Posts
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The Peoples of Tamriel: Elves
This is the second post in a series about the bringing peoples of Tamriel to a GURPS fantasy game. This post deals with elves, just as the first one dealt with humans.
Elves in Tamriel
As it happens in most fantasy settings, the Elves of Tamriel1 are a bit taller than its humans on average, and have large almond-shaped eyes and pointy ears. They’re also more inherently magical than humans, though that extra magic tends to conform itself to the environment a given elven people occupies over time.
Like humans, each elven people is associated with a different region of Tamriel, briefly described in their template. Each template also includes “typical” cultural traits and adventuring professions for a native of that region, which could apply to anyone born there.
Most elven people live much longer than humans, but in a typical Dungeon Fantasy campaign that’s not worth any points2.
Altmer (25 Points)
High Elves in all settings tend to have a reputation as snobs, and these guys are no exception. Altmer are on average taller than humans, with golden skin and white or golden hair. Their eyes are usually gold, amber or green in color.
Altmer are the original elves, at least according to their own traditions. All the other elven peoples originated from groups of Altmer dissidents who left their homeland of Summerset Isle and migrated elsewhere. While individual High Elves vary a lot in their outlook, the highly stratified society of Summerset Island is founded on the idea that they’re better than everyone else.
Altmer religion teaches they are the direct descendants of gods who were tricked into giving up their divinity so the world could be created. They ruled a continent-spanning empire in Tamriel long before humans arrived on the scene, and the islands don’t lack for extremists who want to bring the good old days back at the expense of everyone else. The latest of these are the fascist Thalmor, who by the events of Skyrim are alarmingly close to conquering Tamriel.
The younger generations tend to be much more egalitarian and open-minded, as do Altmer of all ages who live outside of Summerset. Their innate facility with magic and the wide availability of quality training in Summerset means Altmer adventurers are commonly Wizards or members of other spellcasting professions (like, say, Magic Archers). Even High Elves who are nominally knights or swashbucklers know a few spells.
Advantages: Magery 1 {15}; Energy Reserve (Magical) 3 {9}; Better Power Items {1}.
Other Traits: Some level of Intolerance is extremely common among Thalmor members, and even those Altmer who oppose their ideology might still be prone to bouts of well-meaning condescension that translate into an Odious Personal Habit.
Bosmer (25 points)
Bosmer or Wood Elves call the temperate, heavily-forested province of Valenwood their home. Their appearance and behavior are pretty much those of cliche wood elves from other settings: they’re all about archery and protecting their forest homes.
Many Valenwood Bosmer go even beyond the cliche by becoming members of the Green Pact, a religious philosophy that exhorts them to avoid harming plants and natural environments, never take the shape of beasts, and never kill wastefully. Green Pact followers are strict carnivores who feel morally obligated to eat or otherwise make use everything they kill - for the most extreme among them, that includes people. They can’t make any objects from plant matter, but can use those made by others just fine.
Scouts and Druids are by far the most popular professions for Bosmer adventurers.
Advantages: Animal Empathy {5}; Animal Friend {5}; Forest Guardian 2 {10}; Resistant to Poison +3 {5}.
Other Traits: Disciplines of Faith (Green Pact) is worth -15 points and is common in Valendood proper. Green Pact extremists also have Odious Personal Habit (Cannibal) for another -15 points and a -3 to reactions from anyone who is not similarly inclined. This should probably be restricted to NPCs. Bosmer PCs might also opt to take plain old Sense of Duty (Nature) instead or not take any of these disadvantages at all, particularly if they were raised outside of Valenwood.
Dunmer (20 points)
Dunmer, also known as Dark Elves, have ash-colored skin, black, dark brown or white hair, and red or amber eyes. They hail from the volcanic land of Morrowind, which they share with giant mushrooms, giant insects, and a whole lot of ash. They are widely known as fierce warriors and aggressive spellcasters, shaped by their harsh environment and cutthroat politics.
Morrowind is dominated by four noble houses who divide the important functions of society among themselves. Needless to say, they constantly scheme against each other: this is a realm whose premier law enforcement agency is a guild of assassins. They spent much of their history worshipping a pantheon that was basically an ascended adventuring party. After the events of Morrowind they mostly revert back to their old gods. In both cases ancestor worship remains an important component of their religion.
