My Pet Hates

We all have system elements that drive us nuts, and some that just plain drive us away from the table.  By way of further informing my dear readers (as Miss Manners would phrase it) of my gaming philosophy, here are mine:

Absolute Dealbreakers (I won't touch a game or a campaign with these elements, ever)

Alignment. The single stupidest, most insidious and by far most mismanaged concept ever foisted onto RPGs. Screw you, Gygax.
   
PvP. For every person energized by backstabbing and screwing his fellow players (and somehow, these people are overwhelmingly the screwers as opposed to the screwees), there's a gaming group that's been broken up over it. This is the most unforgivable sin in my own campaigns, always has been, always will be.

Hack-and-slash. Look, if all I want are tactical situations, I'll play a wargame. Heck, I'll play a console game – the graphics are a lot better and I don't have to shave, wash or travel to play one. I'm a roleplayer, sorry.

Random chargen. Think Monopoly would ever have gotten off the ground if you got to roll 3d6 x $100 for starting cash? Is there any other type of game other than RPGs where players start out with wildly disparate levels of ability or resources?

High mortality rate. I get attached to my characters, and I want to develop them. If they're just cardboard cutouts with a life expectancy of three game sessions, what's the point? (See Hack-and-slash, above.)

Lack of credible realism. I like gritty, realistic games. If you don't know your shit, or it's not reflected in your game, you really don't want me as a player. Trust me on this one.

Dungeons. It's no longer 1975. We don't use Trash-80s for computers any more, and we stopped listening to disco, and Earth Shoes are antiques, and the polyester leisure suits are all in landfills now. Why the pluperfect hell do these crapfests still exist?

Skills that work. The last time my wife and I attempted d20, she damn near erupted in frustration having failed nine straight First Aid rolls.  Look, if the sailor you hired has only a 50% chance to tie a knot, you're going to throw the incompetent loser overboard.

Jackass/agenda.  I refused to have anything to do with a game written by a fellow who got onto my Ignore list on a prominent Internet gaming forum almost twelve years ago, and who defines "arrogant, obnoxious prick" to me.


Probably Not. (I won't automatically rule these out, but they're huge strikes)

Character classes. Sorry, I don't need a label. Give me a point based system and I can decide for myself what skills I get, thanks.

Levels. Sorry, I don't need to train all at once at some artificial point, and furthermore have an arbitrary basket of arbitrary skills improve. Give me a point based system and I can decide for myself when and what to train, thanks.

All-male groups. Quite aside from that I like women around, an all-male group has a significantly higher chance of having a number of elements I don't like.  I can do without testosterone poisoning at my age.

Horror. It isn't that I hate the genre, per se – although it's no favorite of mine – it's that I don't think RPGs convey horror well.

Silly. I don't do that style well either. Slapstick isn't my cup of tea.

Fire and forget spells. It goes to figure that of all the magic systems in fiction, Gygax would have to copy the one author (Jack Vance) who used a fire-and-forget system. Screw you twice, Gygax.

Lack of walkovers. Sometimes the players make all the right guesses or have all the right luck. I want my decisions, skills and actions to have a material effect on gameplay. I don't want scenarios to be artificially prolonged just because the GM decided they ought to be and nerf anything that interferes with his timetable.

Overforced narration. Hello, there, we're the players, not you, Mr. or Ms. GM. If you want to do nothing but to tell stories, there are coffee houses and bardic circles that cater to that. If it's that you'd rather play yourself, go for it; I'll trade seats with you.

Over the top skill lists. You're seriously telling me I have to take skills in Abacus and Soldering and Isometrics on top of Merchant and Electronics and Fitness?

PDF only. I'm an old fashioned chap who likes a printed book in my hands. I've absolutely no problem with the outfits with PDF options, but if I can't order a bound hardcopy, I'm unlikely to use it.

BS having nothing to do with gameplay. I'm disinterested in the several pages of turgid twaddle by a gamewriter desperate to prove he can really write fiction, honest! I don't need two dozen pages full page color stills and character writeups of the cinematic party of the licensed property. I don't need a fifth of the book taken up by artwork and graphics. Since I am not six years old nor suffer from ADD, I'm capable of reading a book without dozens of (allegedly) pretty pictures to break up the text.

Major sections missing. If your game is missing a character sheet and an index, it's incomplete. If your SF game (say) lacks space combat rules, it's incomplete. I am disinterested in the excuses why ... especially since games missing such sections always seem to have plenty of the aforementioned art and fiction. The only reasons not to include such glaringly obvious sections involve carelessness, laziness, incompetence or obstinacy, none of which bode well for the rest of your rules.

"Fate" points. I don't want to handwave success, I want to earn it. I don't want a Get Out of Jail Free card any time anything bad happens to my character, I want to suck it up and deal with it.

Impenetrable jargon. I don't need some obscure polysyllabic term for every ability and game mechanic. (Yeah, WoD, I'm talking to you.) It's not even so much as needing a copy of Webster's handy to translate the terms during play ... if doing so does you no good, that's a large headache.

Half-assed attempts to emulate a skill-based system with a class-based system. Call them demi-classes, "Prestige" classes, what have you, but the end result is a system far harder to learn and far slower to play, if a GM has to flip through a splatbook every time you try something offbeat.

Lack of "light" options. I like crunch. I like a good bit of crunch ... but not nearly as much as I did, once upon a time. If a system crashes in ruin when you handwave modifiers or don't use every picky rule, I'm less interested.

So-called "social combat."  ... in most cases Just Another Combat System with the serial numbers filed off.  Look, we already have systems with tactical choice, CRTs and all those trappings.

Filler proliferation.  It's good that production values have increased.  It's bad that a lot of it is wastepaper.  I don't need a fifth of my book (and the count is that high) taken up with inch-wide decorative borders, full-page illos, long fiction sections and suchlike crap.  How about you chop the 50 pages that sucks up, just give me rules, and reduce the price of the book accordingly?

Watermarks/fonts.  I don't need fancy backgrounds on every page.  I don't need bizarre fonts, tiny type, or brown-colored print.  Don't worry so much about PDF thieves; worry about me not buying your stuff in the first place, because I can't read the damn thing.  A lot (daresay, the majority) of your customers aren't 20 years old any more, y'know.

Splatbooks.  Look. I know why they exist: so companies can make more money.  I don't even disagree with the principle.  It's the results I deplore ... that far from optional for those who love crunch, they've become essential; that they shoehorn New Stuff in whether it fits or not; that said New Stuff often conflicts -- and often badly -- with the core system, and more often than not was poorly playtested; that they provoke a rules armsrace for Ever And Ever More New Stuff; that the end result is a massive rewrite of the system to disavow much of the New Stuff, whereupon the whole cycle begins anew.  (Only without a large faction of players who declare Rewrite 2.0 to be suckass, and who insist on sticking with the “original” rules.)

New For The Sake Of New. The hobby's been around for approaching half a century.  There is very little conceivable that no one's thought of before.  Most of which IS "new" is in fact some old idea dressed up.  A particular pet peeve of mine is baroque combinations and types of dice resolution mechanics.  Look, it's a randomizer.  It's not revolutionary, it's not new, and it doesn't make any game stand out as Uniquely Kewl. 

NPC of the Day: Jake "Greywolf" Nelp

"Every day I don’t get up, the suits rip down another acre of trees.  I can’t quit."

Jake Nelp is an aging hippie. He grew up on a commune, and holds firmly to 60s counterculture values, morals and practices. The fellow lives out of "Betsey," his colorfully painted '65 Westphalia WV microbus, traveling between various Ren Faires, counterculture festivals and bashes like Burning Man, to hang out with like-minded individuals and sell knives. He forges and grinds his own, and has a wide reputation amongst festival regulars as a superlative knife maker, and as a friendly fellow who plays at campfires and always has a story to tell. It's enough to get by, and for him money is only needful to pay for gas, propane, spare auto parts, food and knife-making materials: "the buck’s a prison of green."

He's also a practicing shaman, with a wide range of occult lore, and is a devotee of Carlos Castaneda (though he greatly prefers pot to mushrooms) and various Cherokee shamen. He's come up with his own rituals, which for some reason he does in jackleg Cherokee, and they do work: largely in the way of manipulating fire and spirits.  He'll only work with magic at night, and song.  Meditation, for him, involves putting on some 60s tunes (he's reluctantly given up his decrepit 8-track player for an iPod player), lighting some joss sticks, putting the lava lamp on, and smoking a bowl.

A few notes:

* Jake is used to living rough, and can manage out of a tent just fine. However -- and this is where the Chronic Pain and Slow Riser comes in -- he's over 60 now, and living off of Faire food and on a futon in back of his microbus has just taken a heavy toll; he's achy. A lot.  He loves being a drifter, but fears that his roving days are nearing the end.

* He is only a pacifist by philosophy. He's well aware that him and people like him get hassled a lot by the Man (thus the Social Stigma, and having an FID in case he gets bothered about the honking big knives he carries around), and that some folks aren't willing to live and let live. He is very fast for his age, knows how to use his knives, and won't shy away from doing so if he figures he must.

