Posts

• Mar 10, 2017

  Dramatic Editing in GURPS

  

  I’ve been somewhat lax in following the monthly themes proposed by the GURPS blogging community. Let’s see if we can change that! This month’s theme is “Luck”, so let’s see what I can do about it.

  What is Dramatic Editing?

  If I’m supposed to write about “Luck”, why did I title this article “Dramatic Editing”? That’s the name of a rule in the old White Wolf RPG Adventure!, which was about pulp heroes with special powers in the 1920’s. It used a variant of the Storyteller system, with a “power stat” named Inspiration. In addition to powers specific to their character types, all PCs in Adventure! could pay points of Inspiration to change the narrative around them. In-character, this looked like lucky coincidence, but mechanically it was a conscious decision by the player. The less plausible the change was, the more Inspiration it cost. This rule was called Dramatic Editing.

  Hasn’t This Been Done in GURPS Before?

  Why, yes! GURPS has several different sets of rules that strongly resemble Adventure!’s Dramatic Editing. Let’s count them.

  In the Basic Set alone, we have:

  • The Luck family of advantages, which allow periodic re-rolling certain tests and picking the best result. Higher levels increase the frequency in which this can be done.

  • Super Luck, which allows the player to outright dictate the result of a roll, once per real-time hour.

  • Serendipity, which is very similar to Dramatic Editing but with more GM control and less guidelines as to what’s possible. Each level of the advantage gives one “use” per session.

  After that we have GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys, which is a whole supplement on the different ways you can spend character points to buy immediate effects. Of particular interest there are the mechanics for Buying Success on p. 16, which at the extreme end can turn a critical failure into a critical success for 5 CP.

  Building on that we have the expanded mechanics for Wildcard Skills that debut in GURPS Monster Hunters 1: Champions: for every 12 points spent in a wildcard skill, you also gain a “point” that can be used for Buying Success on rolls of that skill.

  These mysterious “points” never had an official name until the Impulse Control article in Pyramid #3/100, which called them Impulse Points and gave us a rule set for purchasing them as advantages.

  With that many alternatives, why I am even writing this post? Most of various official mechanics don’t really feel unified. If I wanted a game where Dramatic Editing was central, having several of these mechanics in place would be confusing, especially for new players. I also don’t like that the default Impulse Buys rule requires permanent expenditures of character points. The rules associated with Wildcard skills are nifty, but they require bringing Wildcard Skills into the campaign and that isn’t always appropriate.

  If I was to use a single official rule set for this, it would be the one from the Pyramid article, but I find even it to be a little too finnicky. You have to pay for your Impulse Point pool and for its refresh rate separately, which means your group can have PCs with different refresh rates. The idea of Villain Points from the article is also pretty good, but making them a fixed disadvantage that also has an individually adjustable refresh rate makes them both predictable and difficult to track.

  This can only mean one thing: time to come up with my own system!

  

  Dramatic Editing, GURPS Edition

  This system is meant for campaigns where dramatic editing is a major feature. Its use replaces any other traits meant to represent luck, plot protection, or lack thereof. It is inspired several of those traits, by the Dramatic Editing rules in Adventure!, and by similar systems found in a few other games.

  Note that these rules use “dramatic” units of time rather than the more traditional GURPS measurements of sessions or periods of real or game time. I prefer to use these units because I often play via forum, where real time and sessions don’t have any meaning:

  • An adventure is a complete story with beginning, middle and end, bookended by significant periods of downtime. In a face-to-face game, it can take several sessions to complete!

  • A scene is a usually series of events taking place in the same location, or something like a single big fight, chase, or significant social encounter. It usually ends when the characters have some time to rest or when the context of their activities changes. A session usually has several scenes, unless the whole session is just one big fight.

  The system is built around the following advantage:

  Inspiration (15 points/level)

  Whether you’re lucky or just that good, you often find things going your way. Each level of this advantage gives you an Inspiration Point (IP for short), which you can spend in the ways described in GURPS Power-Ups 5: Impulse Buys, or in Performing Dramatic Editing, below.

  The GM defines how many levels of Inspiration you may buy in the campaign. 3 to 5 should be a typical maximum, depending on how cinematic the campaign is. This advantage is exclusive to PCs, representing the extraordinary luck or “plot armor” posessed by protagonists in heroic fiction. NPC adversaries use a slightly different system. Its use in a campaign implies the use of the rules described below, which apply to all PCs whether they have this advantage or not!

  Regaining Inspiration

  Inspiration Points can refresh in several different ways:

  • They always fully refresh at the start of every new adventure.

