Three more things I've learned running my DF game

Just a few things I've learned running my DF game. Some I guess I knew before, but this game has really highlighted them for me.

Spectacular deaths seem like gloating. I've long since lost the link, but another blogger suggested giving dead PCs a spectacular - or at least gorily interesting - death. I did that for the first few . . . and found it was pretty uncomfortable. It didn't put a light spin on losing your guy, it just seemed to be like rubbing it in. So I've gone back to my very matter-of-fact "Okay, you failed your death check. Your body drops to the ground. Sorry man. Okay, who's next?"

There is an idea out there that you should really enjoy your PC's death as much as his or her triumphs. But at least in my group, with me as the GM, it comes off badly. So I stopped.

Tracking minor consumables. I trust my players to do this, but I really hate to do it myself. I will spot-check, and if it's not on your sheet you don't have it, but that's about it. Minor resources tracking is fine in certain circumstances, but in general, it doesn't add enough to my games to spend a lot of time on it.

I hate playing out the meeting scenes. Seriously. It's my least favorite part of play - "you all meet in the bar" is pretty thin but at least it moves you forward. I dislike either playing, or running, that first session when you spend half of it having your guys meet his guy. I do my best to gloss it over in my games. Instead I try to find some connection between the PCs. If they do meet in a bar, I just make them sudden drinking buddies. But playing it out? It's asking for a "who's katana is longer" contest and it never ends well in my personal experience.

Just skip it. The new guy used to serve with/go to school with/drink with/live near one of the old PCs. Whatever it takes, just get the guy into the group and get on with playing.



I think the theme on all three of these is, just get on with it.

Punching vs. guys wielding swords

GURPS takes the (realistic) approach that reaching your arm out into the reach of a swordsman is a bad idea. Basically, if someone executes a weapon parry against your sword, you just don't hit. If they execute it against your arm, well, bad things can happen to your arm.

However, in a Dungeon Fantasy game, this pretty much hoses monsters and martial artists. Realism be damned, I want my owlbears to exchange blows with swordsman and not get chopped up during their own attacks. So here are some options:

Unarmed Etiqutte from GURPS Martial Arts. Basically, armed defenses cannot be used against unarmed attacks. Like in kung fu movies and the big set-piece fight in Kill Bill vol. 1, such as right here.

Notes: This does make the fighting less gritty, though, so this isn't suited for pseudo-realistic games. It also annoys armed characters because they can only dodge monster attacks.

Half Damage Parries. The damage caused by an armed parry against an unarmed attack isn't a hard strike, it's a redirection or neutralization of the attack. So any successful parry that causes damage (per B376) rolls damage and halves it, round up.

Notes: I've used this for so many years I don't think my players realize it's not in the books. Works fine, it's believable, and makes damage on a parry a nice bonus instead of a free, extra attack.

My Hands Are Lethal Weapons. Characters with Trained By A Master cannot be harmed by a successful armed parry when attacking, and do not suffer damage when striking a high DR surface. However, you do still come in contact with the parrying weapon or the surface you strike, so you still suffer any incidental damage or problems - contact venom, spikes, burning from flaming swords, damaging auras, etc.

In a Dungeon Fantasy game or other monster-heavy game, this may apply by default to any and all monsters!

Notes: This approach makes armed characters happier, because they can still use their main defenses against unarmed/monster attacks. It also makes martial artists happy, too, because they can freely chop orc skulls and hip toss owlbears without worrying they'll be torn up every time they try. Or armor up their limbs and extremities.

Aggressive Parry (Armed). By the GURPS rules, armed parries are aggressive by default. Instead, say they aren't. If you parry normally, you can't hurt the unarmed attacker. If you parry aggressively, at -1 (unless you buy it up), you can attempt an armed aggressive parry using the normal rules in GURPS Martial Arts, p. 65, with the modifiers listed for swing or thrust equally.

Notes: Gives a tradeoff - possible free damage to the attacker, but at a cost of possibly whiffing your defense. Unarmed fighters still have to worry about getting hurt, though.

Too Fast For Your Sword. There are a few options here. One is to allow the Rapid Retraction perk to give its bonus as a penalty to the roll to injure on a parry. Another is an Average Technique or Leveled Perk, up to 3 or 4 levels, which gives a 1 point per level penalty to the skill roll to injure the attacker. Can be combined with Aggressive Parry (Armed) to make for a really tough job of cutting up monster limbs and martial artist's fists and feet.

Notes: This one is okay, but it charges a point premium to unarmed attackers, still requires a roll (now with a variable penalty), and if you apply it broadly enough it becomes more of a genre rule than a character option.


