New DFRPG megadungeon game - Ardun Vul

Amplifying the signal:

DFRPG Ardun Vul

I can't reliably make the time . . . bummer. But maybe some of you can!

GM's Day GURPS Sale

March 4th is GM's Day, and SJG is having a GURPS sale:

GURPS GM's Day Sale

I'll have to see what I'm missing and fill out the collection while there is a sale. As always, I appreciate any purchases of my books!

Diablo update

Last time I left my Diablo game, I was stuck. I had a pile of goatmen archers (mostly Fire Clan) that killed my guy outright in seconds, no matter the tactics I tried.

I "solved" this problem the old fashioned way - I ran away. I piled up 8 full healing potions, and made a run for it through the goatmen and through a door. It cost me about 6 of those potions, but I made it through that door and past another and, eventually, down a level deeper.

I cleared out a few levels below. I still can't take out the fire clan goatmen, but I'm steadily killing off the stuff on the levels below. We'll see if I can get back up and clear them out eventually.

I may take out Nightmare-mode Diablo before I can handle those goatmen. Hah.

Intelligent Items of DF Felltower

DF Felltower features some intelligent items. Not a lot.

There are several items people have ascribed intelligence to, but which totally lack it - they're merely magical effects. One example is the Targe of the Tiger (a variant Ward of the Wolf). It does something on its own, kind of, but it's just an effect of magic that makes it appear to be a living thing in some ways.

A couple of items and spells summon intelligent-ish beings - temporary magical effects in the form of an animal or humanoid form. The Statuette of the Death Goddess and Dragon's Teeth do that, as do Create Servant and Create Warrior and Zombie. They have some intelligence, but they're not sapient or independently thinking. They're more akin to a pre-programmed thing that can handle limited if-then situations.

There are all of three known intelligent weapons in Felltower. Agar's Wand, Malice, and Sigurd's Sword (aka Gram, Balmung). That's it.

Sigurd's Sword is intelligent, and communicates in feelings to its owner. It has its own goal - dragonslaying* - and imparts some of that onto the bearer directly, and the rest by projecting feelings the bearer can sense. Sigurd's Sword can't do much of anything on its own, it needs a bearer it can push and steer.

Malice is semi-intelligent. Possibly more, but there isn't anything to support that. Malice can only be malicious, and remember slights and force the bearer to strike first, strike hard, and show no mercy. It also can't do much directly to affect the world around it without a bearer.

Agar's Wand is intelligent. It is self-willed and able to act on its own. It sometimes will. Its goals are broadly clear (fight evil) but vague in implementation and in what "counts" towards that goal. You can count on it to defend a good bearer, and fight effectively when it has something to fight for, but you can't direct it around. It won't direct its bearer, either - you're either allies or it's not working with you. It's also, incidently, the only Weirdness Magnet in the campaign, given that I do not allow it as a disadvantage on PCs.

That is a complete list of known intelligent items. There may be more, but I wouldn't bet a PC's life on it.

Intelligent items are an interesting plot device and Deus Ex Machina in books. They're a bit more of a problem in games, in my experience. I don't use them heavily because I don't want to either hand out an Ally or have another NPC to run. I have one - Agar's Wand - and that's plenty. My players tend to ascribe intelligence and will to things that lack them, which is interesting, but doesn't add an IQ stat to anything.

The intelligence on those items serves a purpose. If they weren't intelligent, they wouldn't work as effectively. Sigurd's Sword without intelligence just has a negative effect ("Go fight that dragon, NOW!") that people would want to resist because, well, rationally, fighting the dragon later is a better choice. With intelligence you're angering your magic item and might not get to keep using it. Agar's Wand without intelligence has nothing except a PC to direct it, just making it a weapon that fights for you, and, thanks to conflicting enchanments, doesn't do it very well at all. Malice without intelligence is just a cursed sword with some upsides, and sparks questions about Remove Enchantment and Remove Curse as way to keep the upsides and remove the downsides. Intelligence binds their properties together into one thing - you can't see removing one without the other, or ignoring part and keeping the rest.

But the meta-game cost of it is high - lots of work for the GM, another NPC to run or to hand off to the players to min-max value out of. And therefore intelligent items are going to remain rare in DF Felltower.



* And presumably, saving Bwunhilda, she's so wovwy.

Friday Night Links & Thoughts 2/28/25

Busy week, as usual lately.

- Ernie Gary Gygax Jr. - son of Gary Gygax and player of Tenser - has passed away. News on Gizmodo.

- When did 20s become automatic hits? Delta has a look. That wasn't a think when I was playing, has become a meme (as, per Fry, a "widely believed fact"), in the years since.

- A look at loot. A bit math-heavy for my own games but an interesting read.

- Next game is in a few weeks, I think.

What's your GURPS DF / DFRPG magic item placement approach?

Magic item in placement in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game is naturally of a lot of interest to me. I started playing DF a bit late in the line's life - I wrote DF12 before I was able to get my first pure DF game going. I felt like I had to come up with my own approach since there was no system being handed down from above to determine treasure by level or monster type, as I had back in my AD&D and then Rolemaster days.

DF8 provides random treasure tables, which of course can place magic items. You can determine the total value of treasure to be placed used the tables in DF21 Megadungeons. The latter is what I developed out of my own thoughts on how to randomly allocate total value of treasure.

But I largely place magic items directly - either on a cost basis ($10,000 worth of enchanted items, and then I go pick) or a wing-it basis (I think these guys should guard Grimslaughter.)

I have an idea of what kinds of items I prefer to put down in the loot, too, as discussed previously.

But what about everyone else? What systems and approaches do you find works for you? What hasn't worked? Where are you at now, and where would you be if you started over again (or plan to do next time)?

DF Felltower: Looking back on magic item placement

Looking back on my Magic Item Placement post.

How am I doing on these themes?

The best is found, not bought.

This is still true for magic items. The opportunities to buy magic items are even more restricted than when we started the game and no freer than in 2016. PCs generally buy their consumables and armor, but the best armor out there was found in the dungeon - Magescale, Sterick's Plate, and the Targe of the Tiger - the latter two since lost and destroyed, respectively, the shield in the act of finding the first. Hooded Robes of Protection have turned up pretty often, but that's all of DR 2 and mostly useful as a Power Item.

But the good stuff is still found. Doing okay here.

Offensive is better than defensive.

The tendency of my players - maybe players in general, I can't say for sure - is defense. Given a choice between offensive firepower and survivability, they'll choose survivability. It makes sense, but it does mean they'd rather have DR than damage, HP than to hit, and immunities over attacks. So as stated in the original post, I lean heavily towards the former. I give out more offensive items not defensive items. That may encourage defensive builds even more, but I'm inclined to think not. Back when I gave our more armor and defensive magic items people just doubled down to maximize their value.

The PCs have found a few items which can be either/or - a Potion Ring, for example, which the players immediately decided was best for defense and allocated as such.

But largely, I've placed a lot of offensive weapons. Aecris came along, but Vic handed that out. I don't love it - I try to avoid post-DR damage adds as they are rarely decisive and always time-consuming - but it's an offensive weapon. Agar's Wand, which does fight for its wielder, is primarily defensive. It's the only one you'll see in my game. Even then, it is its own thing, and isn't just a magic sword someone can sic on foes. The players really want it to be a self-propelled semi-autonomous killing machine and try to use it as such, but it's one of the rare mostly defensive items I put out here.* Magebane (technically not magical), a Universal Sword, and Shieldslayer were all pulled out of Felltower.

I've put in magic arrows (which amusingly got sold, because they just tossed them in a pile of saleable weapons and didn't investigate them at all), a Wand of Fireballs (given to the best possible user in terms of accuracy, but who usually has 3-4 better things to do than fire 4d Fireball spells), and a few unique potions that largely disappeared into the "we'll use it someday" pile and may have been lost.

I feel like I've largely kept on with this one. Yes, I put in Gorilla Gloves and the armors mentioned above, and there are a few more items out there, but it's magical offense that is found most often.

Enhance but don't replace abilities.

I think I've done well on this one. One swords that'll fight for its wielder, a bracelet that dispelled magic, and a few utility items that do things nothing else quite does. But in general, the majority of items just enhance what people do already. They mostly let them do them better.

Not a lot of detail here, but I think I largely kept to this.


So far, I think I'm doing okay on this. I do it all by feel. But we're mostly on track.



* And it's aimed at wizards. It's a wizard's item, but a non-wizard stepped up and took possession of it. There has been discussion about finding a way to pass it on to to the wizard, but they haven't made any determination of how to do that. Or even ideas. The best so far is, "We should look into that" and fishing questions in my direction in the vague hope I'll provide a simple answer. No luck so far.