  • In the downtime between scenes of an adventure, you regain 1 or more IP depending on how long the downtime lasted, at the GM’s discretion. A five-minute break while running between fight scenes doesn’t refresh anything, while multiple days of R&R are always worth a full refresh.

  • You gain an IP for particularly good roleplaying during a scene and for heroic actions, at the GM’s discretion. Fortune favors the bold!

  • The GM may give your character 1 or more IP in exchange for inserting negative events into the narrative. Essentially, this allows the GM to buy success or use dramatic editing by giving points to the PCs instead of spending them from a pool.

  Points gained through impressive heroics or GM dramatic editing can allow a character to exceed their Inspiration maximum, and even characters without the Inspiration advantage can make use of them! These extra points are lost when the scene ends, so there is extra incentive to use them immediately.

  Performing Dramatic Editing

  In addition to buying success or improving effect rolls, PCs can use Inspiration to directly alter the narrative around them. While this is a conscious decision by the player, and fueled by the PC’s Inspiration, the PC is not aware of this fact, and perceives this as a stroke of luck or fortunate coincidence. This is usually done to get the character out of danger, or to improve their odds against strong opposition. The more extensive and implausible the change, the more it costs.

  Dramatic editing is always initiated by the player, unlike Serendipity, though the GM still may veto or alter edits that violate basic campaign assumptions, exceed the scope the player wants to pay for, utterly break suspension of disbelief, or which simply don’t contribute to making a fun and exciting session. Players should come up with plausible explanations as to why these things happened, and GMs are encouraged to ask for clarification if anything is in doubt.

  In any case, using dramatic editing to cause problems for other players is forbidden!

  Change	Cost
  Minor Change	2 IPs
  Major Change	3 IPs
  Blatant Continuity Violation	4 IPs
  Extension	1 or 2 IP
  Additional Complication	-1 IP
  Offscreen Change	-1 IP

  Below are more detailed descriptions of the possible changes:

  • Minor Change: This change has a minor but not decisive impact on the character’s situation, improving their odds and perhaps giving them some room to breathe. It must be plausible given the current situation, and cannot contradict any established narration. It can do things like bring in plausible friendly NPCs as reinforcements, insert useful objects into the scenery, or give the PC an extra bit of equipment they forgot they brought (like the more specialized Gizmo advantage). The guidelines for standard Serendipity are good here, too.

    Examples: There’s a loaded gun in a desk drawer in that penthouse executive office! These sturdy vines will make crossing that jungle chasm easier! Friendly police officers show up when they hear you fighting those mobsters near their station!

  • Major Change: This change has a decisive impact on the character’s situation, turning lost causes into decent fighting chances or perhaps saving the character’s life entirely from certain death. It can stretch plausibility somewhat, but it still cannot contradict established narration and must adhere to the campaign’s base assumptions.

    Examples: There’s a parachute in that burning penthouse executive office! Those cops that showed up and arrested everyone know your PCs from way back and are willing to release them with a warning… this time. This idling, unlocked sports car that happens to be here is just what you need to give chase to the bad guys!

  • Blatant Continuity Violation: This change can directly contradict a previously established description, though it still might not violate basic campaign assumptions.

    Examples: Turns out the building’s sprinkler system is working after all! The lab had a backup generator the bad guys didn’t know about! This unexplored jungle contains a ruined outpost full of supplies!

  • Extension: Allows a player to “hitch a ride” on an edit just performed by another player, having its effects apply to both PCs. Cost depends on the scope of the original change (minor extensions cost 1 IP, major ones cost 2).

    Examples: That vine is a few inches lower than it seemed, allowing both PCs to grab it! There’s water enough for two!

  • Offscreen Change: The edit affects some place other than the one where the current scene focuses on. This means that it won’t be of immediate help, taking anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour of in-game time to have an effect. This reduces the cost of the edit by 1.

    Examples: The cops will be here… eventually. That providential supply cache is a ways away.

  • Additional Complication: This change is a mixed blessing - it makes the PC’s life easier in one way, but complicates it in another. Doing this reduces the cost of the change by 1, and it’s equivalent to accepting a bad outcome from the GM in exchange for a point.

    Examples: The cops fight the mobsters, but try to arrest you too! The life-saving supply drop fell on top of a nest of snakes!

