Posts

• Feb 18, 2017

  GURPS X-COM: Campaign Setup

  

  The big post-mortem on the Noises in the Dark campaign setting seems to have been relatively well-received, and I’ve been in search of subjects to talk about, so I’m going to make that campaign A Thing here in Octopus Carnival. I’ll post a few more specific descriptions of my setup and play reports for the actual field missions!

  This will break up the blog’s so far relentless stream of fantasy posts with some modern articles, and give me something to write about that’s easier to do than coming up with stats for Dragon’s Dogma Bestiary monsters. After all, everything that’s here already happened. I’m not sure I can post the GURPS stats I made up for the Dreams of Ruin monsters or their environmental effects, but pretty much everything else should be fair game. If you really want to see those stats then throw some money in Mr. Grabowski’s direction so the material can be freed earlier!

  In this post I’ll try to expand a bit on the basic setup for the X-COM side of the campaign, since that part is all me.

  Step One: Recruitment

  This was a forum-based game on RPG.net, so the first thing I did was to put up a recruitment thread. I laid out the basic premise of the game: it’s GURPS X-COM, with soldier PCs and occasional “strategic” interludes where the players themselves made decisions for the organization. Prospective players should post character concepts, and I would choose which ones would fill the group.

  Recruitment was not on a first-come, first-served basis, as I had been burned in the past by doing that and ending up with one or more severely disrupting players. The lot I got from this round of recruitment was pretty nice, though!

  Two of them would end up bailing out from the game before their first in-character post, but I wasn’t too upset with that - it’s pretty much the cost of doing business in forum games. I always recruit a number of players slightly higher than what I think I can easily handle for this reason.

  Obviously if you’re planning on replicating this campaign in a face to face game, you wouldn’t have this issue.

  Step Two: Choose Your Destiny

  Once the initial group of players had been locked down, I presented them with a series of decisions that would shape the campaign to come.

  Choose Your Enemy

  As stated in the post-mortem, this was a choice between the original alien enemies of the X-COM games, and the Dreams of Ruin. There isn’t much to say about the former, as they weren’t chosen and I never developed them beyond this initial concept.

  Choosing the Dreams meant that the initial incidents X-COM was created to investigate had more to do with traditional horror stories about fairies and witches than they did with classic UFO mythology. Strange things silhouetted against the moon, people vanishing into the woods, and a particularly notable incident where all the medical drugs stored in a hospital in Cologne went bad at once for no readily apparent reason.

  Choose your Leaders

  In response to this, a group of 36 nations founded the Council and pooled their resources to form X-COM. The idea behind the Council is nice: the nations of Earth gather together to repel a global threat! The reality is a little darker, as despite all delegates theoretically having the same amount of decision power, the richer members contribute with more money and see themselves as entitled to more influence. The ruling elites of each country also simply cannot resist using this clandestine military and intelligence organization to handle private issues that have little to do with aliens.

  These negative tendencies are greatly amplified by having the Dreams of Ruin as the Enemy, since one of their main effects is to amplify negative emotions in their affected area. From the start I planned to have the corruption in the Council nations to play an important role in the story.

  There were fierce debates among the Council members over who would be its commanding officer. Sure, they all wanted someone who could get the job done, but they were also looking out for the interests of their specific nations. Finally it came down to two choices:

  The first was “Mr. Fox”, an American with a long list of shady black ops in his curriculum, in places like the Middle East and the Balkans. He actually went missing for years to get away from all that stuff, and they only managed to bring him back because the fate of the world literally depended on it. He’s pretty much a Big Boss expy. He has a reputation of taking good care of his men, recruiting the best and giving them top of the line training. The downside is that a lot of Council members don’t like him very much, and he has no time to spare sucking up to them.

  The second was “Mr. Smiley”, a well-connected member of the British intelligence community. He brings from that line of business the idea that human assets are expendable if it means the success of the mission. As such, his agents are individually less well-trained than Fox’s would be, but there are more of them. And his connections mean the Council loves him, in no small part because he promises to look out for several of its member nations’ private interests. He is, of course, a George Smiley expy.

