Game log for 22 June 2014

Cast of characters:

Yémos, human male cleric of Dōsaútōr, goddess of magic (Eric)

Anêr, human male swashbuckler (Eric, NPC)

Mayhem, short human male barbarian do the Dragon Claw Clan (Chris)

Caleb, human male wizard (Chris, NPC)

18 Žnēâns 2852, deep in the Eldalîvā Woods (2418)

The group made camp and a lean-to, and passed the night smoothly. The next morning, the day was pleasant, though Mayhem felt crummy that day anyways (missed a daily HT roll). They didn't make good headway through the woods, though much of that was from the density of the trees. They needed to forage for food, since Caleb's rations were out. Yémos got some nuts and berries, and Mayhem and Caleb got a few little rabbits. Luckily, nothing struck them through the day or through the night, in spite of their badly-made lean-to.

The next day was more of the same: a nice spring day, wandering south through thick woods, while Mayhem and Caleb had some bug bites while sleeping. They ate their small game and berries, then made camp and went to bed.

Between midnight and daybreak that night, however, Mayhem spotted a being walking towards their camp. He roused Anêr, then tried to sneak up on her. She turned and pointed at Mayhem with her spear. She asked him who he was, and he said he was Mayhem.

"The Mayhem?"

She was none other than Alligên, a woman of Mayhem's Dragon Claw Clan. She was wiry and her face was narrow, her dark brown skin was pockmarked and she had braided her brown hair and dyed it green. The two were far kin, Mayhem thought a third cousin or something.

After chatting a bit about bygone days, she got to asking why he was in the woods with the "townies," who had woken and come towards them. Mayhem told her that they were looking for a druid and some fauns at the behest of Praitanêr. This didn't make Alligên too happy, and she told Mayhem that she was the druidess.

Alligên would not help the gang, though nobody held that against her, though they thought she needed to settle down and maybe find a boyfriend. She did tell Mayhem that the men of Dībités Rock had to be following them, and of some of the other pitfalls of the woods, like the werewolves, the ettercaps and their big spiders, who had left the spider silk strands they found the afternoon of the 18th. Mayhem asked her if she could talk to the ettercaps to see if they would help for a snack of some bandits, but she would not, and said the spiders would eat them if they tried to do it themselves. She then stormed southward, and the gang went back to bed.

That morning, the 21st, Yémos took a look to the west, where Alligên had said the ettercaps dwelled, and saw nothing but thick woods. They instead slowly went to the southeast, caught their game, and went to bed. Luckily, nothing bothered them that day, nor the next, as they headed back towards Dībités rock, but staying to its south.

On the morning of the 23rd, they passed by a two-foot wide hole in the ground, and an hour later, saw a gang of six monks and a fighter taking down a bunch of man-sized spiders. Yémos knew their reddish tabards and bejeweled swords meant they were followers of Punšástōr, god of war. The man in mail armor and an old wig spoke to them, and asked them what they were doing so far out in the woods. Yémos said they were only wandering, to which the bewigged man said, "Yessssss, bullshit." Since nobody could think of anything else to ask each other, the two gangs split and our heroes wandered westward for the rest of the day. They were now out of food, and that night, the grind of the day kept Yémos from conjuring enough food to feed everyone.

A few hours after nightfall, Yémos saw a big cat the size of a man. He roused the others, who remembered it to be the caterwaul they had fought on the 12th. He cast Shield on Anêr, and the gang plugged their ears before the caterwaul's howl. However, the howl still struck Caleb with fear, and, with the wear of the day, the bad sleep from not building a right lean-to the night before, and missing dinner, Caleb passed out from fear. The caterwaul came nearer the gang, and pounced on Anêr. However, he did not do enough harm to knock down Anêr, who tried to strike back, but the caterwaul swatted away his rapier. Mayhem came and tried to strike its flank but missed, while Yémos came nearer. Now Yémos and Mayhem could see why the caterwaul was so eager to pounce: he had a big hard-on.

The horny cat tried to claw Anêr, but Anêr swatted his paw. He tried to strike his body as well but missed, but Mayhem stepped forward and buried his axe into the caterwaul, killing him. The next day, they ate Hello Kitty steak (as Eric dubbed it) for breakfast, found the cave of the caterwaul and its gems, and made their way northwest to the gnomish village of Káddrakos.

Notes

The characters got 6 character points. The gems in the caterwaul's smelly cave was the first big haul they had, since they ran away from the evil cleric in the goblin caves and striking Dībités Rock would be suicide.

We gave the rules on GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures a workout, which did take up quite a bit of time at first. This does make camping and navigation much harder without good gear; Eric said he wanted Yémos to buy a tent when they got back to civilization. Foraging was a big concern since they were running out of food. I'd like to cut down on the rolls, but taking extra time doesn't give more food, it only makes you more likely to find one meal, so there's not a big carrot there, much less a big deer.

A big takeaway from this is that the Survival skill is boss. It lets you forage, move farther, set up camp, and set up shelter, and those are only the daily rolls. If you run with wilderness exploration at all, not having Survival is like putting a gun to your head and hoping no one pulls the trigger. It's even better of you have Survival for the right terrain: Mayhem has it for Plains, which befits a barbarian from the hills, but they were in the woods.

If the weather looks good at dawn and nobody in your group has a good Weather Sense skill, don't try to make that roll. Mayhem is the only one who has it, and it's only a 9. They are in spring, before the rainy season, so failing the roll takes away more than making it gives them.

I also found to speed things up that only the slowest men in the group, Yémos and Caleb, should roll Hiking. Mayhem and Anêr walk too fast to have even a critically failed roll do anything. We wound up often having a fractional hiking pace, so they hiked for 10 hours to get a round number of miles (mostly 9 or 11, as it happens: both Caleb and Yémos have laden Move 2), then they forage for an hour in the morning and another in the afternoon to get the full 12 hours.

The daily HT roll for comfort had some oddities, but made for an interesting situation when both Yémos and Caleb, the two spellcasters, failed their rolls by 5 and 6 respectively on the 23rd. This meant they were down many FP when it came time to fight the caterwaul. When Caleb failed his Fright Check, he lost enough FP to put him to 0 as well as being stunned, so he was down for the count before anything started. It gave a bit of randomness and drama to the fight. No, I don't know that a caterwaul would have fought like that, but I rolled that he was looking to mate, and I wanted to have at least one fight.

I remembered to roll for disasters most days, but none came up. I made a roll for both the ones that weather affects and the ones it does not, but none of them came up to the 5 or less on 3d that I had set. I wanted to set the woods on fire, man!

One thing that even with simulationism, you have to look at a roll to make things interesting. I normally would not have had the druidess out at night, but I had her show up anyways when I rolled her to make things less of a grind. And I do know why she was out at night, rest assured. It was Chris who came up with the third cousin bit, I only had her as one of the same clan. She is also about the only NPC with whom Mayhem would have a bonus to his reaction rolls.

A bit of chatter that isn't in the log is that Yémos and Mayhem thought it better to get the food that Praitanêr wanted from Mīstássun and bring it to him rather than bring his bandits to the fauns. I have no idea how that will work out, being that wizards are quick to anger and that adventurers are crunchy and taste good with catsup, but it does give the wizard and bandits what they want, in a way.

