"Possessions Under Control" and Magic

"Possessions Under Control" (PUC) is a nifty article from Pyramid v3 #83 that rewrote the rules for possessions and mind control. Instead of a one-time only quick contest, possessions became a series of rolls based on Technical Grappling's control points. Despite generally positive response on the forums, there's some oddities in the rules and I want to explore using the concepts of PUC with magic.

First, I'm going to present some suggested house rules for using PUC with GURPS Magic. Then, I'm going to do an example of play using the standard rules for mind control and possession, followed by the same scenario using PUC.

House Rules for Possession Magic

Control Person, Possession, Dispel Possession, Permanent Possession, Exchange Bodies, Loyalty, Charm, and Enslave are Possession spells for these rules.

All Possession spells have half their normal casting time, and when successfully cast, allow the caster to make Concentrate maneuvers while performing a mental grapple. The time spent in the mental grapple does not count against the spell duration, but the caster must make a Concentrate maneuver at least once per turn to continue the spell. If the caster does not, the spell lapses and the mental grapple fails.

Mental Grapples
Mental grapples follow the rules on p28 of PUC under the heading "Technical Possession." The attacker rolls against his effective skill in the spell (modified by casting time, gestures, target distance, etc) or technique and counts as having full bought up the Possession technique. He may use any other Possession based technique normally.

Most Possession spells use the Average or Meditation track for Trained Will.

Exorcisms
Dispel Possession is a form of Exorcism. It can only be used to remove a Possession and uses the Fast or Exorcism track for Trained Will.

Example of Play: Our Combatants

I'm using the stock Dungeon Fantasy templates from Adventurers and Henchmen. Anything that isn't mentioned below uses the standard template values, so Singeon (for example) has IQ 10. There are two teams: Singeon and Sir Albrect, versus Mad Donald and his guards.

Singeon is a standard Dungeon Fantasy Swashbuckler with Appearance (Handsome), Enhanced Parry 2 (Saber), Extra Attack, Two Weapon Fighting (Saber/Saber), ST +2,  Saber-20, Knife-Throwing-16. He carries 2 balanced, fine, weapon bonded sabers and wears Lightened 25%, Fortified +2 Heavy Leather Armor. He is, in short, a very offense focused DF swashbuckler.

Singeon's buddy Sir Albrecht is a standard Dungeon Fantasy Holy Warrior with Blessed (ST), Blessed (DX), DX +1, ST +1, Shield-Wall Training, Thrown Weapon (Axe)-17, Axe/Mace-21. He carries a Fine Large Shield, a fine, dwarven axe (with hammerhead and top spike), a Blessed Holy Symbol, and wears Lightened 25%, Fortified +2 Heavy Mail. He's a pretty typical DF Holy Warrior.

Their enemy is Mad Donald, a standard Dungeon Fantasy Wizard with IQ +1, Energy Reserve +3, and various mind control spells, most importantly Enslave-16. He carries a bejeweled quarterstaff with the Staff spell (it's worth $25,000 and is a 25 point Power Item) and wears Fine, Lightened 50%, Fortified +3 Heavy Leather Armor.

Mad Donald's guardsmen are 3 Guards with HP +1, Striking ST +1, Sacrificial Block, Sacrificial Parry, Shield Wall Training, Broadsword-13, Shield-12. They carrying Large Shields and Broadswords and wearing Lightened 25%, Fortified +1 Mail.

Example of Play: Standard Rules

Singeon and Sir Albrect encounter Mad Donald and his guards in a 10' wide corridor. The guards form a shield wall with Mad Donald 2 yards behind them. Singeon and Sir Albrect start 10 yards away.

Round 1
On his turn, Singeon runs forward 7 yards. Sir Albrecht follows and runs 4 yards. The guards take All-Out Defense (Block) maneuvers but don't move. Mad Donald steps forward and takes an All-Out Defense (Dodge).

Round 2
Singeon wants that staff! He makes a Move and Attack to close with the shield wall and attacks a guard, rolling a 9 versus Saber capped at 9. The guard blocks with a 10, rolling against a 14. Sir Albrecht also chooses to Move and Attack, slipping past Singeon to shield rush the same guard with a -1 deceptive attack: he rolls a 7 against a 15. The guard's neighbor takes advantage of Shield-Wall Training to block for him and also rolls a 7, blocking easily.

Mad Donald is now 2 yards away from Singeon, and thinks that a skilled swashbuckler would make a great minion. He swings his staff forward and casts Enslave, rolling a 9 versus a 16 (no distance penalty thanks to his Staff spell) and succeeding by 7. Singeon resists and uses his Luck, rolling a 9, an 11, and a 13: success by 1 is not enough to beat Mad Donald, and now follows Mad Donald's commands. The guards continue to All-Out Defend (Block).

Round 3
Singeon does what Mad Donald wants, and Mad Donald wants Sir Albrecht dead. Singeon is already behind Sir Albrecht, so he uses an Attack maneuver to make three telegraphed attacks against Sir Albrecht's. He rolls 12 three times, easily succeeding against a net 21, and does 2d+4 cu versus DR7, for 12, 6, and 0 injury. Sir Albrecht isn't dead immediately, but he's in really bad shape.

Notes
This was not exactly the most engaging combat ever, was it?

Example of Play: Possessions Under Control

Singeon and Sir Albrect encounter Mad Donald and his guards in a 10' wide corridor. The guards form a shield wall with Mad Donald 2 yards behind them. Singeon and Sir Albrect start 10 yards away.

Round 1
On his turn, Singeon runs forward 7 yards. Sir Albrecht follows and runs 4 yards. The guards take All-Out Defense (Block) maneuvers but don't move. Mad Donald steps forward and takes an All-Out Defense (Dodge).

Round 2
Singeon wants that staff! He makes a Move and Attack to close with the shield wall and attacks a guard, rolling a 9 versus Saber capped at 9. The guard blocks with a 10, rolling against a 14. Sir Albrecht also chooses to Move and Attack, slipping past Singeon to shield rush the same guard with a -1 deceptive attack: he rolls a 7 against a 15. The guard's neighbor takes advantage of Shield-Wall Training to block for him and also rolls a 7, blocking easily.

Mad Donald is now 2 yards away from Singeon, and thinks that a skilled swashbuckler would make a great minion. He swings his staff forward, chooses to prioritize the mental struggle, and casts Enslave, rolling a 9 versus a 16 (no distance penalty thanks to his Staff spell) and succeeding by 7 and then steps back. Singeon attempts a mental parry using Trained Will and rolls a 9 versus a target of 8; he fails and Mad Donald inflicts 1d+2 MCP or 5 MCP. Singeon is now at -2 to IQ, DX, Per, and Will. The guards continue to All-Out Block.

Round 3
Singeon shouts "He's in my head!" He knows he's going to eventually lose this struggle, but he can fight back physically if he can just get through to Mad Donald. He elects to prioritize physical activity and makes a Committed (Determined) attack and chooses to make two steps for a -2 on attack rolls. First, he steps into a guard's hex and Acrobatically Evades: he's at a net -7, and uses Luck to roll 12, 9, and 16 for a success by 0. The guard rolls a 12 and fails by 1, so Singeon gets past him and steps again to get within reach of Mad Donald. Singeon slashes 3 times for Mad Donald's face, rolling against a 15: 11, 15, and 6 are all hits. Mad Donald retreats and dodges the first blow and retreats and performs a dual weapon parry against the dual weapon attack, but with a -4 this will be hard: he rolls a 12 against the dodge and a 5 for the parry, so he takes a sword blow to the face for 7 injury. That's a major wound, and he rolls HT-5 to avoid stunning: a 15 fails so badly that he falls unconscious and releases his mental grip on Singeon.

