Random Links for Friday 12/26/25

It's been a while. Here is stuff to read.

- A nice rule for "cooking" a hand grenade in GURPS.

- A quick rules answer I need to put somewhere besides here - only the consumables in DFRPG Adventurers are available off-the-shelf. Want an Ironskin amulet? Pay for it and await the enchantment.

- These consequences for too much time at sea are really funny over at d4 Caltrops.

Random Links & Notes for 8/29/2025

- 9 and 30 Kingdoms talks a bit about mapping. I'm okay with players mapping or not mapping. It's up to them, as long as their characters can do it. If they try to use it to detect secret rooms, eh. I have lots of filled-in blocks of stone between hallways to avoid explaining line-walls that don't have any clear thickness. So it generally doesn't work. They do help to keep you from getting too lost.

- Not gaming, but this post explains historiography. I first ran into the concept in college and I wish I'd understood it earlier.

- Next game date is unclear.

Random Links for 8/15/2025

Some stuff I found interesting to read this week.

Why Magic Users Suck at Fighting. In general, I think is a perfectly reasonable explanation. It's hard to do two hard things well without a large time investment in each. The dedicated fighter and the dedicated magic-user should be more effective in their niche than a person who does both equally, given the same constraints of time, resources, etc.

OLD DM TRICK #3 - I don't know, this doesn't seem like it would work, especially if anyone maps or the party spreads out a bit.

Of Periwigs and Pallid Masks - while pre-1776 colonial America seems like an interesting place for a Call of Cthulhu campaign . . . all you get is early pre-1776 divisions and violence and political splits. That might help give players a hook, but I don't think you get to have colonial America without all of the politics that made it a rebellion. It's not like one thing happened, simplified text in school textbooks aside, that suddenly made it all explode. Still, given a group of players with a similar interest in history, it could be interesting.

Sharp Practice: The Relief of Dojjibotti! - I love minis, and I love Indian Mutiny mini battles. They're so visually interesting and the conflict is both messy and easy to understand.

Friday Roundup 6/27/2025

- I have a good run going in Battle Brothers. My first run, I didn't understand how to build good brothers, so I'm kind of stuck. My second only lasted a few days before it was clear I was in a living hell - few fights I could handle, almost no recruits I could afford, and lots and lots of undead and wolves and other nasties in the area. The third playthrough, I'm around day 55 or so with the Headhunters, and they're kicking ass. I literally smashed an undead camp for a mission, took an additional mission to smash more, and then wiped out a bandit camp on the way home just because they were on the way.

Three things* turned it for me:

1) Having a better idea how to recruit and build brothers

2) Ruthless use of fishing nets and daggers early to get better armor (and I scored a pike in week 1, which was massive)

3) A policy of having as many fights as I could, much like D'Artagnan was counciled to by his pop.

Because of this, I had better armor than before, better brothers, and guys with as many fights as they have days in the company. Fun stuff.

- I didn't have much time to do game prep, because I wasted what I had on Battle Brothers. Next game is Sunday.

- Concussion sucks enough that everyone fixes it. It's broken.

* Besides surprise, fear, and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope. Ah, I'll start again.

Week Ending Post 6/20/2025

I do these weekly, but last week I was checking out an advanced class at a BJJ school with my training partner who wants to start at that school. Excuses, excuses.

- It's interesting watching the Ardun Vul campaign go through many of the iterations of XP and loot tresholds that I did.

New Loot XP thresholds for DFRPG Arden Vul

"What's the intent of this rule? The "gamist" intent is that we're simulating the way the amount of XP needed to go up a level increased at higher levels in D&D. Because there are no levels in GURPS, we can't have increasing costs to go up a level, so instead we make it harder to earn each XP as PCs get more powerful. The "motivational" intent is to give PCs a reason to keep looking for bigger and better treasures even if they have enough money to buy whatever they can find for sale in the Gosterwick area. "Now that the castle is paid off, I'm thinking of going part-time" is totally reasonable, but probably not something Conan would say."

Yeah, that's why I wrote the tables in my game and in DF21 the way I did.

- A nice look at MERP, Rolemaster, and its retro-clone knockoff.

Reflections on Middle-earth Roleplaying, Rolemaster, Against the Darkmaster, and Art

- Next game is a few weeks away!

Friday Roundup 5/30/2025

- I had a little time to play Battle Brothers. I gave up for the moment on my first game - I seem to have made just enough mistakes for long enough that I can't sustain myself in the fights I need to sustain my crew. I will try to advance the game another time when I'm more skilled.

My new game . . . not good. I seem to be in a high-danger area with tough contracts and very few recruits, many of whom are very expensive. A few days in and I've had to go back to my initial save twice already to just try to choose a better path . . . and it's not working. Hmm. I might need another restart.

Still fun.

- Game is Sunday.

