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Sunday, February 11, 2024

Felltower & the Rules for Monsters

When I run Felltower, I generally play using the DFRPG rules set, with some additions from GURPS Magic, GURPS Martial Arts, and GURPS Basic Set.

But I don't strictly follow the rules, even when I have not house ruled a particular rule to work differently.

Monsters are a great example.

I do monster writeups for myself first, and basically note whatever I think in important and useful in case I can publish it. In actual play, I'm bound by my intentions for what the monster does and what makes sense, rather than the letter of the abilities I put down on paper. If they clash, my intentions win. I'll edit the stats later to reflect what I think should actually better reflect how they play. Ultimately, it's about how I intend them to work.

It's not like the players get to read the monster writeups I use, so they won't be led astray. They will if they depend on a letter-of-the-rules interpretation to make something work, though, and meta-knowledge of the system to base it on. If they use in-game experience and some real-world guessing they'll likely be better off.

Rest assured the ones I wrote up for publication are supposed to work as written. But in my games, they're not always finished writeups . . . and I'm reluctant to share my notes until I know how they should work.

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