Posts

  • Jan 26, 2017

    Mooks & Minions in GURPS: Octopus Carnival Edition

    Octopus Carnival is back from is hiatus! I’ll resume my writing here with an article that’s not directly related to any of my ongoing projects. One goes where inspiration strikes, after all.

    Inspiration in this case came from this post from Peter V. Dell’Orto over at Dungeon Fantastic, about how the mook rules he uses on his Dungeon Fantasy campaign. That got me thinking about the several different iteration of these rules present both in GURPS itself and on other systems. In this article I’ll talk a bit about those and introduce a variation on them that I’ll likely use for my own games.

    Minions With Many Names

    Mooks, Minions, Extras… by now the concept of them is probably well-known to most roleplayers, as a bunch of RPG systems has been codifying the concept for decades now. Since every game has a different name for this rule and I don’t want to keep listing them all, I’ll use the name “Minions” in this article.

    Simply put, minions are weak enemies that pose little threat to player characters individually, and who are present in the game mostly to show case how competent said PCs are. They have simplified statistics and usually go down with one good hit from a PC. They take inspiration from a long line of action and adventure movies, where it’s common for the badass protagonists to mow through a large group of minions over the course of an action scene, or on the way to fighting a tough, named foe. They also tend to feature heavily in chase scenes, where their narrative purpose is to crash and burn with every maneuver the hero pulls off to confound them.

    The concept of minions has been around since the early days of D&D and its hordes of low-HD enemies pitted against mid- or high-level parties. The first time I saw it explicitly named and codified was with Exalted and its rules for Extras, though it almost certainly wasn’t the first system to do so. Many others tried their hand at it, including D&D 4th Edition with its Minion rules.

    GURPS itself has multiple sets of minion rules. In the core book, each minion is an individual opponent: they always go down in one hit, and they never use Active Defenses (but also never All-Out-Attack either). GURPS Action and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy toughen them up a bit by allowing active defenses and allowing for several different grades of opposition. Swarms are large groups of “minions” treated like a single, abstract creature, and again we have a version in the Basic Set and a couple more elaborate ones in Dungeon Fantasy and other sources. I’m sure people have come up with their own variations as well. So here’s mine! It’s focused on distinct individuals rather than on swarms. For now, I’ll use the standard published rules for those.

    Octopus Opposition

    This is how I intend to grade my opposition from now on, from weakest to strongest. The system takes inspiration from the existing GURPS rules, and also from the several different grades of opposition presented by D&D 4th Edition and early Shadowrun (with its Professional Levels).

    Please note that this system is most appropriate for cinematic games that follow at least some “action movie” conventions regardless of their point level. Grimly realistic games should stick to the Basic Set rules (which are the equivalent of making all enemies Elite under this system). Campaigns that sit somewhere in the middle could ellide the lower opposition grades and make everyone at least a Worthy.

    While higher-grade opposition is usually more skilled at fighting than lower-grade foes, its final grade is as much a matter of narrative importance as of pure power. In a campaign following action-movie narrative rules, you are more likely to find higher-grade enemies the closer you are to the story’s climax, or to your mission objective. Named NPCs are also more likely to be of a higher grade than the troops they command even if they are equally skilled, because the GM usually wants the NPC to stick around for a bit longer and be memorable.

    This also means that it’s perfectly possible for a given individual to move between these grades depending on the circumstances of the story. That one lucky goblin minion that managed to inflict significant damage on the party and escape without a scratch might return as a worthy or better at a latter date if the players become obsessed with defeating it. In the case of Horde Ninjas, this progression could happen over the course of a single fight!

    Belonging to a specific grade is always a “campaign feature” and as such never costs or gives points.

    Minions

    Minions are the equivalent of fodder in Dungeon Fantasy or Action. They fight and defend themselves normally, but it only takes a single point of damage getting past their DR to bring them down. This doesn’t necessarily represent killing. A “downed” minion might be unconscious, wounded, or even actively fleeing! Whatever happens, though, they are 100% out of the fight at that point. Obviously, it’s still possible to interact with a defeated minion who is still alive after the fight.

