DF Session 76, Felltower 49 - Part II

Today we finished a delve started a few weeks back, and ended for lack of real-world time.

May 15th, 2016 (but played June 6th, 2016)

Weather: Warm cloudy.

Characters (approximate net point total)

Adventuring:
Dryst, halfling wizard (397 points)
Hasdrubul Stormcaller, human wizard (267 points)
Hjalmarr Holgerson, human knight (269 points)
     Brother Ike, human initiate (135 points)
Mo (his momma call him Kle), human barbarian (271 points)
     Kian, human pirate (~65 points)
Quenton Gale, human druid (267 points)
Vryce, human knight (468 points)

In reserve:
Angus "Mithrilbraid" McSwashy, dwarf swashbuckler (261 points)
Bern Brambleberry, gnome artificer (265 points)
Borriz, dwarven knight (308 points)
Chuck Morris, human martial artist (303 points)
Galen Longtread, human scout (372 points)
Galoob Jah, goblin thief (256 points)
Gerald Tarrant, human wizard (287 points)
     5 skeletons (~25 points) (one is a hunchbacked zombie)
Honus Honusson, human barbarian (302 points)
Kenner Baumfellen, wood elf scout (250 points)
Red Raggi, human berserker (?? points, NPC)

We picked up where we ended, with the PCs surrounded by dead fishmen and giant electric eels and razorfish. The PCs dragged the fishmen over to the ice sheet and looted them, taking a gold lip ring from each one, plus a magical eelskin gold amulet headband depicting two fish heads facing away from each other, and some spears.

While that went one, they did some bandaging, healing, and potion-drinking.

The also sent Dryst and Hjalmarr down into the water to systematically explore the fishmen area with Swim (initially), Water Vision, and Breathe Water. They found numerous flooded cells, some rusted out. All were empty of life, although a few had patches of freshwater seaweed obviously transplanted here, plus some rag bundles tied up with seaweed - maybe a starter seaweed or ersatz seaweed?

One cave had some rusted weapons and fish skeletons on the bottom. When Hjalmarr entered, a spell was cast on him and he felt a wrench, but resisted. He recognized it as the sensation of the shapeshifting attack of the fishman "priest," which set Dryst casting See Invisible and hunting a living fishman. There was none, however, just clearly some kind of magical trap.

Dryst put Improved Magic Resistance on himself and Magic Resistance on Hjalmarr, which let Hjalmarr shrug off the magical attack while he checked out the bottom. Just fish skeletons, and long-corroded weapons.

Searching the rest, they found a staff covered with fish slime (it would later turn out to be Inquisitor Marco's Staff of Healing, sealed up against water with slimy fish goop), a silver chest, a piece of lapiz lazuli, and 14 magical sling bullets. When they pried open the chest, they found it had a broken-tipped cheap main gauche (but a well-decorated showpiece) and what would later turn out to be a Potion of Transparency.

Once all that was done, they headed back to talk to the Crazies. The Warden thanked them and gave them one of his own manacles, which was decorated with a chunk of crystal wrapped to it with copper wire, a few bits of silver and gold (maybe once coins or teeth or decorations) crudely hammered into it, and so on. They took it graciously and asked if he needed more help. He said no, and they were escorted to the way out by boat.

They then met up with the orcs, who had stationed themselves around the way out. The PCs negotiated what 25% was right then and there, deciding they'd cough up loot in order to keep a good thing going. In the end they handed over the main gauche, four spears, a couple of the gold lip rings, and kept mum about the better stuff. The orcs seemed to buy it, and took their potion (via a couple orcs sent down to collect it.) The PCs climbed up, and the orcs escorted them out the same way.

The PCs made it back to town, and divided up the loot.

Notes:

That ends part I. I'll try to post Session 76, Felltower 50 - Part I (sigh) tomorrow.

