December 30th, 2017
Weather: Very cold, snowy.
Characters:
Ahenobarbus the Lacerator, human swashbuckler (262 points)
Alaric, human scout (262 points)
Aldwyn, human knight (250 points)
Gerald Tarrant, human wizard (302 points)
5 skeletons (~25 points)
Hjalmarr Holgerson, human knight (336 points)
Brother Ike, human initiate (143 points)
Raggi Ragnarsson, human berserker (?? points)
Rolan Liadon, wood elf scout (250 points)
We started in Stericksburg with the PCs gathering rumors. One they especially were interested in was one about a fungus kingdom deep under Felltower. Otherwise they got their gear together and headed out. Alaric's acquaintance Rolan joined him - someone he knew before he dropped out of Scout College. Aldwyn knew Ahenobarbus (they say from both taking Extra Attack - they get mistaken for each other.)
The PCs suited up in cold weather gear and headed out. Hjlamarr shook Shieldslayer at Sterick's statue and Ahenobarbus spit on it. They headed out of the slums and climbed the snowy mountain.
The climbed over the snowy, icy walls with their ropes in the cold, but somehow made it over. Mostly thanks to Levitate by Gerry. They cleared the snow from the trapdoor, chipped the ice off, and pried it open. They headed into the dungeon and dropped off their cold weather gear (mostly). They spent a lot of time carefully sending an invisible scout ahead, and then meeting back up with them. Rolan has some ideas about using a set of colored runes he can leave as he moves to indicate where he went and what he saw, but they're too broke to implement that.
They headed down to the second level, and to the giant fantastic staircase. Near it, though, one of the hallways towards the "orc area" was heavily webbed up. Oh yeah, Mo planted a spider egg here and forgot it.
They opened the door and went into the staircase, and waited for the door to close before they reached the bottom. The new delvers were momentarily bemused by the optical illusion that it continues, which Rolan declared a "common, kindergarten-level elf trick." They opened the door, moved out, and waited for the door behind to close. Once it did, they moved toward the mosaic room on the way (I think) to the "golden swordsmen apartments."
They made it to the mosaic room and began to puzzle over the mosaics. I'm not sure what the original plan was, but it derailed right here. Hjalmarr started warning Aldwyn about Durak. Who? Durak. Durak? Yeah, Durak. How do you spell it? D-u-r-a-k. Durak. Etc. Suddenly he felt something in his stomach - butterflies, really, and a sinking feeling.
Soon after, they hear distant scrape-stomp, scrape-stomp noises . . . getting louder.
They immediately started to move deeper into the dungeon. Alaric scouted and found the corridor turned right at the end, but to the left was an archway into a roughly 6 x 6 room . . . with a 5 yard diameter ooze in it! He backed off quickly. They decided a) they couldn't risk to fight it, despite Gerry's Explosive Skull Missile spell, and b) sneaking past was probably not going to work. So they headed back.
The sound was getting closer. They briefly tried to figure out hot to set the ooze onto the Lord of Spite, and decided they had no actual idea how to do that without being between them both. They panicked and ran into the corridor between the "air gate room" and the direction the Lord of Spite was coming from. His scrape-stomp and the clop-clop-clop of his boars was getting louder. So they ran into the gate room. The room smelled smokey, and Ahenobarbus said something was trying to smoke them out. They decided to take the gate. They levitated Rolan up and behind the gate so see if they could hide there - but its swirling blues and greys were translucent. They realized they needed to fly to the gate as it was 9' up and 9' away from them, and the room was 50' top to bottom so they couldn't slide down the "bowl" and reach it. At the same time, wind started kicking up in the room. Air elemental, declared Gerry. So Gerry cast Levitate on everyone and pushed them through the gate one after another, and then came through.
On the far side, they found themselves smashed together (Gerry couldn't seem to move them further once they'd passed the gate, until he was on the same side.) They were blinded by startlingly bright sunlight in thin air . . . and hovering a few feet over a cloud, with the gate in the middle.
They blinked away the sunlight. Gerry eventually lowered Alaric to the cloud. He found it spongy and soft, and he sank up to his knees in it like deep snow. It was wet, and not hard, and his quickly got soaked feet and damp skin. But it was "solid" enough.
Gerry lowered them all and they searched. Above was more sky, leading to more clouds, some patchy, some a solid sheet. The sun, or at least sunlight, was bright. Above was only sky. Below, too, was more sky. Maybe a quarter mile or more below was a nearly solid sheet of clouds, but holes in that sheet revealed only more sky and clouds below.
They began to feel breezes coming from the gate. They fanned out and waited. Out of the gate came a smallish but rapidly spinning whirlwind with glowing red "eyes" within. The scouts shot it with minimal effect. It slammed Gerry and send him flying off of the cloud - luckily his Levitation was still on. They duked it out up close with the elemental, mostly ineffectively swatting at it. It let off a thunderclap and stunned Raggi briefly and also Alaric, who as usually rolled 17+ on his HT roll and was out of the fight. Hjalmarr found the lightning of the elemental was especially potent and lit his shield on fire, scorched him through his armor, and so on. He eventually had to ditch his flaming shield, and naturally got his hand crippled and dropped Shieldslayer, as is his wont. The elemental pulled up into the air and hovered above them, whirling in a tight circle and shooting lightning to the group more or less at random. Gerry tried to hit it with an explosive spell, but missed. His second shot, however, hit it square and demolished it.
They found Alaric's bow, Raggi's axe, and other dropped items "buried" in the cloud and possibly sinking slowly. They dropped Hjalmarr's shield down to see if it clunked or poofed through the cloud. More like the latter.
