Posts

• Dec 27, 2018

  New-School Turn Undead

  Turn Undead was the iconic ability of old-school D&D clerics, moreso than spellcasting. They could do it at will right from level one. It started fairly effective at turning skeletons and rapidly grew in effectiveness, affecting more powerful types of undead and eventually destroying the less powerful ones instead of just making them run away.

  In Dungeon Fantasy, True Faith with Turning shares most of these traits. It doesn’t let you destroy undead, but it still makes it a lot easier for the rest of the party to finish the job. Particularly if they have ranged or high-Reach melee weapons!

  After several editions of evolutionary pressure, D&D Turn Undead became quite different. In most “modern” editions it was renamed to something like “Channel Divinity” or “Channel Positive Energy”. It could only be used a few times a day and had several possible effects. When used for its original purpose, it caused damage to undead instead of turning them. The effectively turned it into a secondary ability, taking a backseat to spellcasting.

  This “new-school” form of Turn Undead might look something like this in Dungeon Fantasy:

  Channel Divinity (18/27/36 points)

  Pre-requisite: Power Investiture (Holy) or Holy Might 1+.

  You channel the powers of your deity into a blast of glorious light that emanates from your body and causes terrible burn to evil undead caught in its radius!

  Using this ability requires a Concentrate maneuver and costs 2 FP. It affects any foes who would also be vulnerable to standard Turning, out to a distance of 4 meters/yards from you. Roll a Quick Contest of Will with each such target. You have a bonus to this contest equal to your Power Investiture (plus +1 or +2 for an exceptional holy symbol) and a penalty equal to the distance between you and the enemy in meters/yards. A monster’s Resistance to Good applies a bonus to its Will. Any foe who loses this contest takes 2d, 3d or 4d of burning damage (depending on the level of this ability). This damage bypasses all DR and affects insubstantial undead!

  Statistics: This is Burning Attack 2d, 3d or 4d with the following modifiers: Area Effect, 4m, +100%; Affects Insubstantial +20%; Malediction 1, +50%; Affects only Truly Evil Undead, -50%; Costs Fatigue, 2FP, -10%; Emanation, -20%; PM: Holy -10%.

  Design Notes

  This power is basically just an area version of the Smite ability from Monster Hunters. The Accessibility limitation that restricts the target it affects is a little different, but I gave it the same value because it doesn’t change the size of the affected group all that much.

  It makes clerics a lot more dangerous against undead in close combat, and gives Holy Warriors a good area attack option against such foes. Taking this instead of traditional Turning sacrifices some tactical flexibility in exchange for increased damage potential. It suits firebrand clerics of sun deities and the like. Of course, there’s nothing preventing a suffciently powerful character from eventually acquiring both!

  Channel Divinity does not make [Smite Evil][1] redundant, since the valid targets for both abilities are slightly different. Smite Evil could affect demons, for example, but would do nothing against mindless undead. It can’t be combined with Smite Evil.

• Dec 23, 2018

  I Shall Smite Thee! Smite Evil in Dungeon Fantasy

  

  Almost all of the classic Paladin abilities from D&D have a clear analogue in the list of powers available to Holy Warriors in either version of Dungeon Fantasy.

  With one exception.

  Smite Evil (5 points/level)

  Pre-Requisite: Holy Might or Power Investiture (Holy) 1+.

  You can empower your blows with the very wrath of the heavens! Channeling raw Holy Might in this way can be tiring, but it can also be just the thing to bring down a powerful servant of Evil.

  You can buy as many levels in Smite Evil as you have levels in Holy Might. You can declare you’re using it before you attack an enemy with your fists or with a weapon. For each FP you pay (up to your level in this ability) your attack will cause an extra 1d of follow-up burning damage to the enemy if it hits!

  This damage is effective against insubstantial targets, even if your normal weapon attacks aren’t. On the other hand, it only affects Truly Evil foes. Smiting anyone else just wastes the FP, but at least you’ll know immediately why it didn’t work. Detect Evil is a very useful companion to this ability!

  Statistics Each level is Burning Attack 1d (Follow-Up, Universal +50%; Affects Insubstantial +20%; Variable +5%; Only against Truly Evil targets -50%, Costs Fatigue, Variable, 1 FP/die, -15%, PM: Holy, -10%) {5}.