Dunmer adventurers tend to be Knights and Wizards, or professions that combine both (like the Mystic Knights from Pyramid #3/13). Thieves and Assassins (or even Ninja!) are also common. Your typical Dunmer wizard tends to prefer elements other than fire for their damage spells, since they expect to be slinging those at other Dunmer in the course of their many violent intrigues. Their tradition of ancestor worship means necromancy is looked upon a lot more favorably in Morrowind than it is elsewhere.
Advantages: Damage Resistance (Limited, Heat/Fire -40%) 5 {15}; Magery 0 {5}.
Other Traits: Getting your PCs tangled in Dunmer House politics is an excellent way to introduce all sorts of social traits like Enemies, Allies, Secrets, Patrons and Contacts in a game that didn’t include them previously.
Orsimer (21 points)
In Tamriel, Orcs are Elves too! They were almost universally reviled for a long time, but their loyal service to the Empire over the years earned them acceptance. They look big, green, and tusky, and unlike other Mer live about as long as humans.
The orcish homeland isn’t an official province, but rather a series of mountain ranges that falls within High Rock, Skyrim and Valenwood. Their capital is the city of Orsinium, which has been sacked and rebuilt multiple times in different locations throughout the history of Tamriel. Traditional orcish culture makes Nords seem like peace-loving softies. They basically worship the God of Having A Chip on Your Shoulder.
Orcish adventurers favor big, brawny professions like Knight and Barbarian, though orcish Artificers are also surprisingly common and tend to specialize either in smithing or in alchemy.
Advantages: Focused Fury {1}; Great Rage 1 {20}.
Other Traits: Both advantages above are from Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Barbarians. If the campaign takes place in a time or place where orcs are particularly reviled, they would also have an appropriate Social Stigma. Like Nords, though, orcish Barbarians in campaigns taking place in their homeland aren’t considered a Minority Group. Some level of Berserk is quite common, though.
Other Elves
The templates above are just for the elves that have been traditionally playable in Elder Scrolls games. There are many, many more:
- In Tamriel, dwarves are elves! The Dwemer vanished way back in the First Age and left a whole bunch of extensive, steam-powered underground complexes whose advanced machinery is still pumping after all these millenia.
- The Falmer, or Snow Elves, dominated Skyrim at the dawn of the First Age and were displaced by the conquering Nords. This led to an ill-fated deal with the Dwemer that eventually turned most of them into blind cave-dwelling cannibals.
As usual for Dungeon Fantasy, every time your PCs think they know all elven subtypes, feel free to introduce a couple more.
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The Peoples of Tamriel: Humans
It appears someone finally took me up on my offer to write a more detailed post on any aspects of my One-Post Skyrim adaptation. The requested topic were racial templates, so this is what I’m going to write about it here.
Scholars in Tamriel tend to divide its peoples into three main classifications: “Men”, “Mer” and “Beast Folk”. This pretty much means Humans, Elves, and Everyone Else, and as usual for this kind of medieval-ish scholarship is as much a political construct as a biological one. This post deals with humans.
My primary source for this article are the wonderful Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, which have detailed descriptions of the lore and mechanics for all games in the franchise1.
Humans in Tamriel
Humans, being humans, don’t have any “mandatory” traits and as such their “templates” technically cost 0 points. Each of the human peoples described here is associated with a specific region of Tamriel where it makes up the majority of the population, so their descriptions also include a bit of info on those provinces and a small list of traits considered typical for their culture and common adventuring professions.
It’s entirely possible for a human character to not have any of their culture’s “stereotypical” traits, or to have an entirely different set more in line with the region they actually grew up in. And the list of common adventuring professions in no way restricts the professions a character may choose from. If you want to be a Nord Wizard or a Breton Ninja, go for it!
Bretons
Bretons are humans native from the province of High Rock, the region of Tamriel that most resembles your typical Arthurian pastiche. They are commonly fair-skinned, with hair that ranges from black to blond. Many demonstrate a remarkable facility with (and resistance to) magic, which is alternatively attributed to their ancient druidic traditions or to elven blood depending on who’s doing the attribution.