  Dramatic Editing vs. Buying Success

  You might notice that even an immediate Blatant Continuity Violation without complications is cheaper than turning a Critical Failure into a Critical Success via the Buying Success rules. The downside of that is that Dramatic Editing is subject to much more GM scrutiny, as described above, whereas a player can normally just spend the IP on buying success and have the effects happen immediately. Generally, anything that could be explained by skill rather than luck should use the Buying Successes rules.

  On the other hand, you might also have noticed that the ability to perform an edit equivalent to a standard use of Serendipity per session costs 30 points instead of 15! This is balanced by the fact that characters can recover IP mid-adventure via rest, good roleplaying, heroism, and accepting negative events proposed by the GM, and that this can allow them to temporarily exceed their maximum. And they could always spend those points in Buying Success instead if no good opportunities for “lucky breaks” present themselves.

  Adjusting the Rules

  The Dramatic Editing rules are purposefully written to a more “fuzzy”, narrative standard than what is usual for GURPS material, and rely a lot on GM and player judgement. GMs who feel that dramatic editing is too powerful as written are free to increase the costs, or come up with more concrete limits on what’s possible. One good way to discourage Blatant Continuity Violations is to set the maximum Inspiration level for the campaign at 3, ensuring that characters can only resort to that most extreme of edits if they surpass their maximum or accept extra complications or delays.

  The idea here is that players should use Inspiration early and often. If your players consistently go over their maximums and stay there, you should either encourage them to use those points more often or reduce the amount of awarded points.

  Compatibility with Other Systems

  If you use Dramatic Editing in a campaign, you should forbid any other Basic Set traits that deal with luck, plot protection or the lack thereof. This includes advantages like Luck and Serendipity, but also disadvantges like Unluckiness, since players get a different sort of reward for allowing bad stuff to happen to their characters. Both forms of Destiny are also forbidden, since recent interpretations of it overlap with the Inspiration advantage.

  Using this with “Wilcard points” might be possible, though it makes things harder to keep track of due to characters having several pools of points to spend. Points from Wilcard Skills cannot be used for Dramatic Editing, but can still be used as described in the original rules.

  Using this with the Impulse Control rules is relatively straighforward! Simply allow players to spend Impulse Points on Dramatic Editing, using the same cost table and guidelines! This does replace the Serendipity advantage, but all other rules remain as in the article.

• Mar 5, 2017

  Operation BRUTAL ADVENT, Part 2

  

  Welcome to another installment on my GURPS X-COM: Noises in the Dark campaign report! Today I’ll continue to tell you about Operation BRUTAL ADVENT, our group’s inaugural mission. The following PCs participated in it:

  • Kendall Fairbarn: A paranoid hacker from the UK. Was completely convinced human society had been heavily infiltrated by shape-changing aliens… and it turned out he wasn’t entirely wrong.
  • Minette Duvall: A bomb-disposal expert from Southern France, Minette is also quite handy with a rifle. She’s devoutly Catholic and swears a lot when faced with danger, which is all the time.
  • Niu Yulan (AKA Julia Yulan): A former hostage negotiatior from China. Julia is pretty handy with a rifle but her medical training and innate kindness are equally important parts of her arsenal.
  • Jack Choi: A former police detective from Hong Kong, and a staunch adherent of the “kick down the door” school of policing despite his light frame.

  The following NPCs also had important roles:

  • Valenkov and Gutierrez: A pair of shooters from Russia and Argentina, respectively, both members of the squad who lost their players just before the start of the mission.
  • Yevgeny Korsakov: The pilot of the squad’s Skyranger transport.
  • Jan Wiest: A cop stuck in the anomaly zone. Together with his unit, he’s been fighting the aliens for months.
  • Gisela Vahlen and company: Seven civilians inhabiting a building inside the anomaly zone. Three of them are relatives of Dr. Vahlen, one of X-COM’s top scientists.

  Evacuation

  After arriving on the scene and investigating the anomaly’s effects the squad managed to pinpoint its source in the St. Marien Hospital. They decided they will eventually have to get in there to stop all of this, but rescuing the civilians should come first. Choi is a little disappointed that they can’t just call in an airstrike and level the place.

  Kendall manages to reach Korsakov, who tells them the Skyranger will be fully refueled in an hour, but that he can leave ealier if they don’t need to fly a long distance. Getting them heavier weapons would require flying all the way to HQ and back, though, which would take a whole day. The local military doesn’t want to share. The squad asks him to fly in ASAP in order to get the civilians out.

  Korsakov says he’ll be there in 30 minutes, and calls again after that exact amount of time to request specific landing coordinates. He suggests the roof of a building just behind the one everyone is in, in the middle of the block. It’s lower than the surrounding structures, which should provide cover from snipers.

