Game Prep

Short post while I take a break from formatting. I finally settled on running my first GURPS game in the Forgotten Realms pre-Time of Troubles. I'm not sure that I'll include the ToT in my game because even though the setting I'm most familiar with is the 3rd edition version and thus post-ToT I like the more sword and sorcery vibe I'm getting from reading the old 1st edition Realms lore.

As for the actual game it got a fair start two weeks ago. We all met up and three of the four players started making characters, my wife held off because she'd just gotten done with an 8 hour work day on what was supposed to be a day off so she was fairly burnt out. She did come up with a concept though and since then we've worked out some of the traits she'll have. Everyone else is mostly done, they just need to buy equipment which depends on me getting it ready for presentation.

Oh right, the presentation. Did I explain this before? I'm going through and copy-pasting all the relevant rules into various documents to then be reformatted and printed off for my players. I've been assured by people on the forums that this isn't illegal as long as I don't disseminate the final document in any way beyond letting my players use it for game. Which I'm not and I honestly hadn't even thought to do. Though when I get it into a final format I may get a hard bound copy from Lulu or something since SJ Games seems to be alright with getting copies of the books done up that way for personal use as well. 

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Did I mention I'm compiling, editing and formatting information from almost a dozen GURPS books into one set of documents for my players? It's a project that's already taken more than a month of mornings before work and periodically a hour or two afterwards before I crash. I'm through most of the stuff needed to make characters, though I'm only just finishing the F's for the skill descriptions and I haven't even gotten to equipment or magic yet. I think I'm just going to print a copy of the GURPS magic book for my players to use and copy things out of, it'll be quicker and easier than my reformatting everything and since I can already remove entire chapters (Technology college of magic anyone?) it shouldn't be too bad to print. Equipment's going to be killer though.

Alrighty, back to it and I promise I'll have actual content again soon since we should actually be playing game in a week or two.

Resources

This post is going to be mostly for my own use but it's good to have it out where I can see it and hopefully it can help someone down the road. I'm just going to list all the resources I'm going to be using to build my hexcrawl game split up between a few categories.

Campaign Guide:
     This is going to be where most of the player facing stuff comes from though obviously I'll be making some of it and I'll probably pull more from other places. Also unless I call it out this stuff is all going to be GURPS books.

• Basic Set: Duh, it's hard to play a game without the core rules.
• Martial Arts: Cherry picking from here mostly. Maneuvers, martial arts, some weapon and campaign options.
• Martial Arts- Technical Grappling: I'm going to try and use a pared down and simplified version of these rules. I don't want to do everything exactly by the book but I've always hated the binary way grappling works in RPGs and from reading Dungeon Fantastic, and Gaming Ballistic (among other examples) it looks like this will work well.
• Martial Arts- Yrth Fighting Styles: The plan is to use this mostly for worked examples of martial arts for things other then humans. Though using it to give examples for martial arts adapted to fighting things other then humans as well (or against magic using opponents) will be useful as well.
• Thaumatology: For lots of rules but primarily because mages are going to use Threshold Magic and druids are going to use the alternate schools for their magic labeled as "Tree Magic" or whatever it's called.
• Thaumatology- Magical Styles: I really like the idea of magical styles and schools being a thing like martial arts are in GURPS. I'm hoping that it'll even lead to in game rivalry that the players will act on.
• Low Tech: The rules for weapons, armor, and various sundry goods are going to take precedence over those in the Basic Set and in Dungeon Fantasy for the most part due to the desire for an increase in verisimilitude in the game.
• Low Tech Companions: A lot of this stuff will be useful to me to work out player facing information but I'm not sure how much they'll be used by my players.
• Powers: I've been told often enough that it's the third part of the Basic Set that I'll probably end up using it, if only as a reference document when my players or I want something random and off the wall.
• Powers- Divine Favor: How I'm going to be running most of the the priestly and clericy types in my game.
• Most of the Dungeon Fantasy series: I was going to list them all out but it would be quicker to list the ones I won't be using and I'm not even sure which ones those will be. I'm obviously not really going to be using the templates in them but I am going to use the play guidelines for a bunch of stuff because while my game will be more flexible then the beer'n'pretzels style that Dungeon Fantasy espouses it will still follow many of the same tropes. *
• Fantasy: For obvious reasons though not as much as I'd thought.
• Various and sundry Pyramids: Mostly individual articles like "It's a Trap" & "Mystic Power-Ups" from 3/60, "It's a Threat!" from 3/77 *

World Building and Hexcrawl Planning:

     This is mostly behind the scenes stuff that I'm going to be the only really aware of for the most part. This is going to be much more widely varied then the stuff from the Campaign Guide so I'll list the complete title and links if available for everything.

