Searching for traps?

Richard LeBlanc writes great products, and now he has a new one on sale for $3: In Alley and Shadow. If you don't already have the D30 DM's Companion and the D30 Sandbox Companion, you have problems. Get it while it's cheap.

The section on Thieves’ Ability to Find/Disarm Traps (pp. 12-13) led me to think of a similar set of rules for GURPS:

Finders Keepers? When looking for traps, a critical failure on the Per-based Traps roll sets off a trap when it is present. Making the roll exactly when a trap is present leads the seeker to think a trap is there, but isn't sure. The seeker can look again, which takes a minute. When a trap is not present but someone looks, roll Per-based Traps anyways. A critical failure means the seeker thinks a trap is there, but isn't sure. The seeker can look again for the trap, wasting a minute.

I'll have to try it the next time I play.

Urbancrawling in Dungeon Fantasy

Urbancrawl procedures

1. GM determines weather
2. Wake up, handle effects of sleep, HT rolls for harsh climates, HT rolls for healing, breakfast
3. Shopping, healing, recharging 
4. Pick tasks for the day
5. Resolve tasks
6. Morning encounter
7. Afternoon encounter
8. Evening encounter
9. Cost of Living
10. Sleep/Night encounter

The General Idea

When the party gets back to town, resolve selling items from the dungeon first. Then, determine what the party wants to do, as these tasks, especially training and crafting, will determine how long the party must stay in town.

This is a work in progress. I have no idea how well much of this will work, though I have long assessed Cost of Living by the day, not by the week.

The High Cost of Urban Living

Cost of Living for Status 0 or higher is normally is $150/week. There are times when this is better assessed per day, in which case the Cost of Living for Status 0 is $20/day. This handles normal room and board, including cost to stay at a tavern. If delvers want to stay at an inn, this adds $80 to daily Cost of Living (thus, making it $100/day) and grants +2 to rolls for Bargain Hunting (Dungeons, p. 4; Exploits, p. 13), Rumors (Dungeons, p. 4; Exploits, p. 14), Advertising (Dungeons, p. 4; Exploits, p. 14), and Finding a Sponsor (Dungeons, p. 4; Exploits, p. 14).

Compulsive Behavior adds lower amounts to Cost of Living when tracking Cost of Living day by day. Instead of the chart on Adventurers, p. 59, a self-control number of 6 adds $16 each day to Cost of Living; a self-control number of 9 adds $12 each day; of 12 adds $8; and of 15 adds $4. This amount does not change with Status.

Daily Cost of Living to feed animals is $10 at SM 0. Halve this for each SM below 0, and take twofold this for each SM above 0. This likewise does not change with Status.

Slumming It

For Status -1, Cost of Living is $10/day, and the delver must make an Urban Survival roll against a cutpurse showing up to pick his or her pockets. Assume the cutpurse has an effective Pickpocket skill of 17 vs. the delver's Perception or Per-based Streetwise; failure means the cutpurse gets the delver's money. If the delver already owns a home here ($1,000 gets him or her a permanent hovel in town, but the delver still must pay Cost of Living), this roll is at +5. Casting the Watchdog spell before going to bed keeps this from happening.

For Status -2, Cost of Living is $4/day, and not only must the delver roll against Urban Survival to avoid a cutpurse as for Status -1, he or she must also must make a HT or HT-based Urban Survival roll to avoid the Aching Ague (below). If playing with the Hygiene modifier, apply it here. If for some reason the delver owns a home, that doesn't help at all with stopping the Aching Ague.

Someone living at Status -1 or lower might be going hungry. Roll Urban Survival. If someone living at Status -1 fails, he is down 1 FP from missing a meal; if someone living at Status -2 fails, he is down 1d/2 FP from missing meals. If someone living at Status -1 owns a home, he doesn't need to make this roll; if someone living at Status -2 owns a home, he still needs to roll, but treat failure as if he was living at Status -1.

Note that someone living below Status 0 will take a penalty to reactions in town equal to the Status at which he is living. He also takes the same penalty to Finding a Quest and Finding a Sponsor (Dungeons, p. 4; Exploits, p. 14).

Aching Ague

Bedbugs spread it, or rats and fleas on the street.

Statistics: Blood Agent (Bedbug bites); HT to resist; 1d-2 day delay; 1d-4 HT damage; 12-hour cycle with 6 cycles. Symptoms produce stomach problems, which is the Nauseated condition (p. B428) after losing 1/3 HT; after losing 2/3 HT, doing anything stressful like combat or moving more than 1 yard a second means a Retching (p. B429) spell for 2d seconds; resist HT to keep from retching. Not contagious.

Encounters

There are many chances for encounters in towns, but most of them are meaningless interactions. Check once for a meaningful random encounter each 6-hour segment of the day: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night. Encounters happen on a 9 or less, assuming you want big ones; size of the settlement does not matter. (I'm rolling on Midkemia Press's Cities myself.) Since most delvers sleep at night, skip checking for Night encounters unless the delvers are outside at night, or living at Status -2 and do not own a home. Resolve encounters as they happen.

Delvers can also go looking for someone or somewhere. Finding a known person or location in a settlement takes an Area Knowledge (Settlement) roll. Note that if the settlement's Search modifier is more than -2, the settlement will have neighborhoods with their own Area Knowledge (Neighborhood) roll. Rolling for the whole settlement when delver does not know or specify the appropriate neighborhood is at -2. If the delver has Area Knowledge for a neighborhood and wants to find something in another neighborhood, this is a flat -3 to the roll; don't worry about distance. Finding an unspecified location (i.e., a "tavern" or a "swordsmith") is just like finding a hireling on p. B517.

Daily Activities

What can a delver do during the day while in town? The short answer is one action of each of Getting Stuff Cheap (Dungeons, p. 3; Exploits, p. 13), Scoring Extra Cash (Dungeons, p. 4; Exploits, p. 14), Finding a Quest or Finding a Sponsor (Dungeons, p. 4; Exploits, p. 14), and training (Training Expenses, The Next Level, p. 43; Exploits, p. 93).

Getting Stuff Cheap: If a delver wants to try Scrounging more than once a week, he or she is -3 for each successive attempt. Crafting and Brewing take longer than a day, so the delver needs to do this action each day until the item is finished. Brewing potions take the time listed for the potion in GURPS Magic. A fletcher on a successful Armoury (Missile Weapons) roll can craft 15 arrows a day. Weapons and armor take a number of days equal one twenty-fifth of the cost of the item. Otherwise, these actions each take a day.

Scoring Extra Cash: All of these actions take a day.

Finding a Quest and Finding a Sponsor: Like Crafting and Brewing, these actions take longer a day; specifically, they each take a week. Thus, a delver needs to do this action each day for a week to make the roll.

Training: A delver can also train for one new trait a day. This requires no roll, and applies only to adding new traits. Spend the points and the money for training; no roll is needed.

Keep in mind that these activities are separate from resolving any encounters.

Doing Work for Yuda: A delver who is down on cash can try to earn some with a side job in lieu of the tasks listed in Getting Stuff Cheap. Someone with Armoury, Artist, Carpentry, Farming, Jeweler, Leatherworking, Merchant, a Professional Skill, Sewing, or Teamster at 12 or better (defaults do not count) can roll against the best of these. Success means the delver earns $30 that day; critical success means the delver earns $60; critical failure means the delver has been blacklisted from working for the next week. The GM need not feel bound by the listed skills; if a player can make a case for why his non-combat skill would let his or her character earn money, let it do so.

If a delver lacks any of these skills, he can try to be a day laborer for much less. Roll against the delver's best basic attribute (ST, DX, IQ, or HT). Success means the delver earns $15 that day; critical success means the delver earns $30; critical failure means the delver has been blacklisted from working for the next week and takes 1d crushing damage from a mishap or a beating. DR does not help with this damage!

These are not secure jobs! To have one of those, the delver must own a home. For $1,000, the delver can buy a permanent hovel in town. While the delver must pay Cost of Living as normal, he or she makes job rolls monthly, as on p. B517. However, the delver must be at home and not adventuring when making monthly job rolls, making this only a choice for a long-term layoff.