- I'm still figuring out which level I'll support the Bat in the Attic kickstarter. But I'm in for sure.

Weekly Wrapup 5/23/2025

- Basically no gaming this week. Lots of grappling practice. One of my friends is competing for the first time tomorrow so that's dominated my time.

- I did play a little Battle Brothers. Using some new mods, it's clear that I have a few poorly built brothers and it might be too late to upgrade everyone to survive the fights I need to take at this point. Hmm. I don't want to start over, but I made need to abandon these guys are try again with better knowledge of what to do.

- I had to do a partial rollback of my Felltower update because some of the modules I use won't run with the new version of Foundry. Sigh. We'll see how it holds up in a week.

- Oooh, I love Battletech with minis.

Thoughts & Links for 5/16/2025

What's up this week?

I've been badly distracted by ice hockey playoffs, sumo tournaments, and getting a friend of mine ready for their very first submission grappling match. But I have done some gaming reading.

- The cult of the TPK and the OSR. Felltower is a good example of this - it's deliberately high lethality. It's not meant to exactly ape the lethality of the old school games we played. It's more. It's just I find the higher lethality, "hardcore mode" approach appealing for this game.

"Enjoy your death as I enjoyed killing you." - Peter, GMing Felltower. Only kidding, it's Leela, The Horror at Fang Rock.

- Why archers don't volley fire. Yeah, so much of Hollywood historical warfare is basically WWI or WWII with swords and bows even when none of it makes sense.

- I have barely played any Battle Brothers. The mods I put on help, but also revealed some errors I made in selecting brothers. No matter. But I just haven't had time to sit and play, not with all of the non-play responsibilites I have going on.

- Next Felltower game is early June!

Friday Roundup 5/2/2025

Busy week with work and ice hockey playoffs, so I didn't do much gaming and practically no posting.

- Played a fair bit of Battle Brothers. The tricky bit for me is that combats can take a while, and you can't save during them. So I've had to avoid playing the game because I'm about to get into a fight and yet don't have the time to complete it. This makes it a bit more of a time investment for a play session than, say, firing up Diablo for a little bit and playing that.

I really like the game - the visual representation of troop conditions are great. So is the combat system, which makes me feel like every weapon has a niche, even if one I don't particularly need to use. I also really like that even a savage beating on a brother can leave them alive, but crippled - and yet still useful. My current group has a one-eyed guy who lost it early on. He's still one of my best front liners. Another suffered brain damage (!) and learns at a reduced rate. But he's tough, good at melee, has a solid base of stats overall, and worth keeping. In any other game he'd be junk. The only guys I shoved aside were so badly mauled as to be useless, or turned out to be useless. Just a permanent injury that doesn't make you do your job less well? Stay on the team.

- I like the idea of "load" for Disadvantages. I tend to get one-two big disads if possible rather than as many minor ones as possible.

- Next Felltower is 5/4. Seems like they'll go through the Air Gate.

Friday Links for 4/25/2025

Made it most of the way through the week. What random stuff is on my mind?

- I like wargames with clever rules. This one, Race to Berlin, is a two-player game, the Allies vs. Russia. How do you handle the Germans? The Allies play the eastern front Germans, the Russians play the western front Germans. This prevents the old issue with 3-way games, which is the losing player deciding to play kingmaker and throw in with one side to let them win. In this case, that can't happen. Nice. Clever.

- I finally broke down and bought Battle Brothers. So far, it's a lot of fun. I expect to get my money's worth in the long run. I didn't sprint for any DLC but it came with one free one that adds a monster and a banner, IIRC. I'm playing my first game on easy for everything except combat, which is on Expert. It's fine and doesn't feel unfair or especially difficult to this point. I do get the occasional issue of not really having a clear idea of what to do next. Whatever. For now, the Cheat Commandos ride across the lands of whatever this land is called.

Enjoyable game, and I finally had some time . . . and it clearly wasn't going on sale for less than $14.99 so what the hell.

- Under Tenkar's Tavern, for levels 1-3. I love it.

Friday Post Roundup

A few posts of interest for the week or so.

- Grognardia has a brief look at the Victory Games James Bond RPG Q-Manual. A great supplement back in the day, for your Lotus and Aston Martin driving Bond days.

- I love this picture, although it's very RPG and not terribly realistic. Still makes me want to game ASAP.

- Zero traction so far on my Felltower to do list. Everything on there was my entry. Hopefully I get a bite on this from my players, so "What is there to do?" becomes less of a challenge in play.

Friday Roundup 4/11/2025

What caught my eye this week?

- Tactics in Adventure Gaming. I liked this look at tactical combat and mapless combat.

- My blog is in the top 90 RPG blogs.

- This list of modules for a GURPS-based Foundry VTT game is very helpful for me. I will have to put up my own list - maybe Sunday - and try one of them myself.

