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  • Oct 2, 2016

    Pathfinder Iconics in Dungeon Fantasy: Amiri

    Update: This is the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy version of the character. If you want to see a version for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, click here.

    As I write this, I noticed that we’ve had a handful of GURPS posts already and none of then has included any GURPS stats yet! I’ll try to remedy that here. Since it might be a while until I have concrete rules to show for the Dragon’s Dogma project, I’ll go with something completely different for this post.

    As you might know, Steve Jackson games recently completed a very successful Kickstarter campaign to finance the production of a standalone Dungeon Fantasy boxed set. This gets me in the mood to do something DF-related. Following the general Octopus Carnival theme of “adaptations”, I decided to adapt the Pathfinder Iconic characters to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. From what I can see, each of the originals is meant to both be a representative of their character class in the Pathfinder setting and to have a unique gimmick that helps individualize them. This should be just the right amount of complexity to illustrate what DF can do, as well. I’m sure a lot of people have done the same conversions in the past, but these will be mine.

    I’ll take each of the DF templates from Adventurers and use them to recreate the Pathfinder Iconic of the corrresponding class. We’ll pull material from other books as necessary to cover that character’s distinctive style. This should limit the complexity of the conversion while still providing an interesting exercise. The end result might not have the same mechanic “feel” of the original, but that’s a feature in our case: it will be a Dungeon Fantasy character, not a Pathfinder character. I’ll try to comment on any notable differences. Please also note that I’ll be using the current line of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy PDFs, not the boxed set, which is still a few months away from publication as of this writing.

    The first template listed in the book is Barbarian. Therefore, our first converted iconic is Amiri:

    By Wayne Reynolds, Copyright 2008 Paizo Publishing

    Amiri’s full official bio and character sheet can be found here. Judging from those, we can glean a few facts about her:

    • Amiri is good at outdoor survival in cold climates, since she returned from a “suicide” scouting mission.

    • Amiri is of normal human size, but fights with an oversized sword that used to belong to a frost giant.

    • She’s fiercely competitive and doesn’t like being outdone at barbarian heroing.

    • She relies a lot on the d20 Barbarian Rage power when fighting, and might get angry enought to lose her mind. In other words, the purpose of Amiri is to flip out and kill people.

    Here’s how I think she should look like in GURPS:

    Amiri, 248-Point Human Barbarian

    ST 17 {70}; DX 13 {60}; IQ 10 {0}; HT 13 {30}.

    Damage 1d+2/3d-1; BL 29kg; HP 22 {10}; Will 10; Per 12 {10}; FP 13; Basic Speed 6.00 {-10}; Basic Move 6.

    Advantages

    • Great Rage 1 {20}
    • High Pain Threshold {10}
    • Huge Weapons {1}
    • Outdoorsman 4 {40}

    Disadvantages

    • Berserk (12) {-10}
    • Impulsiveness (12) {-10}
    • Odious Personal Habit (Overly competitive) {-5}
    • Overconfidence (12) {-5}
    • Social Stigma (Minority Group) {-10}

    Skills

    • Animal Handling (Mammoths) (A) IQ {2} - 10
    • Bow (A) DX+1 {4} - 14
    • Brawling (E) DX {1} - 13
    • Camouflage (E) IQ+4 {1}1 - 14
    • Climbing (A) (A) DX-1 {1} - 12
    • Disguise (Animals) (A) IQ {2} - 10
    • First Aid (E) IQ {1} - 10
    • Fishing (A) Per+4 {1}1 - 16
    • Hiking (A) HT-1 {1} - 12
    • Intimidation (A) Will {2} - 10
    • Mimicry (Animal Sounds) (H) IQ+2 {1}1 - 12
    • Naturalist (H) IQ+2 {1}1 - 12
    • Navigation (Land) (A) IQ+4 {2}1 - 14
    • Observation (A) Per-1 {1} - 12
    • Running (A) HT-1 {1} - 12
    • Skiing (H) HT-2 {1} - 11
    • Stealth (A) DX-1 {1} - 12
    • Survival (Mountains) (A) Per+3 {1}1 - 15
    • Swimming (E) HT {1} - 13
    • Tracking (A) Per+3 {1}1 - 15
    • Two-Handed Sword (A) DX+4 {16} - 17
    • Weather Sense (A) IQ {2} - 10
    • Wrestling (A) DX {2} - 13

    Equipment

    $1865.0, 28.0kg. No encumbrance!

