DFRPG Arden Vul Session 1: First Visit to the Ruins of Arden Vul

Date:

Demmasday, 14th of Toternios, 2993 AEP

Weather:

Unseasonably warm, sunny

Player Characters:

Ioannes Grammatikos Byzantios, Archontean cleric of Demma (Demented Avenger)
Michael J Dundee, Thorcin barbarian (Adam)

Vael Sunshadow, Half-Elven mage (Kyle)

Uvash Edzuson, Dwarven cleric of Zodarrim (Based Cosmo)

Ashe Maykum, Imperial Goblin druid (mercenary) (Archon Shiva)

Significant NPCs:

6 Knights of the Azure Shield

6 Huge Spiders

Ashe's summoned goats, bat swarms, and rat swarms

The PCs all came to Gosterwick from various places around the world of Magae, to explore the ruined city of Arden Vul.  Each had decided to look for comrades rather than entering the ruins alone.  Each failed to sign on with an experienced adventuring company, and they decided to form their own informal band, agreeing to watch each other's backs, make decisions together, and split treasure evenly.  The four hired Ashe, a druid from the Grudge Brigade, to come along on this mission, for an equal share of treasure.

They decided to leave Gosterwick at dawn on Demmasday the 14th of Torernios.  Late winter in the northern hemisphere, but it was an unseasonably nice day.  The night before, Vael and Ioannes had cast several bright Continual Light spells, so light would not be an issue if they entered dark places.  (Ioannes critically failed once and accidentally cast Continual Darkness on the bedding in his room at the Yellow Creek Inn instead, oops, hopefully it'll wash out.)  The group walked east out the Water Gate, the only one of Gosterwick's three gates that actually had completed walls around it.  Following directions from several locals, they took a dirty preference path east from the city to the old Imperial Road, once cobblestone now dirt with stone bumps.  The road turned north, crossed the Swift River at a bridge, and continued north.  About halfway into the ten-mile hike, the party was overtaken by a group of six mounted Knights of the Azure Shield, the force aligned with the ruler of Gosterwick, Lady Alexia.  The group made way for the knights, who proceeded down the road without stopping for discussion.  The group continued hiking until they could see the cliff face, featuring a huge waterfall, the twin colossal statues of the ancient heroes Arden and Vul, and the Long Stair.  The ruined city of Arden Vul was known to be at the top of that cliff.  The group reached the base of the cliff around noon.  The sound of the waterfall was deafening as they approached.  Ashe wanted to use Shape Water to concoct some kind of elevator, but to enter that waterfall or its plunge pool without much stronger magic would be certain death.  Vael thought the statue of Arden (which was remarkably intact for something that had been in the path of a waterfall for a millennium) was magical, while the statue of Vul (that was missing an arm and most of a leg despite being much farther from the water) was not.

After a bit of discussion that nobody could hear because of the crashing water, Ashe and his summoned goats started walking up the Long Stair, and the others followed.  The path was treacherous in places, but nobody slipped.  About halfway up, they found a room tunneled into the rock next to the Stair, its door ripped away.  It was a small bare room, empty except for a fire pit and some firewood.  Ioannes suggested a search and the others joined in, but found nothing of interest.

The party continued up the Long Stair to the next switchback, and found another room in the rock, this one larger and containing a lot of debris and some large spiderwebs.  Ioannes and Vael suggested burning them, and Vael used Create Fire to burn the webs away.  This was quite effective but filled the room with noxious smoke.  Rather than waiting for it to clear, Vael cast Purify Air, and rolled a critical success.  The smoke instantly cleared.  Beyond the burned webs was the skeleton of a long-dead dwarven warrior, wearing mail armor and red leather boots, and carrying a potion bottle filled with sparkling blue powder.  Vael thought the boots and powder looked magical and grabbed them.  Uvash decided not to take the dwarf-sized mail, so the group left the heavy mail and the dwarf's warhammer to possibly take on the trip back down.

After spending a bit of time searching the room, the group resumed their hike, and eventually reached the top.  Ahead of them was the front gatehouse of Arden Vul, consisting of two round towers, with the gate that formerly sat between them completely gone.  The left tower was fairly intact, while the right tower was half collapsed.  Ruined walls continued from the gatehouse in both directions.  The group decided to search the towers.  Considering which to check first, one said "left for loot!" but rather than trusting that maxim, Vael cast Seek Earth, looking for gold.  Amazingly, he detected some gold just a few yards to the northwest, meaning it was in the west tower.  Left for loot confirmed.  The tower, while mostly intact, had some gaps in the walls through which entry was possible.  Michael stuck his head in and started to enter, but then saw several dozen eyes looking at him.  There were six huge spiders in the tower waiting to ambush him, and if they had achieved surprise he would have been in very big trouble, but they did not and he popped back out.

