Gargoyle Guarding the Chamber of Decision

James Maleszewski shared a link to this excellent series of pictures today - auctions of the original art from a very old dungeon-exploration themed art book.

This piece, especially, could easily depict the kind of area I put in Felltower:


Don Greer, Gargoyle Guarding the Chamber of Decision, Down in the Dungeon interior book illustration, 1981

It would fit, either with the wizard in the middle or without. "Let's just go 30-40' down each one and then we'll decide which one to explore." Or is it really not that simple? Let's find out.

Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves playtest applications are open

Like the subject says, applications for the playtest of Chris Rice's new book, Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves are open.

Details are here:

Call for Playtesters: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Thieves

I'm hoping a few of my more active, rules-questioning players will jump in on this.

I'm pretty confident I'll get in on the playtest, but I have no idea what the competition will be like to get in. I'm looking forward to seeing what the draft looks like in a week or two.

Looking ahead in the Cold Fens & Felltower's environs

Not that the PCs are done with the Cold Fens, far from it - they need to survive their current expedition.

But then what?

Let's look at some areas in play.

Cold Fens

At some point, the Cold Fens will be considered played out from an exploration perspective. In other words, there will still be hexes that haven't been explored, but a sufficient amount of them will have been that exploring others won't net any XP.

This is basically so the Cold Fens doesn't eventually become a default "We don't have a plan, so let's go explore 10 hexes and get 2 xp" session. Especially since the fens are more empty of encounters than rich in them, so it will be a procedural hexcrawl with hexes that largely contain hazards, obstacles, bugs, and wandering monsters that don't typically carry treasure.

Naturally this means after the dragon, right? No. After Sakatha, really, and not much after that if anything at all. There is a dragon, of course, but the PCs have a number of clues pointing in the direction the dragon's lair is, and have followed none of those clues. They're not as blazingly obvious as "go X miles south and Y miles west and turn right at the big tree," for sure, but the general hints points to areas the PCs have not attempted to go to. Again, I just don't want to spend sessions rolling random encounters while they move around hoping to luck into something.

Caves of Chaos

This area is low-threat and low-loot. It's not 100% explored, but it may as well be as it will take exploring known areas to find the handful of unknown ones. Unless some high-loot monsters moved in - and there is no indication of that - this area has been largely done over. It's not free of threats, but it's free of threats DF delvers will find worth going after.

Lost City of D'Abo

Like the Caves of Chaos, this is largely done. There are a few big things that were missed, but it would probably take some second looks at things and lawnmover exploration to find them . . . and I'm not sure they'd be found anyway.

Felltower

This basically leaves Felltower. Yeah, that's how it goes. A lot of time has been spent by the current group not going deeper in Felltower and not going into gates seen as risky. They've almost fully played out the "side quest" areas I have prepared and have interest in preparing. So Felltower is likely what waits after the Cold Fens. It's back to going down the exact same path to the second level, avoiding the orcs, coming back to Five Ooze Corner "on the way back," and the usual things of that sort. We'll see what actual occurs . . . but going deeper or going into a risky gate might be unavoidable for survivors of Sakatha's lair, if indeed there are any. If there are not, well, back to the drawing board I suppose, only with Quenton as the mighty veteran of the group!

What do I get royalties on?

So, someone asked what books I get royalties on. Here is the list:

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 12
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Barbarians
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 3: Artifacts of Felltower
GURPS Low-Tech Companion 2
GURPS Martial Arts (and the POD version)
GURPS Martial Arts: Gladiators

I'll edit later with links.

Now, this is not to say you shouldn't buy my other works - I was paid fairly for them, and the continued sales of them provides incentive for companies to keep offering me work or accepting my proposals. But if you want to buy a book that results in money going to be as a direct result of your payment . . . it's those books, above.

Random Links & Thoughts for 9/3/21

Notes and links for today.

- Ever wonder why I approve your comment, and then don't come back and respond to it for hours, or days? Because I have content moderation on, and whenever I have a minute and remember, I go check for comments that need approval. If it's clearly a real person, I approve it . . . and don't come back to read them until I have time to actually think about what's being said.

- Here are minis painted up for B2 Keep on the Borderlands and T1 The Village of Hommlet.

- If anyone wants to buy my core-set-only Bones V set unopened, complete with dice and bases, let me know. I'll sell it at cost + shipping. I'm sure there is stuff in there I want but as I've said before, my time is limited and my eyes and hands just don't allow for painting like I want to. I just don't need all of this.

- I've fallen behind on the play reports for this Judge Dredd game, but I'll make good!

- Ah, Gary Gygax and AD&D, my original game system. Want to do a cool thing? It's extremely hard, it's unfun, and it turns you into an NPC. At best. Enjoy. That applies to running monster PCs, becoming a diety, becoming undead or a lycanthrope, etc. I know all too much of how I run game is best understood in how deeply this was absorbed by me.

