Worlds of the Aramis Trace

Your subsidy route is the Aramis Trace, a group of 8 worlds reachable via Jump-1 in the Aramis, Rhylanor, and Sabine subsectors of the Spinward Marches and Deneb sectors.  The worlds have mostly good to excellent starports, but small populations.

Here are some brief highlights of each world.

Aramis is the capital of the Aramis Subsector.  It's located on the Xboat route from Rhylanor to Vland, so while it is not a very populous world, its starport is quite busy.  Aramis High is the best port in the subsector.  The planet itself is a hellworld, with a corrosive atmosphere that requires special equipment to survive.  The vast majority of the planet's population lives in one underground city, Leedor, adjacent to Aramis Downport.  Leedor has a population of about 600000 people, and is a fief of the Marquis of Aramis.  Leedor was originally a mining settlement, and there are still active mines on the edge of town, while played-out mines are reused for habitation.

L'eoul d'Dieu (LDD) is a water world.  The planet is effectively owned by the megacorporation Sharurshid, which harvests seafood and other aquatic resources.  Sharurshid currently does not allow additional settlement, to protect the marine environment, so the population has been kept to about 500000.  The Imperial Navy base is on a nearby moon.

Natoko is another corporate world, dominated by Tukera Lines, the largest shipping megacorporation in the Imperium.  Tukera uses the world to overhaul its starships, and does not allow non-employees to live there.  The population is about 800 Tukera and starport employees plus some personnel at the Imperial Navy base.  It's unclear why Tukera has chosen to leave a garden world so empty.

Reacher has an exotic atmosphere, and its major industry is extraction of organic resources.  In recent years, trade of these resources has declined, and the population of Reacher has blamed offworlders.  The Travellers Aid Society has posted Reacher an Amber Zone, as it can be dangerous for offworlders to leave the starport.

Vinorian is a mostly-water world with a tainted atmosphere requiring filter masks to survive.  It is dominated by Dirkstrom Industries.  The population is about 4 million, the highest in the Aramis Trace.

Nutema is a hot planet whose atmosphere is tainted by a horrible smell.  The planet is home to about 9000 inhabitants spread across the planet in small family groups, who mostly only interact electronically.  There is a small Imperial Navy base in orbit.

Margesi has an excellent starport, Navy and Scout bases, and a tiny native population of 300.  The tainted atmosphere poisons food, making the world unsuitable for agriculture.  The main industry is entertaining off-duty Navy, Scout, and Starport personnel at a recreation center just outside the downport.

Saarinen is the location of Imperial Research Station Epsilon, centered on underwater planetological studies.  In addition to active research, there is a training center for underwater science and exploration.  There are no population centers outside the starport and Research Station.

March Harrier Subsidy Contract

Starship Ownership and Subsidy Agreement

between

Aramis Trace Commercial Development Trust, LIC ("the Trust")
March Harrier Lines, LIC ("MHL")
Individual Principals of March Harrier Lines, LIC
(names TODO)

295-1099, Rhylanor/Rhylanor

The Aramis Trace comprises the following worlds:

•    Aramis subsector: Aramis, L'eoul d'Dieu, Natoko, and Reacher
•    Rhylanor subsector: Vinorian, Nutema, and Margesi
•    Sabine subsector: Saarinen

The Aramis Trace worlds not currently connected by Imperial Interstellar
Scout Service Express Boat Routes are Reacher, Vinorian, Nutema, Margesi,
and Saarinen.

It is in the interests of the Worlds of the Aramis Trace, the Subsector of
Rhylanor, the Domain of Deneb, and the Imperium to ensure that all of the worlds of the Aramis Trace are regularly connected by reliable starship service allowing for delivery of freight, passengers, and mail.

Due to the currently small populations of some worlds of the Aramis Trace, there is currently a scarcity of commercial traffic between some of these worlds at some times.  The Trust believes this scarcity is likely to continue.

MHL is interested in conducting commercial passenger and freight operations in the Aramis Trace and would benefit from doing so without sole responsibility for the cost of a starship.

The Duke of Rhylanor has authorized the Trust to purchase a 400-displacement-ton Type R Subsidized Merchant starship (Imperial registry A90FD58D578C, referred to as "March Harrier") at a cost of not more than MCr 185) for delivery as soon as possible but no later than 001-1100.

Ownership of March Harrier shall be shared 50/50 between March Harrier Enterprises and Aramis Trace Development Trust, within the limits of this agreement, for 30 years.  After 30 years, March Harrier Enterprises shall assume full ownership of the March Harrier and this subsidy agreement will be voided, unless both parties agree to an extension.

March Harrier Enterprises shall name the captain and crew of the March Harrier.  At least two of the above named principals of March Harrier Enterprises shall remain part of the crew at all times, unless an emergency prevents this or The Trust agrees to a change.

The March Harrier shall be crewed (at a minimum) by a Captain with a Master's License, a First Officer with a Mate's License, a Chief Engineer with a Chief Engineer's License, and a Certified Medical Technician.  All qualifications must remain current and in good standing.