Weekly Roundup - 2/21/25

- I've started reading through Power-Ups 10. I have a lot to think about when it comes to potential implementation, but in generally I like skill trees so I like the basic concept.

- I've stalled briefly on Diablo. I've got a pack of Flesh Clan goatmen to deal with who can slaughter my guy before he can kill one. I've cleared everything short of them. I'll give it another few tries before I give up and start a new single-player game for my guy to level up in. I hate to give up on clearing a level, though.

- Our next Felltower game is in a few weeks. I can't wait to see how my players handle the situation they're in.

- If you're into DCC and mutants, the Mutant Crawl Chronicles is up on a Bundle of Holding.

How did I miss this? Power-Ups 10

Thanks to Blind Mapmaker for reviewing this . . . I completely missed this GURPS release.

Given that I've spent a bit of work on compressing the number of skills we use, this is right up my alley. I'll give it a look and see what might be a potential way to upgrade DF Felltower to a simpler skillset.

GURPS Power-Ups 10: Skill Trees

DF Felltower: Tiger Sprint, Haste, and Serenity.

Our current martial artist PC did a lot of running around last session. Questions came up - not relevant at the time - about Tiger Sprint from DFRPG Adventurers, pg. 31.

Here is how we'll deal with it in DF Felltower.

First, although DFRPG doesn't show you under the hood, this is Enhanced Move with a Chi limitation (-10%). Thus, when we need rulings, especially with how it interacts with the non-DFRPG Power-Ups in other, GURPS DF sources, we'll have to go back to how it was built in GURPS before becoming a rules-lite version of itself.

It doesn't affect Basic Speed, Basic Move, or Dodge. It only works when Sprinting - from the second consecutive Move maneuver where you use all of your movement points to travel "along a relatively straight, smooth course" (p. B52).

How does this interact with . . .

Serenity (Pyramid 3/61, p. 12)? This improves DX, which improves Basic Speed, and thus improves Move before multipliers. For reasons mostly due to hating impenetrable defenses, I don't have any plans to allow the optional version of Serenity that affects Basic Speed. My post on the matter has been amended to make that clear.

Sprint Bonuses are a final add, and Tiger Sprint is used instead of the listed bonuses . . . taking the +20% for sprinting (min +1) to +50% and +100%. But DF Felltower doesn't use Sprinting. To be perfectly fair, this should increase the price of Tiger Sprint to 10 and 19, respectively, with a 1-point perk to cover allowing a non-used rule to apply. I won't do that.

Haste? Haste adds to your final numbers. We've been playing with Haste for a while and I have it add to your final numbers. If it adds to your base, then encumbrance should affect it. Have Move 6 and medium encumbrance? That's 6 x 0.6 = Move 3, and you get Haste +2, you're at Move 5 in DF Felltower. If it adds to the base, then it's 6 +2 = 8 x 0.6 = Move 4. No one liked that, so we don't do that. As a result, this also means that things that multiple move multiply your base, and then Haste is added afterward. This includes all similar effects from magic items. Speed elixirs do add to your base, as it specifies increasing Basic Speed, which then affects calculations down the line. So, Haste +2, for example, will add +2 to the final move after multiplying.

Some notes on all of this:

- This will not apply to Move and Attack. DFRPG Exploits, p. 33 is very specific about calling out Move and Move and Attack for how movement works. It then only references Move, not both Move and Move and Attack, under "Three-Minute Miles" and Sprinting on the same page.

I take that as sufficient evidence that you cannot "sprint" and do Move and Attack together.

- You must use all of your movement points for this; if you miss using your full movement points the sprint bonus ends. This may end up with seeming oddities like being able to run 18+ in one second or only half of that, not in between, but it's not unreasonable to have your weird Chi power only work under specific circumstances. If it bothers anyone sufficiently, it's probably better to save your 9 or 18 points and spend it on straight-up and more versatile Speed and Move.

- Although you can technically run in a circle with "forward movement," Exploits and Basic Set also say that when running away you only get a sprint bonus for "A straight, clear course (not twisting tunnels)" so I'll be harsh on attempts to zig-zag to keep speed up or otherwise min-max a sprint bonus.

- Perception rolls at speed will be penalized by your own speed on the Size and Speed/Range Table. It's hard to scout while running full speed.


I'll modify this post if anything changes or additional qualifications or notes need to be added.


These types of posts are fun, but this took a few hours of on and off writing, reading, and cross referencing. That's all for a movement powerup that someone may or may not take, and may or may not use. That's why I don't write as many as I used to back when I worked many less hours per week!

GURPS DF Session 205, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part V - Mopping Up & Pursuit

Actual Date: 2/16/2025
Game Date: 12/12/2024
Weather: Cold, clear, dry.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (301 points)
      Brother Quinn, human initiate (125 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (335 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (316 points)
      Amlaric, human squire (125 points)
Persistance Montgomery (303 point knight)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (306 points)
      Leon the Eye, human archer (125 points)
      Aaron, Brandon, Cedric, Dortmund, Ernie, Ferd, Grunlark, and Hansel, human guards (62 points)
      Bullworth and Oxford, human laborers (62 points)
      Honest Charles LeGrand, human squire (125 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (298 points)


We picked up where we left off.

Thor was facing a pair of cultists in the stairs - one running, and suffering from Magebane and one stunned and down at his feet - and a gnoll behind him. Meanwhile, Hannari was facing off with a cultist with a ready Ice Dagger. There were a couple of standing gnolls (including one lightly-injured one I think Hannari had thrown and everyone just assumed was dead in the confusion of the melee) and a number of badly mauled, weapon-arm-less mechanical knights.

Thor dealt with his opponents by slashing and stabbing the downed cultist, then turning and decapitating the gnoll behind him, and then going down the stairs after the rapidly-running cultist who'd failed to hurt him last time with Explosive Lightning.

Percy finished off a gnoll with some help from one-armed Vlad distracting it, and then waded into the remaining gnoll and knights. He'd kill the gnoll quickly and then slowly bash the knights down. Eventually, at the urging of Vlad, he swapped to his greataxe from his flail and finished the last knight off with two blows - one too little to penetrate the armor, the other enough to penetrate the neck and disable it.

Hannari threw a meteoric knife at the cultists he faced and wounded him, but took an Explosive Ice Dagger back. He was against a wall so chanced Parry Missile Weapons but it didn't matter - it blew up on contact and wounded him. He threw another knife but Missile Shield took care of that. So he ran up and slammed the cultist and knocked him down, and then finished him off (I can't remember how.) He spent some time retreiving his weapons from the body and heading downstairs.

Chop ran over to the NPCs and told them to come on up to the front, even as he put Stop Bleeding on everyone not obviously dead. Duncan, who'd tossed in a nearly harmless (3 damage on 4d-4) Lightning spell at a knight, headed over and gathered up Aecris and then headed over to search the bodies.

Once that all was done, Vlad snuck up to watch around the corner where the Iron Witch had run, and saw a closed door. He headed back to the PCs.

Meanwhile, Chop joined Thor and Hannari at the bottom of the stairs. Thor and Hannari ran out, taking turns and trying to find the cultist. He'd headed off into the darkness. Thor went one way, Hannari the other.

Thor ran around for a while, first map east and then map south (actually, north isn't up on the map, so whatever), and then south-east-north through a door and eventually found himself back near the stairs. He gave up, met up with a waiting Chop, and they went upstairs.

Hannari just kept going. He ran, forced doors, and then ran again. His ST is really up from (IIRC) a potion, so that let him force some doors he might not have otherwise. He ran and ran and ran. He found nothing.

Eventually, with the fight done above, Duncan cast Telepathy to talk to Hannari. Hannari said he was hunting wizards. They left him to do so for a while longer - maybe another 10-12 seconds? - and then asked him to return. He wasn't done hunting wizards. They moved to the room where the Iron Witch is - Seeker had failed, but Seek Earth said there was gold in there. Hannari said he couldn't hurt her, so why bother. But he crushed a Haste stone so he could run faster. With the distance he'd run, even a +2 is a big, big jump in overall movement.

He did eventually find a hallway with enough branches off of it to not be sure where to go. So he backed off entirely and headed back the way he had come.

Meanwhile, the PCs, along with their only three remaining mobile NPCs - the two laborers and Leon - moved up to a heavy door. They forced it opened and rushed in. Inside was a circular room with some spare but nice stone furniture, black carpeting, and hundreds of glinting stones set in the ceiling. They forced one door out of it, and started to peer down a rough-hewn tunnel off to another side.

That's where we called it, for time.

Notes:

- We stayed in combat time the entire session. I would have dropped out of it once pursuit was broken off, but circumstances prevented it. Hannari kept up his pursuit quite a while after being contacted with Telepathy, and it took a couple of requests to get him to try to rejoin the group to attack the Iron Witch. Then the PCs started to get in some healing, bring up guys from the back, and set up to go after the Iron Witch . . . so I couldn't just close up the fight, let them regather, and go. That made for a steep real time to game time ratio.