The most common way for your average High Rock citizen to go up in life is to impress a noble from its many squabbling fiefs by performing meritorious deeds. High Rock is a big exporter of questing Knights and Holy Warriors, and of spellcasters who take on Druidic trappings.
Traits: Magery and Magic Resistance (Improved) are extremely common among the natives of High Rock.
Imperials
Imperials hail from the region of Cyrodiil, right in the middle of Tamriel. They are called that because in most Elder Scrolls games their homeland is also the seat of the Empire.
The Empire is the third political entity to bear this name in Tamriel’s history. It’s a sophisticated, cosmopolitan society whose seat of power is located in a majestic city and whose hegemony is ensured by a combination of diplomacy, trade, and the military might of its infantry legions. In other words, they are basically off-brand Romans.
Imperial adventurers who hail from the ranks of the legions are most often Knights or battle Wizards. Other popular delver professions are Scholars, Clerics and Bards. The “visiting wise man from Cyrodiil” looking for a lost ruin is common enough to have become something of a cliche.
Traits: Imperials have a reputation for being well-spoken and charismatic. They often have Charisma, Born War Leader, Business Acumen or Smooth Operator, as well as points in the skills boosted by those talents.
Nords
Nords are our off-brand Vikings, as fond of song as they are of fighting. We learned plenty about their homeland of Skyrim in my last post.
The inhabitants of Skyrim have a greater distrust of magic than those of most other provinces, and prefer facing their foes head-on. As such, Knight and Barbarian are some of the most common adventurer professions for them. Bards are also quite popular, both as entertainers and as keepers of history.
Traits: Nord barbarians from Skyrim don’t carry a Social Stigma in campaigns that take place there, and should replace that with 10 points in other disadvantages. Intolerance (Magic Users) or Compulsive Carousing fit the stereotype. Some level of Temperature Tolerance (Cold) isn’t out of place in even the most “urban” Nord.
Redguards
Redguards are tall, well-built humans with dark skin and curly black or red hair. They landed in the arid province of Hammerfell, and made if their home over the centuries. Their culture seems to take inspiration from many different African sources, but ends up looking mostly Moorish, at least superficially.
Redguards are know as the most talented warriors in Tamriel, which is saying a lot given the continent also has Orcs and Nords in it. They make better skirmishers and independent agents than rank and file troops, and during most of the games have a long history of loyal service to the imperial line of Tiber Septim.
Redguard adventurers most often belong to the fightier professions. Swashbucklers and Scouts are the most common, with Martial Artists and Knights following close behind.
Traits: The most iconic Redguard trait is Combat Reflexes! Redguards also prize skill with the sword, so even less martial Redguard adventurers are likely to have some training in that area.
Other Humans
These four human origins are just the ones that are playable in most of the Elder Scrolls games. Several others are mentioned but not traditionally playable:
- The Nedes had a large civilization in the time before the First Age of Tamriel, which entered into decline and was eventually absorbed by several other of the playable cultures.
- The silver-skinned Kothringi of Black Marsh are said to have died out from the Khanaten Flu in the middle Second Age.
- The neighboring continent of Akavir is home to a large human civilization who once successfully invaded and conquered Tamriel, starting its Second Age. In keeping witht he “swipe from real world cultures” theme, the Akaviri are off-brand Imperial Japanese.
Tabletop games set far enough into the past could certainly allow for Nede or Kothringi PCs, and Akaviri PCs would be plausible at almost any time.
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Sometimes too detailed, in fact. ↩
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One-Post Skyrim
ONE POOOOOOOOOST! (image source) I’ve been playing a lot of Skyrim lately, and it occurred to me that adapting that to GURPS could be a fun project. So I’m going to do that in this post.
And when I say “in this post”, I mean that literally! I do not intend to spend the next three years writing about this like I did with my Dragon’s Dogma project. This means I’m going to cheat like a cheating cheater and take shortcuts. Whenever I can get away with giving page references to published books or links to other articles, I will do so. The result should still resemble the thing I’m trying to adapt, and those who disagree with that can still use the post as “Iteration One” in their own more elaborate efforts.
