Where the hell did our horses go?

I made up a house rule on the spot today that I want to share. When the alligator struck, I had the horses make Fright Checks, which is common. Both wound up fleeing: Ash's riding horse right away, and the pony after a few seconds. After the fight, to round them up, I had Ash make an Animal Handling (Equines) roll. He missed by 6, so I ruled that he spent the next three hours looking for the horses.

So, here's the rule: if your mounts or pet dogs run away in a wide-open wilderness (not a dungeon), make the appropriate Animal Handling roll. Apply the penalty from the Speed/Range table for long range, reading "yards" as "animals." Thus, a lone horse gets a +2 bonus, the two horses got no bonus or penalty, and three horses gets a -1 penalty, and so on. If you succeed, you get them back with little fuss. If you don't, you get them back after a half-hour for every point by which you missed the roll.

This not only speeds play, as I don't want to game out every time the horses bolt and run (which is pretty much all the time, as neither is combat-trained), but encourages folks to spend points on seemingly useless skills like Animal Handling.

Game log 20 November 2016: Back into the swamp

Dramatis personae

Caleb, wizard
Mayhem, barbarian
Kim, thief
Ash, squire
Kôštē, cleric (NPC)
Villûdē, guide (NPC)

Quid occurrit

After leaving camp outside Vēristés Castle for the night of 3 Brugés, the gang set forth to the swamp. After trekking for a few hours in good weather, they reached the swamp, and there they chopped down a few trees and made a raft.

Late afternoon, Caleb spotted a big flyer in the sky. No sooner did he see it did that flyer fly towards Mayhem and try to stick its proboscis into Mayhem's armor. Ash and Mayhem smacked the flyer, which Caleb realized was a giant assassin bug, to death with one smack each. Kim was less helpful: she took a shot and hit Kôštē instead. Caleb bound the wounds of the cleric, who scowled at Kim.

That night, they camped in the swamp. In the middle of the night, Villûdē saw an onlooker: an alligator. She sounded the hue and cry, and the alligator made for the horses. Everyone streamed out of the tent, and saw the alligator, which flickered oddly. Villûdē turned white when she saw the alligator up close, while the flickering alligator so shook Ash that he ever after will have trouble sleeping in the swamp.

Kim and Mayhem, however, had no issue with the alligator, and both hit it hard enough that it fled into the swamp instead of chasing after the fleeing horses. Ash, already having trouble sleeping, spent three hours getting the horses back.

Ash slept on the raft much of the morning. Not long after he woke up, Villûdē hit a spot of land with the raft. Not at all odd, but before she could push away, many rat swarms started coming onto the raft, which had hit their nest. Kim, Ash, and Mayhem hacked away at them, while Caleb cast Create Acid to scald the lot of them. That afternoon, they spotted the alligator again, no longer flickering, but it swam away.

They made camp on a patch of land, and it rained that night. Not too long before daybreak, Kim spotted thirteen orcs coming for the camp. She yelled for the others, and aimed for the orcs. Once the others were out of the tent, the orc bowmen took their shots at the heroes, and Kim took an arrow to her chest. Not knowing what else to do, she dropped to the ground, dropped her bow, and played dead.

Six orcs came to the tent. Two of them tried to steal the pony, which gave them all kinds of trouble. Two of them went to the back of the tent and felled Caleb, who was trying to get a Blast Ball ready. The orcs then started to drag away Caleb.

Mayhem, seeing the orcs drag Caleb, ran over to them, and started hacking at them. Two of the bigger orc bowmen took shots at Mayhem, and one hurt Mayhem enough to maybe make him mad. He kept his cool, but chose to lose it to help his friend.

Ash, meanwhile, held off the orcs by the tent. The bowmen, after a few seconds of watching Mayhem and Ash take out their fellows, dropped their bows and rushed forward to help. (They also didn't have many good targets. The orcs who were still standing blocked the heroes, and they didn't want to shoot the horses, which would be tough to ride away dead, as well as drag away and eat back at their camp.)

Villûdē took a blow from an orc twice, but Kôštē stepped forward and healed her both times. She kept parrying the blows of the orc until first his sword broke, then the straps on his shield. At this time, Villûdē and Kôštē struck the orc, felling him. They did a high-five. "Girl power!"

Mayhem kept moving through the orcs, shrugging off their blows. Ash took down two orcs himself, and held against their leader. Still, the orcs kept coming. Kim had crawled away, as no orcs were near her, but then stood up after a few seconds and shot the orc leader from behind, though did not wound him at all. However, Ash wounded the leader so much that he chose to break off the strike, bidding the others to flee.

