New Dawn: Anticipation

Precis: I'm starting my new mass battles fantasy game tonight and reflecting on some decisions and campaign features while I wait.

I'm running the first session of New Dawn tonight. As usual, I'm excited about the start of a new game but can't do much about it until the game actually starts. So I'll post some thoughts about it.

Zero to Hero in 1.4 seconds

I don't normally like Zero to Hero style games. They're an RPG convention, for reasons good and bad, but I prefer starting with more experienced heroes that are comparatively static. On the player side, I like playing the character I want to play at the start of the game, not having to wait for several sessions for the character to grow into my desired concept. On the GM side, static characters from the start of the game make it easier to plot challenges since the character abilities don't change. Similarly, record keeping is easier because the characters don't change much.

New Dawn is a Zero to Hero game. But it's a Zero to Hero game with a turbo-supercharger and nitrous oxide. The first fight of the first session pits the PCs wearing leather armor and wielding stone weapons against an orc patrol in heavy plate armor with good steel weapons. I expect it will be a brutal fight, and only the facts that the PCs have advantage in numbers and skill and set up an ambush will allow them to triumph. But after that first fight, the PCs will have heavy plate armor and good steel weapons. Within short order - hopefully at the end of the first session or the second at the latest - they'll be lords of a collection of little villages. And by the third or fourth session, they'll start getting fine weapons and armor as they become the lords of county and collecting the tax income from 30000 people. It's a very fast ramp up.

Your Money Is Meaningless

One of the odd consequences of a military game is that money is somewhat meaningless on a personal scale. The cost of outfitting a single squad of standard Medium Infantry - the backbone of the armies - is $30K, which normally in Dungeon Fantasy is the kind of money you find at the end of a fairly successful delve. The PCs can expect to outfit hundreds, if not thousands, of Medium Infantry squads over the course of the game. One less Medium Infantry squad isn't going to effect the outcome of the mid-game battles, but it's enough money to give a single PC some very high quality gear. Similarly, the cost of buying a single war elephant is $400K, which buys a full set of very high end armor. It wouldn't be unreasonable for the PCs to get forty war elephants (Hannibal had that many during the Punic Wars), or to get 30 or so and have everyone wearing the best armor money can buy.

As part of the game is supposed to include Dungeon Fantasy style delving, this is going to be a weird dynamic. The vast wealth from totally looting a typical dungeon isn't enough to buy a the horses and armor for a squadron of heavy cavalry, and delving isn't as profitable as sitting around for a couple of months and letting the tax money roll in. There might be other reasons to delve, such as finding lost forgotten magics or acquiring military units that can't be found any other way, but money isn't a motivator.

I could come up with some kind of complicated rule that limited how much tax money the PCs could spend on themselves, but I'd rather embrace the dynamic. It's part of the Zero to Hero in 1.4 seconds concept: the PCs aren't going to spend much time grubbing for gear.

Troupe Style Play

I originally wanted to have a single character per player, but my players ganged up on me and decided they wanted two characters apiece. That way, everyone could get the role they wanted, even with a lot of overlap in roles. Each player can only have one active character at a time, in general, though that rule is going to be relaxed at times.

Another element of troupe style play is bit parts for players. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but there are going times when one or two PCs are the focus of the action and rather than leave all the other players with nothing to do, they're going to get bit parts. The most obvious instance of this will be Detailed Actions in the Mass Combat minigame, when a single PC gets to fight a little melee with the assistance of his bodyguards or whatever, but I expect I'll do the same when one of the spies needs to infiltrate a castle and non-stealthy PCs need to be left behind. People without characters appropriate for infiltration will get to play some sneaky bit parts. Who knows? If a bit part gets enough screen time, it might become a low point value PC permanently.

Disadvantages That Bite

Another thing that's come up while preparing for the game is that there a lot of disadvantages that are normally free points but that, in the context of a military game, are much more likely to hurt. Several people took Pacifism: Cannot Harm Innocents, which in my Dungeon Fantasy games is normally such a weak disadvantage that it should really be a quirk. It just doesn't come up much. In a military game, it has teeth: you have to avoid collateral damage, it's hard to besiege a town (starving innocent town folk is definitely forbidden), and even starting a war with a neutral party in order to get access to a needed resource isn't allowed. I like the change, but I was surprised by the number of PCs that took Pacifism: Cannot Harm Innocents and I'm curious how it will work out in play. Soldier's Code of Honor, another disadvantage that several PCs, has similar restrictions.

A Multinational Approach

I swear I didn't suggest this or really do much to encourage it, but as it worked out, the PCs come from a multitude of races and nations that, while generally agreeing to defeat the evil Empire, have their own agendas. This obviously sets up some plot hooks down the road and meshes with some of my hidden plans, but wasn't planned by me. Currently, the group includes a fae, some humans, a kobold, a minotaur, and a squallite (a kind of wood-elf thing), with possibly one more race in +Uhuk of the Guard's second character.

I'm somewhat surprised that the "normal" non-human races aren't present. There aren't any dwarves, elves, or halflings, though minotaur, fae, and kobold are all conceptually similar. That might just be a side effect of the kind of people I game with. It simplified some things for me, though, in terms of long term campaign planning.

Cast of Characters

The full list of characters is on the wiki, but here's a quick summary:
Hloomawl: +Uhuk of the Guard's minotaur champion/herald.
Nesta: +Eric Schmidt's human spymaster/thief.
Trahaern: +Eric Schmidt's human general/trapper.
Michael: +Eilmyn Davidson's squallite scout.
Skyler: +Eilmyn Davidson's human champion/war captain.
Aisling: +Kevin Smyth's fae nymph ambassador/war captain.
Ariana: +Kevin Smyth's human priest.
Greex: Kiara's kobold spymaster/thief.
Nayla: Kiara's human imbued scout.

Greex was original one of Kevin's concepts, but Kiara liked the idea and took the character. Uhuk is supposedly making a sorcerer but I haven't seen anything yet.

It's a pretty good mix. I'm a little sad that there are two spymaster/thief characters, but it's a reasonable combination so I can't really blame people. I also wish there were more spellcaster types, but neither Divine Favor nor Sorcery are particularly effective with only 50 points to start so I can't blame people for skipping those roles.

I'm excited, and really looking forward to tonight's session.