Themes and Gameplay
Before we can start messing about with rules we have to take a look at our source material, which in this case is the Skyrim computer game (written in bold from now on to differentiate it from the Skyrim region). Skyrim is just one part of the extensive Elder Scrolls franchise, but I’m going to restrict myself to just the one game as source material. Consider it my first cheat.
If I were to describe Skyrim in one sentence, I’d call it the video-game version of a sandbox campaign with a heavy power fantasy element.
How Skyrim a sandbox campaign? It has pretty much the exact same core gameplay loop. You create a character to your liking and wander around a large region peppered with dungeons and other interesting places to visit. You add to your to-do list by talking to NPCs and receiving quests from them, or by overhearing and reading rumors which point you to particular dungeons. While wandering around the map you also periodically run into random encounters. There’s technically a “main quest”, but the game doesn’t pressure you into completing it any more than it does any other quest, and completing it doesn’t end the game.
How does Skyrim give you a power fantasy? Through the rules, by using a skill-based system that gives every player character access to every skill in the game. And through the story, by allowing PCs to play through multiple quest-lines that would usually each take up a whole character’s career. Not only can you become a legendary fighter, mage and thief, you can also become the head honcho of the Fighters’, Mages’, and Thieves’ Guilds. It also doesn’t make you wait until you’re “powerful enough” to give you access to its more “epic” storylines: you kill your first dragon quite early in the main quest, interact with several deities starting not long after, take on (or join) a cabal of millenia-old vampires who want to blot out the sun, and so on.
Choice of System
So how are we going to adapt this for the tabletop? We want something whose “feel” approaches the one I described above for the original game. I’m going to use GURPS Dungeon Fantasy because of course I will, but there are good reasons for choosing it aside from my fanboyism.
I believe GURPS is particularly well-suited here because it allows for considerable flexibility in character creation. Dungeon Fantasy with its insistence in sticking to templates is a little less flexible, but that restriction is easy to relax and we’ll be doing so here.
Other advantages of Dungeon Fantasy: its 250-point starting heroes allow players to feel powerful and take on “epic” challenges right away, and it has ready-made mechanics for most of the situations routinely encountered by Skyrim players.
Also of note are the things that will be different from the computer game: it will be aimed at a whole party of PCs instead of a lone hero and it will use the standard pace of DF character advancement.
Places
A map of Skyrim (image source) The place we’re concerned about is Skyrim! This is the “frozen north” of the continent of Tamriel, a roughly rectangular region bounded by mountain chains to the south, east and west and by the Sea of Ghosts to the north.
In-game Skyrim is around 40 square kilometers in size, but that’s obviously because it’s highly “truncated” as is usual for this type of game. There’s no published official size, though it appears someone has managed to extract a halfway plausible measurement over on Reddit that indicates Skyrim would be about the size of Poland. That means its linear measurements would need to be in the order of 100 times larger than their in-game size: about 500km tall and 600km wide1. That’s quite large! It would take weeks to hike from one end of Skyrim to the other, and that’s ignoring things like monster or bandit attacks.
The climate near the southern border is on the cold end of temperate. As you go north, both elevation and average temperature drop. Grasslands and temperate forests give way to conifers and frozen marshes, then tundra and fjords on the northern coast. The topography is quite “wrinkly”, with several minor mountain ranges dotting the interior of the province. There are two river systems, one to the southeast and another to the northwest, both flowing north to the sea.
Politically, the region is divided into nine holds, which you can see in the above map. Skyrim is officially a province of the Cyrodillic Empire, having joined it in the distant past through alliance rather than conquest. The Imperials are basically off-brand Romans, and you could explain any significant departures from the Viking cultural baseline through this centuries-long association.
Settlement distribution follows the same model as the one I described for Gransys, and since the in-game map isn’t as aggressively minimalist as that of Dragon’s Dogma you can have a better idea of where they would be. Hold capitals are usually major cities, and the other settlements that appear in the game would mostly count as “towns”. Villages, as usual, are everywhere, though I guess Whiterun with its fertile plains has a lot more of them than The Pale. Towns and cities are linked by a fairly good, though winding, road network.
People
Though Skyrim is the home of the Nords, all of Tamriel’s peoples find themselves represented here one way or the other. Players should be able to create characters belonging to any of them. Since all of them will live in Skyrim and be part of its society, that’s where we will focus our attention.
