GURPS Reprint Bundle + Bonus

If you missed it, there is a bundle of reprints over at Warehouse 23:



If you order the bundle (at $215.60) you'll get 8 softbound reprints plus a hardback copy of Basic Set: Characters and Basic Set: Campaigns.

It's a really good deal for 10 books. The offers ends the end of May 7th.

GURPS Lite in the Classroom, Session #4

This was a shorter bit of gaming - lots of non-gaming work to do, so much that I had to cram it in.

For the previous session, see this link.

Rules Explanations

None. Nothing new came up.

Recap

I decided to do a quick, 30-seconds to 60-seconds Dragonball Z recap each session just to get things rolling, ending with, "Now, what do you do?" I'm a big believer in game-starting ritual.

Play

Nothing really interesting happened, but it was a good test of my student's ability to reason and explain.

He went up the stairs from the basement of the tower, and found a room with two boxes set up to make a table, two chairs, a burned-out candle, and some dice. He heard pacing footsteps above the enclosed staircase. He checked the boxes and found rolls of cloth (but didn't think to open them - I realized he didn't know cloth rolls usually aren't packed in boxes) and rations.

He headed up to the next level, intent on going straight up to the level above that - bypassing the guard. I gave him a 50/50 shot that the guard wouldn't see him, contingent on a successful Stealth check. He made that exactly, and the dice came up that the guard was around the wrong side of the stairs. He made it past him undetected.

From there, he made it out onto the battlements. Another guard waved at him as he went to the next tower in the box-shaped fortress. He moved into the next tower . . . and came face-to-face with another guard in a tower packed with stuff.

We stopped there. I told him - as a hint of what the game could be - that he could attack, try to trick the guard, talk to him, whatever he wanted to try. We'll see. There is sufficient gear in the tower ahead to allow him to escape. If he does, I have some ideas of what I'd like to do with him next. Either a dungeon, or a town adventure - perhaps something like Caravan to Ein Arris, modified to fit the world as I'm imagining it.

White Plume Mountain spoilers for my players

If you don't like White Plume Mountain spoilers, skip this one.

If you do, or played it:

Dragon+ has a look at the art of the Yawning Portal version of WPM up right now. There are nice high-res versions of the maps, which is good because it's hard to use the ones in the book itself in play.

There is also a link to this WPM walkthrough.

One reason I like dice rolling

So I've done roleplaying as part of job interviews in the past. In workshops practicing "people skills" and proper responses to customer questions. I've done it in language classes, too. I was never fond of it; in fact I generally hate doing that.

There are more than a few reasons for this - generally no one takes it seriously (or gets too into it). It's often too heavily weighted, as if practice tells you how you'll do in the actual situation (which is iffy.) It's actually fairly far removed from how role-playing gaming goes, even if you're a pretty immersive first-person roleplayer.

For me one of the biggest separating factors is the randomness of dice. You decide on a chance something will work, or the rules designer decides on a chance something will work, and you roll the dice and see. I don't have to convince you it'll work, just convince you it should have a chance and then take that chance and see.

I once did this roleplaying class lesson and had the feedback from the interviewer be, "This won't work at this grade level, what would you do next?" Except I just recycled a lesson I'd used at that grade level successfully repeatedly, which is why I brought it to the roleplaying portion of the interview. Nevermind the awkwardness of "pretend these adults are six year olds!" after days teaching six year olds, the arbitrary judgement felt, well, arbitrary.

Had the main interviewer said, "There is always a chance this could bomb with a particular class, let's flip a coin and if it's tails, it bombed and you need to improvise" I'd have been all over that. After all, my hobby is all about that. It's all about rolling an 18 when anything but that would have been okay. It's all about failing the easy roll and making the hard one. I've got a high built-in tolerance for "things went unpredictably wrong!" or "wildly and unpredictably right!" - if it's generated randomly.

I think that's what I love about dice. When there is a chance it might work, you can just assign that chance. If it's at all possible - which with, say, social interactions, low-percentage but physically possible stunts, or magic - putting it to the dice takes it out of the "GM decided I fail" category. Naturally, some things might just not be possible. But I find that if you can assign a chance, even a low chance, everyone seems to feel better.