Res aliae

We chatted a bit about future character upgrades. I told them what skills were on the 250-point versions of their templates, and suggested social skills for them since they're mostly lacking them (Kim has Streetwise). John, who plays Ash and Kim, learned in the fray that Ash needs High Pain Threshold, though he should also use his Luck some as well.

We got John using Deceptive Attack with Ash for the first time, though just a point, while Chris hit upon the combination of All-Out Attack (Determined) and Deceptive Attack 4 (Mayhem has Two-Handed Axe/Mace-20). As the orcs had good defenses (11 for Parry and Block), this let him move through them with ease. I'll try to think of some easy attack options for Ash; Kim will be trickier.

What Dungeon Fantasy really needs is a good five-cent cigar

You all might have heard that there was a Dungeon Fantasy boxed set Kickstarter campaign, and it funded. One of the books in it will have about 80 monsters. Those come from Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons, Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1, Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2: Icky Goo, a few from Campaigns, and a few new ones that fill niches, like dragons, vampires, and werewolves.

There needs to be more.

Some of lure of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game is for folks who play D&D and want a little more. And D&D has hundreds of monsters. Indeed, they’re coming out with a new book of them right about now. (Note to my brother: Christmas?) Running pre-published D&D adventures in Dungeon Fantasy, which will be a common activity of these folks, will be easier with more pre-published monsters.

From the standpoint of this old hand, there’s another motive. I want monsters who will help me make other monsters. Right now, there aren’t many examples of Plant monsters. To make an evil tree, I have to use GURPS Magic: Plant Spells to give me an idea of how what a tree’s basic stats will be, then go off that. For smaller plants, I have even less guidance. I want them to work in GURPS, and I want them to work in a way wherein I can quickly adjudicate how certain spells and advantages will work with characters my players have made. And there are many traits in GURPS. Maybe when I make a monster, I forget one that it truly should have.

As such, I have a list of monsters I’d like to see in an official Steve Jackson Games monster supplement for Dungeon Fantasy. Yes, I’m channelling my inner b-dog. These come from common sources, mostly in the public domain. Most of them were in early D&D supplements, so we know they’re common in those games.

Android (sci-fi): Construct. It shows how science-fantasy can be done, and possibility of cross-over with other GURPS genres. Selling more GURPS books is a good thing. Androids also are non-magical Constructs. As such, they could be a challenge for Dungeon Fantasy players used to anti-magic to take out Constructs.

Catoblepas (Greek): Dire Animal. This handles the gorgon in D&D, which has a different origin than its Greek namesake. The key feature is its desiccating gaze, which sounds like a fatigue affliction to me. The plural is "catoblepones”: ka-to-ble-POH-ness. I’ll add a few of the ethnic plurals just to make things interesting, mostly Latin (a tongue I know) and Ancient Greek (a tongue with which I'm at least a bit familiar).

Centaur (Greek): Mundane (maybe Faerie). Common fantasy creature. This would also be a high point (about 100 points) racial template. Its unusual anatomy is a draw for making it. Its unusual anatomy is also a challenge in a dungeon.

Chimera (Greek): Hybrid. An example of its low-use class. Hybrids, by their nature, have odd morphologies, and I’m all in favor of having more of them for examples. It could also be a monster capable of facing down many PCs and hirelings with no help.

Deep One (“The Shadow over Innsmouth” by H.P. Lovecraft): Elder Thing. Common monsters from a public domain source, deep ones also are underwater monsters, which are lacking.

Djinni (Arab): Demon. Common non-European demons with many sub-types, like Efreeti and Ghuls. The plural is “djinn.” No tonic. I've shied away from Demons and Elder Things since those classes have many exemplars already, and because those classes should be either outright scary or outright odd, and thus game-specific.

Ent (The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien): Faerie. Yes, Faerie, not Plant, if you're following the Professor's works closely. You can make it a Plant (though that's the Huorns if you're following the books), and you might want to call it an Treant, though his litigous heirs haven't sued Blizzard Entertainment about the balrogs in Diablo. Regardless, an example of a plant-related creature if not actually a plant: a walking, talking tree.

Fighting Tree (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum): Plant. Another fantasy monster from a well-known public domain source and representing a little-used class. This would be a good representation of a more realistic tree foe, as in one that doesn't walk. 