And now for something completely different: Thyroid Surgery Preparation

Yes, I paid someone a lot of money to
cut my own throat, thank you very much.

I haven't been posting much recently for a variety of reasons, but the big one is that I was diagnosed with papillary thyroid cancer in late June and had my thyroid removed on July 8th. The surgery took 12 hours and my energy levels dropped like a rock post-surgery, which means I haven't been awake enough to play any RPGs since then.

Anyway, I'm fine now, or at least, as fine as I can be without my thyroid. But I'm hijacking my own blog because I want to make some notes on a patient's experience with a total thyroidectomy and I found the existing material to be rather sparse.

Preparing for a Total Thyroidectomy

1. Get some bloodwork done. Ideally, you should have bloodwork going back a couple of years with your TSH, free T3, and free T4 levels, but even a bloodwork taken the moment you got the ultrasound of a suspicious tumor in your neck is going to be useful. Basically, after a total thyroidectomy, you and your endocrinologist are going to be experimenting with synthetic T4 and synthetic T3 tablets to determine how much you need to feel healthy and well and not be hypothyroid or hyperthyroid. If you have some numbers personal to yourself to aim for, that's going to be better than just aiming for "within the normal range" which is apparently pretty broad and doesn't suit a lot of people.
   
2. Find out if you're going to have drains. Drains are flexible plastic tubes that pierce your skin and then hang outside your body and feed into little plastic collection bottles and let various gross fluids drain from the inside of your neck into the bottles. Drains are also a huge pain in the ass. The piercings are painful in and of themselves and the bottles have to be carried around, and you have to sleep with your head elevated as long as the drains are in. If you're going to have drains, bring a fanny pack to the hospital so you can carry the drains hands-free and get a wedge pillow or two so it's easy to sleep with your head elevated when you get home.
3. Do all the prep work recommended by your hospital. You'll be under general anesthesia so go in with an empty stomach and don't drink any fluids for at least 8 hours before the surgery, etc. The hospital will give you a list of things to do. Read it, do it.
4. Bring a pair of shorts to the hospital. After the surgery, you'll be in a stupid hospital gown but you'll be expected to get up and walk around some. Wear some shorts under the gown so you can walk around without having to worry about flashing everyone. I didn't remember to bring a fanny pack but I did bring shorts and it simplified walking around so much.
5. Bring comfortable blankets and pillows from home. Hospital blankets are awful and hospital pillows aren't much better. Bring a comfortable blanket from home to minimize discomfort. If you've spent any time optimizing your pillows at home, bring them too so you benefit from that optimization.
6. Bring reading material. You will be bored at some points, so have books or a tablet/smartphone with the Kindle reader on it, whatever you prefer. A laptop is probably overkill and hospitals don't make it easy to plug them in.
7. Contact friends and family and invite them to visit you in the hospital. Human contact will cheer you up.
   

The experience of a total thyroidectomy

My experience went something like this:

1. Home: Got up stupid early, even for me, and showered and went to the hospital.
2. Hospital Reception: Paperwork and waiting.
3. Surgery prep: changed into a hospital gown, got an IV tube in my arm, met some nurses.
4. Surgery room: Got transferred to the OR. Anesthesiologist gave me some anesthesia. Went to sleep.
5. Recovery room: Woke up 14 hours later after an abnormally and stupidly long surgery. Got told everything was fine. Didn't feel any pain because of morphine.
6. Hospital Room: Went back to a sleep for two hours before the morphine wore off. Started feeling a lot of pain. More morphine. I couldn't sit up because trying made my neck hurt too much. Eventually I discovered that if I forced my way past the pain, could sit up normally or at angle without pain. Adjusted hospital bed so I could sit up properly. Recovery begins.

A lot of people with a diagnosis of thyroid cancer have a lot of anxiety about the surgery, but in practice, it's fairly boring until the doctors put you under, and then you're asleep and don't notice anything. There's really not much to be anxious about. There's stuff to prepare, but the actual procedure, from a patient's point of view, is over pretty quickly.

Next Posting

I'll write up the most recent session of After the End soon, and then this blog will probably alternate gaming stuff and thyroid cancer posts for a bit.

After the End and the problem of Armor Stats

I recently bought the new GURPS PDF "After the End: Wastelanders." It's a character creation book for post-apocalypse games, and +Douglas Cole and +Peter V. Dell'Orto have reviewed it at Gaming Ballistic and Dungeon Fantastic.

I found it interesting, and started experimenting with creating some characters. That quickly led to equipping the characters, which led to the problem of "which set of armor stats to use?" Now I'm stuck until I can answer that question.

GURPS has multiple sets of armor stats. Here's the major ones I'm aware of:

• The Basic book stats: These are the recommended stats for After the End. They're too light for low-tech textiles, incorrectly have leather weighing less than layered cloth for the same protection, and have the odd property that metal armor weighs more per point of DR than cloth armor does. They bother me too much to use them.
• The Low-Tech stats: supposedly painstakingly researched, these stats are too heavy to be worthwhile in most games, except for plate harness (and to a lesser extent brigantine) which is better in every way but cost. On the plus side, cloth weighs less than leather, and metal weighs less per point of DR than cloth or leather. Sadly, these don't play well with the next set.
• The High-Tech stats: researched by getting weights and costs out of a catalog, which is great until you have to figure out how much coverage and actual protection a PASGT vest actually provides. On a $/DR and lb/DR basis, the numbers are all over the map, and these can't really can't be used to extrapolate to cover other armor locations. Also, there are oddities with respect to the Low-Tech stats, like some WWI vintage metal armor being noticeable worse than Renaissance plate harness.
• David Pulver's Armor Design System (ADS): Contained in two articles in Pyramid, this covers all armor types from leather hides to titanium-ceramic nanocomposite plate. It's unfortunately difficult to use, since you calculate the square footage that the armor covers and then work out the cost and weight from that, but I could (in theory) rejigger it into a BFA style system where each armor has a $/DR and lb/DR value and then you multiply by coverage. Unfortunately, I think David based some of his values on the Basic Book stats, so those annoy me, and there are other oddities like iron segmented plate weighing and costing more than iron scale/lamellar for the same protection. 
• My own Better Fantasy Armor: I like BFA a lot, since it's a straightforward way to create a variety of armors, and it's explicitly set up so that weak leather/cloth armor has a manageable weight and heavy plate harness weighs a sane amount. Unfortunately, it lets people wear way too much DR for not enough weight. This was intentional, so that people could wear enough DR to handle GURPS' overinflated damage from swung weapons, but after playing with it for several months in Castle of Horrors, I don't think it plays nicely with firearms, which makes it unsuitable for an ATE game.