Dungeoncrawl procedures

Not long ago there was a post on the Alexandrian about the lack of dungeon keying guidelines nowadays. Fast forward to this week when I was chatting with someone on Discord about scenario structures, which led me to try looking for procedures for certain scenarios, which led me to an older post on the Alexandrian with a summary the dungeoncrawling procedures from the original Dungeons & Dragons. Somehow, I had missed this post before, or hadn’t paid it much heed, but this time, I was in the mood to fully port these procedures to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. So, this is it, with commentary below:

1. You can move a number of yards equal to twenty times your encumbered Move each turn. A turn is about 10 minutes long. Alternately, a party can move one room each turn.
2. Non-movement activities also take up a turn or some fraction of a turn. Searching a 10-foot section of wall takes 1 turn. Secret passages are found a Search roll at penalty, average -5; roll 2d-2 if you need a random number.
3. The party must rest 1 turn in 6. If a flight/pursuit has taken place, it must rest for 2 turns in 6. If they do not rest, the characters are down 1+Encumbrance level FP until resting.
4. Wandering Monsters: These show up on a 6 or less on a roll of 3d each turn; 7 is a clue if moving.
5. Monsters: When encountered, roll 3d on Reaction Table. Poor or worse is a negative reaction (fight); Neutral is an uncertain reaction (wary); Good or better is a positive reaction (welcoming). Apply appropriate modifiers.
• Monsters sighted at 4d yards, or edge of the room.
• Surprise: Per check. If failed, must make a DX check to keep from dropping a held item. Monsters are sighted at 2d yards instead of 4d.
• One side can try to avoid the encounter unless it is surprised and within 7 yards of a non-surprised side. Flight is a simple comparison of encumbered Move scores. Handle this in blocks of 15 seconds (since that's the threshold for a HT check); if the fleeing side gets a lead of 30 yards, the other side stops chasing it. If the PCs turn a corner or go up stairs or go through a door, there is a 2 in 6 chance the monsters keep pursuing. If the PCs go through secret door, there is a 1 in 6 chance the monsters keep pursuing. (See Running Away! (Exploits, p. 22) to handle obstacles for each side.) Burning oil keeps many monsters from pursuing; handle this as a Reaction roll: Bestial monsters will stop pursuit on a Neutral or better reaction, others stop on a Good or better reaction. Dropping edible items will force monsters who lack Doesn’t Eat or Drink to make a Will check or stop pursuit (Gluttony modifies check per Fright Check modifier); Bestial grants -5 to this check. Dropping treasure also forces a Reaction roll (Greedy modifies check per Fright Check modifier) to stop pursuit; monsters will stop pursuit on a Neutral or better reaction unless the monster is Bestial, in which case it will ignore treasure.
6. Other activities:
• Many doors must be forced open with Forced Entry at a penalty; roll 1d-1 if you don't know it. Failure means that you get the door open, but the GM makes another wandering monster check. Up to three characters can force a door simultaneously (each trained helper grants +1 to Forced Entry), but forcing a door means you can’t immediately react to what’s on the other side.
• Most traps are sprung 2 in 6; roll for each delver.
• Listening at doors (Hearing at -(DR+HP)/5, and at an additional -2 if you do not have a spy's horn) detects monsters behind closed doors. Monsters with Doesn’t Breathe advantage do not make enough sound to detect in this way.

Some comments:

1. The rates I give let PCs move a little farther in a turn than in D&D; the D&D rates translate to sixteen times Move for unencumbered movement. There are a few reasons for this. First is that it’s easier to multiply by twenty in your head. Another is that Dungeon Fantasy characters are much more likely to be slightly encumbered than D&D characters; almost no starting character is unencumbered without dropping all gear or having the Lighten spell always on. Countering this is that base Move for most Dungeon Fantasy characters is slightly higher than normal (Move 6 is average). A third reason is that the D&D rate is really slow, or 4.8 inches a second unencumbered. I get that this is abstracting searching and being on your guard as well, but still, you’re talking about the slowest you go.
• A handy coincidence for the 10-minute turn is that FP recovery rates are keyed to 10 minutes base. You can just say that a resting character gets back 1 FP in a rest, or 2 FP with Fit or Recover Energy-15, or 5 FP with Recover Energy-20.
2. I think we can assume that the movement rates above assume some general searching already. Again, D&D characters move 240 feet every 10 minutes. Unencumbered. If all they’re doing is moving, they're turtles. Characters in plate armor are moving half that.
3. The idea for this being the penalty comes from Travel Fatigue on p. 24 of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures. Having said that, I’m not wholly sure we need this; spellcasters are going to want to rest often in this system anyways. Anyways, OD&D doesn't list a penalty for not resting; Tom Moldvay's Basic D&D set has -1 to hit and damage. If we do want to go this route, docking FP is the way to go since this greatly weakens spellcasters and fits with how things otherwise work in GURPS.
4. Right now, wandering monsters in Dungeon Fantasy are mostly 9 or less on 3d every hour, or a 38% chance. Checking wandering monsters every turn keeps characters on their toes (and keeps the spellcasters from resting) and it’s easier to remember if you’re always doing it. Regardless, a 6 or less every 10 minutes translates to a 44% chance an hour, which is in line with the current rate. The chance of a clue is my addition; I’m keen on clues. Regardless, I pre-roll these, and just go down the list each turn.
5. This is a lot, but I’ll start with reactions. Not all monsters will fight. Granted, the reaction modifiers in Dungeon Fantasy make fight more likely than in D&D, but there always needs to be a chance. My own game's last session had an encounter which went well due to a good reaction roll. It would have been either a TPK or PCs skedaddle out of the dungeon had it not. Like wandering monsters, I preroll these.
• Sighted: This is a literal translation of D&D distances.
• Surprise: A Perception check works well for Dungeon Fantasy, and the rules (Surprise Attacks, Exploits, pp. 26-27) support this. This also lets me just halve the roll for the encounter distance.
• Avoid: I’ve done some fretting about how to handle running and you can convince me that there’s a better way. A more comprehensive system is on pp. 31-35 of GURPS Action 2: Exploits. Archon Shiva has another system and more thoughts on this. Regardless, I fixed the likelihood that going through doors or around corners stops the chase; Justin Alexander just transcribed things from The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures wrong or was writing it fast. (I think he was going from memory, and the exact rates aren’t important in the article or change its point.) I’m not wholly sold that I’m handling dropping treasure perfectly, but I like the basic idea: you can get away if you get rid of a precious resource. I’m sure bigger monsters need more food or smarter monsters need more treasure, but I don’t feel like working about that now. 
• Note on handling Greedy and Gluttony: Phobias in GURPS have modifiers to Fright Checks based on self-control roll. Apply this as-is (negative) to an attribute check or the inverse (positive) to a Reaction roll. Thus, a monster with Gluttony (9) will be at -3 to the Will check to keep from stopping to eat.
6. Other things:
1. Doors: I got rid of the auto-shutting doors of OD&D; that’s just too weird for too little benefit. If you want them, just use the OD&D rules for wedging open the door.
2. Traps: One benefit of being familiar with early OD&D (my knowledge comes from running Caverns of Thracia) is the idea that PCs do not auto-spring traps. The die roll abstracts the room and keeps you from having to suddenly force PCs to start showing you where they are on a map.
3. Listening: I did like being forced to think about how to handle listening at doors, and what that means. That’s part of the reason for this exercise. Thus, listening at the door means trying to see if there's a monster given non-obvious activity (I'm sure that if the monsters are covering Camel songs the PCs don't need a Hearing roll). Since undead don’t make a sound, that leads me to think that there’s something about the characteristics of being undead that avoids sound, and that led me to using Doesn’t Breathe for this. I took the penalty from the spy's horn on Adventurers, p. 26 (or p. 113 for the one in the boxed set), with the additional -2 to incentivize buying a spy's horn and thus treating it as equipment. Anyone can press his ear to the door and try to listen; spy's horns just make it better.

Hue and Cry

Because I realized I had need for something like this, both through play and through chatting with someone outside my group, here are rules for handling reinforcements when you fight part of a group of monsters inside their lair.

Hue and Cry: Not all monsters will be in their lair at all times. While this makes it easier to fight a small group, the others may show up and fight later! When fighting some monsters in their indoor lair, make a Per or Per-based Observation roll for the monsters; add any bonuses for Acute Hearing or similar Hearing-based traits. On a success, a number of monsters equal to one plus the margin of success will show up in a minute, and they will be aware there is fighting. Any not showing up in this group will show up in 1d hours, and will be unaware there is a fight. On a critical success, that number of monsters will show up in 3d seconds, with any not coming in this group will show up in a minute; all will be aware there is fighting. On a failure, all of the monsters will show up in 1d hours, unaware of anything amiss.

Outdoors, folks are usually farther away, leading to a lower chance of someone being around to hear the fight. Faster monsters wander farther than slower ones. Thus, take the lowest encumbered Move of the monsters, not including any bonuses for Enhanced Move, and look it up in yards on the Speed/Range Table (p. B550). Apply twofold this as a penalty to any Hearing-based rolls as above; don't apply a bonus for Move less than 2.