Because Imperial Mail regulations require that starships carrying mail be armed for self-defense, the Trust will ensure that the March Harrier is armed with at least two turrets, each with at least two operational beam lasers.  MHL will ensure that the crew contains at least two persons qualified to operate such armament at any time the March Harrier is carrying mail, and that said armament is properly maintained and
operational.

Because Imperial Mail regulations require 5 displacement tons of secure cargo space for starships carrying mail, the Trust will equip March Harrier with a certified mail locker, and the crew will be trained in its secure operation and will follow all Imperial Mail regulations to ensure the security of the mail.  (In particular, except in emergencies, the mail locker will only be opened when both an officer of the March Harrier and an authorized agent of Imperial Mail are present.)

MHL agrees to conduct regular commercial freight and passenger service between the worlds of the Aramis Trace at least 70% of the time.  The remaining 30% of the time can be spent persuing any legal business anywhere within the Imperium.  (The ship shall not leave the Imperium without explicit permission from the Trust.)

At all times, 50% of the gross revenues generated by the March Harrier will be paid to the Trust.  MHL receives the other 50%.  MHL is responsible for all expenses.  The Trust has banking services at every starport within the Aramis Trace, and on other major worlds throughout the Domain.  Payment must be made within one month of the time revenue was received.

MHL agrees to keep accurate records of all commercial transactions by March Harrier and to submit said records for audit annually, or immediately on demand.

MHL and the Captain of the March Harrier shall have freedom to decide routes, passengers, and freight, except that any Imperial Mail enroute to the desired destination shall have first call on the ship's freight capacity.  Furthermore, during the 70% of the time that it is following the subsidy route, MHL agrees to support a diversity of freight and passenger traffic, rather than allowing the ship's resources to be monopolized by charters, private cargo speculation, or shipping to a
single corporation, to the extent that other passengers and freight are available.  (Nothing in this agreement shall prevent the crew of the March Harrier from using any passenger or cargo space for any legal purpose when there is not other demand, as long as the crew pays 50% of the retail cost of the space to the Trust.)

MHL agrees to visit and attempt to conduct commerce on every world in the Aramis Trace at least once per six months spent following the subsidy route.  An exception will be made if a world is Interdicted.

MHL agrees to maintain the March Harrier in accordance with Imperial best practices for commercial starships, including an annual overhaul. MHL agrees to have major maintenance and repair work done within the Aramis Trace, to the extent practicable, and to forward annual maintenance reports to the Trust.

In the event that this contract is violated by MHL or any principal of MHL is  convicted of an Imperial felony, the Trust reserves the right to end this subsidy  contract and assume possession of the March Harrier.


Sir Amin Brogers
Director, Aramis Trace Development Trust, LIC
for
Leonard Stephanos Kirgashii, Duke of Rhylanor

[electronic signatures attached]

GURPS Traveller: March Harrier Campaign Intro

High-level description:

This is a GURPS 4th Edition campaign, in the Traveller setting, set in the Aramis subsector of the Spinward Marches sector in the year 1105 of the Third Imperium.

The PCs are the crew of the March Harrier, a 400-ton Subsidized Merchant starship.  It theoretically requires a crew of 5, and has 13 staterooms (so 8 left for passengers), 13 low berths, and a 200-displacement-ton cargo hold.

The background of the campaign is making a living as star merchants: trying to find enough passengers and fixed-rate freight to carry from world to world to make a profit.  And possibly also looking for speculative cargo or other money-making opportunities.

Of course some less routine events might happen, leading to Adventures.

Player-facing information:

It's a science fiction game, with starships and laser rifles.  The Traveller setting is what GURPS Ultra-Tech calls "safe-tech", which means it feels like 1970s SF, not newer SF.  Not a lot of cybernetics or nanobots.  Think Firefly.

An important feature of Traveller is that there is faster-than-light travel, but it takes at least a week to travel to a nearby star, and there is no faster-than-light radio.  So news travels relatively slowly and interstellar governments are somewhat limited.

The PCs are ordinary (though skilled) humans.  Starting point values will be fairly low, advancement will be slow, and there will be caps on both attributes and skill levels.

Because the frame of the campaign is interstellar trading, at least a couple of players should be interested in that.  Other players might just want to play starship crew who don't deal much with the business end, and that's fine.

One major difference between a starship crew and many groups of PCs is that a starship has one or more owners and exactly one captain.  So the players need to decide who owns the ship.  The default setup will be that 4 starting PCs will each own an equal share of the ship.

Once ownership of the ship is determined, the owner(s) need to pick a captain and first mate from among qualified members of the crew.  Other important roles also need to be filled: pilot, navigator, sensor operator, communications operator, engineers, mechanics, gunners, steward, medic, cargomaster, launch pilot, ATV driver.  That is more roles than PCs, so most PCs will have multiple jobs.  (And of course there should be backups for every critical role, just in case something bad happens.) If there aren't enough PCs to fully crew the ship, the players can ask the GM to supply NPCs to round out the crew, or they can try to hire NPC crew members in play.