With full knowledge of the spiders inside, the group formed up outside the hole, while Ashe sent some disposable summoned rat and bat swarms into the tower to engage the spiders.  While the swarms were engaging some spiders, and Ioannes was casting Flaming Weapon on Michael's longsword, Vael bravely approached the hole and entended his staff inside to cast Create Fire inside the tower.  That was a tactical mistake, as it put the vulnerable wizard in the front as two spiders emerged from the hole, deciding that their tower full of swarms and fire was no longer so cozy.  One spider attempted a Move and Attack on Vael and rolled a hit.  Vael dropped his backpack to reduce his encumbrance level (generously allowed by the GM this time, but maybe not in the future), used a Retreating Dodge, and evaded the spider.  Another spider missed.

While the swarms inside the tower continued to terrorize and spiders and distract them from the PCs, the two spiders outside the tower fought Michael, Uvash, and Vael.  Michael landed a killing blow on one spider, and then a killing critical hit on the other.  Uvash got a good swing in with his mace, but barely missed.  By the time the party entered the tower, they saw one dead spider, killed by a swarm.  The other three spiders had fled.

Remembering there was gold in the tower, Uvash entered and found a sack containing a bunch of oversized ancient gold coins.  Nobody was sure of their exact value, but large plus gold was a good sign.  The group searched the rest of the tower and found nothing of interest.  They then moved to the other half-collapsed tower and saw nothing but a chance to dig in rubble without digging tools.  Ioannes poked around for a bit, but then the group moved on.

The most promising direction was north into the ruined city, since there was a road that way, leading to an obelisk, then a large forum featuring an intact tower, a huge oak tree, and a ruined building.  Further north was a pyramid.  The group first checked out the obelisk, which had a bunch of writing in Mithric (the language of the old empire) listing the gods of the old pantheon and a list of old emperors.  There was also an ankh-shaped recess and some writing about a Beacon.  The top section of the obelisk was full of iconography related to the sun.  They noted the writing and continued north to the forum.

There was a huge oak tree, which Ashe estimated was hundreds of years old, oddly placed in the middle of the forum.  The group was more interested in a mostly intact 40' square and 45' tall tower on the east side of the forum.  The tower's huge bronze double doors appeared magical and had keyholes, and the group decided not to play with them in case of traps.  There were no other visible entrances at low level, but there were some large windows on the top level of the tower, with no glass preventing entry.

Vael dropped his backpack, cast Levitation, and flew up to look in the windows.  He saw a room with a large statue of an 8' tall ibis head in the center, and three relatively recent corpses on the floor, two humans in scale armor with shortswords and one halfling in leather armor that Vael's magery detected as magical.  That was too much loot to ignore, so Vael flew back down to tell the others, then everyone dropped some gear to lighten the load so Vael could cast Levitation on everyone.  Michael was heavy enough that Vael couldn't maintain it on him for long, but he managed to get everyone up into the top floor of the tower.

In addition to the ibis head statue and the corpses, the top floor also featured a couple of wooden stairways down, but only the first few feet of each stairway was visible before things got dark with a suspiciously sharp cutoff.  Also, the wood looked quite rotten, so the stairs might not be safe to descend.  The group ignored the stairs for a bit and searched the room.  They found the magical halfling-sized leather armor, two sets of scale armor, two shortswords, a bandoleer of seven throwing daggers, two scroll cases, and a small golden ornament of a man's head.  They threw all the armor off the tower so they wouldn't have to deal with its weight while Levitating down, took the swords and the bandoleer (but not the daggers), then read the scrolls.  One was a wizard scroll that Vael discerned allowed cursing an item.  The other was a letter from the Archon of Arden Vul to a Thothian high priest, apparently written during the fall of Arden Vul during the civil war 1200 years ago.  They weren't sure about all the details but took the scroll.

Next they closely examined the statue.  It was amazingly constructed of precious materials like silver and ivory, but was somehow still intact.  It also detected as magical.  Uvash warned against damaging it, as it might be a holy item. Vael couldn't resist touching it, and he managed to make it rotate a bit on its vertical axis.  With some help from the stronger Michael, they saw that they could spin the statue all the way around, but nothing happened when they did this.

Finally they investigated the suspiciously dark staircase.  Uvash cast Detect Magic and found that the darkness was magical.  Ashe suspected the darkness probably hid a no mana zone so that anyone Levitating down through it would fall to their death.  The stairs also looked dangerously flimsy.  The combination of the eroded stairs and the magical darkness led the group to decide that exploring the rest of the tower could wait for another day.  For now they would gather their loot and Levitate back down.

