More Monster Seeds: Puddings

Here are two monster seeds for puddings, as requested by an anonymous poster on my previous post.

A Prince of Puddings: Puddings are smart, but not too smart . . . usually. Rarely, a highly intelligent pudding leader will arise. Such a pudding may be responsible for the sudden appearance in very organized packs of puddings in the local swamps. Not just the occasional lost sheep or traveller, but whole patrols of well-armed soldiers have disappeared along the fringes of the swamps. The few survivors report puddings in packs. Could a green prince of puddings be behind them? The local government has put up a reward to encourage delvers to take care of this problem. Complications can include rival groups after the reward, druids who don't want the swamplife harmed, wizards seeking to capture the pudding, and all sorts of non-pudding swamp monsters.

Nothing is Pudding Proof: Puddings are mostly a wilderness or dungeon problem, but occasionally they get into urban environments. They're quick, they're sneaky, they're capable of squeezing into small places, and they're always hungry. A pudding loose in a big city, preying from the sewers on the most helpless of victims - drunks, crime victims, and the aged or young - could do a lot of damage before being found. A "bug hunt" in the city sewers for a canny pudding can be dangerous and exciting. Smugglers, guild thieves, secret societies, and others use the sewers for their own ends, and would rather have a pudding on the loose than delvers on the loose. Their opposition could be subtle and oblique or direct and violent - and the pudding won't take sides!



Prince of Puddings: As a usual pudding, but with IQ 8, Charisma 2 (Puddings only), and Leadership-12. It's not clear how they communicate with other puddings, but all other puddings immediately recognize them as superior beings and follow them willingly.

More adventure seeds?

I'm a inspired to do a few more bonus adventure seeds for monsters that don't have them, in support of this quickie Kickstarter.

Which ones should I do? Dinomen? Electric Jelly? Golem-Armor Swordsmen? Slorn?

Let me know in the comments and I'll do a seed or two for the requests that tickly my imagination!

GURPS DFM Monster Seeds

Remember when we did a bunch of monster-centric adventure seeds for DFM1, when DFM2 was launched?

SJG is compiling them into a book. $1 in PDF, $5 in print. Ends in less than 3 days from now!


Pretty neat. I'd back it except as an author I'll get a copy anyway - re-use of materials, you see.

One seed they couldn't include - for space and for we-didn't-pay-for-it reasons, largely the first I'm sure - is this one. The Monster Seed to Rule them All - Draug Race!

Spoilers - I think one of my monsters did this.

SPOILER ALERT!

Hey, I conceived of, and wrote up, the thing that did this!

I love when my ideas do horrible things to other people's PCs.

DF NOVICES, SESSIONS 5 & 6 - THE DEAD OF NIGHT

Notes on DF Session 173

Some extra notes on DF Session 173.

- My players remarked on how much they enjoyed the twist of fighting on the same side as their enemies - especially skilled and tough ones like the golden swordsmen. They did express some disappointed when they suffered some damage right away from the mindwarper, because you know, foes they can beat one on one should be able to take on a boss-level monster without significant harm. It says something that they see a foe whupping on someone to mean the someone sucks, not that the foe is tough. It's a tough crowd.

They did realize that the golden swordsmen weren't fighting to save them, but to win the fight, which made sense. I was please to see them notice this . . . I was expecting some moaning about cowardly golden swordsmen who wouldn't sacrifice themselves for the PCs. It's not about them.

- I need to spend some time between now and next session noodling around with Foundry to get the injury tolerances and DR right. It sucks when I have to manually change the damage every time and uncheck the "use injury modifiers" box.

- Someone asked me if you could change facing as part of a defense, like a Retreat without changing hexes. NO. Categorically no. Retreat causes plenty of problems now. Opening up a "but I don't move" Retreat or "I just change my facing" Retreat would be extremely abusable. It would especially allow for people to start flanked and having a foe behind them, but then use a defense against one foe to prevent a back shot that would otherwise come from the foe behind.

- This was the first time my players encounted void brutes. The original idea for them was from a prior campaign - they were the physical hosts for symbiotic critters that rode them. I didn't get to use them in that game, so I converted them for DF when Sean and I wrote Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1.

The picture of them in DFM1 matches the description pretty well. But that's not really what they're based on. They're actually based on this guy - and specifically his action figure:

Cold Fens: Troll Culture

Trolls figure deeply in the history of the Cold Fens, and why they sit unexploited, edged only by small settlements with guards used to keeping oil and fire on hand.

What is known about trolls?

Besides what is in monster entries, not much.

They are a very odd thing, even in a magical world.

Trolls lack any positive feelings for non-trolls. There are trolls, there is food, and there are things that might be too difficult to kill and eat. They're utterly fearless, don't seem to reproduce in any normal fashion, and seem to lack seperate sexes. Periodically trolls show up in very large numbers. The recent "troll wars" were basically putting down an invasion of hundreds if not thousands of trolls into some areas around the Cold Fens. It's supposed they multiply by dismembering a troll and keeping the parts seperate so they'll grow into full trolls, but that's never been observed.

Trolls don't seem to have an organized religion, but it is believed by scholars that they worship a particularly loathsome troll god of some kind. Crude statues of a troll-like figure pockmarked with nail-made hokes have been found. Crude claw marks of varying sizes have been placed by trolls on menhirs and large boulders deep in their territory. Divinations have revealed the trolls refer to this being as the "Great Old One," "Great Destroyer," or "Troll Father." It's not clear if they respect or worship the "Troll Father" or just respect him. The idea of the trolls fearing such a being can be dismissed outright. Since trolls don't seem to age, it's not clear if this is some exception aging but immortal troll or a representation of a mythical "old" troll.

Trolls generally speak orcish, common, or other languages on the rare occasions that they speak. They have been seen to understand a very large number of languages, but just as often seem to understand nothing said to them. Especially evil wizards and evil clerics have been able to work with trolls - or magically suborn them - and seem to have no language issues in being understood. They are usually silent, and manage to coordinate with one another without seeming to directly communicate. Rumors of troll language that includes dozens of nuanced words for "bridge" and "goats" have never been substantiated.

Trolls have never been seen at play, or dancing, or creating art unrelated to the "Great Old One." It's possible they sing, if the hloo-hloo sounds they make can count.

That about sums up what is known about trolls.

All of the DFRPG Monsters Adventure Seeds

Here are all of the Monsters adventure seeds so far, linked and excerpted:



as-Sharak Adventure Seeds (by Matt Riggsby, for a monster created by Sean Punch for DF2)

Fire With Fire. As-Sharak are cursed to kill those among the living who share their lust for power. While they are ruthless in their violent pursuits, there are those who perceive some morality in it, viewing the demons' victims as getting their just desserts. A quintet of as-Sharak – one of each type – have become proactive, venturing from their lair to destroy not only those who come to loot it but also those who might plan to do so. This category includes the heroes, certainly, but also many wannabe Dark Lords – and the as-Sharak have been killing a lot of them. If the delvers move against the as-Sharak, then along with facing monsters, they will be up against an order of holy warriors who see the fiends as useful scourges against other evils.

Look Who's Back. Fires are burning down houses belonging to Wizards' Guild members around town. Signs point to a powerful demon lurking underground. How long before it becomes apparent that the monster is an as-Sharak who used to be master of the Guild, who blames his former associates for the curse that befell him and is seeking revenge?

Additional as-Sharak seed from Matt Riggsby.

Bronze Spider Adventure Seeds (by Peter Dell'Orto, for a monster created by Sean Punch for DFM1)

Dungeon Repairachnids. Bronze spiders make great additions to megadungeons or other locations adventurers will visit repeatedly. Their presence can explain knocked-down doors being repaired, traps being reset, new passages appearing (or blockages closing passages), scratches and chalk marks being removed, and so on. Delvers hate anything that resets traps and fixes doors, so they’ll probably try to exterminate the spiders. Such actions are likely to attract the attention of whoever – or whatever – set the monsters their task in the first place.

Secret Of The Clockwork Spiders. Finding the clockwork world where bronze spiders originated could be the culmination of a series of delves deep into the Earth. The secret to their construction would be extremely valuable. So would much of the techno-magical gear certain to be found there. Such a realm would have more than just bronze spiders – golems of bronze, metallic animals, and ornithopter-like bronze insects would guard their clockwork god and its worshippers.