Roll Per or Per-based Observation as for indoors, with the penalty above for distance. On a success, half of any monsters out wandering will show up in 1d/2 hours (keep fractions), and will be aware there is trouble. The other half will show up in 1d hours, unaware of anything amiss. On a critical success, half the monsters will show up in 3d minutes, and the other half will show up in 1d/2 hours (keep fractions), all aware of the fight. On a failure, nobody will be aware of the fight; half will show up in 1d hours, as will the other half (roll separately for each half). Divide any times for monsters who are aware of trouble and using Enhanced Move to fight by one plus the level of Enhanced Move.

Signaling: Any monsters outdoors may try to signal their fellows out wandering. Use the rules for Signaling on p. 28 of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures. Assume that each half of those monsters are 1d times Move/2 miles away; roll separately for each half.

Either indoors or outdoors, if the delvers start fighting any reinforcements, make another Per or Per-based Observation roll for anyone else still not in the room or lair. Handle as above, except this goes for all monsters that would show up as reinforcements, not half or margin of success plus one. This keeps the GM from having to roll for smaller and smaller groups!

The upshot of all this is that players never should be sure they have cleared the room or lair, which is as it should be.

Hex Ed: Wilderness Hex Crawls in Dungeon Fantasy

Well, here's a promised full article that never ran in Pyramid. This one is in part my try to make my own version of the One-Page Wilderness System using only d6s. This is somewhat informed by use, advising folks to not to fill every hex with an encounter, leaving the lesser encounters up to pure random rolls. Honestly, I use the original system myself, with my only tweak being a 12 is a purely random encounter. Yeah, it's a d20 roll, but so what? I also always make the standard four rolls for morning, afternoon, evening, and night encounters, not the two recommended here, which was hewing nearer to Kromm's recommendation to one random encounter a day.

Regardless, I think all encounter rolls need to hem to the idea that not only do you need truly random encounters, but you also should have a roll to trigger any nearby encounter. This goes back to early D&D, with the roll to see if someone comes out of a castle if you pass within a few hexes of it.

Not long after writing this, I understood what Rob Conley meant when he told me that getting lost rolls were more trouble than they're worth, and went to a failed Navigation roll lowering how far you get in a day, and something you roll only once a day. I am leaving the rules for getting lost for those folks who want them, however, as I did use them early in my campaign. I also have better ways of handling % In Lair, which are elsewhere on this site. For encounter distances, see the post about the ibathene.  

With GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures, Dungeon Fantasy comes out of the dungeon. A hex crawl can make a wilderness like a dungeon, but more open-ended.

A hex crawl is a set of adventure sites in a wilderness that delvers can explore. Unlike a dungeon, these sites are not linked together. Indeed, the dwellers in those sites may have little to do with each other, and could well have their own dungeons.

Hexes in a hex crawl are like rooms in a dungeon. Hexes show where things are, and give limits to movement and sight.

Making a Map

For a hex crawl, you need a map with hexes. Hexes can be of any size, which is typically a number of miles. Most hex maps have hexes that are 4 to 12 miles across. Bigger hexes won't have many encounters from nearby hexes happen, while smaller hexes will have many more. You can get your map however you like, whether you make your own, you download it from the Internet, or you take it from another game. The original Dungeons and Dragons game took its hex map from Outdoor Survival, an Avalon Hill game.

When making a hex map don’t worry about filling every hex with an encounter if you are using smaller (4 to 6 miles) hexes! Only worry about the bigger encounters. Empty hexes can be like empty rooms in a dungeon, which give a break. You need not fill more than a third of the hexes, and can get away with filling a sixth of them. Fill them with settlements, lairs, landmarks, you name it.

Beasts can move between hexes. They're even more likely to do so, since there aren't walls and doors to get in the way. Hexes can even have dungeons in them, which let you run a dungeon crawl inside your hex crawl.

Lairs

In a hex crawl, “lairs” are all nests, buildings, caves, dungeons, and other places in which dwell monsters and other foes. For each monster lair, note the following:

• How many monsters are in the lair.
• How much treasure is in the lair.
• Whether the lair is hidden.
• Any special defenses the lair has, like traps or guard beasts.
• Whether the monsters leave the lair.
• If the monsters leave the lair, how many of them are in a group, how far (in hexes) do they wander, and when in the day they wander, typically day or night.

A lair itself is a place that might need a map, especially if you think the players might spend a lot of time there. Lairs often have non-fighters, like children or elderly, guard beasts, slaves, prisoners, or whatnot. There might be other lairs nearby, and they might be foes of the monsters in the first lair. The whole lair can be a dungeon, which is a nest of smaller lairs.

Moving from Hex to Hex

The rules for Travel (Wilderness Adventures, p. 20) handle most movement issues. Each hex has a cost to move through it. This cost is equal to the size of the hex in miles, divided by the travel speed for the terrain (Wilderness Adventures, p. 22). Each hex should have only one travel speed. A boon of hexes is that you need not worry about mixed terrain, since each hex has its own modifier for this worked out beforehand.

The delvers’ final travel speed (Wilderness Adventures, p. 23), multiplied by the daily travel time (Wilderness Adventures, p. 23), gives the total movement in miles they can go for the day. This is the budget the delvers can spend to move through hexes. To move from a hex, the delvers must spend the cost of the hex in miles. If the hex has a bigger cost than the delvers have miles of movement, they stay in the hex. Keep track of the number of miles they spend each day, since they can put many days’ travel together to push through a hex. Sometimes, it is best to make a hex map of a bigger hex if the explorers are moving around inside the hex and you need to keep track of where they are in it.

Example: A band of explorers have Move 2, which means they move a mile each hour. They take out two hours for foraging, so they get 10 miles of movement for the day. The band wants to move through a 5-mile hex of dense forest, which is ×0.20 to travel speed. Thus, the hex has a cost of 25 miles. It will take the delvers two-and-a-half days to go through the hex.

Getting Lost

When hex crawling in the wild, with no landmarks or road, make a Navigation roll to go into each hex instead of each day (Wilderness Adventures, p. 22). Success means the group makes it into the hex with no problem, while a critical success shaves off a mile of the effective width of the hex. A failure means the hex costs more to go through: raise the cost to move through the hex by +20%. A critical failure means the group has wandered into one of the two hexes to the sides of the hex into which they wanted to go. Pick one of them randomly, or the one with terrain most like that of the hex they wanted. A Per-based Navigation roll means someone has figured out that the group is in the wrong hex.

Ignore the above whenever the characters can see where they want to go! It’s a little hard to miss the big mountain or the hustle and bustle of a town from six miles away.

Encounters

Check for encounters whenever delvers go into a hex, and one more time for each day and night. Roll a d6 twice to find out which hour of the day or night; if the second die comes up 4-6, add 6 to the first die to find the hour.

For 4 to 6 mile hexes, roll 3d on the table below. The extra roll for each day and night happens in the hex in which the delvers happen to be at that hour.

Encounters (4-6 mile hexes)

Roll (3d) Result

3-8 Nothing happens.
9 Clue to an encounter keyed to a nearby hex. Roll 1d, and count the hexes clockwise starting from the top-right hex. If this hex has no encounter, or the encounter keyed to it does not wander between hexes, nothing happens.
10 Clue to an encounter keyed to this hex. If the group is not moving or there is no encounter in this hex, nothing happens.
11 Random encounter. The GM should have a table of random encounters that are the lesser encounters in the wild. These foes can have a prefix (GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1, pp. 36-38). You can roll randomly for these. Roll 2d. On a 2 or 3, that foe has one of the prefixes in that tome. If one of the delvers has Weirdness Magnet, the foe has a prefix on a 2, 3, or 4 instead. You should make a list of which prefixes monsters can have, and roll to see which prefix the monster does have. For monsters with lots of treasure or a complex lair, it helps to write up a lair before the game.
12 Encounter keyed to a hex two hexes away. Roll 1d, and count the hexes clockwise starting from the top-right hex; roll another 1d, and if it comes up 4-6, count another 6 hexes clockwise. (If you have a d12, you can roll that instead). If this hex has no encounter, or the encounter keyed to it does not wander two hexes away, nothing happens.
13 Encounter keyed to a nearby hex. Roll 1d, and count the hexes clockwise starting from the top-right hex. If this hex has no encounter, or the encounter keyed to it does not wander between hexes, nothing happens.
14-16 Encounter keyed to this hex. On 16, this happens near the monster's lair if the group was moving; otherwise, it happens outside. If there is no encounter in this hex, nothing happens.
17-18 Roll twice. Both results happen at the same time.

