It's bittersweet that the DF Whiterock campaign ended before the PCs quite reached the bottom of the dungeon, but we kept the game going for over two years, so most things went mostly right. Peter asked for a post about things that went well in the comments, so here goes:
Converting a D&D 3.5 megadungeon to DFRPG (with a few other GURPS things thrown in) was work, but mostly went pretty smoothly. GUPRS is a very flexible system that can emulate most other games. Probably the hardest part was converting enemy spellcasters, because there are so many differences in the magic systems. The easiest part was converting DCs to GURPS skill penalties and monetary treasure in gold pieces to GURPS $; I did both of those purely mechanically. And thanks to all the people who put conversions of D&D monsters to GURPS on the Internet.
The house rules for building a DFRPG character with 125 points and no templates worked pretty well. Players seemed to have fun making characters, and the first few sessions were pretty challenging.
The rules for improving characters, where points spent on skills could be traded back when attributes based on those skills were raised, were pretty popular. (It seems that anytime you let players do more than the official rules allow, they're happy. So this was not surprising.) Not limiting characters to templates provided a different challenge than most GUPRS Dungeon Fantasy or DFRPG games.
Five players played in a majority of the sessions, and four played in a vast majority. I had only played with one of the players before, so this showed that it is possible to assemble a reasonably cohesive group from random people on the Internet. Of course it's not quite as easy to do it this way as to use a group of people who already get along: we had a few players who dropped out due to intra-party conflict or because it just wasn't the right campaign for them.
Making "Sense of Duty: Adventuring Companions" not count against the disadvantage limit had the intended result that everyone took it, and then the intended result that PCs who didn't get along kept it at the level of verbal sniping (and occasional Levitation), rather than violence.
Having a dedicated Discord for the campaign seemed to keep everyone in the loop. We mostly knew if we were playing on Friday and who was showing up, and everyone mostly had their characters ready to go.
Roll20 mostly worked okay. The fact that it's web-based is nice because people can play with their phone or tablet when away from a real computer. On the other hand, it doesn't work nearly as well with a phone or tablet as with a real PC. And it doesn't support large maps very well, so some of the larger levels ended up being many maps rather than one map, which was annoying.
We got a surprising amount of roleplaying for a dungeon crawl. The PCs made both allies and enemies. (Of course the allies tended to survive longer than the enemies.) And they each had enough of a personality that when a player was out and someone else ran their character, we got fairly accurate mockeries.
The game featured a lot of combat, and the players got pretty good at combat tactics against various enemies. Outflanking enemies to hit them in the back happened a lot, especially once everyone had Flight all the time. Sacrificial Parry was used a ton. And the players were constantly trying to balance Deceptive Attack, Rapid Strike, and hit location penalties. There were also a lot of stunning attacks, via Rapier Wit, the Stun or Death Vision spells, or Kiai.
This player group had more of a hive mind than most I've seen: everyone shared their character sheets with each other and gave each other advice on how to improve their characters, and the group mostly functioned as a collective with respect to equipment. This was pretty effective.
GURPS / Dungeon Fantasy RPG campaign set in Castle Whiterock megadungeon
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2020-07-13
2020-07-09
GURPS 2020 PDF Challenge Kickstarter Maxed Out: 12 PDFs for $3
If you play GURPS you probably already know this, but The GURPS 2020 PDF Challenge Kickstarter has hit its $45000 max goal, so it's 12 PDFs for $3. (Total, not each. And they're electronically delivered PDFs, so no shipping charges. So $3 actually means $3.) They're already written, and Steve Jackson Games has been around for decades, so this is about as low-risk as Kickstarters get.
I suspect you'll be able to get all these PDFs on Warehouse23 shortly after it's over, so there's no pressing need to join the Kickstarter now; it's just a screaming good deal. (We don't know the MSRPs of these PDFs yet, but if they average $5 then it's $60 of stuff for $3, which is 95% off.)
I suspect you'll be able to get all these PDFs on Warehouse23 shortly after it's over, so there's no pressing need to join the Kickstarter now; it's just a screaming good deal. (We don't know the MSRPs of these PDFs yet, but if they average $5 then it's $60 of stuff for $3, which is 95% off.)
2020-07-04
GURPS DF/DFRPG Conversion Notes Available
In case anyone else decides to run Castle Whiterock using GURPS Dungeon Fantasy or DFRPG, I put my conversion notes up at https://github.com/dripton/gurpswhiterock .