  

  The PCs accept his suggestion, and having prepared to move out with the civilians in the last half-hour, begin to do so immediately. Just before they leave the apartment building, however, they get a worrying radio message from the pilot: “I see a weird light nearby. I will investigate.”

  Ambush!

  This is worrying because Korsakov is never supposed to leave the cockpit during an extraction, and he knows it. Before the party and the civilians have crossed half the courtyard, they see him exit through the ground floor door of the center building and head east at a brisk pace, flight helmet still on. In the direction he’s walking there’s an eerie blue light shining through an open second-floor window.

  Choi and Kendall rush to the pilot’s side, and notice he’s obviously out of it, as if hypnotized. He doesn’t stop to talk to them, but doesn’t resist when physically stopped from walking. The others remain with the refugees, herding them towards the Skyranger, but Vasily shouts out a warning when he notices that the blue light is rapidly intensifying. In a second, a ball of fire shoots towards Choi! He dodges it, and it leaves a small frost-rimmed crater in the ground.

  Minette pours suppressing fire into the window the shot came from, as Choi and Kendall drop smoke grenades for cover. Julia and the NPCs stay by the civilians as they run into the building. As the smoke grenades go off, a huge alien thing jumps out from the window to the left of the one Minette was shooting at, and disappears into the cloud. They only catch a brief glimpse, but it looks like a giant seven-fingered hand.

  Kendall takes Korsakov’s hand and books it back to the Skyranger. The pilot, now recovered, is only too happy to run the rest of the way towards the safety of his cockpit as Julia and the NPC soldiers finish loading the civilians into the craft. Minette stands ready to shoot the alien if it gets close, but it’s hard to see into the smoke from this distance.

  Choi stays near the smoke, intent on fighting the alien. He fires blindly into the cloud and hits it, but then the creature charges at him and pokes him in the chest hard enough to break some ribs despite his body armor. He won’t survive another hit like that!

  Kendall runs back to the fray, followed by Valenkov and Gutierrez. The NPCs fire burst at it and score a few hits, which do a lot less damage than expected. The creature swipes at them with its fingers, but thankfully misses. It hits Kendall with another energy blast, but the hacker’s ridiculous armor loadout pays off, and he gets away with only a slight frost burn.

  Valenkov manages to attract the alien’s attention for long enough to allow Kendall to stick a greande wrapped in duct-tape on its skin. They get clear, and the grenade finishes it off. This was their first official close encounter, and it was only one alien. How many more are there?

  They would soon find out. With the civilians clear of the danger zone, it was time to plan the attack on the alien position at the hospital.

  Spoilers and Fight Analysis

  

  With the campaign already over, it’s safe to spoil you on the alien’s true nature. It was a Bakegumo (“goblin-spider”), a creature that’s an integral part of the ecosystem of the Dreams. They do indeed look like giant hands, though the seven-fingered part was a personal addition: it both made them weirder and referenced the “mystical” number seven, which I decided would be a recurring motif in the alien forces. After this encounter, the PCs named it “Rosie” - I never revealed any of the creature names in the Dreams of Ruin book, an encouraged players to come up with their own.

  The original stats for Bakegumo gave then five hit dice, so my version of them is large and has exceptional ST and HP. It’s also Unliving, which explains why bullets didn’t do much against it. It retains all of the original’s supernatural abilities, so it’s a good thing no one was grappled by it. This one was a scout, and approached the building in the half-hour between the call going out and Korsakov arriving.

  The party did an excellent job coming up with a plan to quickly evacuate the civilians: the longer they waited, the more aliens would converge on their position. Waiting the whole day for more ordinance would bring an overwhelming attack force a few hours in. Using the grenade at the end was also inspired, and worth the two uses of Gizmo it cost Kendall. Without that the fight would have been a lot longer and more costly for the PCs.

  They made some mistakes as well: smoke grenades were a total newbie trap in this game, as the creatures of the Dreams see through a special psychic sense that completely ignores things that impair normal sight. There was no way to know this in the first mission, of course, but they would learn the aliens don’t rely on normal sight if they had autopsied any of them in the strategic interludes. Alas, this ended up not happening before the game ended.

  Next: Assault on St. Marien Hospital!

• Feb 27, 2017

  Dragon's Dogma Bestiary: Gargoyles

  

  This post belongs to a series converting Dragon’s Dogma enemies to GURPS. All other entries, and all other posts adapting the setting can be found here.