Sir Albrecht had been about to use his Blessed ability to perform an exorcism, but he thinks Singeon has it under control. He steps back and grimly begins beating up Mad Donald's guards.

Notes
That was not exactly a titanic struggle, but it was a little more interesting and could have easily gone differently. PUC makes mind control a slower and less certain process, which is probably a good thing: mind control is very powerful, and it shouldn't be a single roll to decide the outcome.

In Review

I like Possessions Under Control, but I'm really dubious of the rule that possession attacks and defenses are distracting and require focus. It effectively means that even not very successful possession attacks stun the target. I think I'm going to abolish that rule, and now I want to see how the combat would play out without it.

Example of Play: Possessions Under Control with a House Rule

Singeon and Sir Albrect encounter Mad Donald and his guards in a 10' wide corridor. The guards form a shield wall with Mad Donald 2 yards behind them. Singeon and Sir Albrect start 10 yards away.

Round 1
On his turn, Singeon runs forward 7 yards. Sir Albrecht follows and runs 4 yards. The guards take All-Out Defense (Block) maneuvers but don't move. Mad Donald steps forward and takes an All-Out Defense (Dodge).

Round 2
Singeon wants that staff! He makes a Move and Attack to close with the shield wall and attacks a guard, rolling a 9 versus Saber capped at 9. The guard blocks with a 10, rolling against a 14. Sir Albrecht also chooses to Move and Attack, slipping past Singeon to shield rush the same guard with a -1 deceptive attack: he rolls a 7 against a 15. The guard's neighbor takes advantage of Shield-Wall Training to block for him and also rolls a 7, blocking easily.

Mad Donald is now 2 yards away from Singeon, and thinks that a skilled swashbuckler would make a great minion. He swings his staff forward, casts Enslave, rolling a 9 versus a 16 (no distance penalty thanks to his Staff spell), and then steps back. Singeon attempts a mental parry using Trained Will and rolls a 9 versus a target of 8; he fails and Mad Donald inflicts 1d+2 MCP or 5 MCP. Singeon is now at -2 to IQ, DX, Per, and Will. The guards continue to All-Out Block.

Round 3
Singeon shouts "He's in my head!" He knows he's going to eventually lose this struggle, but he can fight back physically if he can just get through to Mad Donald. He makes a Committed (Determined) attack and chooses to make two steps for a -2 on attack rolls. First, he steps into a guard's hex and Acrobatically Evades: he's at a net -7, and uses Luck to roll 12, 9, and 16 for a success by 0. The guard rolls a 12 and fails by 1, so Singeon gets past him and steps again to get within reach of Mad Donald. Singeon slashes 3 times for Mad Donald's face, rolling against a 15: 11, 15, and 6 are all hits. Mad Donald retreats and dodges the first blow and retreats and performs a dual weapon parry against the dual weapon attack: he rolls a 12 against the dodge and a 5 for the parry, so he avoids everything.

Sir Albrecht chooses to Exorcise Mad Donald, and rolls Exorcism (at -2 for distance and +1 for his Holy Symbol), succeeding with a 13. Mad Donald parries with Enslave, rolling an 11 and cancelling the attack.

Mad Donald steps back and sustains his Enslave attempt, attacking Singeon again with a 15, while Singeon mentally parries with a 6, somehow successfully defending! One of the guards takes a Move maneuver to reposition himself next to Mad Donald, while another Waits to step into Sir Albrecht's way, and the third makes an attack maneuver. He drops his sword, turns around and steps into Singeon's hex, and grabs him with a telegraphed Wrestling attack: a 9 is sufficient to grab Singeon, and Singeon cannot defend since his back was to the guard.

Round 4
Singeon is in trouble, but when has that ever stopped a swashbuckler? He performs an All-Out Attack (Double). First he uses an attack to Break Free, rolling a 9 against the guard's 12, and slips out of the grapple. He moves up to Mad Donald and launches three attacks to the face, rolling 11, 12, and 10 against a 15. The guard next to Mad Donald performs a sacrificial block and parry, rolling a 10 and an 11, and intercepts one of them. Mad Donald dodges the other two while retreating, rolling a 10 and a 7, dodging both.

Sir Albrecht steps closer to Singeon (and ends up in the same hex as the guard trying to intercept his movement) and tries another exorcism. He rolls an 8 and succeeds easily, and Mad Donald attempts a parry with a 13 against an 11, failing. Sir Albrecht rolls 1d for MCP, getting a 6 and breaking Singeon free of Mad Donald's grip!

From this point, the fight is mostly over: Mad Donald doesn't have enough energy to try another Enslave, and Singeon and Sir Albrecht can deal with some guards in a few seconds.

Final Evaluation

I think these rules can work and make for interesting combats in the mind. I do think getting rid of the distraction rules really helps, but other people might have a different opinion.

Castle of Horrors Session 3

Thursday is GURPS Day!

My online group continued exploring the Castle of Horrors. It was a fairly productive session, though it could have gone a little better. They did finish their first expedition and find their way home, and restocked and set out again.

As usual, +Douglas Cole wrote up his own version of this session, for a player's view of what happened. I didn't read it until after I wrote my own version.

Siege Beasts in the Chapel

We picked up where we left off on the previous session: the PCs were outside the castle's chapel, planning to shoot the huge, armored, four-armed guardian inside, and the guardian was challenging them for a password and preparing to shoot them.

There had been some confusion at the end of last session about whether people were in position when the guardian started talking to them, and how long people had to aim before the fighting started. I decided that the question was basically insolvable, and a random roll of 1d-4 seconds was the simplest solution. Unsurprisingly, most people weren't in position, and only +Nathan Joy's character Yusef had a chance to aim.

The PCs opened fire, with Yusef slamming three shots into the guardian's leg. It dropped to the ground, and returned fire wildly with its crossbow and calling for aid. Other PCs fired onto it or watched the doors. A second later, another pair of guardians (the ones the PCs had briefly tangled with earlier) opened the doors on the ground level, and a second pair came in through doors on the balcony, some 20' overhead. One of the ones one the ground level got shot immediately by +Theodore Briggs' character Thomas, who got near maximum damage on his first 3" 12G high powered rifled slug, and that guardian died instantly. The other two on the ground floor didn't last much longer.

Gold Glitter is Good

The two guardians on the balcony didn't last much longer, as both Yusef and +Douglas Cole's character Neil critically hit with snapshots. As luck would have it, both of the guardians ended up 1 injury away from death and failed their major wound checks, so I had them dramatically tumble over the balcony railing (a good 3.5' tall, but the guardians were 12' tall so it didn't help much) and splat on the floor.

The bodies were quickly searched: their armor was thick cow hide and useless, but each of them had a heavy gold coin on a string around their neck, and a sledge hammer nailed to their right hand. Yusef and +Uhuk of the Guard's character Ryan appropriated some sledge hammers as tools. There was nothing else of value on the bodies, but the gold coins were worth serious money on their own.

+Kevin Smyth's character Raleigh went for the crow statue, which turned out to be glowing faintly under close inspection. When she put her hands on it, the eerie tugging sensation that she had been feeling shifted from the statue to the west north-west, basically in the direction of their campsite. After some discussion, everyone agreed to return to campsite through the courtyards, but first they wanted to check out the balcony. Unfortunately, the stairway to the balcony was past a pair of alcoves, and there was a statue in each alcove.