  Design Notes

  Smite Evil is the most popular ability of D&D Paladins. It’s present in all editions of the game, though its implementation differs substantially from one to the other.

  The ability as presented above is somewhere between the 3.5 and Fifth Edition versions. Like the one in 3.5, it enhances a single attack and its use is a waste if the target is not evil or if the attack misses. Like the one in 5th edition, its use is limited by the same resource you would use to cast spells. As a Holy Warrior, you have to put some thought on when you use Smite Evil, but the cost of a missed attack can be recovered with a few minutes’ rest.

  The “Only against Truly Evil targets” limitation is inspired by a similar limitation in the Smite power found on GURPS Monster Hunters 1: Champions. It includes a bunch of undead and demons, as well as a few other monsters, but also excludes a lot of common opponents, so I feel that’s a fair value. Damage from Smite Evil counts as holy, so if you have a Truly Evil monster who is also extra-vulnerable to holy attacks, this will make them dead very fast.

  The variable fatigue cost limitation was calculated according to the guidelines in GURPS Power-Ups 8: Limitations, and Universal Follow-Up is from its sister volume on Enhancements.

  If you want your holy warriors to smite evil at will, removing the variable FP cost would bring the ability’s cost to something like 6 points/level and make it a lot more devastating against evil monsters, particularly at higher levels. Allowing it to affect anyone would make it cost around 8 points/level, but would potentially step on the Knight’s toes. Doing both would bring the cost up to around 9 points/level.

  Alternate Smites

  Higher Purpose works as a lower-intensity at-will smite in the vein of some D&D 4 powers, since it gives bonuses to attack and damage against demons and/or undead. Heroic Feats is a bit like Pathfinder’s version, giving you bonuses for a limited amount of time instead of affecting one attack.

  By the way, the Smite power from Monster Hunters would itself be a nice Holy Might power for those characters who rely more on their strenght of will than on their muscles. In Dungeon Fantasy it would cost 10 points/level and be similarly limited by your level of Holy Might or Power investiture, and only affect Truly Evil monsters.

  All of these abilities can coexist peacefully in the same campaign, or even in the same character with enough points. Smite Evil stacks with both Higher Purpose and Heroic Feats, but not with Smite from Monster Hunters due to the way Universal Follow-Up works.

• Dec 18, 2018

  My Dungeon Fantasy House Style: Characters

  

  Back when I statted up the Pathfinder Iconics for both versions of Dungeon Fantasy, I decided to work under a set of restrictions to make those characters more “by the book”. The idea was that anyone who had either GURPS DF or the DFRPG boxed set could pick the appropriate version and start playing.

  Were I making those characters solely for my own use, however, I would have done a few things differently. Like everyone else, I have a particular “house style” shaped by my personal preferences. And like everyone else who owns both versions of DF, I have a particular way of picking which version of the rules to use for any given situation.

  I plan to discuss those preferences in this article, for a simple reason: I want to post more characters in this blog, and I want to make them according to my own preferences. It’s useful for the reader to understand what those are!

  Character Templates

  Any professional template from the main GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line or the DFRPG box set are allowed. Pick whatever version you like best! You can also use any templates published in Octopus Carnival. Templates from other sources are subject to my review on a case by case basis, provided I have access to the source in question.

  The same goes for racial templates. In fitting with my stated policy on this post, however, I consider attribute adjustments and traits with a “cultural” origin to be mere suggestions and not part of the template. If you want your dwarf to be a hard-headed greedy grump, take those as individual disadvantages.

  Traits and Powers

  Most traits and powers that exist in both versions of Dungeon Fantasy are identical in both, but when that’s not the case I generally go with the cooler or cheaper version. “Resistant to X” is the one that comes to mind here. I prefer the DFRPG version because it’s slightly cheaper and more granular than the default GURPS one.

  If a power only exists in one version of the game, you’re obviously still allowed to get it no matter where you took your template from. DFRPG bards can learn Alarum, and DFRPG druids can have animal companions.

  Spells

  I’ll be honest, my mastery of the GURPS Magic system leaves something to be desired when compared to my knowledge of its other rules. I’m a fan of fighters, what can I say? For this reason, DFRPG: Spells is the baseline magic book for any campaign of mine. The spells in there are already pre-selected and pre-edited for a Dungeon Fantasy campaign. Spells not present in that book will be allowed on a case-by-case basis.

