Posts

• Jan 3, 2017

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

  

  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.

  

  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.

  

  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.

• Dec 31, 2016

  Octopus Carnival: 2016 in Review

  Doing “year in review” posts seems to be the thing to do, so I’ll write one as well. This post started out as an overall overview of my 2016 tabletop gaming, but that turned out to be mostly about GURPS anyway, so I’m categorizing it as a GURPS post.

  State of the Blog

  The big news here is that I started a blog! You’re looking at it! Octopus Carnival is a little over three months old at this point: its first post went up in September 27th, 2016. Let’s talk a bit about how it’s been doing.

  I’ve been keeping track of how many visitors and views I get using Google Analytics, purely for my own enjoyment as I’ve pledged to myself I wouldn’t include adds or affiliate links here. The following comments about my traffic all refer from the data registered in Analytics.

  During the first month I managed to publish a post every day, making progress in two still ongoing projects: an adaptation of Dragon’s Dogma to GURPS, and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy versions of the Pathfinder Iconic characters. Whenever a new post came up I posted announcements to a thread in the Steve Jackson Games forum and a thread on RPG.net, and after a while I started posting to a GURPS community in Google Plus and to the [GURPS Discord as well.

  From October 26th to November 13th I was out of the country and didn’t have time to post anything, which meant my carefully cultivated traffic fell to nearly zero and I had to start over. My posting rate for gameable content isn’t quite up to what it was before that trip, but that’s intentional: it was kinda eating into the rest of my life. I still hope to post 2-3 times a week from now on.

  Direct access seems to be the main source of traffic to the site, sitting at 21% of the total. I imagine that’s not just people typing up the URL in their browsers, tough that’s certainly part of it. Links that don’t contain a referrer would also count towards this total, and a good bit of those are likely to be people following internal links between posts.

  The second largest source overall, and the main source of referral traffic is the SJ Games forum threa, accounting for 20% or all sessions. Google Plus comes in third overall. Gaming Ballistic’s GURPS Day posts came in at fourth until very recently, but were just edged out by an interesting phenomenom.

  Looks like a couple of my posts were linked at a pair of Russian social networks/blog sites, imaginaria.ru and vk.com, and they got some attention from Russian roleplayers. That’s something I never thought would happen, and it makes me happy!

  Most of those accesses seem to be to the Octopus Carnival home page, which means a lot of people just go there to read the latest post. As for the individual posts, the most popular ones are the Pathfinder characters, despite those only technically being a side project. I can’t say I’m surprised that the Pathfinder name draws eyeballs even on a blog with not a single d20 rule on it. It’s a big name! Amiri the Barbarian is the most popular of the converted iconics, being both the first I posted and the one that got linked to those Russian blogs. Valeros the Fighter comes just below her, having also been linked there. Kyra the Cleric is third.

  Of the Dragon’s Dogma posts, the most popular are the Mystic Knight and Magic Archer, which makes me happy because I’m proud of how they turned out.

  Overall, I’m pretty happy about how I’m doing! Octopus Carnival isn’t as popular as some of the superstars in the GURPS blogging community, but it does have a following and that’s a lot more than I expected :). So thank you for reading it!

  For next year, I’ll try to diversify my subjects a bit more. I’m literally one article away from finishing the main Pathfinder series, and I can already see the end of the Dragon’s Dogma posts as well. There’s plenty of other stuff I want to say on all sorts of RPG-related topics, so I won’t run out of material anytime soon.

  Actual Play

  Pretty much all of my actual roleplaying in this past year has happened online and asynchronously. I’ve been GMing a Dungeon Fantasy play-by-forum game over on RPG.net for quite a while now, and while players have come and gone I managed to get a small but solid core of players who don’t mind the occasional posting slowdown and are entertained enough by my dungeons and the humorous interactions between their PCs. In 2016 this game has continued, and we just managed to complete our third dungeon delve (and our second full adventure!).

  I had also started a GURPS X-COM game back in 2015, and until recently we had managed to complete several adventures as well and make good progress on the overall campaign (which was planned in far greater detail than the dungeon-of-the-week DF game). Unfortunately, the game ran out of steam around November, and I ended it with a post-mortem rather than letting it whimper out of existence.

  I also participated in a few forum games as a player, though all but three of them died the usual death of forum games. Two are still ongoing: one is Godbound, the other a homebrew science fiction system. One was a Legend of the Five Rings 4th edition adventure that concluded successfully, and which I still remember fondly.