We didn't get to play Sunday

The title says it all. One of the two main players, Chris, is in a rehab center with a bad foot. Don't ask, don't tell. Eric, the other player, and I went over a bunch of hexcrawl stuff and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures, which both of us bought. He wound up agreeing with my idea for a daily list of things to handle, which is below.

1. GM determines weather (Nasty Weather, DF 16, p. 30) and disasters (Disasters, DF 16, p. 32).
2. HT roll for comfort (Harsh Climates, DF 16, p. 30).
3. Roll against skill for movement (e.g., Hiking, Riding, Skiing) (Trudging, Trotting, and Trundling, DF 16, p. 21).
4. Roll against Weather Sense to mitigate weather (Nasty Weather, DF 16, p. 30).
5. Calculate movement rate (Covering Ground, DF 16, p. 23).
6. Roll for morning random encounters.
7. Roll Navigation in secret each time group goes into a new hex. GM makes Per-based roll to see if the group realizes it's off-course. Roll for random encounter in new hex.
8. Roll for afternoon random encounters.
9. When done for the day, resolve foraging rolls (Food and Water, DF 16, p. 42).
10. Set up camp (Camping, DF 16, p. 24).

The number of rolls is more-or-less the same, with the HT roll for comfort taking the spot of the Survival roll to sadistically inflic damage. In the stead of random generic damage, there are disasters. There's no specified rate of how often they happen, and I thought a 6 or less on 3d (or about 10%) would be good, but some happen more often in bad weather and some don't, so I'm going with a roll for each kind, 5 or less on 3d. I have tables for each terrain kind; here are Woodlands, which are what will kill the players in two weeks:

1d  Static Woodlands Disasters

1    Disease (generic; roll HT or suffer -1 to all attribute and skill rolls for 1d days, or -3 on a critical failure)

2    Fire

3-4 Stinging Plants

5-6 Swarm

1d  Weather-Affected Woodlands Disasters
1-4 Falling Tree

5-6 Sinkhole

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures: A Review

This is one dense supplement. It is in three parts. In the first, "Who Goes There?" Sean Punch updates what has come before (all supplements, but nothing from Pyramid articles) for the wilderness. It gives ways to tweak each template for wilderness adventuring ("From Delvers to Outdoorsmen"), and that has a hidden gem on page 5, "Wilderness Training." While he gives it as a 15-point lens to boost any delver's wilderness skills, it also works as a list of which skills you'll need in your hexcrawl. 

In the section for tweaking buddies, "Allies," there's a new henchman template, native guide, that you can put afore your delvers and take damage first, after leading everyone to the dungeon. And there's more about furry friends too. 

In the third section in this part, "Equipment," he talks about gear, including the gear about which I wrote not long ago, as well as some new thingies.

The second part, "Braving the Wilderness," is the meat of the book. There are 26 pages of so much crunch that Nestlé is getting free advertising. The first section, "Travel," is relevant to me. Of course, I care about hex crawling, but at no point does he write about hex crawling; travel stays in miles. It might be best to set hexes to "effective miles" to handle this best. Say, a five-mile hex with a road (1.25) costs 4 miles; with some hills (0.50) and no road, it costs 10 miles. It's easier math with 5-mile hexes, but 6-mile hexes match the idea of Move=hexes. 

The next section, "Camping," does add a bunch of new detail over which I skipped before. It isn't too much, however. It's only about a page.

The third section, "Exploration," handles a bunch of little tasks, like scouting ahead and getting lost. On that last one, this is something else that using a hex grid could help, since it lets the GM know where a gang of murder-hoboes wander when lost. There's also a bunch of little movement nuances which won't suit every terrain or game. 

The fourth section, "Dangers," has a short weather section. To adhere to it, I rated the 64 days of weather I had already rolled with one of the four levels. There are also the afore said ways of Mother Nature fucking over PCs, six traps, and almost four pages of combat notes. 

The last section in this chapter, "Mother Nature's Bounty," has ways of getting food, loot and gear out of the wild. Of note is the "Despoilers" sidebar, since it touches on how Mother Nature herself can take offense and go on the offense. I had wanted something like this for my game, and was winging it. There isn't a formal rule, so I'm still winging it, but with a little more guidance.

The third part is "Outdoor Adventures," and gives guidance about how to use what you've just read. "What Could Possibly Happen?" has a list of ways to adventure in the wild. It only loosely touches on hex crawling and other location-based adventures. Most of it is handling wandering and hacking monsters from point A to point B, then using a wilderness as a dungeon.

"Under a Big Sky" goes in another way, that of world building. This is nothing that has been in a DF supplement before, which was intentional. If you're in a dungeon, who cares about the rest of the world? With the rest of the world an adventuring locale in of itself, it needs some love.

"Wilderness Woes" talks about how the players can handle how the world causes damage. It's a look back at the big uncharted wild through which the rest of the book has trod.

Game log for 25 May 2014

Present:

Yémos, human male cleric of Dōsaútōr (goddess of wisdom and magic) (125 points)
Mayhem, dwa- er, human male barbarian of the Dragon Claw Clan (125 points)

NPCs:

Anêr, human male swashbuckler (ran by Yémos's player) (125 points)
Caleb, human male wizard (ran by GM) (125 points)

Log:

The game opens in the early morning of 14 Žneâns 2852, right after Mayhem killed the guard with iron plates for earrings. The other guards broke and ran (failed a morale check), and Mayhem shot the wounded, rough unshaven archer as they fled, killing him too. Caleb missed with fireball and set some brush on fire, though it didn't spread. Anêr and Mayhem tried to heal Yémos; Anêr failed, but Mayhem staunched his wounds, but Yémos is still out. They loot the bodies, finding 5 copper farthings on each body as well as armor, shields, bows and swords. Anêr put the mail from the guard with the big earrings on Caleb, as it wouldn't fit Mayhem, while Anêr took a bow and some arrows.

At daybreak, there was a short rain shower, but otherwise the weather was fine. The gang watched the keep, and saw some bustle, but no one came out to the thicket until evening, when six guards came and brought back the two bodies they had left out. The night was quiet, though only Caleb got a good night's sleep and healed a bit.

On the 15th, the day was again a nice one, and the morning was quiet. However, at mid-afternoon, two wolves, as big as ponies, came into the thicket, and both sides spotted each other. As the wolves walked towards the group, Mayhem and Anêr took shots, with the wolves getting it through their brains that the gang was shooting at them on the second volley. Mayhem at last hit for damage on the fourth volley, and the wolves made it to the bit of thicket where the gang had made camp.

When the wolves made it to the camp, Anêr lunged (All-Out Attack (Long)) and missed, while Mayhem put his axe into the flank of the wolf he had shot. Caleb missed with his big fireball. Then one of the wolves clawed Anêr, and the other clawed Mayhem. Anêr stabbed the wolf on him, but he wasn't strong enough to get through his thick hide, while Mayhem missed the other wolf. Caleb stepped back and started to cast fireball again.

The wolves kept up their fight, and one tried to claw Anêr again, who instead stuck his rapier into the wolf's paw. The other wolf clawed Mayhem. Anêr tried to stick his rapier into the wolf's eye, but missed, while Mayhem, mad from the claws, put the other wolf out with an axe smite. Caleb cast fireball, and held it in his hand to aim.