Everyone rested at the base of the tower to recover from all the spellcasting, then the group continued north.  They briefly looked at a couple of ruined buildings but didn't investigate in detail.  Due north was a step pyramid, about 90' square and 45' high, the largest intact structure they had seen in the city.  Vael decided to do a lap around the base of the pyramid seeing what was around, while Ioannes looked closely at some artwork on the pyramid's steps.  The first four steps had four different pictures, which then started repeating on the next few steps.  The first was an ibis-headed Thoth pointing both arms at a human descending stairs.  The second was ibis-headed Thoth pointing his left arm at a human, who was bowing while presenting a plate of coins and scrolls.  The third was ibis-headed Thoth puking out a long scroll with abstract writing (no actual words) into the hands of some humans.  The fourth was a baboon seated with a book on its thighs, holding a pen, and gazing at some humans while a feather appeared in the air.  Identifying the baboon as another symbol of Thoth was easy, but naming the feather as the symbol of Thoth's wife Maat required a really good Theology roll by Uvash.  The group decided not to actually ascend the pyramid on this first trip into the ruins.

Meanwhile, Vael had discovered an interesting well to the east of the pyramid.  It was uncovered, about 5' wide, and the insides were covered with mirrors, such that the sun overhead produced blinding reflections that made it hard to see down the well.  Vael couldn't resist dropping a Continual Light rock into the well.  It fell for several seconds, then stopped at the bottom.  It was still making light down there, but the reflections were too blinding to make out any detail.  There were no rungs in the well so the only way down would be Levitation or a long rope.  Vael decided today was not the day to explore the well.

The group decided they had enough loot for their first trip into the ruined city, and headed back for home.  They stopped at the room halfway down the Long Stair and recovered the dwarf-sized mail armor and warhammer they had left there before.  They made it to the bottom with nobody slipping, and then they made it back to Gosterwick without any dangerous encounters.

GM's Comments:

Overall, the group's first trip was a success.  Nobody died or even got hurt.  They made it to the ruins of Arden Vul and back.  They explored a couple of rooms off the Long Stair, a couple of gatehouse towers, and the top floor of the large square tower.  They found the Pyramid of Thoth and the well full of mirrors.  They also found some interesting lore, like the pictures on the pyramid steps, the scroll in the square tower, and the writing on the obelisk.  They found a few things other than portable loot that seemed magic: the colossal statue of Arden, the double doors of the square tower, and the darkness in the stairs of the square tower.  Finally, they scored quite a bit of loot: some big ancient gold coins from the spider tower, some magic boots and weird magic powder and dwarf-sized mail and warhammer from the room off the Long Stair where they burned the webs, and some scale armor and shortswords and halfling-sized magic armor and a spell scroll from the corpses on the top floor of the square tower.

The combat appeared to go smoothly: Michael stuck his head in and found the spiders, then Ashe sent his bat and rat swarms into the tower to kill and distract spiders, and Michael killed the only two spiders that came out of the tower to engage the PCs.  It was actually a closer fight than it looked though.  If Michael had been surprised and attacked by all six spiders, he likely would have died.  With less warning, Ashe's swarms might not have had time to engage the spiders before the spiders bit more PCs.  And of course Michael was the PC who killed two spiders, so if he'd gone down fast that damage would not have happened.  And the spiders were faster than most of the PCs, so running away would not necessarily have been easy.  Sometimes the line between winning without a scratch and a total party kill isn't that big.  Michael's Vision beating the spiders' Stealth was really critical.

Having two clerics means this group doesn't miss Theology rolls to know stuff about religions very often, and most of the party reads Mithric, so the PCs are pretty good at engaging with lore.  Whether the players know what's going on with any of the lore is another question, but it's the first session; they've got plenty of time to piece things together.

The worst part of the session for me was tech issues.  I've used Foundry before but it's been a while, and trying to remember all the exact places to click to fix broken token vision or run a combat is not fun when you've got five live players to deal with.  I did a bunch of map testing with a test token and a non-GM login to test my walls and lights, since sometimes having GM permissions doesn't make it clear that something is broken for regular players, but I forgot to run a full combat to refresh myself on all the battle stuff, so there was some fumbling.  Fortunately these type of issues go away quickly when you use Foundry every week.