Nords are basically off-brand Vikings. Hall of Judgment and Dragon Heresy contain great descriptions of a fantasy Viking culture that would be an excellent starting base for Skyrim’s Nords. The main differences are that there are no thralls in Skyrim, and the Nords follow the setting-specific Nine Divines instead of the Aesir. Jarls and Karls work as in HoJ/DH, but Thane is a formal position granted by a Jarl to people who have done a great service to the kingdom, roughly equivalent to a knighthood in importance. Thanes are expected to continue performing the services that gained them the title in the first place, but don’t much else in the way of formal obligations.
Law and order is a bit more formal in Skyrim than in the other settings I mentioned, possibly because of Imperial influence. Each hold keeps a permanent contingent of guards responsible both for repelling external attacks and for keeping the peace internally. Criminals must still pay a bounty commensurate with their crimes, but that bounty is paid to the hold, which presumably then sees that the wronged party is properly compensated. Those who can’t pay their own bounty usually end up rotting in jail for a commensurate amount of time. A Thane who gets caught committing a crime might be able to use their station to escape punishment, but this too has its limits. Commit enough crimes and the Jarl declare you an outlaw and start offering a bounty on your head: that’s how bandit gangs are born.
Character Creation
Starting characters are built on 250 points, and are assumed to be somewhat experienced adventurers already. Players may use any DF professional template they wish, but are explicitly not restricted to only the traits in their chosen template during character creation or advancement. Completely freeform character creation is also allowed. I’m aware this might open up some unexpectedly powerful combinations - adjudicating those is left as an exercise to the GM.
Racial templates are easy:
Nords, Bretons, Imperials and Redguards are all human.
Skyrim also has a whole lot of elves, but so does DF, and they map almost directly to one another! Altmer are High Elves, Bosmer are Wood Elves, Dunmer are Shadow Elves. Orcs are technically elves in Tamriel, and are best represented by the Half-Orc template. Even Dwarves are a kind of elf in this setting, but there are none left alive.
Khajit are obviously Catfolk, and Dragon-blooded make passable Argonians if you replace the fiery breath and Reputation with Doesn’t Breathe (Gills, -50%).
Further tweaking of all of these is not only possible but advisable, and is left as an exercise for the reader.
Magic works differently than standard Dungeon Fantasy. Skyrim is effectively an agnostic Dungeon Fantasy setting that takes the Simple Option for spells and the Cool Option for non-spell powers. Even characters who start off without any Magery may buy it with earned character points. Any enemy group with more than a handful of members is likely to contain one or more spellcasters, and many people know a useful spell or two even if they don’t call themselves wizards.
The Voice
The Voice should be modeled as a form of Sorcery, should a GM with to include it. Each Shout is a separate power that comes in three levels, corresponding to the number of words known or utilized. Students of the Voice rarely learn more than one or two Shouts, buying them directly and paying the full cost. Knowing even one makes you quite a bit more dangerous than you would be in the computer game, since there are no cooldowns in the default Sorcery rules!
And since I know you’re going to ask: no amount of Unusual Background can make someone Dragonborn. This is a trait best assigned by a GM who wishes to make it the focus of the campaign. The in-game effect is that you get a chunk of points to spend on the Voice every time you kill a dragon, and can use them to buy Talent or Sorcerous Empowerment for Voice powers.
Creating specific Shouts is left as an exercise for the GM, but here’s an example:
Unrelenting Force (Fus-Ro-Dah)
- Keywords: Obvious
- Full Cost: 15/30/45
- Casting Roll: None. Use Innate Attack (Breath) to hit.
- Range: 20m
- Duration Instantaneous.
Projects a cone of force in front of the user that pushes everything in its path away. The force doesn’t damage its targets directly, but can throw them great distances and will definitely hurt if it knocks someone into a wall or over a ledge.
Does 2d, 4d or 6d crushing damage with the No Wounding and Double Knockback modifiers, out to a range of 20 meters. The cone is 3m wide at maximum range. Diffuse targets take full damage!