Ultimately every group of players and PCs is different, though, so every GM is going to have to scale the challenge of the adventure to their players and characters. If you run this adventure for two novice players, they're going to need a lot of help. If you run it for five experts, they're going to stomp all over it unless you're really stingy with the character points and magic items. So be flexible and do what you think fits your group, rather than assuming I know something you don't.
Ultimately every group of players and PCs is different, though, so every GM is going to have to scale the challenge of the adventure to their players and characters. If you run this adventure for two novice players, they're going to need a lot of help. If you run it for five experts, they're going to stomp all over it unless you're really stingy with the character points and magic items. So be flexible and do what you think fits your group, rather than assuming I know something you don't.
2020-07-03
The Premature End of DF Whiterock
The Bad News
I ended the DF Whiterock campaign today, after over 2 years and 100 sessions, but before the dungeon was finished. (The Thane was the end of level 12 out of 15, so they were about 80% done. Though they had skipped level 5, the underwater level.)I'm disappointed we didn't finish, but I wasn't having fun anymore, and running this game was way too much work to continue doing if it wasn't fun for the GM. I know some of the players weren't super-happy with the way it was going either.
What went wrong? Ultimately I think a mismatch between player and GM expectations. From my point of view, the players wanted continual increases in power, and complained about not getting enough points or treasure. Meanwhile I was trying to keep the adventures challenging for the increasingly untouchable PCs. Giving them more power was the last thing I wanted to do, as I thought they had too much already.
Also, in the game world, the PCs had defeated the Thane of Narborg, who appeared to be the ultimate boss behind the orc and human slavers who had dragged them into this adventure in the first place. The fact that the red dragon Benthosruthsa was probably allied with the duergar was not clear enough to them. I had Chauntessa clue them in a bit more last week, but they still didn't have enough motivation to do her dirty work.
Things I'd do differently if I ran this again
1. Award character points for accomplishments rather than play time, to give the players a reason to go faster. And award fewer points overall from the start. (If you set a low baseline rate of improvement and give bonuses for significant achievements, players are happy. If you set a high baseline then slow it, players whine.)2. Make the dungeon a bit smaller. As written, it's the surface level with human slavers, then two orc levels, two trog levels, the underwater level (which our group skipped except for one brief encounter with the hydrohydra), the underground river level, the Immense Cavern, three duergar levels, the Demonhold, two levels of Burning Maze, then the final level with the dragon boss. I think it could be reduced from 15 levels to 9 by removing an orc level, a trog level, the underwater level, two duergar levels, and the Demonhold.
3. Figure out voice or text ahead of time. It appears that most players have a very strong preference for one or the other, so voting each session isn't a great idea. (We stopped voting after text won about 20 times in a row, but at least one player was never happy that the game was text.)
4. Write up more ahead of time to make sure all the players are on the same page. One player quit early because this was too much story, not enough mindless hack-and-slash for his vision of DFRPG. I guess you can never do enough Session Zero.
5. I probably wouldn't use Roll20. Making dungeon maps in Roll20 is too painful, because there's no support for doors, and you have to do line of sight blocking manually by drawing all your walls again on another layer. If I had to start a new game today, I'd probably choose MapTool because it's the most mature cross-platform VTT available, even though its scripting language is gross. FoundryVTT looks great, though it's really new and doesn't support enough game systems yet. And the future not-Windows-only version of Fantasy Grounds might also be a contender. Of course, the grass is always greener on the other side. I know everything I hate about Roll20 after using it for two years. I'm sure the others have warts too; I just haven't found them yet.
6. Give more blatant clues on what the PCs should be doing next, rather than expecting them to figure it out. Player agency is great, but when there's only one dungeon prepared, the PCs always need a good reason to go into it.
7. Writing long detailed recaps for every session was a lot of work. I think I'd try to farm that out to the players.
Random observations
1. If you remove mandatory templates from Dungeon Fantasy / DFRPG, the PCs will be more powerful. You need to account for that when handing out points.2. Wizards get drastically more powerful as their spell skills reach 20 (which is achievable with a stock 250-point wizard) and 25. In particular, Flight-25 is "all the PCs fly all the time."
3. Bless is broken. Luck is really good. Having one of them is pretty good: it means fewer dead PCs. Having both is probably too much.
4. Great Haste is broken. I ended up limiting attacks per turn to 3 to curb the worst abuses of it, but just eliminating the spell would probably work better.
5. Mass Daze is often End Fight.
6. Everything in DFRPG is aimed at 250-point characters. Balancing 125-point or 500-point characters is an exercise for the GM. Getting it right is tricky.
