First blood! After play report 7

Cast:
Calawas - Elf Thief (Katz)
Amalia - High Elf Cleric (Paraj) - absent
Volbak - Dwarf Knight (Jim)
Lamaevhun - Wood Elf Scout (Tim)
Ilsildel - High Elf Wizard (Martin)
Chief - Wood Elf Barbarian (Catherine)

Hirelings:
John Porter, employed as a laborer and horse-hand by the party
Titus Longfellow, employed as a man-at-arms by Isildel
Matthias Wimbledon, novice of St. Cuthbert, employed by Calawas

This was a short session, so not too much happened. The party was down at the back end of a hole that had turned into a worked stone passage leading underneath the Moathouse, confronted with a sliding wall behind which they heard voices.

After a lot of dithering on their part, the party decided to force the issue, and the thief got out his crowbar. Assisted by the resident muscles and nearly herniating himself, Calowas finally levered up the wall, after which the barbarian went about lifting and holding it. When he'd gotten the wall about half-way up, the party heard from the other side the shouted words, "Hold! Stop and identify yourselves!" and saw four pairs of boots and four sets of chainmailed legs.

Calowas lost no time and dropped to one knee to fire his bow. He saw four men, dressed in heavy mail and wearing black tabards with a yellow eye in the center, with leveled crossbows. He shot, but his arrow bounced off the chest of the man he fired at.

They shot, and their bolts didn't bounce. Two sank into Calowas' chest, puncturing his lung and spleen. One missed, going wide and bouncing back along the corridor, and the last blew a hole right through Chief's leg. She fell, dropping the wall and frothing into a berserk rage from the pain.

The one saving grace here was that the barbarian was both crippled and without her hammer to hand. She promptly tried punching out the dwarf, who calmly blocked while the Wizard spun up his Sleep spell.

After she calmed down, Matthias rushed forward to check on Calowas, who as it turns out was still alive but badly in need of surgery, which he attempted to provide. Unfortunately, the enterprising thief bled out before his lung could be patched up properly.

That's the point where the party decided to head home to cut their losses and come up with another plan of attack.

Notes

This marks the first death, and the splitting of the family. Really, Calowas has been asking for it for a long while now, going off alone and fighting things while severely wounded.


It seems like my players are under the impression, despite my warnings to the contrary, that they can 'win' every encounter. Hopefully this cured them of that.

The guards have ST 30 crossbows. They can wind them up with a crank well enough, but they're definitely a fire-and-forget deal. I wasn't sure I wanted to do this, since some part of me still doesn't want to take such advantage of the rules, and 4d+4 imp seems kind of harsh, especially four times. Still, I went with it because I'd have no qualms if the guards were PCs, which seems a pretty fair test when the PCs are supposed to be special because of point totals only.

Down the back way: After Play Report 6

Cast:
Calawas - Elf Thief (Katz)
Amalia - High Elf Cleric (Paraj)
Volbak - Dwarf Knight (Jim)
Lamaevhun - Wood Elf Scout (Tim)
Ilsildel - High Elf Wizard (Martin)
Chief - Wood Elf Barbarian (Catherine)

Hirelings:
John Porter, employed as a laborer and horse-hand by the party
Titus Longfellow, employed as a man-at-arms by Isildel
Matthias Wimbledon, novice of St. Cuthbert, employed by Calawas

Our intrepid heroes came back to Hommlet with purses considerably fuller than when they left it last to the smell of smoke in the air. The villagers seemed tense, and the half-trained militia was out in more force than before, but life seemed to be going on as usual. They stopped to weather the night in the Inn of the Welcome Wench, where Volbak once again discovered ale and they learned that a great amount of smoke had come from the Moathouse a few days ago and put everyone on edge, though the plume was out now. Had the Moathouse burnt down in their absence?

There was only one way to tell, so after sunrise and Master Gundigroot's impeccable victuals they reclaimed their ponies and set off on the old overgrown trail.

It wasn't long before they found the Moathouse and the source of smoke. Someone had burned a wide, wobbly circle - three hundred feet, give or take a little - around the whole thing, razing off the underbrush and making unmarked approach basically impossible.

They did the sensible thing and set up camp outside the circle in the swamp - an uncomfortable and wet affair, but also unmarked so far as they could tell - and decided to spy out the surrounds.

 The first thing they discovered is that someone had worked to close a portcullis over the entrance to the Moathouse, though the drawbridge was still down, half-rotted as it was. Lamaevhun saw no real signs of occupancy, but as he poked around in the bog outside the kill-zone he stumbled across a large, foul-smelling hole in the ground about six hundred feet out, big enough for two men abreast and tall enough for a man on horseback.


He went back and informed the party, and after some discussion, they decided to leave John with the horses and the camp and head down the hole to see where it went. They got there without incident and started filing down the hole, finding that it was a nasty, rank and foul den of something or other - bones strewn about the place, along with offal and other filth - when, just Titus (keeping rearguard) stepped down the rampish first portion to the dank inside, he crumpled like a sack of meat.

Amalia and Lamaevhun were in back, and luckily heard the sound of rattling armor and the dull thud as the hireling went down. They turned around and were faced with a large, hairy, foetid beast with a nasty-looking club in one hand splattered with blood and a questionable-looking bag in the other.

Things weren't looking that good. Titus was dead, and the two people who could reach his assailant were the Cleric and the Scout. Lamaevhun lost no time drawing and shooting, and Amalia drew her sword and attacked, but the whatever-it-was didn't seem hardly fazed. It just dodged out of the way, took a cursory swipe at Amalia, and started dragging Titus off, though they could tell it had a hard time with his heavy body. Meanwhile the rest of the party wasn't really in position to help: Chief and Volbak were in the front, far enough away from the melee to take too much time getting there.

Meanwhile Chief had found some kind of impaling stick trap down there in the murk and Calawas went forward to look at it.

Fortunately, Isildel was in the middle and had by now forced his way to the back, and Amalia got in one lucky swing that made the whatever-it-was think twice about dragging off Titus. It dropped him, kicked something in the bushes that put up a jangling of bells much further down in the hole, and for a few seconds there was a sort of chase - them slowed by the bog, it slowed by its wounds - before it dropped down into the reeds and disappeared right before their eyes.

Isildel wasn't having that. He didn't know exactly where it was, but exactly isn't necessary with threshold magic, so soon there was a  12-yard wide fire. Up popped the nasty with a howl and booked it out of the fire...then lay down again.

That's fine. 12 yards wasn't enough? How about THIRTY?! I AM AN ANGRY WIZARD!

Yeah, it was kinda like that.

Up it popped again, howling louder than before. After a few seconds, it collapsed in the middle of the blaze. About thirty seconds later as the three were trudging back to the hole, there was a loud explosion and some differently-colored tongues of flame for a bit, then all was still.