Gerry couldn't maintain Levitate on big, bulky, heavily-armored Hjalmarr. So he shucked his leg armor and lent it to Aldwyn and gave the skeletons all of his spare gear.*
They sat around on the cloud (Ahenobarbus lay on it, "It's like a dream.") They spotted some flying birds far off "ahead" near another cloud. So they slowly levitated Rolan over - a long trip at Move 3 and a few hundred yards. He made it to a nearby "strip" like cloud that was a good 40-50 yards long but only 3-4 yards wide and quite irregular. He lay down and watched the "birds." He was closer and had a better angle. He could see they were huge, they numbered at least 3 at probably at most 5, and there were cone-topped towers visible underneath them. Brightly colored pennants fluttered from them. It was clearly a "fairy tale" like castle, and the big birds enormous. He lay back on the cloud and tried to let his peripheral vision tell him the pattern of cloud movement. They were moving independently of each other, often with their "own" wind. It didn't seem to center on the gate, or the castle.
He signaled Gerry and Gerry slowly brought him back.
Meanwhile, Alaric spotted a few dozen stirges flying down beneath them, around a small cloud that had drifted close but maybe 100 or so yards down. They hid and waited. Rolan made it back and then plotted how to get to the castle. Lots of them wanted to go, but it was eventually pointed out that, if anything was hostile, they were dead. Gerry was the only way there or back, he had to levitate people one at a time. Not only that, but fighting air-native foes when you only can move at 3, when the wizard concentrates on moving you, pretty much mean unlimited free back shots against you while you Wait and hope to hit something as it flies by.
They decided to go back. They tied a rope to a skeleton and sent it through, hoping to pull it back to check on what it found. It went, the rope got sucked through (and Hjalmarr chose not to try and stop it), and that was that. After 10 seconds or so, Gerry checked and his Levitation spell was off.
They waited a while after this - maybe another 20-30 minutes - and then headed through the same way as originally. On the other side was a larger, but somewhat weaker, air elemental. They duked it out with this one. Gerry lowered Hjlamarr to the floor and then cut his spell, then began to cast spells. Eventually it "died" from an arrow shot from Alaric done immediately after it was badly weakened by an Explosive Skull Missile. Another skeleton had its leg blown off.
They gathered the broken gear and the skeleton's stuff and moved out. No Lord of Spite - he'd clearly gotten bored and moved on in the intervening hours.
The PCs headed out toward the "golden swordsmen apartment complex" and reached it, and went past. They decided to break down the brick wall they'd found. They did, using a bedroll to shield and quiet the hammer blows of Hjalmarr, and two more cloaks held out to further cut off escaping sound. Hjalmarr knocked a hole in the wall and began to unbrick it. On the far side was a crusted-over white material like still-damp plaster. It wasn't sticky (Hjalmarr tried to glue a brick to a wall with it.) Gerry took a look and identified it as a strong herbicide. They decided there must be killed plants nearby, perhaps the fungus kingdom was here and the herbicide was meant to block the fungus? ("Oh come on," said Raggi, "Fungi aren't plants.")
They smeared their weapons with the stuff, and Alaric took some.
They wounded down a snaky corridor and found a grate-like portcullis. On this side were two pairs of bladder-and-bellows ejectors, with cords leading to the portcullis. That had 12 small brass bells on it. They realized it was noise to alert . . . someone . . . and substance-ejectors to hit whatever tried to get underneath (bottom pair) or just come through (top pair.)
They spent some time carefully muffling the bells and prying them off the portcullis. Then they cut the cords for the bladders and re-rigged them with their own rope to make manual pull-ropes. They wanted to be able to trigger these on purpose if pursued.
Next, Raggi and Hjalmarr raised the portcullis. They decided spiking it open defeated the purpose of quietly removing the bells, so they lowered it. They entered the room beyond and quickly decided to go through a door to the right instead of a hallway to the left. They pulled the door open (Hjalmarr having tried and failed to push it, despite me saying it opened in toward him.)
The moved beyond this and found their way to a room with a broken purple disc. There, the air was close and Gerry felt sick. They smelled sulpher to the right, and so they went left.
They found an intersection and a pit. They lowered a rope down the pit, and realized it goes right down to a cavern below - there were standing on maybe 20-25' of rock over a big opening. Ahah.
They headed past the pit to a door. Hjlamarr kicked it open and revealed a they were in a T-shaped room . . . with six wolf-men standing at the fringe of their light range!
The lead three fighters moved in, and the wolf-men (werewolves, it turned out) charged them. The werewolves had no interest in letting the PCs form up. They charged right into close combat, bouncing arrows and slows blows off of their fur, and started to claw and bite the PCs. There were about a dozen all together, including a bigger, stronger-looking leader. They howled as they charged.
This quickly became a nasty, close-in brawl. Aldwyn could barely fight with his longsword and was hampered by his shield. Hjalmarr managed a few hits but could barely hurt them, and Ahenobarbus had Magebane bounce off of them. They were getting clawed and bitten, sometimes severely, and Ahenobarbus almost got his throat torn out (Luck turned a 4 into a normal hit, which he failed to defend). The werewolves weren't terribly skilled fighters but they pressed so close it was difficult for anyone to fight effectively. The scouts began taking eye shots when they realized magic arrows had no more effect than magic weaponry - and the werewolves healed damage at great speed. Gerry started putting Great Haste on everyone, starting with himself and the front-line types. The werewolves rotated out the wounded for fresh werewolves and let the others heal.
They dropped a couple with eye shots, and dropped a third that pushed into the hallway pursuing Aldwyn. Hjalmarr was surrounded and clawed but his hand-me-down armor from Vryce was solid. Ahenobarbus put away Magebane and got out Serrita, his beloved silver-edged fine long knife. He went to work.