The ended up with an uneven loot distribution - Vryce got extra (so he'd get 2 xp instead of 0 for falling short of his needs), the others divided the rest. Why so little? Because they didn't want to part with the amulet, because it was too useful as a power item thanks to its 8000 sp value (plus it has Shapeshift Others (Fish) on it, with 4 charges left), so they did a whole hand-me-down trade series to upgrade everyone's power items. They also wanted to keep the potion, and the sling bullets were Puissance +1 and Penetrating Weapon (2), which is a rare find and could be very useful in combat for Vryce against armored, distant foes.

As for magic items, it's nice to see they finally have the staff back, lost in Total Party Teleport I, and first found in Session 9.

How influential was Muhammed Ali?

Muhammed Ali is so influential that we have a character named after him in our DF game.

Even Mo "His Momma Call Him Kle" would admit that Muhammed Ali was The Greatest.

Mo is built more like Wilt than Muhammed, but the name is Muhammed Ali, filtered through the barber shop in Coming to America ("A man has a right to choose his own name"); he influenced even our gaming.

Float like an eye of death, sting like a manticore.

Thanks, Mr. Ali.

Monsters from DFM3 in my campaign

It's no secret I mine GURPS books for my campaign and mine my campaign for GURPS book material.

So it was with Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3.

So, which ones have you seen?

If you've occasionally perused the monsters encountered list, you'll recognize some. But if you haven't been keeping up, here they are:

Cockatrice (slightly varied stats, though)

Giant Ant

Harpy

Medusa

Octopus Blossom

Phase Serpent (the DFM3 ones had their phase aspect beefed up based on play experience)

Rock Troll


(Rock trolls were born from me statting up these guys so I could use these minis in play)

All of them - even the variations - are in my game somewhere. It's just a question of where. There are four of the creatures in areas the PCs came close to but didn't quite go into, and a few in areas they haven't come close to exploring.

You've seen the Furious prefix, Amorphous Stone meta-trait, and Plant meta-trait in action without realizing it since the effects are subtle and I don't always list prefixes or monster traits when I talk about them.

Mummies with Meteoric Iron Daggers

So, it's official. King Tut had a meteoric iron dagger.

Dagger in Tutankhamun's tomb was made with iron from a meteorite

And one made out of gold.

Both decorated.

Clearly, were-creatures weren't a big concern in the Egyptian afterlife, or he'd have had silver. Status clearly was (gold, decorated knife means Ornate). And so was killin' wizards, thanks to his Meteoric blade.

This is good to know, because if there is one thing we've determined in our years of gaming, is that Magery, magical aptitude, sorcery, etc. of any kind is an evil trait. King Tut was well equipped to fight evil in the form of wizards.

Stab away in the afterlife, boy king! Don't listen to Malak - it's good luck to kill a wizard!

New Book: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3: Born of Myth & Magic

So this is the GURPS book I've been hinting at for a while.

It was born out of the need to have a thematically cohesive monster book and yet use a bunch of monsters I had in mind and which it would be reasonable to have artistically depicted.

So, monsters of mythical and/or magical origin.

Yet not wimps when tossed into game where starting characters have Skill-20, piles of armor, and massive attacks.

Here is what you get, 16 monsters for $5.99.*



Some you may recognize from myths. Some from my campaign. Others might be new for both, because my players haven't stumbled across their lairs yet.

Enjoy. Just don't blurt out stats in the comments, my players need to lose PCs to find those out.

* Ah man, I should have made it 13 Monsters (warning, turn up the volume before you hit play. Lightning Bolt is famous for their quiet, nuanced, melodic tunes.)**


** Sorry to anyone who turned up their volume. Heh.

New Advantage: Coordinated Team Timing

Does your team expect perfect coordination?

I sometimes here some or all of these:

"I shoot through this hex, not that hex, because our Invisible buddy is there." Or the invisible guy moves, you shoot, and then he steps back into the spot on his next turn knowing he's clear and no, you don't intend to charge up the middle, not that you said that out loud or anything.

"We walk in perfect formation, with Stealth, even though half of us are invisible and some of us can't see in the dark."

"I yell for everyone to look away from my Flash spell" - you know, they all look away in a split-second without affecting any of their actions. In fact, they all know exactly where you'll throw it, too. The bad guys won't react to your command, though.