The last wolf kept coming at Anêr, but when Anêr stepped out of the way of his claw, the wolf fell to the ground. From there, the gang made fast work of the wolf, with Mayhem getting off two blows, one of which was the last. Mayhem could not get good pelts off the wolves, but did get seven meals of meat from their fleshy bodies, which were about 400 lbs. They spent the rest of the day smoking the meat and healing each other.

That evening, three thouls came to the camp, two of whom the group had met a few days before. Anêr hailed them, and the two groups chatted. The thouls asked for the wolf carcasses and pelts, and Anêr let them have them. The thouls did talk about the wizard or necromancer—they didn't know much about him—in the keep, though neither side told much about the other.

The night was quiet, and the group rested from its rough camping (Mayhem failed the daily Survival roll and everyone took damage). On the morning of the 16th, a pleasant spring morning, Yémos at last awoke, and drank the potion of Minor Healing in his sack. With everyone awake, the gang chose to break the seal on the letter that Mayhem had brought, and read it:

Esteemed Praitanêr, Master of Dībités Rock,

I need the blood of one of your summoned demons for an item I am forging. The cleric of Dōsaútōr has a suitable vessel in his sack to hold the blood. Usual payment offered.

Praidīvós of Mīstássun

After trying to seal the letter once again, the group chose to go up to the keep, and went over its moat by way of the drawbridge as a bunch of surprised peasants and guards saw the battered crew. Two men came out to greet them along with six guards, with four more around the heroes. One man wore one of the black with red trim sashes and was bald but not old, thin but not weak, and wearing armor. The other wore leathers but with cloth coverings of red with green trim, and had greying red hair. When Yémos offered the letter to Praitanêr, the red-haired man told the bald man to read it, who put down his visor, opened the letter and read it for a second before handing it to Praitanêr.

After some asking, Praitanêr laughed when he found that the gang didn't bring the "usual payment," which was bread, cinnamon rolls, and flour. Furthermore, it had killed two of his guards (and the woman in leathers and wearing metal plate earrings, wife of one of them, scowled when Praitanêr said this). But he gave the gang a deal: he would let the heroes heal up for the next few days at the keep if they handed over their weapons for the time of their stay, then go south and find a bunch of fauns and a druid for him. After that, he would give it the blood. The group agreed, and it rested for the next few days.

On the evening of the 17th, Praitanêr gave the heroes a tour of his tower, showing off the fake woods and the keepsakes from his late wife. When Yémos asked about the dying woods, Praitanêr said it was "a small price to pay for power." Anêr sold the manticore stinger to Praitanêr for 9 pieces of gold ($180).

The next day, the 18th, was a fine one, and the group got its weapons from the guards, and started south, as Praitanêr had said the fauns and druids made camp somewhere to the south-southeast. After trekking a few miles, the group chatted, and agreed that Praitanêr was up to no good, and wanted to kill the fauns and druid since he was harming the woods. That afternoon, they saw three wolves who followed the group from afar for a few hours. They heroes didn't strike the wolves, thinking them agents of the druid. That evening, they made their way south to thicker woods, and made camp, and Yémos scrounged up enough food for a meal. In these thicker woods, they found what looked like thick ropes, but didn't have the weavings of normal ropes, instead being whole. They pulled down one, and it had no knot nor loop, but instead had stuck to the tree.

We broke there.

Notes:

A very good session, as we seem to have most of the kinks of play worked out. Five character points all around. Next session is hopefully in two weeks. Remember, making a log is worth character points. Also, drawing pictures of your character is worth it too, and I'll give points as well for making a picture of an NPC. After some chatter, Yémos and Anêr need to figure out their home town. Ideally, there's a short battery of things you should have written down about your character.

Weather or not

I'll start with an essay before I get to rules, which is why do we bother with the weather at all. Trudging through a snowstorm isn't too high on the cool scale in an RPG, unless the snow can fight back. (Now there is an idea, but to make it work, we have to have players interact with normal snow, so back to the essay.)

The first reason why we bother is a bit of hue to the game world. Verisimilitude. Giving us more of a reason to care about the game world by making it more true. It gainsays why we talk about how a monster looks, since we want to get a game edge by whacking its eyestalks or not hitting it with a fireball since it's made of water. It's a clear sign that you're dealing with a world with more to it than the dungeon of the night, and it's a way to tell one day from another. This reason has nothing to do with the game at hand, but rather to get the players to show up for the next game. If we want to have a weird weather effect in a game, it's much more effective if we have days of normal weather against which to gauge the weirdness.

The second thing weather does is it changes how much a group can move. Did I say "changes"? I meant "sometimes lowers." We assume that characters walk to the dungeon on a nice day with nothing to hold them back in the tavern aside from a hangover. (If it's a lovely day and you're down in a dungeon, you might be a munchkin.) If you're keeping track of game weather, on days with crappy weather it will take the group longer to get from place to place, like from a town to a dungeon. There will be days where it can't go anywhere. A good GM will have some adventures for when a group is stuck in town.

Coming from the last thing weather does we get to a third reason to keep track of weather, which is to make the game more about resource management. Some old-school types say RPGs were all about this back in 1980, which is horseshit since it was about fun, but there is fun in getting away with a trick in resource management. ("Hey, when we get out of sixth hour, let's get to Chuck's house fast so we can tick off our arrows and rations!") If a group of players scoffs at its GM as he makes them tick off rations and doesn't bother buying more since that cuts into how much treasure it can haul, then on the way home from the dungeon, it will either starve, which is truly not fun, or it will spend its time hunting and fishing instead of getting back home, which means it has more chances for a random encounter.

El Disgusto: "Camping? Why would I want to go camping? Nature kills! Haven't you learned anything the wilderness encoutners tables?" -- Al Bruno III, A Night at the Inn, a Day at the Racists

Some things that come from this. One thing is that a GM can be kind in giving out boosts to overland movement, since if a group moves too fast later, the GM can slow it down with a blizzard. If he's truly feeling like a dick, he can mess it up good with a tornado. Another thing is that if you have rules for this, players will build characters to exploit those rules. That's alright, since they're building characters that do something other than kill. Not that there's anything wrong with killing, of course.

Now for some rules. There are two spots in the GURPS rules for weather to give general effects: overland movement (mostly Hiking, p. B351) and the daily Survival roll (p. B223). I'm worrying about how common weather happenings change those, and not true fuckyouupforlife things like hurricanes or tornados or lightning strikes. My rule-of-thumb for things like those is if you get caught in one of them, you die. Someone who wants more detail can write his own rules for them, though death will be the most common result.

I've talked about movement in another post, but I'll post the same stuff again so I can have it all together.

Cold

Per p. B430, when the effective temperature drops below the bottom of a character's comfort zone (for humans, this is 35° F), his movement for the day drops by 10%. At 35° below that (0° F for puny humans), movement drops another 10%. For every 10° below that, that is another 10% drop in movement. If a character has an encounter at any point, he then makes the HT roll as described on p. B430 to see if he is down any FP at that point. The usual modifiers apply; roll 1d-2 FP if he failed the roll.

Keep in mind that movement happens in daylight hours, so for handling movement speed, look at the high temperature, not the low. Unless for some reason a character needs to get hustling at 3 a.m., we don't care about the low here.