Traits: Crushing Attack 2, 4 or 6 with (Cone, 3m, +80%; Double Knockback +20%; Variable + 5%; Blockable -5%; Reduced Max 1/5, -10%; No Wounding except versus Diffuse targets -25%; Sorcery -15%;)
Stuff
For the most part, you should be fine using the default equipment list for either version of Dungeon Fantasy. Applying the modifiers described in Hall of Judgment on top of that will get you something that’s a lot more Nord-flavored.
The computer game made a big deal of organizing weapons and armor in tiers that used different materials, but those can be replaced with the special DF materials and modifiers without losing much of anything - particularly if you have DF 8: Treasure Tables or DF Treasures 1: Glittering Prizes, which have a list of “impossible materials” that work as supernatural embelishments to weapons and include several familiar names (glass, ebony…).
Adventures
Skyrim is lousy with ancient Nord burial mounds and tomb-complexes, each filled with traps, treasure, and lots of draugr who will be very angry when they see you taking their stuff. If grave-robbing is not your thing, you can hunt down bandits or murderous fauna for bounties, enter the service of an organization such as the Companions or the College of Winterhold2, or try to talk a Daedric lord or twelve into revealing where their pet artifacts are located.
Skyrim’s story takes place during a time when the Empire is in decline due to a prolonged conflict with the Aldmeri Dominion and the fascist Thalmor that govern it. Most of its other provinces have either been conquered by the Dominion or seceded when the Empire signed a peace treaty with the Thalmor that made several heavy concessions. There’s an ugly civil war going on in Skyrim between the Imperial legions and a rebel faction who call themselves the Stormcloaks and seek to secede from the Empire as well. The Thalmor play one against the other from the shadows. Taking part in the civil war could make for an interesting campaign, but it’s also perfectly possible to play during a more peaceful time either before or after the game’s story.
No matter where you wish to go, simply getting there is an adventure in itself. Using the wilderness survival rules from DF 16 or Hall of Judgment is strongly encouraged. If you’re playing in the same time frame as the computer game, make sure to include dragons in your wandering monster tables3.
Conclusion
So this is a Skyrim adaptation in one post. If you would like me to revisit one of the topics here in more depth, feel free to drop me a comment!
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Review: Hall of Judgment
Copyright 2018 Gaming Ballistic LLC (image source) Hall of Judgment is a particularly notable adventure for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, because it’s published not by Steve Jackson Games but by Gaming Ballistic LLC. It’s not only the first licensed DFRPG book, it’s also the first licensed GURPS book I’ve ever heard of.
It was published fairly recently as of this writing, after a successful kickstarter campaign. I backed it pretty early on, and now I have a copy of the final Hall of Judgment PDF in my screen. So let’s review it!
TL; DR
If you already have the DFRPG boxed set and are looking for supplements to add to your game, this should be at the very top of your shopping list. It contains a Viking-flavored mini-setting with plenty of cultural notes; four separate dungeons; a set of rules for wilderness travel; the GURPS version of the Dungeon Grappling rules; approximately 30 new monsters; and 16 setting-appropriate pre-made player characters.
If you also have the Dragon Heresy intro set and wanted to play in that setting using GURPS rules, then this book should get you most of the way there.
On the Book Itself
Hall of Judgment is a 132-page book describing all of the stuff I mentioned in the TL; DR section. I backed this at the PDF level, so this is what I have. The physical book will be softcover and produced via Print-on-Demand - it seems the campaign didn’t quite reach the stretch goal for fancier printing options.
The layout is a bit similar to that of the Dragon Heresy intro-set, but it feels “GURPSier”, as it should. The font is a bit different, the columns are closer together and the ornamentation around the edges of the pages is different. It all still feels pretty Vigking-ish. Hall of Judgement also reuses several pieces of art from the DH intro set, which is fine by me as they also fit well here.
The writing is reminiscent of plenty of other Dungeon Fantasy products, a style I personally like. The setting descriptions are written in a way that makes it more amenable to a full reading than quick reference, but the dungeons have a clearly labeled section for each room, with labeled paragraphs describing the challenges, rewards, alternative ways of dealing with the challenges, and anything that might be initially concealed from the PCs. I’m sure the Ten Foot Pole guy would think they’re still a little too verbose, though.
Along with the PDF I also got two zip files containing full-sized versions of the encounter and dungeon maps present in the book. The encounter maps have no grid, which means they’re suitable for use in a virtual table-top program.