(Fortunately for them, the fire didn't catch on its own too well, what with the swampy terrain.)

Oh, and it turned out that Matthais checked Titus over and found that he wasn't really dead, just very close. Some magical healing fixed that up well enough and, after a bit of rest around the entrance to the hole, the party went back in. Calowas had long since disarmed the primitive tension trap.

About fifty feet further down the hole, it became a tunnel of wet but dressed stone and took on a gentle but definite downward slope. After another few hundred feet, Calowas in front heard what he took to maybe be voices and the scrape of leather against stone, so they doused the arrow they'd been using as a light source (Continual Light) and he crept forward in the dark.

Pretty soon he found a wall. Feeling along it, the edges seemed like they fit into grooves in the tunnel walls, as though this thing were meant to be lifted out of place. Putting his ear to the wall, he heard muffled voices beyond.


==================================

Notes

This session showcased two things very well: One was the true potential nastiness of an absurdly high level of stealth (aided by Chameleon and Camouflage) on the part of the bugbear. -20 for being in plain sight and being watched when you drop into cover? No problem! The other was the advantages of Threshold Magic as a system.

Isildel was able to throw gross magical power at the problem to solve it. At the same time, I could see Martin making the decision, "Do I want to blow all my tally now, on this? Or do I save it up for something else, and dribble it out a little at a time?" So far, a Tally of 30 has worked fairly well, and it promotes real decision-making about a limited resource.

For some reason, session recaps are really hard for me to write, and I think that's part of why I've been negligent with this blog (on top of everything else). I still have a lot to do, though. Since the best way to do a difficult task is to actually sit down and do it, I'm going to post the rest of the session recaps until I'm all caught up. Any further ideas I have can always sit as draft posts.

In which elves steal, dwarves are hairless and I'm sorely tempted to use horde pygmies: After play 4

I have some catching up to do due to my hiatus. Fortunately, today at work everyone left me alone so I could get my actual work done. And now I'm home at a reasonable hour. Yay!

Cast:
Amalia - High Elf Cleric (Paraj)
Volbak - Dwarf Knight (Jim)
Lamaevhun - Wood Elf Scout (Tim)
Ilsildel - High Elf Wizard (Martin)
Chief - Wood Elf Barbarian (Catherine)

Calowas' player couldn't make it tonight. Since I don't have the luxury of having each session be a different trip into the dungeon, but I don't want hangers-on, the first thing that happened during the session was that an urchin-boy came running into the moathouse, exhausted and dirty, and handed Calowas a card. "Oh no!" Calowas moaned, "I"m late for the Thieves' Union meeting!" and he ran off into the wilderness, putatively back to Hommlet to attend at the local chapterhouse. (Obviously, they're an outpost from Nulb.)

Anyway, the party was nearly done with the top floor of the moathouse; there was some discussion as to whether it was worth finishing the place off, or if they should just try the door they found earlier that led downstairs. After not too much discussion, Volbak took the lead and opened the last door...onto a very moldy kitchen. It was obvious that this place hadn't been cared for for ages.

There was some interest in the mold from the usual suspect, but it turned out both to be not magical nor particularly hallucinogenic, so interest was quickly lost after Volbak took a salutary essay into the kitchen to look for something of value - old cutlery, pots, or something. No luck, but then, they didn't want to stick around to search. I can't say I blame them; the place reeked something awful.

That accomplished, they headed down the stairs, where it quickly became clear that the door had swollen shut due to long exposure to moisture. (The moathouse is in a swamp, after all.) With much banging (and a little hinge-oiling) they finally managed to slam the door open, whereupon Volbak stumbled through the arch...and some green goop fell on him.

Let me say here that I run green slime nasty. The AD&D Monster Manual states that in 1-4 melee rounds you're basically screwed, sorry, that's it. I ran this as 4d cor per turn until you die, and non-sealed armor protects for two turns as it seeps in. (I think in future, if there is future, I'll run it as 2d, but after 1d6 rounds the only way to make it stop is with a Cure Disease and Remove Curse.)

Volbak quickly went down while the party tried to figure out what to do. Isildel tried apporting it off, and got some, but it quickly grew to replace the lost mass. A quick Naturalist roll told them this stuff is vulnerable to fire, and they had ten gallons of lamp oil, but they were using Continual Light for a light source, and the wizard didn't have Ignite Fire...

Turns out, though, that he did have a lit rope. (It's his Signature Item; we discussed this beforehand and I okayed him having a 'comestible' Signature Item, simulating the fact that he always has some around.) So, with a splash of lamp oil (taking 1d6 seconds) and the application of an open flame (taking 2 seconds), the slime-covered dwarf went up like an effigy of Guy Fawkes, still making his various HT rolls to stay alive while the cleric, Amalia, poured holy energy into him as fast as she could.

After the slime was gone, the barbarian tackled him to the ground to put out the fire - and discovered the second dollop of green slime over the archway. Fortunately, the party was prepared, and Chief just lost her hauberk and gained a few scorchmarks.

That was enough of that. The party decided discretion was the better part of valor and carted off their severely wounded comrades back to Hommlet, where Canon Terjon (standing in for the absent Canoness Ydey) agreed to care for the wounded dwarf for a suitable donation to the Church.

The party spent the week in town. Unfortunately they didn't hear much they didn't already know, mostly because Hommlet is not the place to go if you want news. However, they did contact their debtors in Verbobonc, the local Wizard's Society, and they learned that they could erase their debts from underwriting the expedition by returning the book they had found. After their comrade was recovered, they returned to the Moathouse, determined to get at least something out of this debacle by claiming the Manual of the Sea. So, they rented a draft horse and a wagon, and they apported the huge chunk of valuable stone out of the Moathouse and onto the wagon. 

While they were dragging the book back, when they passed Burne's castle-in-progress, they were summoned to meet him by a page. Turns out, unsurprisingly, the local wizard is also interested in magical artifacts. While they couldn't come to an agreement (Burne was willing to offer a goodly amount of coin, but not quite enough to rid them of their debts), they did pawn off a few things they'd found in the Moathouse thus far, including a vial of pacified green slime.

======

From judging how things looked and sounded at the table, pretty much everyone had a good time.  I do badly need to work on my treasure document. At the moment I have it interspersed with the pages of the module, which works fairly well for linear treasure procurement, but doesn't work if someone has questions as to value or weight. I think instead I'm just going to have two folders - one with the module and monster/trap stats interleaved, and the other with treasure, for easy reference.

Also, I need to put together an Excel doc to keep track of treasure weight, so I can watch that appropriately. Best of all would be if each of the players had one, so they could track weight in real-time, but that might be asking for too much accounting at the table. I'm not sure how fun that would be for them.