"No, it just fails." "Why?" = argument at the tabletop
"Ehhh, maybe on a 3." "Aargh, I rolled a 4!" = resigned groans about that one extra pip on the dice.

So GMs, if you want to make me happy, give me a chance of it working. Players, if you try something crazy and there is a roll, know it's probably the GM trying to let the universe give you a chance of being right after all. At least this once. Nothing mind-blowing or deep here, but it was on my mind.

Three World/Dungeon Building Links

So you want to build a world or a dungeon? Three (okay, four) posters are doing exactly that right now in very different ways.

Crowd-Sourced Building

Douglas Cole is getting a crowd-sourced world build going for Dungeon Fantasy. Want to design part of it? Take a look.

GURPS Hexworld Challenge

Slow Dungeon Building

Matt Riggsby is building a DF dungeon bit by bit:

The Occasional Dungeon

It's much like the approach of Castle Triskelion.

Build As You Play

Justin Aquino is posting about something I prefer to do - build as you play.

World Building as we Play

In the post is a structure of what to decide firmly ahead of time, and what the players bring to the table through character generation, and what gets built afterward. Justin is really big on systems - systematic approaches to solving gaming-related issues of design, play, and organization. I tend to be more loose about it all, but having a system you can replicate and share is a good thing.

Gaming Logistics II: GURPS DF, megadungeon w/minis

I ran AD&D with so little stuff that it could all fit into my backpack. I still managed to bring too much and get disorganized during play, but that will happen.

But when I run GURPS, I run it full-on. Maps. Minis. Handouts on occasion. Small maps depicting large areas that my players then map onto much larger maps.

So what do I bring?


- a plastic "milk crate" with full of:
     three plastic Plano 2-3700-00 tackleboxes with figures (one each Battlesystem, Cardboard Heroes, and Bones/Legendary Encounters/D&D pre-paints/Pathfinder pre-paints/terrain);
     My converted GURPS GM screen;
     two binders (one with DF1-15, stripped down to just what I use in this game; one with DFM1, 2, 3 and my own monsters sheets, plus DF8)
     four-five small boxes of doors (thanks to my players and Archon Shiva), minis (apes, gargoyles, the otyugh just in case), a bag of troll minis, a bag of orc minis, and terrain bits;
     two tea tins of home-made carboard heroes (inc. 33 druagr, thanks to Emile Smirle)
     printouts of sometimes-needed rules and rulings I'd prefer to hand out when they occur (cones, area effect, scatter mostly).

Plus I bring:

- my packet of maps (it's in a folder that says Loved Pineapple on it, because it's made in Korea and was sold in Japan);
- my laptop;
- a GM screen so I can roll behind it and have handy charts;
- printed roster charts;
- my notebook;
- dice.

Then you add a GW 80-mini case full of orcs, which holds about 2/3 of my orc collection. and a Feldherr case over-filled (one extra tray) with all of the PCs, likely hirelings, and what I think will be the monster minis I'll need for the session.

I've managed this in one trip, but it's better with extra hands, usually Vic's thanks to his poor timing coming or going. Heh. It's not heavy so much as bulky, something I like to remind people when they say "Holding that 2 x 2 x 3 chest full of coins and potions only puts my guy to Medium Encumbrance!" Yeah, true, but weight isn't the only issue there.

It's not really heavy, but it's somewhat delicate. I've had minis break in these cases because the minis don't quite fit in the slots and the cases get banged around a bit. That's generally just fragile weapons (cough, cough, Wargames Factory, Dwarven Forge) and odd-shaped minis (GW, Reaper monsters mostly).


If I could change anything this, I'd simply do what we did back in the day: play where I live. That would allow me to have my minis close by.

If the PCs suddenly decide to attack the big dragon, the big dragon comes out of its storage bag in the back of my desk and gets put on the table. But if they do that while I'm away, sorry, no mini. If they plan to and then decide not to, I had to carry a large and potentially delicate mini (I could drop it, that happens) all the way to game for nothing. I have to pack figures in cases and remember where they are (and remember to bring them). I can't pre-set terrain and then just pull it out.