    • Ordinary Clothing [Torso, Limbs]: Free, 1kg.
    • Pot-Helm [Head]: DR 4, $100, 2.5kg.
    • Mail Shirt [Torso]: DR 4/2*, $150, 8kg.
    • Regular Bow [Torso]: Acc 2, damage thr+1 imp. $100, 1kg.
    • Hip Quiver [Torso]: Holds 20 arrows. $15, 0.5kg.
    • 20 arrows [Quiver]: $40, 1kg.
    • Oversized Thrusting Greatsword [Torso]: Damage sw+4 cut, thr+4 imp. $1350, 5.25kg.
    • Backpack, Small [Torso]: Holds 20kg of gear. $60, 1.5kg.
    • Blanket [Backpack]: $20, 2kg.
    • Personal Basics [Backpack]: $5, 0.5kg.
    • Rope, 3/8”, 10m [Backpack]: Supports 150kg. $5, 0.75kg.
    • Rations x4 [Backpack]: $8, 1kg.
    • Shovel [Backpack]: $12, 3kg.
    • $135 in coin.

    Design Notes

    Amiri spent 2 points in extra starting cash so she could purchase the big sword.

    Unlike the standard DF 1 Barbarian, Amiri lacks Gigantism, and thus is SM 0. While I know there’s a “Short Barbarian” option in Dungeon Fantasy Denizens 1: Barbarians, I don’t own that book and thus simply decided to remove Gigantism from her character sheet and adjust the point costs accordingly.

    Most of her discretionary advantage points went into the Huge Weapons perk that allows her to wield the sword without penalty, and the Great Rage advantage from DF 11: Power-Ups. Note that these normally require Gigantism - I waived this particular prerequisite here.

    Taking all of that into account, we have a perfectly playable DF character that hits all the same points as the original from Pathfinder! In campaign play, good choices when spending experience would be buying Combat Reflexes, the second level of Great Rage, ST and weapon skills to make Amiri a better combatant, or Absolute Direction along with more and higher Survival specialties to make more skilled in surviving the wilderness.

    1. +4 from Outdoorsman ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  • Sep 30, 2016

    Dragon's Dogma: Adventuring in Gransys

    In this post I continue the discussion of the “high concept” part of this project. The previous post finished with a summary of the pile of material I’ll have when I’m done. In this one I’ll discuss what it’s good for. What types of campaign can you play in Gransys?

    The Eternal Quest

    One alternative that springs readily to my mind is to steal the plot of the original game. The dragon comes, and the Arisen must confront it and uncover its secrets. This has the advantage of providing a solid structure and focus to the overall campaign, but also has the big drawback of holding no big surprises to anyone who is familiar with the source.

    Even if your players don’t know the original game, it’s better to not slavishly adhere to its detailed sequence of events. The important story elements in the original are its revelations, those moments when the player solves one of the many riddles posed by the game. How you get there can and should vary considerably.

    This kind of divergence is helpful both because it keeps familiar players guessing, and because it keeps the campaign itself fresh for the GM. It also makes use of the strengths of the new medium, as a tabletop game will undoubtedly offer far more possible resolutions to a given scenario than a computer game can. Players will need little incentive to come up with these novel solutions, and accepting that it’s OK for them to do so will turn their creativity into another asset for the campaign.

    One PC in this campaign must be the Arisen. The others can be either Pawns, or human allies. Another interesting variation is to have several PCs be Arisen. This can either be because the Dragon created more than one this time, or because older Arisen decided to come out of the woodwork for their own reasons.

    The appropriate power level for a campaign of this kind would be 250 points or more, the standard Dungeon Fantasy power level. The Arisen is always a very capable individual, and so should be anyone who can fight by their side.

    Just The Dungeon Fantasy, Please

    You don’t have to bother with all this Arisen business if you don’t want to, of course! Gransys is a perfectly adequate setting for a standard fantasy (or Dungeon Fantasy) campaign even without that. Decades or centuries pass between each draconic invasion, leaving plenty of time for people to get into unrelated trouble in between.

    Your party could be a normal group of adventurers who raid dungeons or take on dangerous jobs for fun and profit. The expanded map we’ll be working on should have plenty of space for you to fill with extra places to explore, and if the original game is any indication the inhabitants of Gransys are always needing someone to control the bandit and monster population or to go into dangerous and remote spots looking for relics and rare ingredients.