For 8 to 12 mile hexes, roll 2d on this table instead:

Encounters (8-12 mile hexes)

Roll (2d) Result

2-4 Nothing happens.
5 Clue to an encounter keyed to this hex. If the group is not moving or there is no encounter in this hex, nothing happens.
6 Clue to an encounter keyed to a nearby hex. Roll 1d, and count the hexes clockwise starting from the top-right hex. If this hex has no encounter, or the encounter keyed to it does not wander between hexes, nothing happens.
7 Random encounter. See the notes for 11 above.
8 Encounter keyed to a nearby hex. Roll 1d, and count the hexes clockwise starting from the top-right hex. If this hex has no encounter, or the encounter keyed to it does not wander between hexes, nothing happens.
9-11 Encounter keyed to this hex. On an 11, this happens in the monster's lair if the group was moving; otherwise, it happens outside. If there is no encounter in this hex, nothing happens.
12 Roll twice. Both results happen at the same time.

Clues are just that: hints that are about the encounter in question. These can be sights, sounds, smells, droppings, tracks, dead victims; you name it. The only need is that they have something to do with that encounter. If the players want to find out what left that clue, let them make a roll. They might roll against Heraldry (for an old banner), Naturalist (for droppings), or Survival (for an old camp). A critical failure gives wrong information ("Wild horses can leave claw marks too."). If the players want to follow the clue, let them make a Tracking roll to their way to the lair. A critical failure means they go the wrong way and alert one of the other deadly beasts in the wild.

The GM needs to put the lair of a random encounter onto the map when he rolls the encounter. To do this, roll 1d-3. Add the Size Modifier of the monster, or the Basic Move if it is lower than the Size Modifier. Subtract one for each of Bestial or Loner, and add one for Flight. If the tally of this roll is positive, fivefold that in miles is where its lair is; roll 1d for direction as in #6 above. (If using 4-6 mile hexes, skip multiplying it by 5, and read the number as hexes.) If the roll is 0, then the monster's lair is in this hex, but the encounter doesn't happen in it. If the roll is negative, the encounter happens near the monster's lair.

For a hex with a keep or a settlement in it, roll on this table before the group reaches the keep or settlement. The result on the table happens before the group reaches the keep or settlement. The keep or settlement is usually the keyed encounter for the hex. If the result is an encounter in the hex, then it will be guards or dwellers from the keep or settlement.

Let’s Split

Gamers have long held splitting the party to be dangerous. In a hex crawl, if a party splits up, like in Scouting (Wilderness Adventures, p. 25), each group coming from the split makes its own encounter rolls. Since each group will be smaller than the party as a whole, it is less able to fight whatever shows up.

Senses

Encounter Distance

When starting an encounter, each side makes Perception checks to see who is surprised. Let each player roll for his own character. For NPCs, roll against their highest Perception, and give them a bonus for the number of them there are. Use the “Size” column of the table on p. B550, but read “yards” as “NPCs.” For in-between numbers, use the lower bonus.

If no side is surprised or both sides are surprised, let the encounter start with 6d×2 yards between the two sides. If one side is surprised and the other is not, let the side that still has its wits about it choose what to do about the other. It can get to 3d yards from the other side before the other side becomes aware of it. If it wants to get nearer, it needs to make Stealth rolls, opposed by the higher of Hearing or Vision. Again, let the players make their own rolls. For the NPCs, roll against the highest number. The number of NPCs is a bonus for spotting stalkers, but a penalty for stalking. Use the same bonus as to Perception for surprise when spotting stalkers, but treat it as a negative to Stealth for the stalkers.

Finding Dungeons and Lairs

Most landmarks are easy to find. After all, what good is a town if nobody is there? But some spots, like dungeons or lairs, are hidden. If they were not, someone else would have already looted them! To find a hidden place, make a Tracking roll, and apply the Long-Distance Modifiers (GURPS Magic, p. 14) for the hex or other area size. (For 4- to 8-mile hexes, this will be -4; for bigger hexes up to 30 miles, this will be -5.) This is a thorough search, and the time the search takes is the same time it takes to move into the hex. Having a good map gives a bonus, and anyone with Area Knowledge for the place in question can roll against that instead. Failure means the delvers do not find the place, but may look again. Critical failure not only means they don’t find the place, but also that they alert whoever lives there! Anyone who fails can try again as much as he likes until he finds the place, gives up, or a grue eats him.

On a Clear Day You Can See Three Miles

A human can see about 3 miles in clear land. If one climbs a tree, he can see 9 miles. In hilly land, about 200 feet from sea level, he can see 19 miles. In mountains, about 1,000 feet above sea level, a human can see about 42 miles.

Realistically, size changes this. A smaller creature has its eyes lower to the ground, and can't see as far; a half of a mile less for each Size Modifier below 0 works for PC races. For each Size Modifier above 0, a creature can see another mile. For all but pixies and leprechauns, this isn't a big deal, and pixies can fly to make up for being vertically challenged. Don't worry about size if the looker climbs a tree or is on a hill, since the height of the tree or hill is now what is key.

To tell what something afar is, the delver makes a Vision check, as on p. B358. This is at +10 most of the time, since it is in plain sight. The relative Size Modifier of the target to the looker is a modifier to the check, as is terrain. For all but Mountain or Underwater terrain, dock another -2 for being in hilly lands.

Vision Modifiers

Terrain Modifier
Arctic -2
Desert -2
Island/Beach -0
Jungle -7
Mountain -4
Plains -0
Swampland -7
Woodlands -6
Underwater -8

Further Reading

Conley, Robert. How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. This is a step-by-step guide to making a sandbox fit for a hex crawl.
Sorolla, Roger S.G. One-Page Wilderness System. This is the inspiration for the encounter table; the original has a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license.

Random rules and rulings

1. Seeing that Arduin had a table for it ("Arduin has something about everything. It's like Dianetics for men." — Psycho Dave), I was inspired to ask how to quickly mimic rope breaking for GURPS. So thus, after folks told me some things, I come up with this:

If you use a rope for more than its listed weight capacity, you must make an HT roll for the rope (assume HT 10 unless you paid more for higher HT) to see if it breaks. The rope is at -1 to HT for each 10% of listed weight capacity by which the load goes over the weight capacity, so for a normal rope, going at 170% of listed weight capacity will always break a normal rope. Remember that this weight capacity is halved for dynamic loads, which would be lifting or climbing without slowing down first (say, in combat, or lifting an animal without making an Animal Handling roll first). Also, a critical failure on a Climbing check while climbing when the rope is overburdened breaks the rope unless the climber's Climbing skill is 16 or better.

2. Weregeld. Seeing as how I like making lawbreaking penalties fines rather than prison time, I wound up reading up on the weregeld. In short, use the Cost of Living-based fines based on the Cost of Living of the victim rather than stock Status 0. So killing a Status -2 bum would be a mere $1,000 weregeld payment to his family or liege lord, but killing a Status 7 king is $600,000,000. I know this does not scale with the historical weregeld (which was about $4,000 for Status 0, with a halving for Status -1, and about $40,000 for killing the king), but it will deter murderhoboes from murderhoboing after a big haul.

EDIT (3nov2017): Since that scales up way too fast, the fines scale up with victim Status +1. Halve for Status -1; quarter for Status -2. Have fines be twofold the Class B/C felony fine for a Class A penalty, but Mīšarkênē is definitely a death penalty jurisdiction.

3. We didn't play on Sunday, as we had one player out-of-town and another in the hospital (again). So Roman, who plays Xórin the fox-man, his nephew Joseph, who may be joining us shortly, and I all played Blackmoor at the Source Comics and Games, which is kind of a Midwest Mecca for nerdery. Bob Meyer, who played Robert the Bald in the original Blackmoor game, ran the game. According to him, he inherited the game when Dave Arneson died. I never got to play with Dave even though I had met him a few times in the early Nineties, so this was the closest I could come. (My brother, however, not a huge D&D player, not only played with Dave, he got his D&D Rules Cyclopedia signed by Dave and Ross Maker and whoever else was around that night. Lucky little shit.) I'm the guy wearing the Cartman t-shirt, Roman is next to me in the black T-shirt and with one side of his face that looks like it was caught in a time glitch with the panoramic shot, and Joseph is in the Twins tuque. No, it wasn't cold in there, so I don't know what was with the tuque.

How was it? Fun. It was rules-light, with us playing ourselves as one of a man-at-arms (what I played; there were two others), the guard captain (who served as the caller), a couple of scholars (Roman, who could cast spells by smashing a vial of Blackmoor water), three scouts (Joseph), and one woodsman (er, woodswoman, who was one of Dave's "Scandihairians," or hairy Vikings drawing on Dave's Norwegian ancestry). We cleared out two levels of Castle Blackmoor, with Orcs and Trolls, and managed to burn out six rooms, including the floor of one room. We all had one special power of our choosing—mine was to be able to make friends with anyone, which I didn't tell the others, leading to a funny episode wherein the I led out the first Orc we met, with the intent of having him show me where the other Orcs were, and instead the other fighters killed him. (Plus there was the idea of having my own Orc army.) It was a good lesson in keeping things non-linear.