  Gargoyles in Dragon’s Dogma are pretty much what you’d expect from hearing the word: humanoid flying monsters with rock-hard skin and a love of clawing out the eyes of unwary adventurers. The gargoyles of Gransys are living creatures, with flesh and blood beneath that rock skin, so they add “hunting for food” to their list of usual reasons for attacking PCs (territoriality, plain cruelty, etc.). They also have an additional surprise in store: their tails are tipped by a stinger capable of injecting a petrifying poison into a victim. They can’t eat the resulting statue, but it’s still a good tactic for finishing off foes who put up more of a fight than anticipated.

  Gargoyles dislike sunlight, and so make their homes in ruins and cave complexes, particularly those that feature one or more tall chambers full of good nesting spots. Someone suddenly attacked by a gargoyle in one of these dark places might confuse them with a harpy at first, only to be surprised at how little effect their blows have on the creature. Somehow bypassing a gargoyle’s DR is vital to effectively fighting it.

  ST 17; DX 13; IQ 6; HT 13;

  SM 0; Dodge 9; DR 9;

  HP 17; Will 10; Per 12; FP 13

  Basic Speed 6.50; Move 3 (Ground) / 13 (Air)

  • Talons (16): 2d+2 cut or imp. Reach C. May also grapple at skill 16.
  • Bite (16): 2d+1 cut. Reach C.
  • Petrifactor (14): 3d imp + Petrifying Venom follow up. Reach C.
  • Petrifying Venom (resisted with HT-5): Applied via a sting with the petrifactor, above. Targets who fail the resistance roll are turned to stone until cured with Stone to Flesh or similar magic.

  Traits: Claws (Talons); DR 9; Flight (Winged); Night Vision 5; Striker (Impaling; Clumsy, -2 to hit); Striking ST 4; Teeth (Sharp); Bestial; Bully (9); Gluttony (9); Social Stigma (Monster);

  Class: Mundane.

  Notes: Gargoyles only use the petrifactor as a last resort, as they prefer to be able to eat the victim after killing it.

• Feb 25, 2017

  GURPS X-COM: Operation BRUTAL ADVENT, Part 1

  

  Welcome to another post in my X-COM: Noises in the Dark actual play report! These are the PCs that participated in the mission:

  • Kendall Fairbarn: A paranoid Hacker from the UK. Was completely convinced human society had been heavily infiltrated by shape-changing aliens… and it turned out he wasn’t entirely wrong.
  • Minette Duvall: A bomb-disposal expert from Southern France, Minette is also quite handy with a rifle. She’s devoutly Catholic and swears a lot when faced with danger, which is all the time.
  • Niu Yulan (AKA Julia Yulan): A former hostage negotiatior from China, built without a template but approaching a shootier Face. Her innate kindness and empathy came in handy in several of the missions! Julia was ran by three different players during the lifetime of the campaign, which earns her a medal for Most Helpful Backup Character.
  • Jack Choi: A former police detective from Hong Kong, and a staunch adherent of the “kick down the door” school of policing despite his light frame. Also built without a template. His player dropped out of the planet near the end of the game, but not before making things interesting for the rest of the group.

  Also part of the team were two NPCs: Valenkov from Russia and Gutierrez from Argentina, both built using the Shooter archetype. They were originally PCs, but their players quit before making even a single post and after I had established they were members of the squad. I always found it funny that Strike One never had a single PC Shooter who stayed on for a full mission. I mean, the PCs can shoot, but none of them make it their primary focus.

  The Briefing

  As we saw in the previous post in this series, the newly formed X-COM spent its first month of existence futilely scanning the planet for alien activity before they found anything actionable. And it came not from their state of the art spy satellite network, but from a Youtube video recorded by a 12 year old.

  Her name was Gisela Vahlen, and she was Dr. Vahlen’s niece. The video was little more than a standard “family letter” message, recorded on a laptop camera in Gisela’s room, but anyone who watched could see that a lot was wrong with it. The girl had the look of someone who had been living in a war zone for months, and her room looked like part of said war zone. She struggled to maintain a cheery tone, despite the evident stress she had been under, and spoke in English instead of her native German.

  Despite all the strangeness, a distressed Dr. Vahlen confirmed that it was indeed her niece, and that was indeed her room, battle damage notwithstanding. Pointing one of X-COM’s recon satellites at Cologne revealed an anomaly of some sort covering Gisela’s neighborhood. It looked as if someone had smudged the camera lens with a greasy finger. Infrared showed the same thing. And no one else in the world seemed to have noticed it. There were no news that anything was out of the ordinary in Cologne.

