Posts

• Mar 30, 2017

  GURPS X-COM: The Arsenal of Ruin, Part 1

  

  As I mentioned back in the post about my campaign setup on this game, I can’t post adaptations of the Dreams of Ruin creatures here without violating the book’s license. What I can do, however, is post stats for their gear in this campaign, since it’s different from what’s in the original book. Today, we’ll focus on the Puppets of Ruin, which are the only alien the group met in their first operation that actually uses gear.

  Original-flavor Puppets of Ruin carry magic swords, bolt-action rifles, concussion hand grenades, and ocasionally a RPG launcher. That’s a terrifying loadout for anyone in the medieval fantasy worlds they’re meant to attack! With this equipment, and at 3 Hit Dice, they’re supposed to be superior to any conventional force of 1 HD soldiers or even 2 HD humanoids. That would be even truer in a GURPS campaign, where they’re taking TL 7 weapons into a TL 3 world. Even powerful adventurers wouldn’t be able to face them head-on!

  However, in this campaign they’re attacking a late TL8 world, which means their original equipment would actually be less advanced than what’s typically available to an outfit like X-COM! That feels wrong to me - it’s not a proper X-COM game unless even the “weakest” alien has a technological edge over your soldiers. Therefore, I decided they needed an upgrade. And now, for the first time, I’m publishing stats for their weapons:

  Puppet Gear

  These weapons and their corresponding ammunition are grown by the Body Trees rather than manufactured. Their construction and functionality is equivalent to Tech Level 9. They tend to have a curvy, organic look, with no unecessary seams. Each individual item is slightly different from all others, though ammunition for a specific weapon will always fit another weapon of the same type.

  Weapon stats are all as described in the Basic Set, with two exceptions. Weight is in kilograms, not pounds, because I like the metric system more; and monetary cost is not listed, because I didn’t use it in the campaign itself. Filling a cost in shouldn’t be too hard for those GMs that want it, and to figure out an item’s weight in pounds just multiply the listed numbers by 2.

  These days, I prefer to use the alternate Guns specialties presented in Pyramid #3/65: Alternate GURPS III. I did so in the campaign itself, and I do so in this article, though I also note what Basic Set skills the weapons require.

  Puppet Sword

  Around 1 meter long, this sword has a straight double-edged blade made of a ceramic/metal composite material and a substantial handguard similar to that of a cavalry saber. As puppets are more proficient in melee combat than just about any typical modern soldier, this is probably their most dangerous weapon if they happen to be within easy reach of their targets.

  Treat this as a Superfine (p. UT163) backsword (p. MA227 or LT66). It’s used with the Broadsword skill. All puppets have one.

  TL	Weapon	Damage	Reach	Parry	Weight	ST
  9	Puppet Sword	sw+3(2) cut	1	0	1.5	10
  		or thr+3(2) imp

  
  

  Puppet Rifle

  This is a short, semi-automatic carbine firing caseless 7.77mm rounds with an Electrothermal-Chemical (ETC) action. It contains no targetting electronics, but the puppets’ own senses and link with the forest more than compensate for this. It’s made from the same materials as the sword and self-cleaning, requiring no regular maintenance. It’s extremely reliable and won’t malfunction unless some external factor lowers its Malf.

  The Puppet Rifle is fired with Guns (Longarm), or Guns (Rifle) if using the Basic Set skills. All puppets have a fully loaded rifle plus 3 or 4 extra magazines. The Trees of Woe bear extra reloads as fruit, so they can resupply if they have access to a thicket.

  TL	Weapon	Damage	Acc	Range	Weight	RoF	Shots	ST	Bulk	Rcl
  9	Puppet Rifle	7d+2 pi	4	750/4500	3/0.33	3	20(3)	9	-4	2

  
  

  Puppet Grenade

  This is a concussion grenade with an advanced plastic explosive filling and a soft outer shell that limits fragmentation. It’s used with Throwing, and every puppet carries from 1 to 3. These also grow from the Trees of Woe, so puppets near a thicket will be profiligate in their use.