Quick House Rule

Inspired by this thread, I'm making a cost to feed the animals: $10/day for SM 0. I do things a day instead of a week to handle a game calendar. So for the pony and the saddle horse, both of which are SM +1, the cost is $20 each a day.

So, Cost of Living: $20 Ash, Ash's horse, Kôštē, Mayhem, Caleb, ponies

$28: Xórin (Compulsive Carousing)

$28: Kim (Compulsive Spending)

$196 day, $1,372 week

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.

Smart swords

I'm thinking out loud with this post. I've been trying to come up with an angle on intelligent weapons to write as a Pyramid article, but I keep having trouble making them special, especially as the things they do in early Dungeons and Dragons or mythology are the Accuracy spell. This is my thinking on this as of the moment. I haven't playtested this.

There’s a spell in GURPS Magic called Weapon Spirit on page 64. In short, it gives a weapon an IQ score, and can communicate with empathy or, with the right spells, speech. That’s pretty much it. There can be other spells on the weapon, but you can always do that. The weapon could have some disadvantages, which would truly piss off a player.

Forgive me, but what a goddamn bother. Brains in a sword should give you a boon for wielding it, not just giving you a talking metal buddy that might not like you anyways.

So, these are two simple things any intelligent weapon can do that shows that it has a brain:

1. Anyone who has an intelligent weapon Ready can Dodge attacks from behind him (p. B391), at -2. For those attacks from the side hexes which he normally must defend at -2 (p. B390), he defends at -1.
2. If you hit when targeting chinks in armor (p. B400) with an intelligent weapon, you get through all DR, not just half DR.

The wielder must get a reaction of at least Neutral the first time he picks up the weapon to get these boons (or any others tied to the sword’s intellect). These boons show things the sword sees and understands and lets its wielder know.

Smart weapons are fickle. Remember, they need a reaction roll to use. Charisma and Born War Leader will always impress a weapon; Appearance and Voice do not. Status might; your call.

Let its Will be its IQ plus its highest level of Puissance or Accuracy. The wielder is -1 to Will checks against the weapon for every 1/4 HP or FP he is down. Control checks are a Quick Contest of Will. Check when:

• The wielder has a chance for another magic weapon
• One of its disadvantages comes up (see below)
• The wielder drops below 1/3 HP or FP
• Someone with a higher weapon skill is available to own the sword. Use skill plus maximum basic thrust or swing damage, as applicable.

If the sword wins the Quick Contest, it will make the wielder bypass the other weapon, abide by its disadvantage, keep fighting even if the wielder has lost most of his HP or FP, or drop his weapon to let the higher skilled fighter pick it up.

If a sword has a disadvantage, it expects its wielder to abide by it, and will try to control its wielder in case of any conflicts. The sword gets a bonus to its Will rolls to control its wielder regarding its disadvantage, and this bonus is equal to the penalty to Fright Checks for Phobias at each Self-Control Number, read as a positive. Thus, a sword with Honesty (15) gets a +1 to Will rolls to make sure its wielder behaves honestly, while a sword with Honesty (6) gets a +4 to the same rolls.

Resting in the dungeon

Over at Tenkar's Tavern, the Tagblatt of the OSR, there was a link to the Basic & Expert Dungeon Master Tools. Great little site, and I'm sure I'll be using it when I get my girls and some of their friends in a D&D game sometime this fall. (Note to Tony Bravo: can you add the wilderness encounters from the Expert Set to the Wandering Monster Encounter Generator?) But going through the Dungeon Turn Tracker, I noticed something I hadn't spotted in almost 30 years of playing D&D:

Once an hour, or every sixth turn, the party must rest. If it does not, it is -1 to attack and damage rolls.

Upon seeing this, I opened my PDF copy of Moldvay Basic and did a search for "rest." Lo and behold, I found this on page B19, next to last graf on the page:

RESTING: After moving for 5 turns, the party must rest for 1 turn. One turn in 6 (one each hour of the adventure) must be spent resting. If characters do not rest, they have a penalty of -1 on all "to hit" and damage rolls until they do rest. 

Sum' bitch. I'll blame the fact that I started with a kitbash of Mentzer Basic and the AD&D Players Handbook for missing this one.

Now, what does this mean for GURPS? After a moment's thought, it's pretty easy. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures gives a rule (p. 24) for being down FP at the start of a wilderness encounter:

If on foot (Feet, p. 21), rowing or paddling, or otherwise doing work, the missing FP depend on the encumbrance of travel gear (above): 1 FP for None, 2 FP for Light, 3 FP for Medium, 4 FP for Heavy, or 5 FP for Extra-Heavy. 

So if you don't rest every sixth turn in the dungeon, you're subject to this. It shifts the burden of being down from the fighters to the spellcasters, but with the ease of healing spells in GURPS, that is more sensible since that often determines how far a party can go.

I'll have to remember this one next time they're in the dungeon.

Crimes and fines

A few sessions ago, I had do wing a trial for “unlawful spell dueling” because one of the players thought he’d run inside and sit around after said unlawful spell duel. When it came time for penalty, I had no frigging clue, and no guidelines, so I fined Caleb the Cost of Living for a month of high living at Status 0: $600. I didn’t want the game to slow down, and I didn’t want Caleb to admit to an airline pilot that he had been in a Turkish prison, so I made it a fine.

Thinking about it later, I made the right choice on many levels. Not only did a fine speed the game along, but it sapped a resource precious to the players. Still, I lacked guidelines beyond the Cost of Living, so I did some reading and googling.

First, I should say outright: I’m not a lawyer. My father is, and my mother was a librarian for a law firm, and I passed press law in college. I haven’t been in trouble with the law since the powers that be haven’t found out that I peddle hookers, blow, and guns. This is from looking through the legal codes of Minnesota, Google, and Wikipedia. I’m sure I fucked something up somewhere.

Anyways, the characters have committed a crime, and someone has found out and called for the police or Town Watch. To see if it comes, I roll 1d, and compare to the local Control Rating. If it gets below the Control Rating, the gendarmes come, but it takes long enough that the characters can think of something to try to flee. If it gets above the Control Rating, the authorities are too busy eating doughnuts. If it rolls the Control Rating exactly, the authorities come so fast that the characters don’t have a chance to flee.

EDIT (3nov2017): I realized that this always means you have a 1-in-6 chance of having the gendarmes come if you don't flee, regardless of CR, which, come to think of it, seems wrong. So instead, have the fuzz show up on a roll of half the CR, rounded down. A roll of the CR or less but more than half, means you can still get away.

Next, run the trial, per p. B508 in the Basic Set. Make the Reaction Roll, and the Quick Contest of Law (Criminal) for an adversarial trial. The result and the level of offense determine what happens. Apply a -3 to the Reaction Roll for Social Stigma (Criminal Record); once a crook, always a crook.

Good or better reaction: You’re walking.
Neutral: For a felony, you get off. For a lesser crime, you pay half the listed fine (see below), but serve no jail time or probation.
Poor: You lose. What you lose depends on the level of offense.

• Petty misdemeanor: This is being caught speeding or smoking a joint. The fine is Cost of Living for a week, or $150.
• Misdemeanor: First-time DWI, or fifth degree assault (scaring someone into thinking he’s gonna die, or giving him a good bop on the head). The fine is Cost of Living for a month, or $600.
• Gross misdemeanor: This is second-time DWI, or prostitution. The fine is Cost of Living for three months, or $1,800.
• Class D felony: The list of offenses here include possession of stolen property, false claim of crime, weapon possession violation, promoting child molesting, vehicular homicide, fraud, domestic violence, or unlawful firearms sale. At this point, you’re assured of doing some jail time. The fine is Cost of Living for five months, or $3,000, plus 1d-2 years of jail; treat a roll of 0 as 6 months, and a roll of -1 as 3 months.
• Class C felony: You did something like kidnapping, arson, sexual assault, second degree murder, robbery, bribery, receiving stolen property, or forgery. Needless to say, you’ve been a bad boy, or somebody really doesn’t like you. The fine is Cost of Living for ten months, or $6,000, and 1d years of jail.
• Class B felony: You’ve really been bad. You did something like attempted rape or attempted murder, aggravated sexual assault, reckless homicide, manslaughter, assault and battery, or heroin or cocaine possession. The fine is the same as a class C felony, and the least of your problems, as you’re also serving 2d years of jail. (An aside here. I try to keep politics off this blog. I don’t like it in gaming blogs since we’re not going to agree on this stuff, and it’s irrelevant to our elf games. But the idea possessing some blow can get you the same penalty as beating up someone or shoving your dick in someone’s face is truly fucked up to me.)
• Class A felony: Rape, murder. It’s just a shot away. And you’ve been put away for life. I assume you don’t care about the fine anymore.