  In game terms, the players were given the chance to vote for one of the two candidates. Choosing Fox meant the PCs would be built on 250 points, and would get extensive drone and robot support once that became available in the tech tree. It also meant that X-COM would eventually have a nasty falling out with the Council, due to his inability to stay on good terms with them by playing along with the corruption present there. As they would still be the only ones with any real chance against the threat, they would be forced to go rogue.

  Choosing Smiley meant that the PCs would be built on 150 points, and would be part of a larger unit with several other NPCs. The opposition wouldn’t get any weaker, which meant that unit would almost certainly face significant casualties when it fought the aliens. Some of their missions wouldn’t involve aliens at all, but would instead be about doing dirty jobs for one member nation or another. This X-COM would be very well-funded, but less effective at combating the Dreams. The “big falling out” here would ideally be between the PCs and the organization.

  Whatever commander they chose would lead X-COM, and the other would vanish from the game… or so the players thought. The commander they didn’t choose would go on to form a rogue organization that would make an appearance later. Yes, this would be a version of EXALT from the 2012 computer game. Or rather, X-ALT. The hyphens are important!

  They chose Mr. Fox, which meant Mr. Smiley went into the cold to form his black ops squad in the service of those corrupt special interests in the Council nations. This makes X-ALT a “bad guy” faction.

  Choose Your Science

  The players were similarly given three choices of Lead Scientist for X-COM: Dr. Moira Vahlen, Dr. Raymond Shen, and Dr. Yuri Sokolov.

  The first two were taken straight from the 2012 computer game. Here, Vahlen is a German doctor and particularly skilled in the biological sciences. Shen is a Chinese engineer and skilled in robotics. Sokolov, the original character, is a Russian and also a doctor, but his main area of interest is paranormal research - no one alive knows more about all those weird Soviet psychic research programs than him.

  Any of the three would be equally adept at leading X-COM’s research efforts, and their different areas of expertise translated into different “free” starting technologies as the new lead scientist used the organization’s resources to turn their previous research into something useful in fighting aliens. Vahlen would give them advanced medkits; Shen would give them flying scout drones.

  They chose Sokolov, who was a bit of a special case. He spends that time convincing his colleagues that he’s not a useless crackpot, so there’s no bonus tech… but he turns out to be just perfect for leading research into Alien Crazy, which in this case means magic.

  Unlike the choice of commander, all three scientists are part of the team regardless, along with a number of other nameless NPCs - this is just to decide who calls the shots.

  Step Three: Hurry Up and Wait

  With all the choices made, X-COM installed itself in its brand new underground base in the remodeled Cheyenne Mountain complex, and began scanning the skies for the alien menace… only to find nothing for a whole month. At the end of that month something remarkable happened, but I’ll leave that for the next post on this subject. Stay tuned!

• Feb 14, 2017

  Dragon's Dogma Bestiary: Eyes

  

  Today is Valentine’s Day in the US, so this is me making eyes at you. Not that kind of eyes, though.

  In Dragon’s Dogma, the creatures known as Eyes are pure monsters: they have no natural habitat or ecological niche. They are an expression of corruption from beyond the Rift, appearing only in places where the world’s veil is thin and supernatural evil is abundant. While they are living creatures, their forms and anatomy don’t even pay lip service to normal phisiological principles. Tough highly intelligent, they never communicate or negotiate, and always try to kill non-Eyes that run into them.

  They come in several varieties, all of which share some of the characteristics of the Eye of Death found in Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1, p. 14. In fact, the Eye of Death could easily be another member of the this monster family.

  Update (2017-02-21): The Gazer has its own stat block now, and is even nastier with the addition of a couple more gaze attacks.

  Vile Eyes

  The smallest of the bunch, Vile Eyes look like fleshy spheres with a single lidless eye always staring ahead. While they are not as agile or perceptive as an Eye of Death, they share the same death gaze ability and can protect themselves with a nigh-impenetrable energy barrier. Fortunately for their victims, they can’t do both of those things at the same time. Switching from the barrier to one of the other powers and back requires a Concentrate maneuver, giving the PCs a window in which to hit them.