• Welsh Piper's series on building a hexcrawl is very in depth and while I won't follow it exactly I will definitely be using it as a guideline.
• I know Troll Smyth has a hexcrawl guide in his blog somewhere as well though I can't find it to give a direct link to it at the moment. It's unfinished and following it exactly won't mesh with the kind of crawl I plan on running but there are good ideas in the series and elsewhere in the blog for all that he isn't a GURPS GM and I think he might be vaguely bemused at inspiring someone's GURPS game. (Then again I could be completely off base with that evaluation.)
• Bat in the Attic for me is the grandaddy of the "How to..." guides for sandbox and hexcrawl gaming online if only because it's the first one I really remember reading so I think Mr Conley's ideas have influenced me more then others. He does run GURPS as well (I think his Majestic Wilderlands were designed with it in mind at least to some degree) so I may end up shooting him questions too at some point. Hopefully that'll be okay, not weird and out of left field.
• The West Marches at ars ludi are a big influence on my game as well. While I'm not going to detail this game with such a fine focus as Mr Robbins did making things a bit more in depth than the 0-2 things per 6 mile hex has definitely given me something to think about. Other ideas like the consideration of having different encounter tables per area and changing them up as the players do things are having influence on my game. I may run a game with closer fidelity to the West Marches but I don't think it'll be this one.
• The rules found in the world building chapters of the Adventurer, Conqueror, King System from Autarch's fine game are also going to be used extensively. Especially to get some semblance of commerce going in my world. This game has actually come close to being played in ACKS on a number of occasions both because my players already grok D&D and just because this is one of my favorite iterations of it.

*While writing this I decided that I'm going to make posts regarding what bits from Pyramid and the Dungeon Fantasy series I'll be using with my game. It'll be good for me and it'll provide more info for anyone else that happens to stumble across this.

Free Build

In my last post (gods, two months ago?) I discussed the pros and cons of going for templates versus free build for my characters and I think I've figured out what I'm going to do. I actually settled on this awhile ago but between work and getting sick, and then taking care of my sick wife, I didn't think to actually write this down here.

I'm going to go with free build for the most part. I think it'll really highlight the differences between GURPS and other games we've played. Which has been mostly various flavors of D&D though most recently was the IKRPG. It'll also free my time up to actually putting stuff for the game down on paper and make it so I don't have to spend time making a couple dozen 25-50 point lenses for characters which was the other things I was thinking of doing. While that means my players will end up asking me more questions about how to build things it also works out that I'll end up knowing more about the PCs since I'll be helping build them all as well.

This isn't to say there won't be any templates at all. The non-human races available are all going to be represented with templates and I think I'll make some basic templates as examples for the spell casters just because those subsystems can be complicated and I don't want one of my players to make a wizard and find out later that he forgot to buy Thaumatology or something. Also I'm going to make up some "prestige class" templates for use when and if the PCs join up with a secret society or cult or something. Though those will be strictly optional and will probably be more useful as examples of members of those groups then anything else.

Templates vs. Free Build

Like I said in my last post I'm in the middle of writing a setting book for my gaming group to play GURPS from. I'm going to be including all the basic stuff (attributes, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages, etc) though in a much shorter format than is actually in the Basic Set and the other books I decide to take stuff from. This is partially because I only own one set of the books and I'm not going to make my players buy a game that they aren't sure about, and partially because the last time I tried to run GURPS I set the stack of books down and no matter how much I said "Don't worry, we aren't using much from any of these for actual play," they couldn't get over just how many books are available. So I figure if I can link them a pdf or word document with bare bones write ups and page references to the actual books they may be able to swallow it a bit better.

This leads me to my first conundrum though. Whether I should provide them all with templates from Dungeon Fantasy and make them stick to those templates, or if I should have the players do free build their characters with my help. Both have pros and cons though, and I'm going to list them out for my own benefit at least.

Templates
Pros:

• Easier character building
• More independence when building characters
• Niche protection
• Easier identification of character types; frex: "Oh you're a wizard and I'm a thief, we need a healer and a fighter then..."

Cons:

• DF doesn't allow for much in the way of social skills, advantages, or disadvantages and since I want an almost completely open sandbox that may cause some issues
• Power level might be too high for the kind of game I want to run and using the low point total 
• Could induce not just niche protection but the idea that you have to stay inside your role 100%, which isn't what I want. (One of the reasons I want to run with GURPS is I want my mage's player to decide it's bullshit that he can't use a sword and spend the points to learn how, or the fighter to do the same thing but the other way around.)
• Allowing for non human PCs is trickier. Not impossible though, obviously.

Free Build

Pros:

• More freedom in character building
• Gives me a bit more room to define the power level as far as how many points I give the players to use
• "Cross classing" will almost definitely be a thing, who doesn't want to be a good fighter that casts spells, can sneak, and track, etc.
• Allowing for non human PCs is much easier.
• Easier to introduce social skills, advantages, and disadvantages; they're there from the beginning!