  All of this was relayed to Strike One, our PC team, as part of the first in-character post of the mission. Their goal was to fly to Cologne, ensure the safety of the civilians in the area, put a stop to the anomaly, and gather information on the aliens, in that order.

  There were some questions, but Mr. Fox was the first to admit their intel was crap on this op. The only things X-COM knew were the approximate area the anomaly covered, and that things seemed to be terrible inside it and functioning normally outside. At least it would be easy to evacuate from the zone. Dr. Sokolov had already ordered his team to load the Skyranger up with scientific gear, and all that was left before they were ready to leave was gearing up.

  Meet the Quartermaster

  At this point I introduced the party to another NPC: their quartermaster, Nobuo Ishikawa. This little troll of a man was known as Kappa-san back in the JSDF, but here everyone calls him Nobby. Because I firmly believe every military organization in fiction needs a Nobby.

  

  Our Nobby was more than happy to discuss gear selection with the PCs, and to laugh at Kendall’s ridiculously large wish list that turned the hacker into a one-man Ghost Hunters show crew. Most of this stuff was already in the Skyranger, actually, since Sokolov shared his enthusiasm for unveiling alien secrets.

  As for the rest of the gear, I provided the players with a basic list of weapons, armor and accessories to choose from. My goal with the weapon selection was to make it similar to the initial list on the computer games, particularly the 1994 original. The personal firearms were good for fighting people, but a little on the anemic side when it came to damaging aliens. Then you had things like grenade launchers and rockets, which were much more powerful but also heavier and harder to use. No one took those, though they did pick a mix of frag and smoke hand grenades. Julia also took a bunch of candy to win the kids over once they arrived.

  Insertion and Investigation

  Once everyone had finished gearing up, it was time to board the Skyranger! It looked and behaved pretty much like the one in the 2012 computer game, with a top speed of Mach 1 and enough fuel to cross the Atlantic. It sacrificed everything else you would expect from a military transport to achieve that, being relatively tiny and completely unarmed. It was one of those quirky Russian designs, and those adjectives also fit its pilot Yevgeny Korsakov quite well.

  Even at Mach 1, reaching Germany took a while. Once there, Julia asked Korsakov to do a flyby of the anomaly zone from a safe height. The passenger compartment didn’t have any windows, but it did have a monitor wired to an external camera, which showed the same “smudge” as the satellite image. Julia unbuckled and went to the cockpit to look through the windows, and found that whatever was messing with the sensors didn’t affect the Mk I Eyeball. The real landscape wasn’t any prettier, though.

  A region of three or so blocks around St. Marien Hospital in Cologne had been turned into a veritable war zone. The commercial and residendial buildings in that area had all been shot up and covered in weird graffiti, gutted car wrecks littered the cracked and cratered streets… the place must have taken months to reach such a state, and yet the city continued to function normally around it, as if no one knew what was going on. St. Marien was the same hospital where all those drugs had gone bad a while back, so whatever caused this must have happened around then as well.

  It was a good thing that the PCs asked Korsakov to be careful with the flyby, for soon he spotted someone at the roof of the hospital pointing what looked like an RPG at them! He manages to dodge the missile at the last minute, and flies out of there.

  The PCs discuss what do do next, and Minette came up with the following plan of attack:

  

  They’d have Korsakov land about 100 meters to the left of the red X in the picture above, on a wide avenue. Then they’d use the available cover to make it into Gisela’s home, the apartment building marked by the yellow dot. Choi was enthusiastic about kicking the door down, and Julia objected on the grouds that they were there to rescue civilians, not antagonize them. Minette reasoned that they might not have a choice, if the door wasn’t open.

  The craft landed, and they made a run for it, cover to cover. Once more it was a good thing that the PCs decided to be cautious about their advance, since a sniper began taking shots at them from the hospital! Kendall threw a smoke grenade to cover the advance, though it didn’t seem to do much. Choi emptied his PDW in the sniper’s general direction while running, which seemed to have a better effect. Fortunately, all the commotion seemed to have drawn the attention of the building’s inhabitants, as a man opened the door for the PCs when they got close enough, and they all scrambled in. Julia paused to take a last, long-distance shot at the sniper, and apparently hit! No more shots came from that direction after that.

  The building still housed seven civilians: Gisela, her parents, and another family with father, mother and two children. There was also a cop, Jan Wiest, who together with Gisela’s father was the informal leader of the bunch. Minette was proficient in German, and Gisela’s family was proficient in English, so they managed to communicate acceptably.