While even brain injuries from point-blank max-damage arrow shots just wounded the wolfmen and put them down for a moment or two, Serrita was dealing traumatic injury quickly. Two cuts did little, but then a Great Hasted Ahenobarbus started to stab to the vitals after a Feint (he has Extra Attack). He started putting werewolves down. He managed to kill two before they either broke and ran or just changed tactics - but they fled. He turned to the fallen werewolf behind the front line. Alaric and Rolan had been shooting it over and over in the eyes, and Aldwyn had tried to take off its head. Alaric eventually dropped his bow and started sticking silver coins into its eyes (were they remained, actually, and were not recovered), putting in a total of 10 sp before Ahenobarbus killed it.
They'd slain three werewolves. The others fled out a side door. Gerry took a quick look (he was Invisible) and saw a pair of large double doors chained shut at the base of the T-shaped room, and they covered the opened door. Ike and Hjalmarr glanced at the map and realized they could be cut off from behind. Gerry cast Zombie on a werewolf and they fled. (Out of game, I think they thought this was a matter of seconds . . . but Zombie takes a minute, and Gerry was looking around, and Gerry needed to stop and drink paut and people paused to get healed. So they actually were left alone for several minutes. Still, they were concerned.
They basically fled back the way they came, lifting and placing down the portcullis. They wanted to fully re-arm the trap, but they'd dismantled it and re-rigged it for manual use and had cut cords to do so. They could do it, but needed time (10s of minutes, not ones of seconds) to do so. They decided to just head home.
Sort of.
Hjalmarr was navigating, and moved to the lead as the scouts trailed and the light fighters had moved up. He got into the actual lead and wanted to turn left at the next intersection. (At this point, it was very late, so I pointedly asked, "Are you sure you want to go somewhere you haven't been yet today?" I was assured that yes, yes it was fine, and Hjalmarr will lead off.)
So they headed up the corridor, looking - I think - to avoid re-treading ground that was close to The Lord of Spite. Hjlamarr led, with the scouts further back because of concerns about the werewolves trailing them. They moved quickly up the corridor and past the "Lost City" gate. There was a twang and Hjalmarr caught movement out of the corner of his eye (a very lucky Perception roll) and tried to block it (Combat Reflexes helps!). He failed, and it was still too soon to re-use Luck. A massive bolt - flaming, and enchanted, and envenomed - slammed into his side and severely wounded him. Then, arrows and howls came from ahead. Close to a dozen long arrows flew into the group. Raggi took an arrow to the chest through his mail. Others were blocked or just missed. The scouts shot back blindly, hoping for a random hit.
They heard barks and yowls - gnolls! They began to exchange shots with the unseen gnolls ahead. Raggi wanted to attack. Ahenobarbus was undecided. But Gerry said no, and put up Darkness. Ahenobarbus put down alchemist's fire in the darkness. The PCs fled after Hjalmarr downed some potions to stay awake and functional and get back to full move.
They ran around the other way to the stairs - and barely made it in time before arrows and gnolls came at them. Hjalmarr was narrowly missed by some arrows, and they headed up the stairs. Gnolls followed. Alaric took two pot shots on the run but didn't observe his results. Ahenobarbus smashed his other alchemist's fire on the stairs to block them. Gerry sent his zombied werewolf down to fight the gnolls. They fled as combat erupted. They got out on the top of the stairs and I declared that close enough to safety to get home. They wanted to "touch the hand" on the way out but no one remembered to tell me they did it, so no one did.
They made it back to town safely.
* This took a lot of actual real time to sort out weight. I still dislike weight-based Levitate very much. If it was SM-based, even with an encumbrance mod ala Teleport, instead, this would have been a non-issue. I may need to just do this, and endure the grumping.
Notes:
This session marked the first time in the campaign an actual living being went through a gate. Until this point, it had all been Wizard Eye spells, Created Servants, and so on. It took what I should have expected - poor decisions followed by desperation.
We did have the usual "Okay, if a rope into a gate is pulled through a gate, then if we lasso the Lord of Spite, he'll be pulled in. How hard does it pull? Is it automatic? Is it . . ." etc. etc. I mentioned my whole, "It's Magic, not Science" thing - and if gates - specifically put in the game to allow the PCs to explore all sorts of weird and wonderful places - become multi-hour discussions of how to leverage them into weapons or how to partly stick something in and then come back out and if not can we use gates as precision cutting tools to manufacture things or destroy difficult-to-break items? It's amusingly creative but it means "figure out the specific and replicable mechanics of gates to weaponize them for a plan that requires skills and tools we don't have" trumps "explore this strange and wondrous world." I don't mind cleverness, but I do mind edge-case hunting and random experimentation, especially when it's clearly "do something because we're not sure if we just want to use the gate and go adventure."
The PCs started to try to think of silly names to assign to Durak, the Lord of Spite, so they wouldn't accidentally say his name. All sorts of stuff - Mr. Crunchy Pants, Fluffy Bunny, etc. I finally said, "he is called the Lord of Spite so people can avoid saying his name." They might still try to come up with a ridiculous name for him, but I did want to make it clear that saying "the Lord of Spite" is not the same as saying Durak, which is why people assigned him a title. The Good God isn't the Good God's name, because you don't want to tick off your god by drawing his direct attention whenever you need to talk about him. We'll see if the actual name everyone knows sticks, or people end up with multiple names. "Fluffy bunny." "Is that the Lord of Spite?" "Yes, but we call him Fluffy Bunny now to avoid saying Lord of Spite." "Okay, the Lord of Spite is Fluffy Bunny, got it."
The werewolves were tough. I had no sympathy, though. This is at least four levels deep in Felltower, and they have heard rumors of werecreatures, rumors that you need silver to kill them, etc. They tried every magic weapon they had, probably on the "Silver or magic to hit" AD&D logic. But this isn't AD&D. Just because some things in AD&D conflate the killing power of silver with magic weapons doesn't mean they're always equivalent in DF. I was surprised that neither scout had a single silver arrow, no one had taken a silvered dagger "just in case those rumors are true," etc. And while silver-plated isn't as effective as silver, it's cheap enough. They'll probably be more ready next time, although they're more broke than this time.