Crushroom Adventure Spores (by Peter Dell'Orto, for a monster created by Sean Punch for DF2)

King Of The Crushrooms. Legends persist of sapient crushrooms. Mycologists, alchemists, druids, and wizards speak of the fabled Crushroom King, who leads a colony of “civilized” crushrooms. Making contact with the Crushroom King could bring fame and fortune. But the supposed location of the colony is deep within a huge series of caverns, past forests of fungi, spore clouds, and ordinary (nonsapient) crushrooms. Even if the Crushroom King exists, it’s unclear how to communicate with it or what such a being would want. Still, legends portray it as having great wealth, magical mushrooms, and spells for affecting fungi.

Capturing A Crushroom. The secrets of ambulatory fungus hold a lot of promise for magical research by local alchemists. Druids might also covet a captured crushroom, as a natural guard for a grove. Capturing a live, healthy crushroom (no nearly dead specimens wanted, please) would bring at least $3,000 from either group. The obstacles are steep: Crushrooms are neither small, nor easy to capture, nor rational beings delvers can bargain with – and they’re strong. Still, it is a big reward.

Demon from Between the Stars Adventure Seeds (by Matt Riggsby, for a monster created by Sean Punch for DFM1)

Between Stars. The stars are not right; the past few nights, they’ve been downright wrong. Cracks are opening into the Deep Night Between the Stars from which the Demons come. If the heroes don’t want to face ever-increasing waves of Demons and even worse Elder Things, they must step through a gap in the darkness and into a realm where the stars are only distant silver motes. The places between the stars are silent, very cold (Exploits, p. 70), and full of danger, but the adventurers have to find a way to ignite a new star, pushing back the darkness for a while.

Lords Of Night. Refugees are fleeing their villages. The night, they say, is taking their livestock, their families, and everything else. And there’s a pattern. Vicious shadows are clearing a ring around a remote-but-legendary shrine, cutting it off from the outside world. A number of highly intelligent Demons from Between the Stars are preparing to assault the temple and destroy a center of power that can be used against them. The only path to beating them is through them.

Doomchild Adventure Seeds (by Peter Dell'Orto, for a monster created by Sean Punch for DF2)

Doomchildren Gate. Shockingly small bands of doomchildren have launched suicidal raids on the border fort near an old dungeon. The doomchildren have been destroyed each time, but where are they coming from? The local ruler wants that question answered and the doomchildren plague ended. Deep within the dungeon, perhaps a megadungeon, is a long-sealed gate to the realm of the demons (Hell?). It’s leaking – slightly – allowing doomchildren through a handful at a time, and must be resealed. If the delvers aren’t careful, attempts to close the gate could actually open it wide, allowing a larger force of demons to pass through. Alternatively, the gate might need closing from the other side, allowing bold heroes to travel to the demon realm itself for some real adventure.

Children Of The Doomed. The presence of doomchildren usually means the presence of demons, demon-worshippers, or foolish wizards who dared too much (and died in the process). This time it means all three. A wizard friendly to the PCs accidentally summoned a pack of doomchildren along with the peshkali she intended to conjure. The peshkali and doomchildren killed her and are loose. Only the heroes can clear her house of demons. Plot twist: The peshkali is downright maternal toward “her” doomchildren.

Draug Adventure Seeds (by Peter Dell'Orto, for a monster written up by Peter Dell'Orto for DFM1)

The Lord’s Bodyguards. Buried within a local dungeon is a dead lord and his bodyguards, all equipped with excellent armor and weapons, all with rich grave goods – and all victims of a great curse that has made them draugr. One was the beloved ancestor of a powerful and wealthy family; they’d like him laid to rest (read: destroyed) and his grave goods retrieved, and they’re willing pay triple the value for them, intact. What should be a simple kill-and-loot mission has three complications: First, there are 33 draugr, all used to fighting cooperatively. Second, the grave goods are the bodyguards’ delicate gold jewelry, which is vulnerable to fire. And third (which the family doesn’t know), thanks to the curse, Turning doesn’t work within the confines of their hall of crypts. Delvers will need to be very tough – or very clever – to succeed.

Draug Challenge. A draug haunting a barrow nearby is known for challenging warriors to single combat. A group of delvers could defeat it, but a local lord has put up his magic sword as a reward to any warrior who can destroy the thing single-handed.

Gargoyle Adventure Seeds (by Matt Riggsby, for a monster created by Sean Punch for DFRPG Monsters)

Getting The Words Right. Architects will tell you that gargoyles should be called “grotesques,” as proper gargoyles are defined by the presence of a spout. Architects should shut up. Someone is responsible for new strains of gargoyles: Some can spray a strong jet of water; treat as the Water Jet spell (Spells, p. 71) at an effective skill 15, along with Innate Attack (Breath)-15; others spit acid, doing 1d-3 corrosion damage (see Exploits, p. 65, for further effects) per die of knockback. Surely alkahest-spitting gargoyles are not far behind! Are gargoyles selectively breeding themselves to acquire greater powers? Have they appealed to a gargoyle god for blessings? Is a wizard doing it?

Undercover Gargoyle. Gargoyles can’t convincingly disguise themselves as flesh-and-blood mortals, but some bright ones have figured out how to conceal themselves as statues, pillars, and so on. In fancier rooms, including temples and palaces, they can hide in plain sight (Quick Contest of Vision vs. Camouflage-12 to spot) to strike when least expected. But don’t smash the Grand Temple’s new statue of the Great God Zorg!

Lich Adventure Seeds (by Peter Dell'Orto, for a monster created by Sean Punch for DFM1)

The Lich’s Bargain. No lich is truly good, but they aren’t all inherently hostile to all delvers. The typical lich desires magical power and knowledge, and some will trade riches, knowledge, or even assistance to get it. Approaching such a lich is tricky – liches rarely lack lethal defenses – but potentially rewarding.

The Master Of Lost Lore. The Wizards’ Guild needs the details of a particularly important magical ritual, which are in a unique book possessed by an especially evil and powerful lich. The monster is protected by veritable army of skeletons, zombies, demons, and spheres of madness, and a pack of hellhounds – all deep within a trap-filled dungeon. The Guild is offering a rich reward to delvers who return the book, and a bonus if they destroy the lich; what they neglect to mention is that the lich is actually the Guild’s former leader. The lore sought is that of how to become a lich . . . and the current guildmaster is getting on in years. If the PCs are bold enough to talk to the lich first and discuss their mission, it will counteroffer a reward for the assassination of the master of the Wizards’ Guild!

Rock Mite Adventure Seeds (by Matt Riggsby, for a monster created by Peter Dell'Orto for DFM1)

The Underminer! Rock mites are said to be living tools, drones used by a hidden civilization. Many tools can be weaponized. Properly organized, rock mites constitute a strategic threat, and someone may have figured out how to control them. Like an army of sappers, they can undermine not just the walls of settlements on the surface, but entire towns. When bits and pieces of the heroes’ town start falling into holes in the ground, they need to stop the whole thing from going under. The PCs must work to bring back not a key hostage or two, but an entire temple that has sunk beneath the earth.

Mine Tailings. Rumor has it there’s a population of rock mites that doesn’t just eat rock, but leaves behind metal. A scholar wants the heroes to track down colonies of rock mites and confirm the report. They’ll have to get up close to a lot of rock mites, gather samples of their bodies and the rubble they leave behind, and hope that the ones they’re looking for don’t leave behind toxic wastes.

Spirit Guardian Adventure Seeds (by Matt Riggsby for a monster created by Sean Punch for DFRPG Monsters)

The Spirit Moves. Spirit guardians can be formidable, but at least they’re limited to one place. Usually. A spirit guardian attached to a forest may find its domain expanding when the forest grows. And when the forest is controlled by a mad druid with the power to make the trees march, the spirit guardian goes with them. If a group of delvers could just get to the druid, they could stop the moving forest’s weird rampage, but every step of the way, the quest is complicated by a spirit trying to push them out. And things could get really bad when the forest rolls up the slopes of an extinct volcano and the spirit’s attempts to pummel them start to do cutting damage (from the jagged shards of obsidian whipped up from the ground) rather than crushing.