Finally, I was glad that my post on portage for Dungeon Fantasy got some play. They needed to rent a horse and wagon. I knew how much that would cost, and I knew how much horse they would need, with a simple lookup.

Honey I shrunk the PCs: After play report 3

Cast:
Calawas - Elf Thief (Katz)
Amalia - High Elf Cleric (Paraj)
Volbak - Dwarf Knight (Jim)
Lamaevhun - Wood Elf Scout (Tim)
Ilsildel - High Elf Wizard (Martin)
Chief - Wood Elf Barbarian (Catherine)

Last session ended with the ignominous death of my beloved bandits. (Actually brigands - there is a difference.) The thief, undeterred by his wounds, immediately set about casing their quarters, finding some small change, a few rations, and the Manual of the Sea, a manual of Shiphandling written by the mad Dwarf Durgin Ulubad. It's quite ornate, quite magical, quite valuable (the letters are inlaid aquamarines!) and also 1,400 lbs - the pages are slabs of stone. Yep. This was actually the slab that Calawas was tossed onto for later interrogation in the last session - the book protector is just light enough that the Barbarian could move it without herniating himself.

Cue appropriate amounts of dickering about treasure, spurred on when the party found silver and even a bit of gold on the bodies of their enemies. (I'm using the bog-standard DF values for copper, silver, and gold, which makes gold very valuable.)

Funnily enough, the thief and the scout (who were, for pretty much the whole session, in single-digit HP range - more on this later) were stuck in the bandit hole-up when this noise attracted a swarm of dire rats from the pantry. Things were looking a bit sticky, because your typical ROUS brings friends, until the resident Problem Solv-err, I mean wizard Glued them to the floor. Let's see: rats with ST 9 need to make a ST-5 check to move one hex, then do it again to move another...nope. Like shooting fish in a barrel. Or rats in a trap. Still, this stirred up the indigenous wildlife a tad, so that after folks were done looting the bodies, things had been riled up.

Rather than waiting for healing, Calawas hobbled ahead, going down the southern corridor to check out - oh, hey, wait, is that a bloated decomposing body? Awesome! Does it have any stuff? What? No? Sure it does! Let me squish around in it a bit!

And that's how he didn't notice the Huge Fierce Green Snake Barring the Way! -I mean, curled up in the corner. Or rather, shortly afterward he did, after it missed him. Cue hijinks that involved setting a corner of the moathouse on fire, the already half-dead thief getting poisoned and narrowly escaping with his life thanks to the attentions of the party cleric and the barbarian not killing everyone simply because the wizard prepared Sleep that day. (As noted before, Berserk and Sense of Duty to Adventuring companions creates some powerful synergy for DF.)

Well, that's all well and good - off to the nearby room! What's in here?

At the same time, the scout and wizard, who had wanted to go down the other hallway, get ambushed by a tick. Yes, not that impressive, though it was the size of a human head. More of a freakish annoyance than anything else. After that, there was serious talk of going home - it was around 1900 game time - or at least resting. They eventually decided to clear out one of the rooms, bring the horses into the Great Hall, and post a watch, hoping for the best. Well, what do you know, the best happened - they weren't molested in the slightest, despite the swamp being thick with prowling wildlife. Good thing, too, because the cleric is their only source of healing, and she's beginning to feel stretched. Part of that is that she didn't even focus on healing so much as being a "divine caster" - i.e. the one who deals with undead and other icky stuff.

Afterward they tossed more rooms, finding a few pieces of worthwhile treasure but not much. They finally approached the last room, having already found the stairs and cordoned them off for later exploration, and discovered that the room was an old barracks with a giant lizard. Well, that was easy. The barbarian and the knight took care of him, and we broke there. I fully anticipate the thief going through its guts and trying to swallow anything he finds.

===========

Okay, so I'm coming to realize that I need to help rein in Calawas' player. He likes the limelight, and most of the time other people enjoy him having it up to a point, because he's a good actor and a funny guy. However, other people need to be able and allowed to do things. I need to work on including them.

Also, I need to work on presenting random encounters in a better way. The Moathouse is especially egregious, what with wandering nasty wildlife and ghouls and so on, to the point where there were a few jokes about Gygaxian ecology and spontaneous generation. I think this will die down as the random encounters make more sense, i.e. are more able to be rationally integrated into the backdrop. However, we'll see. It's still an area to work on.

The party badly needs a leader. This is related to the first issue, but the whole session was effectively them flailing around - getting things done, certainly, but mostly because everyone was rescuing the thief when he went off and did stupid stuff on his own. It's in some way self-correcting; if he keeps wandering off alone while bleeding out and barely able to move, something will eat him. As it is, he only survived because I drew the interior of the Moathouse two sizes too small.

Finally, the Manual of the Sea really makes me happy. It's quite valuable, but also quite heavy, and a little crazy to boot. It presents a conundrum to the players and is also the reward to that conundrum. There was talk of clearing out the Moathouse and setting up a museum, even. And it's all thanks to the random tables in Dungeon Fantasy 8

Into the Moathouse: After play report 2

Wow, it's been far too long here. Explanations are in order: first I lost my car to a roadside glacier (because it was better to hit that than the schoolbus), and then my wife got sick. With work ticking up on top of that, I simply haven't had time to do justice to this blog.

Hopefully now that I have a new car and my wife is on the mend, we can return to a normal posting schedule.

Cast:
Calawas - Elf Thief (Katz)
Amalia - High Elf Cleric (Paraj)
Volbak - Dwarf Knight (Jim)
Lamaevhun - Wood Elf Scout (Tim)
Ilsildel - High Elf Wizard (Martin)
Chief - Wood Elf Barbarian (Catherine) Player absent, character present

We had our second session last night. I'm quickly learning the virtues of preparation beforehand; I didn't have much chance to prep anything new or even look at my old stuff, so this was successful only because I had previously done a lot of thinking about what the entrance to the Moathouse would be like.

Last session ended in the middle of combat with the frogs outside, with Lamaevhun in bad condition in the belly of a frog. At the same time, Calawas was charging into combat with a spear, barely keeping astride his ill-trained pony, looking set to go out in a blaze of glory.

Fortunately, Lamaevhun managed to wriggle his knife out while inside the belly of the beast. With his strong right arm, he quickly dispatched the beast and got down to the messy business of cutting himself an exit.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party marshalled well, cutting the frogs to shreds in short order. They even managed to avoid losing their horses, due to some amazing rolls on my part for horse morale. (Basically, I was having them make Fright Checks every other round - and they all passed. Every single one.)

Frogs dispatched, they fairly quickly decided to butcher and cook them. French cuisine is, after all, appreciated by all delvers, even the most uncultured. This was fortuitous for more than rations, though, as in the belly of the largest frog they also found a one-caret amethyst, in finest Gygaxian tradition. (How you find a rock about the size of a pea in the guts of a frog the size of a horse, I don't know. I don't question these things.)