7. In this particular adventure, wandering monsters had very little effect. The PCs usually felt overpowered enough that nothing on the wandering monster table would be much of a threat, so wandering monsters were mostly a waste of time. This probably contributed to a lack of urgency, as the players found no cost to slowly moving around looking for every secret.
8. Different players like different things. I think (borrowing the terminology from Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering which I think all GMs should read) our group was one Roleplayer, one Tactician, one Butt Kicker, and two Power Gamers. (They might disagree with those assessments though.)
The Future
A couple of people want my Castle Whiterock GURPS conversion notes, so I'll throw those up on Github at some point and post here when I do.I have a couple of GURPS oneshots I'm thinking of running for a group of friends and maybe at a (virtual?) convention: the Star Trek and Harry Potter adventures from 1shotadventures.com . (So if you think you might want to play in those, don't read them.)
I'd also like to run The Traveller Adventure (for Classic Traveller, from 1983) in GURPS. That's another campaign-length adventure, like Castle Whiterock, but it's 156 pages, versus about 800, so hopefully it wouldn't take as long to run. It's kind of the polar opposite of Whiterock though: SF vs. fantasy, trading vs. combat, a subsector versus one town and one dungeon.
DF Whiterock Session 101: Cillamar Interlude
Date:
Weather:
Hot, humid
Player Characters:
Elias (Wiggles), Wood Elf Cleric, 436 points
Garreth (Zuljita), Half-Orc Fighter, 500 points
Ibizaber (Demented Avenger), Human Thief, 500 points
Polly (Kalzazz), Wood Elf Archer, 494 points
Seépravir (Archon Shiva), High Elf Wizard, 501 points
Significant NPCs:
Agmenalious, Sleeping Silver Dragon
Scalemar, Dragon-Slaying sword
Lama of Elyr, Human Cleric
Quintus, Human Alchemist
Alrux, Dwarf Armorer
Urgus, Dwarf Enchanter
Tyber Lasir, Half-Elf Armorer
Lowrek, Stone Giant Leader
Fjorjek, Stone Giant Corpse
Several Young Stone Giants
Lord Jor of Kilia, Castellan of Cillamar
We started in town, after the PCs had defeated Thane Hrolad or Narborg and the Wall of Darkness, and dragged a bunch of treasure back (ncluding a couple of cursed items that required Apportation.) Seépravir cast Analyze Magic a lot and determined that the Crown of Narborg was powerful but permanently cursed and very evil, and that Koborth's broadsword was powerfully enchanted to kill dragons.
One of the Inn of the Slumbering Drake's serving girls approached Zaber and said that Lady Chauntessa needed to meet with him and his friends. When he gathered the group, Chauntessa joined them in a private booth and asked if they heard anything about the Sleep of Ages spell. She revealed that this had become more urgent, because the victim of the spell was having health problems.
The PCs got upset about how Chauntessa never told them anything and demanded more information, so she told them that the victim was her husband, and the spell was cast by Benthosruthsa's Lamia girlfriend Hasna'azhar. Garreth asked for more information on her husband, so she revealed that his name was Agmenalious and he tangled with the wrong dragon and got put to sleep permanently for it, and that only the caster of the spell could reveal the way to dispel it without killing the victim.
At this point the PCs tried to get Chauntessa to come help them kill Benthosruthsa, but she revealed that she can't leave her husband's side. Seépravir then suggested bringing him along, but Chauntessa was afraid he would not survive being moved.
Chauntessa revealed that at the bottom of the chasm in front of Narborg was the entrance to the Demonhold, which could be bypassed, because the stairs down to the Burning Maze above Benthosruthsa's lair were behind the now-destroyed Wall of Darkness. She also revealed that the Burning Maze was very hot, and handed over two Salamander Amulets.
Garreth demanded being able to see Chauntessa's husband. She agreed to take him into her private rooms. Seépravir cast Soul Rider so she could watch as well. In a secret closet off Chauntessa's bedroom was a narrow bed with an old man with a long mustache and beard lying on it, asleep. His skin looked rather jaundiced. Garreth tried Chi Medicine and agreed that he was magically asleep and his organs were failing.
Garreth and Chauntessa returned to the others, who started asking how to take a Lamia alive. Chauntessa suggested Charming her. Garreth suggested the Spellseal Ring. They resumed asking for more information. Chauntessa revealed that she couldn't scry the Burning Maze, so hadn't actually seen Benthosruthsa in years, though she had noticed a huge black pudding from the Underdark going down the stairs into the Maze.