  Most of my face-to-face gaming has been of the board game variety. I’ve gotten plenty of use out of the XCOM board game, and played a bunch of stuff from my friends’ vast collections.

  I’m not exactly dissatisfied with the overall situation in this area, but I do wish I could play a few RPG sessions at a pace closer to real time. And that’s what I’ll try to do in 2017.

• Dec 30, 2016

  Pathfinder Iconics in Dungeon Fantasy: Merisiel

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

  • Amiri the Barbarian
  • Lem the Bard
  • Kyra the Cleric
  • Lini the Druid
  • Seelah the Paladin
  • Valeros the Fighter
  • Harsk the Ranger
  • Sajan the Monk
  • Jirelle the Swashbuckler

  Today’s template is the Thief, which means today’s character is Merisiel. Here she is:

  

  Merisiel has all the knives. All of them. We’re back in familiar territory with her, as she’s one of the Iconics from the core book. Her bio is here and her stats are here. From these, we can learn the following:

  • Merisiel is one of the Forlorn, an elf raised among humans. They get this depressing name because Pathfinder elves are of the type that takes nearly a century to grow up. She spent these decades as a street urchin who stowed away on ships bound for different cities when her current buddies outgrew her.

  • She’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer but makes up for that by carrying a lot of really sharp knives on her person. She tries to start every combat hidden, to better backstab her foes.

  • Merisiel has an open and expressive personality, always tries to have fun in the moment, and is always chasing the next get-rich-quick scheme.

  Despite being pretty much a bog-standard d20/Pathfinder character, Merisiel presents us with several interesting challenges when it comes to adapting her to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.

  First of all, she’s an elf, but which type of elf? There’s like a hundred of them in Dungeon Fantasy 3. Pathfinder’s stats for elves would suggest the High Elf racial template is appropriate. That’s not all, however! Merisiel is a Forlorn elf, which means she grew up among humans and had no contact with elven culture to speak of. And the DF 3 elf template that best models that is the Half-Elf, even down to the problems relating to both humans and elves. Theoretically full-blooded elves would have longer lifespans and such, but that’s not worth any points in a DF campaign.

  The other challenge is finding the appropriate template for her. The Thief template from DF 1 is a lot closer to the Thief class from early D&D - a middling combatant who’s great at stealth, trap-finding, and reaching difficult places. The d20 Rogue class is still good at those non-combat things, but its main focus is stabbing monsters for massive damage. This is why Merisiel’s Pathfinder stats give her a rapier despite her bio’s focus on knives - it’s the best melee weapon for rogues in that system. I’m going to use the Thief template here, since it’s the whole point of this post, but I don’t want to leave the stabbing part entirely out. Fortunately, the list of Thief Power-Ups in DF 11 gives us something to remedy that.

  Our version of Merisiel is quite sharper than her original bio indicates, though I suppose it wouldn’t be apparent to someone who witnessed her failing two or more simultaneous self-control rolls. Both her DX and IQ are one point lower than you would expect for someone with these templates, to make room for the stabby (Weapon Master for all sorts of knives and Backstabber). The reduced IQ hurts some of her thief skills, but we make up for that with an extra level of Manual Dexterity (which also affects DX-based rolls for Traps and Lockpicking).

  Some future upgrades that look particularly appropriate are more levels of Backstabber and Night Vision. As a member of one DF’s “skill monkey” templates, she can also benefit from increases to all of her skills, particularly Main-Gauche (which is a bit low for a weapon master) and the mental skills hurt by the IQ reduction. Actually buying that “lost” point of IQ would be a worthwhile investment, as would the Thief-specific Talents from DF 11.

  Merisiel, 250-point Forlorn Elf Thief

  ST 11 {10}; DX 15 {80}¹; IQ 12 {40}; HT 11 {10}

  Damage 1d-1/1d+1; BL 12.1kg; HP 11; Will 12; Per 13 {5} FP 11; Basic Speed 6 {-10}; Basic Move 7 {5}.