* The Contacts represent probably four types of people: a fellow knife-maker, a fellow Faire merchant, a fellow shaman, and that lady who bakes the awesome flatbreads at his old commune.

* He's something of an ecoterrorist.  The "Suits" are all that's wrong with the world, and them building highways and pipelines everywhere will ruin it if you aren't vigilant.  A natural gas pipeline proposal which would go through his rural home county -- going, naturally, from places far away thataway to the Big City far away that away -- is very much in his crosshairs, and he's making plans.

* His daughter Brooke is a pediatric surgeon at a teaching hospital.  They love each other very much, and spending the first few years of her life on Jake's commune (that given name is "Riverbrook," actually) gives her significant sympathy for his POV.  Still, she's made up a mother-in-law apartment at her home, hoping Jake will settle down with her. 

* The milieu presumes Normal Mana, the character first being imagined for a Mage game that didn't survive the first session.

 

ST: 11       IQ: 12      DX: 13      HT: 12      Move: 5

Advantages: Charisma/1; Contacts (4 points' worth); Less Sleep/2, License Perk (has an FID); Magery/2 (Night, Song aspected); Night Vision/2; Reputation+3, as master knife-maker, Ren Faire types, 12-.

Disadvantages: Addiction / Pot smoker; Chronic Pain / Mild, 2h, 9-; Code of Honor (Counterculture); Disciplines of Faith; Farsighted (mitigated); Slow Riser; Sense of Duty: underclass; Social Stigma: Second-class citizen; Struggling, Vow (Oppose The Suits).

Languages: Speaks and reads Cherokee at Accented level.

Quirks: Cats are people; Don't mess with Betsey!; Dresses in stereotypical hippie attire; Loves his daughter; Pyrophile.

Skills: Armoury-18; Carousing-13; First Aid-13; Gardening-13; Knife-14; Mechanic (auto)-12; Meditation-12; Merchant (knives)-12; Musical Instrument (guitar)-12; Observation-12; Occultism-13; Public Speaking-12; Religious Ritual-12; Savoir-Faire (counterculture)-13; Singing-13; Survival-14; Thrown Weapon: Knife-13.

Spells: Affect Spirits-13; Create Fire-13; Divination-14; Heal Plant-13; Identify Plant-14; Ignite Fire-14; Itch-14; Plant Growth-15; Seek Plant-14; Sense Spirit-13; Shape Fire-15; Spasm-14; Summon Spirit-13; Turn Spirit-14; Warmth-13.

Betsey is a ‘66 Westfalia VW Microbus camper.  Named after a lady Jake knew (her likeness is on the driver’s side door in a white bikini and glasses), Betsey is done up in lime green and liberally festooned with Peter Max-esque counterculture paintings and liberal bumper stickers.

Her interior is done in ash paneling, with handmade curtains in the windows (gifts from Brooke) and dark blue shag carpeting.  There are futons with homemade quilts in the overhead extendable camper and the back (used for a spare bed in need and for general hanging out).  Behind the macrame-and-beaded covered seats are a couple propane burners scavenged from a Coleman stove, a wash basin, a cutting board, and narrow cabinets holding cooking equipment, wooden and handmade pewter flatware and Jake’s fetish kit. 

On the walls are a bookcase, brackets for Jake’s guitar case, a CD player/radio and a modest stack of CDs, a battery-operated fan, a propane space heater and several dreamcatchers.  The bookcase has the following well-worn titles: Stranger in a Strange Land, The Hobbit, an omnibus of the first three Foxfires, Complete Guide to Camping, Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, the Pentagon Papers, the North American Field Guide to Plants, the 1972 Whole Earth Catalog, the Nelp family Bible, Carlos Castaneda’s Teachings of Don Juan and A Separate Reality, and the following Cherokee shamanic texts: the Kanâhe'ta Ani-Tsa'lagï E'tï, Origins of the Bear, and the A`yûn'inï “Swimmer”, Gatigwanasti, Ayâsta/Gahuni, Inâ'lï “Black Fox”, Tsiskwa “Bird”, A`wani'ta “Young Deer” and Takwati'hï “Killer” Manuscripts.

Beneath the futon is jammed with stuff (getting things out can be a chore): a dorm-size propane refrigerator, two grinding wheels, a portable anvil, a propane cutting torch, a number of canvas sacks, mosquito netting and spare tarps, as well as a 2-gallon spare gas can, a 5-gallon iron cauldron, Jake’s fetish kit, miscellaneous gear and food.

For further explanation of system numbers, check this link.

Campaign FAQ

I've found this a useful thing, over the years, in giving a quick precis about my campaign, my setting and the system I use.  I think all GMs should use something like this, and I know I would've avoided a couple of campaigns in my time if the GMs had handed me one of these:

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New Player FAQ                Celduin Campaign, RG Traynor, March 2015

Hello!  I’ve written this for prospective new players to clue you into what the style of our campaign is like.

What system do you play?  I was one of the original GURPS playtesters nearly thirty years ago – as well as a writer for Steve Jackson Games and several other gaming companies – and I’ve GMed it ever since. 

Ack!  Don’t they call that a hard system?  It isn’t nearly as tough or “math oriented” as its detractors make it out to be.  The real deal is that a dithering player can take forever over the choices available.  I recommend GURPS Lite, a 32 page free PDF from the Steve Jackson Games website, for a look at a stripped down version of the rules.  You don’t need anything more complicated.  Besides that, I require new players to sit down with me and tell me, in as much detail as they feel like, what kind of characters they want to play.  Character creation takes a great deal less time with me present to answer questions and give guidance.

Alright, I know GURPS.  Any changes I need to know?  A number of them, including new Advantages, Disadvantages and skills, templates appropriate to my campaign, and a few other fillips (such as that I still use BSII missile rules for simplicity’s sake).  A number of skills, Advantages and Disadvantages are restricted or disallowed.  I have some house rules for things, but the gist of it goes back to GURPS Lite, which substantively I run; I'm not inclined to slow down play hunting and pecking through rulebooks for every last little modifier.  I have an edited version of GURPS Lite on my campaign’s website, incorporating the house rules, which I urge new players to download.

What’s your campaign like?  I run a Renaissance tech fantasy world, very loosely based on Kenneth Bulmer’s Dray Prescot/Scorpio series.  It is now getting into the Gunpowder Age.  Realism is a hallmark of Celduin, and you won’t see magical streetlights, orcs carrying hundreds of gold pieces and flying cities.  The current party (an all-mage group, an experiment that’s been going on for a couple years now) is based out of a giant seaport, and maritime and urban adventures have traditionally predominated.  Characters ought to be able to get along in a city and at sea. 
            
What’s the play style?  We have a collegial, laid-back atmosphere with a bit of socialization and digression – someone expecting wall-to-wall Action!!! will be disappointed.  (Then again, someone who can’t hack two hours of rip-roaring combat will be disappointed too.)  We’re also a crew of mature grownups and like to see like-minded folks.  I run a character-driven game more than a plot-driven game; of course there’s plot, and lots of it, but I want the players to tell me what they’re going to do far more than I push the plot into telling the players what to do.

When and where?   I run on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month; it starts at 11:30 and wraps up around 6:00 PM.  Good attendance is strongly encouraged.

Anything else I need to know?  We have a cat and a rabbit, and anyone with serious pet allergies should take notice.  This is a non-smoking apartment, and we’re not much for drinking.

R-E-A-L-I-S-M: The Hated Word

"Realism" is one of the dirtiest words in RPG Internet discussions.  Has been for years.  D&D fanboys are especially touchy where it's concerned (understandably so, given D&D), as well as the various pedants huffily proclaiming that "fantasy" CAN'T be "realistic," and that we ought to be using "verisimilitude" or "emulation" instead.

(Whatever.  "Realism" is the word in common use.  When I addressed a condolence card to a friend who lives in the state southeast of mine, I didn't address it to "The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations."  I mailed it to Rhode Island.  If you can't work with terms in popular circulation, the heck with it.)

So by this point I have a sticky response to the issue, which originates from a RPGnet discussion several years ago.  To wit:

Forum D00D: I think the real question here is, "why do you consider the mechanics nonsense"? We're talking an imaginary dwarf, with 100 imaginary hit points, falling off an imaginary cliff, taking damage that is, also, imaginary. If the designer finds it desirable that a character could fall off a cliff and survive, it will be so. If not, for whatever reason, it will not be. (The first mention of "but it's not REALISTIC!" gets you kicked. This is all *imaginary*, remember?)

If I had a dime for every time I've heard this over the last couple decades, I could pay all the bills this month.

Well, yes, it's all imaginary.  So why use cliffs, or indeed any recognizable terrain at all?  Why not adventure in big fluffy masses of amorphia?  Or just teleport to anywhere we want to go, and imagine it to be anything convenient to us?

Why should we use perfectly recognizable medieval weaponry?  It's imaginary, isn't it?  Don't limit yourself, hit the enemy with your kerfluffmezoz or your wheezimithuzit!