Little did they know at the time that there was a pair of bandits watching them despatch the frogs, and then periodically poking their heads back out to see what the ruckus was about. So, when Calawas got bored and wandered into the Moathouse courtyard to poke about, he was shot several times and silenced before he could get a sound out. The bandits thereupon dragged him back to their hideout for questioning, to get the exact disposition of the forces outside, purpose, etc. (At this point, Katz, the guy who plays Calawas, started playing the barbarian instead, who is normally played by my wife. She was home sick.)

Fortunately for Calawas, the Lamaevhun noticed his absence not too long after he left, and Ilsildel even thought he heard a scuffle of chain against stone in a lull in the conversation. (I called for Perception checks; Ilsildel made his by six.)

In short order the party hobbled the horses, banked the fire, and went to take a look. The bandits for their part were mostly prepared, figuring the party would come in after their comrade.

For those of you who don't know or don't remember the first floor of the moathouse, the courtyard doubles as an abbatoir. The walls are pierced by murder holes, and the only entrance to the inner keep is up a small set of stairs and through a set of stout double doors. However, the bandits didn't have enough men (only eight) to take full advantage, and the doors are in bad disrepair, one completely off and the other only holding on by one rusty hinge. So when the party entered the courtyard, they bided their time until the party was close enough, at which point the four with crossbows let fly while four others set up a two-man deep blockade on the stairs.

They missed, causing the Ilsildel and Lamaevhun to drop to the ground. Neither of them care. Hooray for Heroic Archer. Also, they failed to consider the effect a raging barbarian with a Reach 2 weapon would have on their formation. Oh, and with someone behind you it's very difficult to retreat for +1/+3 to defenses. What should have been an easy victory for the bandits quickly turned into a slaughter, and then a rout. The bandit leader called for terms after Lamaevhun dropped one of the front line with an arrow, and Volbak split his head open like a melon.

Terms were accepted...sort of. Volbak made his roll to check his Bloodlust, but our barbarian didn't snap out of the berserker rage, which led to the line of the night:

Volbak, stepping up after a wounded bandit who has already dropped his weapon and is stepping back out of combat: "You realize she isn't going to stop." With Jim's delivery in a Nolan-esque Batman voice, it was very scary, especially if you were a bandit.

At that point it was every man for himself. Lamaevhun and Ilsildel worked together to light up the great hall with an arrow, and Amalia put a Sunbolt through the leader's shoulderblades for max damage, earning her first kill. Shortly thereafter they patched together one of the footmen and found Calawas, alive and hastily bandaged, tied up and slung onto a large block of stone.

We ended there, because it was ten o'clock. Everyone earned five character points (the first milestone being penetration into the moathouse and dealing with the bandits). Volbak earned the MVP point for 1) being awesome on the front line, and 2) having the best quote. Next session will start with finding and divvying up the loot, then deciding whether or not they want to go back to town.

=======================

Notes:

The players have taken fairly well to me giving tactical suggestions. It both speeds along the fight and makes them more effective. At the same time, I've put in an effort to have more narrative flair. I feel it's pretty weak so far, but with time and practice I'll get better and more comfortable again.

One thing about the barbarian: I realized about halfway through the session that I'd brought the wrong character sheet. Instead, I had a higher-powered one (by 25 points) that had a maul instead of a mace. Normally, being 150 points, he wouldn't have enough strength to attack every round with a mace. I let it slide for this session though, because it was awesome. However, had he been played correctly, the bandits would have been much tougher opponents.

We got through one and a half fights in three hours, shoving in a fifteen minute break and some roleplaying/logistical discussion in between. It's a pretty good pace. I think it's helped along by a) me getting more comfortable with the capabilities of my NPCs, b) help provided by me and one of the players on tactical decisions, and c) an interest in fast play instead of strict rules-correctness.

I made a mistake in the mapping of the Moathouse: rather than remembering that the squares on the map are actually 10' squares, I went with 5' squares in my transposition to hexes. This means the moathouse is about 2/3rds the size it should be. (5' = 2 hexes, and 10' = 3 hexes, or close enough for government work.) Whoops. Maybe I need to take the maps, blow them up, and put them on hexes, but that seems like a lot of work. Either way, the first and second floors won't line up, if anyone cares.

I need to figure out what to do with players when their characters get killed. Fortunately, in this instance, there was another PC to jump into. However, generally speaking between sessions I want PCs to drop out (stay at camp, feel sick, whatever) when their players aren't about. The party so far has refused to hire on help; should I give them some hirelings who usually stay with the horses anyway? I'm not sure. One thing I know I don't want is for someone to have to just sit there and watch everyone else.

Communicate the Threat

Spurred by a long comment by one of my players on my first after-action report, I've come to realize that there are a few specific things I can do better both for my enjoyment and for the enjoyment of my players.

As I said before, I'm interested at least on some level in what I'll call "tactical play"; that is, in making combat and the exploration of the dungeon that interfaces with it into a realm of interesting, relevant choices.

There are a few prerequisites for this to work. The first is that communication of the tactical reality is clear. Decisions made without input aren't decisions; decisions made on faulty input aren't meaningful.

This is in fact one of the great boons to using monsters straight out of the monster manual, and also potentially one of the great sticking points for a conversion. It's obvious to anyone who has played D&D for more than one session that goblins are less dangerous than gnolls, and bugbears trump both. You don't mess with a dragon unless you brought serious firepower. Medusae are a sticky business. And so on. So, one of the goals of my conversion should be (and is, to a large extent) to preserve at least the relative threat-level these monsters present. When PCs meet an ogre, they should expect a tougher time than they had with the three kobolds in the last room. (Especially with large NPCs in GURPS, this is difficult but not impossible.)

Let's take an example where this broke down: the frogs outside the Moathouse.

Giant frogs aren't immediately evident as big nasty creatures. The mere fact that they're simply dire versions of animals tends to put them on a lower rung than, say, evil humanoids or the undead. Without other input, their threat assessment is inferior. However, that's clearly not the case. So, what could I have done, as a GM, to properly establish that this encounter was meant to be dangerous?

First, let's talk about what I did do. I made it very clear, several times before our first session, that without smart play this could very well turn out to be a high-mortality game. Also, I helped with character creation as much as I could in the communal format we used, and tried to make it clear that there was a vast difference in combat performance between roles specialized for it (like the Knight or Barbarian) and those not (like, say, the Scout).

...but that's it.

I gave them no useful information about this specific encounter, save that a) they're giant, dog-sized and larger frogs, and b) they're ravenous and will attack without quarter. (I believe I very clearly quoted from the book there, because it amused me.) So, quite naturally, my players assumed this might be a bit sticky, but that they would probably walk over it with only some little difficulty.