- Parry Missile Weapons vs. Missile Spells - I was asked if an incoming spell was Explosive, since apparantly PMW doesn't work against them. I can't find anything that says that. It's a bad choice against an Explosive spell, but it still "works." Also, explosive variants of spells don't look different. Dodge is always the better choice against a Missile spell unless you have to ensure it, at best, hits you and not others behind you or catches less people behind you in the blast.

- I'm continually offput a little by the exclamations of disappointed surprise people get when a) opponents aren't stunned or knocked down from a non-Vitals, non-Skull hit, or b) Wizards make a successful Will roll to not have their Missile spell affect them when injured. Uhm, without a penalty - and there are only a tiny handful of them - stunning happens at best half of the time. HT 11-12 is more typical, which means it's more like 25-37.5% of the time. Oh, and wizards throwing 9d spells aren't going to have Will under 13, and 14-15 is more likely. It's a nice thing if it happens . . . but it's not likely to happen. It's just a weird expression of surprise. Maybe it's in the same category as people who are surprised patrolling monsters don't have bags of treasure with them. Desire trumps actual knowledge of likelihood.

- I really like the confirmation roll in the GURPS module. We did have some teething issues with it as people add in a bucket of modifiers, then hit the roll, then confirm . . . and find that sometimes the auto-added penalties are already in. Sometimes the confirmation roll has a modifier from an unknown source . . . or so I hear. I didn't have any of that. I wonder if people aren't as keenly looking at, say, their chosen maneuver, or posture, or if they're in close combat or suffering from some other effect.

- We don't use Sprinting, but we did get derailed in a discussion of Tiger Sprint plus Serenity. I'll do a post on how they interact, but. It's possible Hannari was running with a sprint bonus, but we'll see - his player will read this and check. I don't use it at all, under any circumstances, but if someone wants to buy Tiger Sprint as a power-up, it'll be allowed and used per the rules in ways I'll outline in a post later this week.

- Forced Entry is, I think, the only ST roll we use. I do think it might be better to be an effect roll . . . I have to play around with that and see how I like it. Rolling damage would be a better way to handle it (and let people Slam through doors, sometimes), but it has some issues. Not the least of which is, what do I do with Forced Entry as a skill. And there are other issues, but it's worth some investigation. I'll come up with some ideas and then put them past my group. Done right, this can help simplify down to one system.

- MVP was Thor. It was a tossup between him (killing and pursuing and good-naturedly running around trying to find people) and Hannari (killing a cultist wizard and chasing another.) Thor won the die roll.

Felltower pre-summary

Fun session today, but it didn't get resolved just yet.

- the PCs finished off the big brawl with the cultist wizards, Iron Witch of Cornwood, mechanical knights, and gnolls

- the iron witch and one cultist wizard managed to get away from the PCs

- Hannari and Thor chased the cultist wizard, split up, and spent a long time unsuccessfully persuing him

- the PCs got back together, mostly, and moved into the Iron Witch's room

Full summary tomorrow.

Noble Knight Clearance Sale

Just an FYI post - Noble Knight has a clearance sale going right now.

Clearance Items

Just a trio of GURPS-related items - an issue of Pyramid, an issue of Roleplayer, and another zine of some kind. But still, worth a quick look if you have some item you're in the hunt for, especially more recent D&D and Pathfinder items.

Friday Roundup 2/14/2025

Fun stuff for a Friday. Warning: may not include actual fun.

- Ian McCullom / Forgotten Weapons takes apart a functioning replica of Deckard's pistol from Blade Runner.

- I love fishmen, so I like this paint job on a Reaper fishman.

- Some detailed analysis of the Monster Manual here. Not the old one, the newer ones.

- Next Felltower is Sunday. The conclusion of the Brotherhood Complex brawl, and we'll see what the PCs do with it. And what they talk themselves into, and out of!

GURPS VTT module updated

The GURPS module for Foundry was updated.

It seems to have solved the drag-and-drop damage problem . . . I can't be totally sure because we're mid-combat. But that was a big issue in our last session.

Some other bugfixes are in there, as well . . . but I don't know how many will actually affect us.

Diablo - Won

I finished Diablo tonight, in Normal mode, with now-25th level warrior Mirado.

- I'd forgotten that when you kill Diablo you just go to a cutscene, and then are returned to town. I'm glad I didn't need to mop up all of those teleporting wizards . . . but still, it feels very abrupt.

- The final levels were tough - it took a lot of trips, lots of potions, and almost bankrupted my guy in the process. So many witches. Sooooooo many witches. Tough when you're a melee guy without Teleport and without either mana or life steal.

- I restarted in Nightmare. Should be fun, but Hell mode is where it's really fun. I miss the days of using a trainer program to make a 50th level dude, use it to make a Hell-mode game, and dumping a too-low-level guy into it to try and survive. Ah, the good old days of hacking stuff to make it as hard as possible. I expected the early levels of Nightmare to be a bit of a slog, but at least the loot is worth more sold.

Fun game. I'm glad I messed around and got it working.

Logic behind allowing and disallowing Power Ups in DF Felltower

DF Felltower tries to play like an old-school, early-edition RPG game. It's heavily influenced by AD&D, Rolemaster, and my earlier-edition GURPS games. It is intended - like normal DF - to be a higher-powered version of the same. You sure don't start at "1st level" in DF.

But in any case, GURPS DF isn't quite like the source material. I end up disallowing a lot of potentially potent and/or useful adventures. No chi blasts, no magic bolts, no special kill shots, no special skill at parrying with your bow . . . not even if I wrote the damn ability up in the first place. I know cool, and I know the rules, but I also know DF Felltower isn't a kitchen sink game.

How do I decide?

- Is it basically mundane? If the ability is largely just a souped-up mundane ability . . . it's likely going in. I don't mind more power. I like more power. It allows me to put in more and more powerful foes.

- Is it wiz-bang and video gamey? It's likely staying out. If it allows you to bend reality to pull off some cool move . . . or bypass some core power limitation of the basic rules . . . it's out.

- Does it usurp another template? Does it let you replace another template's core skills? Thieves as combat coordinators, scouts as spellcasters, wizards as missile spell machine guns . . . not for DF Felltower.

- Is it a "must have"? Probably not allowed. If it's the kind of thing that, once allowed, isn't something a template can do without . . . I won't include it. I don't want a splatbook approach where a new power comes along and you must buy it or be permanently relegated to second class in your own field.

That's pretty much how I pick and choose.

And, importantly:

The default answer is no. It needs to be "Hell Yes!" or the answer is no. I don't need a Power Up to argue for exclusion, but for inclusion.

More Power for Dungeon Warriors & Felltower: Final Availability List (Feb 2025)

The article More Power for Dungeon Warriors in Pyramid 3/61: Way of the Warrior and in Dungeon Fantasy Pyramid Collection has a number of Power-Ups created by Sean Punch and me.

This is a comprehensive list of what is available, and unavailable, for purchase in DF Felltower.

Please note that all purchasing rules still apply - what's available at start-up, prerequisite point investments for combat perks, prerequites, etc. This is only a list of what's available, and doesn't override the rules anywhere else unless explicitly noted below.

Available

Put it in His Eye

Ramming Speed

Retroactive Poisoning (only for Assassins, Druids, Evil Clerics, Thieves, Unholy Warriors)

Sacrificial Block

Third Hand

Willful Warrior

Greater Weapon Bond (Not recommended; this doesn't give any plot protection to your gear; we do not use Signature Gear in DF Felltower.)

Heroic Reserves

Peerless Slayer Training

Two-Weapon Mastery

Ultimate Ramming Speed

All Barbarian Power-Ups (Mountain of Meat, Sure-Footed, Greater Cleaving Strike, Naked Rage)

Both Holy Warrior Power Ups (Emergency Casting, Holy Weapon)

Most Knightly Powers (Bodyguard, Weapon-and-Shield Fighter, but not Tactician)

Most Martial Artist Power-Ups (Fists of Power, Grand Flying Kick, Hundred-Handed Strike, Chain Belt, Inner Alchemy, Mr. Pushy, Master of Lethal Strikes, Rolling Throw, Serenity (DX version, not Speed version), but not Chi Blasts or Unarmed Master, which doesn't play well with DF Felltower's generous unarmed rules)

All Scout Power Ups

All Swashbuckler Power Ups

Unavailable

These abilities are not in use.

Double-Ended Weapon Training

Heroic Sacrifice

Double-Ended Mastery

Interdiction

Killer Hair (for PCs, anyway, it might be a monster ability)

Wizard Hunter

Tactician


Prior discussion on the blog is overruled by mention here.