After the previous experience with statues, no one wanted to walk past them. Fortunately, Thomas and Yusef each had about 10 yards of 1/2" synthetic rope, and it would be easy to climb a rope to the balcony. Except no one had a grappling hook (Doug: "Who takes a grappling hook to hunt deer?") so they ended up piling up some of the church pews to form a platform so that Ryan could lift someone high enough to secure the rope to the railing. I pretty much handwaved the effort.

There was nothing dangerous on the balcony. There were a pair of thrones, slightly rotten, and covered in gold leaf, which the PCs made note of, and a ladder to another room above the chapel. Everyone climbed back down the rope, tromped through the courtyards to the campsite to confirm the hypothesis about where Raleigh's tugging was leading her, and then went back to scrape off the gold leaf before possibly being returned to the Real World.

In a case of excessively stupid GM, I'd forgotten to note how much gold there was on the thrones. As it turns out, an ounce of gold can be trivially beaten out to cover 300 sqft, so my initial estimate of 200 lbs was off by three orders of magnitude. A little bit of work and the PCs were happily in possession of another 2 ounces of gold. With all their loot in hand, they returned to the campsite and were transported back to the real world.

In Texas, the statue stopped glowing, and its eyes instantly changed from green to red. Over the next two days, the eyes slowly changed in color back to green, and the statue started glowing very faintly, like phosphorescent paint. The PCs correctly picked up on the fact that the statue had a recharge time of at least two days, and that they'd need to pack for at least that long for their next trip.

Okay, Enough Roleplaying, Guys!

The players were doing a good job of role-playing everyone's happiness and excitement at getting back to the Real World, but I wanted to move the game along so I cut it short. Everyone was quite amused, as observers have called us on moving from tactical encounter to tactical encounter instead of role-playing more. Which isn't quite fair, I think: I'm happy to see a lot of role-playing that advances the plot, or even goes nowhere, as long as it occurs at the Castle of Horrors. The Real World, at least for now, shouldn't be a big part of the game.

Earlier in the week, I had sent out an email estimating how much loot and experience the PCs were going to get and asking everyone to make plans to spend that so we could move on quickly. I don't think people took it quite to heart, and there was a bunch of hemming and hawing about what to do. I was worried that we were going to have to end an hour and a half early just so people could update their characters, but I bullied them into making some choices immediately with the understanding that I'd be generous in letting them revise those decisions before the next session.

Exploring the First Floor

The PCs had previously agreed that they were going to clear out the first floor of the castle, and then move up until they reached the gnomes' lair. After that, I think people were undecided as to whether to continue up the towers or go into the basement. From the GM's side of the table, I have my doubts about how well they're going to be able to stick to this plan, but it's the thought that counts.

Everyone agreed that they didn't want to tangle with the gargoyles immediately, so they tried a door they'd seen in the north east corner of the keep. That door opened into some old servants' quarters, currently occupied by a trio of surly leprechauns. There was a dialogue, mostly of the leprechauns warning the PCs off and threatening to cut them down if they tried anything, but the PCs did learn that some driders lived in the basement and the leprechauns wouldn't mind if the PCs killed them. Nate immediately pointed out that the plan was to NOT go into the basement, and since the stairs into the basement was visibly blocked by giant spiderwebs, everyone agreed.

With that door explored for now, there were only two other options left: enter through the front doors and pass through the octagon room (and its gargoyles), or go through the chapel and down the long hall to the octagon room.  Either way, the gargoyles were going to be a problem.

Apparently the plan was only to kite one gargoyle, but
the gargoyles didn't the message about that.

There was a lot of planning and discussion and over-thinking, which I firmly squelched. Eventually, everyone piled up some benches near the altar to make a barricade and shooting stand, and Ryan was sent forward to open the doors to the octagon room. Thomas also balanced one of the thrones on the balcony railing, hoping to use it as a swinging weight trap and "Endor" one of the gargoyles. Raleigh prepped an area effect missile spell and everyone waited.

Ryan hit one of the gargoyles in the face with his hammer and ran away, and everyone else opened fire. Hammer blows and gun shots chipped away at two of the gargoyles, slowing them substantially, but they didn't die. We ended the night after the first round of combat, with Ryan kiting a string of gargoyles toward the chapel.

Technical Notes

My wireless router completely dropped my connection for no obvious reason about halfway through the game, and we wasted about ten minutes re-establishing the voice chat after that. Skype sucks.

MapTools was a mixed blessing throughout this session. It doesn't have multi-level support, so rooms like the chapel with a second level balcony opening onto empty space are hard to represent. I know exactly how I think MapTools should handle this correctly, and I think it has 90% of the components necessary to do what I want, but no one has written the necessary code to glue it all together. I should learn Java some time and nerd wrestle it to do the right thing.

The group is trying to figure out what the GURPS stats should be for modern steel and kevlar brigadine armor. We're using a version of Better Fantasy Armor with TL8 options, including "TL 8 Scalar" armor to represent the controversial Dragonskin modern ballistic scale. For now, I'm treating home brewed versions as cheap TL8 Scalar, but there's some discussion and I may end up creating a new armor type.

What Next?

We're going to continue playing next week. The PCs are going to keep shooting at the gargoyles, but gargoyles are fast and tough to kill, and I suspect it's going to go to melee again. They've got slightly better body armor and slightly better melee skills this time, but I suspect they may have to run away again. It'll be interesting to find out.

Reading Rappan Athuk: The Ground Level and the 1st Level

So I never really did much with my read-through of Rappan Athuk. Now that I'm running a small mega-dungeon, I've decided to try to pick up on the read-through, adding a little more every week.

Ground Level: The Mausoleum

This entire area shows a continued lack of familiarity with 3rd edition D&D mechanics: the handy sidebar puts the Difficulty Level at EL7, but the some of the wandering monsters include dire rats, the locked doors are DC 20 (which a 7th level rogue without equipment should be able to open by taking 10), and there's a DC 8 Spot check to find a hidden compartment (search focused characters shouldn't be able to NOT find that compartment at 7th level if they look for it).

There's an enormously hokey bit where there are some freshly dug graves of famous adventurers, alongside an empty grave with a headstone bearing a PC's name. I get that Rappan Athuk is supposed to be a total bloodbath, but that's the kind of trick that works in Scooby-Doo, not when dealing mid to high level adventurers who can cast Divination spells and are going to wonder "how did that happen?"

The crowning glory of the Mausoleum is the nigh-inescapable quick kill death trap for anyone that didn't search a random (though admittedly, prominently placed) statue to find the compartment and the hidden key. Using any other method to get into the Mausoleum sets off a rising floor trap that crushes the PCs into the ceiling and kills them. There's a possible escape via a secret door which is actually easy to find (if the PCs search the right area), but gets blocked by the floor after a minute, so the PCs need to get lucky in their search.

Frankly, the entire thing seems like a dick move for a killer-GM. It's not entirely as bad as it could be, because there is an easily available key that circumvents the trap, but the fact that the statue isn't mentioned in the read-aloud text means that PCs aren't necessarily even going to find it. The fact that the trap seals the secret door four minutes before the trap kills the PCs is also poor form, because it means that through little fault of their own, PCs can get killed even though they've found the secret door. The entire thing seems like a recipe for player metagaming, using the knowledge that their dead characters' gained in a TPK to circumvent the trap the next time around. As I mentioned in my last review, all this would be less onerous if the rumors at least mentioned a deadly trap at the door and the need to find a key.