  Advantages

  • Backstabber 1 (DF 11, p. 35) {10}
  • Flexibility {5}
  • Forlorn Elf (as Half-Elf) {20}
  • High Manual Dexterity 2 {10}
  • Magery 0 {0}¹
  • Night Vision 6 {6}
  • Off-Hand Weapon Training (Thrown Weapon (Knife)) {1}
  • Perfect Balance {15}
  • Striking ST 2 (Only on surprise attack, -60%) {4}
  • Weapon Master (One Skill: Main-Gauche) {25}

  Disadvantages

  • Compulsive Carousing (12) {-5}
  • Curious (12) {-5}
  • Greed (12) {-15}
  • Impulsiveness (12) {-10}
  • Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) {-5}
  • Social Stigma (Forlorn; as Half-Breed) {0}¹

  Primary Skills

  • Acrobatics (H) DX-1 {1}² - 14
  • Brawling (E) DX {1} - 15
  • Carousing (E) HT {1} - 11
  • Climbing (A) DX+3 {1}³² - 18
  • Escape (H) DX+1 {1}³ - 16
  • Fast-Draw (Knife) (E) DX {1} 15
  • Fast-Talk (A) IQ-1 {1} - 11
  • Filch (A) DX {2} - 15
  • Forced Entry (E) DX {1} - 15
  • Gambling (A) IQ-1 {1} - 11
  • Gesture (E) IQ {1} - 12
  • Holdout (A) IQ {2} - 12
  • Lip-Reading (A) Per-1 {1} - 12
  • Lockpicking (A) IQ+1 {4} - 13
  • Main-Gauche (A) DX {2} - 15
  • Observation (A) Per-1 {1} - 12
  • Pickpocket (H) DX+1 {2}⁴ - 16
  • Scrounging (E) Per {1} - 13
  • Seamanship (E) IQ {1} - 12
  • Search (A) Per {2} - 13
  • Shadowing (A) IQ {2} - 12
  • Sleight of Hand (H) DX {1}⁴ - 15
  • Smuggling (A) IQ {2} - 12
  • Stealth (A) DX+3 {12} - 18
  • Streetwise (A) IQ {2} - 12
  • Thrown Weapon (Knife) (E) DX {1} - 15
  • Traps (A) IQ+1 {4} - 13
  • Urban Survival (A) Per {2} - 13

  Equipment

  $754.0, 17.3kg. Light Encumbrance.

  • Ordinary Clothing [Torso, Limbs]: Free, 1kg.
  • Heavy Leather Leggings [Legs]: DR 2. $60, 2kg.
  • Heavy Leather Sleeves [Arms]: DR 2. $50, 1kg.
  • Leather Armor [Torso]: DR 2. $100, 5kg.
  • Backpack, Small [Torso]: Holds 20kg of gear. $60, 3kg.
  • Bull’s Eye Lantern [Backpack]: DF 1, p. 26. 10m beam, burns 6 hours per 0.5L of oil. $100, 1kg.
  • Oil, 1L [Backpack]: Includes flask. $4, 1kg.
  • Personal Basics [Backpack]: $5, 0.5kg.
  • Rope, 3/8”, 10m [Backpack]: Supports 150kg. $5, 0.75kg.
  • Lockpicks [Backpack]: $50, 0.05kg.
  • Long Knife x2 [Torso]: Damage sw-1 cut or thr imp. $240, 1.5kg.
  • Dagger x4 [Torso]: Damage thr-1 imp. May be thrown. $80, 0.5kg.
  • $246 remaining.

  1. Part of or modified by Forlorn Elf racial package ↩ ↩² ↩³

  2. +1 from Perfect Balance ↩ ↩²

  3. +3 from Flexibility ↩ ↩²

  4. +2 from High Manual Dexterity ↩ ↩²

• Dec 27, 2016

  Dragon's Dogma: Saurians

  

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

  • Humans
  • Goblins
  • Wolves

  Saurians are the least populous of the three sapient species inhabiting the Gransys peninsula. They are less technically sophisticated than humans but require little in the way of tools due to their great strength and hardiness. And while they’re not nearly as malicious as goblins, they’re fiercely territorial and have no qualms about eating any trespassers.

  A Saurian’s body is densely muscled and covered in scales similar to a crocodile’s in texture. Their heads resemble those of bearded dragons, and their mouths are filled with sharp teeth. A Saurian is able to walk upright not just because of its roughly humanoid limbs, but because of its thick tail that acts as a counterweight and shifts its center of mass backwards. The final result makes even a burly human warrior look rather puny.