And once again, this book has a table of contents and index comparable to those of a GURPS book, which is awesome.
On the Setting
The mini-setting contained in this book consists of the city of Isfjall and its surrounding region, which includes Lake Odin, a few other named-but-not-described villages, and a large and dangerous wilderness containing four separate dungeons. One of those is the titular Hall.
This is a significant expansion over this adventure’s initial incarnation as Lost Hall of Tyr for D&D 5th Edition, which from what I gather started with the PCs arriving near the Hall already. The whole setting is really a slice of Torengar, the Dragon Heresy world, but in the KS campaign’s words it has been “mildly de-Norsed” so as to be dropped into any Dungeon Fantasy campaign as the generic “Frozen North” from which barbarian characters frequently hail.
Isfjall is described in great detail for a Dungeon Fantasy work, in which “Town” is usually entirely abstract. You get a rundown of the town’s economy, a little primer on local culture, social hiearchies, religion and law, and a list of almost-weekly festivals covering the whole year. Reading this you get a real sense of why people built a town here, where the money and food comes from, and what their daily lives are like. You can set your adventure at any given day in a year and know what the town will look like on that day, from the information given here.
This plus a table of rumors and the hook for the main dungeon take up a little under 20 pages.
I liked this section quite a lot. It’s a nice departure from the “village of dirt farmers plagued by mysterious disappearances” that features in so many D&D-ish modules, and it’s easy enough to modify. You can add the serial numbers back on by replacing a few names, if you want to play in Torengar or stop pretending the local pantheon aren’t the Aesir. You can also take it in the other direction and, say, turn this into the basis for a Skyrim adaptation.
On the Adventure
Right after the chapter on Isfjall is a chapter on “The Journey”, which has a neat little set of wilderness travel rules. They won’t be news to people who already own GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16, but they’re an awesome addition for anyone who only owns the boxed set. Each of the three sub-regions the PCs will need to traverse to reach the Hall are given their own encounter table, which contains a good mix of natural obstacles and non-hostile encounters in addition to hostile monsters. There is also a weather table covering the whole year. If you want to really challenge your party, have them set out to find the Hall in the middle of winter.
All this wilderness traveling can lead to one of four different dungeons. There’s a ruined fortress built atop a barrow that contains the spirits of all its inhabitants, two different fae lairs and the Hall of Judgment itself. At no point are your players forced to go to any of them - there’s a strong hook pointing them towards the Hall, but the adventure doesn’t impose any punishment on the PCs if they want to do something else first, or instead. There are also other minor hook suggestions here for GMs who want to make up their own adventures in the setting.
The ruined fortress and the Hall of Judgment feel suitably Nordic, and the PCs are likely to visit the first in their search for the second. The two faerie warrens are entirely optional deathraps that should be a blast to GM.
On the New Material
Aside from the town setting and dungeons, this book contains plenty of new material that should be useful for other campaigns. I already mentioned the wilderness travel rules - the generic portion of them takes up about two pages, and the specific portion provides a good worked example of how to stat up a region’s weather.
Then you have Fantastic Dungeon Grappling, which is basically the GURPS version of Dungeon Grappling rules Mr. Cole wrote for several editions of D&D, which in turn are a simplified version of the Technical Grappling rules he originally wrote as a GURPS. I posted my own take on a simplified Technical Grappling a few months ago, but the rules from this book are better and I recommend using them if you can. I’ve already used them to great effect in a game I’m GMing.
If grappling rules don’t ring your bell, the 30+ new monsters statted up here should make up for that. Each gets a page, with description, DFRPG stats, and an illustration. All of them show up somewhere in the adventure, though your PCs aren’t expected to fight every last one. You get a mix of wild and domestic animals, some humans, a few undead and demons, and a whole lot of faeries from Norse mythology. Even the weakest of those are quite a bit scarier than you’d expect from their appearance.
After the bestiary there’s a group of 16 ready-to-play PCs, most of which are local to the region. Since the adventure is written for a group of 4 to 6, this is more than enough to assemble a number of possible parties, which would make this adventure a lot easier to pick up and play provided the GM knows the book.