There will be combat in this game, but probably not every session.

There will be character advancement in this game, but it will be slow.  Your PC will not become dramatically more powerful.

There is an opportunity for one player to play a pre-generated character with a backstory important to the plot.  This character does not start the adventure as a member of the March Harrier's crew, but will meet them during the first game session.

Should I try to play in this game?

Do I need to be a GURPS expert to play?  No, I want to keep this pretty rules-light, and most of GURPS is "roll under your attribute or skill on 3d6."  There will be pre-generated PCs available for those who don't feel like making one, or you can have the GM or another player help you make one.

Do I need to know Traveller to play?  No.  I will try to explain enough of the background as we go.

What if I'm a Traveller veteran.  Should I play?  I'd prefer not to have players who've already read or played this exact adventure.  Other than that, Traveller experience is welcome but not required.

What rules do I need to own?  The free GURPS Lite PDF will get you most of the way there.  Almost all the skills will be in the GURPS 4E Basic Set.  I will use stuff from GURPS Traveller Interstellar Wars, the 3E GURPS Traveller line (converted to 4E as needed), GURPS Ultra-Tech, GURPS Starships, and random Traveller books, but players don't need to know all that.

This will be a Rule Zero game.  Players need to be willing to abide by GM rulings rather than arguing.

How about dates and times?

I'd like to play once a week, on Monday nights, from 8 p.m. to midnight US Eastern time.  My goal is to play every week that a majority of players are available.  So if we have 5 players and 1 or 2 can't play that week, we play anyway.  I'd like to end each week with the PCs on the ship in a safe location, so that if someone can't make it one week, it's easy to just leave their PC on the ship rather than having to run them as an NPC.

What about software?

I want characters in GCS format; you can find GCS at https://gurpscharactersheet.com.  It's free and portable and excellent.  You need at least version 5.0.  I already added the Traveller templates that we need to the GCS master library.

https://travellermap.com  is a handy map of the Traveller universe.  (Search for "Aramis" to see where this campaign starts.)

The game will be run using FoundryVTT, but it's web-based so players don't need anything beyond a computer and web browser.

I plan to use Discord to coordinate things between game sessions, and for voice during play.

There will be Google Sheets for tracking money and points.

I'll do session recaps to this blog.

Character generation details:

(This is just a high-level summary; I will give more details to the players later.)

Starting PCs will be based on 150 points, with a -30 point disadvantage limit (including negative attribute costs as disads), and -5 points of quirks.

A -5 point Sense of Duty to crewmates is optional and doesn't count against the disad limit.

Partial, subsidized, strings-attached ownership of the March Harrier is a "free" campaign feature; you don't have to pay points for Wealth or Ship Patron or Ship Owner.

The Captain needs to take Merchant Rank 3 [15].

The First Officer needs to take Merchant Rank 2 [10].

Other Officers need to take Merchant Rank 2 [10], Merchant Rank 1 [5] or Courtesy Merchant Rank 1 [1].

The maximum starting attribute is 15.

The maximum starting skill is 16.

All PCs should use one of the occupational templates from GURPS Traveller: Interstellar Wars.  (If you don't have the book, they're also in GCS.)  Some particularly useful templates are Starship Commander, Starship Bridge Officer, Starship Engineer, Starship Deckhand, Doctor, and Marine.

A March-class subsidized merchant nominally has a crew of five.  (Pilot, Navigator, Engineer, Medic, and Steward.)  If we have exactly five players and everyone wants a different mandatory role then we have a full crew.  If we have fewer players or someone doesn't want to fill one of those roles, then the crew may be filled out with NPCs.  Note that crew members need to be paid, fed, and supplied with stateroom space and oxygen, so the bigger the crew, the harder it is to make a profit.

Most PCs should be human Imperial citizens.  If you really want to play an alien or non-Imperial, talk to the GM.

If desired, one PC may be a pre-generated non-crewmember who will be met during the first game session.

How are you picking players?

I will start by asking people I've enjoyed playing with in the past if they want to play.  Then, if there are slots left, I will advertise them on the Internet.  Once we have a full crew I will put anyone else who wants to play on a waiting list, and contact them if someone drops out.

When does this campaign start?

Once I manage to find 5 players, I'll try to schedule a Session Zero within a couple of weeks, and then regular weekly sessions after that.

How long will this campaign last?

I really don't know, but my best guess is about a year.

GURPS Star Trek One-Shot: Who Tracks the Steps of Glory

Ran another oneshot from J.C. Connors' excellent 1shotadventures.com : the Star Trek adventure Who Tracks the Steps of Glory.  If you might want to play that adventure you should probably stop reading after this paragraph to avoid spoilers.  The PCs were four senior officers of the crew of the Miranda-class cruiser USS Renown, investigating a space anomoly near the Romulan Neutral Zone.  We used GURPS 4E and GURPS Prime Directive for the rules, Foundry with Nose and Nick's Unofficial GURPS System for the virtual tabletop and maps and dice, Jitsi for video and voice, and GCS for character sheets that were imported into Foundry.