What was different in this session because we used DFRPG rather than a version of D&D like Arden Vul was written for?  I'd say the biggest difference was our new PCs had some spells that starting D&D characters would not, and the ability to cast them often rather than once per day if you happened to memorize that spell.  Light was just not an issue with ample Continual Light available, though most of the session was in lit areas so it wasn't a huge deal this time.  (And in D&D Continual Light is only a second level spell and is permanent so any character with a bit of cash should be able to get an NPC to cast it for them.)  Vael's ability to spam Levitation (he has it at 15 so he can levitate people under 160 lbs. pretty cheaply, and even heavier people aren't super expensive if he only needs them to fly for a minute) made getting everyone up to the top of the square tower easy, though this particular use case could be duplicated by one climbing thief in D&D and some rope to help the rest of the party up, or even (with a suitably generous rule set or GM) a rope and grappling hook and the whole party climbing the tower Batman-style.  Another biggie was Ashe's ability to spam Create Animal at the start of the adventure and bring along a bunch of goats and rat and bat swarms; the goats didn't do much except help carry loot home but the swarms took out most of the huge spiders.  Differences in the other direction is that armor is a lot more expensive in DFRPG than in D&D, so these starting characters didn't have much of it.  Though of course they just found some armor and some money, so some of them might be a bit harder to damage next time.  Finally, GURPS has skills for a lot of stuff that old versions of D&D didn't, so things like making Theology rolls for all the ancient religious lore was straightforward.  (D&D added a bunch of skills in 3E so modern D&D is a bit like GURPS there, but AD&D didn't have them yet.)  Since this setting says Mithric is the language of magic, I just told my players that everyone uses Mithric for spellbooks and scrolls and told the spellcasters that if they wanted to be able to read scrolls they should learn Mithric, so they took Mithric, so basically the language that substituted for Read Magic also made reading the Mithric lore easy.

Achievements:

Second Class Citizen: Ashe was the first to play an Imperial Goblin.

Iconic Location: Pyramid of Thoth: The whole party got this achievement for being the first to find the Pyramid of Thoth.

XP:

They haven't identified everything yet, or decided what to keep and what to sell, but 45 gold solidi is worth about 450 modern Archontean gold pieces (they're ten times as heavy), which is $4500.  (All the coin values are house ruled in this game rather than DFRPG stock: basically $1 is a silver piece, and we use AD&D ratios for the other coins.  So a regular gold piece is $10 and these huge ancient gold pieces are $100.)  Divided 5 ways, that's $900 each from just the gold, which puts them well into profitable territory.  Nobody used any consumables other than a day of rations, so as 125-point PCs they only need $156 each (living expenses for a week plus 3 rations) to get their first loot XP.  They need $1560 each (ten times that threshold) to get their second loot XP, and we'll know if they hit it after they identify their treasure and decide what to sell and do the sales math.  Normally PCs in games that lack well-stocked magic item stores avoid selling any magic items because they might want them later, but in this game they might sacrifice items with no immediate use or obvious later importance if it gets them loot XP.  We'll see.

For exploration, the first XP is achievable by visiting at least 5 new areas, and at first glance I think they visted 11.  They didn't visit enough new areas to get the second exploration XP, but they did find the Pyramid of Thoth, which is an Iconic Location, which generated an Achievement for everyone, worth a bonus XP.  So this session was worth at least 3 total XP per player, maybe 4 depending on loot.

Finally, Ashe got the "Second Class Citizen" achievement for being the first to play an Imperial Goblin.  (It's not a bad template, but it's not an obvious choice either.)

Next week:

Presumably the four non-mercenary PCs stick together after their first successful visit to the ruins.  Will they name their party or continue being an anonymous gaggle?  They are expected to bring another permanent PC into the group next week.  Will they go back to the square tower and brave the big bronze doors or the dangerous staircase into magical darkness, climb to the top of the Pyramid of Thoth, go down that mirrored well, or explore more of the surface ruins?  Read next week's recap to find out.

Things I Want to Do Differently This Time Around

I've been running RPGs for decades, so I have Habits and Tendencies and Opinions.  To some extent GMs attract and keep players who like the games they run, so there is some consensus in long-running groups, but it might not be complete.  So I think it's important for GMs to both get feedback from players, and to analyze their games and think about what they can improve.

This is particularly important for DFRPG Arden Vul because it contains several players from the DF Whiterock campaign, that I stopped running after 2+ years and one of the players later picked up and finished.  Since I know that one lasted a long time but eventually fell apart, how do I avoid quitting or losing players this time around?

My first goal for improvement is to keep rules consistent throughout the campaign.  I made two rule changes in DFW that players didn't like.  I thought both made sense at the time, but I was wrong on at least one of them, and not clear enough for the reasons on either.

One was limiting players to 3 attacks per turn no matter what was on their sheet, for a combination of game balance and speed of play.  It's not fun when one player's turn takes too long, but that's better handled with an explicit turn time limit rather than indirectly with an attack limit.  And it's not fun when the PCs get too powerful and wipe out enemies too easily, but that's fixable by adding more or better enemies.  So for Arden Vul I'm removing the attack limit, but might impose a time limit if combat length becomes a big problem, or some players' turns take too long.  (But not at the start, because we don't know if we actually have a problem yet, and also because some players are new to GURPS or Foundry and deserve a grace period to learn before being forced to play faster.)