This was my first use of werewolves, which are basically the werewolves from DFRPG . . . but with some additions. My long-time inspiration for how fantasy werewolves should be are the savan dalage bred by Magden Norath, from the Glen Cook Dread Empire series. That series was a huge influence on my previous campaign. This campaign draws more on different inspirations, but in any case, I like the dark savagery of Norath's critters. I ditched their severe fear of light and vulnerability to fire, because in DF, that would mean they were harmless most of the time. That's better suited to a game where light and fire aren't things every PCs carries around on their delver's webbing.
Speaking of delvers webbing, at one point in the fight Ahenobarbus was fighting, but his player and Aldwyn's player hit on a plan. Aldwyn would sheath his sword, then ready some alchemist's fire off of Ahenobarbus's delver's webbing, and throw it. I was incredulous. I asked something like, "The alchemist's fire is in back or front? Front? So, from behind you, during a fight, he's going to reach around in front of you and take alchemist's fire off of your webbing while you stab werewolves in close combat?" I didn't even mention that Ahenobarbus was Great Hasted. That wasn't going to make it easier. Plus, the time they allotted was less than it would take if Ahenobarbus had already readied the vial and was holding it out for Aldwyn. I'd give that plan a die roll for mishap in a 1-minute AD&D melee round, but I just declared it a no-go on a one-second time scale unless they wanted to organize it better. It's an example of how desperate for solutions they were!
Although it was a fun and very interesting session, it was largely agreed that the smart move with the group they had was to just move on the orcs and invade the "orc hole." Two scouts, a necromancer, two heavy fighters and two speedy fighters, clerical support - and a low loot threshold. We'll see if they follow up on that, or the cloud castle, or the werewolves, next time. They wanted to promise Raggi they'd kill the gnolls next time to improve the odds that he'd come, but Raggi knows this group - they'd change their mind anyway, he's not taking "We will do this" as an actual promise of doing it.
XP was 2 each - 1 for exploring new areas, and 1 bonus point for the first actual exploration of a gate. MVP was Gerry because his Levitation spell was critical.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Saturday, December 30, 2017
I'm dreaming of a white Felltower
It's a cold, cold, cold yet snowy day today - way colder than it usually is for constant snowfall.
But thanks to the Good God's Saint of Work Scheduling, I'm free this afternoon for a game of DF. The PCs will be trekking up in the snow to Felltower (if it's snowy outside here, it's snowy outside in the game, too.)
The group will also include a tryout - another son of one of our gamers - and the first running-his-own-PC session for a returning player. He once briefly ran Korric and Orrie back in session 3.
But thanks to the Good God's Saint of Work Scheduling, I'm free this afternoon for a game of DF. The PCs will be trekking up in the snow to Felltower (if it's snowy outside here, it's snowy outside in the game, too.)
The group will also include a tryout - another son of one of our gamers - and the first running-his-own-PC session for a returning player. He once briefly ran Korric and Orrie back in session 3.
Friday, December 29, 2017
The Role of Post Labels on Dungeon Fantastic
I try to avoid admin posts on this blog. Blog posts about posting blog posts just doesn't feel like something I should be doing . . . however, I think I need this one.
I use the labels for posts quite extensively.
I posted something yesterday in the comments on this subject, and I didn't want it buried:
"Actually and just one further note, not really aimed at you but rather at everyone. I've very careful about my post labels. This one is GURPS, and assumes you're using GURPS rules. A lot of "Wandering Monster" encounters are not purely up to chance, but depend heavily on things like Survival skill rolls, player-decision-dependent modifiers (either positive or negative), PCs stats, and even very specific issues like transport mode (no one falls into pits when using everyone is using Levitation to move) or approach method (how fast are you traveling relative to max speed.) So it's not just "I rolled a 1 on a d12 this turn, then I rolled some damage." I'd implement this a bit differently if I was doing it in, say, 1st edition AD&D or 5th edition D&D, or Star Frontiers, or whatever else.
So I'm really coming at this from the narrow angle of "why I do this in GURPS.""
That clearly refers to yesterday's post specifically.
But it is something that is true in general.
I am very careful, thoughtful, and thorough with my uses of post labels. I've been careful to use the same labels over and over. I've equally been careful about adding new labels after getting a bit label-happy on my S&C blog.
Posts about minis get a minis label - but unless they're painted or about painting, they don't get a painting label.
If I'm talking about Ye Olde Days when I used to play, or my current games, I tag it with war stories.
Posts about GURPS get the GURPS label. Even if they are also about other game systems, I put in GURPS because it also applies to GURPS players. If it also applies to Rolemaster or Swords & Wizardry or some other system, I'll put in a post label out those, too. But if write a post and it's about GURPS only, or I'm only really considering it from the angle of GURPS, it's going to have a GURPS label . . . but not those other labels.
I'll put both DF and DFRPG labels on posts that concern both systems, or my game (which runs primarily on DFRPG, but drawing a lot from DF). But if I only put DFRPG, I'm really thinking, "But not DF" or "But not GURPS in general." Sometimes the reverse - I might post something for general GURPS that wouldn't fit in DFRPG or DF, or maybe in DF but not DFRPG, or whatever.
I don't always call this out in the actual text. But I'm very aware of what I'm doing. I'm quite intentional about the labels I use. I use them to call out what I'm talking about, and what I think the post is about.