Player Characters:

Captain Andrew Seong (Kalzazz), Captain of the USS Renown

Commander Kirshex (djt), Edosian First Officer and Science Officer

Dr. Michael Westinghouse (Demented Avenger), Chief Medical Officer

Lt. Bexley Gracen (Kocrachon), Acting Chief Engineer

Significant NPCs:

Lt. Ethreti Zhress, Andorian Head of Security

Admiral (Retired) Carl Gonzalez, Passenger

Sub-commander S'anra, Romulan commander of secret base

Centurion Tr'mas, Romulan second in command of secret base

Commander Vharien, Romulan commander of hidden comet fleet

The adventure started with Captain Andrew Seong reading a Captain's Log handout that summarized the recent situation, which was a great touch that I highly recommend for any Star Trek RPG.  The Renown had discovered a rare boson micro-nebula just on the Federation side of the Neutral Zone, and was going closer to investigate.  Safely scanning from outside the nebula revealed a small dormant spaceship inside the nebula, so the crew reconfigured their shields and dared to get closer.  The Renown took some damage, but the crew managed to map the nebula and recover a derelict Tholian ship that had been lost in the nebula almost a century before, with its pilot unfortunately dead.

While investigating the nebula, the Renown received an unencrypted distress signal, indicating that a secret Romulan base inside the Neutral Zone was in distress, with a complete life support failure.  After a quick discussion the captain decided to crank the Renown up to Warp 8, risking more damage, to get to the Romulan base and render assistance as quickly as possible.

As they neared the base, sensors revealed that the Romulan base had a landing pad and a building at ground level and probably more underneath, though they failed to scan well enough to tell.  (Electronics Operation (Sensors) was definitely the most used skill in this adventure.)  They tried hailing the Romulans, but got no response.  So they beamed down most of the senior bridge crew, leaving Kirshex behind to command the ship.

The building contained a turbolift, and the turbolift contained four hostile Romulans, who opened disruptor fire on the PCs.  The captain attempted diplomacy, which failed, and then a phasers vs. disruptors battle ensued, with Doctor Westinghouse taking cover and preparing to help anyone injured.  Fortunately for the PCs, they were better at shooting and dodging than the Romulans.  Fortunately for the Romulans, the Federation phasers were set to stun.  After all four Romulans were stunned they were tied up and then transported to the Renown's brig.

The PCs entered the turbolift and went down to the lower level, where they saw more Romulans, these ones not hostile.  They eventually met the Romulan leader, who said that the base's life support system was destroyed, the environment suits were running out of air, and they could really use rescue.  The captain ordered the remaining 30-some Romulans to be beamed up and kept in Transporter Bay 2.  The PCs stayed behind to investigate the base for a while, and found radioactive europium isotopes in the life support system and a phased-magnesium actuator trap in one room.  Much evidence of sabotage.  Eventually they headed back up to the ship.

And not a moment too soon, as sensors indicated that the base was about to explode.  Kirshex ordered shields rear full and to fly away from the base as quickly as possible in the ship's damaged condition.  The explosion caused a bit more damage, but nothing fatal.

At that point, the PCs had about 30 untrusted Romulan guests on board their somewhat damaged starship.  They wanted to find a nice neutral world to drop the Romulans on, while getting out of the Neutral Zone as quickly as possible.  At that point they detected an encrypted transmission: some Romulan ships were coming to investigate the distress signal.

S'anra, the Romulan leader, asked to have dinner with the senior officers.  While they were trying to figure out each other's motives, the captain got an alert that the second-in-command, Tr'mas, who the captain had agreed to move from the transporter bay to a passenger cabin, had apparently stabbed a Federation security officer and escaped.  Dr. Westinghouse ran to sickbay and successfully performed life-saving surgery, while Lt. Zhress led a team of redshirts to find and stun Tr'mas.  When he awoke, Tr'mas said that he had been attacked by a rabidly anti-Romulan crewman and had merely defended himself, but nobody believed him.  He was thrown into the brig near the other four aggressive Romulans.

Realizing that their damaged ship probably could not outrun or outfight the approaching Romulans, the PCs decided to parley.  They would put S'anra on the communicator to explain that the Renown and rescued the Romulans from their base, and then they would transfer all the Romulans, including the ones in the brig, to the Romulan ships.  This offer was good enough for the Romulan Commander Vharien.  Dr. Westinghouse knocked out Tr'mas and the other four aggressive Romulan prisoners, and then all the Romulans were put in a shuttlecraft, with one redshirt pilot.  The shuttlecraft was let through the Renown's shields before the approaching Romulan Stargliders were in weapon range, and then the Renown put its shields back up.  The Romulan leader was true to his word: he beamed all the Romulans off the shuttlecraft, leaving the shuttle and its pilot unharmed, and then the Romulans departed back to their side of the Neutral Zone.  The Renown was able to limp home without a final battle.

Overall, it was a successful mission.  The Renown explored the nebula, recovered an old Thorian ship, rescued a few dozen Romulans from whatever happened to their base, and managed to hand them back to their side without a climactic space battle.