    While minions can theoretically have very high skill levels and fight with fancy techniques, they usually don’t. They tend to come in large numbers and their tactics leverage that. This grade is appropriate for those goblin and dinoman hordes, cheap hired thugs, or the regular forces of the evil Star Empire. Any monster called out as fodder in official materials would be a minion under this system.

    Tough Minions

    Also known as “purple” minions for entirely jocular reasons. They’re like regular minions, but a little more ornery. A tough minion has an HP total like a normal character, but always fails combat-related HT rolls. This means that any hit that forces a “Knockdown and Stunning” roll will take them out, as will reaching 0 HP or less. They can take a few scratches and keep going, but a solid hit still breaks them. These are basically Petter V. Dell’Orto’s fodder monsters, though they never recover from stunning before the fight ends. They do recover in time afterwards, of course.

    This grade is appropriate for pretty much the same types of foe as normal minions in those cases where the GM wants to make things a bit more challenging, or when the group in question has a reputation for strength but the GM doesn’t want them to steal the scene. They’re your goblin veterans, experienced mobsters, or those Imperial soldiers with the black armor that talk in sinister coded radio transmissions.

    Worthies

    Worthies are the “standard” level of opposition. They defend themselves normally, including making HT rolls to avoid and recover from knockdown and stunning, but go down once they reach 0 HP or less. They’re a significant obstacle, but you still don’t want them to stick around too long. The same examples listed for Tough Minions also make suitable worthies, as does any monster from the books not specifically listed as fodder.

    Worthies still tend to come in groups, though these will be smaller than groups of minions. A movie fight against five or six opponents who keep getting back up after being hit is employing worthies instead of minions! Note that this doesn’t mean worthies are necessarily low-skill opponents. At this level, there is no inconsistency whathosever in making them as skilled as the PCs themselves.

    Elites

    Elite enemies are treated just like PCs. They make full use of all of the campaign’s combat rules. When they reach 0 HP or less, they’ll keep making HT rolls to stay conscious and alive, and might fight to the death if they think it’s warranted. When they don’t, retreating is always their own decision rather than something the rules force them to do. Elites are almost always named NPCs with their own personalities and motivations. They are rarely less skilled than the PCs themselves, and are often better. A fight against such an opponent usually marks an important plot milestone in adventures following movie logic.

    Any enemy from the books who is supposed to still pose a threat when under 0 HP is probably an Elite. Boss Monsters from Dungeon Fantasy also fit here - they are usually more powerful in terms of statistics, but they receive the same level of plot protection as the PCs.

    Special

    Every category system needs a catch-all! Special opposition has something that gives it even more narrative protection than the PCs, or that makes it not quite fit in the ranking system above. Colossi with multiple parts that must be destroyed in order? Multi-stage bosses that switch character sheets entirely when defeated? Anything goes!

  • Jan 6, 2017

    The Octopus Has (Temporarily) Left the Carnival

    I’m going to be away from home for the next two weeks or so. There won’t be many posts on Octopus Carnival until I’m back, as I’m unlikely to have time to write anything of substance.

  • Jan 6, 2017

    Dragon's Dogma Bestiary: Harpies

    Copyright 2012 Capcom.

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

    From a distance, harpies look like man-sized owls, with round heads and thick plumage. Only when they take flight and turn on you is it possible to notice their human-like faces and upper torsos. These features are invariably those of women: though there are male harpies, it’s impossible to tell the difference without dissection.

    Harpies also have feminine voices, though they seem to be incapable of verbal communication. In fact, they behave like large birds of prey, nesting at high altitudes and ranging far and wide in search of prey. Harpies are full carnivores and will attack anything that seems meaty enough to sustain them - even people. They are an ever-present hazard in Gransys’ highlands and mountain passes.