Survival follows an akin pattern. If the low temperature for the day is below a character's comfort zone (35° F), his Survival roll is at -1 for the day. If the high temperature is also below a character's comfort zone, his Survival roll is at another -1. If the low temperature is 35° below the comfort zone (0° F), the Survival skill is at another -1, and it's at another -1 if the high is also lower than 35° below the comfort zone. So, on a day when it is at -5° F at daybreak, then rises to a balmy 20° F, the Survival roll is at -3 (both the high and the low are below the comfort zone, and the low is below 0° F), and the characters move 10% slower than normal (since it's below 35° F). That's assuming they're human and there's no snow on the ground or falling, of course.

If a character gets wet, then all penalties for cold are twofold. Feel free to screw over any character who goes ice fishing, then jumps in the lake, crawls out and goes sunbathing. That's pretty much killing yourself.

If the characters are making rolls against Survival (Arctic), then cold is the default assumption. Thus, there are no penalties to Survival for cold until the magic thermometer drops below 0° F (or 35° below a character's comfort zone, if you insist). This isn't for going through the woods near Verbobonc in December, but for truly being in an arctic zone. Also, this little boon is null and void for any characters who get themselves wet or don't dress for the weather.

A last note about temperature before we move on. When we say "temperature," we mean "effective temperature," which includes windchill. I'd eyeball what the windchill is instead of going through the math to keep play moving.

"Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat that yellow snow." — Frank Zappa, "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow."

Heat

Per p. B434, when a character gets to the top 10° of his comfort zone (which, for humans and the like is 80° F), instead of losing FP, the character moves 10% slower for the day. For each extra 10° of temperature, the character moves an extra 10% slower. This is to assume that when a character starts to overheat, he ducks into the shade, and that's where the time is lost. If a character has an encounter at any point, he then makes the HT roll as described on p. B434 to see if he is down any FP at that point. The usual modifiers apply; roll 1d-2 FP if he failed the roll.

For Survival rolls, it's an akin tale. If the high is above the comfort zone (90° F), then Survival rolls are at -1. If the low is also above the comfort zone, then Survival rolls are at a further -1. If the high is higher than 30° above he comfort zone (120°F), that's another -1 to Survival, and it's yet another -1 if the low is also higher than 30° above the comfort zone. These penalties get another -1 for every 10° higher than 30° above the comfort zone.

Like cold, there's a Survival speciality that assumes heat. I lied. There's truly two such specialities: Desert and Jungle. There are no heat penalties for these specialities until you get to 120° F (30° above the comfort zone) so long as you dress for the weather. Sadly for munchkins, this likely means no armor.

Again, "temperature" means "effective temperature." For heat, this includes humidity, though this isn't as big a deal as windchill. It doesn't play into deserts at all; if it did, you wouldn't be in a desert.

"Hot, hot, hotter than hell
She'll burn you like the midday sun, yeah." — Kiss, "Hotter than Hell"

Rain and Snow

First, a little rant about precipitation in roleplaying games. Every goddamn weather chart I see is geared towards having me roll up how much rain or snow falls in terms of how many inches (or whatever it is for you metric folks). I don't give a shit about how many fucking inches of rain have fallen! Nobody in a roleplaying game gives a shit about how many fucking inches of rain have fallen! We care about when the rain falls, how long the rainfall lasts, and how hard the rain falls while it's falling. We want to know how it makes life hard for characters.

When on the ground, rain and snow modify the terrain as p. B351: rain and light snow halve speed, snow deeper than ankle-deep quarters it. Roads don't matter; none of them are any good. Rain goes away after the day; snow stays until the temperature has been over 35° for 10 days with no snow.

When falling, rain and snow halve movement for a time equal to the number of half-hour cells (I'm using the d30 Sandbox Companion) for non-severe storms, and stop it for severe storms. Or, in short, it's -2.5% per half-hour cell of non-severe storms and -5% per half-hour of severe storms. You can round to the nearest 10%, so a half-hour of light rain is no big deal.

Rain can have a penalty on Survival. For a light rain—an hour or less of non-severe rainfall—there is no penalty. For moderate rain—more than an hour of non-severe rainfall—the roll is at -1. For heavy rain—an hour or less of severe rainfall—Survival is at -2. For a downpour—more than an hour of severe rainfall—Survival is at -3.

For snow, sleet or hail, these penalties are harsher. For a light snowfall (or a sleet storm, or a hailstorm)—an hour or less of non-severe snowfall—there Survival roll is at -1. For a moderate snowfall— more than an hour of non-severe snowfall—the roll is at -2. For a heavy snowfall—an hour or less of severe snowfall—Survival is at -4. For a snowstorm—more than an hour of severe snowfall—Survival is at -6.

Weather Sense

Weather Sense is a complementary skill for both movement and Survival. The GM makes the roll. On a success of any kind, he tells the group the weather for the day. On a failure, the GM tells the group the weather for the day before. On a critical failure, make something up, but don't tip off that you're making something up. Tell the players the opposite of what the weather will be or something.

A success knocks off up to 20% of weather-related penalties to movement and -2 to Survival penalties from weather. A critical success lets you ignore up to 40% of weather-related penalties to movement and -4 to Survival penalties from weather. A normal failure has no penalties, but a critical failure lowers movement by 40% and gives a -4 penalty to Survival.

Rolling the Weather

You need a way to roll up the weather, and I don't have one. I'm not about to write one, but I'll make a list of ones I know:

d30 Sandbox Companion. Since you already have this, you can use the weather system in there, though you should nerf gap between the high and low, at least in temperate climates (the normal gap is 15°, and the gap on p. 12 is about 40°-45°). I roll a d5 for variation, and add +1 to the roll if the average temperature for the day before was more than 10° below the monthly average, and -1 to the roll if the average temperature for the day before was more than 10° above the monthly average.

What, you don't have this? Get the hell off my blog and buy it. You need it if you're running a sandbox game, or almost any fantasy game. It's only $5. You have no excuse other than abject poverty.

Wilderness Survival Guide. If you want to waste loads of time rolling up weather, this is made for you. I have it for loads of reasons, but when I was in junior high, I tried rolling up a day's worth of weather with it and it killed a half-hour. I don't think I could stand to do that on the fly, but it does have loads of little goodies in it.

Dungeon Masters' Guide 3.5e. The last version (I don't count the homesick abortion that is 4th edition) has an easy weather system. The system is free on the web, linked above, and is good enough for game purposes. I'll link to Pathfinder's version, buried down the page; I think it's the same.

Empire Weather. It looks like something out of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and it's free. It's bare-bones and vague, and at some point, I'm sure you'll need to override a roll.

HârnWorld. Ah, made by a company that likes diacriticals on funny made-up words as much as I do. I've never tried it, but Hârn stuff is good if you buy into whatever assumptions N. Robin Crossby made with Hârn. It isn't cheap.

Wolfram Mathematica. If you want to ape a real-world spot, you could look up its weather from the recent past.

Look outside. No link for you! Stick your neck out the window. C'mon, I know folks say outdoor air hurts nerds. It isn't true. Really! Trust me!

Game log 18 May 2014

Present:

Mayhem, a short human barbarian (Chris)

Yémos, a human cleric of Dōsaútōr (Eric)

As NPCs:

Anêr, a human swashbuckler (run by Eric)

Caleb, a human wizard (NPC)

Log:

The group made camp on the evening of 12 Žnēâns 2852, and the night was peaceful. The next morning, they set forth for Dībités Rock, which they could see through the dying trees. They could see two things, in truth: something man-made, and something not, both in a clearing, rising just above the trees. In spite of the rotten wood, the weather was a nice spring day.