  The Puppet Grenade is essentially a TL 9 HEC hand grenade (p. UT146 and UT154).

  TL	Weapon	Damage	Weight	Fuse	Bulk
  9	Puppet Grenade	8dx2 cr ex	0.5	2	-2

  
  

  Puppet RPG

  This weapon is a thin launch tube with handles and iron sights, firing a 77mm over-caliber warhead which vaguely resembles a RPG-7 round. It takes 3 seconds to set up. While launchers and their ammo are also provided by the forest, they appear at a slower rate, and only where the Trees of Woe are at their densest. Only about 1 in 7 puppets has a launcher, and will typically carry from 1 to 3 rounds for it. Its squad mates might carry extra rounds as well.

  The launcher has a hazardous backblast that causes 2d burning damage. It uses Guns (LAW), which has the same name in both skill systems.

  TL	Weapon	Damage	Acc	Range	Weight	RoF	Shots	ST	Bulk	Rcl
  9	Puppet RPG	6dx8(10) cr exp	2	10/1000	9/2.5	1	1(4)	9	-6	1
  	linked	6dx3 cr exp

  
  

  Using the Arsenal of Ruin

  These weapons have other campaign roles aside from equipping the Puppets of Ruin! They occupy the same niche as lasers in the original X-COM or magnetic weapons in the 2015 XCOM 2, using technology that’s a step up from what’s initially available to human soldiers but not as good as what the alien masterminds have at their disposal.

  Unlike the alien weapons from the X-COM computer games, they can be easily operated by humans and contain no biometric locks, self-destruct failsafes or anything of the sort. Someone who came across one of them lying on the floor could just pick it up and use it, assuming they had the appropriate skills.

  This is by design! The Forest wants people to commit violence within its borders, and is only too happy to provide them with the tools to do so. Any local Servants of Ruin drawn to its borders will soon find themselves well-supplied with these weapons, and possibly in command of a puppet posse. Even people who aren’t quite as evil might be gifted with weapons as a temptation. They are also chock-full of spores, so taking them beyond the forest’s borders aids the spread of the Dreams.

• Mar 29, 2017

  Dragon's Dogma Bestiary: Chimerae

  

  A chimera is nightmarish three-headed beast whose appearance in Gransys heralds the coming of the Dragon. It resembles a huge lion with a giant goat’s head growing out of its back and a monstrous snake in place of its tail. All three heads are extremely dangerous! Both the lion and the snake have very strong bites and have large enough jaws to grapple human-sized targets, with the snake being venomous as well. And while the goat doesn’t have a large range of motion, it can cast spells. This last fact is very often the last surprise any who dare face the chimera have in their lives, and is a sign that the monster is a lot more intelligent than its animalistic appearance would indicate. In addition to all of this, all three heads can act independently at the same time.

  As heralds to the Dragon, chimerae guard the path to it, making their lairs in places one must cross to arrive at the Dragon’s chosen nest. They can also sometimes be found near lesser dragons as well.

  GMs who use chimerae in their games are also encouraged to include Snake-Maned Lions as either a variant chimera or a related monster. You can never have too many freakish mutant lions in your game!

  ST 24; DX 13; IQ 14; HT 12

  Dodge 10; DR 1 (Tough Skin); SM +2

  Will 14; Per 14; HP 24; FP 20

  Speed 7; Move 7.

  • Lion Bite (15): 2d+2 cutting. Reach C. May grapple the target on a hit. Parried as a weapon.
  • Snake Bite (15): 2d+2 impaling + follow-up 1d toxic (HT-3 to resist; 5 cycles; 1 minute per cycle), Reach C-3. May grapple the target on a hit. Parried as a weapon.
  • Talons x2 (15): 2d cutting. Reach C, 1. Parried as a weapon.
  • Spells (-): The goat head can typically cast Daze-15, Sleep-15, Ice Slick-15 and Ice Sphere-15, using the chimera’s 20 FP.