Alternately, the entire thing is just an aggravating example of pixel-bitching, and could just be replaced by a door to the first level of the dungeon.

Dungeon Level 1: Lair of the "Dung Monster"

There's really no other way to put this: Rappan Athuk is a published adventure that deals with toilet humor. I'm not really sure what to think about a GM who would put toilet humor like this in his personal campaign, much less one that would keep it for publication. It's just really juvenile.

At any rate, level 1 of Rappan Athuk is schizophrenic. It's nominally an EL 3 zone (which can only be reached by fighting your way through 8 gargoyles, an EL6+ encounter), but the titular monster is invulnerable to non-magic weapons and has insane magic resistance (SR 100? really?) and 140 hit points and can grapple and engulf anyone foolish enough to fight it at melee range. The rest of the foes are mostly minor trash monsters like dire rats or lone ghasts.

The level itself has a fairly linear flow, with only two real branches among fourteen rooms and no loops. The corridors also flow straight into the rooms, so there isn't much choice as to what to avoid and what to encounter. About half the encounters are traps, placed more or less randomly and with little warning. Treasure is either minimal (22 cp in one room, 200 cp in another) or ridiculously hard to retrieve (dig for a week to find a +1 keen short sword; there's a 25% of encountering random monsters every 15 minutes while digging).

The climax of the level is a fairly well designed ambush by a group of wererats. There are some notes on how to modify the ambush so it's less of an automatic TPK for low powered groups, but it seems like the entire encounter could be better written to either provide a level appropriate challenge or better warning of the potential danger. And then the level could have been rewritten to be less linear and provide more than one way to reach the next level. I mean, there's an underground river to level 9, but I meant something that most parties would consider taking.

Opinions So Far

This is a fairly awful entrance and first level: maybe fun for sadistic killer GMs and players that don't take the game seriously at all, but inconsistent about the difficulty level for no real reason. Also, it involves some really puerile toilet humor. There's really nothing here that can be easily repurposed for another game, either, and most of it would need to rewritten (and in the case of the map, redrawn) before being used.

One of the many reasons why Castle of Horrors started with Castle Ravenloft, and I didn't even consider Rappan Athuk, was because Castle Ravenloft had lots of encounters that could be used more or less as they were written and the maps provided a lot of branches and level changes for exploring. Rappan Athuk provides none of that, and is worse for it.

Technical Grappling: How does a Disarm work?

In Wednesday's session of Castle of Horrors, there were two instances where a gargoyle grabbed a PC's weapon. In both cases, the PC's surrendered the weapon rather try to fight for it. There were a bunch of reasons why they made that choice, but I'm curious about what might have happened if things had gone the other way.

Our Combatants

Ryan is a Troll. Relevant abilities here are ST 20, Arm ST +4, DX 13, Guns (Pistol)-14, and Wrestling-13. He has Combat Reflexes, and his Dodge is 10 and his Wrestling Parry is also 10. He inflicts 4d CP on a successful grappling attack and has a one-handed grip CP of 12. It takes 4 CP to give him a -1 DX penalty. He's holding a cheap .357M revolver.

The gargoyle has ST 16, DX 11, Wrestling-14, and the disarming technique at +4. It has a Dodge of 9 and a Wrestling Parry of 10. It inflicts 2d+2 CP on a normal grappling attack or 3d CP when grappling to disarming.

The Play by Play

Round 0

Ryan uses an all-out attack to shoot a gargoyle, and does nothing effective.

A different gargoyle uses a Committed (Determined) Attack to double-step into Ryan's hex and grab his gun. The gargoyle successfully makes his attack roll at -7, and since Ryan can't defend, rolls 3d and inflicts 11 CP.

Round 1

The gargoyle has 11 CP on the weapon, giving Ryan a -3 DX for using it, and reducing Ryan's effective ST to 19. Ryan wants to keep his gun - he's Struggling, and guns are expensive - so he's going to try to break the gargoyle's grip. He selects an Attack maneuver and uses Retain Weapon, defaulting from his Guns skill of 14, rolling a 9 to hit versus a target of 11. Normally he'd have to use his Wrestling skill, but since he's resisting a disarming attempt, he can use Retain Weapon instead. The gargoyle attempts a parry, but fails with a roll a 9 versus a target of 8 because Committed attack gives a -2 penalty to defenses. Ryan rolls 4d-5 for inflicted CP, and reduces the gargoyle's grip to 3 CP. Ryan doesn't quite have his gun back yet, but he's no longer at a DX penalty and is only at a -1 ST penalty, so things are looking up for him.

The gargoyle wants to take the gun away, but it's in a hurry, so it goes for an instant disarm. It spends 1 CP and rolls an ST based contest of Disarm versus Retain Weapon: 16+7+1 (24) against Ryan's 24-1+1 (24). The gargoyle rolls a 12 and Ryan rolls an 11: Ryan wins, but barely, and so the pistol is no longer ready. If the rolls had gone the other way, the gargoyle would have pulled the pistol away. As it is, the pistol isn't ready and Ryan has 9 CP on it; the gargoyle has 2 CP left and is still maintaining a grip.

Ryan probably should have spent some CP from his grip CP to keep control of the gun - he only needs 1 CP to hold it and 6 CP to keep it ready, and even spending 3 CP would have been enough to keep the odds in his favor. On the other hand, spending grip CP increases the chances that the gargoyle would take the gun away from him, and does nothing to break the gargoyle's grip on the gun.

Round 2

Ryan makes another Retain Weapon attack to get control of his gun. He rolls an 11, and makes the attack roll easily, but the gargoyle gets a 10 to parry and cancels out Ryan's attack.

The gargoyle wants to improve its position before going for another instant disarm. It attacks with Wrestling, rolling a 13 against its skill of 14 (no target penalties since it has already grabbed the gun), and Ryan blows his parry by rolling a 16. The gargoyle rolls very well on its damage, and inflicts 13 CP, getting an excellent grip on the gun! If the gargoyle had just attacked to reduce Ryan's grip, it would have reduced his Grip CP below 0, and Ryan would have lost the gun at this stage, so this might have been sub-optimal for the gargoyle.

Round 3

Ryan still has 9 CP on the gun, but now the gargoyle has 15 CP and is giving him -7 to ST and -4 to DX. He decides to add a second hand so he'll plenty of CP for the next contest. He attacks with Wrestling, with a -2 penalty for referred CP, and fails with a 14.

The gargoyle tries another instant disarm and spends 12 CP; Ryan will spend 6 CP of his own. The gargoyle is rolling versus 16+7+12 (35) and Ryan is rolling versus 24-7+1+6 (24); the gargoyle rolls a 12 for MoS 23 and Ryan rolls a 14 for MoS 10. The gargoyle wins handily, and tosses the weapon on the ground behind him.

Lessons Learned

In a 1 on 1 fight, Ryan might have been able to keep control of his gun - or he might have spent several seconds struggling to hold onto it, only to lose it anyway. So maybe +Uhuk of the Guard  made the right decision in not even bothering to struggle for Ryan's gun. At the time, Ryan was being surrounded by multiple gargoyles, and all of them were grabbing for his weapon or punching him, and only deft retreating and burning lots of Fatigue for extra effort defenses kept him from being bashed into pulp. He wouldn't have been able to retreat and dodge while spending several seconds stationary to struggle over the gun.