    Note that these harpies are different from the those presented in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3: Born of Myth and Magic. You are free to use those here as well!

    No one has managed to tame a harpy, but those crazy enough to try are willing to pay handsomely for unhatched eggs. Fetching those would require climbing the steep crags where they make their nests, a challenging proposition even if one doesn’t have to contend with a choir of enraged harpies on the way up.

    These creatures originally came from beyond the world: ancient accounts of past draconic invasions report armies of them arriving through the same rift as the Dragon itself. Several stable populations remain:

    Brown Harpies

    These inhabit the mountain chain separating South and Central Gransys, as well as the mountains to the soutwest beyond the Shadow Fort. Their skin is an ashen grey, covered in dark brown feathers.

    Brown harpies have innate magical abilities: their song can compel other creatures to sleep, an effect that becomes stronger the more voices are added to the choir. Brown harpies live in bands (“choirs”) of 4-6 adults.

    Brown harpies fight by using their soporific song and then grappling their sleeping victims and dropping them from a great height. If they can’t do that (because the target is too heavy, or resists the song), then they’ll attempt to rake with their talons. As detailed in Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3, harpy flyby attacks receive the -4 for Move and Attack but don’t have their skill capped at 9, and they may retreat up while dodging to receive a +4 bonus.

    ST 15; DX 13; IQ 6; HT 13

    SM +1; Dodge 9; DR 2;

    HP 15; Will 10; Per 12; FP 13

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

    • Soporific Song (15 vs Will): Resisted by Will, at -1 per singing harpy beyond the first. Affects non-harpies within 10m who hear the song. First failure causes sluggishness (1/2 Move and Dodge) while the song lasts. Second failure causes the target to fall asleep for 1 hour or until awoken, possibly by being dropped from a great height by the harpy.
    • Talons (16): 1d+3 cut. Reach C. May also grapple at skill 14.
    • Bite (16): 1d+2 cut.

    Traits: Acute Vision 2; Claws (Talons); DR 3 (Tough Skin); Flight (Winged); Peripheral Vision; Striking ST 4; Teeth (Sharp); Bestial; Fragile; Social Stigma (Monster).

    Skills: Aerobatics-14; Brawling-16; Wrestling-14

    Class: Faerie.

    Snow Harpies

    These inhabit the northern highlands of Gransys, particularly the area known as Souflayer Canyon. Their skin is black, and their feathers are snow-white with black spots. Snow harpies possess the same soporific song as their southern cousins, and are also endowed with a deadly frost breath attack. Use the same stats for a brown harpy, but add Temperature Tolerance 2 for cold and the following attack:

    • Frost Breath (14): Jet (range 5/10). 1d cr damage with no knockback and no blunt trauma. Targets hit by this must roll HT with a penalty of -1 per 2 points of damage suffered or be frozen (paralyzed) for 1 minute per margin of failure. Each snow harpy can use this only once per fight.

    Succubi

    While they share some similarities with harpies, succubi are demons rather than mere magical creatures. Immortal spirits given physical form, they linger in sites of ancient draconic invasions, or close to the Dragon itself during them. Visually, the main difference between an harpy and a succubus is that a succubus’ lower body and wings are those of a bat, not a bird. Their fur and wing membranes are dark brown in color.

    They have all the same abilities as common harpies, but their bite also carries a deadly venom, and their touch carries a curse. Take the stats for a brown harpy and add Immunity to Metabolic Hazards as well as an 1d toxic follow-up to their bite. Add the following attack:

    • Demonic Curse (15 vs. Will): Targets an enemy the succubus can see, suffers from range penalties. Targets who lose the contest suffer from a 1-point Curse as per the spell on GURPS Magic, p. 129. Doesn’t work on an already cursed target.