The other was slowing down the rate at which character points were awarded.  I never promised any particular number of XP, but players got used to me lazily handing everyone 4 points per 4-hour session, regardless of accomplishments, with maybe some bonus points on top if they did something special.  When I saw that PC power was growing a bit faster than I wanted, I first stopped handing out bonus points, which nobody complained about because they were pretty rare anyway.  Then I slowed the regular reward from 4 to 3 for PCs over a certain point level, which caused minor grumbling.  When I slowed it from 3 to 2 at a higher point level, it caused a revolt.  Even if I never promised anyone 4 XP per session, it became expected, and changing the behavior from the expected caused problems.  Relevant xkcd.

So this time around I'm going to make it clear that PCs get 0 to 2 XP per session for loot (with 1 being pretty easy to achieve and 2 being hard, and the required threshold going up over time with PC point level, but the exact table of loot thresholds not (yet?) public), 0 to 2 for exploration (again 1 being pretty easy and 2 being harder, but the exact amount of exploration required not (yet?) public), and then again the possibility of bonus points for achievements (which I'd like to make more common this time, but small).  So with more variability in reward and more explanation for how the awards are given, I'm hoping that if players want more XP, they try to make their PCs achieve more per session, rather than whining about the GM.  I'm envisioning players figuring out the thresholds to get 1 loot XP and 1 exploration XP every session and always aiming to hit those, then going for either big loot or big exploration for a third XP (with loot being easier if you know where some loot is and think you can beat whatever might be guarding it, and exploration being easier if you know where some unexplored territory is), and then looking for things that might get them bonus XP.

My second goal is to actually finish the megadungeon.  That's a tough one because it's huge, but I think it's achievable if players are oriented toward accomplishing large goals (rather than enjoying killing wandering monsters and searching for every last copper piece), though I suspect there will be some turnover of PCs and possibly players along the way.  Ultimately it's up to the players what they do, though; the GM provides challenges and incentives and hooks but the players act.

My third goal is to play fair in both directions.  Players deserve consistent rules and rulings and to be allowed to use all the fun ideas they have and the cool stuff on their character sheets, but NPCs deserve a chance to win too, and if one of them rolls a massive critical hit against a PC who's out of Luck and Bless, no mercy.  I'm going to set the scene and then let the dice decide.  My one grudging concession to real life on that one is that I sometimes skip wandering monster rolls near the end of a session, if that would force pausing a probably-meaningless fight across sessions and deny PCs access to town, because of an arbitrary real-world time limit.  What I should do in that case, now that I think of it, is make the roll anyway but hit them with the wandering monster early next session instead of late this session, satisfying both the players' need to stop at the agreed time and the wandering monster's need to get a fair shot at eating a delicious PC.

My fourth goal is to have an entertaining GURPS recap blog with a few hundred loyal readers, which requires good source material (Arden Vul is awesome), the players doing fun stuff (I'm sure they will), and consistency.  Because this will be a voice game, I won't have complete logs to refresh my memory, so I'll try to write the recaps every Saturday morning before I forget too much.

My fifth and final goal is to listen to my players better.  A GM can't do everything players ask for because a lot of what they ask for is "let us win more" and if you always do that the game becomes a cakewalk and actually becomes less fun for most players.  But you can bend their requests in a way that gives them some of what they want while preserving some game balance.  For example, one request I got from a couple of players last time was "if a PC dies my next PC should get all the points my old PC had," which would remove all penalty for death (except the time to make a new PC) and takes a lot of tension out of the game.  But starting new PCs all the way back at 125 points might be too harsh the other way, if it causes players to play too cautiously.  So I've announced I'm going to award new PCs a fraction of their players' previous dead characters' earned XP, with the exact fraction not (yet?) public.  If this rule actually gets exercised multiple times then I need to be consistent, so the players will eventually figure out the formula, but I don't need to tell them yet.  Another one is "yes, but".  I need to be open to more weird player ideas unless they're actually a threat to the game, rather than just a challenge to my expectations.  One player wanted to play a rotating stable of hirelings rather than one consistent PC, so I'm letting him do that.  Another player wanted a weird backstory that didn't really fit the setting, but that's fine, Irthuin is a big continent, he's from a remote spot on the map that isn't detailed in the setting, and if any details about that spot become important I'll ask him.

Finally, no plan survives contact with the enemy.  Any plan for a perfect campaign goes out the window as soon as you add the chaos of actual players, and GMs need to forgive themselves and their players for mistakes made in good faith and just try to keep things going and keep them fun as best they can.  The main GM response to most setbacks should be "Noted, we'll fix that next time, next game scheduled for next week."

First game Friday night, half of the PCs done and the other half mostly done, I've got this huge megadungeon about 1/3 prepped and I'm pretty sure they won't be able to reach the other 2/3 in the first session, let's go.

Review: Feats of Exploration

Feats of Exploration is a short (15 pages), cheap ($3 on DriveThruRPG) PDF describing a way to give experience points to PCs in D&D-like games for stuff besides defeating monsters and finding treasure.  Most players are at least somewhat motivated by XP, so if you want them to do things besides killing and looting, giving them incentives to do other things seems like a good idea.  On the other hand, giving them more ways to get XP without removing the existing ways means your players will earn more total XP, which can be good or bad depending on whether you want them to advance faster or not.