  Traits: 360-degree Vision; Combat Reflexes; Compartimentalized Mind 1 (Spellcasting only); Extra Attack 3 (claw/claw/bite/bite); Fearlessness 5; Magery 3; Night Vision 7; Penetrating Voice; Quadruped; Restricted Diet (Fresh Meat); Sadism (9); Terror 2 (Roar).

  Skills: Brawling-15; Stealth-15; Wrestling-15;

  Class: Hybrid.

  Notes: Immune to Animal spells, but susceptible to Mind Control spells. The Chimera may attack with all three natural weapons and cast a spell during each of its turns.

  Fighting the Chimera

  Chimerae like to incapacitate targets either by grappling them with one of their biting heads, or by magically dazing them or putting them to sleep. They will then proceed to tear the helpless victim apart with their teeth and claws. Despite its size, the monster is fairly mobile and smart enough to try and avoid being surrounded. It’s most vulnerable to long-ranged attacks, but it’s also smart enough to be aware of this! When faced with a large group of opponents, a chimera might try to drag them away one at a time.

  A chimera’s lion and goat heads can be incapacitaded by a single attack doing over 12 HP of injury (as if they were limbs). They each have all the hit locations you’d expect of a head: neck, face, eyes, brain. These can be targeted at the usual penalties. Killing a head prevents the chimera from performing the actions associated with that head. The lion head is the beast’s main head - it dies when the whole creature dies.

  Chimera Variants:

  The same variants described in the Snake-Maned Lion article are appropriate here, with the exception of Intelligent (which already applies to all chimerae). Gorechimerae are not only both Armored and Demonic, they also know more spells and have higher combat skills! No one has seen one of these in Gransys - the laws of nature would need to be completly broken for such a beast to cross the Rift.

• Mar 28, 2017

  Psi Wars Campaign Commentary

  

  Looks like my nascent Psi Wars campaign has gathered attention from the highest of circles, by which I mean Mailanka himself is following the game. So hey, no pressure.

  I only noticed the above post today, since I was a bit behind on my RSS reading. It contains a very detailed summary of my recruitment/character creation thread, with links to relevant posts and an analysis of some of my campaign decisions. That’s a better summary than I could have written myself, so go read it! I’ll use this post to provide some additional context on my decisions.

  First of all, a small nitpick: It’s “Bira’s Octopus Carnival” :). Bliss Authority was indeed the one who had the idea for a Psi Wars game on the RPG.net forums, but the blog is mine. It’s all good, though! Let’s move on to the good stuff:

  On Communion

  Mailanka comments about my stated view that True Communion is good, and Broken and Dark Communion are bad. Indeed, I know that things were meant to be more ambiguous than that in the Psi Wars text, but this is my first time actually using the material! I wanted to keep things simple both for myself and for any players who weren’t familiar with Psi Wars as its own thing.

  So, for this specific campaign, I adopted a stance more closely aligned with that of Star Wars itself. A game more focused on exploring Communion would certainly benefit from the more neutral view.

  There was also the more practical reason that it looked like we were headed towards a party which included followers of conflicting Paths, and I wanted to avoid that in the first game. This ended up not happening, as no one spent points in Communion to start. Jatuu the former gladiator might still end up going either True or Dark in the future, if the game lasts long enough.

  Robots and Cyborgs

  I denied lordmcdeath’s wish to play “a robot who pretends he’s a cyborg” for a couple of reasons, the main one being that I wanted to limit the amount of template surgery in this particular game. There are no ready-made racial templates for PC-level robots, and while something could be arranged by taking the base Android template and tweaking it into a usable racial template, the ensuing discussion would have added more time to the already lengthy play-by-forum character creation process. Reality Glitch’s character had already gone through an extensive round of such discussion, and they ended up leaving the game.

  Mailanka’s discussion on whether it’s thematically appropriate to have robots pass themselves off as organic is another reason why I disallowed it for this game - it’s not a theme I wanted to focus on.

  That said, I might end up working on a “playable robot” racial template to post here in Octopus Carnival, possibly even with an “organic disguise” lens. Just because I’m not focusing on that in my current campaign doesn’t mean I don’t like the concept!