    This is pretty much a standard DF campaign with a more fleshed out map and a variable amount of Dragon’s Dogma flavor. You could even just use the map and not bother with any of the setting-specific character options if you are so inclined. 250-point characters are still appropriate, as are “low-level” 125-point templates if the group wants that specific feel.

    Beyond the Dungeon

    Gransys is also a good place for less dungeon-y fantasy campaigns. There’s plenty of urban intrigue to be had in Gran Soren and the Duke’s court. Wandering merchants and peddlers can lead quite eventful lives trying to make a buck. Soldiers in a remote fort have to contend with monsters from outside and morale problems from within. And it could even be interesting to step into the shoes of a regular citizen in this monster-infested world.

    Loot and Pillage

    Even if you decide not to use the setting at all, some of the supporting rules material could still make its way into a campaign set elsewhere. This includes character templates, any new items or item-related rules, and the monsters. Dungeon Fantasy can always use more monsters, no matter what setting it uses!

    So which will it be?

    Most of my efforts here will prioritize the first two approaches. This means they will be geared towards a campaign mostly based on the Dungeon Fantasy rules, with 250-point characters and lots of action. There will be rules to play Arisen and Pawns, but the rest of the material should work perfectly well for games without these things. I’ll try to include tips on lower point level games where appropriate.

    I will, however take some more time to detail the possible sources of intrigue in the setting, so those wishing to to focus there will be well-supported.

  • Sep 29, 2016

    Dragon's Dogma: High Concept

    There are many ways in which I could tackle this project. The order of the chapters in GURPS Adaptations is as good as any. Therefore, we’ll start our Dragon’s Dogma adaptation by looking at the setting’s high concept and considering our general approach to converting it to GURPS.

    What is Dragon’s Dogma?

    Dragon’s Dogma is a video game originally released for the Playstation 3, where it was shortly followed by a big expansion named “Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen”. The expansion contains the full original game and adds a several new areas and features to it. More recently, the game was ported to PC.

    This is an action game with RPG elements, set in a fantasy world. Its combat is quite dynamic and its soundtrack excellent. Its setting contains quite a few distinctive elements, which we will explore in detail below.

    Spoiler Alert?

    One thing I must get out of the way immediately is how full of spoilers this series of articles is going to be. The game’s plot contains several important twists, and while it does enjoy commercial success, it’s not so famous that I can simply assume any potential reader has already played it.

    This adaptation will mostly depict the setting as it stands before the game starts, and discuss information that is common knowledge to the characters who live there. There will be separate posts dealing with its deeper secrets, and those will both contain spoilers be marked as such.

    Themes

    The Eternal Cycle

    Land and skies, and seas yearn

    Finish the cycle of eternal return!

    From the Dragon’s Dogma song “Eternal Return”

    This “Eternal Return” is the original game’s main theme. Every once in a great while (years, decades, sometimes centuries), a huge rift opens in the sky of its fantasy setting and an enormous dragon comes through. Every time this happens, the dragon binds a specific human to it by ritually stealing and eating their heart. This chosen victim is known as the Arisen, for instead of dying they carry on living without a pulse, and possessed of a strange mental link to the dragon.

    Each Arisen is fated to confront their dragon. Those who are successful are hailed as heroes, and often become rulers: there are at least two dinasties started by former Arisen. In fact, the society of the entire world is shaped by this cycle. This has happened many times in the past, and if there’s one thing the inhabitants of this world can be sure of, is that it will happen again.

    This theme gets a lot of exposure, pretty much constantly. Several of the setting elements connected to it have existed in the world for so long no one finds them unusual. Much of the game’s plot involves finding out ancient clues about these draconic invasions. Plenty of NPCs will never stop reminding you that the ruler of the nation where the story takes place is a former Arisen himself. They will also constantly remind you that there’s a fight against the dragon looming in your future. And the verses quoted above show up in one form or another in most of the game’s soundtrack.

    Antiquity

    The land is old, and that doesn’t just mean it’s full of dungeons, either. Several landmarks you pass by regularly are structures build in ancient times, and your chatty NPC companions will always remark upon this. Some are so old no one even remembers who built them, or what they are for. Few people seem to be curious about this, either, which is another sign that from their point of view this stuff has just always been there.