  Unlike their larger cousins described in this article, Vile Eyes are usually found in small groups. Despite their small amount of HP, they are usually worthies.

  ST 5; DX 10; IQ 10; HT 11

  SM -1; Dodge 8; DR 0;

  HP 10; Will 10; Per 10; FP 10

  Basic Speed 5.5; Move 5 (Air).

  • Magic Barrier (-): Gives the Vile Eye DR 30 and Magic Resistance 10 while up.
  • Death Gaze (Resisted by HT-5): 1d toxic damage. Range 20. Cosmic, ignores DR.

  Traits: Acute Vision 5; Dark Vision (Color Vision); Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Eat or Drink; Doesn’t Sleep; Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Injury Tolerance (No Brain, No Neck, No Vitals);

  Class: Elder Thing.

  Evil Eyes

  Not to be confused with Vile Eyes, these things are leathery spheres over three meters in diameter whose body is dominated by a huge fanged maw that opens to reveal the central eye. A large number of tentacles protrude from the central body, each one thick as a human leg and tipped by yet another maw. They are invariably highly proficient spellcasters in addition to possessing debilitating gaze attacks and a barrier similar to that of the Vile Eyes. The monster’s tentacles reach beyond the barrier and thus are always vulnerable, but that also means it doesn’t need to lower the barrier to attack with them!

  Evil Eyes are solitary, and they like to clear out a large, spacious portion of whatever dungeon or region they emerge in for use as a lair. For all anyone knows, they just sit there waiting for intruders to kill - stories about Evil Eye lairs tend to be about mysterious places no one returns from. Very few people know of the creature’s existence. They are obviously boss monsters.

  ST 35; DX 12; IQ 16; HT 12

  SM +3; Dodge 9; DR 5 (body), 0 (eye, tentacles);

  HP 35; Will 16; Per 16; FP 30

  Basic Speed 6; Move 5 (Air).

  • Magic Barrier (-): Gives the Evil Eye DR 30 and Magic Resistance 10 while up.
  • Debilitating Gaze (-): Works as Dispel Magic cast at skill 20. The target must also resist with HT-5 or be Stunned for seconds equal to the margin of failure. Range 30.
  • Bite (14): Damage 4d-2 imp. Reach C.
  • Tentacle Bite x8 (16): 1d imp, plus the target is automatically grappled at ST 15. Reach 3.
  • Spells (-): Any the GM deems appropriate, at skill 20 for Hard spells and 19 for Very Hard ones.

  Traits: Acute Vision 5; Dark Vision (Color Vision); Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Eat or Drink; Doesn’t Sleep; Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Indomitable; Injury Tolerance (No Brain, No Neck, No Vitals); Magery 5; See Invisible; Unfazeable; Vibration Sense (Air).

  Class: Elder Thing.

  Tentacles!

  The Evil Eye’s eight tentacles act as indepentent characters. They have ST and HP 15, Dodge 10, and attack using the statistics shown on the main Evil Eye stat block. Once they grapple a target, they’ll attempt to drag them to the Eye’s maw. Multiple tentacles can cooperate in this!

  Damaging a tentacle doesn’t damage the Eye itself. Bringing a tentacle to 0 HP severs it and takes it out of the fight… but the Eye can spend 5 Concentrate maneuvers with its barrier down to instantly regenerate all of its tentacles!

  The Gazer

  Is this particularly ancient Evil Eye? The progenitor of the whole species? Something else? No one knows. Its true form cannot exist all at once in our dimension, but the visible bits are an even larger Evil Eye with an even more terrible bite. It can use both the Evil Eye’s debilitating gaze and the Vile Eye’s lethal one at will, as well as cast spells or simply slam victims with its incredible bulk.

  ST 55; DX 12; IQ 16; HT 12

  SM +5; Dodge 9; DR 5 (body), 0 (eye, tentacles);

  HP 55; Will 16; Per 16; FP 50

  Basic Speed 6; Move 5 (Air).