Bad: Twofold fines and jail terms. A gross misdemeanor also has 1d weeks of jail. Twofold the 1d-2 years of jail for a class D felony is 1d years of jail.
Very Bad: You likely drank Jobu's wine. Twofold fines and threefold jail terms. A gross misdemeanor has 1d months of jail, and a misdemeanor has 2d days of jail. Threefold of 1d-2 years is 1d+2 years. Class A felonies become death sentences in jurisdictions that have death penalties.
Disastrous: Twofold fines and fourfold jail terms. Gross misdemeanors serve 2d months of jail, misdemeanors serve 1d weeks of jail. Fourfold of 1d-2 years is 2d years. In CR 6 jurisdictions, lesser felonies get death at this level.

This is a quick generalization. Obviously, if you’re running a game in England in the 18th century or in Athens under Draco, the juries will react at a bonus, but anything worse than Neutral for a felony brings death.

If there is a jail term with a misdemeanor or a gross misdemeanor, after the offender gets out, he has probation for sixfold his jail term. Probation in game terms is having Social Stigma (Criminal Record) for this length of time. If you don't get in trouble again, the Social Stigma goes away once the time is up. Otherwise, you'll have to spend half the sentence in jail again. Felons have Social Stigma (Criminal Record) for the rest of their lives unless they can get the government to overturn or nullify this.

For civil cases, the base amount is the amount of damages sought. Each level of difference of reaction grows the payment by half as punitive damages. The government instead of the plaintiff might get the punitive award in some areas.

If an amount is needed for bail, use one tenth of the standard fine, or the standard fine for felonies. That’s the amount actually paid to the court or a bondsman, not the amount of bail. Caught skipping bail means you have to pay the full fine, or tenfold the full fine for a felony, and stand trial for the original offense, with a -3 penalty to the Reaction roll at trial. You’re also at -3 to future Reactions to whoever bonded you.

Lodging for Wayfarers

One thing that stuck out was that I didn't have any rules for finding lodging in a village without a tavern or inn. Now, of course, you don't need rules for these things, but I realized there wasn't a downside to staying at someone's house instead of camping.

To stay at the home of some peasant, make a reaction roll. On a Neutral or better (10+), the PCs can do this. Don't bother rolling for every home in a settlement; this is for the whole settlement. Historically, this is a common way to wayfare; folks seldom left home, and welcomed the tales wayfarers would tell, and the small trade they would bring.

Of course, there are modifiers to this reaction roll. For each day after the first, apply a -3 to the reaction roll; the wayfarers eat the food, and the tales get old. Apply another -3 if there is a tavern or inn in the village, as if there is, that's where wayfarers should spend the night. The weather can affect this too: use the weather modifiers for Survival and Tracking in DF 16, p. 30, but reverse the signs, as bad weather makes folks more likely to help.

(Incidentally, these rules will work fine for classic D&D if you make the reaction penalties for extra days and the presence of a tavern -2 instead of -3. I'd make them -4 in d20 or D&D 5e, since a reaction roll is on a flat d20 (it's a Charisma check) instead of 2d6 or 3d6. Folks in classic D&D let you stay on a reaction roll of 7 or better, 10 or better in d20.)

A pickpocket shouldn't happen often, maybe only on a 3 on 3d. If you want to have the Bloody Benders happen, that shouldn't be a random roll, and needs to be role-played.

Even MOAR points!@@!@!!

Compulsive Lying: Like Lecherousness, Compulsive Lying is a -15 point disadvantage that needs some reasons to justify its high point give-back.

The easy way to do this is to assess a -3 reaction penalty, which turns Compulsive Lying into an Odious Personal Habit with a roll to resist it, much like Bully. Half of me says this is the right way, but the other half of me says this is the quick and easy way, and the quick and easy path leads to the Dark Side. You can handle it so an NPC rolls against IQ (that's 10 if you don't know) to know if you're lying. If he doesn't make his roll, he has a -1 reaction penalty to you, but if he does, he reacts at -5. Treat the self-control roll as a bonus to the NPC's roll, a la the chart with Phobia (p. B149), with the negative sign read as a positive bonus. The advice given in GURPS Social Engineering (pp. 35-36) is mostly for someone practicing deliberate deception, rather than someone who just can't tell the truth for the life of him.

Something about this seems unsatisfying. I've known folks with this disadvantage—I suspect we all have—and much of the time, their constant lies are only annoying, but sometimes, they make big problems. I'm torn between what the effects of this are in real life, which are unquestionably worth -15 points, and the smaller in-game problem that you're unable to convey facts to NPCs, which is a -5 point disadvantage, maybe -10, which is how the Basic Set treats it.

Gullibility: The game effects of this are wholly unlike Unluckiness, which I consider the definitive -10 point disadvantage. Again, Unluckiness doesn't kill you or even directly hurt you, but it happens in every session.

Gullibility, however, won't happen every session, but when it does happen, it can kill you. If we think there's a trick every session, then a self-control number of 12 means you'll fall for it one session in four. I'm not sure there is a trick that will trigger this every session, but if you say that Gullibility also gives a penalty to resist illusions equal to the Phobia self-control penalty chart (p. B149), this becomes fully worth the -10 points.

Klutz: This is a small physical disadvantage, but the issue is that it's an extra roll each game day. Its effects are akin to Unluckiness, so I don't see how this is too much to make it at the beginning of the session, then maybe again later when there's a new day or some other significant happening happens. It would be boring to roll this each day of wilderness travel, especially when the typical 250-point delver taking this will have DX 12. Maybe roll it once for being in town at start, once for the trip to the dungeon, once each level of the dungeon, once for the trip back, and once for ending in town.

Laziness: Just a reminder that after I published my article, Peter V. Dell’Orto added some suggestions for this one, to which I linked in an edit.

No Sense of Humor: Since the lone game effect of this disadvantage is the -2 reaction penalty and the disadvantage is worth -10 points, it applies all the time. This overrides what the text in the Basic Set says. Maybe it won't apply when talking to the King, but that's a special effect at the GM's whim. This is another Odious Personal Habit in all but name.

No Sense of Taste/Smell: While I don’t think there need to be any more game effects, this is a disadvantage that might be worth more than its -5 points suggests. No potion tasting for you. No detecting poison gas traps. If a GM plays his dungeon right, this one can be nasty.

Short Attention Span: This one makes Absent-Mindedness seem harmless for guard duty. Rather than making both a sense roll and a self-control roll to detect an ambush, make the sense roll at a penalty equal to twice the penalty a Phobia of the same self-control (p. B149) roll would give you: -2 for 15, -4 for 12, -6 for 9, -8 for 6. Also apply the normal Phobia penalty (not twice it; see p. B149) to any spell with a casting time longer than a minute. And you’ll need to make a self-control roll to ever take extra time to do something.

Squeamish: I know I talked about this one last time, but the self-control roll will need to happen to go into a sewer. Like Phobia (Open Spaces) or a conflicting Vow, this one could make someone not do anything during an adventure, or at least split the party, so a GM will have to think about what to do with a character stuck outside a sewer.

Trickster: For the most part, this disadvantage seems fine as written. Indeed, reading it, it seems to be fun to play even if it might get you killed, like Berserk. My issue is more like the one I have with Klutz: a day isn’t always a great span of time for this, especially when trekking through the wilderness with nothing more harmful than a deer coming into your sights. Think of having a schedule for this akin to the one I wrote in Klutz, or, if you do roll daily, having a trickster who finds no one to outwit to be grouchy (see Fanaticism). Being -1 to IQ-based skill rolls is deadly in the wild, wherein Survival, a Per-based skill (and thus affected), is the one that keeps you alive.

Lessons learned by this exercise:

• The table for Loner (p. B142) or Phobia (p. B149) is your friend if you want to get rid of rolling things twice.

• A whole bunch of GURPS disadvantages are only small variations on other ones. There are many Odious Personal Habits hidden under other names. If there ever is another revision of the GURPS game, it would be a good idea to systematically go through the disadvantage list and just list these under Odious Personal Habits.

• Some of the prices are whacked out. Lecherousness, I’m looking at you.

• I wish I could get a good hour with the full HackMaster book rather than the free Basic PDF. There are a few good ideas for Odious Personal Habits in the Basic PDF, if nothing else: Close Talker (you have no concept of personal space), Foul-Mouthed (alright, I’ve seen this fucking Odious Personal Habit before), Needy (which is kind of like Chummy). There’s also a good table of Superstitions (Delusions) and a list of Allergies: Animal Dander, Food, Insect Stings, Mold, Pollen. The HackMaster d20 has an interesting list of Quirks and Flaws: Flatulent, Sound Sleeper, Sleep Chatter, Nervous Tick, Male Pattern Baldness, Narcolepsy, Jerk, Loud Boor, Inappropriate Sense of Humor. It seems like one of those games wherein I never would run the game myself, but can gleefully mine it for stuff to use in games I do play, like GURPS or D&D.