There is no hobgoblin, only thoul!

After a few miles of travel, they found an old rope around a tree, and a few broken arrows in the ground near it. Marching onward, two hobgoblins with sickly grey-hued skin and skull drawings on their shields came into their sight. The hobgoblins didn't strike the group, after learning that they did not work of "the Necromancer," who they said lives in the keep. The two sides chatted a bit, and the hobgoblins, who said their names were Fukuruk (who has deep-set eyes, and did most of the talking, though often just "Uh") and Soli (who has a beaked nose), said there was a cave with many ravens near it to the north, a pond to the north of the keep, and a thicket to the south. After getting to the pond, the group spotted the keep and the eponymous rock, a tent rock in the middle of the woods. Thinking that maybe the cave had a way into the tower, the group went there.

They walked inside the cave for a bit, and its path became a stairway leading down. At the top of the stairs was three dwarves, eating their nasty rations. One of them, an ugly stuntie with big forearms, told them to fuck off, that whatever was down in the cave was theirs. The other two, one who was missing an arm and the other who had shaved a Tengwar rune into his hair, kept eating and belching. When Yémos asked if there was a way to the keep from the cave, the big-forearmed dwarf lowered his axe to block the group from going down. Thus, it chose to leave the cave.

They instead turned south to the thicket, walking away from the clearing and reaching the thicket in late afternoon. They went slowly through the thicket, and saw six bandits with black sashes and scarlet trim at about 200 yards away. The bandits saw them as well, and ran towards the group, which hid in the thicket. After looking for the group and calling out that it would let it live if it gave itself up, the bandits walked back to the tower. Our heroes set up camp for the night, though not before Caleb got food positioning from some foraged food. Yémos healed some of Caleb's hurt belly with Minor Healing. The others only had little bellyaches. The nuts and berries of this woods seemed as woeful as its trees.

At about midnight, with Anêr on watch, another group of bandits came, wearing the same crimson-tinged black sashes. They came towards the heroes, and Anêr woke the others. The group held its ground, and when the bandits made it to about 10 yards, one of them, a man with a wrinkled face and mail armor, shot Anêr, but his mail stopped the arrow. Mayhem shot an archer, a rough, unshaven man,  who limped onward. One of the bandits, a woman with plates in her earlobes, ducked out of sight. Another archer, a woman with wild, messy hair, shot back at Mayhem but missed. Yémos held his ground, as did Anêr, and Caleb started casting fireball.

The bandits got nearer, and the wrinkled man rushed Anêr, who sidestepped his wayward blow. Yémos wasn't so lucky, as another man in mail, who also had plates in his earlobes, slashed him with his broadsword. Mayhem shot at the woman with wild hair, but missed, as she and her fellow archer knocked arrows and aimed.

Anêr and the wrinkled fighter traded empty blows, while the plate-lobed fighter gave Yémos another cut. Mayhem readied his sword, while the archers let loose at him: one missed, the other's arrow stuck in his side. Yémos swung wildly at the plate-lobed fighter, who parried his staff, and then he blocked Caleb's fireball.

Anêr got a good stab at the wrinkled man, but couldn't get through his mail. The plate-lobed fighter swung at Yémos again, this time knocking him out. Mayhem stepped over Yémos and gave the plate-lobed man a mighty blow, making him drop his sword. He still stood, but was hurting. The archers drew arrows again and aimed, while Caleb started casting fireball again.

Anêr's next blow still couldn't get through the mail of the wrinkled man, while the plate-lobed man stepped back. Mayhem pressed him and swung his sword, but the plate-lobed man caught it with his shield. The unshaven archer shot Caleb, who lost his spell in the pain, while the wild-haired woman missed Anêr. Caleb started to cast his spell again.

Anêr stabbed the face of the wrinkled fighter, and this time poked his rapier into one of his wrinkles. The wrinkled fighter wildly swung back at Anêr, who stepped away, and when the plate-lobed fighter went for his sword, Mayhem gave him a killing blow.

And there we stopped, since Eric (Yémos) had to get his son (Anêr, when he's there).

Notes:

Yémos rolled Survival for the group both nights, and kept them from getting hurt. Anêr didn't do so well when foraging, getting an 18, and poor Caleb failed his HT roll and took the maximum 6 HP damage. Chris (Mayhem) said Caleb had the "King Kong"—stuff coming out both ends and his ribs hurt, like a big ape was squeezing him. The puke would make this campsite known for some time.

We went to critical hit and miss tables, but Eric didn't want hit location, until I said that Anêr, with his high skill and low ST, would be a perfect candidate for them. After a few blows didn't get through armor, Eric then asked what the hit location penalty was for the Face (-5).

We played for about two hours, less than half in combat. The group had a good reaction roll with the hobgoblins. And those weren't hobgoblins. They were thouls, from the Basic Set. Not the Steve Jackson/Sean Punch/David Pulver GURPS Basic Set, mind you, but the Tom Moldvay Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. They're actually easy in GURPS, being hobgoblins with Paralyzing Touch (from GURPS Horror) and Regeneration, though I think they should have some intermediate level of regeneration so they're not as good as real trolls. Anyone care to make intermediate levels?

I didn't think they would go into the raven cave, so I whipped out a dungeon I had. Still, they didn't go far into it. I hope they go back at some point, though now I'll need to tweak it, since the dwarves won't sit there. The group had a bad reaction roll with the dwarves, but since dwarves aren't chaotic evil, they didn't strike.

The chase rules from GURPS Action 2: Exploits came out again, this time when the first set of bandits spotted our heroes. Eric, for the group, chose a Hide maneuver, and he made the Stealth roll, which wasn't too hard since the bandits started at Long range.

We played at the 1-mile hex level this game. Luckily, the group's pace came out to one mile an hour in the woods. Rolling for this level gave me some new lairs, like the ravens and the thouls. For the most part, however, I don't think hexcrawls should be this fine; kind of a pain to map everything. But since what will happen at the keep is up in the air, I thought it best to have many little choices.

I've long lost Caleb's character sheet, so he's more or less a wildcard skill at this point: Caleb!-13. He casts Fireball, Explosive Fireball and Continual Light, and knows a few wizardly skills (Thaumatology, Innate Attack, Occultism). Still, I'd like another player to make a wizard or at least fill this niche and chair. I keep trying to find more players, but scheduling, location, and my own feeble GMing skills keep me from getting any. Bother.

Game log for 13 April 2014

Present:

Yémos, human male cleric of Dōsaútōr, goddess of magic (Eric)
Mayhem, human male midget barbarian (Chris)

As NPCs:

Anêr, human male swashbuckler (Rett, Eric handled him)
Caleb, human male wizard (mostly held up a torch of Continual Light)

Log:

They started in the room with the shackles and found out that none of the shackles were worth keeping. Yémos tried looking for a tunnel that a man in bonds would have dug, but they found none.

They walked back to the small room with the five hallways out, and saw that the black pudding was slowly slinking down the hallway that led to the great hall. The pudding felt their air and started to turn towards them, and they chose to walk down the hallway to the right of the one that led to the chief's bedrooms whence they came.

Louis Farrakhan's favorite
D&D monster.