    Silver Sirens

    These creatures resemble silver-colored succubi, and are actually guardian spirits summoned by forgotten sorcery. Therefore, they can usually be found in dungeons protecting something important. Unlike all other monsters presented in this article, they are not only sapient but also know magic! While Silver Sirens can fight in much the same way as harpies, they prefer to cooperate with stronger guardian beasts, which they target with healing and support spells while staying out of melee reach.

    To make a Silver Siren, take the stats for a Brown Harpy and add Immunity to Metabolic Hazards. Remove Bestial, change IQ to 12+, and add Magery 2+ along with Healing and Body Control spells meant to buff allies. This magic requires song, in the same manner as that of a bard.

  • Jan 4, 2017

    Pathfinder Iconics in Dungeon Fantasy: Ezren

    Welcome back to our series of conversions of Pathfinder’s Iconic Characters to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy! This is the eleventh and final post in the series. Previous entries can be found here:

    Today’s template is the Wizard, which means today’s character is Ezren. Here he is:

    By Wayne Reynolds, Copyright 2007 Paizo Publishing

    This is a fairly tame design, especially when compared to some of the other characters in this series. Ezren’s bio is here, and his stats are here. From these we can learn the following:

    • Ezren got into adventuring late in life, after wasting his youth trying to clear his father of corruption charges that turned out to be true. He learned his wizardry mostly by himself, as no teacher wanted an apprentice his age.

    • He’s the blastier sort of wizard, devoting a large portion of his spell selection to delivering direct damage. The remainder is split between self-buffing and non-damaging hostile spells (like grease and obscuring mist).

    • His preferred weapon is a cane, and at higher levels he carries plenty of magical jewelry.

    Converting Ezren into a Dungeon Fantasy character is fairly straightforward: he’s just a standard human Wizard. His advanced age doesn’t change anything about his starting stats, and aging rolls aren’t a factor in a DF game. It did give me an excuse to load him up with physical disadvantages that hint at his frail physique while keeping his mind sharp. His spell selection is actually pretty close to the original stats, with fire, lightning and acid attack spells, Shield and Armor for protection, and Grease for control. He also has some nasty area denial options in the form of Stench and Fire Cloud, as well as a bunch of more specialized effects that fill out the prerequisites for the more powerful stuff. His starting power item is his cane, which can be used in combat with the Smallsword skill in emergencies.

    Good advancement options for Ezren are mainly more Magery and spells. Keeping a character point or two in reserve is a good way to pick up additional spells mid-delve via Wild Talent, too! While he has a bunch of spells that require Innate Attack, some players might find it better to replace that skill with multiple purchases of the Psychic Guidance perk found in DF 11, p. 15.

    Ezren, 250-point Human Wizard

    ST 10 {0}; DX 12 {40}; IQ 15 {100}; HT 11 {10}

    Damage 1d-2/1d; Basic Lift 10kg; HP 10; Will 15; Per 12 {-15}; FP 11; Basic Speed 6 {5}; Basic Move 6

    Advantages

    • Energy Reserve (Magic) 6 {18}
    • Magery 3 {35}
    • Wild Talent (Retention +25%, Magical -20%) {21}

    Disadvantages

    • Curious (12) {-5}
    • Low Pain Threshold {-10}
    • Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) {-5}
    • Skinny {-5}
    • Stubborness {-5}
    • Unfit {-5}