You'd think with five options one of them would work for me, but apparently not.

Currently, I'm working on "Easier Armor Design", which is currently several spreadsheets and most of GCA file. It's an attempt to reconcile ADS with Low-Tech, seasoned with a bit of BFA and some sensible values. It is not going as well as I'd like, and I'm having to accept that a fair bit of the numbers are just going to SWAG'd or massaged to get values that I like. Which takes away the purity of adapting ADS to the simpler, BFA format.

My current struggle is how to handle high-tech and ultra-tech armors like Titanium-Steel Alloy plate harness or polymer nanocomposite lamellar suits. My initial plan was to treat them as material modifiers for iron plate or iron scale armor entries, but the math gets a bit wonky (in the sense that the cost ratio between Ti-Steel Alloy scale and TL6 steel scale is not near the cost ratio between Ti-Steel alloy plate and TL6 steel plate). Now I'm thinking about having separate entries for all of them, but that's like another 15 -30 entries for things like "Fiberglass lamellar" or "Plastic plate" and that may not be reasonable, nor readable. So now I'm stuck until I can resolve that conundrum.

I also need to write up the various flexible armors, which is mostly problematic because some of the less advanced materials are just better than the more advanced armors.

Basically, I'm still thinking and trying to write about GURPS, but I'm nerd-wrestling a bunch of numbers without much success.

Table Talk: How Much is Too Much?

+Peter V. Dell'Orto at Dungeon Fantastic posted on his approach to rules arguments in play, and I received some email feedback on my last session. And that got me thinking about the various gaming groups I'm in, and how much time we spend talking about the game, or arguing about rules, or just shooting the breeze during the time we could be gaming. It makes me wonder how much is too much? Should any off-topic talk be forbidden?

Edit: Joe at the Collaborative Gamer shared his views on this topic, too, and +Christopher R. Rice at Ravens N' Pennies talks about dealing with rules lawyers.

Types of Off-Topic Talk

I have a feeling that not all types of off-topic talk are equal, and different types should be tolerated at the table in different amounts.  Rules arguments are different than rules discussions are different than meta-game discussions are different than general chatter.

Rules Arguments: Repeated back and forth between player and GM about the rules for the game is generally unpleasant for the actual participants and any bystanders. Peter has a firm "hell no" rule against it, which seems to work for him, I guess. Rules arguments aren't something I like at my table, but I empathize with a player who wants to understand how the rules work and have them consistently applied so I'm not firm about cutting off rules arguments.

Rules Discussions: My online group has a bunch of rules tinkerers in it, and when the rules don't work right or unclear, there's sometimes a discussion of what to do about them. Often times, its "hey +Doug, how is Technical Grappling supposed to handle THIS," followed by a lamentation that the Technical Grappling playtest didn't spend enough time dealing with Spheres of Madness grappling SM -1 quadrapeds when the whole fight is happening at the bottom of a lake. Sometimes, this kind of discussion is necessary and fruitful, and sometimes it's a big waste of time that should be revisited in email. I don't have an easy way to tell which way the discussion is going (or if its going to turn into a rules argument), so it's hard to say whether I should cut this kind of stuff of earlier than I do. Peter's blanket rule makes more sense to me as I reflect on it: it's a bright line in a murky area.

Meta-Game Discussions: Talk about play style, or scheduling, or other things outside the game but related to it. I generally try to clamp down on this stuff, since it's better to use limited play time to play than to talk about playing, but I also think it's better that people are engaged and talking about the game rather than watching a movie or whatever. Sometimes I deliberately end the game a little early and initiate a discussion about this kind of stuff. It's helpful to get feedback in real-time.

Off-Topic Chatter: Depending on the group, this can be a huge distraction or more important than the actual game. My boardgames group, made up of some former co-workers that get together irregular at a Friendly Local Games Store, is much more about the chatter than the game: we're friends, but we don't see each other much, so games night is a reason to get together and socialize. My online group uses text chat for this kind of stuff, and that's pretty successful, and I don't feel bad about clamping down on off-topic chatter for that reason.

Changing the Table Style

So in the groups I run, there's a fair bit of rules discussion and (unfortunately) some rules arguments. I don't like the latter, but I'm torn about the former: I enjoy that stuff, and I suspect some other people do too, but it's also a distraction from the game that annoys some of the other people. I'm not sure there's a consensus, one way or the other, and I'm entirely sure that I don't want to have to be the conversation monitor for a group of my peers just because I volunteered to sit in the GM's chair.

I guess this one of those things that needs to be put into an explicit social contract, except that the act of writing down an explicit social contract seems to go against the implicit social contract of "we're all peers, adults, and friends, and shouldn't need to hire a lawyer to enjoy an evening." Assuming that's the implicit social contract and not just my projecting my feelings out onto the group at large.

I don't really have a conclusion. Every group is different, and everyone is going to have a different view about what to do. I'm learning more and more toward Peter's approach of "no rules arguments," simply because it's a bright line that's (hopefully) easy to enforce.

The cycle of miniatures painting

1. Receive a new load of unpainted miniatures from a game, a random purchase on E-bay, another Reaper Bones kickstarter, or from a gift (ha!) from a friend, and realize that the backlog is only increasing and the only way to make it manageable is to paint some miniatures.
2. Select a dozen figures and think about how amazing they're going to look when they're completed. Contemplate possible paint schemes.
3. Realize in the months since the last round of painting, several more bottles of paint have dried out or sealed their lids. Curse. Revise paint schemes to reflect available colors.
4. Prepare the figures. When painting metal figures, attempt to prime them without holding the spray bottle too far away and accidentally dusting them. Fail. Decide that the sanding is on a non-critical part, like chainmail or a furry cloak, even if it's really on the princess figure's satiny looking dress.