The door lacked a lock, so they pushed it open and walked down the hallway to a room which had some old broken chairs around a big dais. Atop the dais was a big nest, and before they could turn to run, five striges came out of the nest to fight. Luckily, the striges could never get through their armor with their stingers, so the fight was short. In the hive were 40 silver pennies and 3 gold pieces. After looking at the pillars along the side of the room, which were mostly carvings of the gods, they went out the other hallway, which was on the other side of the room from the one through which they came into the room.

This room was a court, and there was a spot where a throne had been. In its stead was a stack of books. Yémos took the first book, which bore the name Walk with Me, My Friends by one Feoílklis of Erstókkīs, an island land well to the west that once ruled the mainland. The book was about the worship of a god of whom Yémos had not heard named Glanéťūr, who seemed to like putting men through his tricks. Yémos put the book in his backpack, and they took a look at the torches in sconces on the wall. Someone had hand-lit the torches, and not all were lit.

Pushover.

To the right of the way through which they came into the room was another door, which they pushed open. They walked through the hallway into a crypt, in the middle of which were two skeletons. In the short fight, Mayhem took a hit, which Yémos healed with Major Healing after the battle. Yémos saw what looked like a door with no knob or hinges, and after some prodding, pushed it to yield a glowing dark teal light. They threw a rock through the light and heard nothing, and when trying to touch the stone door again, Yémos found he could not. Mayhem pushed one of the skeletons through the light as well. After some chatting, the gang chose to turn back, though Anêr thought he could handle going through.

Pushes over PCs.

Back in the old court room, they chose to go through the next hallway to the right of the last one. The walls and roof of hallway and the caves to which it led had a sticky amber resin all over them. In the back of one of the caves, they saw four men in shadows, and Yémos called out to them. They shambled towards the gang, moaning the one word all zombies can moan: "Braaaaaiiiin." The fight with the zombies was nasty, and swords were breaking or flying all over the cave. Mayhem fell unconscious at one point, but Yémos healed him back right away with Minor Healing.

For he served the
Dungeon Master.

After the last zombie fell, the gang could hear and see a red demon with horns and a big scythe, and a man in leather armor walking on the roof of the cave. Caleb said the wall behind where the zombies were standing was odd, and Yémos stuck his head through it, and saw a pile of gold coins. Alas, living was worth more than gold at this time, so the gang ran back the way it had come, and the man on the roof jumped to the floor when they went back to the court room. Once there, they outran the man and the demon, and the man yelled back at them, "Go to your goblin friends!"

Once outside, the gang went over the hill and set up camp. From there, they could see a bunch of withered trees, which they guessed to be around Dībités Rock.

Notes:

A lesson one of the players learnt was that your Dodge is almost always your worst active defense. A worthy lesson.

The long and short of this short session (Eric had to go after about two hours) was that the players got their asses handed to them. The zombies were hardly fodder, and Anêr kept fighting, being Overconfident and all.

We gave the chase rules in GURPS Action 2 a workout at the end. I let them get away when they won one of the Quick Contests; we were short on time and they were trying to keep from a total party kill. Besides, the evil cleric didn't care much about them.

I can't remember if I gave them two or three character points. No big deal.

Converting NPCs from Classic D&D to GURPS

Let’s face it. We like to use D&D material for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy games. That’s some of the point behind Dungeon Fantasy: running a D&D-esque game with our favorite game system.

Now, often, we make NPCs with the idea of having them do something in the background or as part of a story, and those are easy. Other times, our characters are down in the dungeon and we roll on a table from an old D&D book (the old Fiend Folio, in my case) or some retroclone and up comes “NPC party.” We wince at this line, since what does it mean in GURPS that the murder-hoboes now meet a third-level cleric, a fifth-level fighting man, a fourth-level thief and a second-level magic-user?

This guide is for that time.

There already is some help for this built into GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, albeit in an unlikely book: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Mirror of the Fire Demon. From pages 42 to 45, there are 11 NPCs that we can turn into others down in the dungeon, and we are going to do that. For spellcasters, we also shall turn to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables, where there are tables on which we can roll for spells for magic-users. Cleric and druids will get their spells from the lists in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level. 

Fighters, Thieves, Dwarves, Halflings

We’ll deal with these classes first. I do my rolling on the D30 DM Companion, which takes most of its cues from the Moldvay Basic D&D and Cook Expert D&D sets, so I’m handling dwarves and halflings as those books have them, which is as classes unto themselves. The original Dungeons & Dragons game, the Holmes Basic D&D set, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and its offspring to nowadays have races and classes as two unalike things. You can handle this by mixing and matching racial templates.

The basic ideas behind all of this are:

• The templates in Mirror of the Fire Demon are first-level characters.
• For higher level characters, divide level by two, round down, and add that to all skills.
• For every four levels, rounded down, raise each attribute that is higher than 10 on the template by one. Do not raise skills to show this.
• For every eight levels, rounded down, raise each attribute that is not higher than 10 on the template by one. Do not raise skills to show this.
• Tweak his skills to let him use whatever equipment you roll that he has if you do not want to use the equipment in the Mirror of the Fire Demon NPCs.

Now, class-by-class:

• A fighter is a Basic Warrior. You can have him be a Basic Barbarian or a Basic Archer if that fits your needs better.
• A thief is a Basic Thief.
• A dwarf is a Basic Dwarf Warrior.
• A halfling is a Basic Warrior, but add the halfling template and give him Camouflage at IQ, Sling at DX+2 (this has his Halfling Marksmanship talent), and Stealth at DX. And even though they do not have ST better than 10, we still raise their ST by 1 for every four levels they have.

Let’s do some rolling and make the character. Level 3 of the dungeon, rolling twice on the table in the D30 DM Companion gives 21 and 6, which 1d2 champions: 7th level fighters. (Level titles, oh yeah, what a way to make things so clear!) I roll a 1 on 1d2, so we only have one of them, but that doesn’t matter as they would be the same unless we chose two templates to handle them. Since he’s 7th level, we add 3 to all his skills, and 1 to his ST, DX, HT and secondary characteristics that come from them.

For his equipment, I’ll roll on the Quick Character Inventory on p. 9 first, getting a 23 on a d30, which is the die I’m rolling unless I say otherwise. That means he has a broadsword, no shield, and wears plate armor. (I’ll call that “mail and plate” from GURPS Low-Tech: Instant Armor, and make its stats threefold the Torso armor to handle a whole suit.) To see if he has a second weapon, I get nothing (he has a 50/50 chance, and I roll 92 on d%), so I’ll move to the tables on p. 21 to see if he has more. He has a 5% chance for each level he has to own a magic item, which is 15% since I’m rolling on the 3rd level table, and I roll an 11 on d%, so he does. I roll a 26 the magic item and get 1d3+3 lightning javelins (I roll and get 5 of them), which I treat as a crackling javelin (see Adventurers, p. 30), which means they do a follow-up 2 electrical damage as well as their normal damage.

So, a 7th level fighter:

ST: 14 HP: 14 Speed: 6.75

DX: 14 Will: 10 Move: 4

IQ: 10 Per: 10 SM: 0

HT: 13 HP: 13 DR: 5/4

Dodge: 8 Parry: 13 Block: 12

Broadsword (18): 2d+1 cutting or 1d+1 crushing. Reach 1.

Javelin (16): 1d+1 impaling. Range 21/35. Their crackling javelins do a follow-up 2 electrical damage.

Punch (17): 1d crushing. Reach C.

Traits: Combat Reflexes; High Pain Threshold.