Troll Adventure Seeds (by Peter Dell'Orto, for a monster written up by Peter Dell'Orto for DFM1)

The Troll Wizard. Delvers attempting to exterminate a local troll infestation have come back from the fens reporting a fireproof troll that tossed around spells when attacked! A troll wizard holds great potential as a source of both danger and reward – trolls like loot, and a troll wizard would certainly have some in its lair. Of course, the troll might not be an actual wizard, but a cleric of some unusual trollish god (or even a friendly god). Worse, a troll druid would be very difficult to deal with in a wilderness setting. A spellcasting troll might make a good noncombat encounter, if it isn’t hungry and the adventurers are brave enough to speak instead of attack.

The Giant Troll. A rare few trolls grow to giant size – start with the stats for a giant and add a troll’s traits. Such a monster makes a great guardian for a MacGuffin, a powerful magical weapon, or a rare bit of treasure. And it’s certain to have at least a couple dozen normal-sized trolls nearby as flunkies!

Werewolf Adventure Seeds (by Matt Riggsby, for a monster written by Sean Punch for DFRPG Monsters)

Pack Hunting. The cunning of werewolves isn’t limited to moderately intelligent hunting tactics. A particularly clever pack are moving in the direction of becoming super-predators, taking over and cultivating the upper levels of a dungeon in order to draw in wealthy and powerful delvers. In human form, they’re spreading word that there’s a lot of treasure to be found, and salting the neighborhood with a bit of recovered loot. In wolf form, they lurk throughout the dungeon’s upper levels, keeping an eye on anyone who enters and sometimes rounding up herds of the less-intelligent monsters found there, hoping to overwhelm adventurers without exposing themselves to danger. They’ll try to push particularly tough treasure-hunters to deeper levels. If the delvers and more formidable monsters found on ever-deeper levels don’t kill one another, the pack can move in to finish off the weakened survivors and take both sides’ loot!

These are all in support of the DFRPG Monsters 2 Kickstarter.

I'll update this post as more are posted up, so eventually when the Kickstarter is all funded up and the books are out, we don't need to look all over the place for those posted adventure seeds. All of these were work for hire by SJG, and belong to them.

Giving Thanks for DF Bestiary news

Over on the DFRPG Kickstarter, update #102 has some interesting and exciting news:

A Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Bestiary?

"In the office, we're exploring ideas for new support for the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game, including a possible reprint of the box set. One option, and the one that's looking like our top candidate at the moment, is a Dungeon Fantasy Bestiary."

I'm in for a copy or two of that. Plus there are sample monsters. Warning to my players - I may or may not use those versions. You guys already know I have stats for giants, chimeras, and stirges. But hey, maybe I'll switch over.

So, hurrah for that!

Pyramid #3/108 - What new monsters?

So I wrote some new monsters for the DFRPG-themed issues of Pyramid. What are they?

Here they are by name, and any variations offset below.

Cerberus
     The Cerberus
Colchis Bulls
     Iron Bull (aka Gorgon)
     Rock Bull
     Storm Bull
Ghoul*
Giant Beetle (grouping)
     Big Beetle
     Big Bombardier Beetle
     Humongous Beetle
Giant Centipede (grouping)
     Big Centipede
     Humongous Centipede
Giant Frog (Grouping)
     Big Frog
     Big Killer Frog
     Huge Frog
     Huge Killer Frog
Hydra
Shamblethorn**
Wyvern

Many of these you've seen in my games, and if you haven't, you eventually will.



* Based on the ghouls/wights of Felltower.
** the fabled "root men" of the Cold Fens, which my players call shambling mounds. They are, basically, but also sort-of not.

Nested Encounters - Monster and Trapped Treasure

I was reminded of this possibility thanks to some annoying ants. We had some ants causing an issue where I live, so I put up an ant trap. Basically, poisoned bait.

The bait attracted ants and the poison killed them. But when it came time to freshen the trap, I found a spider had set up shop directly over and around the trap. The ants headed for the bait, but instead got caught by the spider. I just left this alone, figuring, well spider, you do you. Net effect is the same to me.

This makes for an interesting encounter as well. Predators, especially ambush predators, will lurk near a form of bait that will attract prey.

But that's not the say the actual bait must be pure, healthy, and rewarding. The bait itself can be another trap and the ambusher just piggybacking on it. This behavior can explain a lot of "monster with trapped chest" situations where the monster isn't the kind of being that would hoard and trap treasure.

Here are a few I can think of offhand for a typical fantasy game:


- "gold" coins that are actually cheaper coins dusted with yellow mold, paint plus contact poison, or which trigger a trap when approached (a pit, wall-shooting spears, whatever) plus an attack-from-above monster like a spider, obsidian jaguar, lurker above, quasi-intelligent ooze or slime, etc.

- a covered pit, with a mimic pretending to be a section of wall about 15' back, to better come out from behind delvers who stop 10' out when the lead character taps and hears a hollow sound back.

- an illusion of treasure set up over a trap (pit, slide, chute, deadfall trigger, etc.) with a charging ambush predator lurking down the hallway, hoping to ram someone into the trap and retrieve them later.

- an Avoid spell meant to discourage moving down a safe path and into a trapped area (or a dead end, or down the wrong maze path) combined with a Living Pit that sweeps under the delvers when they move into the area.

None of this is really new; nested encounters like this have been common since the modules made for 1st edition AD&D. But it's a good framing to keep in your mind - the monster might actually be piggybacking off of someone else's trap. They might inadvertently be saving you from the trap - a spider snagging giant rats on their way to poisoned water is keeping them from being poisoned, after all. And it'll help confound delvers who'll logically reason that Monster A couldn't set Trap B so Treasure C must be safe. It might not be - it's a nested encounter not originally planned for by the trap setter.

Cardboard Heroes of my monsters!

Check out this update to the Dungeon Fantasy Role-Playing Game Kickstarter yesterday:



That guy on the left appears to be a rock mite. I originally made up the rock mites for Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 for use in my own games. Now, there is an official Cardboard Hero for them, illustrated by Denis Loubet.

How cool is that?

I know you guys who make your own books and hire your own artists have a similar feeling. But it's really something else to go from "I need some kind of rock monster to annoy my players" to "and a game company is making playing pieces with that monster on it" with just some writing in between there. I didn't pull out my wallet and make this happen, and I really didn't let it sink in that:

- I wrote monsters for my own games and then got them published for GURPS DF;

- those monsters made the boxed set;

- the boxed set would include Cardboard Heroes;

- therefore monsters I wrote for my own games would have Cardboard Heroes.

Other People's Posts for 11/7

I just wanted to link to, and highlight, some posts today.

Roger Burton-West reviewed GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3 over on firedrake.org. I'm always happy to see my work reviewed; authors rarely get enough feedback post-publication. One nitpick: Two capitals.

Douglas Cole is up to something, and it starts with "Dungeon" and ends with "Kickstarter." Scroll down until you see the green screen.

Gaming Ballistic, LLC – Update for 11/5

Erik Tenkar has a stripped-down version of a very stripped-down gaming system up - Swords & Wizardry Lite. I downloaded a copy of the PDF and I'm seeing what I can use out of it.

Swords & Wizardry Lite

Merlin at RPG Jutsu has a post up about overpowered GURPS PCs. It's a good read - mostly if you're a player. I've written on similar issues - Over-patching and some character fallacies - that lead to overpowered character building. If you're thinking, "Obviously I have to raise my Parry until it's 16 or less on my fourth consecutive parry while in close combat, grappled, and stunned, or I'm based automatically dead in combat!" this article is one you need to look at. It's written with an eye towards GMs scaling challenges to the PCs, but even in a game like mine where that doesn't happen, there are diminishing returns and self-sabotaging results that come from striving for the maximum possible ability in a small area.

Overpowered – GM’s Guide to Challenging Players

Finally, I like this post about appeals to realism over on Delta's D&D Hotspot:

Nothing Remains Interesting If Anything Can Happen

Dungeon Fantasy: Steal Which Bits? - Part I

So I mentioned that DF products, especially thanks to their hack-and-slash, keep-it-simple approach to the material, are good sources of stuff for other campaigns. Well, what stuff is that?

Here is what I found useful. More tomorrow.

Changes to Magic

This is two-pronged.

First, if you really like the Cleric/Druid/Wizard split - god-granted powers/nature-derived powers/black knowledge from moldy old books - DF has that built in.