Sometimes this shows in my responses to comments - a lot of "yes, but" or "no, because" responses. Or how I respond to "You didn't think of this" when "this" is something from a system, or approach, I wasn't trying to cover in the particular post. Or why my GM-centric advice doesn't advice players, or my player-centric advice doesn't consider things from the GM's view. I put labels to make it clear what I'm doing or what where I see that topic attached to or filed under.
I suppose something I could do would be to call out what game systems I'm talking about, or other post labels, right from the start. But honestly, I'm not going to do that. I like labels for what they do - they let you see what I'm thinking about as I post, and find similar posts where I have the same considerations in mind.
So that's how I use labels on my blog. It's not an afterthought, it's part of how this whole thing is organized.
I use the labels for posts quite extensively.
I posted something yesterday in the comments on this subject, and I didn't want it buried:
"Actually and just one further note, not really aimed at you but rather at everyone. I've very careful about my post labels. This one is GURPS, and assumes you're using GURPS rules. A lot of "Wandering Monster" encounters are not purely up to chance, but depend heavily on things like Survival skill rolls, player-decision-dependent modifiers (either positive or negative), PCs stats, and even very specific issues like transport mode (no one falls into pits when using everyone is using Levitation to move) or approach method (how fast are you traveling relative to max speed.) So it's not just "I rolled a 1 on a d12 this turn, then I rolled some damage." I'd implement this a bit differently if I was doing it in, say, 1st edition AD&D or 5th edition D&D, or Star Frontiers, or whatever else.
So I'm really coming at this from the narrow angle of "why I do this in GURPS.""
That clearly refers to yesterday's post specifically.
But it is something that is true in general.
I am very careful, thoughtful, and thorough with my uses of post labels. I've been careful to use the same labels over and over. I've equally been careful about adding new labels after getting a bit label-happy on my S&C blog.
Posts about minis get a minis label - but unless they're painted or about painting, they don't get a painting label.
If I'm talking about Ye Olde Days when I used to play, or my current games, I tag it with war stories.
Posts about GURPS get the GURPS label. Even if they are also about other game systems, I put in GURPS because it also applies to GURPS players. If it also applies to Rolemaster or Swords & Wizardry or some other system, I'll put in a post label out those, too. But if write a post and it's about GURPS only, or I'm only really considering it from the angle of GURPS, it's going to have a GURPS label . . . but not those other labels.
I'll put both DF and DFRPG labels on posts that concern both systems, or my game (which runs primarily on DFRPG, but drawing a lot from DF). But if I only put DFRPG, I'm really thinking, "But not DF" or "But not GURPS in general." Sometimes the reverse - I might post something for general GURPS that wouldn't fit in DFRPG or DF, or maybe in DF but not DFRPG, or whatever.
I don't always call this out in the actual text. But I'm very aware of what I'm doing. I'm quite intentional about the labels I use. I use them to call out what I'm talking about, and what I think the post is about.
Sometimes this shows in my responses to comments - a lot of "yes, but" or "no, because" responses. Or how I respond to "You didn't think of this" when "this" is something from a system, or approach, I wasn't trying to cover in the particular post. Or why my GM-centric advice doesn't advice players, or my player-centric advice doesn't consider things from the GM's view. I put labels to make it clear what I'm doing or what where I see that topic attached to or filed under.
I suppose something I could do would be to call out what game systems I'm talking about, or other post labels, right from the start. But honestly, I'm not going to do that. I like labels for what they do - they let you see what I'm thinking about as I post, and find similar posts where I have the same considerations in mind.
So that's how I use labels on my blog. It's not an afterthought, it's part of how this whole thing is organized.
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Wandering Damage on my Wandering Monster Tables
I was reminded about this from an unfortunate incident - someone discovering a bite from some unknown critter. Annoying. Potentially harmful or even lethal, if it's the wrong thing.
Lots of this stuff comes up in real life:
- surprise bug bite!
- where did I get this cut?
- I must have gotten scratched!
- I guess I did touch my eyes after I touched that infected person.
- Oh, that was poison ivy vine? It just looked like a bump on the wood in the dim light.
And so on.
I've usually had entries like these on my Wandering Monster tables. I joke about Wandering Damage but it's a very useful concept. Just divorce it from the joke of "skip the monsters, just apply the damage they'd do." Sometimes, harm just happens.
So I put things on my wandering monster tables like:
3: Infected critter bite! 1 HP damage (ignore armor/clothing DR) plus HT roll vs. disease (-1 to all stats until cured).
or
5-6: Bug bite for 1d-4 FP.
or
1: Poisoned! Possibly a bite, a cut from an envenomed thorn, etc. Ignores DR, roll vs. HT - 1d or take 1d toxic damage and -2 DX until all damage is cured.
I've thrown on disease rolls (HT roll), colds (HT roll), unstable ground (DX roll!), traps (Per roll), rainfall (HT-based Survival vs. FP loss, DX-based Cartography to shield the map, etc.), weird smokes or gases (almost anything to roll against, sometimes nothing to roll against), etc. to represent a hostile environment.
Why I like this:
It's unavoidable.
Lots of PCs get pretty blasé about combat. It's something their characters do well by design, often by basic game design (for example, a fighter in D&D-based games or knights in DF.) Unless a monster is tough enough to be a legitimate threat, a combat encounter probably just costs time and may not even cost significant (or any) resources.
Plus, combat is often avoidable. Run from the slow monsters. Hide from the one with poor senses. Talk to the one who doesn't want to die just because it ran into you on the way to the toilet.
But wandering damage of this kind isn't. It just happens unless you took precautions, such as anti-bug lotions, sealed armor, certain spells (-1 to all spells up per incidence of them), etc.
It's realistic.