The PCs tried to get Chauntessa to give them all her magic items, but she refused. Garreth then said he needed to go look for his mask and new sword. At that, Koborth's sword Scalemar started vibrating, and told him that no other sword was as good at killing dragons, but maybe the other sword could be used for breaking down doors or killing kobolds. Garreth said that he needed a two-handed sword. Scalemar sent a suggestion that needing two hands to swing a sword wasn't very manly.
Garreth noticed that Scalemar's pommel looked like a giant tooth. Polly pulled out her shark tooth to compare, but Scalemar's was bigger. Seépravir thought it might be a dragon tooth. Chauntessa said "Oh, that's a gold." Garreth asked what the name of the Inn was before she bought it, and she said it used be be called the Famished Vagabond Inn. Seépravir pointed out that there were no black gems on the sword, and Scalemar immediately agreed and told Garreth that they needed to kill a black dragon. Garreth asked Scalemar what it knew about Chauntessa, and it replied "Silver, not evil. We only kill evil dragons." Garreth revealed Chauntessa's dragon status to the others, though it took Polly a while to understand.
Scalemar vibrated and then told Garreth it was sorry but it couldn't get any longer, but maybe if it killed a dragon then it would be able to. Garreth decided to go talk to the enchanter and the smith to see if they could do anything. Chauntessa excused herself to go scry for assassins.
Just then a young cleric of Elyr walked into the Inn looking for Elias. He informed him that they had heard the Crown of Narborg had been found, and the Lama of Elyr would like to destroy it. Elias, half-listening, was casting Bless +2 on his companions. When he was done, they brought the crown to the Lama. The Lama was very pleased and said they could have any cleric spell they wanted in reward. Seépravir pushed for an even stronger Bless, but Garreth suggested they Resurrect a stone giant.
Seépravir walked over to Quintus's tower and placed an order for a huge number of potions. He asked them to get him the poison sacs from the giant lizards they killed. The others went to Alrux's shop. Garreth's sword was ready, as was his face mask. When Garreth started swinging his new sword around and complimenting it, Scalemar started vibrating again, and said that Garreth should get Scalemar enlarged and then break the other sword in half. Garreth asked if Alrux could extend Scalemar, but he said that he didn't do magic so Urgus would have to be involved.
Garreth went to Seépravir's tower, where Urgus was working. Urgus was able to identify Scalemar by sight, and said that it was a legend, and asked if he could have one of Benthos's teeth. Garreth asked Urgus if Scalemar could be extended without wrecking the magic, and Urgus said maybe, but to fetch Alrux and some alcohol so they could discuss it in detail. Urgus said he'd also need a couple of wizard assistants, like Seépravir and Quintus. They agreed to do the work in exchange for the Thane's Rod of Lordly Might for Alrux, and half ownership of the enchantment laboratory in Seépravir's tower for Urgus. After much enchanting and smithing, Scalemar was extended into a bastard sword, without destroying its magic.
Meanwhile, Polly went to Tyber Lasir's shop to try to get one of her bows restrung to super-strength. After some back and forth and burning a strength potion to show exactly how heavy it needed to be, he was able to begin the work.
While the wizards and armorer were still working, Garreth and Polly and Zaber went back to Castle Whiterock to see the storm giants. They made it to the Immense Cavern (though it was a slow trip because they had to walk and boat rather than fly), then showed the Thane's head to the stone giants. They were able to convince Lowrek, the leader of the giants, to carry the body of the giant that the Thane had had murdered back to Cillamar for resurrection. (Garreth tried to get the giants to haul loot back as well, but the bridge to Narborg had been destroyed and they were lacking a way to fly, so that didn't work.) But they did manage to haul the body of Fjorjek to just outside the walls of Cillamar. At that point, the town guards got a bit nervous at the idea of several stone giants near their town, so they stayed outside, until someone fetched the Lama and a couple of other priests and priestesses of Elyr. They formed some kind of prayer circle for a while, and then Fjorjek stood up, alive again. Zaber went and bought some beer for the giants from several establishments in Cillamar, and then the giants headed back to Whiterock.
Next Garreth and Zaber and Polly dressed up in their fancy clothes and tried getting an audience with the Patriarch. He was not available, but they got an appointment with his Castellan instead. They showed Lord Jor the Thane's head, but he said he couldn't tell one bald dwarf head from another one, but that Chauntessa had told him they were legitimate. He handed Garreth a writ granting him the right to buy and sell new and used armor in town, saying one of the armorers had been complaining about unlicensed armorers dumping too much used duergar armor. He also said that if they were going after Benthosruthsa, the town needed to get its siege weapons ready to be prepared to repel an angry dragon if they failed. So, don't fail.
That was the end of the session.