In reply to Rockwolf66 (msg # 850):

From what I could tell, the storyline is pretty well advanced, albeit in private posts. How/where would a new player fit in?

I'd like to see a GURPS Fantasy game where the players were mostly merchants traveling about, buying and selling and trading, developing and growing their merchant company, and occasionally delving into dungeons to find more capital/things to sell.

Real strong focus on the economic simulation/business management side of things, brokering trade deals and setting up (and guarding) caravans, then these terrifying and dangerous dungeon-crawls that offer big rewards for maximum risk. Maybe a focus on the logistics of preparing and supplying an expedition.

I think that would be fun.

Would probably work as DF if the economics of it stayed fairly detailed.

Tortuga,

I think it would be quite fun too - ever since someone once posted " a tale of two baronies " on the SJW forums where people would make a character, and then a lot of the roleplaying would be related to their barony (they would be barons, of course) and politicking and dealing with 'issues' of the land.

In addition to that there was a set of concepts that pulled directly from strategy and admin-style games (civilisation, crusader kings, rome, etc) where you could opt to develop your land with certain things, had to deal with X number of birgers, merchants, nobles, etc.

It was a fantastic idea and the game started off well up until the GM went AWOL.

I'd really love to play a game like that where players are not just dealing with the roleplaying of adminstration and management of their "resources/land/family/etc" but dealing with more 'strategic' level stuff in general. It really opens up the opportunity to use skills that aren't commonly seen in GURPS games and provide a slightly alternative roleplay experience.


It's probably also worth doing it in something vaguel resembling banestorm in terms of cinematics

Sounds a lot like Birthright.

I think someone did a GURPS version somewhere.

Hello all, I am still working on a setting and would like some feed back on one matter.

What races would you like to play or see playable in a game? You can also name off what type of game you would like to play them in.

If you are curious the setting I am working on is a TL 3+1 Dark Fantasy world where creatures from 3 other planes came to one plane and fought a war several centuries ago and now something is trying to start another war.

The opening mission will have the newly formed group of hunters head to a small town to investigate the death of its mayor while avoiding getting caught by the Church who prosecute hunters on site for what they do. The church has convinced the mass that monster no longer exist, but that has been changing lately and no one knows why.

Races I'd like to see playable in a game ...

as a player... in gurps ....

Most of the time in gurps I play a human!

I'd love to see something that is both big and beefy but doesn't cost an arm and a leg to play in a game not solely about combat.

Yrth-style goblins would probably be fun. I'm not sure what kind of game I'd play them in, but just smaller than human seems like a fun but poorly explored niche.

In a high point game I'd love to play a Jinn or Dragon.

Honestly, for that sort of game, for "Playable Races" I would just say "Humans."  The (admittedly scant) background you provided gives the impression that there isn't much in the way of friendly racial commingling, and opening up a full smorgasbord of racial options is just going to get you a mish-mash group that probably wouldn't make any sense in context.  Especially if their group's purpose is hunting and exterminating non-human monsters.

In reply to LandWalker (msg # 857):

Perhaps the Ogre can join the merchants game! That could be interesting!

As stated in my first post, I am not asking what racing you would like in my setting, I am asking what races you would like to play. period. And if there is a setting which you would like to play said races in I would not mind knowing that too.

so to clear things up for you, what races would you like to play regardless of the setting. Assume the setting fits what ever races you want to play if it helps.

A few thoughts, but I didn't want to make multiple posts, so:


1) I've been working on a setting for a while.  It seems best suited to Dungeon Fantasy.

a) I've realized that I suffer from what some people call Tolkien Syndrome.  Any tips for organizing my writing process and not getting bogged down in minor details?

b) Is there middle ground between what GURPS calls Dungeon Fantasy and Fantasy?  I like the idea behind Dungeon Fantasy, but I've noticed that sometimes 250 points is a little overwhelming for new players to make choices with, and I've also noticed that there comes a point when I start to run into a few of the same issues that D&D has at a certain level.




2) Part of the concept behind the setting I mentioned above is a city built on top of a dungeon.  In some ways, it would be very similar to the idea behind the Ptolus setting.

a) I'd like to be surprised -even as the GM- by some of the levels.  Would there be any interest among the community in designing a level of the dungeon?

b) What are some ways to explain how underground dwellers get food and water?  It seems as though there's only so many times I can use mushrooms and potatoes before it gets old hat.