What Went Well:

The GM and players had fun.  The PCs were interesting.  It was a good adventure.  Most nerds like Star Trek.  Foundry mostly worked.  Jitsi mostly worked.  We had two GURPS veterans and two GURPS newcomers, but "pick the skill you want to try and click on it in Foundry to roll against it" is pretty easy so we avoided rules problems.  Even with a few minutes lost to technical issues, we finished in about three hours, half an hour less than our time limit.

What Didn't Go Well:

We lost a few minutes to audio problems as one player couldn't hear the others in Jitsi.  (The fix was to switch browsers to Chrome.)  The GM had the idea of having a few standby PCs so that anyone not involved in the current scene could run a redshirt instead, which was a good idea in theory, but in practice swapping tokens around is a bit of a pain, and shared ownership of a token leads to token vision issues and general confusion.  I wanted to use this one-shot as a test drive of some high-tech GURPS rules and Foundry before I start a GURPS Traveller campaign, but we ran it very rules-light and the players managed to avoid the final starship battle with diplomacy, so it wasn't much of a test.

What's Next:

I'm going to boldly continue prepping the March Harrier Traveller campaign that I've been thinking about for a year and actually start running it sometime soonish.  One-shots are fun, but I think a longer campaign is even better.

Roll20 vs. FoundryVTT for GURPS

After using Roll20 for the 2-year DF Whiterock campaign, and using Foundry to run J.C. Connors' Hogwarts oneshot for two groups, I think I've got enough data to decide which to use for my next campaign.  To avoid burying the lede, I'll tell you that I prefer Foundry.

From the player's point of view, both VTTs are web-based, so if you have a computer and a supported web browser, you can play.  This is great compared to VTTs that require that every player install client software on their computer, because not all players are computer experts.

One difference is maturity.  Roll20 has been around for several years and is pretty entrenched as a popular VTT.  Foundry just hit the one-year anniversary of its release, so it's not brand new anymore, but it's not as mature.  In particular, right now we're in the middle of a transition between the 0.7.x and 0.8.x versions of Foundry, where the newer versions have more cool features but not all modules have been ported to the new versions yet.  So, basically, if you're already using Roll20 and you're happy with it, switching will cause you work.  Both products have marketplaces where you can buy things like tokens, but Roll20's is more mature and has more stuff.  Roll20 has a larger community of players who know it.

Another difference is the cost and payment model.  Roll20 is "freemium": it's free for basic use, but you have to pay for some features, like dynamic lighting and API access and more storage space.  If you pay, it's a subscription model (about $5/month for "Plus" and $10/month for "Pro", with a 15% discount if you pay for a whole year at once), so you'll have to keep paying periodically if you keep using it.  Foundry isn't free at all: you have to pay $50 for a license.  But once you have it, it's yours forever and you don't have to keep paying.  So which is cheaper is going to depend on what features you need and how long you want to use it.  If you're happy with the free version of Roll20, or can't afford a Foundry license, then free is good.  On the other hand, if you need any of the features that require paying in Roll20, and use it for more than a few months, Foundry's one-time cost is going to be cheaper than a Roll20 subscription.  Note that both VTTs are free for players: if the GM pays the cost, then any players hosted in the GM's games don't have to pay again.

Roll20 is Software As A Service: your games are hosted on Roll20's servers.  This has both advantages (there's less computer stuff for the GM to set up) and disadvantages (if their servers are busy hosting too many other games, your performance will suffer).  Foundry, on the other hand, is downloadable.  The GM has options: they can run it on their own computer, or they can go rent a server somewhere in the cloud and run it there, or they can use a service called Forge that's specifically aimed at hosting Foundry.

The ability to run your own server is nice, as you have complete control, but it also means you need to manage some things for yourself, which perhaps requires more computer skills than some GMs have, or takes time that the GM would rather spend elsewhere.  I chose to run Foundry on my Linux desktop, behind a home router, for minimal setup.  I had to setup port forwarding on my router for my players to be able to connect from outside my network.  And then I chose to setup a DNS name so I could tell my players "connect to hostname:port" instead of "connect to IP address:port".  I also had to setup accounts and passwords on my Foundry instance for all my players, a minor annoyance.  (Warning: Foundry's passwords are currently not stored in a cryptographically secure manner, so you want to be extra careful not to share them with anything else.  I recommend that the GM pick long random passwords for every player and put them in a password manager, then the players put their own password in their own password managers.)  For me, the big advantage of self-hosting is that, because I already automatically backup my desktop every night, I get nightly backups of my Foundry game.  If I mess something up, I can revert to a previous backup.  This gives great confidence to try things, knowing that no matter how horribly I mess things up, I can only lose one day's work.  So if I ever decide to move my Foundry instance off my desktop to a dedicated server somewhere, I'll make sure to do daily backups of that server too.

