To use Conditional Injury or Not? A Review Helps.

Doug recommended this, so I read it.

A Conditional Injury Deep Dive

I'd have gotten around to it eventually. I read everything I can off of the blogs I follow, and I follow Mailanka's blog. I also have noodled around with the idea of getting our Gamma Terra GM to use a system like this. But I didn't know if I'd like how that would come out.

It's reading reviews like this that really let me know what I want to know about a rules variant. I'm very concerned with Actual Play.

I deeply love Doug's work, but it's generally a level or more of complexity over what I actually like to have at my table these days. My role in Doug's life has often been to nag him and say, "Couldn't this be simpler?" or just "Too complicated!" So when he writes rules variations that change the level of detail of a system, I immediately think a) it's probably better that what's come before but b) it's going to be complicated to run compared to what I'd like to run. Since I tend to play games with a half-dozen or more PCs with a half-dozen or more NPCs, fighting anywhere from one to scores of enemies, even a slight increase in complexity is a big increase in time to play.

That said, some things look more complicated than they are. Technical Grappling is actually quite simple at heart - and you can see it based on what Doug's done with the system after. And I've stripped it down even further than he has, yet kept that excellent roll-for-effect mechanic that he created. So the question here was, is this more complicated than I'd like?

The answer is still a firm maybe. But it's deep looks at how something plays from a GM who's used the system to let me know what I really need to know. I've said before that I've seen reviews that said "X sucks" and I've used X and it did not suck, "objective" looks at X or not. This is much more of what I like to see!

DFRPG Monsters 2 arrived

Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Monsters 2 arrived yesterday.

Oddly, I thought, it arrived in a box . . . inside of another box.




Enclosed was the DFRPG Monsters 2 book and a little notebook.




Sadly, the little notebook is just a small, lined notebook. I don't exactly need one of those, and I'm not sure what I'd use it for. Maybe one of my gamers needs it!



In any case, the book is very attractive, and the art looks very nice on glossy pages. I've already included a few monsters in my current game, and more will show their faces (or not, if they don't have them) at some point.

Nobody plays the game I play, say the internet

I check the referring sites to my blog fairly often, so I can see where my traffic comes from and where it goes to. It's helpful for me and interesting to me, as well.

But if I get hits from Reddit, it's usually something odd. Like this one - a thread about games that people don't play. You know, like GURPS. People don't play GURPS, according to at least one commenter.

What RPG Did Really Well in sales but is hardly ever played

Hah.

I get it, GURPS isn't a big player in the small RPG pond. Not in terms of popularity compared to D&D, Pathfinder, and some others. But geez, guys, before you go off and say you can't find anyone who plays GURPS, go try looking to find someone who plays GURPS first. It's really amusing to me. The internet is a great place, but the number of people who won't take the simple step of searching before they say something is pretty high. It doesn't need to be. Type "GURPS campaigns" into Google . . . and click on the link to the Reddit sub-forum about GURPS. I don't know, maybe that might help?

I just found that really amusing, tonight. I'm going to go back to working on getting ready for this weekend's session of the game that is hardly ever played, in a campaign no one could think of. Heh.

Douglas Cole's new DFRPG Support

Douglas Cole has a new three-book Kickstarter up for DFRPG support:

Twlight 2000 1st edition boxed set photo repost

This is the edition of Twilight: 2000 that really grabbed me. I bought it based on the adds in Dragon, and I loved it. I got to play very little of it, but I own most of the supplements for it. They're amazing. With the right group - a wargamer-heavy group, especially - it would have been amazing. Some of the design decisions - such as the really long equipping-the-group part of character generation, the roll-well-or-die aspect of determining your initiative score, and the whole "bullets" vs. "shots" issue ("This game is bullshit, a revolver doesn't only have 2 shots!") . . . all conspired to not let me run it in high school.

But I still love the game for all of the other things I got out of it. And it's still attractive today. Check out this post:

Twilight 2000 1st edition box set photo gallery

The Inexpensive Missile Spells of Felltower

I've written on this before, but I can't find where I wrote it.

As written, when you create a Missile spell such as Lightning, Fireball, Stone Missile, etc. you get the energy savings discount on the total cost, not per turn. Per the GURPS FAQ:

4.3.3 It seems missile spells are much more powerful than before. Is that right?

Yes. Now you can put up to [Magery * base cost of spell] energy each second in it, for one to three seconds; spell effect is multiplied by each multiple of the base cost. Note that the cost reduction for high skill only applies to the total cost of the spell. With skill 20, you can't cast a 6d fireball for free by concentrating for 3 seconds.

(Italics mine)

Short version? In Felltower, that last sentence is wrong. You absolutely can cast a 6d fireball for free thanks to your skill 20 by concentrating for 3 seconds.

Honestly, I didn't know this was the wrong way to do it originally. But even once I did, I found I preferred the way this made Missile spells a cheaper way to apply damage to a target than most other spells. They're slower (up to 3 turns of casting, and at least one turn of attacking) and you need to hit with your throw, as well. You need a free hand. Targets can Dodge or Block and those are usually fairly effective defenses in a low-tech world with missile weapons to deal with.

So if you wonder why the players in Felltower favor 6d missiles so much, it's because of this ruling. Ggetting to skill 20 isn't difficult. It only takes IQ 16 and Magery 6 to have it with all spells for 1 point, and DF Wizards start with IQ 15 and Magery 3 and enough discretionary points to get to Magery 6 immediately.

And I like it this way. Bring on the high-damage Missile spells!

Game Inspiration: Japanese Kofun

Here is a short but well-shot piece on the "keyhole" tombs of Japan:




They're pretty fascinating - left untouched, they're potential adventuring connections for a modern game. In their original forms, surrounded by moats and lined with clay figures (haniwa), make very cool settings for fantasy games.