1) Ok.

a) Only bother creating what your players are going to encounter. If they dig deeper, improvise and take notes.

b) DF Henchmen has rules for smaller templates.

2a) Perhaps.

2b) Magical solar lights.

I like Henchmen.  The only issue I find is that the monsters and creatures often seem to be geared more toward the assumption of 250 points.  The easiest example of seeing that is comparing an orc template from Banestorm to any of the ones from the DF line.

In reply to Johnny Angel (msg # 862):

Just answering Q2.

2a) Perhaps. What do you want? What about random generation?

2b) There are always carnivorous that eat the fungus eaters. Or creatures that get sustenance of heat (ie lava) or eat gems or metals (did I hear someone say rust monster?) or even rocks. Underground lakes easily explain water, often in large enough quantities for plankton that live of heat instead of light.

I'm fine with some amount of random generation.

The dungeon is a bit video-gamey in some respects.  I imagine that lower levels will be tougher.  I don't want combat to always be the answer though.  I have some ideas in mind for puzzles and social challenges -which I don't mind sharing if asked.

The vague idea I have in mind right now is that levels 1-3 are somewhat peaceful (but not necessarily without challenges) due to having been explored by many NPC groups already.  When I've run the setting for a different group previously, one of the early levels was dominated by large bees which collected pollen from glowing flowers.  This produced "glow honey" which could be bottled relatively easily, and was a nice way for me as GM to remind players that they might want to take a light source.  Typically, the bees leave you alone as long as they're not disturbed or startled.  I lost some of my old notes from the first time I ran the setting, but my thoughts at the moment are to have the hive on part of 3; possibly edging into an area of 4 where there is a lack of ceiling/floor between the two levels.

4-6 is tougher, but not radically different in general challenge; though there may be particular areas which are harder or easier. I feel as though those levels should be more active.  The game is somewhat intended to introduce some people to GURPS who haven't played before, so I'd like a few levels to introduce various aspects of the rules and give a chance for players to get a feel for what their characters can do.  I'm heavily considering using the decagoblin challenge from Pyramid in here somewhere.

7 is when I'd like to start ramping things up.  Difficulty is one way of doing so, but so is complexity.  By complexity, I mean there may be more than one type of problem (social, puzzle, combat, etc) involved in a situation.  My gut feeling is that this is around when players should have a good enough grasp on mechanics to start interacting with the game world more.  I'd like to introduce some sort of minor boss that roams this level.  Killing the boss isn't necessary, but I feel that it should be a threat which could be attracted and doing so would be undesirable.

8-9 would get a little harder than 7.

10 contains a series of gateways.  I have a pretty solid idea of what's on 10.


So, I suppose what I'm looking for is a few things to fill in the blanks.  It could either be a level or a series of rooms on a level.  If there's something which fits into the general idea above that you'd like to test out and get feedback on, I can see how the players interact with it.

One idea which I'm working on is using the Fungi from DF Monsters 2. I like the dazzler and puffball options for a possible hazard during an encounter somewhere on 5.

Hmmm, I have deviated from that a little, in that I am using Fungi as a source of food, but it has side effects. Some just make you ill, others expose you to magic and in doing so can turn you into an elf/orc/dwarf, etc, and others just give you temporary Lecherousness. In this way, you can treat some fungi are rewards, instead of potions, and the effects can be many, and maybe the effect comes from a gas cloud released on damage or even if vibration is detected. You could even ave flammable ones to slow down that pyromanic mage.

The puzzle ones I can understand, but I have always struggled to come up with good social challenges my players enjoy. Might I ask some of your ideas in that regard?

Food fungi is still a possibility.  What I mentioned was a specific use of a creature found in one of the monster books.

For social challenges; honestly, I've considered blatantly stealing parts of a D&D adventure called Caves of Chaos.

Also, in this particular setting, there are other dungeon delving groups.  An idea that I used in a non-GURPS game before was encountering another group who had been stuck underground for a while and was starting to suffer from paranoia.  The players needed to cross a bridge, but the paranoid NPCs were on the other side with a hastily built fighting position and a makeshift siege weapon.  The players had to use social skills to calm down the NPCs if they wanted to cross safely.  Fighting was allowed as an option, but was obviously more dangerous due to the possibility of a scorpion bolt being aimed at the first person across.