Diablo: Things I'd Forgotten

Diablo very much influenced Dungeon Fantasy - potion belts with 8 potion slots, hack-and-slash gaming, town is safe, magic items are found or purchased but not made, etc.

There are a few things I'd forgotten, though:

- Quests sometimes trigger new areas in old areas. You might find a crack in a wall that wasn't accessible before when you get a quest, or a chest you can't open until you've met the quest-giver.

- You increase stats, but increasing spells is all about finding magic in the dungeon.

- Unique items are always interesting, even if only useful for a while.

- Mood music is awesome.


Amusingly, some stuff I just remembered - Tab for the automap, arrow keys to move it around, Shift+Click to stand in place and swing, right click to cast spells . . . I haven't played in close to 30 years but I remember the keystrokes like they were yesterday.

And I remember the Battle.net only helm Lightforge . . . which was totally sweet. They said it was only accessible by a lucky drop in the demo version, but it was a hacked item. My friend Ed traded for them and got all of us one each. And me, two, after my first guy was lost in a computer failure. But I digress . . . got to go back to clearing the Bone Chamber . . .

Random Thoughts & Links for 2/7/2025

It's Friday, time for random thoughts and links.

- Diablo lead progammer David Brevik describes DF Felltower, although you do have a lot more up-front customization of characters in Felltower thanks to GURPS.


But the main thing is loot? Killing monsters and loot, story not needed? Yes. That's my game.

- I've been thinking about my game's rules. I feel like I keep trying to simplify, and cut out things - rules, especially - that I feel don't add enough fun to justify the cost in time and complexity. But I also feel like that's becoming less true as I go on. A couple of rules I'd quietly dumped have been revived after pushes from players. A rule or two I'd downrated in effect have returned to the foreground a bit. If I started from scratch, my preferred ruleset for Felltower would be shorter, and although my players seem to agree in principle, actual practice is causing more rules and rulings to track. Hmm.

- Chester looks at Unlimited Adventures - a Gold Box CRPG toolkit.

A Snowy Day in Hell: Diablo

Out of nowhere, yesterday, I decided I wanted to play Diablo 1 again. I fiddled around until I got it to work - and oddly, it didn't seem to love sitting on my main partition so I stuck it on a USB key and it worked fine. I patched it up to 1.09, used a patch to keep it stable on Windows 10, and fired it up. And then a good chunk of my day was back-filled and front-empty thanks to a snow and ice storm. So I played Diablo for breakfast today.

Mirado the Warrior is now level 9 and slogging his way through the upper 4 levels of the dungeons below the old church in Tristam. I spent a good deal of time getting sucked into the loot rewards, just one more fight to level, and the OH SHIT RUN of it all. I don't feel overwhelmed but I sure as hell feel a little nervous with every door I open and every corner I turn.

I played D3 for a little bit a while back, the demo anyway . . . and I wasn't enjoying it. I felt like I was just clicking and hoping. It looked good, but I didn't feel that existential fear of my guy getting popped like in Diablo 1. I felt like I couldn't beat the Skeleton King, but not like I was afraid of losing my guy or like I had any real stakes other than some time. I could have gotten the upgraded D2, or installed D2 and the expansion from my disks . . . but it was Diablo itself that seemed like a great way to spend some time. Much simpler - Warrior, Rogue, Sorcerer - and less worry about skill tree builds.

I played this game so damn much back in the day. I think I capped out at level 48 with one of my guys - Cthulbert - and played with my lamented lost buddy Ed, Don, my coworker Jesus (not Hey-soos, rather Gee-Zus), and a few others here and there. Fun stuff.

If anyone knows a way to get rid of the need for the CD, that would be nice, as my main play machine doesn't have a CD-ROM. If you've done it, let me know what worked - I tried searching for all sorts of methods and tried them to no avail, so don't drop me a link unless it's described what you had work for you. Thanks guys, and see you in Hell! (Aka levels 13-16)

VTT Gripes & Praises

Comments on the VTT we use - Foundry, hosted on Forge, using the Unofficial GURPS module.

This is all for Session 204.


Praises

- the new GURPS module for Foundry has a die roll confirmation - you can now see the net roll, with your mods, before you roll it. It's very handy. It's an extra step on each roll, but it saves a lot of pre-roll double checking, or post-roll calculation.

- the damage dialog gives calculations for major wounds, shock, knockback . . . and you can roll for the victim and apply prone, stunning, shock, etc. with a button click. Very nice. If we can be sure the calculation is right, I can inflict knockdown and stun on PCs instead of having the dely of waiting for the player to pull up a sheet and roll.

- the numbering at the end of the NPCs was sufficient to differentiate them.

- there is an editable status effect I think we can use for Resistances and such.

- Overall, the experience is getting smoother.

Gripes

- drag-and-drop damage doesn't work well anymore. If there are multiple actors in one hex, the top one is selected for the damage dialog. This was literally just fixed.

- I still can't easily add new combatants to a fight without revealing them. If there is a way to add someone to combat as invisible on the turn tracker by default, I'd love to know. The gnolls weren't a surprise because someone saw them populate the turn order before I could make them invisible until they were within sight.

- Sometimes when I marked someone as fallen, they disappeared from the map for the players. Since bodies are bad footing for our purposes, that is bad. I had to leave everyone up and on the turn tracker, which isn't ideal.

- I still need a way to mark statuses on NPCs without revealing them. The PCs spotted a pair of disabled mechanical knights and no one even remarked on them . . . because they could see the disabled icons on them. They should have had to at least question if they were active for a second, not get the answer from icons I put down.

- Facing is still weird as you move your guy . . . and being able to draw a path and then click to move along it would clear up a lot of questions about how people moved around.

Rules and Rulings from Session 204

Rules and rulings from DF Session 204.

- At one point Hannari did a Move and Attack - ran up, threw at a cultist from a yard away, and then the cultist's explosive spell went off. He had 1 more movement point, but you can't use ordinary movement points as a Retreat reaction by my ruling. I don't think anything in GURPS supports using "Move" to escape the blast radius of an explosion or effect unless it's specifically a non-instant effect (Shape Earth comes to mind, nothing else does offhand.) Since he'd used Move and Attack he couldn't use Retreat. When a blast went off behind him a split-second later (from a cultist throwing on his turn, a bit further down the move order) he similiarly couldn't use that one last move point to move forward and further away from the blast radius. Someone argued for forward momentum, which might make some logical sense, but again, nothing in the rules allows for it. I don't want to get into the precendent of allowing people to have momentum and prior movement give combat bonuses since GURPS similarly doesn't penalize you for lacking such things. Had he been able to use Retreat, the fact that he'd moved 8 yards in one second in a straight line wouldn't have impeded him, so moving 8 yards in a straight line doesn't aid him, either.

- How do slams and knockdown and knockback interact? My players argued that knockback should occur before knockdown, basically because of the wording for Knockback, where you may fall and that's discussed after. Under Slam, it doesn't say either way, it only says knockdown. I disagree - I think if you do so much damage that you automatically knock someone down, you should get to overrun and trample them. But I did agree to run it the way they want to. I may need to enforce Knockback rules for crushing damage from now on. I generally ignore it because it's more calculations, more rolls, and rarely significant. I think everyone has images of knocking down NPC after NPC after NPC as they pinball off of each other. I doubt it'll ever come to that. I may have to make a ruling to cover situations were this doesn't make sense, and where trampling is the most logical effect. I'll probably have to argue rules again when that comes up, but I think if you can trample, that should be the default effect of a slam, and foes shouldn't be knocked back and away from the trample. Once again, a ruling makes another special case . . . which is why I largely ignored knockback until people wanted it back.

- I basically don't track shield damage unless someone has an attack that can reliably one-shot a shield. It's just too much headache in a VTT. People do ask pretty often, but the answer is pretty much, no, don't bother.

- Someone suggested that it would be cool if your missile spells got larger as you put more dice into it. No, no, no, no, no. No, as the GM, this would not be cool. People would want Per rolls to see how big it was. They'd argue that it should be Per-based or IQ-based Thaumatology and then later argue it should be Observation or Tactics or whatever the heck they're good at because "my guy should be experienced at this." Then they'd want to be able to guess within a die. Then people would want a perk to allow them to have missile spells that don't give away their power by size. Nevermind it makes no sense with Lightning even if makes sort-of sense with Stone Missile. Then people will ask about scaling to SM. This is pure give-a-mouse-a-cookie territory and doesn't add anything to the game except, "Wow, that Stone Missile was 18d, it must have been so big!"