  • Magic Barrier (-): Gives the Gazer DR 30 and Magic Resistance 10 while up.
  • Death Gaze (Resisted by HT-5): 1d toxic damage. Range 20. Cosmic, ignores DR.
  • Debilitating Gaze (-): Works as Dispel Magic cast at skill 20. The target must also resist with HT-5 or be Stunned for seconds equal to the margin of failure. Range 30.
  • Petryfing Gaze (20 vs. HT): As Flesh to Stone (Magic, p.51). Range 20.
  • Blinding Gaze (20 vs. HT): As Strike Blind (Magic, p. 38). Range 20.
  • Bite (16): Damage 6d imp. Reach C.
  • Tentacle Bite x16 (16): 2d imp, plus the target is automatically grappled at ST 20. Reach 3.
  • Spells (-): Any the GM deems appropriate, at skill 20 for Hard spells and 19 for Very Hard ones.

  Traits: Acute Vision 5; Dark Vision (Color Vision); Doesn’t Breathe; Doesn’t Eat or Drink; Doesn’t Sleep; Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Indomitable; Injury Tolerance (No Brain, No Neck, No Vitals); Magery 5; See Invisible; Unfazeable; Vibration Sense (Air).

  Class: Elder Thing.

  Even More Tentacles!

  The main spherical body has no tentacles, but the creature can summon up to 16 of them from rifts that open in the walls or floor and move around at Move 4. Severing a tentacle only means it will be automatically replaced by another in 2 turns.

• Feb 7, 2017

  Octopus Carnival now has a Projects page!

  Octopus Carnival now has enough material in it that I thought it was time for a little organization. At the top of the site you should now see a “Projects” link, which will take to a page linking to all of the big thematic post collections I’m working on or have finished already. From there, you can go to individual project pages that discuss its overall goals and link to every individual post.

  As of this post, I have pages for the Dragon’s Dogma adaptation, and my collection of GURPS stats for Pathfinder Iconics. If you haven’t followed either of those from the beginning, now would be an excellent time to get reacquainted with them.

  In the future, I’ll add tag support to the blog to make it even easier to navigate between posts in a project.

• Feb 6, 2017

  Dragon's Dogma Bestiary: The Undead

  This is the sixth post of a series converting Dragon’s Dogma enemies to GURPS. Previous posts can be found below:

  • Humans
  • Goblins
  • Wolves
  • Saurians
  • Harpies

  In Gransys, the word “undead” applies to those walking corpses more commonly known as zombies in other media, but here we use it in the more traditional Dungeon Fantasy sense to encompass all sorts of horrors from the grave. Undead make up a large enemy subtype that remains relevant all through the original game, so any discussion of them necessarily involves spoilers.

  Undead in Gransys are generally similar to those found in countless other fantasy settings. They infest any place that has seen a great deal of death and not much in the way of ritual purification, or where dark forces are actively at work. Since many dungeons fall into both categories, they tend to have a lot of undead.

  These creatures tend to be more active at night, and while it’s common to find large groups of undead they rarely cooperate with other types of monster, which they view as targets just like any other living creature. In large dungeons, undead and living monsters tend to have distinct territories and keep to them, with the occasional fight redefining their borders.

  Zombies

  There’s little to say about the zombies of Gransys that hasn’t been said a thousand times elsewhere. They’re slow, they moan a lot, they come in large numbers and they like holding you down and biting you to death. The Horde Zombies from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2 and the Servitor Zombie from DF 9 should do nicely to represent the bulk of them. Of note is that Gransys zombies are usually not infectious. They rise because of necromancy, ambient dark magic, or divine curse, not a plague. Of course, an industrious coven of necromancers could still get a zombie infestation going by doing all the animating themselves.

  Interesting zombie variations include:

  • Zombie Warrior: Increase ST and give them skill equal to DX with a weapon. Give them a suit of armor and a weapon covered by the skill.

  • Giant zombie: Double ST, increase SM to +1, and add Resistant to Turning (+3).