All the armor in the world won't help you against a curious spider or annoyed ant if it's unsealed. Even if it is, unless you're breathing air through a filter you can still suck in something harmful. "I have plate armor!" shouldn't mean "So I'm immune to anything that causes less damage than I have DR." Sometimes the guy with scratchin' holes in his ratty shirt or who won't wear heavy armor is on to something - in certain places the real threats are the brown recluse who drops down on your neck during break, not the sword blow you fear you won't parry.
And this kind of stuff just happens in normal environments. In hostile ones, during travel, they're bound to happen more. They make the game feel more realistic, too - how come you fight giant ants but no one ever just gets bit by one?
It's funny.
Really, not much to say beyond that. "Your knight was bit by mosquitoes!" is pretty funny. Even dragon-slaying heroes step on the wrong spot and twist an ankle or get bit by a bug.
It's fast.
Resolution is quick. Roll, roll, the PC rolls, you describe, stuff happens, you keep moving. It doesn't take a lot of time to resolve. So you get a good bang-for-your-buck time wise.
Lots of this stuff comes up in real life:
- surprise bug bite!
- where did I get this cut?
- I must have gotten scratched!
- I guess I did touch my eyes after I touched that infected person.
- Oh, that was poison ivy vine? It just looked like a bump on the wood in the dim light.
And so on.
I've usually had entries like these on my Wandering Monster tables. I joke about Wandering Damage but it's a very useful concept. Just divorce it from the joke of "skip the monsters, just apply the damage they'd do." Sometimes, harm just happens.
So I put things on my wandering monster tables like:
3: Infected critter bite! 1 HP damage (ignore armor/clothing DR) plus HT roll vs. disease (-1 to all stats until cured).
or
5-6: Bug bite for 1d-4 FP.
or
1: Poisoned! Possibly a bite, a cut from an envenomed thorn, etc. Ignores DR, roll vs. HT - 1d or take 1d toxic damage and -2 DX until all damage is cured.
I've thrown on disease rolls (HT roll), colds (HT roll), unstable ground (DX roll!), traps (Per roll), rainfall (HT-based Survival vs. FP loss, DX-based Cartography to shield the map, etc.), weird smokes or gases (almost anything to roll against, sometimes nothing to roll against), etc. to represent a hostile environment.
Why I like this:
It's unavoidable.
Lots of PCs get pretty blasé about combat. It's something their characters do well by design, often by basic game design (for example, a fighter in D&D-based games or knights in DF.) Unless a monster is tough enough to be a legitimate threat, a combat encounter probably just costs time and may not even cost significant (or any) resources.
Plus, combat is often avoidable. Run from the slow monsters. Hide from the one with poor senses. Talk to the one who doesn't want to die just because it ran into you on the way to the toilet.
But wandering damage of this kind isn't. It just happens unless you took precautions, such as anti-bug lotions, sealed armor, certain spells (-1 to all spells up per incidence of them), etc.
It's realistic.
All the armor in the world won't help you against a curious spider or annoyed ant if it's unsealed. Even if it is, unless you're breathing air through a filter you can still suck in something harmful. "I have plate armor!" shouldn't mean "So I'm immune to anything that causes less damage than I have DR." Sometimes the guy with scratchin' holes in his ratty shirt or who won't wear heavy armor is on to something - in certain places the real threats are the brown recluse who drops down on your neck during break, not the sword blow you fear you won't parry.
And this kind of stuff just happens in normal environments. In hostile ones, during travel, they're bound to happen more. They make the game feel more realistic, too - how come you fight giant ants but no one ever just gets bit by one?
It's funny.
Really, not much to say beyond that. "Your knight was bit by mosquitoes!" is pretty funny. Even dragon-slaying heroes step on the wrong spot and twist an ankle or get bit by a bug.
It's fast.
Resolution is quick. Roll, roll, the PC rolls, you describe, stuff happens, you keep moving. It doesn't take a lot of time to resolve. So you get a good bang-for-your-buck time wise.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Some Practical Magery 0 spell issues
The other day I put up a post asking for suggestions for good Magery 0-requirement spells for a DFRPG game. I got a few of them.
A number of them, though, have been offensive - Flash, Glue, Stench . . . generally, I went for utility spells, ones that are useful to put up but either have a long duration (Continual Light) or a long effect (Ignite Fire) or have a reasonable cost-to-duration (Mage Stealth).
The offensive ones? Great spells, if you manage to get them off.
Here are some practical issues I see:
Skill
For non-Wizard, non-Bard templates, skill is going to be between 8 and 11 for a 1-point investment in a spell. Most of them will be the lower - it's the Thief that allows for a whopping 11 for 1 point.
A character with IQ 11 and Magery 0 needs to put 20 points in a spell to get to a reliable and cost-discounted 15. If you're putting 20 points into a single spell, you should probably be thinking you are overemphasizing your minor at the expense of your major. Should a Knight dump 24 points in getting a 15 in a spell or raise ST by 2, DX by 1, skill by up to 5 (6 if you dump the spell entirely)? Odds are, you aren't adding more than you are taking away. Points are zero-sum. So you either accept a low skill and success rate, or dump in points to succeed more often at the expense of other things you can do well. That could be two to four well-shot arrows, a Feint and a sword swing, four blows from fists and feet, a backstab, etc.
For a different caster type, these are smaller issues - you're looking at a 12+, but then again, you need a solid reason for an offensive spell based on IQ+Magery 0 when you have IQ+Power Investiture 3+ on tap, instead.
Success
With a low skill, odds are you are going to fail fairly often.
Skill 8 = 25.9% of success.
9 = 37.5%
10 = 50%
11 = 62.5%
Those aren't great success rates in a time-critical application.
Cost
Failure will cost 1 energy.
Success will cost the full amount.
Odds are you'll pay more than the full amount to cast the spell.
Casting Time
For most templates, casting time will be double. Skill 9 and under doubles casting time (per Spells, p. 10).
