Killed my Windsor & Newton brush

So, I went to paint tonight and found this:



I'm not sure what I did, here, but I must have left something on the brush. The bristles have been completely eaten away! I didn't find any shed bristles, so perhaps I incompletely cleaned some of my brush cleaner off of it.

Oh, well. I'll paint with my 00 instead of this 0 until I get a chance to replace it.

Revised GURPS Magic: Healing spells and cumulative penalties

Here is another spell rules change - or at least rules clarification - for my Dungeon Fantasy / Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game campaign, DF Felltower. For more, see my Revised GURPS Magic for DF page.

The various _____ Healing spells in GURPS have a simple but effective limitation: a -3 to cumulative castings.

It's come up in my games - is this successful castings, or just attempts?

For my DF campaign, I have ruled this is casting attempts. Succeed or fail, the very act of attempting Minor Healing, Major Healing, or Great Healing on a subject counts as a casting. If it fails, pay your 1 energy and take the -3 cumulative on the next casting. Succeed, and have the spell effect, pay the cost appropriate for that effect, and also have the -3 cumulative on the next casting.

This makes for a very effective limitation on total healing for the day, which in turn makes injury more of a resource drain than it can be in GURPS. It has played very effectively in our game, too, and made for interesting tactical choices about spell casting and strategic choices about healing spell planning. Pack your potions, the cleric can't just try and try again!

Plot Continuity and Sequels (over on CRPG Addict)

I like this look at plot continuity and sequels over on the CRPG Addict:

Plot Continuity Across Sequels

Having played games where the sequel makes bizarre assumptions about the previous game, I was keen to see his examples.

I've played a few games that couldn't even keep straight what I did during that particular game - Fallout II was the worst example I can think of off hand. In that one I got an ending that talked about how I wiped out the deathclaws (I hadn't) and two end vignettes that contradicted each other. Nice. So sometimes it seems to be a bit too much to expect it to happen between sequels.

This is one reason I love tabletop games so much - it's not limited someone's scope and ability to cover all possibilities. You just go with what happened and make stuff happen from there. But a well-done sequel segue in a video game is very nice.

Musing on the next session in Olympia

Our next Felltower session may be our second session with the group currently adventuring in Olympia.


They seem to have plans to do three things:


- seize whatever treasure there is within the Caves of Serpents;

- visit the Forge and get the cyclops there to make someone a powerful magical weapon;

- escape back to Felltower (they hope) via the gate to the underworld, somehow bypassing its guardian in the process.


It's mostly the rest of what was set out as possible things to do in the immediate area of their arrival gate other than visit Olympia.


We'll need 6-8 players. Any lower and it's getting unwieldy.

Any more and we don't have enough PCs and NPCs to run.

Someone needs to replace Alaric's player, as he went back to college despite Felltower being the font of all that is worth learning.

Someone can run Ike, if we get an overage.

And someone may have to run Dryst, because we're not sure Dryst's player can make it . . . and it takes an experienced hand to run a 400+ point wizard with 117 spells, Wild Talent, and an unorthodox strategy for powering spells (basically, everyone else does it for him.)


I think we can get this all done in one session. If not, well, I'm probably giving two sessions worth of XP to the PCs. No sense in rewarding lollygagging and time-wasting. Unless they come up with a compelling reason to expand their mission, in which case, I may expand the XP. Chronos is out there, for the truly bold . . .

Game Inspiration - MER's Lovecraft story

I aspire to get to this level of perfectly tuned silliness:

"The coffin was heavily enslimed with ages of accumulated muck, but strange glyphs could still be seen on its rim, and along the side of the lid. No sentient being had ever read them; they had been placed on the stone in some unfathomable way by a group of sinister creatures who had left no trace of themselves, not even the glyphs."
- Mark E. Rogers, "The Book of the Dunwich Cow," in The Adventures of Samurai Cat

I don't really do gonzo. I don't really do all-out silly. But there is at least some silliness in my games. I don't know that I'd stick the above into my dungeon, but it does inform what I do pretty heavily.

Hall of Judgment material in Felltower

What to use from Hall of Judgment for my DF/DFRPG game?

First off, I'm not going to read the finished adventure end to end. I've read parts, but not the entire thing. This at least retains the possibility that I could play it. I won't run it (I have too much to run as it is), but at least it's possible I could get in there and play if someone runs it.

The rules and monsters? I read them all. What will show up in Felltower?

Short version - not all of it. I've been running my DF game for over 100 sessions and 7 years; we've solved a lot of problems that new rules are meant to address.

Fantastic Dungeon Grappling will inform how we run our house ruled grappling. I like FDG but it does make some decisions differently than how I chose to make them earlier. Doug and I had worked on a simplified TG for DF for a while, and I took that and stripped it down further and did my own thing with it. But FDG deals elegantly with some issues that we didn't directly address, and so we'll use a merged version of them.

Field Dressing Game will see use since one of our players likes to have his character butcher and eat things. Especially weird things.

The Wilderness Survival rules are nice, but I'm satisfied with what we use from Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures. I get why Doug re-invented the wheel; DFRPG didn't have any rules and he probably didn't have access to use the materials from DF16. You wouldn't go wrong using these; but like FDG, I have others already.

From the Bestiary there are some critters I will use. I don't generally use a lot of normal animals, in fact I almost never use them - and there are a lot of normal animals in the book. The various bandits, warriors, etc. I don't need - I use the basic stats for 62-point delvers from DF15 instead. I will certainly use some of the faerie stats, if my players ever figure out a way into (well, under) elf hill, although they should be warned - I'll change them to suit my particular conception of Faerie. The ice alf and krabbari would fit right in with some minis I have, so they go in. I like the vaettr but I'm not sure I can fit yet another wight variation into my game; it's fairly full of them already.

so Hall of Judgment is a solid get for me, even without running the adventure. A good base of faerie critters, a couple of demonic and elemental monsters, and some modifications to my grappling rules. If you don't have you own grappling rules, don't use DF16, and will use the adventure, this is an excellent supplement.

Minis WIP

I haven't really had a lot of time to paint, and it's been humid beyond the norm, but I am not totally given up on painting this summer.

Here is a mini I've been working on:



He's a Warhammer Empire (I think) commander, mounted with an old Ral Partha shield as a buckler. I can't quite settle on the best way to finish him, but I think perhaps some grey on his mustache, some washing and highlights on his clothing, and a bronze face on his shield will do it. Perhaps tomorrow, if the humidity is as low as it was today.