  Skeletons

  Common skeletons are little more than faster, more fragile zombies, but they get interesting rather quickly. Like zombies, they don’t keep any of the original person’s memories or personality, but they do often retain their skills! Skeletons that rise from old battlefields tend to be skilled soldiers. Old temples and mage towers will often contain skeleton wizards. None of them can improve on these skills after death, but if a 400-point delver falls in the depths of a death-tainted dungeon, they’re likely to become terrible monsters.

  Basic skeletons were commoners in life, and follow the Servitor Skeleton template from DF 9 without any weapons or other equipment. For more dangerous specimens, create a human opponent and apply the Servitor Skeleton modifiers as a racial template. Using some of the ready-made opposition here works, but unique high-point skeletons also exist.

  Ghosts

  Ghosts are incorporeal undead that resemble spheres of eerie light. They tend to appear at night over bodies of water, but some may also appear in drier settings if they died there. In either case, ghosts never stray too far from the site of their death. Ghosts attack by “entering” a victim and slowly draining their life. This is erroneously referred to as possession by the inhabitants of Gransys, but the victim is still in control of their actions while this goes on.

  Physical attacks pass harmlessly through these creatures, but spells affect them normally. Properly fighting them requires a magician with the right spells - Affect Spirits or “pure energy” attack spells like Fireball or Sunbolt. A group that lacks any of this is reduced to running and hoping they get far enough away from the creature’s territory before they succumb to it

  ST –; DX 12; IQ 6; HT 10

  SM -1; Dodge 8; DR 0;

  HP 10; Will 12; Per 10; FP 10

  Basic Speed 5.5; Move 10 (flight with Hover).

  • Drain Life (12 vs. Will): Causes injury equal to the margin of victory. Cosmic, ignores DR. If the ghost is wounded, it heals the same amount of HP. The ghost must touch the victim to use this attack.

  Traits: Flight; Insubstantial (not vs. Magic); Immunity to Metabolic Hazards; Injury Tolerance (No Blood, No Brain, No Neck, No Vitals, Homogenous); Fragile (Unnatural); No Manipulators; Divine Curse (must stay within 20m of place of death), Supernatural Features (Glows).

  Class: Undead.

  Wights and Liches

  The prime example of sapient undead in Gransys, these are powerful spellcasters who used forbidden magic to turn themselves into immortal undead. They retain their memories and personality and can keep on improving in their craft after the transformation. The difference between a wight and a lich is one of degree, not of kind - a wight is simply a lich who’s still relatively new to the business.

  For both, use the Lich from Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 as a starting point. Wights generally have less of everything that makes a Lich dangerous: spells, Magery, IQ, resources and minions. Proper liches use the published stats.

  A note on the Unkillable trait: this is a big feature of the published Lich, but the video game doesn’t seem to ascribe anything like this to its version of them aside from the tendency all monsters there have of respawning after a while. The easiest way to translate this would be to split the difference and say Wights don’t possess the Trait, as they’ve yet to master the trick to it. As variant mana levels are very rare in Gransys, it could make sense to have liches use the more traditional philactery instead.

  A lich that has a philactery as its weakness still has Unkillable 3: to kill such a creature, both the philactery and its current body must be destroyed. If the PCs somehow manage to deal with the philactery first, they must still contend with the Lich, and do so before it has time to make another philactery to kill it for good.

• Feb 2, 2017

  Elemental Weapon Spells on Hard Maths

  I’m still working on the next post in the Dragon’s Dogma Bestiary, but I saw something neat today and thought I had to share it and make a few comments of my own.

  The Hard Maths blog has an interesting article on Elemental Melee Spells up. These create weapons of pure energy from nothing, and might be an interesting addition to the arsenal of a Mystic Knight!

  Such a character would probably value mystical power more than physical might, as the spells don’t add to the users ST for damage and a final skill level of 15+ is vital for maintaining them for any appreciable length of time. They also need Force Sword, a skill which would have no other use in a fantasy setting… which means there’s a secretive order of elementalists that teaches it along with the spells somewhere out there.

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