  Their situation was every bit as bleak and bizarre as it seemed in the briefing. A few months ago, shortly after news broke out about the hospital’s drugs all going bad, a large group of people in unmarked military uniforms and eyeless gas masks appeared in the hospital building and began killing everyone they came across. They haven’t really been trying to occupy the neighborhood - they just stage raids out of the hospital, and drag any bodies back with them when they return.

  Wiest’s unit has been fighting them since nearly the beginning, and the remaining civilians in the area have either been helping or hiding. A lot left the area as soon as they could - all those that remain (cops and civilians) stay out of a sense that they must contain the attackers. Wiest calls for backup every day, but no one ever answered, and no one ever came, until today.

  Assessment and Planning

  This story does nothing to answer the PC’s initial doubts: if this has been going on for so long, how come no one noticed? Kendall uses his skills and advanced gear to scan the airwaves, only to find them filled with something that sounds a lot like wailing and gnashing of teeth run through a “creepypasta” audio filter. It’s like an especially eerie form of jamming, as it prevents him from reaching HQ or anything outside the anomaly zone. His attempts to get through it end up revealing what seems to be alien radio chatter… which sounds exactly like the jamming except for the fact that it also has the cadence of someone with military training talking over radio. He also scans the laptop Gisela used to send her video message, but finds it to be a normal Macbook Air despite the occasional spooky image bleeding through its normal interface.

  The squad gets together to discuss what they learned here. The detailed workings of this anomaly are still a mystery, but it’s clear that it’s somehow preventing information about what’s going on here from getting out, and it’s likely affecting the minds of those within as well. The last bit would explain why any civilians still say in there rather than simply making a run for it. Assuming it’s being generated by some sort of transmission equipment, its shape indicates that this equipment is located in the hospital and likely guarded by these masked alien invaders. They’re going to have to get in there in order to stop it.

  End of Part 1

  To find out how the assault goes, stay tuned for part 2!

• Feb 20, 2017

  Pathfinder Iconics in Dungeon Fantasy: Seoni

  If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I’ve already converted no less than eleven Pathfinder Iconic characters to Dungeon Fantasy, one for each of the templates from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers. You’ll also know that you can find a handy list of all of them in this page, which declares that the project as a whole is done. So why the heck are you seeing yet another of these articles here?

  Well, the simplest reason is because I wanted to do another one. Consider this a bonus track for the Pathfinder Iconics in Dungeon Fantasy album! As such, it doesn’t quite follow the rules I set for myself in the main set of eleven iconics.

  You see, our subject today is Seoni the Sorceress. Here she is:

  

  I have to say this isn’t one of Wayne Reynolds’ best efforts, since the proportions and the pose are a bit weird. That aside, Seoni stands out among the Iconics in that she shows quite a bit of skin, tough at least her bio gives us a reason for that. That bio is somewhat split between the page containing her d20 stats and this blog post.

  As the Iconic Sorcerer, Seoni represents a class that’s present in the Pathfinder and d20 core rules, but absent from DF 1, which had the Swashbuckler instead. It’s not hard to see why: any of the “traditional” spellcasters from DF 1 are already about as versatile as a d20 Sorcerer. It would be a while until GURPS had an officially published template that had the same relationship to the other spellcasters as their d20 counterparts. That template turned out to be the aptly-named Sorcerer from Pyramid #3/82, which in turn uses rules from GURPS Thaumathology: Sorcery.

  So now that I’ve explained my reasoning, let’s look at what we can learn from Seoni’s bio and stats.

  • She comes from the land of Varisia, and belongs to the nomadic culture of its original inhabitants. This culture is roughly analogous to the Romani of our world.

  • Due to her mystical bloodline, Seoni has experienced mysterious visions since a very young age, and her quest to understand those has led to the awakening of her powers. The tatoos covering most of her body are both a status symbol in her culture and a focus for her magic.

  • Seoni’s obsession with being in control of her own fate combines with her penchant for detailed plans to make her look like a “control freak” to her companions.

  • She is extremely blasty. The vast majority of her abilities deal direct damage, usually with fire or lightning. The rest are either straightforward combat debuffs (glitterdust, dispel magic) or energy barriers (mage armor, shield, wall of force).

  Our version of Seoni certainly manages to uphold the “less known spells cast more frequently” motto of the d20 Sorcerer. She knows all of four spells, but she can cast all of them all day long without even spending FP as long as she can both move and speak when she does so. She can only use one of them at a time, but Accelerated Casting allows her to switch effects without pausing. She can do passably well at social endeavors with her training in Diplomacy and her Charisma, and can improvise any minor spell with a full cost of 7 points or less, but what she’s really good at is spamming lightning bolts all day, every day.