Anything else? Sure. One option you hear sometimes is extra DR for martial artists on their arms and hands, but I find with guys doing 3d-4d damage, you can't afford enough DR to really help and make it safe. Plus, once you start armoring up your hands, your arms, your legs, and your feet, well, why not torso and head armor? I find that leads to "I may as well wear full armor." Natural point-bought DR is possible, but again, you need a lot to really matter, again, so it's charging a surcharge to guys who use a difficult attack style instead of a more powerful, longer-reaching weapon. So I find I prefer to rule it safe, and make it fit the genre.

What do I do?

I personally use the second and third of those rules - half damage parries and My Hands Are Lethal Weapons. This works pretty well. The unarmed brawler types and normally armed fighters suffer badly (but not terribly) if they fight armed opponents. But martial artists and monsters are still scary threats, and you can ward them off with your swords and axes but not get a free pass to avoid their defenses.

It's been a lot of fun. So I hope some of those suggestions work for others.

GURPS DF Statline

When I right GURPS stats for monsters or NPCs, I try to compress them down. The standard GURPS PC writeup or short monster writeup is pretty compact, but still takes up more room than is absolutely necessary. I like to write the monster stats in with my room descriptions so I don't have to refer to more than one screen or sheet of paper at a time.

Here is how I compress down the necessary stats for a DF monster into a one or two line set of notes.

For example, here is a (somewhat modified) DFM1 troll, who's gone a little addled from his time in the dungeon:

Crazed Troll (ST 20 DX 14 IQ 9 HT 12 HP 20 Will 10 Per 10 FP 12 Speed 7 Move 7 SM+1 Dodge 11 Parry 11(x2) DR 0 Bite-15 2d cutting C grapple on SM+0 Claws(x2)-15 2d+1 cutting C-2 IT(NB,NV) Regen Dark Vision Berserk(BF)-6 Stealth-18 DFM1 p.31)

In case you can't follow, "Bite 15 2d cutting C grapple on SM+0" is "Bite, skill 15, 2d cutting damage, Reach C, counts as a grapple on SM 0 or smaller opponents." The x2 on claws means it has two, same with the x2 on Parry. Yes, I nested parenthesis. No, that doesn't bother me. I abbreviated some of its advantages into lines I'll recognize immediately.

For me, that's all I need to go on.

It has other advantages, sure, but I've noted the ones I need to remember. If I think it'll matter, I'd add more. It has a bunch of advantages, but I know most of them by heart anyway. I could look up ones that matter if someone throws an obscure spell or something odd happens. I also know my players and the encounter, so if I know sense of smell won't matter or it won't be sneaking up on them or what have you, I'll omit its stealth score.

I could forgo all of those stat names, too, if necessary - 20/13/10/12 20/10/10/12 is pretty clear to me. But I don't want to waste a second parsing them out if I can write them out and save that split second of confusion between "which is Will and which is Perception?"

In any case, that's how I compact down the encounter-critical information I need for a monster so I can insert it into my dungeon's room descriptions. I rarely need to page flip for the actual monster.

Hopefully this "compressed stat line" approach might be useful to other space-conscious GMs.

Dividing monetary treasure by level?

Just a quick followup question to my last post:

Has anyone ever used the "one share per level" method in the PHB?

As in, 5th level fighter gets 5 shares, the two 2nd level guys get 2 each, the 2/3 Fighter/Thief gets 2 + (3/2) = 3.5 shares?

It's one of those weird level-isms (er, game-isms?) that we never used, but I'm curious if anyone ever did in their games.

Divvying the Treasure - Who gets what, why?

The topic of dividing the treasure got a lot of play back in early editions of D&D. AD&D had (of course) a whole series of different ways of dividing it. Gary Gygax divided a whole section of his intro materials in B2 to the subject.

Even modern games have taken a shot at it - GURPS Dungeon Fantasy devotes a couple of paragraphs to it in DF2.

Back in the day, we went round the table in some kind of order - usually diced - and people took what they wanted. One especially memorable trio of players in my junior high days would do this for all non-coin treasure, nevermind magic items. They were the kind of guys who'd take a wolf pelt cape over a suit of magic armor because their guy would look cooler in the cape.

Recently, my players have taken a more collective approach. Money is divided evenly. Magic and special non-magic items are given the person who is best suited to use it. If it can be used by multiple people, they tend to come to some kind of agreement on who deserves it or needs it most.

There is occasional moaning about giving good stuff to people who didn't come on the adventure, but it has been known to happen that way too. After all, that magic sword might save your character if you give it to the character of the guy who missed that session and let him use it. Other times they just sell it and say, oh well, you missed it. More the latter than the former in my current dungeon crawling game.

I'm curious how other folks do treasure division. One of the types in the old AD&D books or one of the broad methods in DF2? Some other way of doing it?

