Rich McGee

D&D pencils?

Agreed.  GURPS Old West (second or third edition is fine: same book; different covers) really is _the_ definitive sourcebook on the genre from a gaming perspective.
 
 

I would not put it that far. The launch was clean. The Hot staging worked. The problem with the booster is the stresses of the flip and burn caused the booster to fail, and the Loss of Telemetry, either through ground stations, or Starlink made the termination system remove ship 25 from existence, lest it go uncontrolled and land on a city in Africa or something.  If you remember the Falcon development they lost a number of them before they were able to get controlled landings and were able to reuse the part.  THis is a much more complex rocket than the Falcon, so I am expecting five failed launches until they can get a a good, reuseable rocket.

That's my approach as well, alongside the occasional "big convoluted conspiracy no one can fully stamp out" (eg VIPER) and "stays in the shadows" mastermind types.  Learned my lesson with D&D's Deities & Demigods way back when - if you give combat stats to an entity, it will eventually be beaten in combat because you gave it stats.  There's nothing wrong with foes who cannot be defeated in a conventional fight, not even a super-fight. and they do not need stats. 
 
Just use them wisely and if defeating them does become a plot necessity, offer the players at least a couple of ways to do so that don't involve a brawl.  Defeat can mean a lot of things, and what the heroes may see as a win for them is often just an unstoppable foe deciding they have better things to do.  Save the "monomaniacal obsession with punishing the heroes" stuff for their lackeys and other foes that can be beaten with punching.  "Fiat invulnerability" villains shouldn't behave that way any more than you'd declare a vendetta against a gnat.

That's my approach as well, alongside the occasional "big convoluted conspiracy no one can fully stamp out" (eg VIPER) and "stays in the shadows" mastermind types.  Learned my lesson with D&D's Deities & Demigods way back when - if you give combat stats to an entity, it will eventually be beaten in combat because you gave it stats.  There's nothing wrong with foes who cannot be defeated in a conventional fight, not even a super-fight. and they do not need stats. 
 
Just use them wisely and if defeating them does become a plot necessity, offer the players at least a couple of ways to do so that don't involve a brawl.  Defeat can mean a lot of things, and what the heroes may see as a win for them is often just an unstoppable foe deciding they have better things to do.  Save the "monomaniacal obsession with punishing the heroes" stuff for their lackeys and other foes that can be beaten with punching.  "Fiat invulnerability" villains shouldn't behave that way any more than you'd declare a vendetta against a gnat.

I've used the occasional cosmic being and conceptual entity, essentially as a plot device to set up the story and move the action forward. Where conflict with it was involved, it was against any minions the being had.

I own several GURPS supplements but have never actually played GURPS.
 
I've played MERP, though that was thirty years ago.  A couple months ago I couldn't remember anything about the system other than percentile dice, so I went back and looked up how to play.  You know, at one point I almost had those tables memorized?

I played a lot of MERP decades ago. I ran a short-lived campaign on Tabletop Simulator during the lockdown. 
 
I have run GURPS once or twice, but I used the GURPS Lite version. I figured it was easier for the players to learn the system. 

You know he's back in print in Dyskami's Absolute Power, right?  The game is nothing but a new edition of SAS with the setting time-skipped forward a bit.  No better balanced than ever either, I might add.  And Kreuzritter is as much a cardboard cutout of a master baddie as ever, so if you liked him before you'll like him there, he hasn't changed in any meaningful way.  But he does have quite a few more words written about him now - they split the setting into its own book, making it a $120 two-volume game if you want the world and the rules.

I'm thinking in terms of the villain who wields so much "mundane" power that he cannot be touched. He is nowhere near where anyone can even get at him if he does not wish them to. And he won;'t fight the heroes.
 
He doesn't have to.
 
He has more than enough loyal associates that he can ruin the lives of anyone who gets into his crosshairs, wittingly or otherwise. Not just agents or supervillains on retainer, but also lawyers, corrupt police, politicians, and judges, and so forth. You can catch up with his minions but never get enough on him to merit direct intervention.
 
An example is Rupert Thorne, from Batman: The Animated Series. He was the one enemy Batman could never touch. One of the two principal bosses of Gotham's underworld, he was far too busy running an illicit empire of drugs, gambling, prostitution, and all the other things you didn't dare mention on a "family show" to have time for the sort of capers most of the Batman villains would try to pull. Batman was determined to pull him down, but never managed it. He was the master of half that was evil and all that was undetected in Gotham, and not even Batman could do a damn thing about it.
 
