More notes & rulings after Session 160

Lots of stuff came up Sunday in game.

- They divided up the magical javelins between a number of combantants, basically only one or two of whom have anything like Thrown Weapon (Spear.)

How do you carry javelins? Everyone wants a "javelin quiver" and claims that someone has one, but I have no record of a cost or weight or capacity. All the actual historical images I've found of javelin troops shows them clutching them in hand. Only delvers carry them as a backup throwing weapon while they primarily act as heavy infantry. Is there anything in the GURPS canon, or stats someone uses, for a "javelin quiver"?
I handwaved this for now, but it needs to be resolved. People already carry a genuinely ridiculous amount of weapons (most of the swordsman have 3-4 reach 2 swords plus knives plus missile weapons plus thrown weapons).

- The PCs are fighting, in large measure, what they didn't want to fight a couple levels up - "cone hatted cultists" and golden swordsmen. They seem to regard them as basically loot carries to be exterminated - maybe dangerous ones, a bit, but not very. They avoided obsidian golems and an iron spectre, which they seem to regard as death on the hoof, too difficult to be slain with only three heavy melee fighters and two high-rate-of-fire light fighters. So they see this fight as easier.

The way I see it is that my group seems basically bi-polar. They spend most of the time talking like they've already won a fight, foes are contemptible or beneath actual contempt, and serve only to carry loot to the PCs so they can be killed, made into zombies, and then carry their own gear into town to be sold. The rest of the time they're in a blind, running panic, fleeing from unbeatable foes who they have no chance against. There is almost nothing in between.

The occasional dose of believing they'd have won had someone rolled one or two rolls differently, thus changing the entire battle, doesn't provide much change of descriptive scenery.

I'd probably be more sympathetic if they treated foes with cautious respect rather than casual contempt, and treated defeat as something to be managed rather than a sign of being totally overmatched beyond all hope of salvage.

I'm not really sure if I'm not the same way. Or if this is that uncommon, especially in high-lethality games. But it feels odd to me to lack a "it might be a tough fight" feeling or a "these are worthy foes" feeling and only have "we can't win" or "these are mere victims" split, instead.

- the players had asked between sessions about selling the giants' magical gloves. I told them they were basically unsalable - they're SM+2 or +3 (I forget offhand) dragonscale gloves, well-used, well-made and magical but old and extremely specific in use, and unable to be modified for size or fit. So only giants could possibly use them, and no on in Stericksburg is buying for giants. They suggested "collectors" might want them, despite me saying that "collectors" weren't very much of a thing in this world.

Actual email quotes:

Me: The gloves will net you very little. I'm not saying whoever is holding them now should keep them, but expect little for them. The same issue you have - you can't modify them and you can't use them - applies to almost 100% of buyers. The tiny percentage that *can* use them would be tough to find, and expect to get a discount because there aren't competing buyers.

You guys can bring them all to Black Jans (it's never just Jans, his/her/its name is "Black Jans") the beginning of next session.

Player: Yeah, I assume the gloves are just going to be collector's items.

Me: "Collector's items" is code for "junk" in this game.

So they took them to an extremely powerful, mysterious wizard, Black Jans aka Jans the Black, who is well-known to only be interested in items of "especial curiosity" (noted in Total Party Teleport, again one of the two linchpin sessions of the entire game) and tried to sell them to him/her/it.

This did not necessarily provide a positive reaction bonus. So it goes.

- It's getting tougher to end sessions back in town, as fights are longer when the group is large and the foes are numerous. I don't have a solution for this as everyone generally is moving more quickly these days, but they also have a lot of things they can do on a turn. The wizard with 2 back-to-back actions thanks to Great Haste is much faster than any of the fighters, even when they just Wait.

I am learning that attempts to "speed up" combat by doing things ahead of time don't help, either. I really do need things done as follows:

1) Declare your Maneuver.
2) Execute your Maneuver piece by piece - show all steps, do all moves, declare all bonuses.
3) Declare and execute any details of the Maneuver.

So "I Wait" slows things down. "I take a Step and Wait. I step (moves figure in Roll20) and I'll attack anything that steps within my melee range" is faster . . . because I don't need to followup with questions. Doing a Move and saying "I end up here" means I need to count the hexes, too, and make sure you didn't step in a hex that triggers some NPC action.

Unstated and understated moves don't help. "I move here, and then I All-Out Defend." I need to know the second, as do you, or we don't even know what your Move or allowed Step is.

It just needs to be complete and concise, and speeding anything up by skipping things, assuming things, having an SOP that's different for 8 different PCs that I'm expected to remember, doesn't speed things up.

- NO HELPING! Every time someone helps, it is not helpful. It's incorrect help or already factored in most of the time, and always takes more time than than the value it returns.

- New tactic? Waiting and then attacking a foe's weapon as it comes in on the attack, to deal with a one-reach weapon versus a two-reach weapon. It's fine. Crogar did it to an axeman (who failed to parry), and a golden swordsman did it to Wyatt (who parried.)

- Amusingly, two players were arguing over something citing the game summaries in the argument. Like they aren't written by me, at least 24 hours later, as I try to just bang out a reasonably sensible accurate-ish summation of the game so we don't forget important major items. And yet they'll say, "It didn't say that in the summary for that session." The most accurate ones are inaccurate. They're not even contemporaneous notes, by my definition. They're all at least a little inaccurate.

We had an interesting rules question, but I'll defer that to later in the week as it'll take some writing up.