    Skills

    • Alchemy (VH) IQ {8} - 15
    • Cartography (A) IQ-1 {1} - 14
    • Diplomacy (H) IQ-2 {1} - 13
    • Fast-Draw (Potion) (E) DX {1} - 12
    • First-Aid (E) IQ {1} - 15
    • Gesture (E) IQ {1} - 15
    • Hazardous Materials (Magical) (A) IQ-1 {1} - 14
    • Hidden Lore (Magic Items) (A) IQ {2} - 15
    • Hidden Lore (Magical Writings) (A) IQ-1 {1} - 14
    • Hiking (A) HT-1 {1} - 10
    • Innate Attack (Missile) (E) DX+2 {4} - 14
    • Meditation (H) Will-1 {2} - 14
    • Occultism (A) IQ {2} - 15
    • Research (A) IQ-1 {1} - 14
    • Savoir-Faire (High Society) (E) IQ {1} - 15
    • Scrounging (E) Per {1} - 12
    • Smallsword (A) DX+2 {8} - 14
    • Speed-Reading (A) IQ-1 {1} - 14
    • Teaching (A) IQ-1 {1} - 14
    • Thaumatology (VH) IQ {1}1 - 15
    • Writing (A) IQ-1 {1} - 14

    Spells

    All have +3 from Magery.

    • Air College
      • Purify Air (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Create Air (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Stench (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Shape Air (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Air Jet (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Walk on Air (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Lightning (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
    • Body Control College
      • Frailty (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Vigor (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
    • Earth College
      • Seek Earth (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Shape Earth (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Earth to Stone (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Create Earth (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
    • Fire College
      • Create Fire (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Shape Fire (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Fireball (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Explosive Fireball (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Fire Cloud (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
    • Healing College
      • Lend Energy (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Recover Energy (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
    • Movement College
      • Haste (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Grease (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
    • Protection and Warning College
      • Shield (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Armor (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Missile Shield (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
    • Water College
      • Seek Water (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Purify Water (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Create Water (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Create Acid (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16
      • Acid Ball (H) IQ+1 {1} - 16

    Equipment

    $770, 8.5kg. No Encumbrance!

    • Cloth Armor [Torso]: DR 1*. $30, 3kg.
    • Ordinary Clothing [Torso, Limbs]: Free, 1kg.
    • Distinguished Cane [Torso]: As a fine, balanced short staff. Damage thr cr or sw cr. Decorated with extensive relief (+4 CF) and set with gems that bring its value up to the listed amount. Provides 6 FP as a power item and is enchanted with the Staff spell. $530, 0.5kg.
    • Backpack, Small [Torso]: Holds 20kg of gear. $60, 1.5kg.
    • Paut x2 [Backpack]: Restores 4 FP or energy lost to magic.
    • Scroll Case [Backpack]: Waterproof, holds 20 scrolls or the like. See DF 4, p. 12. $75, 0.5kg.
    • Personal Basics [Backpack]: $5, 0.5kg.
    • Paper, 20 sheets [Scroll Case]: $20, 0.5kg.
    • Scribe’s Kit: [Backpack]: $50, 1kg.
    • $230 remaining.

    1. +3 from Magery ↩

  • Jan 3, 2017

    GURPS X-COM: Noises in the Dark (a campaign post-mortem)

    By AntiMingebag on DeviantArt

    In my 2016 in review post I mentioned a GURPS X-COM play-by-forum game which I unfortunately had to end mid-campaign that year. In this post I’ll talk about it in more detail, because even though it didn’t reach its conclusion I think a lot of things about it were great successes. Perhaps this knowledge can help others, including Future Me when I try something like this again.

    The Setting

    The setting was 2020 Earth, and the five-year difference was only there to give me some chronological wiggle room. The original intent was to keep everything as close to the real world as possible, other than the existence of X-COM and the alien invaders. In fact, my mapping tool of choice for outdoor action sequences were Google Maps and Google Earth!

    My iteration of X-COM blends influences from several places, as you’ll see below. The Council responsible for funding it is made up of the 36 nations described at the end of this page. Its command and science staff were NPCs, but I wasn’t entirely under control of who would take which position!

    At the start of the campaign, before we even made characters, I gave the players two choices for the position of Commander and three for the position of Lead Scientist. They chose a character who was basically a Big Boss expy for Commander, and an… eccentric Russian scientist named Yuri Sokolov, whose specialty was in weird science.

