Random Links for 6/20/2023

A few posts to round out the week.

- Paper man death stories over at Pits Perilous.

- an interesting way to reward summaries. I don't, because I don't want to effectively give a reward that my busiest players can't take advantage of. The game is in the session, not between. But I get the idea, and it fits for a lot of people. I think this is an interesting way to do it.

- Maybe I should teach ChatGPT to play Fire in the Lake so it can teach me - I'll have space, and soon I will be able to play a game. Lack of table space won't stop me now . . . so should I use an AI to learn it more quickly after I do the guided solo tutorial?

- I've picked Torment back up, after a break for busy-ness. Not much done, but I'll say a LG playthrough is easier. It's always easy to see the good path and just do that.

- I got a comp copy of GURPS Fantasy Folks: Goblins & Hobgoblins. So that's out. Phil did good work here.

- This podcast makes me very interested in trying Age of Wonders 4. It sounds like a suped-up Master of Magic.

Felltower Merged Unarmed Skills?

Back when we voted on merged weapon skills, we also voted on merged unarmed skills. That won out.

But implementation has been trickier than I'd hoped. I need to basically retool the skills and then add perks to allow for existing characters to use existing benefits that we want to carry through Felltower.

So I've decided that it's not worth changing for the current game situation. We'll continue to use all of the existing unarmed skills, although I'd generally prefer people avoid Boxing because it's quite limited and I think it's the odd skill out for our game.

For the weapon skill merges, check here.

DF Felltower Rules questions - PMW and Enhanced Parry

Rules question for DF Felltower:

Does Enhanced Parry (Unarmed) apply to Parry Missile Weapons?

Yes.


I don't think it makes sense if it doesn't, given the way parry bonuses tend to work in GURPS 4e and how we run them in Felltower.

Handsome's real-world counterpart

Just so you know, token images aside, I see my scout Handsome as looking like a bottom-tusked slightly green-tinged version of this guy:

That's Al Leong. I chose him once it became clear that with Dishonest Face, Born Goon, and a pragmatically blase attitude towards inflicting harm and doing bad things . . . he was a lot like an 80s or 90s action movie henchman. Al Leong is the henchman of henchmen. Handsome is a henchman with a little too much autonomy and free will.

That's not his only source of inspiration - but it's the only source that came after Handsome was created and I started to figure out his particular attitude problem.




By the way, most excellent Al Leong role? Genghis Khan, dudes!

DFRPG Felltower Adjacent - Session 1

We played a session of Vic's game today. I won't write a whole summary, because that's a lot of work and won't increase my enjoyment of the game. I'll give a brief summary. If Vic wants to write a summary I'll post it here.

- we met up in a town and headed off to find a missing mentor of our bard. Along the way, despite Per 14, Handsome didn't spot an ambush. Amusingly, the ambushers threw glue at him but missed and glued up our bard, instead.

- we slaughtered the ambushers, all except one. Sadly, they were kobolds. I don't like kobolds. On a 1-10 scale of dislike to like, they're a solid 2. Felltower adjecent doesn't mean you'll see kobolds in Felltower and I'm kinda sad they even exist in the same world as it.

- We made it to town and found there was a bounty on kobold ears of $5 per ear, so three of us went back and took their ears and brought them back. We also got $100 for the live kobold.

- We heard about a kobold camp, but also a ruins where we needed to look for our bard's mentor. We went there.

- We met some folks who wanted to show us a dragon's bones. Our bard told them it wasn't a dragon. Handsome spotted a hidden guy with a spear and went to shoot him, just as one yelled, "Just kill them already!"

- That's how it worked, except in reverse. We killed them all, including a gnome Heroic Pistol Crossbowman. He kept shooting his dinky crossbow with poisoned bolts at a half-orc and a dwarf. Hadn't he read DF3?

- We didn't kill one halfling who surrendered, after Handsome tried and failed to kill him (a clean miss, my only clean miss.)

- We turned the halfling in to town as a bandit, sold everyone's stuff, and saved the mentor of our bard.

- Handsome had a pretty good hit ratio. 14 shots, 13 hits, 3 of them dodged. So 10/14 damaging hits. That's because Scouts are good and I preferntially shot at foes least able to see the arrows coming.

- XP was 5 for sufficient loot, 1 xp for fulfilling a quest goal, 1 xp for the bandit fight = 7 xp. MVP was Handsome for killing a bunch of guys and for my crack about the idiot assassin trying to poison the two guys with Resistant to Poison 5.

I bought Slayer Training (Bow/Vitals) for 3, +1 to Bow skill for 4, and learrned Carousing because Handsome is a party orc.

Rules question of the day - is cancelling a spell a free action? The rules don't say it is, but they don't say it isn't, either. I'm 99% sure we've played it as requiring a Concentrate action, but it was run today as a free action. I think it should require Concentrate, since it's a non-trivial thing to do.

Random Links for 6/24/2023

I was unfortunately too busy yesterday to post, so we'll have to post random links and such today!

- Doug has launched a new TFT Kickstarter. I have zero interest in TFT, but Doug has a business stake in it, so I'd be remiss if I didn't pass along the word in case you have some interest. Plus it's written by David Pulver.

- I've been playing a LG playthrough of Planescape: Torment. It's both more limited than, but more rewarding thing, a CE playthrough.

- Vic is running game tomorrow, so we'll see Handsome the Half-Orc in action.

- There is a Cowboy Bebop RPG? Interesting. I'm curious how they handle the economy. I can't see how I'd need this, as it should be easy enough to run in GURPS 4th edition, but still, it's interesting to know it's out there and I like Cowboy Bebop a lot.

Swords & Wizardry revised reviews

Here are two reviews of the revised Swords & Wizardry. I got this from the Kickstarter, and I downloaded the PDFs, but I'm waiting on my hardcopy to sit and read it. I know I'll enjoy it better that way.

But these two reviews want to make me skip ahead in my reading list:

S&W Complete Revised

Recommended: S&W Complete Revised