Giant Beetle, Giant Centipede, Giant Fly (Worldwide): Giant Animals. Common in D&D and in fiction in general, they have a lot of variations. Almost as important is that plastic minis for these monsters are on sale by the bag-full at most dollar stores. They’re alike and akin to the Giant Ant of DFM3, but their bodies differ enough to make them three separate entities.

Giant Venus Flytrap (Little Shop of Horrors by Roger Corman, I suppose): Plant. Another common kind of fictional plant, which has few examples of its class so far. The clinging vines from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (Baum) are akin.

Golem (Jewish/Greek/Shelley): Construct. Common and pied. The clay (or stone) golem comes from Bohemian Jewish legend, the bronze (or iron) golem from Greek, and the flesh golem from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The flesh golem is also a crossover with the horror genre. Its plural is apparently “glamim,” with the stress on the “-mim.”

Green Martian (A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs): Mundane. Another sci-fi crossover. They could be a racial template, though their extra arms and resulting extra attacks might make them pricey.

Gryphon (Egyptian/Persian/Greek): Hybrid. This one is in the Basic Set, but the basilisk also has an official write-up for Dungeon Fantasy, so I'm being complete, and a hippogriff has to be half something.

Hellhound (Worldwide): Demon (or Faerie). Evil caniforms are long part of mythology and fantasy roleplaying games. Man's best frenemy, so to speak. There are many examples, and one could pick one (like the black dog, the crocotta, or the yeth hound) or come up with one of one's own.

Hippogriff (Greek): Hybrid. Another common fantasy beastie, this one also makes a good flying mount.

Hydra (Greek): Hybrid. The trope namer for its class. The hydra's heads, their extra attacks, and the need to sever them to beat the hydra is a tricky thing to handle. It's also a good water monster.

Jötunn (Norse): Mundane. This is the typical D&D giant, likely coming to D&D by way of L. Sprague de Camp's and Fletcher Pratt's "The Roaring Trumpet." The best other example would be the Greek Cyclops, as the genuine Greek Giant isn't all that giant. The plural is “jötnar” if we use Icelandic.

Kobold (German): Mundane (or Faerie). These little guys have a niche since goblins in Dungeon Fantasy are man-sized. Scads of little evil guys–the Diet Cokes of evil­­­–are common for low-level D&D characters to face. Kobolds' liking for traps gives an excuse to put more of them in an adventure, and using less-standard ones as well. Akin to the Morlock from H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine, when you think about it.

Kraken (Norse): Dire Animal. Yes, there's one in Allies, but it's an ally, not a bad mofo to face. The legendary kraken was surely a bad mofo of the sea.

Merman (Worldwide): Mundane. A legend wherever there is sea, it would work as a low-cost racial template for water-based games.

Nāga (Indian): Demon. A non-European demon, an example of a veriform monster. Apparently its plural is “nāgā.”

Nixie (German): Faerie. Faeries and sea monsters are under-represented, and a reason for this list.

Pegasus (Greek): Dire Animal. Again, flying mounts are popular. Pegasi are the most horse-like of the ones on this list.

Qilin (Chinese): Faerie. A non-European take on the unicorn and dragon legends. Also, as many of these guys in gaming are good guys, they'd be good foes for evil characters.

Rukh (Arab): Giant Animal. Another monster common to early D&D games. A note about riding one or using one to transport goods would harken to the tarn of John Norman's Tarnsman of Gor and many other books (the collective Gor books have more words than the Bible, which is how their fans take them). These were a staple of the Blackmoor campaign; this would harken back to it without having to mention these justifiably ridiculed examples of how not to write. It's the one Gorism that Gygax should have kept in the D&D draft, as using rukhs for long-distance transport is much more interesting than teleportation. I think the plural is "rikhākh." I'm not sure quite how that works; the Semitic triliteral root is a tricky thing.

Shoggoth (At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft): Elder Thing. Another horror crossover from a popular source, shoggoths are so alien that their write-up would teach a thing or two about unusual beasties.

Sphinx (Egyptian): Faerie. Much akin to the Sumerian Lamassu, but much more familiar to Westerners. Both would set up possible non-combat challenges. Apparently, the plural is “sphinges.” That G is hard: SPIN-guess, but with a little more air after you say that “P” (think the “P” in “pin” instead of “spin”).

Strix (Roman): Dire Animal. Another foe from the Basic Set that is common in these games. And the plural, folks, is "striges": STRIH-gayss.