5. First pass at blocking out major areas with colors. Make sure to splotch dark paint on areas that will be later painted with bright colors. Realize the figures look like crap. Despair and contemplate a hobby more suited to innate talents and skills, such as counting lima beans.
6. Second pass at blocking out major areas with colors. Go over previous dark splotches with light grey paint and then the bright color. Splotch some of the dark bits with light colors. Notice a flash line that should have been cleaned up before priming and try to clear it with an x-acto knife without destroying the rest of the paint job.
7. Touch-up the major areas and do some preliminary dry-brushing. Notice that aside from the unpainted detail areas (belts, pouches, boots, gloves) and finishing the skin and hair, the figure actually looks pretty good right now.
8. Go through the finicky process of painting the detail areas with a fine tip brush. Get slightly cross-eyed. Curse the finicky detail and once again vow that next time, all this stuff is just going to get painted black and to heck with proper contrast.
9. Notice while doing the detail bits that there's an area under the figure's arm pit or leg that should have been painted in a color but that was left white. Swear again. Paint that little area, accidentally overstaining the adjacent areas and get an uneven color effect that is nearly impossible to fix.

10. Apply the flesh tone base and wait for it to dry. Apply the flesh tone wash and wait for it to dry, which it does unevenly as usual. Apply the flesh tone dry brush and notice the figure is looking really good. Paint the eyeballs with white. Repaint the area around the eyeballs in flesh tone, thereby obliterating the wash and the drybrush. Use a technical pen to do the eyebrows and pupils. Notice the figure is a little cross-eyed but lack the patience to redo the entire face from scratch to fix it.
11. Paint the hair with a dark base. Drybrush with a lighter highlight. Realize that there's almost no tint difference between the two and re-drybrush with an even lighter tone. In the process, accidentally strip off the not entirely dry drybrush and base coat, revealing the primer. Swear again. Repaint the hair's base coat. Let it dry. Drybrush again with a color that has too much tint difference and looks vaguely unnatural. Despair. Notice that some of the drybrush got on the face and despair again.
12. Realize that the paint on the figure's toes got worn off during all the handling. Consider picking up another hobby like a normal person. Touch up the toes instead.
13. Consider lacquering the figure now, but realize that its 100 degrees outside. Put it off until fall.

14. Quickly base the figure with globs of green paint. Notice that the foot to base boundary is pretty uneven, and consider fixing it, but decide against starting an endless cycle of painting foot and base to get the lines perfect.
15. Throw the figure onto a shelf with the other figures waiting for lacquering. Feel proud about how good it actually looks with all the colors complete, and then sad because it could look better if it'd been painted by someone with some skills.
16. Contemplate starting another set of figures. Realize none of them are especially compelling right now. Get distracted by a video game or novel.
17. Return to step 1.

Why yes, my Sentinels Tactics figures arrived this week. Why do you ask?

So Where Have I Been?

So it's been almost 4 months since I last updated my blog. I'm not particularly going to apologize, since I don't feel I did anything wrong, but I will say what's been up in my life.

In November, I finally got Skyrim, and that game got me addicted for quite some time. It's a fun game, and the various Dragonshouts make for a nice change of pace from the usual melee/archery/magic options of the Elder Scroll games.

On December 19, my employer Calxeda announced they were shutting down on December 20th. This was not the happiest Christmas announcement I'd ever heard. On the plus side, it mostly killed my Skyrim addiction. On the minus side, the Christmas vacation is not the best time to find health insurance and start searching for a job.

January was spent searching for a job. Happily, that was successful and I started at my new outfit during the first week of February.

Since then, I've still been playing a little GURPS, both face to face and online, and a lot of my new favorite game: Sentinels of the Multiverse (SotM)! It's a solo or co-op game of superheroes and supervillains. It's absolutely fabulous. I'll be adding some SotM posts to this blog.

I don't know how much I'll be posting in the future, but I'll try to add stuff when I have something to say.

My Bones Came Today

So like a lot of people, I participated in the Reaper Bones kickstarter. I already have lots of miniatures, so I was less interested in the random goblins, orcs, and generic adventurers, and more interested in the chance to get some of the larger miniatures cheaply. I was hoping to get the order in March, when I'd have time to paint them, instead of in June, when I'm overwhelmed at work and playing Borderlands 2 in my not particular lycopious spare time (hence the lack of updates here).

Anyway, my Bones arrived today and after an hour or two I've finished preliminary sorting. I tossed most of the stuff I already have a lot of back into the box: all the orcs, armored warriors, and the like. I separated out the stuff I plan to paint: the hydra, the three griffins, the two large demons, the two giants, the giant skeleton, the fourteen lizardmen and fishmen, the eleven modern day figures, a half dozen small demons, another six golems, and the transparent green and red figures. That's already over fifty figures, and a month or more worth of painting even at my best speed.

The ironic bit is that my group has been playing narrative games recently, and detailed tactical maps and miniatures aren't really necessary.

If I get done this batch, there's a couple of sprues of kobolds I'd like to paint, along with some extra lightly armored warriors, the pirates and townsfolk, and some other miscellaneous figures that caught my eye. And if I somehow get all that done, I should probably tackle my backlog of unfinished metal miniature projects.

It all sounds like so much work. I guess I'll go play Borderlands 2 instead.

My character died, so I created a new one

I took a gamble and it didn't pay off, so now I have to try something else.

The Experiment

My character in Nate's online game, Brother Michel, was always something of an experiment. When our group got together and starting making characters, we have various innovative concepts but no wizard and only one Holy Warrior. I firmly believe that all delving bands need at least two people with healing capability and at least one wizard for utility spells (Shape Earth, Analyze Magic) and to kill diffuse enemies with area effect attacks. So the experiment was, can a single character do both roles well?

In practice, the answer was pretty much "no". Although wizards and clerics have a lot of synergy, having to buy Magery twice (once for Power Investiture and once straight) was crippling expensive. It wasn't cost-efficient to buy high levels of Cleric! or Wizard!, since more IQ raised both of them and all my spells. I couldn't really afford Energy Reserve for both power sources, and it wasn't obvious which one I should favor. Although I had a lot of utility, I burnt through paut potions like nobodies' business and still had to spend a lot of time resting.

(As an aside, I think I screwed up in the design. As a cleric, there's a temptation to be a decent second-line warrior, so I picked up a glaive and dumped a lot of points in it so I could get the Grip and Reach Mastery perks. I think I would have been much better off being a non-combatant with a staff, which would have freed up a lot of points. I almost never contributed anything to combat by direct damage).