- Next game is in May, so expect lots of little housekeeping posts from me and no big summaries. Interesting discussion in my telephone game post, too. I'm still wondering what I can do to improve things.

Friday 4/4/2025 Roundup Post

Friday roundup!

- The telephone game is alive and well. One of my players suggested getting some arrows of dragon slaying, because Puissance +3 is cheap on arrows and any weapon with Puissance +3 is Slaying. So, almost none of that is actually true. But half-remembered rules and events get passed along and become, to paraphrase Phillip J. Fry, widely-believed facts.

You have to wonder how many things in Felltower are regarded differently than they actually are thanks to similar half-remembered details passed along, morphed, and then re-remembered. I'm half curious but mostly I deliberately tune out the player discussions to avoid giving away what I actually think.

- I'm writing a new DF Felltower Questionairre. Unlike the last one, this one is entirely focused on player responses, not the PCs. My last survey did both. My goal at this point is to just figure out what things within the game and rules are working well, and what are not. It's surprisingly hard to word them in a neutral way while also eliciting the feedback I'm interested in.

- Do you kill the hobgoblin children in the Caves of Chaos? 20% of respondents, and 100% of Desmonds, do!

- This guy - Togilius the Chamberlain is pretty neat. He'd make a good NPC wizard in my game. Or a PC wizard in my game.

Seek Earth

DF Whiterock has a nice post on Seek Earth.

Find it here.

In DF Felltower, I do the following:

- Even a single coin is a "significant" amount. This means that small hoards, and even single coins layed out, can distract a Seek Earth spell.

- I don't allow specific gemstones. Casting on gold, silver, rubies, emeralds, sapphires, etc. one after the other - trivial with high skill - just doesn't work out. I basically just shut this down to avoid the annoyance of needing to know the direction to everything in my dungeon from every point in my dungeon, in three dimensions.

- I give relative directions but not "lead" people to anything. Directions are rough - I tried being very specific, but people believe their maps and measures, so if I said 40 yards northwest and they go what on their map is 45 yards NW and find loot, they think there is more 5 yards closer as well and keep looking. Insisting on vague has actually made for more clear communication.

- I always choose to lie on critical failures. Lie, lie, lie. Oh, and roll on the table for what else happens. Information spells are great, but when they're wrong, they're really wrong.

Optional rule ideas:

- Give a -1 for each source you ignore in the casting. Make everyone pool their gold together or move away from them so you can treat them as one "hoard" of gold. This fits the DF -1 per adjective approach to obstacles, makes for a challenge to find a "big" hoard in a mess of little ones you're carrying, and rewards the 20+ skill of better casters. It also explains why skill-12 pikers out in the world have troubles and your IQ 16, Magery 6 guy does not.

- Make it akin to an divination spell - give a direction, but not a distance. Let people triangulate . . . it'll be easier for you, the GM, as they do the trig to determine how far to go.

- limit the castings to once per period of time - says, once per hour, or once per substance per day. Don't allow spamming it out.

I haven't tried, these, but I love the second one and like the first one . . . and that first one is an easy implementation.

Friday Night Roundup 3/14/2025

Stuff for the week.

- Things I Want to Do Differently This Time over at DF Whiterock is well worth the read. I do this kind of thing myself, but only an exercise in passing along lessons . . . my game is just an undying series of sessions without a cold restart.

" I'm hoping that if players want more XP, they try to make their PCs achieve more per session, rather than whining about the GM." I have to pat myself on the back for my XP system - this is pretty much what happens. The current version, especially so. People don't moan at me, they moan that they can't find the loot they are (correctly) sure I have stocked the dungeon with.

Also this: "Ultimately it's up to the players what they do, though; the GM provides challenges and incentives and hooks but the players act." Yes.
I will keep a close eye on what he chooses to do and how it works out.

- Speaking of Megadungeons, Castle Zagyg is up and running on Backerkit. I'm out . . . I don't need it, and the price tag is (probably appropriately) steep.

- I've got a bit of a break coming up, so I may not post much - or at all - for a week or two.

Friday Night Fun - 3/7/2025

The usual fun for Friday!

- I stumbled on this video on YouTube of a military vet on the Warlord demo team showing off a setup for Bolt Action. Looks beautiful.

- I purchased Skald: Against the Black Priory. It was on sale for like $9 all in, so I got it. I figured if I disliked it, I'd return it. The videos of gameplay I saw seemed okay. It's actually a lot more fun than it looks, although it can be hard to read the text. Worth the money for a deeper game than Diablo 1, but not so deep that I can't just learn to play as I play.

- Game is Sunday. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I hope it's the last session in this delve, but that's partly up to the players and partly up to the dungeon's environment. DF Felltower isn't a "fast forward" kind of game, so the more time spent in combat, the less time to explore - and neither gets handwaved. I think we'll have time, despite that. Fingers crossed!

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!

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.

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

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!