And since it doesn't have to make sense, we don't need to have these pesky movement rules, besides which we all want to be Matrixy and John Woo-esque, don't we?  Tell your DM that you're running through the air and phasing right through every intervening tree and foe to hit the Big Bad with your wheezimithuzit, and better yet you're doing it before he cut down your friend, because since it's all imaginary we don't have to use linear time either.

No, I don't care that I rolled a "miss."  Skill progression is one of those boring "realism" things, and I don't believe in it.  Let's just imagine that I hit the Big Bad whenever I need to, and for twenty-five hundred d8 of damage, too.  Encumbrance is boringly realistic too, so I’m ignoring it, and I’d rather imagine that my snazzy quilted vest protected me like the glacis armor on a T-72, please.

Alright, show of hands.  Why don’t we play our RPGs that way?

It’s called suspension of disbelief. We put our games into recognizable settings that mimic real life.  We use swords in fantasy games because we have the expectation that such milieus use swords, and those swords do the relative damage of a sword instead of the damage of a 155mm mortar shell because that is our expectation too.  Our fantasy characters wear tunics and cloaks, live in walled cities or sacred groves, and scale ramparts where the force of gravity pulls us downward, not pushes us up.  We have an expectation of how fast we can walk, how far we can ride, and how long we can sail.  All these expectations are founded in -- wait for it -- reality.

To the degree we ignore these things, just because, we lose touch with suspension of disbelief.  If the ten-foot-tall Big Bad hits a peon with his greatsword, we expect the peon to be in a world of hurt; we don’t expect the sword to bounce off.  If the party wizard shoots a fireball at the orcs’ wooden stockade, we expect that it might catch fire; we don’t expect the wall to grow flowers instead. 

And if an armored dwarf takes a gainer off of a hundred foot sheer drop, we expect to find a soggy mass at the base of the cliff.  We sure as hell don't expect a dwarf boinging around like a rubber ball, happily warbling, "Bumbles bounce!"

That there are a great many gamers who want their rule systems to reflect reality, rather than ignore it -- so that we find ourselves constantly sidetracked as to issues of WHY suchandsuch doesn't make sense, or because the GM has to explain how come the dwarf isn't a soggy mass -- ought be a surprise to no one.

Why is it such a surprise to you?

Random Reaction Rolls

I like reaction rolls for a particular reason, and it's exacerbated by my combat LARP experience.

Sitting in the GM's chair, in a comfy position, with a mug of steaming tea at my hand, I'm far removed from actually being in a stress situation. I know everything that's going on, I know everything that's offstage, I have unparalleled knowledge of the situation in a fashion we couldn't possibly have in real life.

But the world doesn't work like that. The fog of war is real. People don't always see what's going on, people don't always know what's going on, and people often guess wrong even if they have all the information.

In that LARP, I was one of the chief national leaders, and my character was the most powerful wizard in the game. I had to make a lot of decisions:

* Based on information that people told me, colored by their own prejudices or flawed insights.

* Based on the fact that I hadn't gotten any sleep the night before.

* Based on the fact that I hadn't gotten any sleep because the bastard, in my face and telling me I had to do something, was partying all night long two tents down the row.

* Based that I'd reinjured my chronically bad knee two hours before and it was hurting, a lot.
               
* Based on whether I trusted people or not, based on what I thought I could get away with politically or not.

* Based on my own prejudices, flawed insights, or whether or not I hated Soandso’s guts.
 
* Based on me just not knowing what I needed to know, and being forced to make a WAG.

Sometimes I got it right. Sometimes I got it wrong. Sometimes I played the odds exactly as I should have, and the odds just fell the wrong way.

Those are all variables impossible to calculate for each and every NPC. I just figure that no matter how smart someone is (or isn't), how capable someone is (or isn't), how well informed someone is (or not) ... sometimes they have bad days. Or very good days.

Heck, the last run I GMed was heavily colored by a NPC making a terrible reaction roll and thus reacting badly to the situation, no matter how much my wife's character was trying to talk sweet reason into him. Sometimes it happens. Random rolls are a good way to emulate that.

Yeah, but what if the NPC’s interacted with the party a number of times before.  So what?  Surely many NPCs have good days and bad ones. Heck, I'm very much a good day-bad day person. Catch me on a good day, and I'll be all accommodating about your request or inquiry. Catch me on a pain-filled day after a night of short sleep? I'm likely to be snarky, and sometimes stubbornly so.

Come to that, my first wife was even more capricious, and in all too many of our fights, I'd pull up short, incredulous that we were fighting as hard as all of that over such a petty thing, and ask "Alright, what is this really about?" Invariably, she'd pull up short, and reveal the subject which was really preying on her mind, something usually having nothing to do with me but about which I could be supportive and help defuse things.

I've kept this in mind when having a NPC snark-out, and a few times the more empathetic PCs have asked, by way of being supportive of their friend and helping to defuse things, "Hey, Nath, you seem like something's got you well off your feed. Anything it'd do you good to get off your chest?" Nice hook for a sideplot ...

NPC of the Day: Ruy Sanchez Koriskevich O'Higgins

I ran a Firefly campaign for a bit – and would love to run one again.  The campaign was based out of Twilight Station, in the middle of the Black, floating above a pastoral planet of religious fanatics.  It was something of an interstellar truck stop, with a bunch of businesses, and run by unregenerate Browncoats who were seeking to jump start the Lost Cause.

The group was stranded there, but won a decommissioned war surplus gunboat in a poker game, which became their new ship – Nightwind.  Unfortunately, Nightwind came with an extra: a fellow who claimed to be the ship’s medic.  They tried to run him off, but he waved what he said was an ironclad contract for him to be ship’s crew for three years or until he got tired of it, with a guaranteed rate of pay.  Not much they could do about it, so onboard he stayed.

Ruy Sanchez Koriskevich O’Higgins is a bit of a whack job.  He’s swarthy, with piercing black eyes, and long post-Civil War era hair and mustache ... the hair which he dyes mauve.  Go figure.  He’s keeps a shortsword scabbarded to his side, heaven knows why.  Don’t get between him or anyone he feels like beating down, either, because he fights like a wounded weasel and doesn’t really know when to stop.

He’s also a bit of a pain in the ass aboard ship.  He’s a devotee of Feng Shui (whatever the heck that is) and has a habit of rearranging the wardroom furniture and cargo pallets to suit notions of “positioning” ... and if you ask him to explain, the answer is so laden with jargon you never understand.  He also claims to be seeking “satori” (whatever the heck that is), and frequently is doing yoga routines, which he insists on following through no matter the emergency.

Still, he’s a good doc, nothing much ever fazes him, he’s a middling shot, he’s fast as hell, and he’ll always throw in to whatever scheme the crew proposes ... including smuggling, which he’s altogether good at doing ...

One thing not readily apparent (and which he’ll conceal from the crew) is that he took permanent damage from chemical agents in the War.  As a result, he doesn’t eat much (and will throw up if he tries), he’s unusually susceptible to toxins, his senses are dulled, he can easily tolerate very cold temperatures, and he’s just not as physically capable about a third of the time.

ST: 11    DX: 14     IQ: 13     HT: 11     Per: 10    Will: 14     Speed: 6  
               
Advantages:  Cultural Familiarity/Black, Reduced Consumption / 2/3rds food, Temperature Tolerance+1, Unfazeable

Disadvantages:  Berserk (12); Compulsive Behavior / Wanderlust; Disciplines of Faith / "Satori;" Odious Personal Habit / “Feng Shui;” Susceptibility to Poison; Sense of Duty / Crew; War Wounds / -2 everything, on a 9- or less, for two hours

Skills:  Area Knowledge/Black-13; Boxing-14; Calligraphy-12; Crew/Spacer-13; Diagnosis-13; Fast-Draw/sword-14; First Aid-16; Free Fall-13; Gardening-13; Guns/pistol-14; Housekeeping-13; Meditation-13; Philosophy-11; Physician-14; Pressure Points-14; Shortsword-15; Smuggling-13; Surgery-14

Quirks: Bombastic around women; Constantly snacking (but only nibbles); Eats tapioca pearls in drink; Twirls his mustache compulsively

Cultural Familiarity is knowing the customs and suchlike of an area to which you're not native.  Odious Personal Habit, in GURPS terms, is a reaction roll penalty for something about you which is obnoxious enough to bug people.

For further explanation of system numbers, check this link. 

NPC of the Day: The "errantry kids"

So ... I've been having private runs for my wife's powerful wizard-princess for a few years now.  One of the customs of the elven empire in which she now lives is "errantry" -- in your youth, you get together with your best buds and go wandering about for a season or two, all under assumed names like "Snowviolet" or "Morningstar" or "Nightflame," and Do Worthy And Good Things, only traveling with what they can carry and accepting no pay for their deeds.  While the tales have it that people on errantry are fighting dragons and battling for the rights of the downtrodden, the elven empire has secure internal borders and good government, and the authorities aren't crazed about young folk wandering across into the truly scary lands beyond them.  So, for the most part, those on errantry wind up teaching schools, helping farmers bring in the crops, building barns and the like ... which is rather the true lesson behind it all.