Another difference is the wealth of add-on modules available.  (Here, I use "module" to mean "code library" not "RPG adventure".)  Roll20 has been around for a long time, so it has developed support for a lot of game systems, but the JavaScript API support (which requires a Pro subscription to use) is somewhat limited.  Foundry has, in my opinion, a much better API, so there are already a ton of modules available, some of which do pretty impressive things.  General advice is start with the basics and not go crazy installing dozens of modules at first.  When I ran DF Whiterock in Roll20, I used one module to improve combat order tracking, and it was great.  For the Hogwarts adventure I ran in Foundry, I used a few modules: Dice So Nice for pretty animated dice, Actually Private Rolls so players can't see when the GM makes private rolls (as knowing that they rolled, even if you don't see the result, leaks information), PDFoundry for integrated access to my GURPS PDFs from inside Foundry, with hotlinking from the character sheets to rules references, and Turn Marker to put a marker under the active token in combat.  Plus Nose and Nick's unofficial GURPS system, which includes character sheets, importing characters from GCS or GCA, clickable skills and attributes on sheets, and a bunch of other stuff.  When I used Roll20, there were several GURPS character sheets available but I didn't feel like any of them were amazing, so we didn't really use them heavily, mostly using paper or PDF character sheets instead.  (One player did use a Roll20 sheet.)

The time setting up the VTT can be dwarfed by the time setting up an adventure, though.  It really comes down to how much the GM wants to show on screen.  If you want to run a game mostly "theater of the mind" and not use maps or virtual character sheets, then you don't really need a VTT at all: any chat client with a dice rolling plugin will do.  If you do want maps, then the amount of prep time required is directly proportional to how many maps you want and how pretty you want to make them.  I don't have any artistic ability, so I scrounge the Internet for maps and tokens, using free ones if available, or buying battle maps or token packs I like from artists.  If you can't make your own maps and tokens, it ends up being a lot easier to run a fantasy game than other genres, because so many of the maps and tokens out there are aimed at that genre.  DF Whiterock was based on the published Castle Whiterock adventure, which came with black and white maps, so I ended up digitally ripping the maps out of the PDF adventure with the pdfimages tool, then using the GIMP image editor to trace the maps to create background images, then pulling the background images into Roll20 to make base maps, then doing my dungeon dressing by finding tokens for furniture, rubble, doors, etc. and placing them on top of the background maps, and then manually adding lines to show where walls blocked line of sight.  This was a lot of work.

Doing maps in Foundry is pretty similar to doing them in Roll20.  You create a "scene" which is just like a Roll20 map, then you pick a background image, then you can add "tiles" which are background images that sit on top of the map (like furniture) and "tokens" which represent actors (like PCs, NPCs, or monsters).  And then you paint walls for your map to block line of sight, and add light sources.  One advantage that Foundry has over Roll20 is that doors are specifically supported.  In Roll20 I spent a lot of prep time placing door tokens with line of sight blockers under them, and then a lot of game time manually swinging the door token to the side and removing the line of sight blocker when a player opened the door.  In Foundry, when you're placing walls you can designate part of the wall as a door (or a secret door, or a window, or a one-way door) and then players can interact with it: click to open or close.  (Unless it's locked, in which case trying to open it makes a noise, and the players know their PCs need to unlock the door in-game, at which point the GM can click it to unlock it, and then the players can interact with it as a normal door.)  The killer feature I'd really like is auto-walling, where the computer interprets the art and figures out where to put line-of-sight-blocking walls and doors.  I believe that's doable for simple maps and really hard for complex maps.  Of course, if you buy your maps from an artist that fully supports your VTT, they can create the walls for you.

Doing tokens in Foundry is also pretty similar to doing tokens in Roll20.  Foundry does a few things better.  For one, tokens come with a facing arrow, so if you play a game where facing matters and use tokens whose facing is not obvious, you don't have to manually add facing indicators to your token art.  For another, Foundry has the distinction between "prototype tokens" and "tokens".  Basically, the prototype token is the mold from which all tokens for a particular actor are forged, while the token is one instance of a token on-screen.  For a singleton character like a PC or a named important NPC, this is a distinction without a difference, so you can click a checkbox to say "link actor data" and establish a 1:1 correspondence between the token and the actor, so that for example if you remove some hit points from the token in scene 1, those hit points will still be lost for the token for the same actor in scene 2.  But for an actor like "generic spear-orc" where you might have 50 different instances of the token across different maps, you can drag as many of the token as you like onto the screen, and each will have independent stats based on the prototype.  Wounding one does not harm the others.  In both VTTs, tokens can have vision and lighting.

"Fog of War" is another feature of most VTTs.  The players can only see roughly what their PC should be able to see.  Roll20 supports a basic version of Fog of War by default, where the GM manually uncovers parts of the map.  Then it supports Dynamic Lighting as a Pro feature, where the GM spends a lot of time adding line of sight blockers, and players can see what their token can see, based on lighting and vision and line of sight.  Foundry inverts this: dynamic lighting is the default, but there is a module available that supports manually cleared Fog of War for GMs who prefer that.  There are also options for whether previously uncovered parts of the map should remain uncovered simulating the PCs remembering what was there, or should go dark again, forcing the players to remember (or map!)