Getting Your Points' Worth

I'm a Loony. I don't think GURPS has enough disadvantages.

Disadvantages were one of the things that drew me to GURPS 25 years ago. Teenage I liked the idea of PCs being greedy or horny and playing this, and here was a system that had mechanics to encourage this. Adult I still likes this.

Now, over the years, I can see some of the downsides. Disadvantages can get forgotten by both players and GMs, leading to free points for folks who take vague disadvantages. Also, I'm running Dungeon Fantasy, and frankly the advantages are of more use in a game that always involves NPCs in genuine social situations. Mind you, I tend to run my game with Dungeon Fantasy as a base and pile world detail onto it, but the issues are still there.

And so, for my benefit as much as anyone else's, I'm writing this post. I should note that I combed through the GURPS Basic Set and GURPS Social Engineering to write this, and took a look at HackMaster Basic as well. I'm taking the common law attitude that other rules systems may give guidance. If you know more such systems than I and want to share it, please, let me know. I'd like to look at the full version of HackMaster, or Hero to get more ideas.

Absent-Mindedness: This is a 15-point disadvantage. To give everyone a good idea of what that means, Unluckiness says the GM can fuck over a PC once a session.

That’s Unluckiness, a 10-point disadvantage. So a 15-point disadvantage needs to be tougher than that.

Now, back to Absent-Mindedness. First of all, note that the GURPS Basic Set points out that the penalties apply to guard duty. Second, if you want a little more bite, since the absent-minded wizard might shirk guard duty anyways, think of the HackMaster approach: take away a small item. Doing this the GURPS way, make an IQ-2 roll in secret to see if the character didn’t bring along a small item. If he fails, roll randomly to see which item he didn’t bring. Don’t tell him until he tries to use the item. This is like the way in the Basic Set, but moves the roll to the beginning of the session, which is easier to remember.

Bad Temper: There are two issues here. First is that Basic doesn’t define what lashing out does. Selfish (p. B153) comes to the rescue: the target gets -3 to reactions towards you. Anyways, the next issue is a stressful situation. I’d say this is an IQ-based skill roll, or a DX-based skill roll for skills modified by High Manual Dexterity, done at an overall penalty. Down in the dungeon, you’re likely not near too many NPCs while picking that lock, so failing a self-control roll means the character stops using the skill, bitches at whoever set him off or is nearest to him, then must make the skill roll at -2. I suppose you could make a skill roll to let you make a skill roll instead of one roll at -2, but that’s irritating.

Also, GURPS Social Engineering (p. 70) notes that someone with Bad Temper must make a self-control roll when taunted, with a penalty equal to his margin of defeat. 

Berserk: As well as the normal issues in Basic, GURPS Social Engineering notes that someone with Berserk has the same problems with taunting as someone with Bad Temper does. Hmmm … this sounds like kender versus barbarians might be an interesting fight idea.

Bloodlust: Failing a self-control roll means the character will strike at a downed foe, even when that foe isn’t a threat. If you’re playing with most foes going down when they go below 0 HP, let the player dispatch a downed foe on a Melee Weapon roll; don’t bother with damage. This kills the foe right this second, meaning that’s the only wasted second.

As well as losing time in combat, this disadvantage will make it hard to take prisoners. For starters, many of them will be dead, and nobody is going to surrender if he sees that some blood-crazed murder hobo will kill him anyways.

Bully: When can he get away with it? That’s a good question. Most prisoners, I’d say, and many NPCs. Regardless, however, the reaction penalty handles most of this disadvantage, which is mostly an Odious Personal Habit with an action associated with it.

Charitable: You know you won’t be killing any downed foes, right? You need to make a self-control roll to not help any downed foe who isn’t still obviously dangerous. You can make some rational assessments: this mostly applies to Faerie or Mundane foes, and nothing known to be Truly Evil. Add the foe’s SM to the self-control roll to keep Charitable PCs from helping downed dragons. If you’re not a skilled healer, you’ll just make a First Aid roll (even at a default) to bandage, which will mean that your foes will be alive the next time you would trigger this encounter.

Colorblindness: Among other issues, this will make assessing gem worth hard. Make this an automatic failure on any Merchant roll to do this.

Compulsive Carousing: Most of the partying will be done in town. Increase cost of living as Compulsive Generosity.

Compulsive Gambling: Most of the gambling will be done in town. Increase cost of living as Compulsive Generosity.

Compulsive Inventing: The disadvantage of the artificer. Basically, roll self-control any time an artificer can solve a problem without inventing something. Failure means he goes for the invention anyways. Think of Twist in the Fresh Beat Band, for those of you with young kids. I think of the original Marina in that show myself, albeit for other reasons.

Compulsive Vowing: This little disadvantage brought this all along. I have a character in my game with it, and frankly, it’s a bothersome little disadvantage. If you don’t want to ban this silly disadvantage, the character will vow to see through whatever mission he is undertaking. If for some reason the character has to do something else before the mission’s end, he is -1 to reaction rolls for each self-control roll level (use the table on p. B142 for Loner) as he’s a pissy Anakin Skywalker-wannabe. No, not Darth Vader; that would make him cool.

Cowardice: Well, you do realize what happens in Dungeon Fantasy, right? Just letting you know before you take or allow a PC to take this.

Moving on, a character with Cowardice needs to make a self-control roll to go into combat with someone of a bigger SM, or if outnumbered more than 3:2, or when facing someone obviously better skilled or having tougher weapons. Also make a self-control roll to keep from running when you take lose more than half your max HP.

Curious: I don’t have a good definition of a mystery, but a character with Curious will drink from that magic fountain, or listen at that ratty door or peep through that hole unless he makes a self-control roll. He won’t try to trigger traps for no good reason, however.

Disciplines of Faith (Ritualism): The character needs another hour each day for these rituals, whatever they are. Effectively, they’re like Chi Rituals, just not as often or as silly.

Dwarfism: Having run a PC with this, I say to remember Reach penalties, and the penalties in Pyramid #3/77: Combat. Otherwise, this becomes a free +1 to hit, which isn’t much of a penalty.

Fanaticism: This is going to be a problem disadvantage, so think about it for a second. Unless your Fanaticism is for finding monsters in dungeons, killing them, and taking their stuff, you’re going to be sulking about every mission, and logically finding a way not to go on it. (And if it is, then this is free points.) If this doesn’t bother you, consider any fanatic unable to dedicate himself to his mission is grouchy.

Grouchy: You’re not getting your way, and you’re gonna let everyone know. Until you get back on track, you are -1 to all IQ-based skill rolls, self-control rolls, and reaction rolls.

Keep in mind that if your Fanaticism doesn’t come up, you just gave yourself -1 all the time. I don’t think that’s too fun, but suum cuique.

Gluttony: You need extra meals each day. How many? See the reaction penalty for Loner NPCs (p. B142), and read that as “extra meals” instead of a reaction penalty. You will have extra meals with you, and if you don’t, you will stop and hunt or forage. If you cannot, make a self-control roll each day. If you fail, you will be grouchy (see Fanaticism).

Greed: Another 15-point disadvantage, so it’s supposed to be a bother. If you find that you’re not going to earn enough loot to pay off your sponsor, rest for a week, and top off your power items (DF 3, p. 42), you will steal from your teammates on a failed self-control roll. You should steal from them in advance to keep from having to pick their pockets, which they might find out. Text or pass notes to handle this.

And if the guy who wants to take this disadvantage is that guy, kick his ass to the curb. The player’s ass, that is. Unless everyone is cool with the inevitable player vs. player conflict this will bring, ban it.

Honesty: Among other things, someone with Honesty will heed the laws in town and not behave like a murder hobo, including the weapon laws, and not murder prisoners. It's a pretty restrictive Code of Honor linked to a reaction bonus for playing it.

Impulsiveness: Whenever you're not outnumbered, not facing obviously better foes, or facing foes of a SM bigger than you, you need to make a self-control roll to keep from rushing into combat. Obviously, they have to be unfriendly, otherwise there would be loads of dead serfs.

Intolerance: This is a GURPS disadvantage that isn't too disadvantageous to PCs as written. You don't like orcs? Well, you're going to kill them anyways. To make this make sense, any time you have to work with a target of your Intolerance, you are at -1 to IQ-based skill rolls, and any DX-based skill rolls affected by High Manual Dexterity. (Whenever I talk about these DX-based skill rolls, I'm talking about the skills involved, whether or not you actually have High Manual Dexterity.) Touchy folks who see your bigotry will react at -1. 