Admittedly, it has it baked into 250-point templates centered on dungeoneering, which might not be your game. You can't just grab a cleric or wizard template and dive into a plot-and-social or lower-powered (or both) campaign.

But the basic rules are sound:

Clerics get a pick-list of spells, only those spells, but ignore prereqs. Even in a game where Power Investiture 6 isn't a no-brainer starting character choice, the actual spell lists and approach works.

And DF7 might not fit my game, but it's a great source of variant cleric approaches for games where, yes, there is a Cleric of Thor and a Cleric of Odin and a Cleric of Hermes and they all seem to just have that one god kicking power down to them.

Druids draw power from nature. Again, they get a pick-list (and some nifty powers, which can be expanded on) and spells that only they can use.

Wizards get everything else.

Secondly, that "everything else" has been modified. Spells like Enlarge and Invisibility are changed to make them less game-shatteringly important. The economy-breaking Create spells no longer turn out permanent high-grade materials such that no wizard with them would do less than turn a faux-medieval world into Star Trek's post-scarcity society. In other words, if you basically like the GURPS Magic system but have concerns with the abusiveness of some of the spells, DF goes a long way towards fixing them.

And you can always release the handbrake and allow those "off limit" spells - Gate spells, Teleport, and so on - if they aren't really sensibly off-limits in your game world.

Supplements useful here: DF1, DF7, Pyramid 3/60.

Monsters

The Dungeon Fantasy line has a lot of monsters. Three books worth and part of a chapter in Dungeon Fantasy 2. All of them suit fantasy games, since DF is nothing if not a scaled-up stripped-down fantasy game.

So you have book after book of monsters to steal from. Some of them, at least some of the ones I wrote, came straight out of a long-running, plot-oriented, originally moderate-point game where the power level apex was about where DF starts out. Trolls, dinomen, horde pygmies, and more are right out of that game's notebook of monsters. They don't need to be in deep dungeons guarding dollar-sign bags and trapped chests brimming with gold and jewels. They work just fine lurking in forests, being fodder in the evil lich-king's army you're trying to avoid, or whatever.

Warning: The monsters are powerful and assume 250 point characters. For less-powerful less combat-optimized characters, monsters are proportionally more difficult. Generally, you need to use fewer types of monsters per encounter, and fewer monsters per type, when placing them into a lower-point game.

For example: Fodder monsters are probably Worthy (one-to-one challenges for PCs), Worthy are nearly boss-level (one-to-many) and bosses are going to be very special challenges. A Broadsword-14 Parry 10 orc with a medium shield (DB 2) and Scale (DR 4) is a one-turn kill for a Broadsword-20 DF Knight with ST 17 (3d cutting, 1d+4 impaling), but for a Broadsword-16 PC with ST 13 (2d cutting, 1d+2 impaling) he's going to be a challenge. A DR 17 golem-armor swordsman is going to go from "tough fight, aim for Chinks in Armor at -8 and wear it down" to "well-nigh-unstoppable, aim for Chinks in Armor at -8 to even have a chance to hurt it, if you hit"

Supplements useful here: DF2, DF9, DFM1, DFM2, DFM3, DFA1.


Part II will follow this week. If you've found bits of DF useful, please post what bits in the comments. Please keep it positive! I'm looking for what's broadly useful outside the game as written rather than critiques of the game as written.

A month of GURPS DFM 3 and a bonus monster mod

The monthly report for my GURPS books sales came out today.

My most recent book came out back on June 2nd, so I've had almost a solid month of sales.



How did it do?

Not bad.

192 books sold.

That's not enough to justify a DFM4, not by a number of sales. But it's a good number of sales overall for a GURPS PDF in a sub-line of books in its first month. That out-sold Barbarians by 20%, so hopefully it keeps up a good pace and keeps selling.

Bonus Content

But I can't just talk about the book. Well, obviously I can, but it's more fun if I add something for people who have it. Here is a pair of manticore variants for you.

Noble Manticore: Some rare manticores are friendly and noble in character but also serious and humorless. IQ becomes 10; Will becomes 12. Remove Intolerance, Odious Racial Habit, and Sadism. Add No Sense of Humor.

Wise Manticore: Some manticores are sagacious and knowledgeable. They aren't necessarily less ferocious, however. Many love puzzles and riddles, and may be mistaken for sphinxes. This is a potentially fatal mistake if the manticore isn't also Noble (see above). IQ becomes 15; Will becomes 18. Add Area Knowledge-15 and Hidden Lore (one of Demons, Faerie, or Elementals)-14.

Note that Wise Manticore is incompatible with Bestial Manticore.

Monsters from DFM3 in my campaign

It's no secret I mine GURPS books for my campaign and mine my campaign for GURPS book material.

So it was with Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3.

So, which ones have you seen?

If you've occasionally perused the monsters encountered list, you'll recognize some. But if you haven't been keeping up, here they are:

Cockatrice (slightly varied stats, though)

Giant Ant

Harpy

Medusa

Octopus Blossom

Phase Serpent (the DFM3 ones had their phase aspect beefed up based on play experience)

Rock Troll


(Rock trolls were born from me statting up these guys so I could use these minis in play)

All of them - even the variations - are in my game somewhere. It's just a question of where. There are four of the creatures in areas the PCs came close to but didn't quite go into, and a few in areas they haven't come close to exploring.

You've seen the Furious prefix, Amorphous Stone meta-trait, and Plant meta-trait in action without realizing it since the effects are subtle and I don't always list prefixes or monster traits when I talk about them.

Best Practices of DF Monster Stocking II

Here are two more points to follow up on yesterday's Best Practices of DF Monster Stocking.

More Mixed Monster Encounters

Make sure you combine monsters with each other.

Trolls and rust monsters are natural allies. Trolls and stirges are natural allies. Demon-apes and gargoyles are natural allies. Shambling mounds and druids with the Lightning spell are natural allies. All at least according to my players.

Why is that? They've encountered them together (or had one pile in to a fight with the other) or thought about how nasty they'd be as an encounter together. Sometimes it's a strange symbiosis - trolls don't have weapons, so they don't mind feeding delver armor bits to their rust monster. Sometimes it's an obvious pairing (druids can heal plant-men). But having two, three, or more types of monsters together potentially makes the threat fundamentally worse.

One monster may have an exploitable weakness, but their fellows do not. For example, a mix of flying and non-flying monsters means flying ranged weapon using delvers can't just fly up and shoot them to death. Or a monster might be especially vulnerable to magic but is coupled with a monster that can only be effectively fought with magic - do you focus on taking out the ones with the weakness or use your magic against the otherwise invulnerable enemy? The class wizard-backing-fighters approach is exactly this - each aids the other and covers a weakness.

A mix that doesn't enhance one or the other is just different in color, not kind. An ogre with some orcs is a nice combo, but it's just a physical big foe with physical strong foes. Sufficient sword skill will see them off. A wizard with three apprentices - or just four different wizards - are just a magical threat. Sufficient Magic Resistance, Will, and HT rolls will shrug off their non-physical attacks and if you can dodge a wrench you can dodge a Fireball. You might need Resist Fire and Resist Lightning and Resist Acid to fight them, which is more challenging, but it's just like the ogre and the orcs. One might be stronger but the threat is identical.

Add a wizard to the orcs, or have them summon an illusion-casting demon and you've got a very different encounter. Give those four wizards a few excellent melee fighters or draugr bodyguards and you'll need to choose between Resist spells and other buffs. Do you bum rush the wizard and give up your flank and your squishies, or do you play like-fights-like?

And don't confuse the origin and color description of an attack with its effect. An nearly-unkillable demon doing 4d+4 with its mystical demonic thighbone club and an ogre doing 4d+4 crushing with a club are the same offensive threat. A jet of flame that can be blocked with a shield is not that different from an arrow that can be blocked with a shield. A paralytic touch attack resisted with HT and a paralytic contact poison delivered by touch and is resisted with HT aren't terribly different, either - both are easily handled with the same Dodge score. Understand the game effect of the color and what it'll play like when mixing threats. A mix of ghouls, wights, and deathtouch wizards is all one threat with different damage types - it's keep away. The same mix with Curse-spell casting evil clerics might be a wholly different encounter.