  Saurians live in small bands humans call “basks” for their tendency to be found basking in the sun. They reproduce by laying large eggs with soft, slimy shells that require constaint moisture, which means basks often claim territory near large bodies of water.

  Saurians fight using crude spears and polearms sized for their large frames. These and the occasional rawhide satchel are the most sophisticated tools any human has seen them use. Those experienced in fighting them know to sever the tail: it can be targeted from the side or behind at a -2 penalty. Like the tail of certain mundane lizards, it comes off easily: injury over HP/2 is enough to sever it, which means the Saurian is unable to stand upright. This doesn’t reduce its movement, but it does mean it can only use its natural weapons to fight.

  Saurians in this state will usually try to flee the battle. The tail grows back in time even if severed!

  Below are descriptions of all species of saurian found in the original game and its expansion. They are meant to be worthy challenges to 250-point delvers, which makes them quite scary for less powerful characters.

  Common Saurian

  The most commonly found variety of Saurian is a dark brownish green in color, and conforms exactly to the general description above. They are cold-blooded, and thus tend to keep to Gransys’ warmer southern reaches.

  In the original game, there was a sizable group of them living in a flooded seaside cave underneath Cassardis, complete with a large amount of eggs.

  ST 15; DX 12; IQ 8; HT 12

  SM +1; Dodge 9; Parry 11U (dueling glaive); DR 4 (Tough Skin);

  HP 15; Will 10; Per 10; FP 12

  Basic Speed 6; Move 7.

  • Oversized Crude Dueling Glaive (16): 1d+4 imp or 2d+4 cut, Reach 1,2*.
  • Claw or Bite (14): 1d cut. The bite benefits from Born Biter (DF 3, p. 15).
  • Tail Swipe (12): 1d+1 cr. No penalty to hit targets behind the saurian.

  Traits: Born Biter; Claws (Sharp); DR 4 (Tough Skin); Peripheral Vision; Striker (Tail, Clumsy: -2 to hit); Teeth (Sharp); Terrain Adaptation (Swamp); Bestial; Cold-Blooded 2; Social Stigma (Monster).

  Skills: Polearm-16, Brawling-14, Wrestling-14, Stealth-12

  Class: Mundane.

  Equipment: Crude, oversized dueling glaive.

  Sulfur Saurian

  This species of Saurian is so named for the color of their scales, which are black with bright yellow streaks. They are a little more tolerant of the cold than Common Saurians, and thus live further north. They share the same general traits described above, and possess two other remarkable abilities: they can shift the color of their scales to match their surroundings, and they can spit paralytic venom!

  Basks of Sulfur Saurians are common on the margins of the river crossing the Cursewood in central Gransys and on the warm waters of Lake Hardship, being one of the reasons for the lake’s name.

  ST 17; DX 12; IQ 8; HT 12

  SM +1; Dodge 9; Parry 11U (dueling glaive); DR 4 (Tough Skin);

  HP 17; Will 10; Per 10; FP 12

  Basic Speed 6; Move 7.

  • Oversized Crude Dueling Glaive (16): 1d+5 imp or 2d+5 cut, Reach 1,2*. Often laced with the poison described below.
  • Claw or Bite (14): 1d+1 cut. The bite benefits from Born Biter (DF 3, p. 15) and from the poison described below.
  • Poison Spit (12): HT to resist; failure entails a non-cumulative -3 to DX and IQ for 1 hour. Acc 3, Range 10.
  • Tail Swipe (12): 1d+2 cr. No penalty to hit targets behind the saurian.

  Traits: Born Biter; Claws (Sharp); Chameleon 4; DR 4 (Tough Skin); Peripheral Vision; Striker (Tail, Clumsy: -2 to hit); Teeth (Sharp); Terrain Adaptation (Swamp); Bestial; Cold-Blooded 1; Social Stigma (Monster).

  Skills: Polearm-16, Brawling-14, Wrestling-14, Stealth-12

  Class: Mundane.

  Equipment: Crude, oversized dueling glaive.

  Geo Saurian

  This species has even stronger than a normal saurian, and has more clearly supernatural traits. Their scales are black with small red streaks, and have a metallic cast to them. Like sulfur saurians, they can change their coloration to match the environment and have dangerous spit. Unlike sulfur saurians, their sticky spit is flaming, not poisonous.