The Gamble

All that said, I think Michel was a decent enough member of the group and was certainly capable of contributing, both in and out of combat. So while I would have preferred to have a dedicated wizard and a dedicated cleric, the combo of the two covered the bases. That wasn't the gamble.

The gamble was not upgrading my el-cheapo armor and hoping to find some magical full plate. I knew that we were playing a Pathfinder adventure, and I hoped we'd find some good armor at some point. I bought the best armor I could afford out of the gate, but since we were on fixed budgets and using the Low-Tech armor rules (with no cheap magic!), that meant a cheap Plate and Mail breastplate with a cheap light mail backside. Combined with my half-dwarven  tough skin, I had a reasonable DR5 from the front and DR3 against most attacks in the back. Don't get stabbed in the back, that was the plan.

Of course, we started fighting ninja. In the original adventure, I think the ninja would be dangerous but not too awful - they'd get a lot of sneak attacks for minor extra damage, but they wouldn't have insanely high hit chances. In GURPS, the ninja were murder, popping up behind our characters and making all-out attacks into our vitals. Michel had gone down from vital hits on two previous occasions, so I guess it was just a matter of time.

In this case, Michel got stabbed from behind. His weak armor failed to significantly absorb the damage, and he failed his first death check and was mortally wounded. While Brother Cadmus can heal injury, he's not a surgeon, so there was no one to fix the problem. (Kevin offered to have his character default Surgery off First Aid and use her shortsword as an improvised tool, but I declined.)

So now Brother Michel is dead. It's a little ironic, since I based him on Brother Anheuser, a half-dwarf wizard/cleric in Michael Walewski's D&D game way back in 1991, and Brother Anheuser is the only other character of mine that I can remember dying in play.

The Problem of Roles

So I need a new character for Nate's game. But the delving band still needs a utility wizard and a cleric. I noodled over this a bit last night, and came to some conclusions:

• Demonologists and necromancers are in no way utility wizards, and I don't want to play one anyway.
• Elementalists are just pared down wizards without the utility of Knowledge spells.
• Shamans suck, and while my revised shamans are better, they still lack some of the useful Knowledge spells.
• I should fix that.
• There's no point in playing a wizard-cleric again.
• Since I'm the main person paying attention to tactics in the group, I want to play someone with some legitimate tactical skill.

Someone suggested Mystic Knight, but Mystic Knights are blasters and warriors, not utility wizards. On the other hand, a lot of utility spells are cast out of combat, and Nate's houserules on magic make it somewhat viable to cast non-combat spells with low skill levels. I mulled this over a bit more, and decided that a Mystic Knight/Wizard would make a reasonable out-of-combat utility wizard, while still having a lot of front line combat ability, tactical leadership, and diffuse-foe blasting ability.

I played around with the idea and whipped up something. His current background is a bit vague, deliberately so. I'm going with the idea that the character was a Tianese bushi, serving the Amatatsu family in Minkai way back in the backstory of the adventure, decades ago. He was sent ahead when the Amatatsu family fled through Kalsgard, captured by ninja, and placed in suspended animation. His memories have faded over the decades, and now he really remembers very little of just about anything. This is a convenient dodge so that Nate doesn't have to spoil a bunch of the backstory that we'd otherwise learn through future adventures.

Here's the character write-up I sent to Nate, modulo some tweaks in the quirks I made this morning. I still need to clean up the equipment list a bit, and there may be some more tweaks based on some questions I have for Nate, but this is where I'm starting.

Shiba Ujimitsu, The Failed Student

310 points

ST 14 [40]; DX 14 [80]; IQ 11* [20]; HT 14 [40].
Damage 1d/2d; BL 39 lb; HP 14 [0]; Will 11 [0]; Per 11 [0]; FP 14 [0].
Basic Speed 7.00 [0]; Basic Move 7 [0]; Dodge 10.
5'6"; 160 lbs.

Social Background

TL: 3 [0]. Languages: Taldan (Accented/None) [0]; Tianese (Native) [0]; Trade Tongue (Broken/None) [0].

Advantages

Destiny (Minor) [5]; Extra Arms 1 (Force Extension; Magic; Weapon Mount) [6]; Imbue 3 (Magical) [36]; Magery 0 [5]; Magery 3 [30].
Perks: Grip Mastery (Broadsword; _Free); Quick-Sheathe (Sword; _Free); Sacrificial Parry (Broadsword; _Free); Shield-Wall Training (_Free); Strongbow (_Free); Style Familiarity (Knightly Mounted Combat - Early Medieval; _Free); Style Familiarity (Kyujutsu; _Free). [7]

Disadvantages

Chummy [-5]; Code of Honor (Xia) [-10]; Disciplines of Faith (Arcane Rituals) [-10]; Sense of Duty (Adventuring companions) [-5]; Sense of Duty (Current Client) [-2].
Quirks: Distinctive Feature: Eyes glow and emit glowing smoke when exciting; Distinctive Feature: His words appear as Tianese glyphs as he speaks; Social drinker; _Unused Quirk 4; _Unused Quirk 5. [-5]

Skills

Alchemy/TL3 (VH) IQ-2 [2]-9; Annihilating Weapon (Broadsword) (VH) DX [1]-14†; Armoury/TL3 (Body Armor) (A) IQ+2 [0]-13; Armoury/TL3 (Melee Weapons) (A) IQ+2 [0]-13; Blinding Defense (Shield) (VH) DX [1]-14†; Bow (A) DX+1 [4]-15; Boxing (A) DX+2 [0]-16; Broadsword (A) DX+2 [0]-16; Carousing (E) HT [1]-14; Climbing (A) DX-1 [1]-13; Fast-Draw (Arrow) (E) DX [1]-14; Fast-Draw (Sword) (E) DX [1]-14; Guided Weapon (Bow) (VH) DX [1]-14†; Intimidation (A) Will+2 [0]-13; Knight! (WC) DX+2 [48]-16; Leadership (A) IQ+2 [0]-13; Conic Blast (Bow) (VH) DX [1]-14†; Occultism (A) IQ-1 [1]-10; Penetrating Strike (Bow) (VH) DX [1]-14†; Penetrating Strike (Broadsword) (VH) DX [1]-14†; Project Blow (Broadsword) (VH) DX [1]-14†; Savoir-Faire (High Society) (E) IQ [1]-11; Shattershot (Bow) (VH) DX [1]-14†; Shield (Shield) (E) DX+2 [0]-16; Stealth (A) DX-1 [1]-13; Tactics (H) IQ+2 [0]-13; Telescoping Weapon (Broadsword) (VH) DX [1]-14†; Thaumatology (VH) IQ+1 [2]-12†; Vampiric Weapon (Broadsword) (VH) DX [1]-14†; Wrestling (A) DX+2 [0]-16.