Some folk make errantry their life, and indeed go out to take on monsters and warring against the over-mighty.  As far as the rest goes ... well, sometimes the teenagers get uppity and want to go out too.  So Princess Elaina, with some restless teens on her own estate, decided to do the local landowners a favor and announce that she was leading a pack of teenagers out on errantry for two summer months: who was in?  Well, damn near everyone, but in the end, she set out with thirteen.  And, much to their dismay, led them to the task she'd already arranged in advance -- helping a village heavily damaged by the spring flood to rebuild.

I did this cheat sheet for the pack, which is far preferable to doing up individual NPC sheets for what is, after all, a group of relatively nondescript teenagers.  It summarizes their race, age, manor of residence, parental background, a couple key skills, and (teenagers being teenagers) whether they particularly Like! or Dislike! those cute kids of the opposite gender, that being in terms of GURPS Reaction Rolls (high is good, low is bad).

The three for which there's scarcely any info are from Elaina's own manor, so I didn't particularly need cheats for them.  But for a pack of NPCs, for which nonetheless you need to RP them and come up with a personality trait or two, this is a good approach and doesn't take all that much work.

NPC of the Day: Lady Datia

My wife put in a request for some of her favorites, but I figured I'd ring in an interesting Big Bad.  (Sorry, love!)

Lady Datia, third daughter of the great lord Teraeth val Linix, is tall, willowy, beautiful.  She was the wife of a country squire whose holdings are a day’s ride from the capital, and had a three year old daughter.  Though always careful to display the proper decorum, Datia yearned for the high life, and sought – vainly – to convince her husband to relocate to the capital for the social whirl.

The shenanigans that ensued wound up getting rolled into a plotline, and the party drew her ire when they busted up what she thought would be a permanent gig, forcing her to flee one step ahead of the authorities and leave behind her husband and daughter.  Her pattern since has been to marry rich men, under a false identity, take them for what they're worth and split. 

Feeling vengeful, Datia went to work and learned about the party.  She supplied damaging information about the rogue's father to the rogue's mother, causing the breakup of their marriage.  Her next target was the old alchemist on the corner who was a favorite of theirs, and in marrying and ditching him clipped a heap of gold and a bunch of high-powered alchemical poisons, which she used to great effect -- through cutouts -- in taking out or sickening several folks near and dear to them.  On two other occasions, the trouble coming to the party was provoked by her, unbeknownst to them.

Datia's only significant magical item is a stolen religious relic of some power, much of which she can't use; the key power she can use is that it renders her immune to scrying or divinations. She's a good actress and deft at disguise.  She also has some modest arcane powers, but no one outside of her estranged and embarrassed family remembers that she had a brief wizardly apprenticeship in her teens, and she never lets anyone know.

Beyond that, she’s smart and focused. She doesn't have a gang to betray her.  She's very likeable, and folks trust her instinctively and talk freely in front of her.  If she needs help, she'll beguile a fellow and wrap him around her fingertips, but she'll never let that fellow know where to find her, and she will always have a bolthole and a fast mount available.  She won't let herself get suckered into a confrontation, direct or otherwise.  She doesn't leave trademarks or mocking Ba-Ha-Ha notes.  If a plan looks like it's blown, or she thinks a situation is spiraling outside her control, she'll cut her losses and bolt, and if possible has a secondary mark in hand to take the fall.

In short, she's read the Evil Overlord Rules.

RPG groups, by and large, suck at detective work.  They rely heavily on their widgets and spells, and they count on the bad guys making predictable, cliched mistakes or having blatant, exploitable character flaws. They don't often do patient, and they can't often handle patient.  A hundred times more of these scenarios end because the GM has placed a finite limit on them (and, of course, the PCs always win in the end, right?) or from the foregoing factors than not.

I was proud of her.  It's easy for a GM to beat down a party with overwhelming force, zowie! powers like teleportation or insubstantiality, by a NPC's Epic Uberness, or by a torrent of widgets.  Doing so with guile and misdirection, with a hard-keyed scenario (hey, if they had made all the right guesses and been a little lucky, she could have been nailed much sooner), that's harder.

What they never did attempt was to trap her at the only spots of vulnerability: (1) There's only a finite number of rich, single guys out there who get swept up by a beautiful, cultured woman from Somewhere Else and who loves the city life; and (2)  She still had affection for her first husband and for her daughter.  It took the main party nearly five real years to catch her, and in the end only because they called in some major favors and brought some immense arcane powers to bear.

ST: 9     DX: 11     IQ: 13      HT: 10    Speed: 5.25      Move: 5  

Advantages: Acute Taste-Smell/1; Beautiful; Charisma/1; Comfortable wealth; Empathy; Magery (Body Control spells only)/2; Serendipity; Smooth Operator/2

Disadvantages: Callous; Greed; Minor Medical Ailment/migraines; Social Stigma: outlaw; Major Vow: Revenge!

Skills:  Acting-15; Administration-13; Area Knowledge: Warwik royal demesne-15; Baseball-13; Body Language-14; Current Affairs/high society-15; Carousing-15; Connoisseur/music-13; Dancing-12; Detect Lies-14; Disguise-15; Erotic Art-14; Fast-Talk-15; Filch-13; Forgery-13; Holdout-13; Knife-12; Mimicry (human)-14; Musical Instrument / lute-11; Needlecraft-10; Observation-13; Poetry-12; Poisons-13; Savoir-Faire-16; Search-14; Sex Appeal-17; Vajikry-13

Grimoire:  Arousal-13 †; Birth Control-13 †; Choke-15; Comfortable Seat-13 †; Fair Skin-14 †; Rapid Intoxication-13 †; Resist Intoxication-13 †; Resist Pain-13; Stun-15; Tears-15

Maneuvers:  Ruse / w/Sex Appeal-16

Quirks: "But wealth IS power;" Attracted to "bad" men; Fashion slave; Overestimates her luck; Soft spot for animals & kids

Explanations: Serendipity means something just goes seriously right for you, once per adventure: a tree branch breaks over the head of the guy who's about to run you through, the first box you break open in the warehouse has the Ark of the Covenant, that sort of thing.  Smooth Operator gives bonuses to social skills (which are figured in already) and you’re recognized as a suave person.  Migraines?  Make a HT roll every day.  If she blows it, she’ll have about two hours worth of -2 to everything, at some point (she's taken too many alchemicals over the years, and the headaches are a side-effect).  Yeah, they play baseball on my world, and it’s considered an avant-garde spectator sport in the capital.  Vajikry is a game that's something of a cross between checkers and Stratego.  Her Ruse maneuver basically drops a guy’s combat defenses by heavyweight vamping; letting her top fall open or off is a favorite.

I’ve invented a bunch of spells (well, a couple hundred of them); the ones marked † are the non-book ones.  Comfortable Seat prevents saddlesores and jostling in carriages.  Fair Skin keeps your complexion mild.  The others are self-explanatory, and I’m quite narked that SJ Games saw fit to exclude a birth control spell, which you’d think would be one of the more fundamental spells in any realistic culture.  If you prefer GURPS RAW, substitute others.

For further explanation of system stats, check this link. 

NPC of the Day: Eve

I’ve watched a few war-related series of late: Band of Brothers, The Pacific.  My favorite is Tour of Duty, a critically-acclaimed Vietnam War series focusing on a platoon in the boonies.  I never saw it in first run; my household watched China Beach, its competing ‘Nam TV show.  Beyond that, we were St. Elsewhere fans, where ToD’s star – Terrence Knox – had been a scumbag.  Knox’s Sgt. Zeke Anderson is anything but on ToD, and it gave me some ideas.  (Okay, okay ... “Fantasy Effing Vietnam.”  Sue me.)

One of my two groups is based out of the mighty elven empire, which until recently was isolated in the far northwest of the world.  A few years back, they created a magical Gate on an island just off a whopping trackless jungle – and, not remotely coincidentally, smack in the middle of the world’s chief shipping lane.  For a bunch of reasons, they’re colonizing that jungle, which is pierced by a honking big river and watershed.  That’s where the Imperial Marines come in.  The "Blue Legs" are a riverine force (the empire’s still new to the concept of a deep sea navy), and they’re the grunts on the ground patrolling the interior.  They’re also a very insular, tight-knit bunch, respecting pretty much no one other than themselves ... which, considering that they’re usually unsupported in the middle of nowhere, with no more gear than they can pack on their canoes, makes good sense.  Anyway, that’s where the group came in, in accompanying a squad of Marines into the heart of darkness.