That said, the rules for disarming worked reasonably well. There was certainly a struggle, and it wasn't a forgone conclusion: if Ryan had been a bit better at grappling, or if the gargoyle hadn't been an absolute master of disarming, Ryan might have been able to retain his gun.

I still find Technical Grappling to be confusingly written in places: it took me a couple minutes of searching to figure out the penalties for Ryan trying to put his second hand on his gun and for the gargoyle to attack to increase his CP. It's manageable, but I wish there had been a step by step list of the components of a standard grappling attack and the possible modifiers. Something like this:

1. Attack your foe with a grappling skill.
1. If you are establishing a grapple, hit location modifiers apply. If you already have at least a 0 CP grapple on your foe, hit location modifiers do not apply.
2. (some other modifiers)
2. Your foe may defend if he chose a maneuver that lets him defend.
1. If your foe is not grappled, he may retreat.
2. Referred control or whatever.
3. Who can spend CP how and why here
4. (other defense modifiers)
3. If your foe failed to defend, apply CP.

Obviously, that needs more detail. But it would be great to have all the conditional modifiers in one place.

Castle of Horrors Session 2

Thursday is GURPS Day!

Last night was the second session of Castle of Horrors. We started nearly on time, despite +Douglas Cole having accidentally ignited a fuel air explosive the day before and thus being on painkillers and a little distracted. It was a pretty good session: not quite as good as the first session, but still quite fun and fairly productive.

There's No Shame in Running Like Scared Little Bunnies

We started this session by resolving last week's cliffhanger: as the PCs were returning to the octagon room, the eight gargoyles woke up and began attacking. Doug reminded me that his character Neil had Danger Sense, and I allowed that he'd shouted enough of a warning that no one was surprised.

+Uhuk of the Guard's character Ryan started by firing a .357 magnum into the gargoyles, but their rocky skin pretty much bounced the hollow-point round. Everyone else opened up with rifles and shotguns, and while a couple of their bullets penetrated, the gargoyles were homogeneous stone and reasonably impervious to gun shots. It would be possible to take them down with gunfire, but it would take a long time. At while the gargoyles were lousy at dodging gunfire, they were strong and fast and fully capable of grabbing weapons and yanking them away from their owners.

+Kevin Smyth tried casting spells again - and succeeded, with the expenditure of a Destiny Point and a roll on the calamity table when his Tally exceeded his Threshold. Nothing too bad happened, and so Jamie the orc boyfriend became strong and got a good hit against a gargoyle with his hatchet. Of course, the next turn the gargoyle got a firm grab on it.

The gargoyles were also throwing punches, and occasionally connecting. They weren't doing huge amount of damage: indeed, Raleigh in her armor absorbed a couple of hits without hurt and Ryan's bony plates were reducing the hits to a manageable amount. Neil wasn't quite so lucky, but since the gargoyle's claws were blunt, he was more "hurt" than "mangled."

I warned the players that the balance of the fights was pretty uncertain, because they were "eggshells armed with sledgehammers": high damage from their guns, but they weren't good at defending in melee and had no armor and almost no capability to recover from injury. In the fight with gargoyles, they were just eggshells, and they quickly realized that running away was the only option. Unfortunately, the gargoyles had formed a solid line between them and the front door, so their only useful retreat was to the spiral staircase to the east. So they ran, and luckily, the gargoyles didn't chase them.

"Those gnomes on the top floor"

These are not the void brutes you are looking for.

The staircase went up and down, and the PCs decided that up was safer than down. The next landing opened up to a book filled room with a man writing at a desk - and a pair of massively muscled, green scaly skinned, shark tooth men with pupil-less white eyes standing guard. There was about a moment's discussion, and then everyone kept running. They weren't sure what that was, but they wanted no part of it.

The next landing led to a T-shaped room with a closed door in the west wall. It wasn't obviously hostile, so they decided that was a good place to stop and rest. A faint trail of brown splotches coming from the staircase showed that someone else had come to the same conclusion earlier. At any rate, people reloaded, rested, and let Raleigh patch them up.

While all that was happening, Neil and +Theodore Briggs's character Thomas heard some hushed voices and movement from beyond the door. Everyone tensed, but after a whispered conversation, decided to wait for Raleigh to finish and then hope that whatever was beyond the door was friendly. They put that plan in motion, and Neil and Thomas sneaked toward the door - only to notice a tripwire leading to a bunch of noisemakers just before they tripped it. Thomas tied off the trip and then he and Neil set up an ambush by the door and Jamie opened negotiations.

The people on the other side of the door weren't hostile, but they weren't friendly, either. Fortunately, Jamie is a good negotiator and quite charismatic, so eventually the door opened to reveal a quartet of heavily armed and armored, red-skinned gnomes. They let the PCs in and closed and relocked the door.

"Something's Not Right Here"

The gnomes were inquisitive about the PCs and their intentions, but not willing to answer much in the way of questions themselves. They did reveal that they weren't allies of "the madman downstairs" and had fought and ran from the gargoyles earlier, but were now staying in these rooms for "gnome business," which a couple of the gnomes were a bit confused about. Carlardan, the gnome leader, eventually negotiated a payment of 6 ounces of silver to take the PCs through the gnome controlled area and out onto the castle parapets, where the gnomes had a crane and could lower the PCs into any of the castle's four or five courtyards.

He proceeded to show the PCs two more of the rooms the gnomes controlled: a library or study with a massive, open fireplace with a fire burning on the stone despite a lack of visible fuel, and a massive, ornate bedroom turned into a RenFest chemistry lab and convalescent room. A sixth gnome was lying on the bed, with a head wrapped in bandages. Raleigh tried to negotiate a refund of some of the silver in exchange for providing medical services, but Carladan strangely refused, insisting that he'd finishing brewing up some healing potions (this time they'd work!) soon. The PCs were confused by his behavior, and Raleigh pressed the issue long enough to examine the patient and cast Major Healing on her, triggering another minor calamity (by this point, Raleigh was having problems casting Healing and Body Control spells, and was looking to start exploding if he kept casting spells). Carladan wasn't pleased by Raleigh's spellcasting, but honored the deal and took the PCs out onto the parapets.

Strange and Creepy Things

The Castle of Horrors has four courtyards: the west (main) coutyard that the PCs started in, the southeast courtyard where they found the goblins, a northeast courtyard that they hadn't been into that was unremarkable, and a central east courtyard behind the chapel.  As per the agreement, Carladan took the PCs to the central east courtyard, but in a round-about way: instead of cutting through a visible entrance beneath one of the keep's two tall towers, he stayed on the curtain walls.

Carladan explained that the tower was dangerous: stepping into it risked being attacked by the tower walls themselves, which would turn red and pulse and start animating halberds and attacking. The PCs pretty much said "thanks for the tip", rolled to resist Curiousity, and stayed out of that particular death trap.

As they approached the central courtyard, I realized my notes were inadequate. I'd made a last minute change while stocking part of the keep, and though I'd changed my notes on the ground level, I'd forgotten that this particular change would also be visible from the walls. So there was a little confusion when I belatedly mentioned there were several 1/4" thick strands of spider web running from the ground to the parapet on the north side of the wall separating the northeast courtyard from the central courtyard, and again on the south side.

+Nathan Joy does not like spiders, and his characters almost always have a quirk that they don't like spiders either. So his character Yusef panicked, and pretty much tried to scrap the plan. There was a long discussion about the fact that the PCs still couldn't beat the gargoyles and there weren't any spiders or spider holes visible and that it really seemed like the silver Crow statue was important for getting home so they needed to get into the chapel somehow and so on and so forth. It was mildly amusing from the GM's perspective, but also something of a distraction.