The zero turn handoff. That is, I fast-draw and ready a potion and do a wait to hand it off. You grab it from my hand and open it and drink it. Net time? A tiny fraction of a second. Was this planned? No, we just knew it because he's wounded and I know how many FP and HP he's down and his plans for the rest of the fight.

Etc.

Why not just say, okay, all of that works, let's not argue, but only if you pay for it?

The cost for this is based on Adventuring Bond. It does not include any of those benefits.

Coordinated Team Timing
5 plus 1 per additional teammate

Members of a group have split-second timing when it comes to awareness of your teammates and their actions. You have a general sense of where everyone else is in combat, where the invisible guys are standing, how to pass off potons, ammunition, weapons, etc. without a problem, when to reach down to grab a hand beings held up to get out of the water, etc. As long as the action has based on coordinated timing and teamwork (shoot between moving friends, for example) or just basic coordinated practice (march in formation with a gap for the invisible person), the GM should allow it if you have this advantage. This isn't mental communication or anything of that sort - it's only useful for coordinating multi-person actions that should take some coordination to pull off.

All members of the group must have this to function without problems. Any character who lacks it is subject to whatever whim the GM has about facing during Flash spells, running through hexes with Invisible wizards, etc.


I'm mostly joking here, but the basic idea is sound - the GM says, okay, your wildly timing-dependent combat actions will work on a 1-second timescale in a swirling fight . . . if you pay points so that is true. Basing it on the bond means it's low enough cost that players will probably say, okay, that's a no-brainer purchase, but not so low that it's meaningless to buy it. You don't want to cost it so high that players figure it's easier to try to argue each case or apply hair-splitting timing to planned actions to get things done. You just say, yes, you can march in the dark quietly without messing up your formation or throw around your invisible friends that you can't see either, but it'll cost you a few points.

Writing lots of rules, but using only some

If there is one thing I feel I'm pretty good at, it's writing rules. I'm not great at it, but I'm pretty good at it for GURPS, and I do have an abiding interest in writing them. I like to tinker, and I like to think, "What if?" and "How would you do this?"

But there is a contradiction in that, too. I like the occasional rules-heavy game, I like rules-light games, and I like rules-medium games, too. But I generally err on the side of "use less rules at the table."

So I write a lot of rules, and I buy a lot of crunchy, rules-filled material, but run a table with less rules than you might expect.


That kind of stuff.

In short, why do I write a lot of rules, but generally come down to a much smaller set when I play?

- a specific, generally minimal, set of tools

plus

- a large number of choices for those tools.

That is, I want rules that play well together, or at least play well with the other rules. I want options for gritty realism all the way to cinematic handwaving of any semblance of reality. But I want to be able to choose from them.

I also like the mental challenge of assembling new rules.

But I really don't want to mix everything up in a big slurry or stew and use it all at once.

I might appreciate having detailed rules for running long-distance races for that one time the PCs do a long-distance relay race. I might want disease rules and long-term incapacitation effects in my pirate game. I might really care about who draws first to the point of consulting a box on Fast-Draw for all of the nitty gritty.

And I'll want it all compatible.

But I don't necessary want all of it at once.

If you want a food analogy, I want a buffet but I don't want to eat some of everything every time.


So anyway, that's why you'll see me write rule after rule after rule, and publish books full of them . . . and then not use them all. It's just more tools for the toolbox, but I still only choose a few of those tools to include.


I sometimes convey this to others, too. If you've ever run into my "Why are you even using those rules there?" attitude, you'll recognize this. It's me saying, why use rule X when you're playing Y? Why use the gritty realism rules for that kung fu movie game? Why use the cinematic rules for shooting when you are playing a gritty game? Why bother with economic development rules when your game just needs a simple answer to "How much is a _____"? It's not just me being annoying, obstreperous, and a big bother. I'm really trying to prompt a decision about what you want from the rules, and to get you to look at what you're trying to accomplish. You might have a good reason for seemingly incompatible rules going together. But I always feel like part of my job as a reader, playtester, editor, etc. is to make you look at it from my point of view, and then explain why you made your choices.