  In Closing…

  I’m very happy to see this game has been noticed by the setting’s author and I hope I don’t disappoint in my execution :). If you’re interested in following the game as it happens, the out-of-character thread is here and the in-character thread is here.

  Next up: Golko himself!

• Mar 22, 2017

  Operation BRUTAL ADVENT, Part 3

  

  Welcome to another installment on my GURPS X-COM: Noises in the Dark campaign report! This is the final installment of 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.

  Recovery and Planning

  The party had just survived their first encounter with a Bakegumo, and was still reeling a bit from the experience. Choi, in particular, had been hit quite hard by the hand-like alien, whom they decided to call “Rosie”. At least Korsakov was recovered from whatever mind control he was under, and quickly loaded the civilians up into the Skyranger, taking off to safety once that was done.

  Julia stepped up to apply first aid to Choi’s wound, which probably included at least one broken rib. She opened up her crash kit and noticed with much consternation that any drug it contained that was more advanced than rubbing alcohol had turned into some sort of foul black sludge. Pills, liquids, even the stuff applied to hemostatic bandages, all gone bad. The kit had been effectively reduced to TL 6 in terms of effectiveness! She was still able to restore some of Choi’s lost HP, but it took longer than it otherwise would.

  After this is done, they get to planning. From everything they know so far, the “distortion field” is preventing German authorities from noticing what’s going on in the affected zone. The squad decides taking this field out is their best bet. Judging from the shape of the effect, they figure the source is in a building just south of the hospital’s parking lot. There’s no telling on which floor it is, though.

  Jan Wiest, the cop, tells them his buddies have been working on a reckless plan to assault the hospital. They’ve managed to get an old Toyota Hilux truck working, and have loaded it up with anything even remotely incendiary or explosive they could get their hands on. The plan is to send the vehicle careening towards the northwest corner of the hospital as the opening move of an all-in assault. They’ve clearly given this some thought, and this is the first real opportunity to put the plan into action - the flashy assault should provide the PCs with the distraction they need to go in through the opposite corner.

  Infiltration and Engagement

  The PCs agree with the plan, with Valenkov and Gutierrez choosing to lend their firepower to the distraction assault. Everyone gets into position, and as the squad hears the distant explosions begin, they move in on the building from the southwest corner. That section of the hospital is walled off, but the wall happens to have a convenient, sturdy fuse box that can serve as a stepping stone, and provides easy access to a second-floor window.

  The hospital looks even more dilapidated than the other buildings in the neighborhood, as it has been shot at more often. All the windows above the ground floor are broken. Every bit of the outer walls that hasn’t yet been covered in bullet holes is instead covered in runic-looking graffiti. As they enter through the window, the party notices the interior of the hospital doesn’t look much better. Paint has peeled or been torn off from the walls in places, and the same graffiti is everywhere. All the lights are out, most of them broken. The air feels dusty, and smells faintly of rot.

  Choi rolls an unprimed grenade down the hallway, but nothing unusual happens. Kendall has a harder time getting accurate readings from his sensors in here - his chemsniffers, for example, report the air as being composed of 100% hydrochloric acid. Still, he manages to pinpoint the source of the anomaly. It’s somewhere below them in the hospital’s Geriatrics ward, which they can reach by proceeding down this hallway. They cautiously move on.

  In a minute they reach the stairwell and elevator. The sounds of fighting outside are beginning to die down. Since the source is below them, they figure the best place to put it would be all the way down in the hospital’s extensive basement.

  Minette looks at the elevator and at the stairs, and has an idea: set up a bomb inside the elevator and send it down to the basement, and then assault the place through the stairs once the explosive goes off. This would turn any possible ambush the aliens are preparing against them. The elevator comes from a higher floor when called. Its light panels have been torn off and its walls covered in graffiti. Minette sets up a proximity mine built from one of Choi’s grenades and an optical sensor Kendall got from a nearby automatic door.