The leader of the NPCs had certain things that he'd respond positively to and certain things he'd respond negatively to.  Associated skills in GURPS would likely be Diplomacy, Heraldry, Saviore Faire(Military), and possibly Fast Talk.  In the original version, using Intimidation lead to being shot at; being accompanied by undead gave a severe penalty to trying to be diplomatic, and trying to run or otherwise move quickly lead to a negative reaction.  Depending on the amount of success, the NPCs offer to accompany the players and have some knowledge of the area.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:40, Sat 20 Aug 2016.

I was thinking some more about the social challenge question.

The game I'm running is very focused on Dungeon Delving.  However, the two primary players are interested in starting their own delving business.  That has included some social scenarios.

One of the first things they did was seek out some hirelings to fill their ranks.  This lead to a series of interviews.  While not a challenge in the sense of "winning" or "losing", there was challenge involved in trying to discern who they wanted to hire without being able to have concrete game stats to look at.  As the person running the game, it also gave me some insight into what non-combat activities interest them.  It lead to a few surprises on my end, and, in the long run, I think it will create some interesting situations.

One of the NPCs they hired is a cook with an obligation to a secret society.  One is a coleopteran warrior with social ties to a clan.  The other is a porter who is Lazy; I'm curious to see how long he stays with the group before his disadvantage is noticed and becomes a problem.

Assuming their business has some success, I have a few other things in mind.  There are other delving agencies in the city where the game is taking place.  Slander and competition via propaganda and advertising is a possible social challenge.  Attracting sponsors and patrons is also a possibility, and that carries a few social scenarios.  I'm still sketching out the inhabitants of the city; I'll have more detail to share once I fill in some of the blanks.

Current party composition
Vampire Alchemist - player; being a vampire is a secret
Minotaur Saint - player; minotaurs are more common in this setting; saint of a fire god
Dwarf Cook - hireling; secret society member; least combat skilled
Human Porter - hireling; lazy porter; has some spear skill
Coleopteran Warrior - hireling; using an oar as a polearm; also uses a longbow

One of the things I like about GURPS is that it has more plausible combat results.  It's one of the many things which attracted me to the system.

That being said, I'm newer at running Dungeon Fantasy.  Both the PCs and their opponents often have high skill and high damage, and that tends to lead to fights where one attack has the capability to severely injure or kill most people.  While I do expect combat to lead to harm, going from full HP to near death seems to happen a lot more regularly than I had anticipated.

I'm not sure what advice to offer my players when they build characters.  I'm likewise unsure of what I can do on my end of things to lead to more balanced outcomes.

I'm not looking to take it easy on the players, but they are newer to the system, so having them hover on death's door as a regular thing isn't what I expected from the first few sessions.

Any advice?

Well, there is an interesting mechanic that was introduced ( i think )  in monster hunters, regarding 'destiny points' or 'extreme comptetance'. It essentially is a way of having the ability to spend CPs for successes/effects (like flesh wounds) without actually spending character points, encoded in an advantage or two.

something similar to that might work out for you - though this kind of thing would probably lean some scales of kick-assery well in the favour of your players.



For people attacking your players, if you keep the levels reasonable then it is much more managable. I found thatwith DF and other fantasy-esque settings there was some inflation of the abilities for descriptions.

"the tall strong looking orc who weilds his axe with great skill" in any realistic setting ends up being   st 12-13, skill 14   in DF those values generally get hiked up. Granted even at the lower end of that spectrum anything more than a "bad roll" for damage is still going to mess people up.

I think one of the things that halped me a lot was to say "It's okay to get hit" one thing to remember is that even at 0HP you won't just die - if you're bleeding you're bleeding - it's not until you start hitting those HP multipliers taking damage that you're rolling to die. So your characters can be in fights, have smashed out all of their 17 HP of damage, be battered and bruised on the verge of losing consciousness - but the only real risk for death is that they keep bleeding.  If they had bought some oil that they rub over their skin that uatomatically stops wounds bleeding, then it's all just good "they wake up later"

The inflation of abilities is a lot of what I'm looking at.

Last night, a fight against a group of goblinoids turned out to be a lot tougher than expected.  I'm a little apprehensive about using some of the tougher creatures from DF: Monsters.  My concern is over whether the game will turn into an arms race in the same way that high level D&D tends to.

I was using the Decagoblin set of encounters from Pyramid.  The two players are still very new to GURPS.  I'm still getting back into the swing of things myself.  So, maybe later sessions will give me more info to judge from.