It's written by Jon Britton, the GM on the 3d6 Down The Line Actual Play series on YouTube, which I watched because they're doing Arden Vul.  I don't normally have the patience to watch Actual Plays, but Arden Vul is a huge and complicated adventure, and I wanted to run it well, and I figured watching another experienced GM run it might give me some helpful hints.  (The usual spoiler disclaimer: don't watch their series beyond Session 0 if you might want to be a player in Arden Vul.   Even Session 1 has a huge spoiler.  But I do recommend it if you know you'll never be a player in it and you like Actual Plays, and especially if you want to GM it.)

Anyway, there are 13 categories of feats: exploration, lore, rumor, secret, puzzle, trap, hazards, skills, location, NPC, faction, quest, safe haven.  And there are 4 levels of feats: minor, major, extraordinary, and campaign, which each give a different number of XP.  The rest of the pages are XP math: here's how you calculate the exact amount of XP each PC gets for doing each level of feat.  (There's also a spreadsheet for this somewhere, not included in the download.)  And there are some lists with checkboxes, in case you want to print out the PDF and then check a box when a PC achieves one of the feats.

Anyway, I'm not running D&D or anything D&D adjacent, so I didn't buy this for the XP math, so I'm not going into the details of that part.  I don't really care if a 4th level thief needs 8000 XP to get 5th level so carry the zero and a minor feat should be worth 275 XP this week.  I am, however, running a fantasy RPG and giving out character points for loot, exploration, and achievements, so I basically bought it for ideas for achievements to add to my game.   (And also to tip Jon $3 for making all those videos.)

Looking at Jon's categories, "exploration" is redundant with one I already had, though he gives an exact threshold (5 rooms) which it at least a hint that I should try to set objective levels for what counts as "enough" exploration rather than winging it too much.  (My thinking is to have two levels for exploration and loot, where the first levels should be easy to achieve and should be hit in most sessions, and the second levels should be hard to achieve and should only be hit when the PCs actually do a lot of exploring or bring home a great haul.)  "Location" feels somewhat overlapping with "exploration", but I guess the distinction is importance: if you map a bunch of empty or boring rooms you still get credit for exploration, but only important rooms give a location bonus.  So maybe in addition to giving 1 point for exploring a few new rooms and 2 points for exploring a lot of new rooms, I give a bonus point for finding an Arden Vul Iconic Location (tm) or a significant secret area.  (Not for just a random secret door.)

And "quest" is kind of obvious.  I thought of that one myself.  But I did not think of "establish a reliable safe haven," and it's a good one.  Getting a base in or close to the dungeon so you don't have to go back to town as often sounds cool, and if my players pulled that off I'd throw them an extra point.  (It's not quite as critical in Arden Vul as in some megadungeons, because Gosterwick is only a half-day's walk away, but I can see not wanting to make that walk every session if you could find a good alternative.)

I think "puzzle" and "trap" and "hazard" are a bit overlapping and a bit too generous as written; I would only give extra points for solving a puzzle or defeating a trap or avoiding a hazard if it was non-trivial.  Making a single skill roll to spot a pit or disarm a poison needle on a chest doesn't feel points-worthy, but if it's a really complicated puzzle or trap that requires a lot of thought or teamwork or especially formulating a plan and going back to base for knowledge or equipment and coming back later, sure.

"Faction" and "NPC" also kind of blend together to me; I guess you could define "NPC" as town NPCs and "Faction" as dungeon NPCs, but I'd lump it all under "if you do serious roleplay (not just a one-minute negotiation or a single Diplomacy roll to avoid a fight) to serious benefit that's probably some points."

Finally "skills" is for using equipment or abilities in an unorthodox way.  I think that falls under the general umbrella of Rule of Cool bonus points for me; if you have a clever solution that amuses everyone that might be worth a bonus point, but only once per distinct idea.  The first time you use knockback to put an enemy into lava that gets called out as the highlight of the session.  The seventh time you do it, it's just another attack mode.

The last couple of pages of the PDF list examples of other feats you could add.  Some of the examples are pretty good.  I think this is all obvious (if Jon can make rules you can make rules too, you outrank him in your game, as you're the actual GM of your game and he's just some guy on YouTube), but some new GMs haven't yet figured out that they make the final rules and what's in books are just suggestions, so maybe this is helpful for them to start spreading their wings.