    Danger

    A small army of monsters enters the world along with the Dragon, and many others are either native or managed to survive and form stable populations after a previous invasion. While there are safe spaces for humanity here and there, the space between them is monster territory. Several of the in-game NPC remarks and plot points show that keeping even a minimum standard of safety is a thankless job, and that major incursions are a constant danger.

    Every time the player goes into a dungeon or transitions between areas while inside one, the loading screen displays scary messages emphasizing how dangerous the place is.

    Often, when the player defeats a particularly nasty monster, nearby NPCs will remark on how unusual and spectacular that feat is. “Normal” people can only hope to stand against these in great numbers, and expecting losses.

    Setting

    The setting of Dragon’s Dogma will be discussed in greater detail in future posts, I’ll give a brief description here.

    The whole game takes place in the independent duchy of Gransys, which shares an unnamed fantasy world with several other nations from which it is separated by a mountain range or by the sea. It looks and feels quite medieval, with NPC clothing often remniscent of 13th and 14th century European attire (PC clothing and gear tends to be more outlandish). Their speech patterns are distinctive as well - the characters in this game do a better job of sounding medieval than those in many others. The landscape is typical of Europe-inspired fantasy settings, with forests, plains and mountains. The “age” and “danger” themes discussed above are heavily expressed in the design of this landscape, too.

    Other nations are mentioned by name, and some of the NPCs come from them, but the player never goes there.

    There is magic, and its existence is public. It is learned through the study of arcane principles. Most characters are human, and are racially diverse. The single nonhuman people (as opposed to monsters) are the Pawns. Pawns look human but have a different, somewhat alien mentality. They mostly wander the land working as mercenaries, but all have a special tie to the Arisen.

    Gameplay

    What do you do as an Arisen in Dragon’s Dogma? You walk the land either searching for answers to the mystery of the Dragon, or performing tasks for the Duke to make the kingdom of Gransys a safer place. Both often involve entering dark underground ruins, fighting a lot of monsters, and plundering their treasure. The deepest, darkest secrets are buried in the deepest, darkest, most dangerous dungeons.

    The game is single-player, but party-based. You directly control the Arisen and are accompanied by anywhere from one to three AI-controlled Pawns. One of those you create with the same level of detail as the Arisen. The others come from other players.

    You belong to one of nine different “vocations”, which are in effect character classes. Each one uses different equipment and has different abilities, which you learn as you “rank up” in each vocation. It’s possible to go somewhere and find a monster that’s vastly more powerful than what you’re prepared to deal with at the moment.

    Combat is real-time and fairly dynamic. Martial characters attack with weapons and have a varied repertoire of techniques as special powers. Spellcasters use staves and cast spells. Spells can consist of elemental attacks and buffs, health and status healing, or debuffs. Matching elemental effects to enemy weaknesses is an important strategy.

    There is limited grappling, too, as it’s possible to restrain human-scale enemies so an ally can kill them. It’s also possible to climb larger “boss” monsters in order to reach their weak spots.

    Most of the time is spent travelling on foot to important locations and exploring them. The game’s cities are more than just abstract collections of shops, but there’s only two of them on the map, with the rest of it being dungeon/quest sites and the monster-infested hinterlands. There are plenty of sidequests of the “kill X enemies” or “fetch X items” sort, and you can ignore the main plot to work on them, but many can be completed as you work on said main plot.

    There is a vast amount of items and equipment available, and you can improve your equipment by working with an armorer and providing them with payment and specific materials (many of which are monster parts).

    As in all games, there is some conflict between story and gameplay, but it’s not especially jarring. The biggest element of this would be Gransys’ somewhat truncated map. It only has two settlements with all its other locations consisting of dungeon or quest sites, but the story implies the duchy is bigger than that.

    Adaptation Stragegy

    Given Gransys’s overall look and feel, and what is expected of the player in the original game, this definitely sounds like a job for Dungeon Fantasy! That line will provide an excellent starting base, and only a little additional customization should be required to cover the elements unique to Dragon’s Dogma.

    What would these elements be? The first one is that it goes a bit beyond the default DF assumption that “town” is an abstract place to buy stuff between dungeon raids. “Town” is a concrete place, what goes on there is important, and can be an adventure in itself.

    On the other hand, it doesn’t to that much beyond the default assumption, as we’ve seen. There are only two fully-detailed settlements in all of Gransys, though the story implies there should be more. In our adaptation, we’ll expand the in-game map to the size it’s supposed to be, and fill some of the extra space with additional settlements. Or at least provide enough information for the GM to come up with one when needed. This will also give us the added benefit of more room to for dungeons and for wilderness adventuring.