Those of you who know T1 know that's not true. The book is very clear - this is throwing the characters in at the deep end. So what could I have done, proactively, to make that clear, especially to players new to  tactical play?

First, there should have been more environmental clues. Bones near the pool, divots in the road, or generally something to indicate that they are now in dangerous territory.

Second, I can and should specifically call for rolls vs. the appropriate monster-recognition skills, Naturalist, in this case, and then given the PC(s) with those skills the rundown on these monsters. "Oh, these particular frogs have the dark-blue spotted backs of the Greater Voracious Lump-Backs - very dangerous, even to a patrol of armed men, especially in large numbers!" (Or whatever.)

Third, if in my judgment the encounter is liable to go completely foul without some crucial bit of knowledge, I should just straight-up give it to the players. "Guys, these frogs do 1d+1 cr with their tongues some can swallow SM+0 creatures. Also, there are six of them." Realism be damned if it leads to a bad night. (Note: I don't think we had a bad night. Actually, it seems like everyone had fun, even if the Scout's player is a little disappointed in his character's already-imminent death.)

None of this is the same as coddling the players or playing in easy-mode. In no case would I give away information that would reduce the necessity of my players to make decisions as to how to achieve their goals. Also, if surprise is an essential element of the encounter, so be it - you wouldn't know that bugbear is hiding in the rafters because you didn't look hard enough and he's sneaky, sorry. However, when that bugbear makes himself evident, unless bugbears are meant to be some strange exotic creature people have never heard of, the players should know - even if I have to straight-up tell them - that bugbears are almost as strong as ogres and are smart enough to use guerilla tactics.

In Which Hommlet is Left Surprisingly Intact: After play report 1

Cast:
Calawas - Elf Thief (Katz)
Amalia - High Elf Cleric (Paraj)
Volbak - Dwarf Knight (Jim)
Lamaevhun - Wood Elf Scout (Tim)
Ilsildel - High Elf Wizard (Martin)
Chief - Wood Elf Barbarian (Catherine)

Our intrepid group of adventurers made it down the road from Verbobonc to see the little village on a hill with its strange new Church, bringing only some little gear and their travel-worn ponies. They came originally from a sylvan community on the shores of the Nyr Dyv, being a sort of extended family that was sent out "to make something of themselves" and, perhaps more importantly, to stop being near home. (The dwarf was adopted because his parents have strange ideas about the origins of the species; nobody's had the heart to tell him yet.)

They came with a decent amount of debt underwriting their expedition from the purser's Guild in Verbobonc, and so were quite interested in employment, and fast. (The pursers are known both for their usurious rates and for their legbreakers.)

Riding past the Church, their druid (not pictured above) spotted the standing stones of Jaroo's grove in the distance and set off in a beeline to, "Contemplate the inner mysteries of nature," over the wizard's objections that, "You can do that here, dude! I brought, like, fifty feet of rope!"

Instead of messing around in the town, they made a beeline for the Inn of the Welcome Wench, hoping to find lodging and, well, some wenches. What they found instead was more expenses, but Master Gundigroot was kind enough to put them up for the night with a basic meal in exchange for the party wizard making all of his lighting require no oil for the next week or so. During their copious conversation on the nature of the fare and serving staff, Lamaevhun and Isildel shared this gem:

"Dude, try the turnips, they have awesome turnips."
"I prefer the stuff I can kill myself."
"Dude, you can kill turnips! Can't you hear their screams when they bite into you?"

This went on for a bit, until the traders entered the establishment and managed to garner instant dislike from Calawas. Nevertheless, after a bit of verbal sparring, it was made clear to the greedy little bug- I mean, the party thief, that a chance for coin was afoot, so they repaired to the trading post for a bit of more private conversation.

It seems that Lareth is the leader of a band of ruffians that Gremag is convinced is harming business. After some wrangling the PCs secured the right to keep anything they find (of course!) and even a pouch of a hundred copper, which elicited quite the interest from Calawas when Rannos, the slow stupid one, went to open the safe. Also, they completely blew off the offer of a man-at-arms to go with them for only $15 a day.


After that, they decided to retire. Early and fresh next morning (at about ten o'clock, after getting rid of hangovers and having breakfast), they set off for the half-day's journey to the old moathouse everyone had been telling them about, passing by Burne's construction with only a few glances and leaving the druid behind to his contemplations.

It all went well and I read some box text (we're enjoying the box text), until they came upon a pool that the scout discovered was home to a colony of voracious monstrous frogs! He got off a shot, but then was quickly snared and swallowed, discovering that the larger ones had teeth. This caused Chief (an otherwise unassuming individual who has both Berserk and Sense of Duty (Fellow Adventurers)) to go a little crazy and start playing golf, smacking one of the dog-sized frogs straight into the side of the moathouse. The rest of the party dithered and got ready while the horses miraculously stayed their ground, sealing the scout's doom. (He was around seven hexes ahead, which was great for the rest of the party, but very bad for him when he missed his perception roll. Also, we discovered that our dwarven knight has a move of 2 with encumbrance. Whoops.)

===========================
Notes:

1. Three hours is enough time to do some roleplaying, but not enough for serious dungeon delving it seems. I should probably be prepared to stop in the middle of combat pretty much always.
2. They didn't have a lot of interest in intrigue in Hommlet. I'm okay with this. They willfully stumbled into the one truly interesting thing going on, and none of the module requires that they care about Hommlet in the least.
3. My players are prone to distraction. I knew this before; our last GM (the guy now playing the scout, poor man) basically had us run riot over his campaign with some nights where we didn't even play but fifteen minutes or so. Fortunately, they also respond well to direction. I don't want or need to be tyrannical, since half the joy of this group is getting together to talk about stuff, but they're attentive when I take the reins to get back to the game.
4. I need to brush up on GURPS combat a little from a GM side. I know the rules, but it's been a while, so I have some trouble remembering to apply them all at times. There were definitely a couple moments where the frogs did some things they oughtn't be able to. Also, I need to firm up their stats a bit to deal with corner cases.
5. I badly need to teach my players how to play, or they're all going to die. For example, our scout had a full second to himself to react to these frogs. He knows also that he's out in front, a goodly number of yards away from help. So what does he do? He shoots one frog once in the torso. With skill 16 and 5 yards away, without help coming, he should have at least gone for the vitals, or (if standing still instead of doing a Move and Attack to retreat) maybe use 1 FP to shoot the vitals twice (Heroic Archer makes that a 10 or less, or 11 if you don't want to defend - low, but when faced with a bunch of enemies without backup, quantity has a quality all its own). None of this occurred to the player, though, nor to anyone else at the table. However, my work is predicated on the idea that the players know their options.