Finally, Yusef bowed to the inevitable and everyone descended into the central courtyard and moved around until they spotted the four-armed monster in the chapel. There was another brief discussion of what do, and then some people started moving forward to the chapel wall so they'd have cover against the monster's crossbow attacks. The monster spotted them and challenged them for a password, and when they couldn't provide it, moved to attack. But by then it was after 9 pm, and Doug and Uhuk were losing focus, so we called the game and ended on another cliffhanger.

Technical Notes

I waffled a bit on how tough to make the gargoyles, and ended up buffing them slightly from my original design: some minor increases in skill (from mediocre to professional, with some focused disarming abilities) and a little more HP. I ended up fairly happy with how they played out: the gargoyles were dangerous, but in a predictable way. They outnumbered the PCs and were mostly resistant to their best attacks, and had tricks to remove the PC's best attacks, but the gargoyles striking damage was relatively weak and no PC was going to get murdered for a failing a single defense roll (unlike the 4-armed monsters, that do 5d-1 impaling and are thus swingy as hell). Fighting the gargoyles was a battle of attrition that was stacked heavily against the PCs, and the players realized it and ran.

It's pretty obvious that the gargoyles can be defeated: a typical DF party with a Weapon Master Knight backed by a healing cleric would cut through them at a pretty good pace. Any given gargoyle might stay up for a few seconds as the knight cut off hands and feet, but the outcome wouldn't be doubt. The PCs were heavily handicapped by their lack of armor, mook level melee skills, and lack of healing magic. At least some of that is going to be remedied if the PCs can ever complete this expedition and go home, so now they're relatively focused on doing that.

Most everything else in this session went well. I worried slightly that was overplaying the gnomes, but as I think about it, subtlety is not a virtue when presenting a possible mystery to PCs. Players get a lot of information and have a lot of distractions and things to think about, so if you want to impress a point on them, you might as well hammer it in. They don't quite know what's up with the gnomes, but they do know that something is up, and that's good enough for now.

I was annoyed with myself for forgetting about the spider strands on the third floor map. I mentioned this in the play by play above, but the actual description was even worse than I described. I had told the PCs all about the central courtyard and the view from the castle walls and the portcullis winches, and they were deep in discussing the merits of opening the portcullis to make a fast retreat versus paying the gnomes more to stand by to lift them with the crane, and then I say, "hey, oops, here's this important detail that you probably would have noticed much, much earlier." Not my proudest moment in GM'ing.

What Next?

I expect the fight against the siege beast in the chapel to go poorly for him: he's a flesh and blood monster, and being as big as a water buffalo doesn't help much when several people are firing 7.62mm into you. There may be some surprises, but nothing that the PCs won't be able to cope with. So hopefully that will no more than half the next session. And then if the players can manage to avoid being distracted by something shiny, they'll be able to get home, complete the expedition, and earn CPs.

I'm not sure what will happen after that. Ryan lost one of his guns to the gargoyles, so he may want to recover that, but everyone needs better armor and melee skills before they try that. The PCs will also have earned at least some real money, so they'll definitely be coming back to the Castle. I'm just curious as to where they'll want to explore next.

Castle of Horrors: Optional and House Rules

GURPS is sometimes criticized for not being a role-playing game, but instead a collection of options that let you build a role-playing game. It's a valid point, though I don't think it's a bad thing. I don't think I've ever played a game without using house rules and optional rules. GURPS just has more options, and labels them more clearly.

Having all those options does require that the GM select all those optional rules. I understand that Sean Punch, GURPS Line Editor extraordinaire, selects optional rules on the fly, using really detailed rules for individual duels but then dropping all that detail and going to broad strokes for big fights. That's amazing, if true, but I prefer to have one set of optional rules selected in advance so that all the players are on the same page. These are the optional rules I selected, and the house rules I'm using, and now I'm going to explain why I chose what I did.

What Books Are We Using?

One of the ways to decide on optional rules is to decide what rule and setting books are going to be included, and which aren't. Even though I'm implicitly allowing psionic powers in the game, I'm not using GURPS Psionic Powers, because I personally don't like that book, especially it's highly optional rules for power stunts that my players tend to treat as gospel. On the other hand, I really like Imbuements, so that was definitely in.

With only a few exceptions, I'm using most of the "core" and "expanded core" books from GURPS: Characters and Campaigns, of course, but also Magic, Martial Arts, and Powers. I'm also using almost all of the Power-Ups series. Powers: Divine Favor is a flavorful expansion of Powers, so I'm including it. Thaumatology is a big book of optional rules, most of which I didn't want to use because I was already house-ruling magic, so it's available as a reference for a couple of things but it's generally not in use.

Possibly the most difficult set of optional rules to decide upon are the grappling rules. Campaigns has a perfectly functional, if rather binary in outcome, set of grappling rules, and there's a couple of variants in Pyramid, and then there's the big hammer in Technical Grappling (TG). Since +Douglas Cole is the author of TG and also a player, it means I have the author on hand to explain any confusing bits. That doesn't quite make the inclusion of TG a no-brainer, but it lowered my resistance to adding a more complicated set of rules for a relatively rare combat action. Doug did propose using a draft of his simplified TG rules, but I got about 8 pages into a 50 page document before realizing that they weren't that simplified and nixed that idea.

Lots of Options, Pick a Few

Although I'm using a lot of the books, at least in theory, I'm not using a lot of the optional rules. Generally, official option rules tweak a game in one of two directions: gritty realism or over-the-top cinematism. I didn't want a gritty game, because that's incongruous with dungeon-crawling, but I didn't want a crazy cinematic game either. Basically, I wanted an action movie, but something along the lines of the first Die Hard, not Die Hard With a Vengeance.

For the most part, I chose optional rules that are clarifications and logical expansions of the Basic set rules: Committed and Defensive Attack or the new Extra Effort options. The only new Extra Effort option I don't allow Heroic Charge in my games, because my experience is that it makes a mockery of defensive positioning: Heroic Chargers run behind enemy lines and strike people from behind, and what should be a ground-based melee looks more like an aircraft dogfight.

Pyramid Options

Pyramid is the monthly GURPS magazine, and contains a huge collection of optional rules. I selected a very small subset of them, initially sticking with the "logical extensions of the standard rules" theme: so All-Out (Strong) can be used for thrown weapons and the like. The one exception was another one of Doug's articles, "Delayed Gratification", which adds a new attack option that is something of a combination of a feint and a deceptive attack. Originally, I didn't include it because I've almost never seen it used in play by anyone other than Doug, but he asked for it specifically and I didn't mind adding the option for him. I expect it will almost never come up, since the PCs are using guns a lot more than fists or blades.

Rejected Optional Rules

I did propose a couple of other rules from Pyramid that got rejected. David Pulver has a suggestion to halve the damage of long-arms and give them an armor divisor, giving them the same penetration against armor but reducing their lethality. We were going to use that, but I finally decided it helped the bad guys (who would be the target of longarms) more than the PCs (who be firing the longarms), and that it made using GCA complicated, since the firearm damage on everyone's sheets would be wrong. It was too much complication for too little gain.

Moving Beyond the Optional Rules

Even with all the official optional rules, there comes a time when a GURPS GM wants to tweak the game to better match his tastes. I'm not immune to that impulse, though this time through I tried to rein it in as much as possible.