Conclusion
I got this book by backing the Kickstarter campaign at the US$10 tier. It’s now available on Warehouse 23 or Gaming Ballistic for US$12.50. In its 132 pages it contains an adventure, a setting, new rules, a bestiary and a pre-made PC portfolio. Given that your typical Dungeon Fantasy supplement only does one of these things, costs $8, and likely contains some of the same material that was put into the DFRPG boxed set, this book should probably be at the top of your shopping list if all you have is that boxed set.
Even if you’re a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy player, this is still excellent value for the money, as the only redundant bit here would be the 2 pages of wilderness travel rules, and that only if you already have DF 16.
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Meltaguns in GURPS
Perfectly cromulent battle tactics (image source) The theme for this month in the secretive cabal of GURPS bloggers is “fire or heat”, so I figured I would do something a bit different from my usual dungeonnesque fare and adapt Melta weapons from Warhammer 40K to GURPS.
Hasn’t that been done already? Yep! Many times, often for the whole of 40K rather than just one weapon, with results of varying quality. A quick search for “gurps meltagun” brings in this this thread in the SJ Games forums as the top result, and there are a whole lotta others below that. My only excuse for doing this is the Full Metal Jacket adage: “There are many like it, but this one is mine.”
Meltaguns
These bulky weapons fire short-ranged beams of concentrated heat with an effect similar to the blast of a shaped charge. They use canisters of highly compressed exotic gasses as ammo, which account for about a third of their considerable weight. There is pretty much no reason to use one of these instead of a good anti-vehicle missile, but the Imperium of Man never cared for reason.
A meltagun can punch through most personal and vehicular armor and cause grievous harm to the soft bits behind it. If you miss, though, your target will be in a prime position to shoot back or charge at you1.
Melta weapons come in several varieties:
Inferno Pistols can (barely) be fired with one hand, using Beam Weapons (Pistol). Their effective range is a bit shorter than that of your typical video game shotgun, which is quite a feat.
Standard Meltaguns are fired using Beam Weapons (Rifle). They do the same damage as inferno pistols, but have greater range and more shots per canister.
Multi-meltas, as the name implies, basically consist of several meltagun assemblies bolted together. The resulting weapon is huge and heavy, with a heat so intense it produces a 3d burn “backblast” that affects the shooter and anyone standing up to 2 meters behind them. For these reasons it’s usually either carried by large people in powered armor, mounted on vehicles, or attached to shielded tripods. In the first case it’s fired with Beam Weapons (Rifle); in the others with Gunner (Beams).
All melta weapons halve their armor divisor past 1/2D, and are affected by spaced, laminated or electromagnetic armor as if they were shaped charges.
TL Weapon Damage Acc Range Weight RoF Shots ST Bulk Rcl 9^ Inferno Pistol 6dx2(10) burn 3 10/30 3kg/1kg 1 3(3) 11 -4 1 9^ Meltagun 6dx2(10) burn 6 30/90 6kg/2kg 1 5(3) 12† -6 1 9^ Multi-melta 6dx5(10) burn ex 12 100/300 40kg/15kg 1 12 (5) 18M -8 1 Design Notes
Like Perfect Organism did over on his forum thread, I started by looking through Ultra-Tech in search of already existing weapons that would be similar to Warhammer 40K’s melta weapons. The plasma flamers on page 127 of that book looked almost promising, but look both too weak and too slim to fit the bill. The root of the problem is GURPS Ultra-Tech assumes a universe that makes sense, even when describing superscience. But this is Warhammer 40K! Nothing makes sense!
So in the end I took inspiration both from the plasma flamer stats in Ultra-Tech and from the melta weapon stats in the Only War corebook. Then I pulled the final numbers of out the Warp. The end result is even more insane and less realistic than UT’s plasma flamers, but that’s what the superscience tag is for.
Pricing these monstrosities is left as an exercise for the reader. If you’re playing in the 40K setting or somewhere similar, cost doesn’t really matter, since the people most likely to use these weapons will have them issued by their bosses. In other settings they’re perfect as the inventions of a pyromaniac mad scientist or the like. If they are available commercially, they should be expensive, and in all of these cases their Legality Class is no better than 1.
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If you hit and your target is still standing, then you’ve just angered something that can stand up to melta-guns. Good luck surviving! ↩
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