Limiting sources of situational bonuses?

Just a brief GURPS thought today.

I tend to find lots of stacking situation modifiers tricky. Players constantly want to "just make sure" that they get all of their bonuses. They want to deal with a long-term problem now with a focused investment of points. They want to eke out every bit they can to survive.

But making sure you've counted them all can take time, and still result in errors and edge cases - does Hard to Kill protect against a spell that might kill me? Does Hard to Subdue help me roll to wake up? Does my +3 for Dirty Fighting apply to this one opponent, this time?

On top of that, it can be point inefficient as well as unwieldly. The guy with HT 13, Fit, Hard to Kill 2, Hard to Subdue 2, and FP 13 has spent 16 points to get most of the effects of HT 16, but not all of them, and lost out on 0.75 worth of Basic Speed (15 points on its own) and 2 FP (6 more points) by not spending 14 more points. And has a lot more questions about what applies, when.

So what if you could only every buy one ability that provide situational bonuses? So you could get Fit and Hard to Kill, or Fit and Hard to Subdue, but not all three (and Fit only because it's not a situational bonus, it always applies.) You basically have to make a hard decision and get the one you really want.

You'd still get situational bonuses, but you wouldn't have a lot of them, and have to have so may iterations of your base stat + bonuses to keep track of.

I'd need to do more numbers and look at more cases, but this is an idea that might suit a game with high power and steady growth . . . while very high stats and skills might be annoying, are they more so than moderate stats and skills with lots and lots and lots of bonuses to comb through and decide where they apply? My experience says no. And it's better, in general, for the players - less questions, generally more effectiveness, and less edge cases where they thought something would apply and it does not. Simplified chargen and progression, too, is a helpful bonus.

So I think I need to put some more thought into what this would look like.

How much defense is too much?

This is somewhat of a rant, I guess.

I exasperatedly exclaimed something like, "Oh for ****'s sake!" during our last session, as someone rolled a 13 and made a Parry by 2 . . . not counting any DB, without Retreat, and without any extenuating bonuses of any kind. Just a pure parry roll of 15 before all of the fun stuff that's piled on top of that - the PC also had a 2 DB shield, and a Shield spell of +2 or +3, and could potentially Retreat. Why the exclamantion? Just some general muttering about how dangerous the situation was. You know, followed by the revelation of a 98.1% of success and only a rule-required margin for failure or critical failure.

Honestly, I get why my players do the things they do - why they layer defensive buffs over high defenses over everything.

But still, as a GM, it's face-palm territory when people say their defenses aren't good and then you find out they have a 15 Parry, without any DB or Retreat, or say they're about to get overwhelmed and die when they're forced to fall back on Dodge-14 and can't get that all-too-important +3 for Retreat. It's the defense equivalent of poor-mouthing . . . woe is me, I only have a near maximal defense, not the maximum possibly allowed.

Like a 95.4% of success is too low, and only a 98.1% chance of success - on a guy who also has Luck and a pile of DR and high stats and additional bonuses to deflect any non-damage followup.

Anything that can potentially cause any harm get classed as "lethal." So monsters are put into two categories - harmless, or so dangerous they can only be fought with superior numbers, in a defensive posture, while buffed, with no possibility of allowing flanking attacks, with room to Retreat.

Personally I think the "we can't afford to get hit, because we can't afford any casualties" approach means excessive caution.

It also can feed an arms race. Massively layered defenses that cannot be reasonably dealt with means they must be unreasonably dealt with. A GM really has no choice besides, effectively, "I guess you all win" or ramping up the offensive power of foes and provide for effects that cannot be avoided. Otherwise it's just rolling dice to see which PC kills the enemy, and how long they take to die, without real challenge of potential failure.

Yet, again, this means a push towards caution. It further forces the game towards tactical combat considerations in all situations, since Retreat is held up as a requirement to survive and worries about denying a flank dominate discussions about what to do.

This is why I've mused a few times about hard skill caps, hard defense caps, and other bounded limitations. That way the arms race at least ends at some point.

But I'm not sure it would stop what drives me a little nutty about the whole thing - the excessive concern that any chance of failure means a high chance of failure, and describing anything less than maximal defenses as poor. One of my players can get a little smug about his high defenses, but at least he's owning the fact that he has them and that they're high. I just feel like a more reasonable acceptance of how defensively secure the PCs are, right out of the gate and then especially after they get more points and better gear would help. So would an acceptance that risk can be reduced but not minimized without costing some - perhaps most - of the risk-reward challenge that DF is meant to be. And I've said it before - people over-patch and they tend to hold up "without any casualties" as delve goals . . . and it costs a lot without getting the end-goal in return.

Just some thoughts.