The first change I made was halving the cost of ST. That was a change I first tried in Mecha Against the Giants, and I really think it's helpful for high-tech games. First, it recognizes that ST isn't worth as much in the age of gunpowder. Second, it discourages people from selling down their ST: ST 9 only gives 5 more points, and the reduced HP and lifting capability can really effect people so the trade-off is less worth it. Finally, it actually encourages people to buy up their ST a bit, because the extra HP and increased lifting capability are worth it. If ST had been 10 points per level, I expect everyone would have had ST 9, 10, or 11, but the actual PCs are grouped around 12 with a little more variation.

I came up with several perks, mostly from comments by +Nathan Joy. There's been a constant struggle in house rules in our online games, between the people like him that think Fast-Draw should be a weapon technique, and people like me who think it should be a skill or something. This time we found a compromise: Fast-Draw Training is a perk that lets you roll against weapon skill to fast-draw it. People still put a point in it, but it's one less skill. This idea really came into it's own by adding a similar perk for Forced Entry that let people skilled with weapons get bonus damage for attacking stationary objects. This saves a couple of points for focused warriors, but also lets non-combatants (such as firefighters) learn the Forced Entry skill. It's an elegant solution.

Another concept I borrowed from Nate is weapon skill categories. GURPS weapon skills are possibly overly detailed, and there's a long standing problem that it's stupidly expensive to have a samurai who can use a katana in one-handed and two-handed styles. Weapon skill categories are a skill category more difficult than the individual weapon skills, but cover a broader category: so Sword Weapons instead of Broadsword and Two-Handed Sword. It basically makes individual weapon skills a specialization of the category skills. Again, it's an elegant solution that allows for an affordable, broadly trained character or a slightly cheaper specialist.

Another skill related change was halving the cost of techniques. I've never liked technique pricing in 4th edition: improving a skill overall by 1 level costs 4 points, and buying two techniques that each improve some subset of that skill by 1 level also costs 4 points, so people generally only buy one or two techniques at most. Halving the cost of techniques means that it's worthwhile to invest it three or four techniques, which will hopefully give a little more variation and diversity in the PCs' abilities.

I'm also using a bunch of house rules from No School Grognard: Better Fantasy Armor, College Ritual Book Magic, SSR Rapid Fire, and revised knockback. I've already written essays about what I didn't like about the standard GURPS rules for each of those house rules, so no need to go into more detail there.

One last change was some different Fright Checks rules. The standard GURPS Fright check rules are odd: a scared character usually freezes up (or throws up), but almost never runs away. Freezing up, instead of running, is especially annoying in online play, because it can mean an hour or more where a player can't contribute at all to the game but still has to stick around. Running away, even if it's a forced action, is something the player has some control over (even if it's only picking the direction that they run) and has the added bonus of potentially triggering new events. The new fright check rules encourage running away by giving characters substantial penalties to all die rolls, including defenses, for failing fright checks. A standing -5 penalty is fairly crippling, and it encourages PCs to retreat from the fight rather than whiff and open themselves up to damage. I like rules that emergently create behavior instead of prescribing it, so this rule is pretty good.

Castle of Horrors Session 1

I'm very excited to say that Castle of Horrors has gone from idle musings to a campaign wiki to a completed first session, and it was glorious! Everyone involved had a lot of fun, and there was laughter and fear and tension and running away like scared little bunnies.

Castle of Horrors is my modern day hunters become dungeon crawlers campaign in GURPS. The first session was last night, and this is my recap. Douglas Cole wrote his own version here, so you compare the player view to the GM's view.

You wake up in the courtyard of a creepy castle

The protagonists of Castle of Horrors consisted of 5 PCs and 2 NPCs:

• +Nathan Joy as Yusef, retired military civil affairs agent
• +Douglas Cole  as Neil, a former cop turned private investigator
• Angela, his fitness bunny girlfriend/Ally/Dependent
• +Kevin Smyth  as Jamie Raleigh, academic and wannabe wizard
• Raleigh Jamie, her orc boyfriend/Ally/Dependent
• +Uhuk of the Guard as Ryan, troll street person
• +Theodore Briggs  as Thomas, dwarf inventor

As an aside, I'd like to thank Kevin for giving his characters androgynous names and swapping the gender expectations. I had Raleigh's and Jamie's names switched in the first draft of this document, until Doug pointed out the error.

The "Real World" of Castle of Horrors had 10% of the population undergo Shadowrun style goblinization in 2013, which is why several of the protagonists aren't human.

The game started with our heroes going out on a camping/hunting trip. I like to start my games in media res with minimal backstory, because I think getting the actual plot going as quickly as possible makes for a better experience. So I glossed over the hunting trip in about two sentences and moved immediately to Yusef crawling out of his tent and noticing they were no longer in east Texas woodlands, but instead inside the courtyard of a big black stone castle. I didn't use the words creepy or spooky, but the players did almost immediately.

Everyone woke up, and after establishing that they were either in the courtyard of a big black castle or sharing a hallucination, starting packing up the campsite and loading their guns. Whatever was going on, they were suspicious of it.

You feel a tug to the east

Somewhere around this point, I sent a note to Kevin, telling him that Raleigh felt a compulsion to head east. Since the front doors of the castle were to the east and several other people wanted to see if the place was inhabited, that was easy enough to do. They stopped at the entranceway to marvel at the odd writing and strange emblem mounted over the door, but didn't really know what to do with it.

One of the doors was ajar, and the heroes stepped in, pulling out flashlights (or turning on gun-mounted tactical lights) as they went. The interior was dark, with mold on the floors and thick cobwebs on the ceilings. There was another set of massive doors across the room, so they went and opened those, too.

The next room was a huge octagonal chamber, with more doors to the east and a large set of stairs rising to the north. More cobwebs on the ceiling, though strangely not on a collection of leering gargoyles. The moldy carpet also had several disturbing brown patches near the east doors and by the south archway to another hall. Most disturbingly, there were several crossbow bolts buried in the back of the door they had just come through.

The players took another ten or fifteen minutes to explore this room and role-play the increasing strangeness they found themselves in. It seemed pretty obvious to everyone that violence had occurred in the room recently, and that whatever had attacked came from the east. They were even more bothered when they pulled one of the crossbow bolts from the wall and realized it was entirely organic, with a chitin-like head and insect-like wings growing out of the shaft in the place of glued feathers. Eventually they decided to open the east doors, and though Ryan took cover when he did, they weren't particularly careful about clearing the center of the room.

Run like scared bunnies

The doors opened into a long hallway - so long that several of the flashlights didn't have enough range to illuminate the far end. Ryan and Thomas have infravision, so they could see some massive, 4-armed shapes at the far end, leveling weapons at them. Ryan frantically tried to close the door while the shapes requested a password (speaking in a mix of Middle English and Early Modern English that Uhuk claimed would sound like a Yorkshire accent). When no password was returned correctly, the shapes opened fire.

My initial rolls were hilariously bad: a critical failure and an out right miss. However, Jamie and Raleigh were in the center of the room, right in the line of fire, and though Jamie had the presence of mind to dive for cover, he still took a crossbow bolt to the gut.

One of the house rules we're using is the new damage table from Pyramid v3.84: instead of thrust damage being roughly half of swing damage, thrust damage is now only 2 points less. And given that the 4-armed shapes were actually variant siege beasts with ST30, that crossbow was doing 5d-1 damage. I offered Kevin the chance to lessen the hit (before announcing how much damage it would do), but he declined, since Raleigh was an orc and had lots of HP and could take the hit. 34 injury later, Raleigh was 2 injury away from dying and lying on the floor in a heap.