  Geo Saurians can only be found on volcanic mountains or near active geothermal vents. The most well-known concentration of these features is the Tainted Mountain, which lies in the monster-infested range west of Gransys’s borders. That’s not to say they couldn’t be found within some deep dungeon that also had these features, along with other fire-themed beasts!

  ST 20; DX 12; IQ 8; HT 12

  SM +1; Dodge 10; Parry 12U (dueling glaive); DR 7 (Tough Skin);

  HP 20; Will 12; Per 12; FP 12

  Basic Speed 6; Move 7.

  • Oversized Crude Dueling Glaive (16): 2d+3 imp or 3d+5 cut, Reach 1,2*.
  • Claw or Bite (14): 2d-2 cut with linked 1d burning. The bite benefits from Born Biter (DF 3, p. 15).
  • Flaming Spit (12): 1d burning. Acc 3, Range 10.
  • Tail Swipe (12): 2d cr. No penalty to hit targets behind the saurian.

  Traits: Born Biter; Claws (Sharp); Combat Reflexes; Chameleon 4; DR 7 (Tough Skin); Peripheral Vision; Striker (Tail, Clumsy: -2 to hit); Teeth (Sharp); Terrain Adaptation (Swamp); Bestial; Cold-Blooded 2; Social Stigma (Monster).

  Skills: Polearm-16, Brawling-14, Wrestling-14, Stealth-12

  Class: Mundane.

  Equipment: Crude, oversized dueling glaive.

  Saurian Variants

  In all cases, the stat blocks above are for average saurians of each type. The GM is free to increase their skills and attributes to produce exceptional individuals without any additional justification! A few possible variants found in the game merit special mention.

  Giant Saurians

  Some saurians reach absurd sizes! Maybe they just never stop growing, or maybe these have been contaminated by ambient magical energies. Take a normal saurian and increase its SM to +2; multiply ST by 1.5. Their even bigger weapons add +1 to damage on top of the ST increase. Truly colossal specimens at SM+3, ST x2 and +2 weapon damage might exist if the GM is feeling particularly sadistic.

  Pyre Saurians

  Despite their shape, they are not actual saurians, but lizard-shaped elemental beings of pure fire and magma. Start with the stats for a geo saurian and change its class to Elemental. Add Injury Tolerance (Homogenous), +2d to the burning damage from the bite and spit, and a 1d burning emanation in a 2 meter radius. Fortunately, they use no weapons and always rely on their natural claws, bite and tail.

  Saurian Sages

  Despite their bestial nature, Saurians do have a mystical tradition centered around mastering their vulnerability to cold. Those rare individuals who complete a pilgrimage to the roots of the world are able to master cold itself! To make a Saurian Sage, start with a normal saurian and remove Cold-Blooded. Raise IQ to at least 12, and add three or more levels of Water College Magery or Elemental Empowerment related to water. Give them any appropriate ice-themed spells or elementalist powers you wish. If starting from a geo saurian, their burning spit becomes freezing instead: it still does burning damage, but it’s no longer incendiary.

  Variant Stacking

  “Pyre Saurian” and “Saurian Sage” are incompatible with each other. You won’t even find individuals of both types working together! However, both variants are compatible with the “Giant” upgrade, and combining them can give you something not entirely unlike a dragon.

• Dec 19, 2016

  Pathfinder Iconics in Dungeon Fantasy: Jirelle

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

  • Amiri the Barbarian
  • Lem the Bard
  • Kyra the Cleric
  • Lini the Druid
  • Seelah the Paladin
  • Valeros the Fighter
  • Harsk the Ranger
  • Sajan the Monk

  Today’s template is the Swashbuckler, which means today’s character is Jirelle. Here she is:

  

  Even if you’re familiar with Pathfinder’s Iconics, Jirelle might be somewhat new to you. This is because the class she represents, the Swashbuckler, is not from the core rules but from the “Advanced Class Guide” supplement. You can find her bio here, and the only place where I could find her stats is inside this free package of premade iconic characters that contains all of them.

  From these, we can learn the following:

  • Jirelle is a half-elf born in the Shackles, a pirate-infested archipelago. She sunk her evil pirate’s mother ship to avoid becoming a demonic sacrifice, but the ship and its whole crew later returned as undead. Her main long-term goal is returning them to the depths.

  • Her fighting style is acrobatic and daring, relying a lot on precision and fencing skill.