One complaint I had about Roll20 is that it wasn't great for large maps: if you made the map too many pixels, you got warning popups about performance, and used up more of your limited storage quota on their server, and your players with slower computers might notice decreased performance.  This disappointed me because when I wanted a huge map for the Immense Cavern level, I had to break it up into multiple maps, which was more work for me and less seamless for the players as we needed to do manual map moves whenever their tokens crossed a map boundary.  It also meant that long-range battles didn't happen much.  Unfortunately, the Hogwarts adventure didn't feature any huge maps (the biggest one I made was about 100 yards by 55 yards and worked great), so I haven't actually stress-tested Foundry there.  (I mean to do so at some point in the future; feel free to remind me if I forget.)

In Summary:

• Roll20 is cheaper if you only need the free stuff.  Foundry is cheaper if you want advanced stuff.
• Roll20 is more mature.  So it has more players, more art packs, more D&D adventures, etc.
• Foundry is more flexible in terms of hosting.  Roll20 is simpler because there's only one way.
• Foundry supports doors.
• Foundry has better APIs for add-on modules, and thus more cool and useful modules.
• Foundry has better GURPS character sheets.
• I like Foundry better and plan to keep using it for future games.

Warlock's Tunnel, FoundryVTT, and GURPS

I ran J.C. Connors' Hogwarts adventure The Warlock's Tunnel for two different groups recently.  Using Foundry Virtual Tabletop, GURPS, and Nose and Nick's unofficial GURPS module for Foundry.  Here's a review of all of the above.

First, the adventure.  Without spoilers, in case you might want to play it.  It's set at Hogwarts in 1987, a few years before the first Harry Potter book.  A Hufflepuff prefect is missing, and the PCs should want to investigate.  (But will they?  You never know with players.)  The adventure is for 4 150-point second-year student wizards.  It comes with 7 pregenerated PCs, so the players can basically pick whichever 4 out of 7 they like, and go.  Though it should still play fine, just a bit easier or harder, if you have 5 or 3 players.  The pregenerated PCs are interesting, with various personalities, backstories, spells, skills, and Houses.  One of them has a pet Niffler.  One is an American who's recently moved to the UK and transferred to Hogwarts.  One is a prankster.  One is way too good a student.  Etc.  Very fun characters.

As an introductory GURPS adventure, it only needs the GURPS 4E Basic Set and GURPS Magic.  The various GURPS spells used have been given Harry Potter-ish names, and a few new spells are included in the adventure.  As an introductory GURPS adventure, it's a pretty good choice, as most people already know the Harry Potter background, so you don't have to explain too much backstory.  And you can mostly avoid getting too bogged down in rules, just "roll 3d6 and try to roll under this attribute or skill" can cover most things.  GURPS has a reputation for complexity, but the main rule to avoid problems is to not use all of it.  Just use what you need.  In this case, that's a few basic rules and a few spells.  And the characters are already made for you, which is the hardest part.  I don't want to go to deep into reviewing the adventure, because I don't want to spoil it, but it's your basic investigation / adventure story.  The adventure says you can play it in a couple of hours; both of my groups took about 4 hours, but everything is a bit slower over the Internet.  Overall, I think it's a good adventure, but suffers a bit from the "we're stuck so let's ask a professor for help" problem that's endemic to the Harry Potter universe.  If the PCs have any sense, once they realize their out of their depth they'll run to Professor McGonagall or Professor Dumbledore for backup.  If you're a real-life 12-year-old and you find out that horrible crimes are happening, yes, you should totally get an adult to deal with it.  But if you're the hero in a Harry Potter book, letting the adults solve your problems is no fun.  So the GM has to come up with reasons for the PCs not to do it that way.

(As an aside, J.C. Connors has a bunch of other free oneshot adventures available at 1shotadventures.com.  They are surprisingly professionally put together for free adventures.  Most of them are for GURPS, but some also have versions for other systems like D&D or Call of Cthulhu available.  A couple are solo adventures in case you don't have a gaming group handy.  Check them out.)

How does GURPS work for Harry Potter?  Pretty well, I think.  GURPS has a bunch of magic systems, but the most basic one, used here, is spells-as-skills.  Each of the kid wizards has a dozen or so spells, not too overwhelming, and then a dozen or so other skills.  If you want to cast a spell, you roll 3d6 and try to roll less than or equal to your spell skill.  If you want to use another skill, same thing.  If you want to try a skill you don't have on your sheet, you're free to try, but defaults are usually around IQ-5 or DX-5, so your odds of success are not great.  Of course the GM can apply modifiers ("You want to try to use your Animal Handling [Nifflers] on an animal that's nothing at all like a Niffler?  Fine, roll at -4."), but that's most of it.