Here's a real-world example. In the 1950s, my hometown of Portland was the Mos Eisley of the West Coast. The city had a crime lord who ran casinos and other "dens of iniquity" throughout downtown. If he saw someone heading into his territory, he would trick them into buying their equipment from him, letting him set up the operation and saying he would keep the police off his back. But he also had the press, cops, judiciary, and City Council in his pocket, and the trap would be sprung when his pet reporter ran a story on this terrible new cesspool of vice, which would inevitably prompt a raid. The mark would have no choice but to slink out of town with nothing, while the boss bought back his own equipment from the police at pennies on the dollar and get ready to run the game all over again.  (At the time, it was the sort of city where a Jack Napier could accurately say "Decent people shouldn't live here. They'd be happier somewhere else.")
 
The deadliest villain is the one you can never reach. You might not even know he exists until you're in his crosshairs.

Much of VIPER would also be behind the scenes. While they do have agents and supervillains they also have a number of characters with no real powers themselves but still can screw with the characters, the Duchess being a prime example. Other organizations as well, such as the Institute of Human Advancement, like to screw with characters from behind the scenes, making it so that it doesn't matter that they can take a direct nuclear strike, they can still be screwed with. Even a number of individual supervillains, like Harlequin, who loves to screw with characters from abroad.

You can and probably should run some of VIPER as a behind-the-scenes operation -- their resources and reach are vast. But almost everything and everyone you'd want to use actually has been written up, in either the 4E or 5E VIPER source books. The sheer detail Scott Bennie put into those books is very impressive.

I rewatched that movie several months ago and I was surprised the Tom Baker’s character actually helped his minion. I was shocked by that! 😱

I am actually playing in a MERP campaign via Discord. Our next session is on Saturday.
 
I haven't played GURPS in a long time, though.

Try looking up the the Black Hand from Minaria, the setting of TSR's old, old board game Divine Right.  Minaria got a huge (for a hex-and-counter wargame) amount of worldbuilding background and was obviously someone's homebrew D&D campaign at some points, most of which was published in early Dragon issues that can be found online.  The Black Hand is your classic necromancer-liche type, magically bound to his cursed tower stronghold but occasionally wandering afield on military campaigns with hordes of skellies and other undead.  One of his signature spells/creations was a conglomeration of zombified flesh and bone the size of a small hill, which was pretty much a smellier version of the giant bone construct you're describing.  In game terms he could only create the thing by moving into a hex marked as a "recent battlefield" where one or more armies had been destroyed during the game - the source for all the semi-fresh corpses used constructing the thing.  "Old battlefields" (permanently marked on the map, from historical battlefields) were recruiting ground for skeletons, of course. 
 
Haven't played that game in decades but the Hand came to mind the moment I read your description.  Good memories. 
 
In a swords & sorcery game he'd fit nicely as either a legendary-but-static menace to overcome at home, or a threat to a whole kingdom if he's taken to the field and started raising his legions of undead   Or go more creepy/weird horror with it and have your heroes sent on diplomatic mission to recruit his aid against another kingdom.  That'll work out great, I'm sure.  Don't forget to to include the token sacrificial royal offspring for the players to save from a fate worse than undeath - or not, if they're that kind of heroes.

Try looking up the the Black Hand from Minaria, the setting of TSR's old, old board game Divine Right.  Minaria got a huge (for a hex-and-counter wargame) amount of worldbuilding background and was obviously someone's homebrew D&D campaign at some points, most of which was published in early Dragon issues that can be found online.  The Black Hand is your classic necromancer-liche type, magically bound to his cursed tower stronghold but occasionally wandering afield on military campaigns with hordes of skellies and other undead.  One of his signature spells/creations was a conglomeration of zombified flesh and bone the size of a small hill, which was pretty much a smellier version of the giant bone construct you're describing.  In game terms he could only create the thing by moving into a hex marked as a "recent battlefield" where one or more armies had been destroyed during the game - the source for all the semi-fresh corpses used constructing the thing.  "Old battlefields" (permanently marked on the map, from historical battlefields) were recruiting ground for skeletons, of course. 
 
Haven't played that game in decades but the Hand came to mind the moment I read your description.  Good memories. 
 