On balance, should you buy this PDF?  It's $3.  If you're a 3D6DTL fan or an OSR completionist collector you probably already did.  If not, and $3 is significant to you, you don't really need it, but it might be helpful.  It's probably a bit more helpful if you're running D&D (or something D&D-ish) and doing XP calculations, because he gives you concrete numbers of XP with some examples and a spreadsheet.  (Note: if that gives you a headache, you have my permission, as someone who's played RPGs longer than most people on this planet have been alive, to never precisely compute XP and just hand out levels once in a while.  I think there's even an "official" name for that now, in some versions of D&D-ish games: Milestone XP.  Remember, the points are made up and the math doesn't matter; it's a game.  Do what's fun for your group.)

If you're not running D&D or you don't care about XP math, then this is really just a list of ideas for ways to reward your players for playing in ways that your group finds more fun.  If you need those kind of ideas, get it.  If you already have plenty of ideas, you don't need it, but it's $3 so it doesn't take much value for it to be worth it.  I only got a couple of things out of it and I think I got my money's worth.

Arden Vul: The Archontean Calendar

One of my players actually asked about the Archontean Calendar, and once again someone else already made a great web page about it which I will just link rather than recreating.  (Thanks!)

Okay, I'd feel bad making a blog post consisting totally of a link, so I'll talk about the Archontean calendar, as an non-spoiler example of how well developed the Arden Vul setting is.

The nice thing about the Archontean Calendar is that it has 12 months (easy to remember!) and each has exactly 30 days (how convenient, none of the variable days per month nonsense like we have).  Are we done?

Sadly, no.  The year on Magae is 372 days (not 365, not 365.25, not a nice evenly-divisible-by-everything 360), so that leaves 12 leftover days.  Wait, 12 days, 12 months, can't we just make them all 31 days and declare victory?  Well, that's what I would do, but the Archonteans are like the people who brought you Daylight Saving Time: never settling for a simple solution (ask your boss if you can move your shift an hour earlier in the summer so you have more time to play with bugs after work) when a more complicated one (redefine time itself for everyone!) would do.  They instead added two 6-day intercalary (new word for me; thanks Richard Barton) periods, which makes the calendar really ugly but does mean they don't have to count to 31.

Are the intercalary periods at least evenly spaced, like right at New Year's and Midsummer, or right at the solstices?  Of course not.  Again, this world feels realistic.  One of the intercalary periods (the Mercedonian Days, or Days of Wages) is right after the New Year, which is convenient.  But the other one (the Voluptarian Days, or Days of Pleasure) is two-thirds of the way through the year, between the eighth and ninth month.  Which totally makes faux-historical sense because it's the harvest festival, and harvests for annual crops in temperate climates are most often in autumn, but it drives me nuts because it's asymmetrical.  Just like our real-world calendar where we have 4 30-day months, 7 31-day months, and a 28-sometimes-29-day month.

The different year lengths and intercalary periods complicate any translations between the real-world and game-world calendars.  But it doesn't really matter much, so I probably won't bother.  If the players care deeply about the date for some reason that actually justifies burning GM time I'll track it accurately; otherwise I can mostly wing it by taking the real-world date (since we play once a week and PCs probably mostly delve once a week since all the DFRPG Town rolls are weekly) and changing the month name to the Archontean version.  The main need for dates in the game world is seasonal weather, and I just assume game seasons are roughly in sync with real seasons and use today's real-world weather in a city that's a decent analog in terms of latitude and terrain for the campaign location.

Finally, I'll mention the days of the week.  They are Basilsday, Lunday, Tothsday, Mitrasday, Tahsday, Horasday, and Demmasday.  So one for the emperor, one for the moon, one for Thoth (a greater god of the old pantheon, no longer popular), one for Mitra (new pantheon), one for Ptah (old pantheon), one for Horus (old pantheon, and not just unpopular but possibly dead), and one for Demma (new pantheon).  I just love the inconsistency; it feels like a silly jumble of historical accidents rather than something designed on purpose, just like the days here on Earth.

I guess if there's a point to this ramble it's that if you're trying to create a fictional world inhabited by humans, don't make things too neat and tidy.  Humanity is a mess of legacy systems and fiction should reflect that.

Arden Vul Character Creation Rules

We're using Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game as the base rules set.  Anything from the rest of GURPS will only be brought in with GM approval.  (I'm trying to keep this simple so that a new player with only the DFRPG has a chance to keep up.)

PCs at the start of the campaign get:

• 125 points
• -25 point disadvantage limit
• Sense of Duty (Adventuring Companions) [-5] does not count against the limit
• -5 point quirk limit

We are using the Five Easy Pieces character generation option from Pyramid 3/113 (also in GCS).  There are a bunch of 50-point templates and you get to pick as many of them as you can afford.  With 125 + 25 + 5 + 5, you can afford 3, unless you bought an expensive racial template and can only afford 2.  Disad points embedded in a Piece *do* count against the limit.  Any leftover points can go to anything on any of your Pieces, or any abilities that are not reserved to a particular template in DFRPG.  (Anyone can buy up their attributes, buy most skills, and buy most advantages.  But a some things are reserved for a particular template, like Halfling Marksmanship is only for Halflings and Turning is only for Clerics.  If you're not sure, ask.) 