For a lot of spells, this "merely" makes a one second spell two seconds. But now this spell must be worth taking two turns away from other actions the PC could be doing.
Again, you can remove this issue with points . . . either with improved Magery, or IQ, or just putting 2 or 4 points in each spell. But the same concern applies that I mentioned above - what are you not doing with those points that improve your profession? And if you're doing to pull lenses from DF and go for the Wizard lens, you should be eyeing it as a whole, not in terms of a few Magery 0 spells that could help.
So from a practical standpoint, low-point investment spells for Magery 0 characters are going to fail often and cost a lot. I think utility is better for them. From an efficiency standpoint, if you're going to invest points to get past these practical issues, you're starting to get away from what you do better than anyone else in order to half-ass something less poorly. I think that's probably a mistake.
A number of them, though, have been offensive - Flash, Glue, Stench . . . generally, I went for utility spells, ones that are useful to put up but either have a long duration (Continual Light) or a long effect (Ignite Fire) or have a reasonable cost-to-duration (Mage Stealth).
The offensive ones? Great spells, if you manage to get them off.
Here are some practical issues I see:
Skill
For non-Wizard, non-Bard templates, skill is going to be between 8 and 11 for a 1-point investment in a spell. Most of them will be the lower - it's the Thief that allows for a whopping 11 for 1 point.
A character with IQ 11 and Magery 0 needs to put 20 points in a spell to get to a reliable and cost-discounted 15. If you're putting 20 points into a single spell, you should probably be thinking you are overemphasizing your minor at the expense of your major. Should a Knight dump 24 points in getting a 15 in a spell or raise ST by 2, DX by 1, skill by up to 5 (6 if you dump the spell entirely)? Odds are, you aren't adding more than you are taking away. Points are zero-sum. So you either accept a low skill and success rate, or dump in points to succeed more often at the expense of other things you can do well. That could be two to four well-shot arrows, a Feint and a sword swing, four blows from fists and feet, a backstab, etc.
For a different caster type, these are smaller issues - you're looking at a 12+, but then again, you need a solid reason for an offensive spell based on IQ+Magery 0 when you have IQ+Power Investiture 3+ on tap, instead.
Success
With a low skill, odds are you are going to fail fairly often.
Skill 8 = 25.9% of success.
9 = 37.5%
10 = 50%
11 = 62.5%
Those aren't great success rates in a time-critical application.
Cost
Failure will cost 1 energy.
Success will cost the full amount.
Odds are you'll pay more than the full amount to cast the spell.
Casting Time
For most templates, casting time will be double. Skill 9 and under doubles casting time (per Spells, p. 10).
For a lot of spells, this "merely" makes a one second spell two seconds. But now this spell must be worth taking two turns away from other actions the PC could be doing.
Again, you can remove this issue with points . . . either with improved Magery, or IQ, or just putting 2 or 4 points in each spell. But the same concern applies that I mentioned above - what are you not doing with those points that improve your profession? And if you're doing to pull lenses from DF and go for the Wizard lens, you should be eyeing it as a whole, not in terms of a few Magery 0 spells that could help.
So from a practical standpoint, low-point investment spells for Magery 0 characters are going to fail often and cost a lot. I think utility is better for them. From an efficiency standpoint, if you're going to invest points to get past these practical issues, you're starting to get away from what you do better than anyone else in order to half-ass something less poorly. I think that's probably a mistake.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Origins of Dinomen
Over on Dungeons on Automatic, the PCs in their campaign fought 16 dinomen.
Dinomen actually originate in my previous GURPS campaign. That game was set on the Known Worlds of D&D, used 3rd edition (revised) GURPS with the two Compendiums and GURPS Martial Arts 2e, and had 150+40+5 point characters. The power level was good, but it's worth noting that most DF character start with ST and skill levels that people ended the game with in my previous game. That game did feature the world's first Heroic Archer (once we'd made a partial changeover to 4e), just as a historical note.
Back in that game, I'd adapted Garks from Rolemaster (specifically, from Cloudlords of Tanara). I used them to replace most generic little fodder - kobolds, xvarts, goblins (since we used GURPS-style PC goblins), mites, etc. I took the idea of small, annoying, animal-like fodder creatures that attack en masse and ran with it. I kept the name "garks" for that game, but didn't really do much stat-wise to convert them. I just liked the idea of them.
When it came time to write Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1, I knew I wanted to use these guys. I decided they were easier to deal with at SM 0 as a GM than at SM-1, so I moved their size up just a touch so they'd fall into SM 0. I also decided they'd be more fun and more unique as little dinosaur-headed humanoids, and so I made that change. All that really remained of their original inspiration would have been a directly-stolen name, so I changed that as well.
Thus, dinomen.
Their stats are identical to the stats I used in my 3e game. Their leader and champion stats, same thing.
In my previous game, I put a half-dozen 150+40+5 point guys optimized for campaign play, not just straight dungeon-bashing (of which they did little), in tight tunnels against more than 30 of them coming from multiple angles. The PCs beat them, but it was brutal, and included one PC panicking from a spell-induced fear effect and falling down a pit and others getting slashed and bashed by hatches and clubs. It was a tough fight, and "the gark fight" was talked about for a while in that game.
One of the PCs got the leader's magic axe, which was a Quick-Draw hatchet he'd use until the close of the campaign as a fight-starter (and thus, occasional fight finisher as it killed a very surprised foe outright.)
In any case, since I thought 5:1 odds against non-optimized PCs who'd probably have been in the 185-200 point range in 4e (maybe a bit less) was good enough to make them fun, I should emphasize that in the description. Hence the dozens, scores, dozens of scores comment. Against DF opponents, dinomen really need to be deployed in large hordes to even be a little scary.