Panic ensued, but Ryan got the door closed before any more fire could be exchanged. Raleigh was pulled to the south side of the room while Thomas, Neil, and Yusef covered the doors. Kevin spent a couple of destiny points to make sure that Raleigh could successfully cast a Major Healing spell, and Raleigh miraculously recovered. But the PCs wanted OUT of the spooky castle, and fled west for the courtyard.

The Dragon Statues Awake

Just as Thomas was stepping across the threshold to the courtyard, the 4 stone dragon statues that were perched overhead came alive and started breathing fire. A couple of people freaked out: most noticeably Ryan, who failed a fear test but threw a clumsy punch anyway, and then a general melee broke out. Thomas' beard got lit up, but house-cat sized dragonettes are no match for 7.62mm rounds or 3" 12G buckshot. The combat was literally over in seconds, and everyone fled into the courtyard.

They reloaded their guns, applied first aid to Thomas, and generally hyperventilated for a bit. After some discussion, everyone agreed they wanted to go home NOW. Yusef suggested moving around the courtyard, trying to find a sally port or crack in the wall or something. Since no one really wanted to go back into the castle (except the two Greedy PCs, who wanted to recover the silver blood of the dragon statues), Yusef's plan was accepted.

Meet the neighbors

They found a group of small, green men, clearly goblins, in the southeast corner of the courtyard. Hostilities were averted, and friendly communication quickly established. Neil almost queered the deal by aiming at the goblins, but was eventually convinced to lower his gun since though the goblins had bows out, they didn't have them up or drawn.

My notes for Wiremu, the goblin leader, have him as something between a used car salesman and a mafia wiseguy, and I think that came across. A couple of people were muttering "these aren't goblins, they're Ferengi!" and the PCs definitely caught on that Wiremu's questioning about whether or not they were warriors was not just idle curiosity.

Wiremu: "So only the troll is a warrior, huh? The rest of you are... academics or something?"

Yusef: "Something like that."

Wiremu: "Interesting. Say, did you guys hear some thunder earlier, or did you show up after that?"

Ryan (flatly): "That was us."

Wiremu: "Oh! Okay then. Good to know."

Meanwhile, Raleigh was wandering around the courtyard, triangulating the source of her compulsion as somewhere in the chapel to the north. That chapel had mostly boarded over stained glass windows, and honestly did not remind the PCs of the kind of last stand bastion against zombies you see in horror movies, no sir, you can trust the GM when he tells you that! For some reason, my attempts to reassure them failed.

Raleigh and Ryan peek into the chapel and do not like
what they see.

Peaking through the windows, Jamie and Ryan saw three things of note: the interior of the chapel was in disarray, as though there had been fighting; another one of the four-armed monsters was in the room; and there was a silver crow statue on the altar. Not being entirely stupid, Kevin reckoned that the statue was the Icon of Crowspire, one of the great treasures that were worth extra CP when recovered.

The PCs had another quick confab, and then asked Wiremu about going into the castle. Wiremu said he and his tribe didn't do that, that the interior of the castle was dangerous, and that he'd strongly prefer that if the PCs wanted to break into the courtyard, they did it from somewhere else. He generously offered to help raise the portcullis to the next courtyard, as a matter of fact, but the PCs decided they didn't trust the little weasel and declined.

Once more into the breach

With something resembling a goal in mind, the PCs went back into the front door. The greedy people scraped silver off the walls, and everyone else discussed tactics: they'd dismount one of the inner doors, and then use it as cover when they opened the door the siege beasts. Rifles from behind cover should beat crossbows in the open. It was a good plan, and they started to to put it into motion, when they all came down with a case of gamer attention deficit disorder.

Unfair!

They could just barely see, in the south hall, a glint of metal. Someone went down to look and found a full harness of rusty steel plate on a manikin, and then everyone else trickled down to investigate. The statue didn't attack them, so they stripped off the helmet and tried it on: it obviously didn't fit Ryan or Thomas, but as it happened, it perfectly fit Raleigh. Some jokes were made about how duct tape could replace the absent arming doublet, and in a fit of misplaced enthusiasm, Raleigh was soon swaddled in 55+ lbs of ironmongery. Since she was the protected one, she was also tasked with opening the door.

Although they could see a spiral stairway to the east, they managed to return to focusing on their plan to kill the siege beasts. As a group, they walked back into the octagon room, and shouted in frustration as the gargoyles came to life, unfurled their wings, and moved to attack. It was getting late, and that was the perfect place to stop, so that's where we quit.

Evaluation of Play

I have been anticipating this game for weeks, and it turned out to be even better than I expected. The players were mostly on the ball, and though there were a couple of distractions, everyone was involved in the game as they could be. There was a lot of great role-playing, with everyone giving the real feeling of people trapped in a strange situation and trying to get through it.

Doug noted that in a lot of ways, this campaign would be a better introduction to role-playing games than typical D&D fare: the tropes of being a castaway with guns, forced to investigate something mysterious, are much more familiar to modern minds than the weird tropes of D&D. That wasn't intentional, and with everyone in the group role-playing for 2-3 decades it wasn't necessary, but it was an interesting point.

There really wasn't anything I would have changed in the game. Everything went very smoothly, the rules never got in the way, and the challenges were (surprisingly) appropriate. We had a short discussion after the game ended, and the players all felt the same.

Technical Notes

We play online, using MapTools for the map and dice-rolling and Skype for voice chat. This works for us, reasonably well, though there are usually some technical problems (Doug didn't have Java installed when we started, and Uhuk's computer couldn't find her sound card so she had to switch to her tablet). Nothing too bad.

The entry way, with information token highlighted
and the shield handout on display.

MapTools has a feature that we haven't used much in the past: the GM can put down little informational tokens with text descriptions, and the PCs can just refer to them with a mouse click. I was very deliberate in putting room descriptions EVERYWHERE, and putting a fair bit of detail in them, especially visible exits from each room. This didn't work nearly as well as I hoped, because I think the players forgot to click on them. I was constantly being asked "hey, is this patch of wall a door here?" and although I mentioned an incongruous and jury-rigged crane perched high on the keep and had it clearly written up as such in the room descriptions for the courtyard and keep, none of the players actually knew where it was and a couple of people thought it was a bird. I'll keep working on this feature, because I think it has a lot of potential.

Another feature that we hadn't used much in the past was handouts: the GM can push a picture to all the players. This worked a little better, but it's not persistent, so the players can't look again on their own time. Still, I'm using Ravenloft for the physical floorplan of the castle (modified in places), so I could push them some pictures to give them a better idea of what I was describing.

We're using an alternate system for fright checks: instead of randomly stunning people, failed fright checks in combat situations give penalties when interacting (attacking, defending, resisting mind control attempts, etc) with the source of the fright check. I like this system better because it doesn't take people entirely out of play, an important consideration when playing online, and it generally gives people more control. Ryan was the only person failing fright checks of any significance, so it didn't come up, but it worked well when it did.

What Next?

We're going to continue Castle of Horrors next week. I have a couple more levels of the castle to map and stock. I did have some ways to discourage the PCs from entering the unmapped levels, but they never got to the relevant staircases. I'll quietly remove those discouragers as I finish mapping.

I'm really looking forward to next week. The gargoyles are much tougher than the dragon statues, and I suspect the PCs may end up having to run like scared bunnies again, but with worse options for the retreat. Peter Dell'Orto talks about clearing your six and making sure you always have an escape route, but the gargoyles are between the PCs and the door. It should be interesting.