Spells

Analyze Magic (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Apportation (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Continual Light (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Create Air (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Detect Magic (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Grease (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Haste (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Identify Spell (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Light (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Purify Air (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Shape Air (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†; Walk on Air (H) IQ+1 [1]-12†.

Footnotes

* Conditional -1 from 'Chummy' when alone.
† Includes +3 from 'Magery'.

Equipment

1× Dai-Kyu (ST 16; $900; 4 lb);

1× Katana (Balanced; $3250; 5 lb);

1× Kite Shield (Balanced; Fine; $1680; 13.5 lb);

1× White Harness consisting of

• 1× Light Plate Armor Components (Forearms, Feet, Hands, Shins, Back Thighs, Back Torso; Advanced; ~Fortify (All) (+1); ~Lighten (All) (x3/4); $3500; 10.05 lb);
• 1× Medium Plate Armor Components (Shoulders, Upper Arms, Neck, Front Knees, Front Thighs, Front Torso; Advanced; ~Fortify (All) (+1); ~Lighten (All) (x3/4); $5150; 15 lb);
• 1× Medium Plate Helm (Head; Advanced; ~Fortify (All) (+1); ~Lighten (All) (x3/4); $1650; 4.5 lb);
• 2× Medium Plate Vitals Reinforcement (Front Vitals and Back Vitals; Advanced; ~Lighten (All) (x3/4); $700; 1.5 lb);

1× Potion Belt ($60; 1 lb).

Encumbrance

None: Basic Lift 39 lb. Ground Move 7 yd; Water Move 1 yd. Dodge 10.
[Light]: Basic Lift 78 lb. Ground Move 5 yd; Water Move 1 yd. Dodge 9.

Defenses

Parry: 11 (Knight!). Block: 11 (Shield (Shield)). Dodge: 9/10.

Armor: Eyes: DR 7; HP 2. Neck: DR 7. Skull: DR 9. Face: DR 7. Torso: DR 7 (13 vitals). Groin: DR 7. Arms: DR 7 (4 forearms); HP 8. Hands: DR 4; HP 5. Legs: DR 4 (7 front thighs); HP 8. Feet: DR 4; HP 5.

Weapons Attacks

Katana • 1H Swing (17): 2d+1 cut. Reach 1, 2 or 1H Thrust (17): 1d+1 imp. Reach 1.
Kite Shield • Bash (17): 1d cr. Reach 1 or Rush (17): slam+3 cr. Reach 1.

Dai-Kyu ST 16 (15): 1d+4 imp. Acc 3. Range 320 yd / 400 yd. RoF 1. Shots 1(2).

Comments on the Design

One problem in GURPS is that people with shields generally can't use bows, because it takes too long to drop a bow and ready a shield. Shiba here gets around that problem by having a magical third arm to hold his shield. Ideally, in a ranged combat, he'll snipe a bit (using Guided Weapon (Bow), Shattershot (Bow), Conic Attack (Bow)) while covering the Scout with his shield. He's also fairly effective at killing diffuse opponents, because Conic Attack (Bow) lets him make area effect impaling attacks. Diffuse opponents generally don't have much armor, and 1d+4 imp averages 15 injury. He can also throw in a Shattershot to add some shrapnel to the effect (arguably; I need a ruling from Nate).

As a melee fighter, he's limited by so-so skill for a front-line fighter, but Projected Penetrating strikes give him a nice opening attack (2d+1 (2) cu damage at up to 10 yards...) I also need a ruling from Nate as to whether I can treat Projected Strikes as a ranged attack for ranged imbuements, in which case I'll start cutting people up with Projected Conic Blasts from my sword.

The equipment is nothing too special, except for the use of Pectorals to give me DR13 for the vitals. Nate has OK'd doing this, though it's unclear if it's book legal. You can't normally layer non-flexible armor but I guess we could make it Heavy Mail at the loss of 1 DR if someone wanted to argue the point.

I made sure he had plenty of Destiny points - 1 general purpose and 4 from Knight!. No more backstabs, thank you very much, and it's not like they'd be all that effective.

Obvious improvements over time: more Magery, Energy Reserve, the Recover Energy spell, possibly a gizmo so he always has at least 1 Paut bottle/session, Combat Reflexes, more imbuements, more DX, more ST, possibly more Will and/or Perception. We'll see how it goes.

I'll certainly have experience when I get around to writing "The Effectiveness of Mystic Knights" in Dungeon Fantasy, though it's helpful to see how two or three different people play a character before writing one of those articles.

Changing the Tide: Welcome to Farshore and Beyond

Welcome to Farshore

In the Savage Tide Adventures Path (STAP), the final episode of the 4th adventure (Here There Be Monsters) segues directly into the opening of the 5th adventure (Tides of Dread). The delvers, having just crossed a significant portion of the Isle of Dread, arrive at the northern colony of Farshore just in time to rescue it from pirates. Cue dramatic music!

My problem with this presentation is that it's a huge pain for me. I've got one session left before our group returns to its normal gaming experience, which in this case is going to be Dungeonworld. There's already the final tedious fight from Fogmire to complete, and I ended on that cliffhanger so I'm pretty much committed to the grindfest versus the nigh-invulnerable golem. This is probably something I should have thought of ahead of time and planned differently. The opening of Tides of Dread is a neat set piece, with the delvers running around town saving people from pirates and probably needing to split up to save everyone in time. I don't really want to cut it, but I don't want to end on a cliffhanger that may never get resolved, nor do I want to start it and then play Dungeonworld for a couple of months and come back to Savage Tide.