GURPS DF Session 204, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part IV - Mechanical Knights, Gnolls, and Cultists

Actual Date: 2/2/2025
Game Date: 12/12/2024
Weather: Cold, clear, dry.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (301 points)
      Brother Quinn, human initiate (125 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (335 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (316 points)
      Amlaric, human squire (125 points)
Persistance Montgomery (303 point knight)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (306 points)
      Leon the Eye, human archer (125 points)
      Aaron, Brandon, Cedric, Dortmund, Ernie, Ferd, Grunlark, and Hansel, human guards (62 points)
      Bullworth and Oxford, human laborers (62 points)
      Honest Charles LeGrand, human squire (125 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (298 points)


We started where we left off three weeks ago. The PCs were in a big fight with a bunch of mechanical knights and the Iron Witch of Cornwood (an iron-bodied wizard).

Thor was fighting with a single knight, Percy four or five of them, and Vlad (armed with Chop's club, eventually), Chop, and Duncan another. As the session began, Thor broke away from the knight he was fighting and ran around the melee to reach the Iron Witch. Percy kept fighting the knights surrounding him, backed by Agar's Wand playing defense. Percy systematically crippled the hammer arms of the knights (he kept saying, "sword arm") and taking out their legs. They kept after him, shield bashing from seated or prone position. They hit him a fair number of times, but never managed to inflict any damage through his DR. He was briefly spiked in the back by one before he was able to cripple its arm. This kept him busy for most of the action.

Thor got around to the Iron Witch and slashed her in the chest with his meteoric iron long knife, cutting her but not deeply. She ran after tossing a Stone Missile at Thor that he blocked. He followed. In a few seconds, it was clear he was falling behind - his Move 6 vs. her Move 7.

Vlad and Duncan pounded away at the knight in front of them, and Duncan eventually nailed it with a hard shot with a Stone Missile in the right arm and finished it off; it dropped, motionless.

Chop moved up and got off a long-ranged Stone to Flesh and restored Hannari. Hannari took off after the Iron Witch, throwing a meteoric iron kama at her foot to cripple or trip her up. It hit, but did so little it didn't do more than dent her and didn't stick in or hinder her. She kept running, now pursued by both Thor and Hannari. Hannari quickly broke off the chase, because he figured he couldn't really harm her. Thor did a few turns later, after she ran around a corner, because he was just falling further behind.

As they headed back toward Percy, the door to the stairs down - which was right in the fight area - opened up, and a mass of gnolls burst out and attacked Hannari and Thor. They ran back to the other PCs, pursued by gnolls. Backing the gnolls were cultist wizards - those same five guys they'd tangled with repeatedly before (putting the firm lie to the tentative belief that they'd "killed" one in a prior delve).

The gnolls rushed the PCs. Percy broke off from the crippled knights and moved into the fray, launching three strikes at the lead gnoll . . . and hit him three times in the skull, taking him to below -10xHP. Thor and Hannari got into a rough line with Percy and Agar's Wand. The crippled knights started to crawl up behind the PC line. Percy and Agar's Wand went to town. Thor managed to slash one gnoll and wound him badly. Hannari put one down (I think not fatally). Percy killed or knocked out nine of them, and Agar's Wand three more.

As he was doing so, the five cultists emerged from the stairs. Two were briefly within two yards of one another so Hannari threw a Magebane grenade. One dodged out of the gas cloud, the second was caught in it and lost access to his Magery. Hannari ran up to the cultist wizards, and spiked one point-blank in the face with his meteoric iron kama. It knocked the cultist out, and so his Explosive Stone Missile went off. Hannari wasn't able to dive away and took serious damage, as did a gnoll that was too close to the both of them. Another cultist threw an Explosive Fireball that hit the floor right behind Hannari, lighting him on fire (and the gnoll, as well) with 10 base damage. A third threw an Explosive Ice Dagger and further injured Hannari.

Thor ran up and ran over one of the cultists with a slam, only to get caught in a 6d Explosive Acid Ball ("I should start regarding my outer layer of heavy plate as disposable.") He turned after the fireball cultist, and knocked him down and into the stairwell. He was zapped with Explosive Lightning but his Resist Lightning kept him from harm. Chop healed up Hannari with a long-ranged Major Healing.

Even as all of this happened, the disabled knights kept crawling up. Duncan retrieved Thor's flaming sword, and Chop backed off from the knights.

That's where we left it - the Iron Witch of Cornwood had fled, the mechanical knights are down to five or six badly mauled constructs with non-functioning weapon arms and and at least one non-functioning leg, and a few gnolls are still up. The cultist casters only have two still standing - one affected by Magebane and fleeing down the stairs, another backed off to a T-intersection and readying a (presumably explosive) Ice Dagger.

Notes:

- This writeup was a wee bit more detailed, but somehow, when I closed it out to do other work I managed to lose a chunk of what I wrote. So you get the summary of the summary.

- Several players wanted to do another turn or so, just to finish the fight. Maybe, but who is to say what's finished? Will they grab bodies and leave? Stop and try to rest? Try another "rest at the entrance" and regroup to come back after the remaining dwellers in the dungeons? Way too much to resolve . . . and from my perspective, even if finising is a quick 1-3 more turns of fighting, that leaves the players 2-3 weeks of planning their healing spells, discussing ways to maximize their looting, etc. complete with all of the questions they'll ask in between. I'd rather they have to make quick decisions quickly, not with weeks of planning based on certain knowledge. Not since it'll take the whole day anyway even if we don't start in combat. So ending "early" (a little later than our usual time) was better from my perspective. If everyone was gung ho on finishing it I might have, but it wasn't unanimous for continuing, either.

- MVP was Percy for killing/knocking out 9 gnolls in a handful of seconds; Agar's Wand took down 3 in that same time. 12 out of 16 went down just from Percy and his gear. Agar's Wand got right into slaying the evil gnolls, even as it wouldn't pound away at the mindless automatons they wanted it to fight.

Rules & Rulings

VTT Gripes

Fellower pre-summary

We played Felltower today.

- the PCs mostly demolished the last of the mechanical knights . . . mostly.

- the Iron Witch was forced to flee, but the only one who could harm her that was nearby wasn't fast enough to catch her.

- a bunch of reinforcements showed up - gnolls and cultist spellcasters!

- Percy showed everyone what he was born to do - crush skulls and take names.

We had to leave off mid-fight, again, despite some excellent progress.

Full summary tomorrow. It was a good one.

Friday Roundup 1/31/2025

Busy, busy week for me, and not for gaming. Here are a few things I did like, though, and some notes.

- Here is yet another look at Appendix N from the AD&D DUNGEONMASTERS GUIDE, with more Gygax commentary on his influences.

Prependix N
- This was the Traveller set I wanted. The bookstore had Starter Traveller and Deluxe Traveller. The first was $12, the second $20. I had $12. I really wish I'd saved up another $8 before I bought the game. I spent a lot of time with supplements that assumed you had the little black books, and nothing I had pointed back to pages in Starter Traveller. I felt like I'd gotten a bit of a broken game, because I could never tell what was missing or different.

Deluxe Traveller

- Mini combat in the Pacific in WW2.

- Game is Sunday, in all likelihood. I hope the PCs can find another gear and win this fight they're in, and finish exploring the dungeon. I expect it's likely to be another split session, though.

DF Felltower: Why can't you temporarily suppress magic?

Over the course of Felltower, the question of countering magic has come up. Canonically in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, there is no way for PCs to temporarily suspend an enchantment. If magic is permanent, the effect remains and is not subject to the relatively simple and easy counters of Dispel Magic and Counterspell. Curse-like effects are often removable with Remove Curse, and you can dispel/counter non-permanent magic.

But it's deliberate that the spell list doesn't include Suspend Enchantment. Because of this, these things are generally true:

Dispel Magic doesn't harm created undead, contructs, or permanent enchantments (wether on items or locations.) It does generally have the potential to end the magic behind spells like Animate Shadow or Animate Object or Create Warrior. Some spells have very specific counters, and thus aren't subject to Dispel Magic - examples include Flesh to Stone and Entombment.

Counterspell can only directly counter spells, not magic effects in general, and are subject to the revised rules we use.

Ward is only useful defensively, and again, only against spells, not enchantments and magical effects that just happen to be possible to create with a spell. Just because you may potentially be able to Ward against Burning Touch doesn't mean all touch-based fire attacks from magical creatures are subject to Ward.

Remove Curse is effective against a special set of spells and effects - they're called out specifically in the descriptions of the individual spells.



Why?

Because enchantments should be special. They should not be subject to a high-skill caster or a good roll to end. Magic-based obstacles should be solved with cleverness or sucking up the effects, not by just spamming out Dispel Magic.

