valuable for adding realism & background color to RPG games.

In these Archives, I've collected all the old DQ Arcana that I can find, some general articles that apply to multiple RPGs, and the few GURPS house rules we've generated so far.  I hope you find them useful.

--- Charlie