Fortunately, there's an easy way to resolve this: postpone the attack. Let the delvers arrive safely in town, and discover the rampant inflation. Having to put up with the inflation for a day or two should make the impact of the town's gratitude for saving them from the pirates more meaningful. It should also give me time to set up some of the role-playing bits and politics without the pressure of recovering from the pirate attack.

And Beyond

STAP covers 12 adventures, but I'm only running about half of them. Some just came off as boring or implausible to me on the read-through, so I'm cutting them. For sure, I've already skipped the first adventure, and I don't intend to run Lightless Depths, which is a weird railroad trip that's hard to explain and not interesting. I'll probably keep City of Broken Idols, which is an expansion of the old Taboo Island from X1: Isle of Dread, though I'll remove a lot of the plot elements that I'm using inconsistently at best (ie, all the references to the demonic pearl factory which ties into the overall "let's kill Demogorgon" storyline that I've been ignoring). The Snakes of Shuttlecove, or whatever the next adventure after that is, bores me to tears, so I'm definitely skipping that.

In summary, my current plans are to run the main plot of Tides of Dread, since it's an interesting sand-boxy sort of story. The delvers have a limited amount of time to explore the Isle of Dread, recruit allies, loot Taboo Island, fortify Farshore, and do other heroic stuff before a pirate fleet comes to raze the colony. Depending on how well the delvers do at looting and fortifying, they may decide to flee back to civilization or defeat the pirate fleet. Either way, we'll pretty much be done with the Isle of Dread (and most of STAP), unless the delvers want to stick around some more and explore more stuff.

At some point, though, they'll be done with the Isle and go back to civilization, turn all their loot into magic items, and become more powerful than I can imagine. Killing orcs and ogres will stop being a challenge at that point, but it seems cruel to not let them play around with their Puissant Fine Balanced Elven Welsh Longbows of Armor-Breaking Accuracy and whatnot. So while I will happily offer to retire the characters at that point, when they refuse, I have a plan.

After Serpents of Shuttlecove, the next STAP adventure Into the Maw. As written, it's a sailing trip into the Abyss and then a prison-break from a demonic prison. It sounds rather insane, and I don't think it's going to work for my group: first, all the delvers are "good" that they won't cut deals with demons, and second, Sister Joan the Saint will have Enhanced Smite by then, and 3d bu damage in a 16 yard radius means that you don't have to cut deals with demons because the demons are all burnt to ash. Reflecting on this reality, I was going to just toss the adventure, but then I had a good idea. Instead of making it a demonic prison in the Abyss, make it an unseelie faerie prison in Faerieland. It should convert over pretty easily, since the difference between "scary scaly demon" and "creepy unseelie nightmare" isn't really that much in concept. But there's nothing objectively evil about bargaining with the fae, even if its often unwise.

So adapting Into the Maw should work as a high level adventure, and high powered unseelie fae make perfectly adequate enemies against 400 point delvers and don't strain credibility at all. The fact that the place is a prison means I can even use some of the demons, since they would be escaped prisoners either way.

The last 3 adventures in STAP are a big war against Demogorgon. I'm not sure how I feel about them, and I'm not sure that even high point delvers are really ready to kill gods. But I can worry about all that next year.

Writing Posts I Would Want to Read

Writing Posts I Would Want To Read... and Then Forgetting I Wrote Them

So for the last day or so, the top article from this blog has been the highly intriguing "The Effectiveness of Bards in Dungeon Fantasy." And I as I wander through my blog-roll and their blog-rolls and sometimes their blog-rolls' blog-rolls, I see an article title that just sounds fascinating to me. And I move my mouse over to click on it and realize that the reason it's so fascinating is because I wrote it in the first place. I also did this all the time for "Fixing the Prices in DF," only I said "doh!" a lot more when I did. Does this happen to anyone else?

Stop Reading the Boring Stuff!

On a possibly related note, the most popular post by page-views on this blog is "Actual Play: Savage Tides Gargoyle Cliffs." I think it's the most popular because +Peter V. Dell'Orto directly linked to it, and his blog is insanely popular. So thanks to Peter for mentioning me, adding me to his blog-roll, and all that. But really, that AP is not one of my better posts; I put it up for content and so I wouldn't forget it. But really, people, please go read the better stuff like the Changing Tides articles (especially the Sargasso Sea), which are more about the design process, or my clever blending of the Ritual Magic system with the grimoires from Ritual Path Magic.

Or keep reading the Actual Play articles - eyeballs and comments are gratefully appreciated, whatever posts they land on!

The Sinking Ruins, a mega (non) dungeon

I'm not a big fan of mega-dungeons. I'm not much of a fan of dungeons, really. I much prefer adventures set in abandoned cities or ruined castles or tangled forests or, well, anything with an open sky above. I'm not claustrophobic, so it's not like I'm afraid of dungeons, I just don't especially enjoy preparing them or playing in them extensively. I think that's a huge part of why Red Hand of Doom is one of my favorite modules: despite being a huge module, there's only two "dungeons" and the three other major set-pieces are an abandoned keep, the ruins of a sunken city, and a town undergoing a siege.

Nevertheless, I've been reading Peter V. Dell'Orto's articles on megadungeons, and a couple of things he's said sound interesting to me. The idea that it's impossible to completely clear the dungeon, or even clear a level, just sounds fascinating to me. Having to make some strategic choices as you enter the dungeon so that you always have a retreat path could be really cool. For various reasons, I don't know if that would work with my current tabletop group, but it could be really neat for the right group.

I'm currently running Savage Tides for my group, nominally in between running things we actually care about. I'm probably going to wrap it up later this year when they complete the Tides of Dread adventure, because after that the adventure rapidly goes to places that I'm pretty sure aren't going to work for my group (ie, literally to Hell, where Sister Joan's intolerance of other religions is not going to play well with the adventure's requirements that you cut deals with demons and devils). So what to run next?

One option would be to heavily adapt the later adventures in Savage Tide so they're workable with the group. I've also been inspired by Peter's reviews of Dragonlance, and it looks like it might be fun to ditch the stupid storyline and convert the early modules into delving sites for a bunch of murder-hobos. Or I could create a mega-dungeon of my own.

The Sinking Ruins

One thing I know I don't like about mega-dungeons is I often have a hard time believing that anyone would build the silly things in the first place. I know there are a few historical examples in history, but they're rare. And since mining is hard, real life examples don't have miles of extraneous corridors and widely spread out rooms, which serve important purposes in a mega-dungeon of making it plausible that the delvers don't fight the entire orc tribe at one time.