And if you've got a preferred method, any special reason why?

Teleporting in GURPS DF

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, out of the box, severely limits the Teleport spell. It forbids it outright, unless you spend a boatload of points for the privilege of a limited version, and you can't do that until later.

Why? Largely to limit mages ferrying people around, bypassing all physical obstacles, and going back to town at will to replenish supplies. GURPS doesn't limit you to once a day only if you get to 11th level, you can start with this spell and use it over and over. I've run a game with teleport, and "teleport across the entire campaign map to go pick up some rations and potions" happened pretty often. It could be fun, but it made dungeon obstacles a joke.

So DF bans it because it takes a good part of the challenge out of dungeoneering.

Over on the GURPS forums, Kromm suggested a way to write up the spell if you do want to include it.

Here is the whole thread: Limited Teleport for DF

Here is his writeup: Teleport writeup for DF

Short version? Can't see it, can't go there. And BAMF!

Note to my players: I may consider using this, but I'd replace the listed prereqs to "Magery 3, IQ 13+ and spells from 10 different colleges." Why? Really limits it to dedicated wizards, not to guys who pick up some wizardry just to teleport.

GURPS & resistance to non-magic weapons

One thing I use in my current DF game is creatures who cannot be easily hurt by non-magical weapons.

Lucky for me, GURPS lets me customize this in a few ways right out of the box. I do two, primarily.

Resistance to non-magic weapons. Some monsters I use can't be hurt willy-nilly with non-magical attacks. How I generally do this is some form of Injury Tolerance (Damage Reduction), with an Achilles' heel of weapons with the Puissance enchantment. The Damage Reduction level depends on the creature - /10 isn't uncommon, and for effectively immune ones I'll give them /100 or better, with Cosmic (drop all fractions) (GURPS Supers) to ensure it zeroes out.

This allows for truly massive blows to hurt them - but it's not easy. You can squish a wight by dropping the ceiling on it, maybe, or a golem might be able to tear it limb from limb, but it's not easy to kill it by beating it with a club. Better get a magic club.

This extends to physical manifestation of magic, in some cases, but not in others. Some creatures might also shrug off fireballs and lightning and stone missiles, while others might not. It depends on their overall trait list.

This can get confusing, though - my players have asked "Is my sword with Accuracy +1 a magic weapon for purposes of hurting (wights/gargoyles/whatever)?" "Is my broadsword with Flaming Weapon magic? It worked on those wights!"

My simple answer is no. It's Puissance that matters. That's what makes a weapon "magic" in my games for purposes of bypassing resistance to non-magical weapons. It's the enchantment that increases basic damage and I figure it's damage we are talking about. If the weapon lacks Puissance, it's not magical for these purposes, sorry.

False clues exist, though - wights clearly suffer from fire, so that's why the flaming broadsword worked on them pretty well. Not because it was a magic item, but because it was fire.

Can only be slain by magic weapons. This one is even easier to do - it's either Unkillable 1, 2 or 3 plus an Achilles' heel, or Supernatural Durability with an Achilles' heel. Either way, if you deal the death blow with a magic weapon, it's dead. Otherwise, lacking the Damage Reduction from above, it's just as easy to hurt as anything else with the same traits.

I'm generally stingy about the death blow. You can't beat everything to death then go around whacking the twitching remnants with a Puissance +1 sword and call it a death blow. It's got to be the actual blow that takes the creature to -5xHP or forces a death check that it fails. This gets to the heart of what I figure this represents - some kind of supernatural key that unlocks the mortality of the creature. You can't just willy-nilly throw it in at the end (or the beginning - cut it with a magic sword and then finish it with non-magic ones). You have to do the right thing at the right time or it doesn't matter if you did it at all. It's either very mystical, or it's like getting into the BIOS screen during bootup - oops, sorry, missed it. Wait until it's fully up and then try again.

The first of these works well for things you just can't easily hurt - or hurt at all - without magical weaponry. The second works for things you can hurt just fine (usually anyway) but won't stay dead until you break the supernatural attachment to existence that they have.


Hey, neither of these are immunity! Well, no. GURPS makes damage immunity pretty hard to come by. Immunity is effectively infinite DR vs. a given damage type, and infinite power is hard to define in finite points. You can do it, but I prefer not to, not for damage anyway. It avoids weird circumstances like dropping a wight down a 1000' pit and it takes no damage because the floor isn't magical (or silver, or on fire, or whatever). I find it makes for a "do it the hard way, or do it the easy way" split with monsters. You can still brute force your way through these guys with a non-magical weapon, but in the first case it'll be brutally hard and in the second case you can't solve the problem permanently.

I hope these are useful to folks who like a little bit of AD&D-ish immunity in their games.