  They send the elevator down… and it blow up too early, with a much stronger force than they anticipated. The blast climbs up the shaft with enough force to buckle the doors on their floor. Looks like the aliens had prepared a little surprise of their own at the basement! The squad quickly recovers from the surprise and proceeds with their original plan, running down the stairs.

  As soon as they emerge in a dark basement room, they begin trading shots with the aliens down there. There are four of them, firing from rooms adjacent to the box-filled space the party emerged into, wearing black military uniforms and eyeless gas masks. Despite the lack of eyeholes, they can apparently see pretty well in the eerie blue-green light suffusing the basement.

  The fight is short but intense. Minette shoots two of the enemies early, while Choi tries to flush another out of cover with more frag grenades. Instead of running away, the alien draws a sword and rushes Choi! He and Kendall spend a few tense seconds in melee combat before while Minette deals with the remaining shooter, and are finally able to back away and shoot the last enemy.

  With the fight over, they can assess their surroundings in more detail. They’re in a storage area filled with boxes containing medication and assorted medical equipment. Every box that was hit by a stray bullet or sword blow is leaking the same black sludge found in Julia’s medkit. The green-blue light comes from some sort of fluorescent mold that clings to the walls. The air feels musty and heavy, and everything is covered in a thin layer of red dust.

  As for the aliens, once unmasked, they look like faceless wooden puppets. Their “skin” feels like some kind of dark wood, though the blood from their wounds hints at fleshier interiors. Their weapons are single-shot rifles with a strange, curvy design and no ejection ports. They did sound like they fired solid ammo, though. The party decides to move on rather than speculating about the alien bodies. Leave that to the scientists.

  The Anomaly

  The eastern door out of the room opens into a wide corridor extending from south to north. Kendall’s sensors indicate the anomaly’s epicenter is north, so they go that way. The way is littered with scattered furniture and with larger and larger alien fungal growths, some of which quiver when the soldiers pass near them. The dust thickens as well.

  They almost miss the minefield, but Minette notices it at the last instant. The devices seem to be made of a white material similar to fiberglass, but their form factor simply screams mine. There were six, all placed in such a way that the hallway’s clutter would block line of sight to them. Now that they know where the mines are, the squad can carefully walk past them. Running through this area would still pose a hazard, though. After some deliberation, they decide to push some of the hallway’s furniture into the adjoining empty rooms before proceeding, to make a future retreat through this area easier.

  When they finish, they can hear shuffling and crashing sounds coming from a door at the northern end of the corridor. Sounds like someone is getting ready to flee in a hurry. They quickly move up, checking the adjoining rooms for hostiles, and finally arrive at the source of the noise - and of the anomaly.

  This is a large room where all of the hospital’s remaining lab equipment and computers were moved and set up atop a ring of heavy metal desks in the room’s center. Most of it is wrecked when the PCs arrive. Two of the soldier aliens and a Bakegumo seem to be busy destroying everything, supervised by something that looks like a pillar of black smoke with embers for eyes. Something lashes out of the smoke, causing the PCs to feel as if the ve/

  /ry ai/

  /r was cut. It steps into the resulting rent in space, and it closes behind it, returning the world to normal. Time for another firefight!

  The Bakegumo turns to Minette, and begins doing a strange “dance”. She begins to hear the distant sounds of drums and brass cymbals, and the edges of her vision begins to crawl. Minette gets off a long burst, but the alien seems to ignore it as she begins to feel her own sins crawling on her back. A bullet from one of the puppets hits her vest, and the pain snaps her out of it, allowing her to finish the “Rosie” off.

  Meanwhile, Kendall triggers another feedback look, trying to flood the alien communications channel with an amplified version of the eerie chatter he recorded earlier. It’s enough to confuse them for a second, hurting their accuracy enough that Choi and Julia are able to deal with the pair. With that, there are no more hostiles in the room.

  Julia takes the time to apply first aid to Minette, and just as she finishes everyone notices the trees. A clump of five or so, all together at the center of the ring of desks. Black trunks, black leaves, black branches heavy with fat white fruit the squad recognizes as the mines from earlier in the hallway. They reach to the ceiling. This is the first time they are noticed, but upon looking at them the squad knows they’ve been there the whole time.