Rumormongering in Hommlet and Nulb

Ah, rumours. That venerable conceit, that ingenious method of imparting information to the players. Rumours are true, rumours are false. Rumours come on tables and charts, they come in the form of maps, they come from the old man in the tavern and the city guardsman who used to be an adventurer, before he took an arrow to the knee.

One thing you should realize up front: I'd never heard about rumours and their mechanics before discovering the OSR.

Sure, I knew the old rag about the old man in the tavern. I even purposefully started a campaign that way once. But quests are different from rumours. Before I found the OSR, I had never even considered rumours as existing, much less the mechanisms of their dispersal or their uses and pitfalls.

I don't know how this happened. Certainly it has something to do with never playing a version of D&D before 3.5, though I'm kind of surprised I didn't pick it up in the AD&D books on my father's shelves that I spent hours with.

Okay, no, I'm not that surprised; I was mostly into them for their cool pictures, especially of monsters. I was so into the monsters I actually read their descriptions.

Anyhow, now I'm in the position where I want, nay, need to give rumours to my players. So what do I do?

Obviously, I construct a rumour chart and roll a d20 (or d30), and for getting fancy I allow carousing to increase the chance or number of rumours you get.

So let's talk about Hommlet. Hommlet is a small town that mostly wants to keep its head in the sand, with some bad elements mixed in trying to tear things apart. The townsfolk don't know much and they don't want to know much about the Temple; sure, there are some folks that do, but the PCs should be talking directly to them instead of just rolling on a chart if they want that information. Information that should come from specific sources shouldn't be part of a rumour mill.

What sorts of rumours can they pick up in Hommlet, then? The Moathouse is right down the way; most everybody knows about it and knows at least a little of its history. Those living on the southeast side of town might know a little about the comings and goings thereabouts, but not much. The villagers' information on the Temple of Elemental Evil is even more sketchy. Talking to Burne or Jaroo directly might yield fruit, but just drinking at the inn isn't going to get you much more than the hopeful talk of other adventurers.

If the PCs spend the week in Hommlet, they don't get a rumour for free. Carousing can get you one rumour, though.

Nulb, on the other hand, is a hotbed of activity. Seriously, just look at the banner; you've never seen a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. (Unless you're a Martial Artist who took the Wizard lens. Then, maybe.) PCs who stay in Nulb get one rumour for free. If they carouse, for each two points they succeed by, they get another, until the chart's dry for that week.

Simple. Easy. Another distinction between the two villages. I might even institute a Nulb-specific "if you fail at carousing, something bad happens" chart, though not as severe as that link, methinks.

Levels in the temple

One of the advised conceits in D&D is the correspondence of dungeon level with character level. If you're level one, you should stay on level one of the dungeon. If you're level two, venture down to level two, and so on.

This is violated quite a bit, especially later on, but it's still at least implicit in 1st edition. Needless to say it doesn't work in GURPS, since GURPS doesn't have levels.

It can be broadened out to say, "Further down means more dangerous," and fortunately this is the way the Temple operates; they expect you to be around level six or seven by the time you hit Temple level three. So how am I going to salvage this in GURPS? I don't quite know.

I've spoken before (as have many others) about the difference in the power curve between GURPS and D&D. In fact, it's more accurate to describe them completely separately. Nevertheless, I want to preserve the feel of the temple, transitioning down to tougher monsters as the party grows stronger, and having the party grow stronger, rather than presenting a roughly homogenous difficulty that only slowly grows.

The first part of this is figuring out the rate of advancement. For my game, I want the PCs to hit 250 points, the base point value for the DF templates, by the time they finish level 2 of the Temple. This strikes me as fairly fast advancement (though it remains to be seen if I'm mistaken about that), since the PCs are starting at 150 points. Nevertheless, I can tie point rewards to geographical features. For example, once the PCs discover the secret room on Level 1 (disclaimer: I'm not looking at the map at the moment; I don't know if one such exists) they get ten points. If they recover the treasure horde in room 136, it so happens that's enough to earn them 5 points when they go back to town, for paying off their debts. You get the idea. Extra rewards (for roleplay, awesomeness, or whatever) will be above and beyond, so that it's possible to advance faster if they play well, or slower if they play poorly. (One could argue that I should place more points, because the assumption is that the PCs won't find every treasure, but looking at

Every twenty-five points is a 'level', for purposes of building new characters. If your character dies, your new character gets his last point value that evenly divided by 25. (So, if your character had 186 points, your new one gets 175. Don't die.)

So much for characters. Unfortunately I doubt I'll be able to give too much in specifics on this blog, but one of the stats to write down for treasure hoards, secret rooms, and other desirable areas is character point value.

For monsters, the process is a little more difficult. I want to maintain roughly the same constitution in the temple; if AD&D players are fighting githyanki in the temple, GURPS Dungeon Fantasy players should also be fighting githyanki. However, numbers obviously need to change; HP does not an interesting encounter make. However, I discussed this in more detail in a recent post.

Still, I'm hoping that skill level may make a difference. I understand that 14 is the minimum level to challenge 250 point DF characters. Maybe 12 will work with less skilled PCs. Still. I understand there's a fairly hard lower level of skill that matters. Hmm.

Unfortunately, it looks like what I'll need to do is put together a skeleton crew ("This room has at least one ogre; this room has at least a roper and three trolls.") based around what the module says, then tweak it in play to actually fit. Unfortunately I don't have the experience to do otherwise. This is distasteful to me, but there it is. I suppose it's all right so long as I haven't given any hints of a contrary nature about what's to come if I bump the bugbear count from two to fourteen before the PCs hit the room.

I can at least map out relative difficulty levels in the module from room to room and use those to guide my placement, if nothing else.

First session a week from Tuesday

Well, you know I'm excited. We wrapped up the other campaign (by throwing the GM for a loop and doing the sensible thing - calling the police) and we're set and ready to visit Hommlet. I have the Moathouse and the town ready for them to tear apart as they will, though I'm still fiddling a bit with Lareth's hoard.

Hommlet itself was especially easy, of course - if the PCs get into trouble, I can throw mook guards at them, and if they don't, then I don't need combat stats, and everything else is already in the module. Oh, except the relationship charts and the thinking-through how I want people to behave, which I've done in previous posts.

Whether or not the PCs experience any of that depends of course on what they do. It's quite a viable strategy for them to stroll into town, go to the barkeep and say, "Hi, we're adventurers; point us at the nearest dungeon!" or for them to get involved in the political intrigue below the surface. Who knows? I certainly don't.

Besides, they've decided they're all a bunch of pansy elves (and one adopted dwarf who doesn't know it - he just thinks he's a short and hairy throwback). All the villagers are too smelly and crude for them anyway, right?

We'll see. I look forward to having a real play report to put up here.