So my first problem with creating a megadungeon is coming up with a reason that I can accept for it to exist. And then I remembered that Chicago has been sinking almost since it was founded: the early settlers would periodically reraise the roads and build steps down to their buildings, and then eventually add new levels to the buildings to put them above the roads. There's a similar line about Discworld's Ankh-Morpork, "a fellow with a pick-axe and a good sense of direction could travel anywhere beneath the city by knocking down a few walls." If the mega-dungeon is the ruins of an ancient town that has been sinking into the ground forever, with multiple layers of buildings and roads built up around it, then that's very interesting and plausible for me.

So now I want to flesh out this concept, provide a few more details. Starting at the very bottom, there are some natural caves (I can totally accept natural caves in a mega-dungeon). Maybe a lot of natural caves, or some semi-unnatural caves that people only find by "digging too deep." In order to dig too deep, you've got to dig, so some layers of mines and/or sewers above that; maybe some of the sewers are played out mines. Above that, the original roads and buildings of the city, now buried and having become sub-cellars of the next few rebuildings of the city. I might add a nearby volcano or some other equivalent natural disaster producer, so that the city can have been knocked down or buried a couple of times and rebuilt, radically changing the layout and road plan.

I don't know if I'm going to go any farther in actually fleshing this out. Right now, it's an idea I don't have a huge amount of use for. But it's definitely something to reflect on, should I ever be in a position where I need a mega-dungeon. 

Blogger's Note

I posted twice today, so if you're following a direct link from someone's blog-roll, consider reading Daily Posting, Double Posting.

Also, I've expanded on this article with more detail.

Daily Posting, Double Posting

I've been trying to post more or less daily here. I like the ego boost I get from seeing more page views, and I figure I'm more likely to develop followers and active commentators if there's always regular content.

I didn't manage to post yesterday. I started to write a post, revised it, decided it was crap, and left it sitting in drafts while I rethink the approach. I have two ideas I want to discuss: a) which DF templates work well, and which don't, and why some of the templates need some oomph via house rules or whatever, and b) some suggestions on improving the Bard and the Martial Artist. The first draft of the first article came off as pretentious and contentious and I wasn't sure I wanted to be besieged by commentators telling me that the Thief is consistently the most valuable template in their games (though honestly, comments are good, so maybe I should, and maybe I'll get someone telling me that a Shaman is their best template and I can be amazed). The second post I just haven't put enough thought into: I know I want to revise Enthrallment and Chi skills to better match the power level of Wizards and Weapon Masters, I just haven't sat down and researched it enough. Research takes time, and I could be catching up on Dragon Age II here.

The other thing I've noticed is that posting twice a day is a bad plan. I posted Talents for RPM, and followed it immediately with Saints and Ritual Path Mages in Dungeon Fantasy. Talents currently has 4 page views, and Saints has 14. While I'll grant that the second is a generally more interesting article, I think the culprit is more that Talents only showed up in people's blogrolls for about 10 minutes, and thus only my active followers even know about it. I'm sure it will get more page views over time, as people binge on my archives. Assuming that ever happens.

The takeaway, then, is that in order to maximize page views, I need to post daily, but I can't post twice in a row to make up for skipping a day. I'm sure that's a known thing that I could have read on a blog somewhere, but until I started this blog I've really been on the consumer side of blogging, not production.

An Introduction

About the Blog

All the cool kids (by which I mean +Douglas Cole  and +Peter V. Dell'Orto) have gaming blogs these days, so I thought I'd start one. It'll be about my gaming experiences: mostly thoughts on GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, but also other GURPS games and Savage Worlds and whatever else springs to mind.

About the Blogger

I figure I'm often curious about the background of bloggers I read, so I might as well post a bit here. Skip on to the next entry if you don't share that curiosity - I'll get out of the navel-gazing and into what passes for substance soon enough.

I started playing role-playing games as soon as I could read enough of the words to understand what was going on (and on my first read, I thought "cleric" meant "circus" and was even more confused.) with my older brother's copy of the Moldvay Red Box. I got my copy of Star Frontiers as a Christmas present in 1983. I continued through Moldvay Expert D&D, 1st and 2nd editions of AD&D, 2nd edition GURPS (I still have a very battered copy of the 1st edition of GURPS Fantasy, the version that contained both the original GURPS Magic system and the Yrth world background), Gangbusters, Gamma World (4th edition), Marvel Super Heroes, Battletech, Paranoia, and more. I played lots of games in college, most memorably a long-running Vampire (mixed 1st and 2nd and revised and who knows what else) game, but also some Torg and Rolemaster and more AD&D. I entirely skipped over D&D 3rd edition, playing Heavy Gear and GURPS 4th edition instead, branching out into Mutants & Masterminds and Savage Worlds. My current group played D&D 4th edition until we got bored, experiments with various odd games, and mostly plays GURPS 4e and Savage Worlds now but we can be pretty faddish.

About the Blog Title

I haven't been playing RPGs since the very beginning, but I've played them for over three decades and that's enough, I think, to earn the title of grognard. But despite apparently playing the same games as a lot of the Old School guys, I apparently missed the Old School experience. The Caves of Chaos were not some grim slaughterfest of endlessly replaced PCs and hirelings: they were a straightforward experience of firepower and looting. I never played any of the Giants series, or Journey into the Depths of the Earth, or Tomb of Horrors (I didn't even own them until they came out on PDF in 2004 and I haven't read them all the way through). I never thought that dragons or mindflayers or beholders were part of the iconic D&D experience, and upon being told that they are, I tend to get rather confused. So I'm clearly not part of the Old School.

But I'm not part of the New School - assuming there is a New School - that grew up around JRPGs and D&D 3.0 and maybe the later parts of AD&D (2nd edition). Balanced encounters? 5 minute work-day? Railroad adventure full of narrative and dramatic turn-abouts and all that? I'm not interested in any of that, either. Most times the big monster goes down without a big dramatic fight and I'm okay with that.

So I'm a grognard, and of no particular school. And honestly, No School Grognard sounded better than "Unschooled Grognard", which I batted around for a few minutes. But I'd like people to read this blog for some other reason than a curious pity.

Speaking of, on to content.