  Spooked, the PCs decide to blow the trees up using the hallway mines and their last grenade, thrown from outside the room. The resulting blast is devastating, and as soon as the trees are gone the whole distortion field clears. A pressure they didn’t know they were under lifts from their minds. With the interference gone, Wiest is able to reach them by radio and inform that the assault force managed to take out all the remaining alien soldiers, but they lost a few men and Valenkov and Gutierrez were gravely wounded.

  Denouement

  Later on, the squad manages to reach HQ and discover that a second Skyranger is on the way, called in by Korsakov, with a full cleanup crew. Over the next few days, they direct the local authorities and collect everything from the area that even looks alien. The civilians still living there are relocated by the German government, with the exception of Gisela’s family who, at Dr. Vahlen’s insistence, was moved to Mother Base. Hans, Gisela’s father, joins X-COM as an engineer.

  Despite casualties, the mission was a success, reassuring the Council of X-COM’s effectiveness.

  Spoilers and Fight Analysis

  

  The new enemy they fought here were the Puppets of Ruin, depicted above. Named “Pinocchios” by the group, these are the main front line troops of the Dreams. They combine excellent military training (both modern and archaic) with a total lack of compassion and a willingness to serve anyone who displays the right mix of cruelty and strength. The ones you see above are in their “natural” state - for this campaign, I decided that anyone who enlisted puppet units would give them their own uniforms, hence the black fatigues with eyeless gas masks.

  The originals are meant to terrorize medieval fantasy worlds, and carry the equivalent of TL 7 military gear. Mine carry TL 9 equipment, which I will detail in a future post.

  The “pillar of smoke” alien was an addition of my own. It was meant to replace the Night Hags from the Dreams of Ruin sourcebook, though at the time I didn’t know what was going to be behind the smokescreen.

  While the puppets are good shooters and would be unholy terrors when pitted against 150-point soldiers, the more powerful X-COM squad was rather better at dealing with them. The hardest part for them was dealing with the puppets’ melee proficiency, as none of the PCs put many points in close combat and none of them had a weapon that could really stand up to the alien swords. No one suffered damage from them, but it was more due to luck than skill or sound tactics.

  The same can’t be said of the elevator trap or the minefield, though - success there was entirely due to character skill and player ingenuity. Had the party blithely taken the elevator down, it would have resulted in a TPK, as the bottom of the shaft was lined with mines.

• Mar 20, 2017

  Psi-Wars: Golko Wants You Dead

  

  I’ve been following the creation of the Psi-Wars setting on Mailanka’s Musings with great interest, and it’s no secret that this project was one of the inspirations for me to start my own blog. In fact, as I write this I am also in the process of starting up a short Psi-Wars game on RPG.net! Someone else proposed the game, and I stepped up to GM it.

  The setup is going to be something I saw used long ago for a Star Wars one-shot using Wushu: there’s this crime lord named Golko, and he wants all the PCs dead for some reason. Their only hope is to team up and take Golko down. In addition to creating a character as normal, each player has to both state the reason Golko wants their PC dead, and tell me one true thing about Golko. In other words, they collaborate to create the adventure’s antagonist.

  Our PCs are:

  • Jatuu Harhlohuan, a Felinoid and former arena slave turned Psi-Knight. Only time will tell if she will follow the path of True Communion or fall to the lure of its Dark side.

  • Lady Maya Afolayan, a noble-born Fighter Ace who pretends to run her family’s shipping concern while looking for wrongs to right in the Galactic Rim.

  • Captain Scarlet Crimson of the Crimson Corsair, a space pirate with a heart of gold and a quirky robot crew.

  • Paul “Patch” Patterson, Scarlet’s chief engineer, who can deal with technology using both mundane skills and psionic powers.

  The other important character in this story is Golko, of course. Not all players have posted the required answers, but so far he’s turning out to be a nasty piece of work. I’ll post his description when I have all the information I need.

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