You can see that too in the Dungeons on Automatic fight description - 16 dinomen resulted in a total massacre. Had they not been surprised . . . it probably would have still been a total massacre. Dinoment are really the picture-perfect DF fodder. Low stats, low damage, low defenses . . . but there are a lot of them, and it only takes a 3 here and a 4 there to inflict sudden, surprising, upsetting damage on the PCs. But you need to deploy a lot of them for this to happen. And if they can't ever come to grips with the PCs, well, they won't even rank that.
My tip on using them would be:
- open spaces, so the PCs can't bottleneck them.
- very large numbers, so the PCs have to worry about FP, HP, and Luck being ablated away as sheer probability results in hits.
- provide them non-dinomen support. An evil wizard*, some trolls who pal around with them, actual dinosaurs, an unholy cleric or two, swarms of giant rats that accompany them looking to feast on the slain, opportunistic ogres. That can force the PCs to put their better fighters against better threats, and risk flank shots or overrun by dinomen.
- overrun. Dinomen who march up to the PCs and slug it out toe-to-toe are dead. So are most of ones who rush into close combat, try to Evade past big front rankers to attack the weaker folks behind them, rush around flanks, push right up into the PCs and make it impossible to drop Area spells on them without collateral damage (simply because they're in the same hexes as your friends), etc . . . but those tactics make these guys a bit scarier.
* Is there any other kind?**
** No.
Dinomen actually originate in my previous GURPS campaign. That game was set on the Known Worlds of D&D, used 3rd edition (revised) GURPS with the two Compendiums and GURPS Martial Arts 2e, and had 150+40+5 point characters. The power level was good, but it's worth noting that most DF character start with ST and skill levels that people ended the game with in my previous game. That game did feature the world's first Heroic Archer (once we'd made a partial changeover to 4e), just as a historical note.
Back in that game, I'd adapted Garks from Rolemaster (specifically, from Cloudlords of Tanara). I used them to replace most generic little fodder - kobolds, xvarts, goblins (since we used GURPS-style PC goblins), mites, etc. I took the idea of small, annoying, animal-like fodder creatures that attack en masse and ran with it. I kept the name "garks" for that game, but didn't really do much stat-wise to convert them. I just liked the idea of them.
When it came time to write Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1, I knew I wanted to use these guys. I decided they were easier to deal with at SM 0 as a GM than at SM-1, so I moved their size up just a touch so they'd fall into SM 0. I also decided they'd be more fun and more unique as little dinosaur-headed humanoids, and so I made that change. All that really remained of their original inspiration would have been a directly-stolen name, so I changed that as well.
Thus, dinomen.
Their stats are identical to the stats I used in my 3e game. Their leader and champion stats, same thing.
In my previous game, I put a half-dozen 150+40+5 point guys optimized for campaign play, not just straight dungeon-bashing (of which they did little), in tight tunnels against more than 30 of them coming from multiple angles. The PCs beat them, but it was brutal, and included one PC panicking from a spell-induced fear effect and falling down a pit and others getting slashed and bashed by hatches and clubs. It was a tough fight, and "the gark fight" was talked about for a while in that game.
One of the PCs got the leader's magic axe, which was a Quick-Draw hatchet he'd use until the close of the campaign as a fight-starter (and thus, occasional fight finisher as it killed a very surprised foe outright.)
In any case, since I thought 5:1 odds against non-optimized PCs who'd probably have been in the 185-200 point range in 4e (maybe a bit less) was good enough to make them fun, I should emphasize that in the description. Hence the dozens, scores, dozens of scores comment. Against DF opponents, dinomen really need to be deployed in large hordes to even be a little scary.
You can see that too in the Dungeons on Automatic fight description - 16 dinomen resulted in a total massacre. Had they not been surprised . . . it probably would have still been a total massacre. Dinoment are really the picture-perfect DF fodder. Low stats, low damage, low defenses . . . but there are a lot of them, and it only takes a 3 here and a 4 there to inflict sudden, surprising, upsetting damage on the PCs. But you need to deploy a lot of them for this to happen. And if they can't ever come to grips with the PCs, well, they won't even rank that.
My tip on using them would be:
- open spaces, so the PCs can't bottleneck them.
- very large numbers, so the PCs have to worry about FP, HP, and Luck being ablated away as sheer probability results in hits.
- provide them non-dinomen support. An evil wizard*, some trolls who pal around with them, actual dinosaurs, an unholy cleric or two, swarms of giant rats that accompany them looking to feast on the slain, opportunistic ogres. That can force the PCs to put their better fighters against better threats, and risk flank shots or overrun by dinomen.
- overrun. Dinomen who march up to the PCs and slug it out toe-to-toe are dead. So are most of ones who rush into close combat, try to Evade past big front rankers to attack the weaker folks behind them, rush around flanks, push right up into the PCs and make it impossible to drop Area spells on them without collateral damage (simply because they're in the same hexes as your friends), etc . . . but those tactics make these guys a bit scarier.
* Is there any other kind?**
** No.
Monday, December 25, 2017
Christmas Loot 2017
Gaming-wise, I got some nice stuff for Christmas this year, including this from my fellow gamer and brother-in-law:
Jeff Rients's Broodmother Skyfortress for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Jeff's stuff is way more gonzo than I ever play, but it's always interesting to read. So I'm really looking forward to what I can plunder from this. The PCs haven't had a sniff of the cloud fortress in my current game, but perhaps I'll be able to loot this for ideas to put in it before they get there.
Jeff Rients's Broodmother Skyfortress for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Jeff's stuff is way more gonzo than I ever play, but it's always interesting to read. So I'm really looking forward to what I can plunder from this. The PCs haven't had a sniff of the cloud fortress in my current game, but perhaps I'll be able to loot this for ideas to put in it before they get there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