Skills: Brawling-17; Broadsword-18; Shield-17; Thrown Weapon (Spear)-16.

Class: Mundane.

Notes: DR against crushing is 4. He has the Shield skill, but can’t Block unless he picks up a shield. Notable gear includes:

• Broadsword, $500, 3 lbs.
• Crackling Javelin (5), $15,330, 2 lbs.
• Mail and Plates Suit (covering all locations except the face), $3,000, 60 lbs.

Yeah, he’s boring, but you can come up with a name and personality yourself. Deem that beyond the scope of all this.

Clerics, Elves, Magic-Users

These guys have the same basic ideas as the others, but have spells. Class-by-class:

• Clerics are Support Clerics with True Faith (Turning) if they’re Lawful or Neutral, or Terror if they’re Chaotic. They also have the skill Diagnosis at IQ. See below for Power Investiture.
• Magic-Users are Artillery Mages. See below for Energy Reserve and Magery.
• Elves are Basic Archers with the Wood Elf racial template. Even though they do not have IQ better than 10, we still raise their IQ by 1 for every four levels they have.

For Energy Reserve, Magery, and Power Investiture, we’re going to handle this a little different than on the templates. A first-level cleric has Power Investiture 1; a first-level magic-user has Magery 1; a first-level elf has Magery 0. These go up like attributes, so at 4th level, they get another level of Power Investiture or Magery. Magic-users get Energy Reserve (Magical) 1 at 1st level, which goes up like a skill.

Now, we have spells. Clerics get two spells for each level they have. Roll them at random, which might be odd since you have something like 32 spells of Power Investiture 1 or other such spell tallies. Roll at the highest level of Power Investiture he would have at the level of experience, so a 9th level cleric has six rolls on Power Investiture 1, eight rolls on Power Investiture 2, and four rolls on Power Investiture 3. Always give him Minor Healing for free. He will have the the spell at a skill of IQ+Power Investiture-2 (or -3 if it is Very Hard), but if you roll the same spell more than once, add one to his skill each time.

Magic-users and elves get one roll on the Enchantment Type Table in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables for each level he has. From there, roll on the table it gives, and reroll results that give a spell not on the Wizard spell list from Pyramid #3/60: Dungeon Fantasy III and for which he lacks the Magery. Give him all the prerequisites spells for each spell he has. If you’re in a hurry, don’t worry about the prerequisites unless he needs one to blast his foes. He will have the spell at a skill of IQ+Magery-2 (or -3 if it is Very Hard), but if you roll the same spell more than once, add one to his skill each time. Magic-users should also get Lend Energy and Recover Energy.

Alternately, you can pick from the spell lists in Mirror of the Fire Demon, but you need to keep the Magery prerequisites in mind, since these templates have Magery 3 or so by default.

So, also on the 3rd level of the dungeon, I roll a 16 and an 11, which is 2d6 elves. Elves, like dwarves and halflings, don’t go up in level as you go down further in the dungeon, but we’ll call this 1d4+1 5th level elves to make them like the evil curates (5th level clerics) to make this more interesting. I’ll write for a lone elf to be clear.

Since they’re 5th level, we raise all his attributes and their secondary characteristics by 1, his Magery by 1, and his skills by 2. We have five rolls for spells. I get Clouds, which isn’t on the list, so it doesn’t count, Shape Water, Wall of Light, Charm, Shade, Rotting Death, which doesn’t count since he doesn’t have Magery 2, Power, which doesn’t count, and Destroy Water. I’ll put the prerequisites in the list too.

Rolling for equipment is a 14, which is a shortsword, mail armor, no shield. Since they’re elves, they have a 50/50 chance at a missile weapon, which we’ll give them anyways since GURPS elves are archery munchkins, calling a crossbow a regular bow since I rolled a 24. They have no magic items and no leader.

Our 5th level elf:

ST: 12 HP: 12 Speed: 6.00

DX: 15 Will: 11 Move: 4

IQ: 11 Per: 11 SM: 0

HT: 12 HP: 12 DR: 4/2*

Dodge: 8 Parry: 11 Block: 11

Punch (16): 1d-1 crushing. Reach C.

Regular Bow (20): 1d+1 impaling. Range 195/260. Bodkin arrows do 1d+1(2) piercing instead.

Shortsword (17): 2d-1 cutting. Reach 1.

Traits: Acute Vision 2; Appearance (Attractive); Forest Guardian 2; Magery 0; Night Vision 2; Sense of Duty (Nature); Striking ST 1 (ST 13).

Skills: Bow-20; Brawling-16; Fast-Draw (Arrow)-19; Shield-17; Shortsword-17.

Spells: Alertness-9; Bravery-10; Charm-10; Continual Light-10; Create Water-10; Destroy Water-10; Dull Hearing-10; Dull Vision-10; Fear-10; Light-10; Loyalty-10; Keen Hearing-10; Keen Vision-10; Purify Water-10; Seek Water-10; Sense Emotion-10; Sense Foes-10; Shape Water-10; Wall of Light-10.

Class: Mundane.

Notes: DR against crushing is 2. He has the Shield skill, but can't Block unless he picks up a shield. Notable gear includes:

• Fine Mail Armor (covering all locations except the face), $2,700, 45 lbs.
• Regular Bow, $100, 2 lbs.
• Shortsword, $400, 2 lbs.

Blankets and Tents

Going through the equipment lists, I see no special reason why anyone would bother to buy a bedroll or a tent, since they do nothing. However, a blanket is part of the basic loadout, and tents are offered as an upgrade, so they should do something. So, this is me thinking out loud about how to handle them.

Bedding

This is easier to rule. If you have no blanket or sleeping fur, your sleep is not as good and therefore some of your sleep time is lost. I can't find anything online about how much this is worth, so I crack open the Wilderness Survival Guide (which was among the first AD&D books I owned, by the way, though I lost my copy over the years and bought it on PDF again last year) and look on page 65. And the first thing that strikes me is how kind AD&D was to missing sleep: you only had to have five hours of sleep each night. Anyways, getting beyond that, it lists "Lying on bare ground (no bedding or padding)" as docking an hour off one's sleep, so we'll go with that. That will be two hours in weather below 35°F, but the blanket knocks that down to one hour, and the sleeping fur means no loss.

The other lines on this table bring up good issues. Plate armor knocks off four hours, which sounds about right; call all rigid armor knocking off half its DR in hours, rounded down. No loss for flexible armor; I think it's now a moot point that you can sleep in mail without much problem. Being below 0°F (or 35°F lower than your character's own low temperature threshold, for anyone with Temperature Tolerance) takes off another hour, while being above 90°F (or whatever your Temperature Tolerance gives you) takes off two hours.

Now, if you're hex crawling, missing sleep would have its normal effects, which means you're down FP. If you want to sleep a little longer, that will cut your travel time, so each extra hour cuts off 10% of travel, since I assume 10-12 hours of actual travel to make Move = 5-to-6-mile hexes. If you're using the slewing way of travel (hey, remember slewing in Microsoft Flight Simulator?) in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons, rule that not having a blanket means you get to wherever 10% slower, while not having a sleeping fur in winter or arctic weather means you get there 20% slower, or 10% slower with a normal blanket.