  Equipment

  The “canonical” weapons list for my campaigns is the one from Low-Tech, though the one in DFRPG: Adventurers will do as a substitute in a pinch. As far as I know, it just has less weapons. Weapon modifiers are the ones in DFRPG: Adventurers. The “canonical” armor list is the one from DFRPG: Adventurers. The Basic Set one feels outdated, and Low-Tech’s hit location rules are too complex for me.

  I haven’t had to deal with characters of wildly differing sizes yet, but I’m tempted to use the scaling rules in vanilla DF when that happens. Just for armor, though. For weapons, just pick an appropriate stat line for a smaller weapon and wield it with the skill that feels right. For example, a pixie knight might wield various knives with Broadsword, Two-Handed Sword or Polearm depending on size.

  Other gear should generally be taken from the DFRPG list, though I gather it’s similar enough to most GURPS sources that you can take something from Low-Tech or the Basic Set if you really want it.

  The Tech Level is 4, when that matters. The availability of guns is decided on a per-campaign basis.

  Side Note: Iconics in the House Style

  If I were to stat up the Pathfinder Iconics in my “house” style, they’d mostly follow the DFRPG templates, but freely borrow from the GURPS DF line for powers. Kyra would get her fire spells, Lem would get his bard song, Lini her pet leopard, Sajan his kopesh, and even Valeros his Dual-Weapon Attack. I guess the exceptions would be Amiri and Merisiel, as I find their DFRPG selves all-around better than the original.

  I’m not going back and statting these bozos up a third time, though. I leave that as an exercise for the reader.

• Dec 13, 2018

  On Cyberpunk

  There’s this William Gibson short story, from way back at the beginning of his career, called “The Gernsback Continuum”. You could argue it’s a neat encapsulation of everything the cyberpunk literary movement was all about.

  It’s about a photographer who gets hired to travel through the US and take pictures for an art book, of buildings built using this very specific sort of 40’s-50’s architecture. You know the one: aerodynamic fins and flanges everywhere, meant to look “futuristic” in a robots-and-spaceships kind of way. Of course, the story takes place in the 80s so everyone there knows the future these buildings were alluding to never came to pass. That’s what the art book is going to be about, that nostalgic lost future feeling.

  

  Our protagonist gets so into it that he starts hallucinating that future. Silver teardrop-shaped cars driving on the highway or flying in the sky above it. A plane that’s a huge flying wing with twelve propeller engines, two squash courts and a ballroom.

  It culminates in an entire city (Tucson, IIRC) visible on the horizon being replaced by a version of itself that’s all impossibly tall flanged towers linked by crystal roads and swarming with those silver cars and with Beautiful People in Togas. There’s a couple of them right beside our protagonist, though they don’t see him. They talk to each other with sweeping gestures and bold statements that can be summarized as “Isn’t the future great? And it’s all ours!”

  At that precise moment, our protagonist freaks the fuck out. I was a dumb teenager when I first read this story, so I didn’t quite get what was so horrible about that moment. Now I do. Every one of those Beautiful People in Togas is white, blond and blue-eyed. What the heck did they do to everyone else? Perhaps that lost future never coming to pass isn’t a bad thing at all¹. In the end the protagonist gets rid of the hallucinations through a steady diet of crappy media and headline news about the oil crisis.

  The story’s title refers to Hugo Gernsback, the man responsible for editing the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories from 1926 to 1936. I’m guessing everything our poor photographer sees comes from that magazine, too, or from other publications influenced by its style stretching into the 50s. Gernsback also lends his name to the Hugos, one of the two top literary prizes in the field of SF.

  The cyberpunk movement, whose writers would end up winning quite a few Hugos themselves, was in large part a reaction to this style of science fiction. As the introduction to Guardians of Order’s Ex Machina so aptly puts it, cyberpunk stories were about outsiders trying to survive and find happiness in the face of an oppressive society. Cyberpunk protagonists, Gibson’s in particular, were often criminals, drug addicts, poor, kids, people of color, or more than one of the above at the same time.