Players, keep all of that in mind. Each fight isn't "find the tactical puzzle solution." A single monster might be that - hey, they're good at melee, let's not do that. A multiple monster fight will force you to prioritize. Make sure you actually do that on some level. But don't miss the forest (winning the fight) for the trees (finding the best tactic to neutralize the combination).

Telegraph the enemy

Leave clues. As a GM, it's tempting to make all monster encounters a surprise. But especially in GURPS DF, the templates come with serious investments in knowledge skills. Physiology to spot vital points. Hidden Lore to know secrets about types of creatures. Current Events and Research to gather knowledge in town. Naturalist to understand animal types. And so on. If you can't use them except when the monster appears out of nowhere to attack, it feels like they have less value.

Think about what those creatures would do to their environment. Do trolls sharpen their claws on walls? Do eyes of death shoot down every damn squirrel in the area (yes!)? Do peshkali have a snaky musk? Do giant apes leave dead snakes and dinosaurs lying around?

Color like that works in several ways. First, it's more immersive in the game world. Only in Munchkin, Dungeon!, and video games do monsters just sit in rooms and get generated by a random element when you kick the doors down. Second, it gives the players a reason to use their skills on their sheets. Third, it gives the players to use their own brains and attention to in-game details ("What, peshkali? WTF?" "Dude, didn't you hear him say 'a snaky musk' and mention the sounds of swords being sharpened?") Finally, it encounters scouting and looking and sneaking, because that's how you get these before the first sign of horde pygmies is, "Oops, dart in your neck!"

Players, this means you're rewarded for looking for clues. Oh, and listening while the GM is talking. Sure, that was a good parody video you saw yesterday and it does remind everyone of that time with the orcs and the barrel of alchemist's fire . . . but what's going on around you now? Scout, look, listen, use your own knowledge to spot incoming threats . . . then use your character's skills, basic testing, and your own experience to confirm them. If you don't pay attention to clues, the GM won't bother to put them in. If you look and the GM didn't bother, that's a hint that you want them!

Best Practices of DF Monster Stocking

If there is a single takeaway line for this post, it's this:

Purely physical threats are weak in DF.

You can stop reading and just keep that in mind and you'll be okay. Naturally I have a lot more to say about it, with much longer and more complex near-run-on sentences, but that's the crux of it.

There are a few reasons for this.

- DF delvers are very tough. Right out of the game, they are experts at what they do. That especially includes fighting. Although the non-fighter types have a lot of trouble hanging with the main fighters, they're still pretty good (Wizards start with a 14 weapon skill, which is well above basic competency.) Not only that, they're generally set up for multiple defenses and multiple types of defenses quite well.

- GURPS Magic contains a lot of complete solutions. Any magic system used instead that apes the results of GURPS Magic does the same. Non-flying creatures can't really hang with flying delvers. Sight-hunting creatures suffer against Invisibility. Missile launcher types, no matter how lethal their missiles, just fail against Missile Shield. Fire monsters can't beat Resist Fire. Tough melee fighters can often be Levitated and left hanging in the air. And so on.

- It's generally cheaper to buff up than to kill in GURPS.

- It's easy to get better at dealing with physical threats. Most threats will either be physical or come with physical elements. PCs can and will react to this by raising defenses, adding armor, layering on cheap buff spells, etc.

With those things in mind, here are two of the best practices I've come up with.

Mundane foes need supernatural support.

First and foremost, don't just have purely physical foes. If all you can do is fight with missiles and melee, you're playing to the strengths of the delvers. You might exceed them, but it can get tiring to be a supposedly amazing human warrior but dungeons are packed to the walls full of Smallsword-30 goblins - given that skill just to be a threat. ST is nice, but you have to land a blow for it to matter. High DR and HP will keep you alive, but for how long before you whittled down, especially if it's not coupled with any real offensive threat?

This isn't to say physical foes can't be a threat. They just aren't a big threat solo, and aren't as big of a threat without supernatural support. A pack of dire apes is annoying. A pack of dire apes backed by an ape spellcasters with a ghost-ape ally can change the fight from "slaughter" to "keep the apes off the guy who can hurt the ghost!" I was looking at using a monster from another GURPS supplement for DF, and realized two spells and one Knight would fizzle all of his attacks and then kill him, respectively. The solution? Add supernatural powers suited to GURPS Magic. Done, real threat created.

Not only that, but delvers tend to place a high emphasis on supernatural support-based tactics. If your monsters can't attempt to counter those or remove those, or use their own, the playing field just won't be level.

Think Wizards and Clerics, not witchmen and shamans.

This goes for both the GM and the players. For a GM with an old-school D&D background especially, adding two or three weak spellcasters with a handful of low-level spells each adds a lot of juice to an encounter. It's tempting to say that out of 100 lizardmen or 30-40 bandits or a dozen trolls that one of them has some minor magical power. That generally won't cut it. Instead, take a cue from the frequency of spellcasters that show up in DFA1 and put them in to the dungeon in bunches. Instead of 300 gnolls having one spellcaster and his or her two pathetic apprentices, have 300 gnolls have one spellcaster per squad (62 point guys might be okay), and a couple of really good casters topped by a main wizard or cleric in the 125-250 point range not counting the racial template. Don't mess around - it's like the PCs will be better, have superior magical support, and will grow from the challenge. In a magical world with common spells that can end fights in a single go or shape the battlefield with ease, you'd be foolish to go around without support. If groups survive, it must be because they have more spellcasters. Put them in. Treat it like a military group would treat a squad without a light automatic weapon and anti-tank rockets - as if they're doomed.

For the players, you can't think "weak spellcaster" when you see the enemy spellcasters. There are weak ones, but they are numerous. Don't bet on being the only side bringing magic to a fight. Just because you chose "Wizard" as your template doesn't mean there aren't other Wizards out there.

Prefix, Prefix, Prefix.

There are a number of prefixes out there for DF. Some of them fundamentally change the threat level of monsters. Use them liberally. While a few just make you more of a physical threat (Determined, Juggernaut, Ravenous), others make you a very different threat (Distorted, Chaos, Undead, Ghostly.) Still others make you a repeated threat (Possessed, Psycho Killer, and the suffix . . . from Hell.) Don't overlook them. Even if you just want to use them for inspiration, realize that ten trolls is just ten trolls, but nine trolls plus a Distorted Elemental Psycho-Killer troll is a potential nightmare. And keep the above in mind - make one of the remaining nine into a wizard or cleric.

For the players, just be aware that the one owlbear you met or that eye of death you killed or that acid slorn you killed isn't the end-all and be-all of their stats. Use what you know, but be aware you don't know everything.

Use a variety of target-location methods.

This one I rarely see discussed. If all of your monsters hunt by sight, they're all doomed. Blur will penalized all of their attacks and Invisibility and Blackout will put them down to Wild Swings in no time. You must mix up how monsters sense targets.

I use a variety of: See Invisible. Discriminatory Smell. Detect (Precise, Reduced Time). Radar Sense. Hearing-based Detect. Vibration Sense. Occasionally Blind Fighting. And a few others, too. Plus I'm fairly liberal in handing out Night Vision, Infravision, and Dark Vision to depth-dwelling monsters. The really scary ones often have more than one!

It's not because I want to frustrate the casters of the three spells above. Not exactly, anyway. It's because it's necessary to constitute a real threat. If you just churn out monsters who can't sense foes unless they're looking directly at them in well-lit conditions, there is a one-spell solution to that. By all means reward use of supernatural concealment, Stealth, and so on - but equally, you need to challenge all the ways you need to sneak. Don't make it trivial to reduce monsters to ineffectiveness by making all of them spot targets the same way.

For players, keep in mind that you need to figure out how a monster spots you to defeat that with magic or tactics. Smoke might frustrate orc archers but not impress the Shaolin monkey men slingers. You can be invisible to sight and sound but Detect Life (Precise) will spot you right away. There is a No Smell spell for a reason, and it's not to make fourth graders laugh. Take precautions, but don't assume your precautions always work. And know that if you attempt to buff versus everything and layer anti-detection magic versus everything all at once on everyone, you're never going to get anywhere. And it still might not work . . .

Review: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2: Icky Goo

Here is the usual disclaimer for a GURPS book written by Sean Punch - Sean is my friend, often my editor, the GURPS Line Editor, and sometimes my co-author. I'm not remotely impartial. But I am using this still in play, and I do know a thing or two about monsters for GURPS.