Tents

Some other lines in this table from the Wilderness Survival Guide lead us to tents. If the wind speed is 20 m.p.h. or greater and you have no tent, it says to dock two hours. If there is light or moderate precipitation and you have no tent, it says to dock three hours. (Those in plate armor don't take this loss, so if the weather is bad and you know it will be, it might be better to sleep in your plate.) And, in the graf below the table, it says that you can't sleep outside a tent in "extreme weather conditions," listing a lightning storm, a hailstorm and a sandstorm as examples. All of this I am going to use as-is for my hex crawl. For travel without detail, give a bonus of +1 to the Weather Sense roll to lower travel time if there are enough tents for everyone.

Group Basics

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers and the Basic Set both call this "[b]asic equipment for Cooking and Survival for a group," which sounds well and good until you realize that there's no special group Cooking or Survival rules anywhere. So, we'll handle this like the tent: having Group Basics means that you get a +1 to foraging rolls since the gear lets you better skin and prep the food to make it last longer and get more off the bone.

(Note to my players: wow, I hadn't looked at the Survival skill in ages. You all will hate those daily rolls.)

Throwing This Open

Anyone have any ideas?

Game log for 2 March 2014

Present:

Mayhem, 125-point dwa-er, human male barbarian (Chris)
Yémos, 125-point human male cleric of Dōsaútōr, goddess of magic and wisdom (Eric)

Absent:

Anêr, 125-point human male swashbuckler (Rett)

Retired:

Caleb, 125-point human male wizard (Nate, run for this session as an NPC)

Notes about the above: Nate quit the game, so I ran Caleb as an NPC until we get a chance to drop him off somewhere. Or he dies, I suppose.

The game starts on 12 Žnēâns 2852, right after the death of the manticore. In a flashback to the 9th, Mayhem woke up in the tavern. Praidīvós realized he forgot to give Yémos the letter of introduction to get the blood from Dībités Rock, so he hired Mayhem to do bring that letter, with a payment of 10 gold pieces, payable when Praidīvós gets his demon blood. Mayhem makes it to hex 2216, and hears the gang fight the manticore. He comes up to the others and and they talk about slicing apart the manticore. Anêr tried cutting off the stinger, but stings himself, which crippled his left hand. Yémos casts Minor Healing gives Anêr back most of what he lost. They choose to move on.

No Emerson, Lake and Palmer springs to mind.

A mile or so eastward, they hear some whimpering coming from a cave, and see some tracks nearby. They try to sneak up to the cave, and they hear a howl. Mayhem fails his Fright Check, taking going ashen and and stunned for 3 seconds. An elf-like feline (a caterwaul) comes out of its cave and charges Caleb, but doesn't hit him. Anêr gets near the caterwaul but doesn't swing; Yémos casts Shield 2 on Anêr. Caleb takes a step back to ready Fireball. Anêr makes a mighty swing, but the caterwaul dodges. The caterwaul tries to claw the wizard again, but the wizard dodges, but loses his spell. Yémos then whacks the caterwaul with its staff, but the great cat stays and fights. Anêr swings again at the caterwaul, but the it swats away his claws. The caterwaul steps back tries to put those claws in Anêr, but the Shield spell helps Anêr shun the blow. Yémos takes a swing, and the caterwaul doesn't dodge. The caterwaul parries Anêr again, then starts to withdraw, running towards its cave. Yémos steps in front of the wizard, who tries to cast Fireball, but he misses. Anêr moves back to defend as well. The caterwaul gets into its cave when Mayhem awakes from his stun.

The gang chose to go eastward and leave the poor cat alone. After some more travel, they hear growls, which Yémos identifies as wolves. Since the wolves are not bothering them, and looking for prey, the gang instead goes onward.

Add a little more snivel, and some self-soiling.

About an hour later, they see a cave, to which they go and see four goblins cooking a rat. Our gang sneak up on the goblins, and Mayhem shoots the nearest one with an arrow. The goblin pulls out his bow and ducks behind another goblin, who gather their wits to fight the gang. Caleb tries to cast Fireball, but fails. Anêr waits, Mayhem moves nearer, and one goblin steps towards Mayhem and draws his axe. The one with his bow takes a shot at Mayhem, who does not dodge, but his armor stops it. The other goblins draw their bows. Yémos and Anêr near, and Caleb gets Fireball ready. Mayhem, sword out, takes a swing, and the goblin falls to the ground, groaning in pain  The other goblins run off. 

The gang ties the goblin, named Kuflaug, who had six copper farthings on him. They ask him what's in the cave, and after a bit, he asks if they will kill the wizard and his "red man." He doesn't want to go into the cave, so Yémos wants to take him inside, and Anêr leads him in at sword point.

A little bigger and much more badass than a goblin.

They go into a big round room, about 50 foot diameter, and see the rotten tapestries on the walls, and listen at the door at the far end. They hear nothing. They push it open and go down the hall into a smaller round room, with four doors as well as the short hallway going into the room. They ask Kuflaug about traps in the rooms beyond the door to their right, and he says he doesn't know. They listen at the door and hear nothing. They walk inside, and see five orcs in a big barracks, which scares hell out of Kuflaug. The orcs ask what the goblin is doing inside the caves with the men, since the goblins are paying them to kill the wizard. As they parley about how much money the orcs should get (all of it, as they say), a black pudding seeps into the room from under the door through which they had just come. Man, orc and goblin all run to the one other door on the other side of the room, and find the door is locked. The orcs start to hack at the door, while the gang talks about what to do about the black pudding. After some mishaps, Caleb gets the Fireball spell going, and singes it. The orcs spot an opening, and run around the pudding instead of going through the door, which they have now hacked open.

Not for eating.

The gang goes into the room beyond the broken door. The room has fewer beds, and bigger, with a big statue of a humanoid with an oversized head. Mayhem goes first, behind the trap finder, and spots the loose tile, but the goblin wasn't so quick and stepped on the tile anyways and died from the bolt that shot out of the statue's mouth. Caleb and Anêr both took a shot, while Mayhem and Yémos get out of the way of two more shots. Everyone looks back, and see the pudding trying feebly to chase after the orcs. All choose to look through the room and go into the next one. After pushing in the stuck door, they go into the room, which is even smaller than the last one, and has oily rags and empty tin vials are in a corner. A lone big workbench, missing a leg, is against the far wall, which has some phosphorescent fungus on it. Random broken tools lie scattered on the bench. Caleb advises against shutting both doors after smelling the trap that comes out of a bottle in the middle of the room. They go to the other door and find the old prison, with rusted manacles and chains and some bits of little bones.

And we break here. The two characters whose players were there, Mayhem and Yémos, each got two points.

Notes: We gamed in Chris's apartment. Chris, can you clean up the place a bit if you're going to offer? And maybe show off some of the four decades of gaming material that you've accumulated? I know your foot is bum. Hopefully, the weather will let us do better in two weeks, either make your trek to Universe Games easier, or make it easier to get your excess stuff out.

I think I have the random encounters down, at least when they should happen. Now to worry about lead in for those.

Our barbarian is lacking in wilderness skills. Those will help the gang to get through the woods. Namely, a guide should have Hiking, Navigation (Land) and Weather Sense and some Survival (in these lands, mostly Plains, Swampland and Woodlands). The other characters can soak up whatever Survival skills the guide does not have.

Speaking of Mayhem, he lived up to his name by shooting a goblin before I could even get in a Reaction roll. Who knows how they would have handled someone talking to them? The orcs didn't take it too badly.