    Character-wise, some change will be needed to the default DF template set. All magic in this setting is arcane, and most magicians are of the “staff and robes” kind. We will also need an extra template or two to exemplify the “hybrid” martial/magic vocations, which are the most distinctive. We should also come up with a racial template for pawns, since they are a common sight. And, though not every game needs to be about the Arisen, an Arisen meta-trait would be a useful thing to have.

    There’s no need to replicate each and every item and piece of equipment from the original game in GURPS, as GURPS already has a quite serviceable gear list that does provide some overlap. We might stat up one of two particularly distinctive items, though. And the equipment enhancement system is distinctive enough that it needs a tabletop equivalent.

    The most work-intensive bit, and the one most likely to yield dividends for generic Dungeon Fantasy games, are the monsters. There’s a ton of them, and DF can always use more monsters! We’ll try to link them to already existing GURPS versions, but some will need their own stats.

    Finally, but no less important, we’ll take a look at each of these elements as we go through them and discuss how they may be used in isolation in more generic campaigns. This way, you can use this material for your own “not-quite-Dragon’s-Dogma” setting.

  • Sep 28, 2016

    Adapting Videogames

    Before I start with the whole Dragon’s Dogma thing, I would like to discuss the process of adapting a video game itself. It will help explain my decisions.

    The excellent GURPS Adaptations contains a wealth of detail on how to adapt traditional fiction into an GURPS campaign, and while a lot of that is equally applicable to adapting from a video game I feel there are some important additional considerations. These concern gameplay.

    “Gameplay” is a term that encompasses everything you do in the game as a player, as well as the workings of these actions. Different genres of games give you different levels of insight into these workings, from the intuitive feel you get for your jumping distance in a platformer to all the numbers an electronic RPG shows you.

    Fiction has no gameplay. Even the longest fantasy novel with the most lovingly described magic system will never make its readers do anything other than read the text to see what happens next. Video games are the exact opposite of this. Even the most immersive and story-intensive of games will always demand that you pay as much attention to its gameplay as you do to its story and setting.

    If you think this sounds kinda similar to adapting from one tabletop RPG to another, you’re getting it!

    Essentially, adapting a video game into a tabletop RPG campaign presents us with all the difficulties of adapting fiction and with all the difficulties of converting material from a different game system!

    The more transparent those mechanics are, paradoxically, the harder they make the adaptation effort. When adapting mechanics, whether from a video game or from other tabletop RPG, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of trying to convert them as closely as possible. While that can be an interesting intellectual exercise, it rarely generates a simple and practical result.

    My preferred approach is to rely on the strengths of the “destination” system as much as possible, adapting the fiction and trying to recreate the same feel of the original mechanics without getting hung up on its details. Whenever the two conflict in the original, the fiction takes precedence. For games that are part of a franchise, I pick from the bits of setting information and mechanics that give me the most coherent picture (or at least the picture I like the most).

    In the end, I hope to have a campaign framework that is enjoyable to play and fits GURPS idioms. And I hope you agree with me about the result :).

  • Sep 27, 2016

    Introduction

    Welcome to the Octopus Carnival! This blog serves two purposes: hosting my English language RPG-related writing, and allowing me to learn how to use the Jekyll site generation engine.

    Why Jekyll? Because Tumblr has been getting on my nerves lately. I have a Portuguese language personal blog in there, and while I was never assiduous in maintaining it recent changes in the Tumblr user interface have made me even less inclined to do so.

    And why English? I’m not a native speaker, but pretty much anything RPG-related I’ve done in the past handful of years, from reading books to preparing material to playing the games, has been done in that language. It’s slightly easier for me to think about games in English at this point. Plus, I want to be featured in the GURPS Day summaries over at Gaming Ballistic!

    One of the biggest inspirations for this was the excellent and extensive Psi Wars series of articles on Mailanka’s blog, which aims to create a Star Wars-like setting from the ground up. Adapting stuff from media to role playing games has always been something I’ve been very interested in, and this finally pushed me to try it publically.

    As a first project, I intend to adapt some stuff from the Dragon’s Dogma video game. I think it will be relatively easy to do, and a smaller task than Psi Wars, but time will see if I’m wrong. In addition to that, I’ll post other stuff as it comes to me, like one-off characters or rules.

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