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Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Rules & Rulings

As always, rules & game world questions came up.

Game World Questions

Hey, someone wanted to pay for six-fingered vampire information! Can we find him?

That rumor came up years ago, so no.

Can we use the oracular pool more than once?

Clearly, yes, but it isn't clear if you can do so at the same "level." Coin of the realm twice? That didn't work. Coin of the realm and coin of the soul? That worked. Is it time dependent, character dependent, etc.? You don't know.

Can we taxidermy the six-fingered hands?

You can try. Gerry will try, as a matter of fact, and he purchased the IQ/Easy Hobby Skill (Taxidermy.) He (joked?) that he will now want to sell stuffed versions of everything. They can try, but almost everything will sell as junk. There isn't a huge market for stuffed monsters that someone else killed. There might be a market, but not a big one, and margins are likely to be tight, and you may not be able to find a buyer quickly. In other words, you can try, but costs are up front and profits are later, if at all. Cost is likely a random roll, modified heavily by damage.

Rules Questions

Fine sticks

Someone asked about "Fine" sticks. Presumably, fine wooden swords. Of course, this leads to "can I buy a stick, get it fine, sharpen the tip, and get a +1 to damage?" I'm not sure. I lean towards no. I'm not sure if that's correct, though. I do know that GCA won't let me make sticks fine, though, but nothing in DF1 or Low Tech says you can't. I'm inclined to say that only metal can gain a damage bonus here.

How does Mage Sight interact with Dark Vision?

Dark Vision is black and white, so Magic Sight will work but you won't be able to tell one aura color from another.

Can I fit someone else's armor?

Yes, within reason. I allowed 6'2" and 200 lb. Wyatt to lend his spare armor to 6'4" and 215 lb. Aldwyn his armor. It won't fit very well but Alwdyn has Armor Mastery so that's not a big issue.

Meta-Game Rulings

We've had a lot of recent cases of the following:

- Hearing a rumor which prompts an idea for a delve goal

- deciding to do it, "if" they have certain equipment, spells, etc.

- deciding if they want to, or can, get said equipment, spells, etc.

- possibly accepting or rejecting the plan.

For example, we've had, basically, "Oh yeah, Air Gate! Can Gerry learn Walk on Air and Varmus learn Levitate? Okay, learn those and we'll do it!" We also had "Oooh, ghost noises from Felltower? We need Affect Spirits, Command Spirits, we need to know if Exorcism will work here, we need Materialize, and maybe some other spells. Let's get those."

Both no, because it's the same day. It's the same exact day. You have downtime to do downtime things, but you can't decide on Sunday morning - pre-dawn, even - to have learned a skill/spell/etc. and purchased a bunch of items and then decided to act on a plan requiring them.

That serves two purposes:

- it keeps me sane. Otherwise I have to be prepped for everything the PCs can do, everything rumor might prompt them to do, and everything they could do if they spend points/buy equipment/etc.

- it keeps the players sane, because they get overwhelmed by choice.



And that's about all of it, I think.

2 comments:

  1. I run into the downtime thing with my Majestic Wilderlands campaign. Both with GURPS and with my OD&D based Majestic Fantasy Rules.

    With Majestic Wilderlands it is more about paying for a magic item now rather than paying somebody to make it and waiting weeks or months to be made.

    Because I have magic item shops and didn't want to be seen to be a dick about what available. I came up with a series of charts that autogenerated the inventory.

    For Majestic Fantasy, I multiple the total XP the NPC shop staff has by a factor and that give the total inventory budget. Plug that number into my table and it spits out a complete inventory. I will refresh a fraction of it every month.

    Not sure what I would base the inventory value on for GURPS. But the time and cost factor is more straightforward.

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    Replies
    1. I'm not sure either, but it's an elegant solution. I'd just need to a) figure out the inventory value and b) find a generator that spit out sensible items.

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