For more reviews, please see my Reviews page.



GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2: Icky Goo
by Sean Punch
22 pages
$5.99

Icky Goo is the second in the Dungeon Fantasy Monsters line for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. Like its predecessor, it is a monster manual. Unlike it's precessory, it is a very specific monster manual. Instead of a mix of monsters, it is just slimy stuff.

Each is done up in a full, ready-to-go (and ready-to-roll) DF monster stat block. Each is lethal in a DF kind of way, which is more "save or die" than "realistic, slow, long-term effects." Mold in DF doesn't give you immune system issues five years down the road, it inflicts horrible things on you right now. Often with the help of painful puns and nod-and-wink nastiness that brings to mind NetHack and very old editions of fantasy role-playing games.

If I've done my math right, you can generate:

36 kinds of fungi
2 kinds of jellies
27 kinds of molds
1 ooze
6 colors of puddings
15 kinds of slimes (ranging in lethality from "weak" to "virulent.")
36 kinds of spore clouds

In total, that's potentially 123 monsters.

That's not counting pre-statted scaling for larger patches of all of the above. Sometimes much larger patches. And some of them change as they get larger. And that's not counting applying aspects of one kind of slime to another kind of slime - you could give an ooze mold defenses, or give slimes pudding colors and powders, etc. as well if you'd like.

One great thing about these slimes is that they are nasty. They are minor foes in most cases, but not dinky distractions. Their abilities are dangerous, their poisons potentially lethal, and their attacks potentially fatal. They aren't without their defenses, either - ask my players, who ran into fire-resistant slime that gave them quite the surprise.

The books is complete. Want to know the sale value of slimes? There. The technical split between a fungi and a pudding and an ooze? Done. Which skill to roll to identify them, categorize them, or salvage their salable bits? Done. You won't be left with a lot of slime-related questions.

There is art, as well, although it's not up to the same size and detail of the art in DFM1. It's all older art (mostly Denis Loubet) re-purposed into slimes, etc. The good part about that is that if you have Cardboard Heroes you have all the counters you need to deploy these suckers (slimers?) on the map.

Great quotes, too - Lovecraft, The Blob, and this Sean Punch gem:
"Goo lack the weaknesses of organisms that have internal organs, eyeballs, debts, and regrets."

If you need more slimes for your Dungeon Fantasy game, this is the book for you. If you just want some perfect wandering monsters and mindless (and soulless, and remorseless), get this.

Overall: I like Sean Punch's work a lot, so I like this. But even more so, I've already used slimes and molds from this book in my game. I've written a couple of my own monsters using spins off of the powers involved here. And I've revised some oldie-but-goodie monsters of my own to bring them more into line with this book. It's great material and I highly recommend it to Dungeon Fantasy GMs.

Mad Wizard Did It!

Or a demented godling.

This list, culled from a variety of sources, is pretty freaking awesome reading. The comic linked at the bottom pretty much explains everything.

Mad Wizards and Demented Godlings*

There is a reason why my players - including those who run wizards - claim you can't trust any wizards.

To add a few the author, Max, didn't get to because they're from other, non-D&D and non-Palladium sources:

As-Sharak (Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons): "The as-Sharak are elemental sorcerers who sold their souls for power . . . only to be turned into monsters in Hell and returned to the living world to punish similarly arrogant mortals."

Eye Entity (Rolemaster Creature & Monsters): "Eye Entities are formed through a magical ritual and a foul alchemical process [. . . ]"

Eye of Death (Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1): "It’s also known that reckless wizards
sometimes summon eyes of death into this world."

Flaming Skull (Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons): "The jury is out on whether they’re necromantic creations or free-willed evil spirits who loathe mortals."

Gladiator Ape (Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1): "Not every mad wizard or strange civilization is satisfied with mere flesh-eating apes (Dungeons, p. 23). These flesheaters have been bred as vicious combatants."

Golem-Armor Swordsman (Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons): "This construct consists of a flesh golem – made from a formerly living swordsman – riveted inside solid metal plates that are also animated, thereby augmenting strength."

Lich (Rolemaster Creature & Monsters): "When confronted by unavoidable death, most Evil Clerics, Evil Magicians, and Sorcerers depart life with one last, dreadful curse. A few forgo this privilege to become Undead, securing immortality as liches."

Shadows (Rolemaster Creature & Monsters): "Shadows are the result of a horrible ritual known only to a few Necromancers and recorded in only the most despicable tomes of vile knowledge."

The Rolemaster ones are supported by many more, as are the GURPS ones. I only picked a few examples from DFM1. My examples don't even scratch the surface of the evidence that, basically, wizards are d***s. Mad gods, not much better.


* By the way, I love that he, too, colored in his monster manuals. Here is my Fiend Folio.

DF Session 48, Felltower 39 - Near TPK

September 28th, 2014

Weather: Cool, clear.

Characters: (approximate net point total)
Al Murik, dwarven cleric (250 points)
Dryst, halfling wizard (372 points)
     Father Keef, human initiate (125 points, NPC)
Galen Longtread, human scout (372 points)
Red Raggi, human berserker (?? points, NPC)
     Demetrios, Antonios, and Leonatios of Meepos, human spearman (unknown point totals, NPC)
     Gort of the Shining Force, dwarf adventurer (unknown point total, NPC)
     Yellow Liz, human smallswordsman with a very leggy mini (unknown point total, NPC)
     Jon Blackbart, human swordsman (unknown point level, NPC)
     Boohee, pig
     Swoinch, pig

Still in town:
Asher Crest-Fallen, human holy warrior (250 points)
Bern Brambleberry, gnome artificer (265 points)
     Mark Strawngmussel, human laborer (62 points, NPC)
Borriz, dwarven knight (308 points)
Chuck Morris, human martial artist (303 points)
Galoob Jah, goblin thief (256 points)
Honus Honusson, human barbarian (302 points)
Vryce, human knight (444 points)

We started as usual, in Stericksburg. A new member joined the group - a dwarven cleric. He'd met Gort, who told him that if was interesting in bringing the Good God's word (and hammer o' smiting) into the depths, he should come along with these youngsters he'd been escorting into the dungeon. Thus Al Murik joined the group.

Since Vryce couldn't make it this trip, they went for hirelings. They found a trio of brothers trained as a shield wall. The Meeposian brothers hired on as a trio for a single share of treasure. They were pretty well equipped (scale, helmets, large shields, spears, swords) and knew how to fight as a team. The others came as volunteers - and included "Leggy" Liz aka Yellow Liz, a smallswordsman and Gort of the Shining Force. They turned down Orcish Bob, though, and I think they missed him in the big fight. They similarly turned down Rexos the Axe, who'd offered to join last time as well.

Well, not Jon Blackbart, exactly. He wasn't around, so they spread around 30 sp in drinks money and bonus money to find him, and he turned up. They wanted him because he seemed to handle Swoinch and Boohee well enough.

They gathered some rumors - including one about a lever on one side of the dungeon opening doors on the other side, another about rock trolls being friendly if you get to know them, and one about an unkillable warrior guarding a fantastic treasure. Al Murik immediately said, "Unkillable doesn't mean we can't hurt him." They also heard that some monsters are immune to magical weapons.

Since the orcs are now too powerful for the group to reasonably assault (oops!) so they headed down through the dragon's cave, hoping to link up with the "behir" aka the twelve-legged wyrm. They spent a lot of time wandering in circles, trying to ensure they hadn't missed anything on their map. They hadn't, and having Galen there to verify when they'd backtracked helped a lot.

They wandered around the cube-shaped room they found outside of the dragon's lair, found another pair (or was it the same pair? Doesn't seem likely) of giant metal doors, and some half-magically dug tunnels. They were chopped sheer enough to be Destroy Earth, most likely, and then chipped out more before work was abandoned.

They heard water drips, the occasional roar or muffled thump, and other ambient dungeon/cavern noises. Nothing came of those, though.