Succubus (European): Demon. As Mailanka wrote in his guide, some monsters are just plain sexy. That bard who took Lecherousness needs to get his -15 points worth, if nothing else. “Foul creature from Hell, get off of Brandobar the Lusty! We shall send you b—oh! Uh … that’s not right.”

Unicorn (Greek): Faerie. Another monster that evil characters can kill, and good characters can handle as a non-combat challenge. I'd go with the more modern fantasy white mare instead of the medieval legend. Start with the mythology, and where it conflicts with modern fantasy conventions, go with modern fantasy conventions.

Werebear (The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien): Mundane. Represents a non-infectous shapechanger. Like most were-beasts, this one is an apex predator. That's important when placing were-beast lairs in the wild: there has to be at least as many lairs of the straight animal as the were-beast. And we don't bother to game out every rabbit encounter, so your werebunny is just frigging obvious.

Wererat (The Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber): Mundane. Another non-infectous shapechanger, this one is one of the few whose animal shape isn't an apex predator. This sets up non-standard challenges; the Lankhmar book that gives us these spends a lot of time in the sewers.

Wight (The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien): Undead. Mostly, it's here for its attack: level drain. Someone has to come up with a good GURPS level drain. Otherwise, it's just a tougher skeleton. You could give level drain to the wraith, I suppose, though I see that as a truly badass undead fighter instead.

Will-o’-the-Wisp (English): Faerie. Another faerie that sets up an encounter that isn't a straight-up fight. These are some kind of floating ball, which is, well, an unusual morphology.

Wraith (The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien): Undead. You can adapt the ones from GURPS Magic for this, but something has to be the fighter equivalent of the Lich.

Let's list these by class:

Construct: Android, Golem.

Demon: Djinni, Hellhound, Nāga, Succubus.

Dire Animal: Catoblepas, Kraken, Pegasus, Strix.

Elder Thing: Deep One, Shoggoth.

Faerie: Ent, Nixie, Qilin, Sphinx, Unicorn, Will-o’-the-Wisp.

Giant Animal: Giant Beetle, Giant Centipede, Giant Fly, Rukh.

Hybrid: Chimera, Gryphon, Hippogriff, Hydra.

Mundane: Centaur, Green Martian, Jötunn, Kobold, Merman, Werebear, Wererat.

Plant: Fighting Tree, Giant Venus Flytrap.

Undead: Wight, Wraith.

Sometimes the class is a marginal call.

As water-based creatures are a goal for this, those would be Deep Ones, Hydras, Kraken, Mermen, Nāgā. Creatures from non-Western mythology are Djinn, Nāgā, Qilin, and Rukh, which aren’t as many as I would like. 

There are a few like the Lamassu that I had on the list until I realized that the another monster (in this case, the Sphinx) filled the same niche. Others, like fantasy ghouls, didn’t truly have a niche. A niche is important for an official product, as space is limited and we’re paying money. We don’t need more stats for man-sized monstrous humanoids in GURPS. Come to think of it, we don’t need more stats for man-sized monstrous humanoids in D&D.

Creatures from modern fiction are Deep Ones (“Shadow over Innsmouth” by H.P. Lovecraft), Shoggoths (At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft), Flesh Golems (Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley), Green Martians (A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs), Fighting Trees (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum), Wererats (The Swords of Lankhmar by Frits Leiber), Werebears (The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien), and Ents, Wights, and Wraiths (all The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien). Obviously, this list bears a big debt to Tolkien, whose books fueled little of the atmosphere but much of the trappings of early D&D.

Game log 6 November 2016: Time to level up and get dirty again

Dramatis personae

Caleb, wizard
Mayhem, barbarian
Ash, squire
Kim, thief
Kôštē, cleric (NPC)
Villûdē, guide (NPC)

Quid occurrit

They went back to Mīstássun. On the way, they ran into three men with spears. One of them, who wore stud piercings in his ears, yelled at them to stop. “Doncha know about the toll?"

Caleb said, “There never has been a toll before."

The man with the stud earrings said, “We are collecting tolls in the name of the Queen!"

Caleb asked, “Where are your papers of commission?"

“Papers? We don’t need no steenkin’ papers!"

And then the fight started. The goons yelled, “Make it easy on yourselves!” as they came near.

Caleb said, “We are … on our pockets!"

Kim said, “In your wet dreams!"

The heroic murderhoboes had a field day on the not-so-heroic murderhoboes. Mayhem took out two, and Ash took out one. Kim broke her sword trying to stop one from hitting Caleb. They looted the bodies, and Kôštē bound their wounds.