  • She wields a rapier as her main weapon, and despite the illustration showing one of every traditional off-hand fencing weapon on her person, the character sheet indicates the buckler is her favorite.

  It turns out we have quite a bit more options when picking a template for Jirelle than we did back when I first started writing this series! The recently released GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Swashbucklers has five different swashbuckler templates, each one with a slightly different focus! Now, Jirelle’s piratical background might point to the Buccaneer, but her Pathfinder stats are all about the flashy fencing with only a slight nod towards seafaring skills. So it turns out that the default Swashbuckler template really is the best choice here. We just have to make sure she knows how to sail.

  I’m pretty satisfied with the result! Dungeon Fantasy Jirelle has skill 20 with her rapier and skill 18 with her buckler, which enables some pretty cool tricks. She also knows her way around a ship, and her Charisma helps boost her social skills and Rapier Wit ability. Making her a better leader of men would be a good use of earned character points, especially in parties that lack a more dedicated social character. And of course, points spent on Rapier will never go to waste!

  Speaking of “points spent on Rapier”, this version of Jirelle spends one character point on extra starting cash so she can afford the Edged Rapier.

  Jirelle, 249-point Half-Elf Swashbuckler

  ST 11 {10}; DX 16 {100}¹; IQ 10 {0}; HT 13 {30}

  Damage 1d-1/1d+1; BL 12.1kg; HP 11; Will 10; Per 10; FP 13; Basic Speed 7.25; Basic Move 7.

  Advantages

  • Charisma 2 {10}
  • Combat Reflexes {15}
  • Enhanced Parry (Rapier) 2 {10}
  • Half-Elf {20}
  • Luck {15}
  • Magery 0 {0}¹
  • Perfect Balance {15}
  • Rapier Wit {5}
  • Weapon Master (Rapier & Buckler) {25}

  Disadvantages

  • Code of Honor (Pirate’s) {-5}
  • Gregarious {-10}
  • Impulsiveness (12) {-10}
  • Obsession (Acquire a ship and crew to defeat my evil mother) (12) {-10}
  • Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents) {-10}
  • Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) {-5}
  • Social Stigma (Half-Breed) {0}¹

  Skills

  • Acrobatics (H) DX+1 {4}² - 17
  • Boxing (A) DX {2} - 16
  • Carousing (E) HT {1} - 13
  • Climbing (A) DX {1}² - 16
  • Fast-Draw (Knife) (E) DX+1 {1}³ - 17
  • Fast-Draw (Sword) (E) DX+1 {1}³ - 17
  • Fast-Talk (E) IQ {1} - 10
  • Intimidation (A) Will {2} - 10
  • Jumping (E) DX {1} ‐ 16
  • Leadership (A) IQ+1 {1}⁴ - 11
  • Public Speaking (A) IQ+2 {2}⁴ - 12
  • Rapier (A) DX+4 {16} - 20
  • Seamanship (E) IQ {2} - 10
  • Shield (Buckler) (E) DX+2 {4} - 18
  • Stealth (A) DX-1 {1} - 15
  • Streetwise (A) IQ {2} - 10
  • Thrown Weapon (Knife) (E) DX {1} - 16
  • Wrestling (A) DX {2} - 16

  Equipment

  $1378.0, 11.53kg. No encumbrance!

  • Ordinary Clothing [Torso, Limbs]: Free, 1kg.
  • Boots [Feet]: DR 2*. $80, 1.5kg.
  • Hat, Wide [Head]: $18, 0.15kg.
  • Leather Jacket [Torso, Arms]: DR 1*. $50, 2kg.
  • Leather Pants [Legs]: DR 1*. $40, 1.5kg.
  • Light Buckler [Torso]: DB 1. $25, 1kg.
  • Rapier [Torso]: Damage thr+1 imp or sw cut. $1000, 1.5kg.
  • Backpack, Small [Torso]: Holds 20kg of gear. $60, 1.5kg.
  • Personal Basics [Backpack]: $5, 0.5kg.
  • Waterskin [Backpack]: Holds 4L of liquid (4kg if water). $10, 0.13kg.

  1. Part of or modified by Half-Elf Racial Template. ↩ ↩² ↩³

  2. Includes +1 from Perfect Balance ↩ ↩²

  3. Includes +1 from Combat Reflexes ↩ ↩²

  4. Includes +2 from Charisma ↩ ↩²

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