The unit’s commander is Eve, who’s the equivalent of a first sergeant.  She’s a hardbitten, hardcore lifer who’s seen it all, done it all, and takes no guff from anyone who hasn’t.  Like any good lifer non-com, she prefers that the officers tell her what they want done and leave her to handle the details.  She will rap you upside the head if you make any reference to her being stone-gorgeous, and will do the same if you insist on calling her “Dame Anevea” – she couldn’t very well decline being knighted by the Emperor, but she hates the formality, and pretty much no one much lower in rank than the Admiral of the Navy can get away with it.  Like most people of elven blood, she is a latent wizard, but has only recently learned her first spell – Insect Repellent.  She’s extremely experienced, extremely senior, doesn’t want to be an officer ... but the time’s approaching when it’s up or out. 

Eve’s team is a deep penetration unit; they scout, they do their objective, they get out.  She’s positively chary of taking casualties, and won’t do forlorn hopes or suicide missions.  Her move would nominally be good, but the team carries everything on their backs, and that can slow them down.  She prefers hatchets in combat, carries a brace of javelins for throwing, and is quite fond in battle of faking injuries, "accidentally" stumbling, that sort of thing.  One of their quirks, widespread in the Blue Legs in general, is to use a lot of slang taken from the indigs' language.

ST: 12    DX: 13    IQ: 12    HT: 13    Per: 12      Speed: 6     Move: Likely to be 5 or less.  

Advantages:  Ally / Marines, Beautiful, Combat Reflexes, Damage Resistance/2, Fit, High Pain Threshold, Legal Enforcement Powers/1, Magery/0, Rank-2/Ord-Matoc, Social Regard: Respected, Status-2 / Knight of the Sapphire Rose

Perks:  Armor Familiarity/1, Riverine Training, Penetrating Voice, Teamwork

Disadvantages:  Code of Honor (Soldier); Compulsive Behavior/wanderlust; Extra hazardous Duty; Sense of Duty: Marines; Struggling, Workaholic

Skills: Administration-11; Axe/Mace-15; Boating-13; Brawling-15; Brawling-13; Camouflage-13; Carpentry-12; First Aid-12; Knife-13; Leadership-15; Navigation-13; Public Speaking-13; Savoir-Faire (military)-12; Shield-13; Soldier-13; Stealth-14; Survival-13; Swimming-13; Tactics-12; Tarocco-12; Thrown Weapon: Spear-15

Spells: Insect Repellent-11

Quirks:  "Never tell the brass anything;" Collects interesting rocks; Doesn't want to retire; Uses Altanian jargon

By way of explanation, the Legal Enforcement Powers means, in shorthand, that she can hassle civvies, the Altanian outback being a military zone.  "Ord-Matoc" is a first sergeant, more or less.  Riverine Training differs from the Naval Training perk in so far that Eve doesn't really know from the deck of a ship, but she's pretty good at staying stable on a keelboat or a canoe.  In GURPS terms, a Duty is what you *have* to do; a Sense of Duty is something you *want* to do.  Tarocco is a card game; feel free to substitute the gambling game of your choice.

For further explanation of system stats, check this link. 

How To Fix Religion In Your Game

It's long been a truism that gamers dislike playing clerics.  Most clerical PCs are the result of "We have to have one of everything" / "We can't adventure without a healer!!!" mindsets.  The people who play them, more often than not, are the weary volunteers, the folk who showed up late when it came time for chargen, the ones who were bullied or browbeaten into it, the ones for whom it was Their Turn To Play The Cleric.

A couple factors go into this.  Some claim it's because the world is becoming atheist, but I don't buy that: certainly in America, the notion that religion is less dominant than it used to be would be farcical, and the trend from the 70s on forward -- the entire history of the hobby -- is for the United States to become more religious.  But there surely is a marked nervousness about the concept in RPG circles.

This is, in fact, nothing new. RPGs have always, generally speaking, sucked at depicting religion and faith. Part of this is the OD&D dungeon fantasy mindset, where it was important to know what level your cleric was, what nifty magical toys he had, and oh, of course, what alignment he was, but pesky things like doctrine, dogma and ritual practice were afterthoughts at best. I had more than one conversation in the Seventies with players of D&D clerics where they could rattle off all the stats and items, but were shaky on the names of their gods ... except that, of course, the anonymous gods in question were "Lawful Good!"  In the game that Gygax built, clerics were just a different type of fire support unit.

Beyond that, the bewildering array of deities most fantasy campaigns and settings had, combined with alignment, contributed to a bulletpoint view of religion. Sure, the Sea God's about water, uh-huh, uh-huh, and sailors worship him, uh-huh, uh-huh, and, like, dolphins are his messengers, uh-huh, uh-huh, and, well ... alright, alright, he's Lawful Good!  Okay??? Nothing about doctrine. Nothing about history. Is the clergy celibate? What does a wedding service look like? Are they in favor of slavery?

We never knew those things, and since there are twenty other gods, each with their sets of bulletpoints, we don't have any traction for what any other god is about either. Three gods, sure, we could get a handle. Thirty, and who can be bothered?  Nope: it comes down to "Bunsgrabber is the God of Partying Down.  His alignment is Chaotic Horny.  He is depicted as a young man with a great tan, wearing cutoffs of purest gold.  His priests always wear sunshades and strange caps with horizontal visors pointing backwards, and his High Temple is at the coastal fort of Lauderdale."

Beyond that, since there's a strong streak of distaste in some circles for any roleplay that gets in the way of tactical planning and execution, we can readily see where the conflict comes ... the more so in that cleric/paladin types in D&D and other such games are portrayed, more often than not, as humorless scolds blending the worst of medieval Catholicism and the Inquisition. Their faith never does seem to benefit the party ... the only impact it has is "Damn, we can't do X because the cleric will go into a tizzy."

There are ways to mitigate this, above and beyond the extensive advice I give in my Starting From Scratch: Faith Manages post:

* Slash the number of religions in your setting. By a lot. A half dozen is about what people can handle, at maximum.  Campaigns work fine with three faiths.  Or two.  Or even just one.

* Develop those religions. What do they believe ... comprehensively? What are their practices? How are they trained? What does the hierarchy look like? (And please, how about we not just parrot the Roman Catholic church?) Is there any similarity in temple architecture? What's their take on icons? Do they allow group marriages? Do they trouble over marriage at all? Give the players some meat to chew, here.

* Consider that in sharp contrast to how most GMs portray a polytheistic society -- as, in fact, henotheistic, where people worship only one god but ignore the others -- make it a genuine pantheon. It doesn't matter if I regularly attend services of the Sea God; if my daughter's getting married, I'm going to make sacrifice to the Fertility Goddess. I might recite a rote phrase to the Fire God when firing up my hearth. I'll surely sacrifice to the War Goddess before going into battle.

* Remember the posts where I talked about mages, and that the vast majority of them are going to be researchers, academics, in service, carrying out official duties and the like, as opposed to being enchanters doing nothing but churning out goodies-on-demand for PCs?  The same thing with clerics.  Priests should not be doing nothing but lazing on barcaloungers at their altars waiting to heal PCs.  They should be working on sermons and homilies, or in long prayers that can't be interrupted, or in the middle of holy ceremonies, or managing their parishes, or performing pastoral duties ... or off healing their parishioners.  (Seriously, I'm much more likely to have burned healing spells on my parishioner Rolf the carpenter, who just fell off the damn roof, or on his wife, who's having a rough time giving birth, or on their teenage son, who fell into the damn hearth and got badly burned trying to get Papa's supper going, than to be hanging onto them on the off-chance non-faithful adventurers wander by.)

* Turn off the god tap. Seriously, folks, faith ought not be a public utility. If you're not a worshiper of my god -- or at least pay lip service thereto -- my healing powers ought not work on you. If I'm a white light priest in a party of murderhobos, my powers ought not work at all. But, by contrast, if you roleplay some serious faith, perhaps the local priestess of the Fire Goddess should see that, and be more favorably inclined to you because of it. Give people some incentive to do this.  A character makes an act of devotion: attending a service, reciting prayers (the whole thing, not "My character recites the Creed of the Sea"), lighting devotional candles ... fair enough, the character gets +1 for the next important roll.

So You Want To Write These Things Yourself?

Don't hold your breath, gamewriter.

People have odd notions of pros in this hobby.  I’ve come across some startling fanboyism.  When I came to gaming forums in 2003, after an eight year hiatus from tabletop, a fellow proclaimed in one thread of the inerrant truths of Ryan Dancey’s proclamations, was shocked that I’d neither heard of nor was impressed by him, and that I couldn’t be much of a gamer if I didn’t Know Who He Was.  That no one else in the hobby in 1995 had heard of Dancey didn’t really penetrate the poster’s shell.

(I reflect, with amusement -- and some irony -- that the gamer of today wouldn't know who in the hell Dancey was either, because he pretty much never did anything after 2003.  But I digress.)

But that's because participants in this hobby place a huge, disproportionate importance on it  — it's the same syndrome that has SF conventioneers quivering in ecstasy at the mere sight of authors who didn’t crack the New York Times top one hundred best-seller list with the most popular books of their careers.   Some people just gasp in horror that the names of the Big Name Authors of the Games They Play aren't engraved in gold in the consciousnesses of every gamer alive, and it's natural to go on from there to assume that these people are figures of monumental importance and wealth.