  As for power-ups, she can always use more Sorcery spells! Her mundane skills are lacking a bit, so any spare points there also help. Those players willing to save points for a while can fully master Dispel Magic for an additional 48 points, which would enable Seoni to cast and maintain 2 effects at once.

  Seoni, 250-point Human Sorceress

  Attributes

  ST 10 {0}; DX 12 {40}; IQ 12 {40}; HT 12 {20}

  Secondary Characteristics

  Damage 1d-2/1d; Basic Lift 10kg; HP 10; Will 12; Per 12; FP 12; Basic Speed 6.00; Basic Move 6.

  Advantages

  • Accelerated Casting {10}
  • Charisma 3 {15}
  • Magical Lineage (Fate-Touched) {1}
  • Sorcerous Empowerment 6 {70}
  • Sorcery Talent 3 {30}

  Sorcery Spells

  • Dispel Magic {12}

    Attempts to negate every instance of magic within the area. See Sorcery, p. 21.

    • Keywords: Area (Leveled), Resisted (Will or spell).
    • Full Cost: 60 points.
    • Casting Roll: Will.
    • Range: Unlimited.
    • Duration: Instantaneous.

  • Fly {10}

    Allows the target to fly with a Move equal to their Basic Speed x2 for three minutes.

    • Keywords: Obvious.
    • Full Cost: 48 points.
    • Casting Roll: None. Use Innate Attack (Gaze) to aim.
    • Range: 100m.
    • Duration: Three Minutes.
    • Statistics: Affliction 1 (Flight with Magical, +360%; Increased 1/2D x10, +15%; No Signature, +20%; Fixed Duration +0%; Sorcery, -15%).

  • Lightning 3 {7}

    An Innate Attack doing 3d burning surge damage. Metal armor counts as DR 1. Targets struck by it must make a HT roll at -1 per 2 injury suffered or be physically stunned (HT to recover in subsequent turns). Behaves unpredictably around conductors.

    • Keywords: Missile, Obvious.
    • Full Cost: 35 points.
    • Casting Roll: None. Use Innate Attack (Beam) to hit.
    • Range: 100m.
    • Duration: Instantaneous.
    • Statistics: Per Pyramid #3/82, p. 13.

  • Mage Armor {8}

    Gives the subject an extra DR 5 for the duration.

    • Keywords: Buff.
    • Full Cost: 40 points.
    • Casting Roll: None. Use Innate Attack (Gaze) to aim.
    • Range: 100m.
    • Duration: Three minutes.
    • Statistics: Affliction 1 (DR 5 with Magical and Force Field, +280%; Increased 1/2D x10, +15%; No Signature, +20%; Fixed Duration, +0%; Sorcery, -15%)

  Disadvantages

  • Bad Temper {-10}
  • Curious (12) {-5}
  • Disciplines of Faith (Ritualism) {-5}
  • Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) {-5}
  • Stubborness {-5}
  • Unnatural Features 5 (glowing tatoos, otherwordly air) {-5}
  • Weirdness Magnet {-15}

  Skills

  • Climbing (A) DX-1 {1} - 11
  • Diplomacy (H) IQ-1 {2} - 11
  • Fast-Talk (A) IQ-1 {1} - 12
  • First Aid (E) IQ {1} - 12
  • Gesture (E) IQ {1} - 12
  • Hidden Lore (Magical Writings) (A) IQ {2} - 12
  • Hiking (A) HT {2} - 12
  • Innate Attack (Beam) (E) DX+4 {12} - 16
  • Scrounging (E) Per {1} - 12
  • Staff (A) DX+3 {12} - 15
  • Thaumathology (VH) IQ-2 {2} - 10

  Loadout

  • Ordinary Clothing [Torso, Limbs]: Free, 1kg.
  • Quarterstaff [Torso]: Damage thr+2 cr or sw+2 cr. Parry +2. $10, 2kg.
  • Backpack, Small [Torso]: Holds 20kg of gear. $60, 1.5kg.
  • Paut x2 [Backpack]: Restores 4 FP of energy lost to magic. $270, 0.5kg.
  • Glow Vial x2 [Backpack]: Sheds light in a 1m radius for 12 hours. $60, 0.5kg.
  • Blanket [Backpack]: $20, 2kg.
  • Rations x4 [Backpack]: $8, 2kg.
  • $572 remaining.

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