Little gems in random treasure generation

In a previous post I said that with each trove I would also be including one randomly-generated item, just because. Boy, am I glad I did, and here's why:

The very first thing I rolled up was a Textbook of a Common Skill, Written in a Common Language with two enchantments and two embellishments. Those Enchantments were Waves and Fog; the embellishments were expensive extensive inlay and a cover of fine material edged with fur.

Oh, did I mention that the Bookbinding Properties table told me that this book was made out of stone tablets? It weighs twelve hundred pounds. I don't figure I'm spoiling this for the players because the book is around seven cubic feet, and so fairly obvious when you find it.

Given this information, I've decided this book is written in dwarvish and is called the Manual of the Sea, teaching whoever consults it Shiphandling/TL3, and allowing default rolls even without the prerequisite skills. It's bound in thick, fur-edged seal skin (elephant seal, naturally), and its letters are filled with tiny aquamarines, too small for individual sale.

I would never have put such a thing in the moathouse, and in the process of reading the dice I learned something new about my version of Greyhawk.

First, enchanters can sometimes go a little mad. They become obsessed with the creation of some masterpiece of their art; usually some extremely implausible but strangely powerful and valuable item that they go to great expense and hardship to complete. It can take years to finish, and is often made of implausible materials or otherwise reflects the partial insanity of its creator. Dwarves in particular are prone to this malady; any truly absurd item is liable to have been dwarf-work. In addition, if something keeps an enchanter in this mood from completing his work for long enough, he will go truly insane, with unpredictable effects - this is part of why there are so many towers of mad arch-mages about.

Second, the original lord of the moathouse was a sailor, both on the nearby river and on the Nyr Dyv it connects to, as a privateer for the Duke. When he was granted his title and the moathouse, he brought the Manual of the Sea with him at great expense (it was in his ship, as his 'lucky charm' - it didn't hurt that he could hide from other ships and change the conditions of engagement with its enchantments). Eventually he gave it to his son, but by that time the Temple was gaining prominence...


If you haven't, I highly recommend using some random treasure in your game. It provides a focal point for peering into the reality of the world you inhabit, sitting around the table, helping to clear away the mists of unreality just a little.

Treasure in the Temple

I've been mulling this over for a while; after all, this is the entire point of why the characters would risk life and limb going into dark ruins of evil cults in the first place. Otherwise, they'd settle down into the nice safe positions of village blacksmith/publican/prostitute or whatever. So it had better be worthwhile.

Also, it's there for the enjoyment of the players (including myself), so it had better be compelling, or at least momentarily interesting. No, "you find $4000 worth of stuff," or "you find a thousand silver pieces" in my game. Even if the players don't care about the palladium tiara with a frog motif and just care how much it costs, it will amuse me to put it there in the first place.

Peter over at Dungeon Fantastic has a helpful post about what he's learned about treasure from running Keep on the Borderlands and his megadungeon (play reports of which are what got me doing this in the first place, because they're awesome). I never really felt the temptation he mentions of giving too little treasure, because I have ways to soak up and control money written directly into the adventure (training costs, plentiful hirelings at least after the moathouse, carousing, potential for theft, plentiful mundane/consumable items while keeping enchantment rare by forcing people to make a long potentially dangerous trek to the city and then wait for the enchanter, even animals), so I don't feel worried about treasure destabilizing things. If making a big score means the PCs can replenish their supplies, upgrade their gear, and hire a bunch of people to watch their horses/hold their torches/fill out the front line, well then, good - there are a couple places the PCs pretty much need an army. Nevertheless, the post is useful because it puts the practical experience of someone who has done this sort of thing before in one place with reasons and explanation.

Also, it's nice to know that his experience syncs pretty well with what I've been thinking.

Generally, for every gold piece worth of treasure written into the original module, I will substitute $5 worth of GURPS treasure. If this is not in a hoard of some sort (e.g. carried by monsters), then it will probably mostly remain coin. So, for example, one monster carries 1-6 sp, 1-6 ep and 1-6 gp. We'll assume I rolled 4 for each, which would translate into 6.25 gp. This means he'll carry $31, or four silver and fifteen copper, using the default values from DF 2. It could be any coin that adds up to $31.

For gems, I'll convert those by rolling randomly on the random gem creation tables in Dungeon Fantasy 8 - Treasure Tables - which, seriously, if you want to run (or even just play) DF, you should get. It's probably the most awesome book in the series. In fact, I like gems, and will probably be expanding the gem creation table to include a number more, like zircon, that exist in D&D but not the table. #Then I'll do the spot-check above to make sure it equals or exceeds my 1 gp = $5 base.

For hoards, I'll follow the same guideline for establishing total value. However, for specific non-monetary treasure, I'll convert it according to the DF Treasure Tables, picking items and embellishments that best mimic the item as given. For example, in the moathouse there is an ivory box worth 50 gp. After conversion that's a small stone box made of Fine Material (ivory) and Minimal Painting/Enamel. Since I'm feeling pedantic, I'll roll on the Decorative Motif table and find out it has a leopard motif. If I were feeling especially so, I might give it more embellishments and then make it damaged by its treatment, reducing its monetary value back toward the desired amount.

I now have an ivory box about the size of a large book painted with cavorting leopards, worth $250 and weighing 4 lbs, reduced from 6lbs because ivory shouldn't be as heavy as stone.

Once I'm done converting specific items, I'll take half the value in coin, double it, and then roll in the treasure tables (whichever ones I choose, depending on monster, placement, etc.) to pick out various valuable objects to substitute. I'm doubling the halved amount because DF gives 40% for sold items that aren't jewelry or gems, unless someone takes wealth as an advantage, and such objects are invariably harder to carry about than coin anyhow. So instead of a cache of $10,000 in coin, the PCs might come across $5000 in coin and $5000 in assorted fine garments, spices, tea services, books, and dungeon-delving gear.

Then, on top of this I'm going to roll once completely randomly on the treasure tables, just for kicks. Sure, this could end up with a pair of gnolls guarding a giant magical cannon, but if that happens I have an interesting story on my hands. Maybe nobody realizes what it is, because its in several pieces, or these gnolls managed to avoid having it taken from them by the giants next door by threatening to use it, being comfortably affluent roguish adventurers who found it and are waiting for a buyer to get back to them. (By the way, would the PCs like it? Only 5000 gold pieces and three hirelings and it can be yours!)

In the moathouse, this doesn't stand up very well. For example, one treasure hoard contains the wonderful sum of 2000 copper pieces. That's 10gp, for those playing along at home. That's just going to be kept as 2000 copper pieces, or $2000 in GURPS terms. (It's thematically appropriate, too.)

Happenings in Hommlet

I made this very simple relationship map as a quick-and-dirty explanation of how various different people in Hommlet connect with one another. It doesn't include everyone, just everyone I thought might be interesting to put on such a map. (For example, the braumeister and cabinet-maker aren't on this map; they're just subsumed under 'Townsfolk'.)