Well, I think also that in terms of engagements that ar skirmishes. Numbers have a rather large effect - even just having 3 vs 2 actually can really make noticable difference without just say 'scaling up the enemy to be stronger monsters'.

Even a force of weaker creatures if you start adding in tactical thought/leadership etc. could be formidable.

The thing I really try to go for more than anything is a way to think cleverly or something. If you put a big war-like hulking orc that has been spanking people with his stolen dwarven greataxe - and he happens to be a weapon master in a direct compeition with some goblin wielding a broken breanch... well direct force will likely just have the goblin dstroyed. When the granularity of fighting comes with the 'cut' evenhaving a small advantage in skill, fortitude, etc would mean things go from "oh crap i'm in a fight" to "oh %$£%$% I have no arm" (0->60) in no time at all.

The best way to tackle that is with options that allow for those direct hits to be deflected. It's said time and again that using things like terrain, obstacles, etc help a lot but it can extend further than that.

1) Personality - it is unlikely that even a confident, well-established warrior would be pushing to attack every round, fights work in flurries more than anything. A guy who is smaller, or feels a bit intimidated would likely be more defensive or cautious... but it means defensive attacks, proving feints etc.

There's a great post on the SJW Forum about a boxing match with two different types of fighters, this gives some of the idea for it

2) THings other than skill and strength - the last gasp allows at least one totally different style of fighting. I used it in one of my fights where the guy fought purely defensively in order to wear out a very aggressive enemy with the depleting skill level associate dwith exhaustion after a while my guy could just pick the enemy apart.

It's jut one example but that kind of thought can really change dynamics of fighting.


Imagine calling out against the enemy "guess where your greenskinned momma was last night !" and encouraging them to fight below optimum. Lots of strong, committed and/or all out attacks as anger and frustration get more and more


If you incorporate such things into combat then you could jave something like a bard, actually be a formidable character. Because... he is so skilled at messing with peoplese heads (strong charisma, intimidation, will, acting, etc.) that he is able to scare the crap out of anyone fighting him into thinking he's the greatest and best warrior ever... so the enemy, out of fear doesn't perform well (even if it's not 'fear' directly, i.e. a seasoned veteren enemy.. unless thay have unfazeable/indomitable (one of those) they would still be affected by such ruses)  they are overly cautious and so focused on protecting themsevles that they leave openings.



this was a bit ofa brain dump, hope it helps.

Yeah, it does help.

I haven't tried Last Gasp yet.  I'm holding off on introducing a lot of rules until both of the players have a better grasp of GURPS.  I'm still shaking off my own rules rust as well.

Looking over the encounter, I think part of the problem was that I chose tougher opponents than I should have.  I used Goblin Commandos from an online conversion.  10 Commandos vs the 4 (2 PCs and 2 hirelings) leading to only one casualty was pretty good in hindsight.

Still, my question is does Dungeon Fantasy turns into a race of ability and magic item inflation?

To some extent, I know it's part of dungeon fantasy style, but part of why I got away from D&D is because I didn't like how levels stacked in such a 'vertical' way.  "I trade in my +1 armor for +2 armor."  At a certain point, creatures and players started having numbers just for the sake of having bigger numbers, and it leads to fights in which whomever hits wins.  The 0 to 60 comment above is exactly what I mean.

The other thing I tend to dislike about that approach is that characters would sometimes become immune to the world around them.  I remember playing D&D 3.5 and realizing that the army I had acquired was virtually worthless because I could fight all of them by myself and win.  Don't get me wrong, I highly enjoyed the system at the time I was playing it, but I liked that GURPS lead to results which made more sense to me.  Even in a Dungeon Fantasy game, I'd rather have heroes leading armies than fighting them.  A hero fights 10-20 goblins and wins?  Ok, fine.  A high level fighter fights 1000 people and wins without a scratch as a regular thing?  That starts to break my ability to buy into the fiction.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:04, Tue 30 Aug 2016.

I imagine some of you are aware of this already, but there is a Dungeon Fantasy Boxed Set on Kickstarter.

https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...ame-powered-by-gurps

In reply to Johnny Angel (msg # 873):

They don't know me as "Backer #1" for nothing!

(I kinda wish there was a gold star or something trivial like that for being the first backer, but there isn't.  So I just get to say "I backed it 20 seconds before the #2 backer!"

I'm excited for this project. I'm looking forward to where it goes and what other projects it inspires.

The Dungeon Fantasy version is a high power game in GURPS.