In additional, magical creatures - undead, constructs, mana-dependent beings, etc. - shouldn't be singled out for a special generic damage / save-or-die spell (such as allowing Dispel Magic to damage or outright kill such creatures). And if even some are, that means step one should always be casting Dispel Magic to see if it'll damage or kill such creatures. The spell would go from a way to counter temporary magic to doing that plus potentially killing otherwise potentially problem-causing foes. Don't know what to do with a critter? Start with Dispel Magic.

Therefore I don't even allow it on a critical - the "I rolled a 3, so a miracle occurs!" that is the equivalent of post-1st edition D&D/AD&D's "I rolled a 20." Allowing such would encourage people to just keep trying to same spells over and over and over, hoping/praying for a 3. Once that's possible, generally, people will just try Dispel Magic on everything unti it works. I've seen this with our special rule on Missile Shield that allows a 3 or 4 to penetrate it (if you had an effective 1+ skill in the first place, of course) - people just keep plugging away, hoping for that low roll that will solve the problem without them needing to find a different solution. I like that rule enough to keep it, but allowing it does push people to a thoughtless repetition of a failed tactic until they've rolled a 3 to see if it "really" doesn't work.

With that in mind, players can be sure that only NMZs really mess with their enchanted items, magical creatures won't just take damage from one spell that automatically acts as a damage spell / off button, and that spells designed to counter spells aren't the answer to fantasy problems that aren't instantly amenable to "I hit it really hard in the hit points."



Related:

Revised Dispel Magic (and for people who groan that a 1-hex spell was 3 seconds, 2 with Skill 20, is now 5 seconds, 3 seconds with skill 20, thus making the spell "useless" for combat . . . feel free to not cast it!)

No Felltower Today

Due to a cold weather-related house problem, half of our gamers can't game today. We've postponed the resolution of the Brotherhood Complex. Next game date is as yet undecided.

Trying some new VTT settings

I put in some new settings for the VTT for tomorrow:

- auto-popout for the Combat Tracker

- larger font sizes to make it easier to read

- I think I managed to turn off the ability to take yourself out of combat

- turned off the auto-open on the modifier bucket - huge for me, since I use two screens and it's effective in the middle

- maybe made some other tweaks that will affect combat positively . . . but we'll see. Sometimes it's hard to parse out what it is I'm actually causing to happen.

Friday Links 1/24/2025

Friday has come.

- I finally got around to getting & reading Lyorn (Amazon.com link), by Steven Brust. He dedicated it to John M. "Mike" Ford, with regrets that Mike wouldn't be able to see it.

It involves a musical, with based-on-real-world-music songs in the text.

I mostly bring this up because, yeah, John M. Ford would have loved it.

I interacted with him on the Pyramid message boards back in the day, as I mentioned here. Knowing his taste, as soon as I saw the first music, I thought, oh, yeah, he would have loved this book. I'm not a musical guy, but I can read along and grin and bear it because of the dedication.

- I think our next game is Sunday. I hope so, because I'm planning on it.

- Yexil from Gamma World mini. I had no idea they made that. We met one of them, once.

GURPS VTT Module Wish List

Here is a quick list of what I'd like to see in my VTT, especially for the GURPS module. I'll keep the updated as I go or as things change.

drag and drop damage onto the combat tracker. There are times I'd like to be able to drag and drop damage to the combat tracker. Or to an open character sheet, for that matter.

Ability to automatically assign a random 3-digit number after all NPCs. If I drop 10 orcs down on the board, giving them adjectives before their names just causes goofiness from my players. "Sleepy Orc" or "Angry Orc" is going to start a whole derailing series of time-wasting comments and annoy me. "Orc (175)" and "Orc (609)" are easy to tell apart and minimize the commentary.

Undo Damage. Look, sometimes people mess up their roll, or their target, or it gets on the wrong guy. One-click Undo would be awesome.

Assignable Mods. I'd like to be able to, on the fly, add changes to a figure. Give it Homogenous or additional DR or whatever and keep the change on the character.

GM-only visibility on statuses. I'd like to be able to put a status on an NPC that I know about, but that the PCs don't. They shouldn't know if someone is mentally stunned, or can fly (if they haven't flown yet), or have Armor 3 cast on them, or whatever. I'd like to mark it privately but visibly to me.

Are we still using . . . (Felltower Rules)

Let's look at some rules we've used in the past but may or may not be using now.

Are we still using Trademark Move?

In a word, no.

It's 1 point for a +1 to a very specific combo. Only a couple of PCs use such a combo, and even then, they vary it up based on circumstances. So it's just easier to say no, we're not using that anymore. I'm not willing to have people pick a "best case" scenario that factors in the +1, pay 1 point for it, and then use it only when it's the best option . . . and then modify it anytime their skill increases, and ignore it whenever they quaff an Agility potion to increase their DX as it's not optimized for the temporary, new DX. I'm not sure it's a great use of 1 point, but it's also a poor use of the rule, and it sure doesn't fit the bargain of speeding up play in return for a bonus.

If I could get my players to agree to fixed feints and fixed Deceptive Attack, I would go for this . . . but they're always proved fairly resistant to the concepts.

Are we still using the Modified Mook Rule?

Yes.

You don't see it quite as often. The PCs generally encounter larger numbers of Worthy foes and less mobs of Fodder. I don't use the Modified Mook Rule for Worthies, so . . . it's in play but doesn't show up as often. And the Modified Mook Rule doesn't apply Mook vs. Mook, so when you have a big brawl of 62-point hirelings vs. 62-point cultists neither side just drops automatically. Those two factors mean it's not as front-and-center as it could be.

Are we still doing No Rule Lookups?

No. Sadly, no.

We look stuff up. Not enough of my players follow this post, so we fairly often get specialty moves used without actual certainty about how those rules work. Through in some "helpful" comments like, "I think a miss by 1 hits torso" or "I don't think we do that" or "Did you remember the -1 for Curse?" or "Can't you use (name totally different move)?" on top and . . . the game stops until we check. I get it when someone literally does a totally new thing we haven't had come up . . . but it comes up for always-used things like Evasion and grappling and weapons Getting Stuck, too.

So, in theory I'd like to get back to this but 9/10 times my players recollection of how the rule works isn't complete, generally people dont seem inclined to just let me rule and go, and so then what? Better to look it up.

Mapless Combat

No.

With a VTT, I've found that I need to keep tokens down on the screen to run a fight. Any tokens on a screen will result in people trying to move tactically. Any mapless aspect of the combat disappears into map-like combat without actual assigned hexes and facing . . . so it's the worst of mapped (slow!) and mapless (imprecise!) instead of either fully implemented. It's just easier to make everything mapped.

Do DF Felltower foes play by the rules?

This is expanding on Rules & Rulings for Session 203.

Do DF Felltower foes play by the rules?

Yes.

Why not cheat?

I'm the GM. I define the parameters of the world.

I literally have unlimited bad guys.

I have unlimited points in my budget.

I have unlimited access to equipment in the game world.

I can impose any limitations I want on the PCs up to what the players will tolerate and still come back to the next game session.

So why would I need to cheat?

All Felltower NPCs aren't built with a point budget. Basically, only PCs are hirelings are, although occasionally I'll build an NPC and see what the total is. That's really just so I don't have an idea of a Worthy rough peer to the PCs only to hand out so much extra stuff that they're now a near-Boss. I do it sometimes as an exercise to see if what I'm doing matches what I thought it would cost up as. But I almost never set a budget and build unless it's a bunch of mooks, and then only once for a repeat-use type foe that is meant to hit a very specific power niche.

Why do I play by the rules?

I find I benefit a lot from playing things as straight as I can.

The players can judge their abilities and limitations based on what they know of the rules, and what they observe. They benefit from in-game knowledge and knowledge about the game. If I, in a word, cheat, the players can depend on what's on their sheet for their own characters and nothing else at all. Even there, there will be doubt. Will my spell work? Who knows. If the enemy displays an ability that I also have, does it work like mine? Will my resistances work? I've played in a game like that. The GM was a hoot to play with, but honestly, it was hard to do anything but concentrate on story because your paper man sure as hell wasn't playing on a level playing field.

It means I can largely rely on my players to help the game run smoothly* without needing a second set of rules for the foes. I can let them Charm foes and order them around and have their powers work as expected. I can look the answers up in the rules instead of just making stuff up as I go. And there can be a consistent set of rules instead of a hodge-podge of exceptions and individual rules for each and every power and bad guy. Petrifaction works the same way for everyone. Paralysis works the same way. Death checks work the same. The works.

None of this means I'm constrained from what I can do, but I am constrained in how I do it. Constraints lead to creativity, in my opinion. I'm able to make exceptions that make sense, and have unique powers and unique foes that do things that - by the book - might not work. But I don't let them casually violate the rules and basic operations of the system in a way that doesn't let the players figure out what they're up against.