This is a special sort of problem, because a lot of what's in Felltower is an excuse to use minis I've accumulated over time. That's part of the fun and joy that is playing this game - pulling out minis that have sat ready for use since . . . whenever. Figures I'd owned since I was a kid. New ones I bought just to get that reaction from my players when they hit the table. It's combining the minis aspect of my game with the imagination that went into our dungeon and characters.

If it was only the megadungeon, no minis?

I'd need:

- my packet of maps;
- my laptop;
- a GM screen so I can roll behind it and have handy charts;
- printed roster charts;
- my notebook;
- dice.

And that's about it. Felltower is a few files on my computer and a bunch of maps (and I really should make copies of them and off-site back them up, actually). Part of me would like to run things that way. But only a small part. I mean, just wait until you see that dragon on the table . . .

Some AD&D vs. GURPS thoughts

Here are some thoughts of 1st edition AD&D vs. GURPS based on recently running both of them.

I've tried to roughly organize these but they do jump back and forth as subjects intertwine.

Taking Damage

I've heard it said that in GURPS, if you're taking damage, you're losing. In AD&D, if you're taking damage, you're also losing. More slowly, perhaps, and without the death spiral of "hit means less combat effectiveness" that GURPS can include, but you're losing.

And where GURPS has resistance rolls and checks to keep fighting, AD&D is just "0 HP and go down" and plenty of monsters come with save or spectate powers. You're sturdier in GURPS but have a death spiral. In AD&D you are ultimately more fragile but don't have a death spiral. You trade a possible sudden shift in the combat (GURPS) for a steadier but not safer drain of resources.

Not only that, if the enemy rolls well enough, you're hit. You can't really anchor a combat and fight off the foe except by not being hit as you kill those you hit. The lack of DR means your HP can bleed off very quickly, even if AD&D generally lacks the catastrophic hit potential of GURPS.

Unlike GURPS, where healing casters are limited by easily-recoverable FP and have access to flexible healing spells with fixed effects, in AD&D you've got randomly effective healing spells in limited quantities. Run out, and you can't just rest a short amount of time and get them back.

Dealing Damage

GURPS lets you use your skill to maximize your damage. You can use skill to hit vulnerable locations and apply your specific damage type to those that give you the best potential results. In AD&D, you just take what the dice give you.

This does make it even more critical than in GURPS to pile on and focus your attacks on a smaller number of targets. The fragility of foes (they also drop at 0 HP, generally), their ability to harm you with a single good roll, and their full damage potential until death (or at least unconsciousness) means you need to put them down. If you assume the best thing to do is spread your damage out so none of it is wasted (IOW two fighters attack two foes, "just in case you drop yours in one blow") you're taking a risk. In GURPS this pays off as well, but a wounded foe might pass out seconds later even if just left alone, foes might be reduced in threat by a good roll, etc. You can give yourself more leeway to fight with a foe knowing you can occupy the foe defensively, overwhelm him with skill, etc. and no worry about not removing potential hits back as much. It's a matter of degree, however.

Magic

It's easy to look at the use-and-forget memorized spell system and think that spellcasters have a limited number of shots and then they become a pile of backup abilities. To an extent that's true. But the non-spellcasters are equally in the same boat of limited uses. Yes, fighters can stab away without running out of attacks. Thieves can sneak as much as they want. But in combat you can't assume you get to attack an unlimited number of times - you're generally going to lose HP during a fight. The spellcasters actually have much more control over the outflow of their resources!

Your spells are more powerful, but you pay for that with limited uses and a much more severe limit on utility magic. If you memorized Fireball instead of Fly, it doesn't matter if you know Fly, you don't have it and that's that. If you need it multiple times you need to have it ready that many times. Spell choices are zero-sum.

This also means the GM is more likely to let crazy stuff work. If you can only get off one abusively interpreted use of a spell each day, that's fine. If it's now an abusive spell you can spam all day, such as in GURPS, you're less likely to get a "yes, I'll allow that." It's precedent plus frequency instead of precedent plus a limited zero-sum resource.


Both are fun games - I'm taking pains to point this out because this isn't some game vs. game argument. They're game vs. game observations about how the games seem to flow in play.