In a swords & sorcery game he'd fit nicely as either a legendary-but-static menace to overcome at home, or a threat to a whole kingdom if he's taken to the field and started raising his legions of undead   Or go more creepy/weird horror with it and have your heroes sent on diplomatic mission to recruit his aid against another kingdom.  That'll work out great, I'm sure.  Don't forget to to include the token sacrificial royal offspring for the players to save from a fate worse than undeath - or not, if they're that kind of heroes.

You can find even more examples of this overall archetype in Clark Ashton Smith's writings, particularly the Zothique story cycle.  Some of them may have started out as human, but by the time they come into the story their study of magic has rendered their humanity a dim memory, while others are just plain things from beyond disguised as mortal men or women.  You can find most or all of CAS' writings in public domain online, inclduing some very well-done audio readings scattered around YouTube.  IMO he does a better job with really dreadful inhuman magicians than REH manages, in part because he's happy to write from their point of view instead of their sword-wielding opponent(s).
 
On a less literary note, the old Sinbad films with SFX done by Ray Harryhausen are chock full of fine evil magicians who could easily be reskinned for use outside of their Hollywood Arabian setting.  I'm particularly fond of Tom "Doctor Who" Baker's Prince Koura, whose magic is just the right level of "this clearly isn't healthy for the user" to explain why magicians are so rare.  The fact that Caroline Munro is also in the film might make me a little biased, though.   

The bone golem.  Some vile sorcerer that drains the life from his victims likes to add their skeletons to his giant mindless shambling anamaton.
 
Sorry; I just totally blanked on ideas for the sorcerer himself.
 

Going back to Robert E. Howard's precedents, he was fond of what  I like to call "pseudo-gods." These were non-human supernatural creatures out of some "hell" dimension, or the "outer darkness" ouside the world, or whatever other Lovecraftian locale you prefer. Typically malevolent or at least hostile, they usually wielded magic beyond what mortals could attain, and attracted cultists who worshiped them; but in clothing their spirits in the substance of Earth they were vulnerable to injury and even death by enough force, or some weakness the protagonist could discover.

You can find even more examples of this overall archetype in Clark Ashton Smith's writings, particularly the Zothique story cycle.  Some of them may have started out as human, but by the time they come into the story their study of magic has rendered their humanity a dim memory, while others are just plain things from beyond disguised as mortal men or women.  You can find most or all of CAS' writings in public domain online, inclduing some very well-done audio readings scattered around YouTube.  IMO he does a better job with really dreadful inhuman magicians than REH manages, in part because he's happy to write from their point of view instead of their sword-wielding opponent(s).
 
On a less literary note, the old Sinbad films with SFX done by Ray Harryhausen are chock full of fine evil magicians who could easily be reskinned for use outside of their Hollywood Arabian setting.  I'm particularly fond of Tom "Doctor Who" Baker's Prince Koura, whose magic is just the right level of "this clearly isn't healthy for the user" to explain why magicians are so rare.  The fact that Caroline Munro is also in the film might make me a little biased, though.   

I'll take the last option over those other ones anytime.

I had it (I think) once in very early 2020 when tests were still near-impossible to get and was bad-flu levels of sick for a week.  Since then I've ducked it, and have kept up with my shots.  Absolutely refuse to de-mask.  Used to get terrible lingering sinus infections once or twice a year without fail for well over a decade, and since masking I haven't even had a head cold.  Turns out japan was right all along.

I had it (I think) once in very early 2020 when tests were still near-impossible to get and was bad-flu levels of sick for a week.  Since then I've ducked it, and have kept up with my shots.  Absolutely refuse to de-mask.  Used to get terrible lingering sinus infections once or twice a year without fail for well over a decade, and since masking I haven't even had a head cold.  Turns out japan was right all along.

Glad I could help. Thanks for your input. If I were running an AD&D game (note that I play 2nd Edition and earlier), I may use a spell failure chance for spellcasters with speech impediments using the intelligence table. In 1st Edition some illusionist spells didn't have verbal components, but most other types did.
 
This all came about when I was worldbuilding with my gaming group last weekend.  My contribution was that the world's greatest wizard in history struggled to cast spells with incantations because he talked like Elmer Fudd. Still, he was able to banish the BBEG. After that, he could "bweathe a sigh of welief and west fwom his wabors."