    The other two scientist choices were Dr. Vahlen and Dr. Shen from the original game, and they stuck around as prominent NPCs despite not being the official heads of research. The other Commander choice, a British spy named Smiley, went into the cold and out of the game.

    The players also got a choice of two different alien invasions, and I’ll talk about them in more detail later.

    The Characters

    Character Creation

    Player characters were built using 250 points, and preferably a GURPS Action template. There were a few added restrictions. Highly cinematic advantages such as Gunslinger were off-limits during character creation, tough there would be opportunities to acquire them in play. Traits whose scope was limited to a specific area of the world were also disallowed, since this would be a globe-trotting campaign and they’d almost never come up. These mostly consisted of social traits such as Contacts or Enemies.

    The point total was dictated by their choice of commander, since the two of them represented different popular strategies in the original games. Mr. Fox (“Big Boss”) prefers to have a few very competent soldiers with extensive robot support when that becomes available. Mr. Smiley would have gone with a large number of relatively expendable soldiers, which would have led to teams of 150-point characters and several NPC redshirts.

    The other main variant rule I used was the simplified Guns skills from Pyramid #3/65, which I find a lot simpler to handle than the default spread.

    The PCs

    There was a bit of churn in my player and PC roster during the campaign, as is the nature of forum games, but these characters showed up the most during the entire run of the game:

    • 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.

    We had others, but they stayed for a shorter time than the four above. Several actually never saw action as PCs, though Russian Shooter Vasily Valenkov gets another medal for always being there for his teammates even with no player to run him.

    The Organization

    X-COM itself was also a character! Between field assignments, players stepped out of their normal characters for a moment and moved to a “strategy” layer where they made decisions that affected the organization as a whole. Since I didn’t want to make this part too complex, it was mostly about deciding what to research next.

    Each strategic phase, the group got a certain number of “research points” that depended on how well they had done in their previous mission and how well-favored by the Council X-COM was. They allocated that between several different research topics, most of which cost a single point at the time the game stopped. A topic that was fully paid for would bear fruit in the form of new technology by the time the PCs went on their next deployment.

    The Enemy

    As I mentioned before, I gave the group a choice of enemy to fight. I wasn’t very forthcoming with details during this particular part of the vote, of course, as the whole point of an X-COM game is that the enemy is unknown. The two were described mostly in terms of what their early signs were: Lights in the Sky and Noises in the Dark. As you can guess by the title of this post, the latter’s more mysterious nature won out in the end.

    The Lights in the Sky invaders were pretty much the aliens from the original games, mostly as shown there. I would have introduced some variation, but they would still have been largely recognizable. I can’t really into more detail, as this path wasn’t chosen and thus wasn’t developed.

    In retrospect, I’m really glad the players chose to go with Noises in the Dark because this meant I had the opportunity to pit X-COM against the Dreams of Ruin.

    Art by Melissa Uran.

    If you follow that link, you’ll arrive at a DrivethruRPG page for the book of the same name, which had come out shortly before I started the game. I backed its Kickstarter, and was dying to use it somewhere. I think this book is probably the best thing to come out of the OSR, not the least because I don’t have to use any OSR rules to run it. The good stuff is all system-agnostic and the rest is relatively easy to convert. Go download it, it’s free!

    The best summary I can give about the Dreams is that they are a weaponized ecosystem that feeds on mundane evil and spreads the cosmic variety wherever it goes. Its creators in the book purposefully obscured their identity and simply let the thing loose in the multiverse, but in this campaign it was being purposefully deployed as a weapon. Instead of UFOs and sectoids, the PCs get to deal with evil fungal trees and homicidal puppets.

    The identity of the author of the Dreams is left mysterious in the book (unless you have access to an obscure old edition of Deities & Demigods, I guess), but I needed slightly more concrete masters here if I wanted this to feel like X-COM. I eventually settled on something that’s a mix between the original Ethereals and the devils from the excellent Kill Six Billion Demons comic. They were beings of congealed energy whose intellect and personality was entirely provided by the masks they wore. The ones at the top of the hierarchy wore black masks, with the progression going black -> gold -> green -> red -> blue -> white. Other species these Masters had subjugated also had these masks imposed upon them.