Now this is in ignorance of what most game designers make; for my own part, I was a frequent guest in the modest two-bedroom suburban apartment of the president of a game company that had one of the most hugely touted supplements of the 1980s, and he made almost ZERO money from the hobby — the family income was based on his day job as an environmental services executive.  There might not be more than a couple dozen people who make decent livings as full-time game designers.  There might not be that many.

There’s probably a hundred times that many people who’ve been a semi-pro at some time in their gaming careers, which leads into another syndrome. What sports fan hasn't sat up in his chair and cursed the blunderings of the home team, insistent that the player or the coach is a bum, and that he could do better himself? This derives from the fact that a majority of the men and a growing number of the women in this country at one point in their youths held a baseball bat, kicked a soccer ball or threw a football. It isn't THAT hard, they think, and so they figure they know all about it.

In like fashion, many GMs write their own scenarios and adventures. They have a notion how it's done, and they then read a product and mutter, "I could do a better job."  Now very few of you have book authors as personal friends (counting people who’ve had genuine national releases from major publishing houses, my total is two) ... but gaming?  Eight published authors of GURPS products alone have been regular players of mine, or else I’ve played in their campaigns.  That figure more than doubles for writers for non-GURPS products, and we won't even discuss those I’ve played with in one-shots, playtests or convention runs.

Now maybe there's a preponderance of game authors in New England, but what's more likely is that there's a whole lot of them out there period, and chances that every one of you who is a veteran gamer has played with at least one. So you look across the dice at the Sunday afternoon run, and there's Joe Blow, who wrote a module for D&D and a few articles for Vampire, and you say to yourself, "Sheesh, he's not any better a gamer than I am. What makes HIM so special?"  The mere implication that he's making dollars from the hobby can either be resentment making, or fill you with the certitude that you can do it yourself.

Fair enough.  Just don’t expect riches.  For the great majority of us, selling a gaming product meant some nice pin money. One sale got me the down payment on a new economy car. Another paid for a modest vacation.  One (split four ways for the co-authors) bought me my books and materials for my last semester of college.  I’ve got a dozen RPG publishing credits, and all of the money I ever earned from gamewriting doesn’t total up to a single year’s worth of a full-time minimum wage job.

Beyond that ... every single gamebook I ever wrote came through connections.  I met the aforementioned game company president at the local gaming club; he’d just moved to the Boston area, and we’d both joined the same dice baseball league.  There was the game company president who had a serious crush on my first wife's college roommate (true story!).  There were the people who recognized my name from long-time writing in APAs.  I started writing for GURPS because the baseball-loving game president had received a courtesy copy of the playtest rules from Steve Jackson, Rich didn’t have particular interest but knew I was a TFT GM, and handed them over to me – that got my name on the radar and into the GURPS corebooks.

This is how a number of game companies winnow down the hordes of energetic wannabe writers. Few game companies – if any – have people reading through slush piles. They often have specific projects in mind, fitting into existing product lines, and as in any other creative field they'll hire someone they know (or someone vouched for by someone they know) over those newcomers. They are not at all interested in OJT, and expect professional efforts written to their exact requirements, submitted on or before the deadlines, no excuses.

Starting your own deal from scratch? It can be done, and we know of folks who've done it. Unfortunately, many of them already had capital they were willing to invest to print their stuff, convention hop to push their stuff, and keep the bills paid while they were trying. And for every indie success, there've been twenty small press failures, and fifty no one's ever heard of beyond the local college's gaming club.

(I've two anecdotes to illustrate the syndrome. The first is from the mid-80s.  The gaming club at UMass-Amherst had a fellow who designed a board game, called Dawn of Islam.  Sorta a Diplomacy/Risk style wargame with unbalanced sides; the Byzantine position was by far the strongest.  Except ... the Islamic player, early in the game, received four tokens called "Army of the Faithful" which were damn near invincible, and of course to conquer the rest of Europe he'd have to go through the Byzantine player first.  Very intriguing, very well designed, very engrossing, there was a session damn near every week.  Everyone said that the designer ought to get it published.  He never succeeded at it, and the only reason I know the guy's name at this remove -- Roger Adair -- was in asking clubbies of the era on Facebook a couple years back.  Roger's passed away now, and no doubt his marvelous game's been at the bottom of a landfill for a couple decades.)

(Second one is, well, me.  I started veering away from D&D very early, and getting very very variant indeed.  Typed up the result in 1981, brought it to UMass with me the next spring.  I was something of a nine-day wonder that spring semester, had more players than I knew what to do with ... either I was that good a GM or everyone else was that bad, eh.  That was the only semester I was at UMass, life events taking me back to Boston, but one of my players had a xerox of the system, and Tom was enough of a fanboy to GM it.  He was doing it years later, something I found out at a SF convention down the road.  Having moved on to TFT and GURPS by then, I inwardly winced that someone was still GMing that godawful melange, but gave belated permission, and furthermore got into Tom's hands a copy of my spell manuscript, the part he never had.  The last I'd heard, he was still GMing it deep into the 1990s, many years more than I'd ever stuck with it.  Go figure.)

Not deterred? Fair enough ... give it a shot! Just make sure to keep your day job.

Explanation of NPCs: footnote

I do play GURPS, and I'm not going to take the time to convert characters to other systems ... especially since I really don't know other systems (other than Fantasy Trip, a long out-of-print system that doesn't precisely have more players than GURPS).

But you should have a handle on what some of the numbers mean, so you have a good idea what these NPCs can do and how well they can do it.

(Caveat: the explanations are my own perception, usually.  Not every GURPS GM shares my take.)

Stats:  Stats are Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity and Health.  There are also secondary stats such as Fatigue, Speed, Move, Perception, Will and Hit Points, which are all figured off of the main stats.

10 is the system default for "average" -- unless there's a racial modifier, every character starts with 10s in each of the main stats.  Improving stats is expensive in GURPS, so stat numbers that a D&D player might perceive as only decent are in this system quite good.  Almost all physical skills are bought off of DX, and almost all mental skills are bought off of IQ; in consequence, GURPS characters tend to be created with variations on 11-13-13-11 numbers, even after the major revision in 4th edition that jacked up the point cost on improving DX and IQ while leaving ST and HT alone.

7 is the lowest stat the system allows, and 8 is the lowest I allow: it's pretty much the lowest you can get and still be a viable adventurer.  Still, a stat of 8 sucks, and over the years several of the players who've blown through my warnings have traded out characters once they realize exactly how much it does suck.

12 is, IMHO, a pretty decent stat.  13 is very good indeed, and it's about what I encourage PCs to use for their go-to stat -- "prime requisite" in D&D terms.  14 is outstanding, something that a beginning PC might have as a "prime requisite" stat with some sacrifice; looking over my records, people manage with a single stat less than half of the time.  

More than that?  In the 37 years † I've been GMing GURPS, only nine characters have had a stat of 15 or more.  All but one of them started before the 4th edition cost revision, and six of them played a race that gave a stat boost.  One intrepid dwarf had ST 15/DX 15, and was otherwise a blithering idiot with just a half-dozen skills.

Skills:  Basic premise -- in GURPS, beginning characters are competent.  This isn't D&D, where a character can only be reasonably expected to succeed at a skill half of the time.  A skill of 12 (which is okay at best for a PC) has a 74% chance of success.  A skill of 13 has 84%.  A skill of 15 has 95%.  Penalties apply -- if you're trying to shoot someone in the countryside at midnight, from 30 yards away, you had damn well better not count on hitting him with that 14 roll -- but even so.
 
A level of -8-9 is better than the default level for not knowing a skill at all, but it's not very good; a good example is that Broadsword-8 means you've just finished boot camp, and you were clumsy to begin with.  (The minimum DX you can have and have Broadsword-8 is 9.)

-10-11 is okay.  It'll do for routine, non-emergency, non-combat uses.  Think of an apprentice in a craft, or someone of decent physical prowess just getting through basic weapon training.

-12 is the nominating level for "can make your living with this skill," and -13 is "... and you're actually good at it."  -11-12 is where a newly-genned PC should have routine, secondary skills in the "It's Good To Have Someone In The Party Who Knows Something About History" camp.

-14 is quite good, and -13-14 is about where a newly-genned PC should have important skills.  A warrior-type with a lead weapon skill of -14 will be alright.

-15 is where I place an expert, and a newbie with this for his or her go-to skill is doing just fine.  A newbie swordsman with DX 12, for instance, is allocating a significant number of points to get Rapier skill this high.

-16-17 are quite expert, and these are levels that newly genned PCs will only reach with serious sacrifice, and that I'll allow a newbie to take only if I'm in a pretty good mood.

-18 is my nominating level for master, and few PCs ever push numbers this high or above.

-21 is my nominating level for "best in the region," and I won't let PCs reach this without long training, serious sacrifice and some excellent explanations.  (You don't get to be the best swordsman in the kingdom by going on adventures.  You get to be the best swordsman in the kingdom by working out four hours a day, every day, with weapon masters in the salle.)