Advancing further, they eventually found a series of tunnels breaking off from a small intersection, along with a set of rough-hewn stairs going up. They looked like a natural slope hacked into stairs, according to Gort. They sent a Wizard Eye with Dark Vision up to scout, and saw that after a landing the stairs continued up a natural pipe, and ended in a half-cave, half-worked room with a white tile floor and a solid door. They moved up, and after being sure it wasn't trapped, got to work on the door. It was triple-locked, a close scan of the opening edge revealed, with no lock or handle on this side. There were hinges, metal ones, but they were mostly covered with a metal covering and stone was worked or shaped over that. Raggi went to work on the hinges with a maul, but couldn't even ding them (vault-level hinges, more or less). The door was similarly too much (it bounces many greataxe blows from Raggi's magic axe) until they deployed a ram. It took almost a minute of solid blows from Raggi and the three Meeposian brothers to take the door down, leaving only a wrecked iron-bound door and bits hanging on the locks and hinges. A Silence spell kept the ram from making noise, but they didn't set it up past the door so its fall made a lot of noise. CRASH.

Beyond it was a cross-shaped intersection with alcoves flanking the door, with pedestals for the stone golem they've encountered. None were there, though. Past that two corridors angled off. From one or both - echoes are tough - Galen heard orcish voices in hushed but fast conversation and then not-too-successful sneaking noises fading away. Ah, orc guards. They realized they'd busted out of door meant to keep stuff in, and alerted the orcs about that.

Some quick investigation by Invisible Galen and Dryst's Wizard Eye showed they were near the place they'd fought the hobgoblins and siege beasts and the six-fingered elven demon vampire master thing. So they took a side tunnel past the roper lair and climbed down the cliff, lowering the pigs.

From there, they advanced in a very tight, very close formation, waiting for a strix attack. Sure enough, dozens of the stirges flew out and attacked. They killed a couple dozen with only some minor injuries - mostly because even when stirges attached themselves to bare flesh, either Raggi grappled them and ripped them off with ease, or Galen shot them off the victim from the other side of the crowd (Bow-30, effectively, with his bonuses, so a mere -10 to -14 meant easy shots). Armor spells on the few vulnerable folks bounced many attempts, too.

They chose to rest right there, and naturally, the stirges came back and attacked again, disrupting their rest. They killed another half-dozen or more and then finished resting as the survivors didn't come back.

Past there, they met the wyrm, who was very impatiently waiting for his months-ago promised pigs. They fed it Swoinch, who it devoured in a big gulp or three. Then they started talking. It told them about some nearby dangers (a flying shadow with hundreds of friends, some apes they promised to feed it, some other stuff like poison mushrooms). It also told them the easy way to the dragon (which it knew was dead) was to stick to the left after skipping the first left (a dead end on their maps.) They figured that might take them past the cloaker and they didn't want that. So they went right, aiming for the treasure they'd spotted with a Wizard Eye a while back.

They went down a long gallery, hearing stone-on-stone scraping but seeing nothing. They found another cube-shaped room with a faint feel of magic. Beyond it was a big room with thick stone columns with a staggering amount of treasure scattered around the area between the columns and spilling out. They formed up, advanced cautiously, and sent in a servant and Wizard Eye. The servant disappeared before it reached the treasure, the spell ended. Maybe dispelled? It wasn't attacked. They began to hear flapping noises, so they quickly buffed up and started to advance slowly. Dryst decided something might be hiding, and started throwing See Invisible on Galen. He rolled - I swear this is true - 18 (converted to a normal failure via Magical Stability), and then an 18 which was followed with a 17 vs. his sub-16 maximum skill. Critical Failure, confirmed - his first since spending a boatload of points to get Magery 6 stabilized. I made up some possible disasters and it came up as "Forget the spell for 1d weeks" - 2, it turned out. They also got off lots of buff spells - Haste and Shield, mostly. The first was invaluable, the second, because it's front-arc only, only helped a few important times.

They kept moving in, spreading out as they exited the tunnel entrance. The flapping revealed itself as a mob of flying demons - identified as the shark-mawed Shurakar by both Dryst and Al Murik. Shark-Bats is what they actually got called. Galen started shooting them, and as each one was hit it blinked out of existence. Illusions? Some real, some fake?

Meanwhile the flapping got louder, and a stone grinding "voice" or "roar" was heard from in the room somewhere.

Galen moved around the edge, and once he was well into the room, he shot the treasure - it disappeared. Illusion. The loud flapping stopped suddenly, although some distant flapping was heard, and last of the grinding noise stopped.

That was when it went badly. As he did that, with so many of the party spread out and facing away from the door (and the pocket-like corners to the right and left), they were jumped. Literally. Four till-then invisible demon-apes leaped out, landing behind them, and grappled. One grappled Dryst's neck, one Galen's, one Raggi's, and a fourth dropped in front of Raggi and clawed his face open. The fight was on - except even the least-grappled person had 8 CP on him, thanks to strong and skilled grapplers.

The fight got nasty right away, as the brothers advanced to help Dryst, backed by Keef and Al Murik. Galen tried to shoot the demon grabbing him over his shoulder - he was Great Hasted, most of the turns gone from shooting illusionary shark-bat-demons - to mixed success. He was shooting at something like -19, thanks to shooting blind, being grappled, shooting with a reversed grip, etc. Basically, almost impossible to even do for anyone, which for him meant a 11 skill to hit and a miss might hit himself (he nearly did, a couple times.) He shot the ape at least once, and it told him, "You'll pay for that. I'm bringing you to Hell with me!" He also took a mild fear effect from the demon's touch.

The one on Dryst tried to neck snap him, but his damage cap was low because of only 10 CP so he couldn't hurt Dryst (despite having his "backup" armor while the main stuff is being enchanted). The ones on Raggi started to grapple him for more CP, even as he dropped his axe (he'd have had a sub-10 chance to do anything, even All-Out Telegraphic) and grappled back.

The others moved in, leaving Keef, Gort, Blackbart, and Liz to guard the rear.

Just then, Gort yelled "Gargoyles! Hell gargoyles!" as a pack of 5 especially well-fanged gargoyles and a giant sized fanged gargoyle flew from where the party came from and horn-slammed into the group. Gort went right down, missing his defense roll and getting creamed after bouncing his sword off the gargoyle. He went right out, which ultimately saved him. Liz and Blackbart got mobbed, with Blackbart falling back even as the big leader went after him, and the others tore Liz apart even as she desperately tried to hold position. They'd all made their Loyalty rolls (well, Gort doesn't roll) but they were badly outmatched.

That grinding roar? The call to the gargoyles to come and get some. The demon-apes noted the scout and reacted to it in the intervening sessions, making some plans for backup.

The fight kept rolling. Raggi was borne down to the ground and taken to 0 ST and DX from CP (which takes 40 CP on him!) even as he drove himself Berserk just to make sure he'd stay awake. He was helpless but berserk.

The demon holding Dyrst turned to fight the brothers and Al Murik, even as Dryst - in an ultimately suicidal but gutsy move - quick-drew and opened a flash of Alchemist's Fire and dumped it on the demon grappling him. He made his DX roll but not critically, which, naturally, meant they were both soaked with alchemical napalm doing 1d(5) burning damage per turn. ("Way to commit, soldier!")

Galen's foe did some neck snaps on him after foiling some attempts to break free, and Galen was eventually forced to drop his bow and go for his sword. Raggi was getting chewed on. Dryst's demon-ape got annoyed by getting hacked with Al Murik's axe and speared by the brothers so it jumped 15 yards over them and into a corner, carrying the now-helpless Dryst (ST 7 vs. lots and lots of CP = helpless) The brothers rushed to help him, Keef took cover, and Al Murik ran to help Galen. He put an axe into the back of the demon grappling Galen, who then let go, turned invisible - and probably jumped away, based on later events. Things looks extremely bleak despite Galen suddenly being free - he was barely alive, making death and unconsciousness checks.

The fight went worse - Blackbart went down after whacking the boss gargoyle for a while, and it failed lots of Bloodlust self-control rolls, and just kept biting him (it and its buddies were Ravenous, per DFM1) for 3d+3 vs. Blackbart's leather armor. He reached -5 x HP in no time and died. Dryst went unconscious from neck snaps, even as the demon and he burned. More and more, the fight went badly. The brothers finally reached Dryst and the demon, which neck-snapped him (nearly killing him outright) and dumping him on the ground before turning invisible and leaping away. The brothers couldn't know he'd left, so it took them precious seconds to stop waiting and try to put the fire on Dryst out. They'd be too late - they missed a roll to pat out the fire, got burned themselves, and the next turn Dryst took just enough damage to put him to -45 HP and automatic death.