    Alien technology was largely based on magic instead of mundane engineering, as every non-human species in the setting had natural “magic circuits” in their bodies that could channel mystical energies. They used Ritual Path Magic quite extensively, with their artifacts being products of enchantment despite looking like advanced technology. The Dreams produced TL 4+5 gear for their servants, and the masters of the Dreams used TL4+7 gear.

    The PCs never met anyone higher in that hierarchy than a white-mask, aside from this one rogue blue-masked alien who defected to their side in a mission and helped with research. X-COM was able to learn the basics of magic before the game ended, and use some effects in the form of the Technomagic described in GURPS Monster Hunters 5: Applied Xenology.

    There was also not one but two extra factions in this war. One was a species of snake-people from Nilfheim who acted as interdimensional smugglers and drug dealers - they rode on the tails of the Dreams and preyed upon the worlds they victimized, disguising themselves as natives. So yes, Kendall was right and there were reptoid infiltrators everywhere. These took the place of the night hags from the Dreams of Ruin book.

    The other secondary enemy faction was a band of mercenaries and shady operators run by Mr. Smiley, the commander they rejected at the start. He used funding from corrupt elites from Council nations who weren’t satisfied with the way that X-COM failed to cater to their interests and sought an alternative. Yes, this organization was named X-ALT.

    Copyright 2013 Firaxis.

    Not all of these aliens have corresponding GURPS stats, since many never appeared in the actual game, but enough have them that I could make a future post or two out of them. Stay tuned!

    What Went Right

    In Noises in the Dark I put to use several things I learned from previous attempts at running play-by-forum games, and tried several more. I’m happy to say several of my riskier experiments were successes!

    • Giving the players a set of campaign-shaping choices at the start worked pretty well! It made some of them a little more invested in the setting, and more importantly gave me a lot of motivation to flesh those choices out once they were made.

    • The “strategic layer” gimmick worked very well and was a very X-COM thing. Players cared about the choices they made there and they genuinely shaped future events.

    • At the same time, the tabletop format allowed for missions that were more elaborate than was possible in the computer games.

    • Google Maps/Earth as a mapping tool was simply awesome! Players had a very positive reaction to this one, as did I. It greatly enhanced the missions and quickly led us to further enhance play by seeking extra real-world information about the places in question. (“Is this a residential area? Let’s check by seeing if there are any apartments to rent around there!”).

    • The monsters were suitably spooky, and encounters with them provided great atmosphere. The group perceived their first Tree of Woe on Halloween (of 2015), which was serendipitous.

    What Could Be Better (and Why It Ended)

    Sadly, not everything was perfect with that game. If it was, it would still be going! So what didn’t work like I expected?

    • Overly elaborate fights don’t work so well in a GURPS play-by-forum game. I usually roll everything myself and resolve up to 3 rounds before posting, following general directions from the players. That, however, makes some setups both exhausting to resolve and, I imagine, unsatisfying to read about.

    • The “realness” offered by using Google Maps is a double-edged sword, especially for this game in particular. The Dreams of Ruin tend to flourish in sites of great natural or human disaster. The second mission was in such a place, and it already made me few slightly uneasy. By the end of 2016, I was no longer willing to mine real-world tragedy for plot hooks.

    Both of the above factors contributed to sap any energy I had for keeping this game going. Rather than leaving it entirely unsolved, I ended it officially and posted all of the spoilers for the players to see. What the items in this section taught me is to keep fights relatively simple in future games, and not make them the central focus of the campaign. And to stick to fictional settings for darker storylines. I’m OK with making analogies to real-world issues in fictional settings, but outright using them as plots in a game doesn’t sit well with me.

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