-25 is my nominating level for "one of the best in the world."  I've let exactly two PCs in my campaign's four-decade history reach this with a single skill apiece.  The first was the best healer in my campaign's history, and the second is not merely the most powerful wizard (and highest point total character) in my campaign's history, she's legitimately one of the world's most powerful wizards. 

(These levels are my personal takes, mind you.  Sean Punch, the GURPS Line Editor, opines that -18 is "best in all the land" and over -21 puts you in the running for "best of all-time."  A number of GURPS setting books, by contrast, are really free with tossing out -15s to potters and militia weekend warriors.)

† - as of 2022, anyway.  Yes, that would date before the system was published; I was one of the playtesters. 

NPC of the Day: Grogondo

I've mentioned my predilection for a "viewpoint" NPC a couple times before.  While Kardo, at eleven years straight and counting, is by far my longest standing VNPC, this was really my earliest: before this fellow, my players tended to have one or two key hirelings apiece who were, to a large extent, one-dimensional cyphers played by them as silent, almost faceless adjuncts.  This character, who made his debut in 1980, was a key step in my evolution as a GM.

In many a campaign, Grogondo would have never gotten off the ground: as you can see, he's an orc.

(That's actually what he looked like, too; it's part of the cover of my first published gaming book, and the artist, Denis Loubet, not only did a great job on the cover, but depicted four characters from my main group and more or less got them right.  I'm afraid that Denis and Hannah Shapiro spoiled me for collaboration with artists.  In any event, I digress.)

Obviously, in that first few years of the hobby, orcs were already staked out as the Klingons of RPGdom -- the evil, dishonorable, baby-munching enemy, to be whacked on sight.  But ... there was a difference.  Most of the players in my two groups, at the time, were friends I brought into the hobby.  They hadn't yet absorbed some of the prejudices that gamers had generally, and they didn't know that they were supposed to reflexively mistrust and hate this guy.

ST: 12     IQ: 10     DX: 13     HT: 13/16    Per: 12    Will: 12    Speed: 6.5     Move: 6  

Advantages:  Combat Reflexes; Contacts / Low-level criminals, 9-; Night Vision+3; Outdoorsman+1; Reputation / +2, as hardcore killer, among local lowlifes; Very Fit

Perks:  Improvised Weapons; Neck Control; Weapon Adaptation

Disadvantages: Bloodlust; Bully; Code of Honor (Stays Bought); Colorblindness; Odious Personal Habits+1 / "Broken" speech; Reputation-1 as uncouth & barbaric; Short Life Span; Social Stigma: Minority Group; Struggling; Ugly

Skills: Brawling-14; Climbing-15; First Aid-10; Hiking-14; L: Altanian (B/-); L: Avanari (N/-); L: Talendi (B/-); Packing-10; Riding-12; Seamanship-11; Shortsword-12; Singing-13; Spear-14; Staff-13; Stealth-14; Streetwise-10; Survival-14; Swimming-14; Tactics-10; Thrown Weapon: Spear-13; Tracking-15

Maneuvers: Feint-15

Quirks:  CB: Vandalism; Deliberately inarticulate; NOT intolerant of elves; Recreational drug user; Skirmisher mentality

Grogondo pretty much projects the stereotype of the second-tier mercenary thug.  He's not an experienced regimental soldier, he'll pretty much do what he's paid to do, and he throws his weight around as far as he can manage.  Local lowlifes know him, and fear him more than a little bit, although he's never really worked for criminals except as an occasional bodyguard.  He's inarticulate, and speaks with broken syntax -- "Ya, Gro-gondo do 'dis t'ing.  Gro-gondo kill f' you now?"  Stereotypical thug orc, in a land where orcs are second-class citizens at best and no one expects better.

This is somewhat deceptive.

First off, he's smarter than the average orc.  (Stronger, tougher, faster too, come to that.)  If you're loyal to him -- and to Grogondo, "loyal" pretty much means "Don't screw me and pay a fair share and on time" -- he's loyal to you.  While in some ways he's a typical orc, he deals well enough with elves (who don't often return the favor), and his inarticulacy is a posture: he speaks the local language perfectly well, but chooses not to so as to encourage others to underestimate him.  It works.  He speaks smatterings of two other languages, and is illiterate.

He's an excellent and veteran outdoorsman, and is known to be one, which has led to a number of his jobs ... he might not know how to get you to the ruins of Castle Alvang in the mountains, but he'll keep you alive in the howling wilderness if you know to get there.  He's also an experienced caravan guard, and can do teamster work.  (None of this is impaired by his casual hemp smoking habit; he likes to get mellow, not stoned, and he really can stop any time he wants or needs to do so.)

But don't expect him to stand stalwartly between you and harm in battle: that's not his style.  He's a circle-around-and-flank-the-unsuspecting-foe guy, although he doesn't lack courage -- he just figures that frontal assaults are stupid, and will avoid them if at all possible.  He's also a take-no-prisoners chap -- to Grogondo, the only good enemy is a dead enemy, and dead enemies can't get revenge on him.  Employers who waver on these important values lose his respect, fast.  You might want to play close attention to his facial expressions: if he winces or sneers off to the side, it means he thinks your plan is dumb.  He doesn't work long for employers who make dumb plans.

* * * * * * * * *

The party leader of the group for which Grogondo was the VNPC was elven blood, sure, but the player was pretty ruthlessly pragmatic, and thought that Grogondo was the greatest thing since sliced bread; the characters became allies and fast friends.  Grogondo was around for a few years, and became quite experienced.  I present him here as a beginning NPC (at 125 pts, which is below a starting PC in my campaign).

(For those of you unfamiliar with GURPS:  the split health is Health/Hit Points, the +3 HP being an orcish trait in my campaign.  Very Fit confers high resistance to disease, poisoning, staying conscious, you lose fatigue at half normal, and recover it at twice normal -- pretty much, you're a triathlon type; Improvised Weapons means you can fight perfectly well with broken bottles, flagons and table legs; Neck Control gives large resistance to being choked or strangled; Weapon Adaptation in his case gives him the ability to use staff techniques with a spear and spear techniques with a staff -- usually he carries a spear.  Struggling means he doesn't own much: his spear, some substandard leather armor, camping gear, and that's about it.  The italicized items are orcish racial traits not otherwise reflected in the stats.)

For a further explanation of system numbers, check this link.

Adepts of the Doxology

“Are you alright, Sana?” I screamed, daring a glance back at the fallen wizard, that lizard of hers screaming like a tea kettle.  I didn’t hold out high hopes - that damn crossbow bolt was sticking IN her, and it sure didn’t look good.  For any of us - me, Dray, the four remaining sellswords, we were holding off Tellek’s band of renegades at the wall, and we’d done for a dozen of the bastards at least ... but there were a couple dozen more, and now they were pissed.

“Wolf Lord’s nut sack, here they come,” spat Dray.  I nodded and gripped my last two throwing knives, feeling in front of me to make sure the axe was there and ready.

S-S-S-S-S-S-SHING!  The front wave was flattened, knocked down as if by Upuaut’s own scythe.  S-S-S-S-S-S-SHING!  I stole another glance back, and there was Sana Avennia, staggering forward - that bolt still sticking out of her! - shaking her flail at the enemy line.  S-S-S-S-S-S-SHING!  The bronze links rang in the night, and damn me for a civvie if it wasn’t a sweeter sound than temple bells.

“Eyes forward, Gwythar,” Avennia hissed, wiping the blood from her mouth with her free hand.  “We’re not done for yet, but neither are they.”  S-S-S-S-S-S-SHING!

ADEPTS OF THE DOXOLOGY OF SAN DESTINAKON

(NB: This is one of the wizardly orders from my campaign, which some people have found interesting and poached for their own.  For those of you scoring at home, "Fristles" are cat people, "Khibils" are fox people, "San/Sana" is a term of respect applied to scholars in general and wizards in particular, and the system information below pertains to GURPS.  Adapt as you wish!)

The Adepts practice animation and body control magics.  While the order does not discriminate, a preponderance are Fristles and Khibils, both races native to the desert home of the order.  Further, all Adepts carry bronze flails which they use as foci for their magics.  However, the Adepts can and do also use the flails as weapons, and are some of the most skilled warriors among wizards.

Their schola is in the far-off western desert of Mycretia, and most Adepts train there, making wizards of this otherwise useful and well-regarded order more uncommon the farther from there one gets; along the Talendic coast, Adepts come to parity with Wizards of Fruningen in numbers, while it is quite rare to find an Adept beyond the Pazidani Peninsula.  Adepts are schooled in a demanding and punishing regimen which includes a degree of mysticism and ascetic practices unusual amongst magical orders.  Privation, starvation and mortification are known to be part of the training.  Self-flagellation is a notable part of their practices, commonly employed when Adepts believe they have failed or faltered in a task through carelessness, clumsiness or inattention.  Nothing beyond rumors exists of the private rituals they undergo.  “Listening to the Wind” is known to be an element of meditation, although what that means is unrevealed.