This will affect the marching order. After all, if you hate halflings, and you have one in your party, are you gonna let him get behind you? They have dirty little fingers and dirty little minds. They're gonna get you every time. (This actually happened in my game. Likháfrikh, the dwarf engineer, hated the goblinoids whom he oversaw. So if both he and Kúflaug, the PCs' orc slave, went into the dungeon, I made sure he didn't march before Kúflaug.)

Jealousy: This is truly not disadvantageous as written. Its game effect is a reaction penalty for NPCs who have the disadvantage. So, treat this as Intolerance (Anyone better off than you). The targets of your Jealousy will always react to you at -1, rather than touchy folks reacting badly, as your body Common will be apparent.

Kleptomania: Another -15 point disadvantage that isn't too disadvantageous in DF. To fix this, for starters, you will  Shoplift or Work the Crowd (DF 2, p. 4) every time you are in town. Also, like Greed, you will steal from your teammates in dire straits. Indeed, you're not going to try to get more money in advance, but you'll pick their pockets regardless. Come to think of it, you'll do this when you're not in dire straits too.

Don't let That Guy take this one.

Laziness: You are at -4 to Scoring Extra Cash (DF 2, p. 4), and any extra cash you do get is halved. You are -2 to Finding a Quest (DF 2, p. 4). It seems like there should be more, a penalty to guard duty or something.

EDIT: And Peter Dell'Orto has something more. The short version: you're useless in town. My comments below might be adding too many Odious Personal Habits to it, however.

Lecherousness: The more I read, the more I don't think this should be a -15-point disadvantage. Heck, in Dungeon Fantasy, this could be -5. What are the effects in play? Well, you're more susceptible to seduction (GURPS Social Engineering, p. 29), but so what? It's not like there will be a succubus on every damn dungeon level. You get to act like a horn dog at the table even more than usual.

There has to be some penalty for taking the saloon whore John Norman-style. So, if you have any level of Lecherousness, you need to make a HT roll at the start of every session when you started in town (or after any downtime in town). Ignore any result other than a critical failure. On a critical failure, you have Chronic Pain (Severe, 1 hour, 12 or less), Social Disease, and are down 1d HP. The Chronic Pain and the Social Disease last until someone cures you, usually by casting Cure Disease; the lost HP heals normally.

Mind you, we're talking about a -15 point disadvantage, so the occasional rendition of "Why Does It Hurt When I Pee?" isn't enough. This is Warren Beatty-level fucking. So, if you don't get no satisfaction for a day, make a self-control roll lest you be grouchy (see Fanaticism above).

Consider hiring a boytoy/kept woman as a hireling to offset this. Hmmm … I now get why Dave Arneson kept pleasure slaves on his equipment lists.

Loner: This isn't a big disadvantage, only -5 points, but it seems kind of out-of-place in a DF game, with its emphasis on teamwork and niche protection. So, read the reaction penalty as space in hexes you need while working on an IQ-based or DX-based-with-High Manual Dexterity skill roll. If you don't have it, you are at a penalty to work equal to that reaction penalty. Feel free to lower that if the conditions are partially met (say, nobody can give you more than 2 hexes of space and your self-control roll is (6), so your penalty is only -2).

Miserliness: You won't buy weapons unless they're Cheap, so you will have broken swords littering dungeon floors everywhere. If there's Cheap armor in the campaign (make it cost 40% less but weigh 50% more), you'll only buy that too. You need to make a self-control roll to spend money on someone else or pitch in money for a group purchase, and you'll do this only if it's needed. You'll need to make a self-control roll to buy something that costs more than 20% of your starting wealth on yourself.

None of this applies to gear you find in the dungeon, which is one more reason to become a murder hobo.

Obsession: There are two levels here. The -5 point level isn't much of a problem. Kill all dragons? You strike them first in combat and when you hear that one is in a dungeon or a lair, you go there.

Many of the -10 point ones are more of an issue, since they involve career choices and how you'll spend your points. So, self-control rolls will need to happen when you try to spend them on traits unrelated to your obsession. The GM should give you some leeway here. If you want to be the best swordsman, buying more ST or Enhanced Parry are definitely related to that, as well as your sword skill. IQ and Magery are handy for anyone wanting to become a lich.

On the Edge: You need a self-control roll to flee combat, or not engage whenever anyone threatens you. Unlike Impulsiveness, the idea that you could lose doesn't bother you, so you aren't any more likely to flee dragons than rabid puppies.

Overconfidence: If you have points in a trait that could solve a problem, you need to make a self-control roll not to try to use it. Use the overall task penalty as a bonus to the roll, so if it involves climbing a slimy, moss-covered wall and you have Overconfidence (12), you'd roll at 14 instead. This cuts the other way too. If you have to climb a wall with ample hand and foot rests (+4) to get past a big fan with razor-sharp edges that will slash anyone who fails his Climbing roll, your self-control roll would be 8 ("Aw, that primitive trap? Of what are you scared?")

Paranoia: Like Bully and Stubbornness, this is more-or-less a glorified Odious Personal Habit with some role-playing advice.

Phobia (Crowds): Big masses in combat will set this off.

Phobia (Open Spaces): This will slow wilderness travel to a crawl. Rather than rolling all the time, treat the Fright Check penalty as a penalty to wilderness travel speed equal to 20% times the Fright Check penalty, unless you're in a carriage or boat. If combat or anything else interrupts this, you'll be at a penalty equal to your Fright Check penalty. Foraging and hunting are impossible for you.

Phobia (Sun): This is on the suggested list of disadvantages for Clerics of the Night, and all I can say is WTF? Travel during the day will be like Phobia (Open Spaces), and you'll need to make self-control rolls to leave the dungeon unless it's night or overcast. Like On the Edge, this one might be under-priced. Not even That Guy would take it.

Pyromania: I'm not sure there needs to be much guidance here. Like Compulsive Inventing, you need to make a self-control roll not to use fire as a tool to solve a problem if it is a viable solution. I suppose there needs to be a chance not to set a forest fire during travel, say self-control+3 each day.

Selfish: This one's listed effects (self-control roll or lash out after a perceived slight) won't happen too often in Dungeon Fantasy. You'll likely share badly, and insist on getting first dibs on game and healing. It's kind of a reason to be an asshole. If That Guy isn't the one taking it, explain to the player that the other characters might well lower his cut of the take as a way of getting even for his being an asshole.

Selfless: By contrast, this one will cause problems for the character. Make a self-control roll to move to the front of the line in healing if you need to (say, you've lost an arm, while the other guy took a 2 HP blow to his chest), or not be the one to go hungry when group rations are short.

Squeamishness: Treat as a Phobia around Slimes and corporeal Undead.

Vow: Like Obsessions and Fanaticism, it's boring to say that a character just won't go along because it conflicts with his Vow. If this would be the case, which hardly applies to every vow (things like fighting only with one sword or not speaking ever wouldn't take apply, for example), treat the character as grouchy (see Fanaticism) until he can steer everyone back to taking care of his vow.

Weirdness Magnet: I think it's safe to say that more pixels have been spent trying to handle this disadvantage than any other. Let's break what it does down:

• It has a -2 reaction penalty to everyone who knows you're a weirdness magnet and who knows what that is. That is hardly everyone; I'd call this worth -5 points, and the penalty applies to generally learned folks, not most bartenders or peasants.
• Then we have "weird shit happens to you, but won't kill you outright." That's like Unluckiness (Limited, Weird shit only). Elder Things will target you first, monsters will be weirder (see below). Since Unluckiness is a -10 penalty, this has to be worth less than that. It isn't quite Unluckiness since the weird shit isn't necessarily bad, but that's our base.
• The paranormal seeks you out. This is related to the kind of, sort of Unluckiness (Limited, Weird shit only) and is part of the explanation thereof, but isn't quite. Kromm has a good explanation here of the game effects of this.

For the monsters, I'd recommend giving a chance any random monsters are modified by a prefix (see GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 for many of them). For my campaign, I came up with rolling 2d. On a 2 or 3 (or 1 in 12), a random monster will have a prefix if nobody with Weirdness Magnet is around. On a 2, 3, or 4 (or 1 in 6, or twice as likely), a random monster has a prefix if someone with Weirdness Magnet is around. I give the same chances for whether or not a monster is Giant or Dire (see Mailanka's Homebrew Monsters thread), with 1 in 6 any Giant-or-Dire monsters being Giant. (Heck, I even give the same chance that a monster will have one of the templates in thread, which just make monsters tougher.)

Xenophilia: You need a self-control roll to not try to offer friendship to any Elder Thing or other unworldly thing not directly threatening you.

EDIT: There's a sequel.