How does FoundryVTT work?  Well, there are a bunch of intro videos on YouTube.  But basically it's a virtual tabletop, like Roll20 or MapTools or Fantasy Grounds or Owlbear Rodeo or...  The good thing is that this adventure comes with tokens for the PCs and some major NPCs, so you don't have to make them.  And it also comes with a bunch of picture handouts, which Foundry lets the GM show to the players.  The bad thing is that it only comes with one map, so if you want maps, the GM has some work to do.  I've run a lot of GURPS in Roll20, and a bit in MapTools, and so far, after only running one adventure in Foundry, I like Foundry better than either.  Once you load up Nose and Nick's unofficial GURPS module, you have GURPS character sheets, including import from character generation tools like GCS or GCA.  You can click on a skill or attribute on your character sheet to roll against it.  Foundry supports maps with hexes, not just squares.  It supports token facing, with a built-in facing arrow so you don't have to add one to your tokens.  And token vision, lighting, etc. are built-in.  As are a bunch of token status modifiers for GURPS, like Stunned, Prone, Nauseated, Shocked, Kneeling, etc.

The first group I ran the adventure for were experienced RPG players who hadn't tried GURPS before.  They all grasped "click on the skill to roll against it" immediately, and that's as much GURPS as they needed to learn.  We used Jitsi for voice and video with that group, and it worked great.  The second group were mostly GURPS veterans who hadn't tried Foundry before.  We used Discord for voice, no video, and it also worked great.

Minor issues: tokens don't have vision by default.  You need to click "token vision" to let them see, which is annoying.  I forgot to assign one PC token vision, so that player had problems seeing things until I fixed that.  Then I only fixed it on one copy of their token, not on their "prototype token" that would be used forevermore, so the problem came back when the players moved to another map.  Eventually I got it fixed right.  Also, setting up lighting for each token can be a bit of work, so for the maps that were dark, I just turned on map-wide global illumination once a couple of PCs cast Continual Light spells, to make things simpler.  (I would not do that in a more hardcore dungeon crawling game, but this is a light fluffy oneshot about young student wizards, so not annoying the players too much with limited light radius seemed like the right call.)

As far as Foundry modules go, Nose and Nick's GURPS support for Foundry is under rapid development, but already really solid.  It doesn't support quite as much automation as some of the Foundry D&D modules do, because GURPS doesn't have a free System Reference Doc with rules that you are explicitly allowed to use like D&D does, and Nose and Nick want to keep Steve Jackson Games from getting mad at them for automating too much, but it supports the basics like "click on a number on the sheet to roll 3d6 and try to roll under that number" and "click on a weapon's damage to roll that much damage."  And that's most of what you need.  (If you want to add tables that they have deliberately left out to respect copyrights, like the critical hit table or reaction table, it's not that hard: Foundry makes it easy to add rollable tables.)  Other modules we used include PDFoundry (PDF viewer built into Foundry, so you can click on a rules reference on your character sheet and bring up that page of the rules, if you own that rulebook in PDF form), Dice So Nice (animated dice flying all over your screen), and Turn Marker (put an animated marker under the token whose turn it is in combat so the player hopefully notices and goes before you have to remind them).

Overall, I enjoyed this adventure and will probably run it again in the future.  It's a good simple short demonstration of GURPS.  I was also pretty happy with my first experience using Foundry to run an RPG.  Thanks to the authors of everything we used.

Next up: I'd like to run another J.C. Connors oneshot, Who Tracks the Steps of Glory, because it's Star Trek and I haven't run a Sci-Fi game in a while, so I need practice with stuff like high-tech ranged combat and starships.  After that, I want to run a GURPS Traveller campaign.

Frontstabbing: A House Ruling

In GURPS and DFRPG, if you start your turn in the target's rear hex, it doesn't get a defense against your attacks.  (Unless it has Peripheral Vision or something similar.)  This makes backstabbing pretty good without any special abilities, just the ability to get behind your opponent.

However, if you're highly skilled with an impaling weapon, but not very strong, like Zaber in DF Whiterock, backstabbing isn't ideal, because most opponents have armor on their back.  You'd really rather stab them in the eyes, which often gets you DR 0 and a free brain hit (for quadruple damage and a good chance at a knockout).  However, if you can reach their eyes then they can see you coming, so they get a defense.  (Quite likely at -2 for a side attack, but any defense is way better than no defense.)

Unless you're invisible.  If you're invisible, and they don't have See Invisible, and they don't hear you coming or smell you, then frontstabbing should work about as well as backstabbing.

So my house rule on frontstabbing was basically: if you're invisible and approach an enemy from the front, it's a contest of your Stealth vs. their Hearing.  If you win, they didn't hear you coming, and they will have no defense against your invisible attack.  In DFRPG, Invisibility goes away after one attack, so only the first attack will get this benefit, but one good eye shot is often enough.

The other possibility is smell.  For simplicity I don't give most opponents smell rolls, unless they have an exceptional sense of smell (like many canines), or the frontstabber is particularly stinky.  (See, a reason for PCs not to dig through latrines for treasure!)  The No-Smell spell comes in handy if you want to sneak up on scent hounds; Zaber actually used it to pickpocket a sleeping ettin guarded by a dire warg of his magic ring.