What is known is that the last stage of the Adept’s training involves the feared Desert of Blood, ringed with cruel mountains, where he must survive naked – with only the bronze flail for a tool – for one month.  There, in a haunted land where the flow of mana is slight, is where Adepts learn to cope with weak or erratic mana flows; this also stands them well in enchanting magical artifacts, something at which the order excels.  Adepts who survive leave the Desert with a familiar, almost always a winged dragonet slightly smaller than a house cat, believed by observers to be sentient.

Symbol: A bronze flail.

Garb: Adepts wear robes in a diamond checkerboard pattern, usually in brownish and black colors: brown, bronze, umber, tan, brass and so on.  It is usual to wear a mantle which covers the shoulders.

Template: In addition to the Mage and College of Mage Templates:

    Advantages: Ally [Familiar, at least 10+], Flagellant’s Blessing [1], Language [Hrestoli, full written and spoken comprehension, 6] and 2 points chosen between: Better Magic Items [1], Controlled Cantrip [1], Elixir Resistance [1], Far Casting [1], Improvised Items [1], Mana Compensation [1], Mystic Gesture [1], Quick and Focused [1], Rule of 17 [1], Staff Attunement [1], Willful Casting [1].  Include to those in the base Mage Template: +1 to ST or HT [10], +1 to DX [15], Fit [5], High Pain Threshold [10], Rapid Healing [5].   

    Disadvantages:  Disciplines of Faith/Mysticism [-5], Vow [Keep cult secrets, -5].  Include to those in the base Mage Template: Chronic Pain [varies], Wounded [-5].

    Primary Skills: First Aid (IQ+0) [1], Flail (DX+1) [8], and at least fifteen spells taken from the following colleges: Animation, Alteration, Body Control, Enchantment, Movement (ML+0/-1/-2) [all @ 1 apiece].

    Secondary Skills: Include to those in the base Mage Template: Area Knowledge (Mycretia, IQ+1) [2], Religious Ritual (IQ-1) [2], Survival (IQ+1) [2], Theology (IQ-1) [2].

Tidbits: GMing and Compromise

How far do I go by way of compromise in what I run? Not very.

What I run is a Renaissance-tech fantasy world, very loosely based on Kenneth Bulmer's Scorpio series, using GURPS.  I specialize in urban adventures and run a lot of nautical stuff.  I don't do dungeons, and my plot arcs are a lot more about geopolitics than Good Kingdom vs. Evil Empire.  I'm a realism bug.  PvP is strictly forbidden in my campaign.

That's the deal.  If you want to play D&D or Pathfinder, I'm not your guy.  If you want lots of interparty conflict, I'm not your guy.  If you want to do SF, well, I do a few months worth of Firefly every several years, but that aside, no, I don't do that.  If you want high entropy dungeon fantasy where the PCs' goal is to be the lords of creation, no, I don't do that.  If you can't handle that a single veteran soldier might be able to slap you around and that thirty orcs with spears definitely will slap you around, no, I'm not catering to you.  If you don't like that we're a friendly lot who break for lunch and spend the first 15-20 minutes asking about everyone's fortnight, well, shucky darn.

I've been doing this for over three decades now, and I'm pretty set in my ways.  I GM two groups who like my way of doing things just fine, and those players who couldn't handle one or more of the above elements find other groups in which to play.  I've also long since made sure prospective new players know the score, in detail; sometimes they listen.

Sorry, but I’m not going to be one of those sadsack GMs who write to gaming forums complaining that they’ve been bullied into running a game system, a setting, a genre they didn’t like.  Life’s too short.

Mariners' Quarter II

Sign of the Melting Block:  This old time ice selling family business has recently been taken over by Shalla Luathaich, the grand-niece of the proprietor, who has retired to the countryside.  In reality, “Shalla” is the priestess Tantra, cleric of Mallia – the dread goddess of disease – who with her three acolytes sacrificed Shalla and her grand-uncle, forged the right papers, and plan to use this business to spread disease throughout the Old City and the ships leaving for foreign ports.

Venturers’ Guild Hall:  This five-story wood-and-stucco building houses sailors and harbor pilots; fishermen have their own Guild and are not welcome here.  Non-able seamen are discouraged from hanging around save for entrepreneurs or sea captains hiring for voyages (and pay a fee to the Guild for the privilege).  Membership costs a gold sovereign, which is taken out of the wages of a sailor’s first voyage.  The annual tithe is 15 silver sinvers or 10% of a sailor’s wages (whichever is higher), and that too is deducted from seafaring pay; captains who mislead the Guild in order to mulct this are harshly treated if caught, and blackballed on a second offense.
                           
On the first floor is a large lounge where captains and officers gather, and where a large cork board tracks known shipping.  There is an administrative office, where a wall covered with cubbyholes hold messages for passing vessels.  The Guildmaster’s office is comfortable and kitschy, with the walls covered with nautical bric-a-brac, there’s cabling instead of moulding, and so on.

Most of the second floor is taken up by a meeting hall where Venturers can hold rallies, and there is a separately run teahouse on the 2nd floor balcony upon which the sailors take tea and shoot the breeze.  

On the third and fourth floors, low cost (and mediocre quality) food and beds for seamen are available barracks style.  Supervising the barracks hall is Salty Leofri, a former bosun’s mate.   The fifth floor has modest “lockers” for long service mariners, with room for a bed, table, chair and seachest and not much more.  Notables include:  

Seldon val Troon, Dorval’s half-brother, is the Guildmaster, a position of enormous political influence and the reason why the val Troon family have plucked this plum.  Seldon is a qualified captain, but has his post far more for reasons of politicking than any other, and he is quite good at it.  A lean, hearty man who loves life.  He asserts his title for all its worth in public politicking, but never here or among his guildmates.

Nath “Hawkeye” val Troon, son of Seldon, is the chief harbor pilot.  In this post through nepotism, he is tolerated largely because pilot posts are seen as sinecures for elderly do-nothings and because Hawkeye is a genial, popular man with a reputation as a bladesman, and puts less work than he could into administrative duties (in consequence, the master piloting logs are indifferently kept). 

Cap’n Dolan Hide is the cheerful, swarthy son of a Lohvian merchant and a veteran bladesman, well off enough that he sails because he wants to do so.  He cons the Windrose, a 70' fast schooner outfitted for the tea trade and noted for being weatherly.  The Windrose sports no visible cannon, but her swivel guns shoot lightning, not bullets.

Gwythar the Knife is Dolan’s first mate, a giant of mortalendic blood. He is a skilled helmsman, but an unbelievable knife thrower, one of the world’s best.  He is festooned with knives, several enchanted and all Very Fine quality.

Vangar and Varko are twin brothers who own the Sea Lord’s Confidence, a 250 ton roundship.  They take turns as captain and helmsman, and it is difficult to tell which is which; they are both equally humorless and taciturn.  The Connie is a once-renowned sailer that was poorly repaired following a grounding, and a good bit of rot has set in. 

Shena of Seahill captains the Black Risslaca, a shallow draft sideboard schooner with four sweeps designed for inshore and reef work.   The Risslaca is a jumpy, persnickety ship requiring an attentive, attuned helmsman, which Shena is.  She won’t do a knowingly illegal act (emphasis on the “knowingly”) such as smuggling or drug running, but she also asks few questions.

The Trefoil Herb:   Neysa is a fairly prosperous elven blood herbalist.  She has two assistants who spend their time compounding preparations in bulk for the quarter’s physicians.  She is painfully aware her husband Lodos happens to be the Commodore of the Brotherhood of Renders (the great pirate cabal); they are separated and on poor terms.

The Sisterhood of Sublime Mercy Orphanage:  This orphanage hosts several dozen children at any given time, and has a sour reputation in the neighborhood.  The Sisterhood apparently believes in hard work for their charges, claiming it will teach them useful trades and a work ethic, and operates a nearby sharpener and brickmaking factory.  They claim (not completely inaccurately) to place children in fosterage on suburban farms and in apprenticeships in the city, and hotly and persistently maintains their innocence of any wrongdoing, while maintaining (also not completely inaccurately) that they teach the children to read, write and cypher.  More sinisterly, however, Mothers Mellindra and Yhantse sell a steady percentage of the better looking or stronger children as slaves to illicit buyers.  They have onsite a half-dozen scum guards (deliberately picking handsome, innocent looking ones) to help keep the children in line and discourage questions. 

Tyraesa Square:  This large public square in the northwest of the quarter has a weathered sandstone fountain so old the features of the person memorialized are no longer discernable; it is jocularly called “Old King Log” after a notoriously inept monarch of three centuries ago.  The wide base of the fountain is the source of public drinking water for the poor.  The square is also a popular venue for minstrel performances and street theater.

Dock Square:  This square is somewhat out of the way, and peopled by the lower-class district residents, the fishing trades, and the down and out.  Outsiders – the Town Watch included – will attract scrutiny, and may be harassed by local youths and wannabe thugs.  There are a number of pushcarts selling various ready-to-eat foods, which is ignored by troopers as long as the thoroughfare isn’t blocked.