In the end, that makes the game run more smoothly for me, more enjoyably for the players, and more understandable for people reading along at home. And I find it easy enough.










* Except for Vic. No helping, Vic!

Weekly Roundup 1/17/2025

Another busy week is coming to a close, but I did have time to check these out and recommend them:

- Color me interested by Against the Darkmaster, discussed a bit here. Except I never played MERP, I liked Rolemaster.

- I always wonder about the best ways to do this kind of "vastness." How do you give people a chance to fill in a hex map by exploring the nooks and crannies, yet also show them what they can see far away? Give the rough outline, even the terrain, but make sure it's clearly not explored yet. My mapping vocabulary isn't up to that.

- I stumbled upon this in my bookmarks of things to "read later." Well, it sure is later. But it's an article about a private airforce with outdated but still modern and lethal aircraft. It's the kind of thing that reminds me that in a modern game, when the PCs need to go up against UFOs or flying squid monsters or whatever . . . it's quite possible to get military gear into their hands without putting them into the military. My sci fi games PCs always wanted a private arsenal . . . maybe in such games you could do the same.

Rules & Rulings from Session 203

Rules & Rulings from last session!

Can you Wait until someone else's turn ends? Essentially, can you hold your turn until later in the sequence, usually to ensure you get to surpress defenses before someone (or after someone else has done so)? Yes, but the trigger needs to be concrete - after so-and-so attacks is okay, but not "after so-and-so goes" or "just before so-and-so goes." It is also subject to the same rules for Wait as written.

I don't have any real issue with essentially changing your initiative order permanently to later, but GURPS doesn't allow that, and I'm not willing to change that rule just to change it. I'd have to put a lot of thought into NPC turn order to optimize it, and the players would put a lot of time into optimizing their order, too. I don't see an upside to that right now.

Can I shoot down a Missile spell?

Our Scout wants to use Wait and aim at a wizard's held missile spell, to shoot it as soon as it's thrown to either set it off or deflect it off course.

There might be a place for a rule like this, but it feels too much Marvel Comics and not enough DF, especially DF Felltower. Plus I feel like it creates too many edge cases - what kind of missile, does damage matter, can you use missiles to disrupt other attacks, can you throw grenades as an attack to harm a weapon on the way to you, etc.? So I said no.

Like I said, I can see a rule for this - maybe even a Power Up that allows you to do this kind of thing. But as a standard ability with ranged attacks . . . eh, no. Do I really want people hurling meteoric knives at Lightning spells and then claiming this somehow should disrupt the magic or block it or something, or toss Alchemist's Fire at a Fireball to shower an otherwise shielded wizard? No, no I don't want to deal with that. Again, nice idea, but not a DF Felltower kind of idea. Feel free to develop this one yourself for your own games but you won't see it here.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose - spotted!

The martial artist used Judo to throw opponents for the first time today. So naturally, this question came up - if I Judo Parry and then can throw, does that mean if I attack with Judo and they parry unarmed, I can throw them next turn?

No! There are no "heads I win, tails you lose" effects like that for Judo. That was specifically written up to avoid that.

I was amused how quickly Doug Cole stepped in to say that this was a specifically-blocked case. He's right. Nothing is worse than a system where HIWTYL is in place, especially for the "You" in this equation. Imagine having to fight someone where your attacks lead to bad things for you if you fail, and your defenses lead to the exact same bad things whether you succeed or fail. No one wants to fight where the 4 possible quadrants of results are 3:1 against you - 1:1 on the attack and 2:0 on defense.

This isn't to say that circumstances can't create HIWTYL - unarmed guys punching at armored folks can have this happen, damage to unarmed on parries can make this happen, the Flaming Armor spell is designed to make this happen - but it's not a basic assumption of grappling rules, that's for certain.

Does the Iron Witch cheat?

DF is a game where the monsters might be totally unfair. I always play by the same rules, even if I find ways to give monsters exceptions or powers that PCs couldn't have.

The Iron Witch, well, maybe. She's thrown, that the PCs know of, Shield 6 (base cost 12), Missile Shield (base cost 5), two Explosive Stone Missile spells, at 12 (base cost 24) and 18d (base cost 36), and two Flesh to Stone spells (base cost 10 each). Assuming skill 20 (they know she has Magery 6, and IQ 16 isn't crazy since wizards start with a 15), and my rules for energy reductions on missile spells, this works out to 10, 3, 18, 30, and 16 points of energy. 77 energy. That's a lot.

A standard DF wizard can have ER 20, FP 26, and a power item. Give her a 35 point power item ($18,001 item), and she has 5 energy left. So even without "cheating," and nothing special, she'd be okay if low on FP. Given higher skills on some of the spells, or a larger Power Item, and she's fine even with a lower base FP. Skill 25 on the spells would net back 11 points; it would net back 6 if it's just Stone Missile. That's a lot of money and character points to get there, but you don't always need to bend the rules to get the results. That said, maybe she's just a Cheater McCheaterson and has scads of energy or free spell-like powers. That's possible, too. It's just not the only answer on the table.

And for comparison, Chop has Major Healing-25 and has expended IIRC close to 30 power. He spams out 0-cost spells like Curse a lot, but he's belted out a lot of healing. Duncan has probably spent a bit less but still a lot.

We didn't try Dispel Magic on the golems! No, it hasn't been tried. It won't work. You cannot disrupt an enchantment with Dispel Magic. Only a No Mana Zone or the Suspend Enchantment spell - not available in DF - can do that. You can't "turn off" enchantments in DF Felltower with spells. It makes logical sense to consider it, but the wording of the spells and the underlying assumptions of enchantment vs. temporary magic are very much different than the logic assumes.

GURPS DF Session 203, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part III - War of the Robots

Actual Date: 1/12/2025
Game Date: 12/12/2024
Weather: Cold, clear, dry.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (301 points)
      Brother Quinn, human initiate (125 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (335 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (316 points)
      Amlaric, human squire (125 points)
Persistance Montgomery (303 point knight)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (306 points)
      Leon the Eye, human archer (125 points)
      Aaron, Brandon, Cedric, Dortmund, Ernie, Ferd, Grunlark, and Hansel, human guards (62 points)
      Bullworth and Oxford, human laborers (62 points)
      Honest Charles LeGrand, human squire (125 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (298 points)


We picked up where we left off.

Hannari opened up with first one, and then another, smoke nageteppo to mask the melee from the Iron Witch and the Stone Missile she was holding. The PCs kept banging away on the mechanical knights. The Iron Witch called, "To me!" and those knights that could disengage (most of them) just turned and ran back through the smoke to her.

The PCs formed a rough line . . . very rough. Hannari pushed around the flank along with Thor and they ate the blast effect of a 12d Explosive Stone Missile that dealt 60 damage on the impact hex. Then the knights were ordered to "Charge!"

After that, the PCs just kept fighting away, taking down a few of the knights. Thor and Hanari were pushed to one side, the others to the other side. Vlad decided to give up just causing minor damage (if that) to the knights and engage in melee, hoping to use up blocks and parries and force the knights to their (hopefully) lower Dodge. However, he immediately was hit in the hand and it was crippled. Brother Quinn healed it right up but the HT roll for recovery was a miss . . . it's a lasting (1d months) cripple. Unable to use his bow or his hatchet, he tried to just attract hits. He called for a couple of hirelings to come forward, and Chop called for everyone to come.

The brawl continued, and the Iron Witch moved closer. Duncan hit near her with a 4d Explosive Lightning that failed to stun her, just as Percy was rushing toward her. She kept her knights pulling back to fend him off, tossed a massive 18d Explosive Stone Missile into the back ranks of the PCs, and killed three of the guards and wounded Chop badly and finished off Honest Charles. Amlaric was badly wounded and kept fighting, but he can't hit hard enough to really bother the knights. He'd fall unconscious a few seconds later. But eventually the Iron Witch got off a successful Flesh to Stone on Percy and he failed to resist, and the knights pushed through.

Chop healed himself with a Gem of Healing, turned Percy back to flesh, then healed a bunch of the PCs at range, and then healed himself up to full.

Percy kept bashing the knights. Thor lost his sword to a critical block and swapped to his long knife to try to hack necks that way. Hannari used throws to put a few knights down, and then Hannari rushed the Iron Witch, only to fail to grab her as she put up Shield 6. Next, she cast Flesh to Stone and beat Hanari's resistance. Percy cracked her three times, missed once, was dodged once, and hit her on the right arm . . . for very little effect.

Shortly after she pushed out of the corner she was in and three of her least damaged knights formed an arc in front of her. Others are scattered around, in varying states of disrepair. One at least just froze up after briefly being stunned by Lightning. Still more have inoperable arms, legs, or feet. Thor is fighting one of the still-intact knights. Percy is moving towards the Iron Witch. Vlad is unable to fight at the moment, a couple of the NPCs ran off, Chop is low on power, Duncan temporarily out of ideas, and no one else up to fight.