On the bodies, they found 3 gold pieces, 140 silver pennies, and 147 copper farthings, as well as a bit of amber. More interesting though less lucrative were papers saying that the three men were members of the Reapers mercenary outfit: Permónos, who wore the stud earrings, Prēssīvós, a buck-toothed man, and Dībrátor, who had a hook for a hand. Kim knew the Reapers were mercenary band that camped outside of town and whose leader hung out at the Scarlet Harlot tavern.

Once in town, they sold the bit of amber, and Kim bought a new sword. They spent the next week training and hanging around the bars, keeping their ears open. They heard tales of a dragon living in an odd church in the Eldalîvā Woods in the west, and about the Armor of the Ape in an old tower in the Dumenrôn Swamp to the south. Caleb pored over old books, and found that the dragon Hiszgorr the Poisonous lived in the north of the woods, and tales an odd beast with a flailed tail roamed near a tower in the swamp. Not wanting to fight a dragon, they chose the swamp, though this time wanting to keep away from the ibathene.

Caleb found that no one knew anything about his doppelgänger. Not only that, nobody remembered anything about his doppelgänger, or that he had ever been there.

They made sure to tell the powers that be about the Reapers’ strike. Nabbrášus the mine owner shrugged her shoulders. The Town Watchman at the courthouse said that since the strike happened outside the town walls, there was nothing he could do. The man at the castle with the County took the papers, and thanked them for letting the County know.

Before leaving, they went to see Villûdē at the Wild Cats tavern. She wasn’t having a good night, trying to have the crowd give her money for her tales of the swamp, but they wouldn’t hear of it. “If you saw the ibathene, why are you still alive!” Dodging rotten tomatoes, they went up to Villûdē, and asked her if she wanted to guide them again. Wiping a tomato from her arm, she agreed.

Villûdē had not only heard of the beast with the flail tail, but had seen it, and said it was the santer. She didn’t know about the tower, but said the santer was in the eastern swamp, north of the ibathene and south of the nagas’ island. Caleb, however, thought it best to go at the swamp from the east, taking the road most of the way. Also, he thought it wise to meet the lord of Vēristés Castle, on the eastern road. Friends couldn’t hurt.

Because everybody needs a little ELP.

Thus, they set out on 31 Smôs, two days before the full moon. They took three days to reach the village of Agêdūnon, the last settlement before Vēristés Castle. From Agêdūnon, they set forth, but at midday, saw a tawny blur in the sky coming towards them. As it came nearer, they saw it had leathery bat-wings, the mug of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion.

A manticore. They weren’t too far from the spot in the woods where they fought another manticore a few months ago. It sprayed its tail spikes from afar but missed, while the heroes lobbed their volley. Caleb hit it hard with Stroke of Lightning, and it thought better of the strike and flew away.

As the night fell, they made it to Vēristés Castle. There, nine guards told the
m to hand over their weapons and come inside. After some dithering, they handed over their weapons. “Down with the Queen! Down with Ažbrátōr! Down with Nemmagós!” they shouted to the puzzled gang, and led it inside.

Inside, Lord Kaggrétōr, a man with sharp looks and light brown hair, made them all shout “Down with Ažbrátōr! Down with Nemmagós!” before signing a badly-written screed against the Queen. Most signed with an X, Kim with a squiggle, and Caleb signed, “Praidīvós of Mīstássun.” Kaggrétōr then asked them why the Queen hated him, why she tried to take away his castle, and, if they ever saw Count Gostálios, if they could put in a good word for him so the two could meet to talk.

With that, he threw them out, and tossed their weapons at them. They made camp, not having bought the parts for a raft from the castle.

Res aliae

As the manticore came in, with Chris's head in the way.

We spent a lot of time leveling up. At my behest, the players spent points and money into Carousing, and got two good rumors out of the deal. Being such a shifty crew, having skills in drinking at taverns seemed to fit.

After asking for world details, which brought out the note I had with my original rolls for the world four years ago with the idea that the local tree was a “palm” and the local game was a “reindeer,” Chris (Caleb/Mayhem) thought it a good idea to meet with the nobility, and saw Vēristés Castle near the swamp. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I’m always happy to play a loopy NPC.

We somewhat formalized the idea that there were main characters—Caleb and Kim—and more muscle ones—Mayhem and Ash. Mostly, that’s how things have been playing, as when they parley, they use the smarter characters for obvious reasons.