  The worlds of classic literary cyberpunk had all sorts of social problems that were directly inspired by the present in which those stories had been written. They weren’t exactly extrapolations, but rather commentary on the present. Since the stories were set in the future, I think they also ended up presenting us with another message: those issues don’t just go away because technology advances. If you ignore them today, they’ll still haunt you tomorrow.

  By now I’ve read a bunch of online discussions where people say the cyberpunk genre is dated or outright obsolete. We’re no longer in the Eighties. Things have changed. The tech looks either retro or absurd to our modern eyes, the USSR imploded, Japanese companies didn’t take over the world.

  I feel this argument is kinda missing the point. The specific technologies and setting elements that appear in classic cyberpunk stories are indeed a product of their time, but they’re just props. The themes and motifs behind those props are timeless. It’s quite possible to write a story with more up-to-date props that still feels cyberpunk. Heck, Gibson himself never stopped doing exactly that.

  Overly focusing on the props is a mistake a I feel a lot of people make. These people include a good number of RPG writers and fans, unfortunately. I clearly remember reading an article that talked about just such a thing once, but unfortunately I can’t remember where. So when I next talk about this, I’m going to be writing my own version of that article.

  1. Me not getting the horror of this situation was a spectacular feat of unmitigated dumbassery. The comparison between this vision of the future and Nazi propaganda was right there in the story. ↩

• Nov 18, 2018

  On the Relationship Between Castlevania and Ravenloft

  There probably isn’t a direct relationship between them. The original I6 Ravenloft module came out in 1983. The original Castevania game for the NES came out in 1986. On the one hand this was the 8-bit era, so it’s likely Castlevania began its development after Ravenloft had come out. On the other hand pen-and-paper RPGs were a small-scale hobby and no one had casual access to the Internet back then, so it’s unlikely that Castevania’s Japanese developers would have heard of the module.

  Still, both Ravenloft and Castlevania very clearly get inspiration from the same sources, and tell remarkably similar stories: one or more intrepid adventurers enter a gloomy kindgom ruled by an ancient and cruel vampire lord, break into said lord’s castle, and kill him with a weapon destined for the purpose¹.

  The environments in both are heavily inspired by gothic literature and monster movies. As games, both have a reputation for being quite hard. Strahd from Ravenloft is clearly inspired by the literary Dracula, with a different name to make him more copyrightable. Konami went the other way and named their vampire Dracula while making him completely different in most other aspects.

  I mention the original I6 adventure specifically because I think Ravenloft loses quite a bit of its Castlevania-ness when it turns into a campaign setting with a metaplot and that business with the Mists. The original adventures set up dynamic scenarios: things are bad, and have been for a while, but the PCs are fully expected to upset the apple cart as soon as they get into the picture. The Ravenloft campaign setting, on the other hand, is just another static D&D setting where the only allowed changes are handed down from on high in the form of metaplot.

  Í haven’t really read the new-ish Curse of Strahd sourcebook², but I gather it’s tries to turn I6 into a full campaign starting the characters at level 1 and lavishing praise on Strahd himself at every opportunity. Since I didn’t really intend to use the rules as printed on either version I went with the cheaper one.

  There’s no deeper insight here. Just something I’ve been thinking off and on for a while. I’m obviously not the first person to think of this: someone home-brewed a campaign setting called Barovania back on 2012 or so which mixed a lot of old-school Nintendo lore with the usual old-school D&D soup. Finding a link to that now is a challenge, but I remember reading it.

  In any case, if you want a Castlevania experience in your tabletop, you can pretty much run I6 Ravenloft as written and just convert the monster and item stats to your system of choice. Maybe use the Castlevania soundtrack as mood music. There are quite a few organ arrangements for it too. You could also forgo the random placement of the special treasures and make it so one of them is in a place that’s easy to see but impossible to reach without first finding the other.

  For extra franchise power, after your group beats Strahd, run Ravenloft 2: The House on Gryphon Hill as a sequel by having it take place 100 years later and feature the descendants of the PCs in the first adventure. All the thematic stuff you need is already in there and pretty system-neutral.

  1. You can technically kill Strahd without finding the Sun Blade first if you’re badass enough, but doing things in the “proper” order is both easier and more dramatic. ↩

  2. Curse of Strahd is only available in print, which makes it hella expensive. I6 and Gryphon Hill were available as PDFs for much, much less. ↩

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