The demons on Raggi were just gnawing on him. One kept biting his face and attacking to establish more CP. Once it had 40+ itself, the other let go and jumped Father Keef, cracking him down in a single blow (random location was Neck, for 15 penetrating damage, which became 30 for 10 HP Keef.)

The group did finally get a demon down around now - the one on Galen re-appeared and sucker punched Al Murik, who failed to resist the Fear effect despite a +8 to resist and Will 15 or something like that (a 17!) It jumped to "safety" but "within line of sight" isn't safe with Galen around. Galen acrobatically rolled to his bow on a prior turn, avoided the demon's previous strike, and readied the bow. With it now far away, he plugged it and killed it. It turned into a howling cloud of greenish smoke and disappeared, leaving only a piece of jewelry behind.

The gargoyles entered the fray now, with one branching off to engage the Meeposian brothers. It couldn't seriously threaten them, but they couldn't bother it with spears. Even when they later changed to swords, all they managed was to annoy it a little with a single hit and fend off its claws. Gargoyles know they can't die from non-magical attacks, so they aren't very serious about combat sometimes. They literally have forever to beat you to death and act that way. That saved the party.

The fight went on, with Galen eventually shooting down another demon, Al Murik sticking one with his pick and then ripping it out, and the one on Raggi getting shot by Galen a couple times. The one that was on fire never re-appeared (it died 1-2 seconds after killing Dryst, before it could re-engage in the fight.) But several misses by Galen meant that what should have been a death-shot on the demon wasn't. He ended up running around the battlefield dodging gargoyle slams and being chased by the big gargoyle. Al Murik got cornered by three gargoyles. The final demon - only wounded by Galen - went invisible.

Right here, that miss by Galen was huge. It almost cost them everything. The demon grappled Galen from behind and inflicted a 9-point fear penalty on him. I ruled that didn't affect Attacking to Break Free and its terrible rolls to parry or even get more CP meant Galen eventually got free. In the meantime, though, the boss gargoyle starting rending on him.

In the meantime, desperate, Al Murik blew all of his available FP on a huge Awaken spell to wake up Raggi, who was very near death (-85 HP or something like that) but not dead. It was barely successful, and Raggi was no where close to the 9 or less he needed and stayed down. He'd have been in terrible shape anyway, one hit from going down at all times.

The demon yelled on Galen yelled at the gargoyle and said to go away, and it did, wandering over to deal with Al Murik. That helped Al, because the big boss started pulling gargoyles away from Al to get in himself, and Al ran for it. He managed to get free of the pile-on, which thanks to his Armor spell hadn't been hurt but he was rightly scared of the gargoyles getting bored and grappling him.

At this point, Galen got free, and despite the -9, turned and shot the demon-ape down. Four for four, they were down.

It was really late, and at this point I told them it was clear that a) they didn't have the firepower to deal with the gargoyles, even if they got Raggi back up, and b) it was hopeless to figure. They took the direct suggestion I gave them to deal with this in some way that would let me get home (I have early work on Monday, and it was very late). Galen said, "They like gemstones." Dryst's player said "I have my emergency gemstones - you've all been told about them in case I die and need Resurrection." So Al Murik rolled Public Speaking and offered to bribe the gargoyles with some gems.

The boss said they'd kill them all and take them.

Al said, no, you'll never find them.

They managed to convince the gargoyles to turn around (no peeking!) and not look. They took out the five most valuable stones from Dryst's collection and offered them. The boss demanded six, so they'd have one each. Al produced the "last one" (He's Honest, but not truthful, apparently) they had to give away, and the boss was satisfied. They flew off, leaving the party in a huge mess.

Thanks to a beaker of great healing potions, a charged healing scroll, and a 4 on a healing roll, they managed to get the non-dead guys up and fully mobile. They took Jon's corpse and Dryst's corpse, left the remnants of Liz where they fell, found the four pieces of jewelry the apes had, and fled. They got past the wyrm (it was full from eating like 30 stirges and two live pigs, and in no mood to bargin for Dryst's delicious corpse), climbed back up, took the stairs back down, and wound they way out to the dragon cave mouth and home.

Notes:

So in the end, the finaly tally was:

Dryst - dead, at -5xHP (almost exactly - at -45 or -46 HP)
Liz - dead, at below -10xHP (the gargoyles weren't happy with her)
Jon Blackbart - dead, at -6xHP (the big gargoyle kept failing his Bloodlust self-control roll).
Swoinch and Boohee - eaten; such is the lot of sacrificial pigs in a dungeon.

Everyone else is alive, but Father Keef is going to have a scar from that neck wound. He's lucky he's not dead.

Dryst will possibly get resurrected - they need to fork over $15,000, which they don't have, and then I'll roll the spell. Dryst has some of that, but we'll see if Vryce has some handy. Raggi, sadly, had been sitting on some money for a while (he'd done well) and then spent it all in a fury of partying and sped-up gear upgrades, and he's nearly broke.

I doubt anyone will resurrect Jon Blackbart, showing again the Curse of the Henchmen Page.

Raggi was freaking angry at being useless in the fight. You could say he kept 50% of the ape-demons completely occupied for most of the fight, and came out of it okay. This is true, but as he sees it nothing died horribly from his axe or hands like they damn well should have, so he's annoyed at being useless. This may affect a) his availability and b) his patience.

It could have been much, much worse. It was almost a TPK, and the casualties are so light only because of lots of healing stuff expended, good rolls on healing, and some luck when I checked to see if anyone died of their frightful injuries.

Invisible demon-apes attacking by surprise is tough. I figured they'd either leverage invisibility and super jump and do a lot of good stuff, or not and die. It was the former.


This session went way, way, way too late. Like, 3 hours late. Mostly this is because:

- the fight went long. Way long for the actual seconds of game time and the number of combatants.

- as the fight got bad, and the stakes got high, people took a long time to decide what to do. Every decision was magnified, or so it seemed, so everyone took forever to make a decision. Things got slow.

- people took a long time between turns, for the same reason.

- Morale got low as it looked like it was nearly a certain TPK, so talk turned to "What character next?" and "What went wrong?" and not "What do I do now?" which also slowed it down.

I think I need to get my timer going again and do 3-2-1 countdowns even when it's life or death, TPK or not. I don't think anyone did anything at 10 pm they wouldn't have been able to do at 8 pm just because they dragged their feet.

Honestly, I obliquely hinted the gargoyles weren't defeatable, but I think everyone was too tired to notice. Since it was late, and I didn't want to spend any more time playing out a slow, helpless grind of death, I basically said in some like these words - "You can't outrun the gargoyles and you can't kill them. So find another way or just get ground down." That's when they negotiated. I charged a -1 point "Hint Fee" from their XP.

Al Murik is a dwarven cleric with a mysterious Y-shaped scar on his cheek. There are two references there, if you can find them. He's run by a player new to this campaign but not new to us - the player has gamed with me since High School, and joined our 10-year-long GURPS campaign about a year into it and played until it ended. He's got a little more free time these days and jumped back in. Good thing, they need a cleric.

Awaken probably needs a tweak - right now, it's + margin of success, -3 for injury, -6 for drugged. Probably makes sense to scale the injury penalty to the HT penalty to wake up, from -0 (above -1xHP) to -4 (-4xHP and below), actually. Got to think about that.

The group - or at least members, like Galen - had a chance to break off from the fight and run. It would have been the smart move. But everyone, or close to everyone, has things like Sense of Duty (Adventuring companions) and wouldn't consider it. Had Al dropped, though, I bet Galen would have made a break for it. If he dropped some gear he could make No Encumbrance and would have had Move 13 with Haste and could outrun the gargoyles. But he wouldn't stop fighting while his buddies were up.

This was also a fight that, thanks to lots of terrible rolls, went worse than it should have. Galen missed easy bow shots a few times, rolled minimum damage a lot, and otherwise had some issues. Twice Al Murik had a fight-ending shot on his axe or pick and did too little damage to matter. A max-damage axe throw would have taken that demon out, yet his minimum damage hit meant it lived to nearly win the fight for Hell.

So why Swoinch and Boohee? Swoinch is the sound Hen Wen makes in The Book of Three. Boohee - aka ブヒ - is onomatopoeia for pig noises in Japanese. So now you know, and knowing the half the pig.