That's were we left off, with both sides badly mauled, at the beginning of the 35th second of combat.

Notes:

- Loyalty rolls matter. A couple of the hirelings blew their rolls and fled . . . we'll see if they regroup and come back.

- The players are frustrated - that's a direct quote. The mechanical knights are fast, skilled, reasonably strong (2d-ish damage), lacking in vulnerable areas . . . they're tough to put down. The Iron Witch is fast, has solid DR, lots of power for spells, spells . . . not a "rush and kill" wizard. So the usual tactics aren't working, and bum rush the wizard isn't an option. They did a bunch of "mobility kills" on feet and legs, but the kneeling and sitting knights kept fighting.

- The PCs aren't in a terrible spot, but they sure aren't in a good one. A post-session debrief revealed an issue - they'd wanted to pile on one knight at a time, and literally only one knight in all of the turns of combat we played had to defend against two PCs at once. They'd wanted to form a line and force the enemy to come to them, and did not do that, either. It's too late for the latter but not for the former.

- MVP was Chop for Stone to Flesh and Major Healing a lot of fighters back into the fray.

Friday Roundup - 1/10/2025

Friday roundup!

- A pretty cool paint job on this Reaper Miniatures shoggoth

- Over on Don't Forget Your Boots, I read Out With The Old, In With The Gnu

Too-different character concepts is a tough problem to overcome. I've gone as far as making meta-game pronouncements to ensure everyone has some reason to be together to avoid that problem. Even then, you get the guy who wants to run a fanatical holy warrior and the guy who wants to run an undead-making necromancer and yet still play together.*

The other issue he mentions is skill-boosting. High skills are part of the fun of my game, too, but once they hit a certain point nothing can usefully compete. This is why I'm very reluctant to hand out items that boost skill. I'd hand out a +3 Puissance sword or a +5 Strength belt before I'd pass out a +1 Dexterity ring. I'd rather hand out wishes than skill boosters or non-ST stat boosters.

- Next DF Felltower game is Friday.

- Speaking of megadungeons, Elfmaids & Octopi has a look at the big published ones. It's in eyebleeding white-on-black with red, though.


* They're fighting crime the hard way, wearing magic armor, with a +3 Puissance Holy Avenger and the Black Cauldron.

I Wouldn't Miss "Miss By 1 Hits Torso"

One rule that I find annoys me the longer I play GURPS is entries on the hit location table that say "[1] Miss by 1 hits torso instead."

Why?

- it slows play, even if only because everyone says, "Does a miss by 1 hit torso?" No one can seem to remember (it's eye, skull, face, groin, neck, vitals, and that's it.)

- it causes edge cases, like rolling a 17 to hit the vitals (a 17 always misses) when you have a 16 to hit. Does that miss? A 17 always misses. Does it hit the torso? It's a miss by 1, and a miss by 1 hits torso. What about Chinks in Armor? Does that count as the underlying location? I think yes, but it's not stated clearly.

- it complicates rolling in a VTT, because it will show "miss" and it'll still be a hit, just not to the location auto-selected for damage by a player's macro. That adds an additional step.

- some of the sitations feel wonky. A miss by 1 with a swinging attack to the skull hitting body? Sure, the upward sweep clips the torso instead of the skull, or a downward cut misses the head narrowly and hits the body. But a miss by 1 to the eye with an arrow hits the body? A thrust to the groin hits body instead . . . okay. A thrust to the face also hits torso, not skull or neck? They're both closer. Why do the limbs never get hit on a "miss" to a central location?

With all of those things in mind, I'd love to delete Note [1] off of the Hit Location Table and just let a miss be a miss.

This admittedly messes with PCs - who aim for vitals and eyes and neck and skull more often than their NPC companions and foes. But it's also the case that it comes up less than you might think. And I've ruled a 17 is still a complete miss, but it's still an edge case people want to argue when it comes up. It would just speed things up and get rid of what's essentially a freebie +1 to hit overall when going for a better location.

Unless my players really revolt over this . . . it's probably gone as soon as I can reasonably ditch it.

Felltower, Money, and ACOUP's article

I linked to an interesting article on ancient and medieval coins vs. fantasy gold coins over on ACOUP.

Felltower uses devalued currency compared to standard DF. I use a silver standard, but gold coins appear in numbers. There are a few reasons for that:

- Felltower is more Renaissance / Pre-Modern than Medieval or Ancient.

- Felltower doesn't feature a true vassalage system, or a gifting culture in general.

- Modern expectations are not to be given gifts with social expectations attached, but to be paid. At least modern, US expectations.

- Devalued currency with gold coins thrown about are a fantasy fiction expectation.

I don't pretend my system is historical. It just needs to feel realistic in some way, not actually reflect history. I find it a lot easier to hand over different cultural expectations than to get people used to using money to exchange for good and services to not expect to do that.

Mapping Felltower today

It's a Felltower Sunday, so I spent a bit of a time working on maps.

I have a nice book of 4 squares to the inch graph paper from someone recently (thank you!) and turned it into a "fine detail for Felltower" map book. I've been working on the levels far ahead of where the PCs have been going. It's a relaxing way to spend the afternoon, drawing up maps of locations the PCs will get to eventually.

That's pretty much what I've been doing each week. If I don't have any other Felltower work to do, I do some close-in maps to be ready for future play.

To aid this, I bought a few more tools:

- a better rule set
- a proper L-ruler

I do need a new mechanical pencil. Any recommendations for a 0.5 mm mechanical pencil?

Weekly Roundup 1/3/2025

Getting started off on 2025's weekly comments and links.

- Rob has been up to a lot at Bat in the Attic Games.

- I don't include enough corrupt law enforcers in my fantasy games. Not by half. Not after reading this post about some.

- An Acoup post about gold coins? Hell yes. I tend to over-think my coins in fantasy games.

- The first RPG published in 2025? Periapt Games seems to have a good claim on that.

And I posted a fair bit this week, in the lulls around the holiday.

GURPS & the clunkiness of Chinks in Armor

First off, I think the name is clunky. "Chinks in Armor?" We don't say "Eyeslits of Helm" or "Vital Parts of Torso." I'd go with Armor Gaps. Sure, that implies a lack of armor, not reduced armor, but chinks doesn't imply reduced armor, either. So, Armor Gaps for me.

Second, while I can appreciate the symmetry of -8 for Torso, -10 for elsewhere, my players generally stumble over the lack of penalties for a hit location. One idea I've toyed with is -8 plus half the location penalty rounded down. So torso -8, neck -10, arms and legs -9, hands and feet -10 . . of course, that makes eyeslits of a helm -12, not -10 . . . but hey, it's DF, I don't care, people start with a 20 in combat skills.

Third, I think there needs to be additional specific exemptions:

- doesn't affect Fine armor
- some locations/armors may lack gaps (I'm thinking invisible bucket helms, say, or the vitals in general)
- I don't allow this on eyeslits or vitals at all with swing/impaling or swing/piercing weapons. I just don't buy it due to the angles involved.

Images from Session 202

Here are the two enemies the PCs are facing in the Brotherhood Complex.

Mechanical Knight of Cornwood - a somewhat unreliable but formidable construct. Cheaper to make than most golems for this level of ability, but their speedy contruction has a cost in reliability.

These are straight-up statting up of a favorite mini of mine - a Tom Meier-scultped Ral Partha Mechanical Knight. I have a mounted one, as well, so beware, PCs!

Iron Witch of Cornwood - the inventor of the Mechanical Knight, one of the fractious Cornwoodian nobles who chafe at the iron-handed rule of King Titanius Anglesmith.

The Iron Witch is actually a mini painted by my sister. I had an enamel paint set from some model set, and she proceeded to use those to paint one of my TSR minis from set 5303 Magic Users and Illusionists. But we didn't have anything resembling flesh color - it was a set of vehicle colors. So she just didn't paint that. I kept the mini as-is, spray-sealed it, and put an "Iron Witch" in my GURPS campaign when I started to use minis again. She was a distant figure in that game - and was possibly responsible for giving the rapier Malice (see DFT3) to a swashbuckler type PC. I made her a bad guy in the Felltower world because she was an ideal match for the Ral Partha mini.

I loved the idea of an iron golem wizard, especially one that either a) was human, and made herself into an iron golem, or b) was always a golem. In the previous game, it was option a. In this one, it's likely that she's just a willful golem who has improved herself into a master wizard. A true self-made woman!

And why do we call them robots, and pronounce it robut? Here is Chop demonstrating his expertise in First Aid (Human) vs. Hidden Lore (Construct) . . .