I'm using it as a loose who-gets-involved indicator. So, if Burne gets in trouble somehow, natural responders might be the Badgers, Rufus, the clerics of Cuthbert, and the village elder (and through him the militia or other townspeople).

There are some things not shown on the map, too. For example, Black Jay is the villager whose wife and child were killed while he was away during 'the wars', which I'm spontaneously deciding means they were killed by agents of the Temple during a raid from the Moathouse while he was away - the wars being, specifically, the one of Veluna against the Temple. Thus, if he finds out the traders are active agents of the temple, he's liable to gird himself and go burn them out, by himself if he must. However, seeing these relationships mapped out visually like this does make it easier to both represent the individuals in Hommlet with better veracity and to draw up a loose timeline of happenings.

Here's what will happen in Hommlet if the PCs don't interfere somehow (say, by raiding the Moathouse):

• The traders and their agent will continue feeding information to the Temple fairly unimpeded.
• At the same time, the agent will try to use his inside status as a member of the laborers (not pictured, whoops!) to compromise the building of Burne's castle somehow, probably by weakening the foundations or including a backdoor somewhere.
• Within about a month, the traders will begin recruiting bandits and river pirates as laborers to work on the castle. Once there are enough, they will start using the abandoned secret room under the inn again for covert meetings.
• Around this time, Gundigroot will notice something fishy is going on and the druid Laroo will start spending more time in the Inn.
• The militia will get a bit edgy as well, with all the lowbrow strangers filtering in and spending a lot of time in the Welcome Wench.
• After another month or so, a mysterious fire will catch in the Church of St. Cuthbert, razing it with only one survivor, who dies under the ministrations of the druid after spending a few nights in a fever-dream about 'evil in the flames'.
• The militia will institute a curfew and begin patrolling the village. Burne's Badgers will tighten security around the castle. The two will not get along.
• Nira will pack up and leave town.
• Spuignor will sign on with Burne.
• Fumok will disappear (off to Nulb or the temple, I imagine)

By this point, the village is still playable, but it becomes somewhat harder. Villagers are less inclined to trust strangers, and the Temple's influence is growing faster than ever. I could go further, but I don't see the point - almost certainly, the players will do something to keep anything beyond point 2 (possibly point zero) from happening. This is just a tool to make sure the village doesn't become stale.

Moathouse Operational

Whew. I've finished all the Moathouse NPCs, including a couple small extra surprises of my own. It helps that I could steal a few bits from already published GURPS sources. And people say GURPS doesn't have any monsters!

This still leaves treasure, of which I've already done most, and traps, which are so easy I'll probably handle them on the fly. I'd say it's ready for play, considering I already have an idea of how Hommlet is going to behave.

However, I doubt you tune in here to hear me congratulate myself, so here's a bit of musing.

Lareth's guards are naaasty. Even without a cleric backing them, they could probably destroy a party, played smartly. There are six level 1 fighters, led by a level 2 sergeant, and if they start losing they will call for the rest, which consist of twelve more level 1 fighters and two more level 2 sergeants. Yowch! Any party that just barrels forward into the combat is either going to be very lucky or very dead. If anything, this comes across more in GURPS; for example, the book says that six of these reinforcement guards have spears instead of crossbows, which naturally leads to the assumption that you will run them competently using unit tactics, with spearmen protected by your front-line shield-wall. This tactic transitions very well to GURPS, with the added benefit that a shield-wall is even more difficult to take down due to the ability to use sacrificial blocking and teamwork.

A party is going to have to be smart and sneaky to crack this nut. Oh, and that's not counting the lieutenant (a level 4 fighter) or the cleric.

Hopefully soon I get to let you know how it goes.

Ghouls

Spoiler alert: there are ghouls in the Moathouse and the Temple. With that in mind, I naturally need GURPS stats for them.

This was going to be a rather straightforward affair: chance for paralysis and ghoul fever, eschewing the three attacks per turn as something reserved for more powerful and scary monsters (like trolls). After all, my experience with ghouls stems from 3.5 D&D and Pathfinder, where they're just not that scary unless they have a huge number advantage. Sure, that paralysis is theoretically scary, but it's an easy save and hardly matters anyway, right?

Then I cam across this post over at Delta's D&D Hotspot.

I was especially intrigued by the possible aversion to sunlight, since that's outside my experience, brings them closer back to their Tolkienian roots, and gives an interesting twist I don't think my players will expect, but can exploit once discovered. It also led to me beefing them up a little further, to bring them in line with what I think was the original intent in the module.

ST: 12	HP: 12	Speed: 5.25
DX: 10	Will: 10 (+2 vs True Faith)	Move: 6
IQ: 6	Per: 12
HT: 11	FP: 11	SM: 0
Dodge: 9	Parry: 10 (unarmed)	DR: 1

Bite (15): 2d cut, save vs. ghoul fever at HT-2
Claw (15): 1d(5) fat, resist at HT-1 or be paralyzed for 1d seconds. Once paralysis ends, roll as for Mental Stun to recover. Treat this as a Contact Agent affliction.

Ghoul Fever: 1d-2 fat daily (infinite cycles), roll HT-3 to stop cycles. Once at 1/3rd FP, the infected is constantly cold (think Frodo stuck with the Morgul-blade)

Skills: Brawling - 14, Tracking - 12, Stealth - 14

Traits: Appearance (Hideous), Bad Smell, Doesn't Breathe, Doesn't Sleep, Extra Attack 2, Fragile (Unnatural), High Pain Threshold, Immunity to Mind Control, Immunity to Metabolic Hazards, Injury Tolerance (No Blood, Unliving), Infectious Attack (Must kill victim), Uncontrollable Appetite (6), Unfazeable, Vunlerability (Sunlight x2).


Class: Undead

Notes: Truly Evil. Will not negotiate. Attack without fear, except in the presence of very strong light (daylight or stronger, including Continual Light at 6 cost and like spells. Will attempt to hide and ambush prey. Provokes Fright Check -3 in people who have not succeeded in a Fright Check vs. ghouls, ghasts, etc. before


They're glass cannons; they could easily kill off a party if they get the drop on the PCs, but a few good hits will put one down for good. Their Fright Check and tendency toward ambush amplify the chances of them being nasty, but smart players will recognize the signs of a ghoul infestation and be on the alert. Also, I feel like this does a good job of potentially returning the 'scary' to these creatures, which otherwise suffer from Cleric syndrome.

The Vulnerability is not a mistake; a weakness would make them too much like vampires. This way, they take double damage from light sources that cause damage (such as a Sunbolt spell, or a laser), and they can be played as sensitive to strong light sources, but they aren't in the same difficulty more powerful undead are.