The only available racial templates are dwarf, elf, half-elf, halfling, human, and Imperial Goblin.  (Links to someone else's worldanvil page.)

Human  (Pick Archontean, Thorcin, Wiskin, or Khumus as your native language)

Elf (Native language: Elvish)

Half-Elf (See both Human and Elf, and pick Archontean, Thorcin, Wiskin, Khumus, or Elvish as your native language.  If you were raised equally in both cultures, feel free to buy a second native language.)

Dwarf (Native language: Dwarvish)

Halfling (Native language: Archontean)

Imperial Goblin (New racial template below, and in GCS.  Native language Archontean.)

Imperial Goblin [0]

SM -1 [0]

Per +1 [5]

Basic Move -1 [-5]

HP +1 [2]

Night Vision 5 [5]

Resistant to Poison +5 [5]

Sharp Teeth [1]

Ugly [-8]

Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen) [-5]

Everyone gets one native language for free as usual; which one depends on your racial template as listed above.  (If you don't pick a native language the default is Archontean, unless you're an elf or dwarf.)  The most commonly spoken languages in the area near Arden Vul are Archontean (more urban and ruling class) and Thorcin (more rural and working class).  It might be useful to speak both.  Mithric, the language of the ancient Archontean Empire, is currently dead as a native language but still exists as the language of magic, some religions, and some sages and scholars.  Spellbooks and scrolls are written in Mithric so all mages and clerics who want to be able to use them should know some Mithric.  It's allowed to take languages at Accented or Broken, for fewer points.  (In GCS, use the GURPS Basic Set version of languages instead of the DFRPG version to get these options.)

Starting money is per the DFRPG rules.  You can buy Wealth to get more.  You can also trade points for cash (only at the start not later).  You can start with any equipment from DFRPG: Adventurers (only) *except* plate armor, which doesn't exist in the setting.  (If there's some obviously common non-magical item you want that isn't on the list, like twine or a chicken, ask the GM.)  After the game starts, some equipment (special orders, magic items) may not be easy to find; you may need to make availability die rolls, or travel to a big city, or hire an enchanter...

Coins are different from those in DFRPG; we're using AD&D coin value ratios and the silver piece standard.  So a copper is $0.1, a silver is $1, an electrum piece is $5 (but that doesn't matter because nobody uses them), a gold piece is $10, and a platinum piece is $50.  You can mostly just use GURPS dollars and ignore the exact coins, unless you enjoy that kind of thing or find a hoard so big that the weight actually matters.  These coins are in GCS under Home Brew / Arden Vul Equipment.

There is one new perk for this campaign, Burdock's Valley Local [1].  (Also in GCS.)  If you take it, you've lived in the Burdock's Valley area long enough to know stuff; you get extra rumors and an area map and default Area Knowledge for the local area.  If you don't take it, you just arrived from somewhere else and have to ask NPCs for directions.

Religion in Arden Vul

Someone else already really nicely summarized the religions of the Arden Vul setting on worldanvil , so I'm going to link to theirs rather than making another one.

(If the link goes dead, let me know and I'll make a full page.)

There are only four full temples staffed by full clerics in Gosterwick (the closest town to Arden Vul, about a half-day's walk depending on how much you're carrying and how wounded you are).  If you think you might need clerical assistance in a hurry, you might want to focus on:

• Demma (goddess of fertility and crops)
• Heschius Ban (god of power; there's no alignment in GURPS but I hear disturbing things)
• Lucreon (god of wealth and merchants)
• Mitra (god of justice and contracts and defending the weak and paladins)

Gosterwick also features some small volunteer-run shrines to the other six major Archontean gods, some of the Archontean minor gods, and a few Thorcin gods.  These are nice if you're studying basic comparative theology, but not so great if you need a Cure Disease.

The larger town of Newmarket another three days to the south has temples to all of The Ten major Archontean gods, several of The Seventeen minor Archontean gods, most of the Thorcin pantheon, and the Wiskin god Odin.

Note that even though The Twelve are listed at the top of the page, they are no longer sponsored by the Empire and no longer have many worshippers.  Worship of Set is actually illegal, and Horus is presumed dead and is apparently no longer handing out spells to his few remaining clerics.  So PC clerics should not pick them, unless they want to Fast-Talk the GM into letting them pay for an Unusual Background.

The History of the Archontean Empire in 3 Maps

Here are 3 non-spoiler maps describing the rise and fall and re-ascendency of the Archontean Empire.  (These maps are copyrighted by the folks who made Arden Vul, but they let people download them for free so I don't think they'll mind GMs running Arden Vul sharing them with their players.)

The bottom map shows the Empire as of the current game year, 2993.