Cons:

• No "class" templates means more hand holding on my part and more likely that my players (all new to GURPS) will build underpowered or "useless" characters. It also means much more time spent making the characters as everyone reads over all the skills, advantages, and disadvantages and agonizes over their decisions.
• The almost certainty of "cross class" characters might also mean that PCs end up stepping on each other's toes a lot.
• They may also end up with a fairly glaring hole in their capabilities, hopefully I'll be able to spot it before play started but there's no guarantee

So there we go. I'd like to run a good game for these guys and one of the biggest things I want out of GURPS (and why I want to run with this system instead of ACKS like I'd originally planned) is I want the flexibility and openness of the system and I'm afraid I won't get that if I run straight Dungeon Fantasy despite the fact that that would probably be the easiest option. Especially since all my players are brand new to the system. I'll have to think on this more and discuss it with my group a bit. 

A Quick Visit

So I'm back after too many months for me to like thinking about. While this post won't be terribly long I'll try to give a quick update on the various goings on since my last post as far as it relates to my gaming. Basically everything can be boiled down to "not enough". My group hasn't been meeting regularly basically since my last post, we haven't even actually managed to have a game since September and I can't remember the last time we managed to get two games run on two consecutive weeks. The rapidly approaching holidays aren't promoting any hope in me that we'll manage to get together more than twice more this year either. Which isn't the end of the world but it does make me somewhat desperate to game. Unfortunately because I work 2nd shift it's hard to even join an online game since the majority of people are free evenings when I'm working.

Anyway, other updates: I've done a bit of work on all but the Traveller game out of the projects I listed in my last post. The World of Darkness game and the GURPS hexcrawl are getting the most attention though because in theory I'm going to be running them sometime in the near future. Currently I'm working on an outline for a GURPS "game book" for the hexcrawl, putting together a list of templates, allowed advantages and disadvantages, skills, and equipment for the world is proving to be interesting. In theory it'll help me get a better handle on the system and it will make building characters easier for my group since none of them have played GURPS before.

Hopefully I'll get together some more content heavy posts soon rather than these one off "Here's a quick update of my gaming life" things that I've been doing. Maybe I should start up one of those gaming blog writing challenge things to get me in the swing of writing...

Quickly, Before I Pass Out

Quick post before I pass out since it's almost 3am, I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night and I've been up since 7am or so. Basically this is just an update to declare my intentions of returning to this and hopefully make a better go of it. It's also going to be very stream of consciousness so it might not make a whole lot of coherent sense.

One of my players (temporarily my GM) is running an IKRPG game for the group. When we started out we had a large Protectorate of Menoth paladin, a dwarven arcane mechanic and his "pet" Warjack, and an inquisitive sharpshooter from a merc company full of pirates. Because I thought of something a bit more in-line with the game premise I switched from my pseudo-Arabic paladin to a commando working for Cygnar's intelligence organization. The guy playing the dwarf switch to an ogrun (think civilized orc/ogre that hails from dwarven lands) because I jokingly told him his character had heroically sacrificed himself in battle to save the lives of myself and the other PC. He thought I was serious and erased his character sheet and started making his ogrun ironhead.

Of course now that we're starting to get in the swing of things the guy running the game switched positions at the school we work at and he's now working weekends. Hopefully this won't interfere with game too much. As it stands though game's on indefinite hiatus until he gets used to his new schedule and figures out if and when he's going to be working past five on Saturdays since that's our optimal start time.

On the plus side a friend of ours messaged me saying he had more free time so he could start gaming again. This unfortunately is because him and his wife are splitting up however so I'm very conflicted about how happy to be about this news. I really need to actually take the time to grab lunch with him at some point.

I'm now planning on using this blog (I know, I've said that before) to help me plan out games I want to run. When and if I ever get to run them who knows but at least I'll have something down in case. So, really quick without any real explanation:

• RuneQuest 6 translation of 2nd edition era Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay with some influences pulled from 1st WFRP and early editions of the wargame
• GURPS Fantasy hexcrawl set in my own home brew setting
• further defining my "Ithaca by Night" setting thing for new World of Darkness (That's Ithaca New York not Ithaca Greece. Sorry all you Grecophiles out there. Also does anyone call it the "new" World of Darkness anymore except people that played in "old/classic" World of Darkness?)
• translate Forgotten Realms to ACKS, with most of the work going into custom divine casters and other classes though defining either the Sea of Fallen Stars or The Sword Coast with the economic rules in ACKS sounds interesting.
• Mapping out a few sectors for Mongoose Traveller.
• Further defining the collaborative map my gaming group made for a Burning Wheel game a few years back.

There I think that's all of it. I'm supposed to be planning something for some out of town friends for when they're here at some point. Only problem is I don't know when "at some point" is so it's hard to build up the drive to start planning. I'm thinking I might print off the D&D 5e starter rules and run the two people left in my group through something basic though to fill up time while our GM settles into his schedule. 

I'm Back?

I know it's been awhile and to be honest part of why is the inertia of just not posting. I'm not sure if other people have this problem but the longer I go without a post on a blog, the harder it is for me to start back up again. I need to try to post at least once a week though I'd like to get it up to twice or three times.

Anyway, I'm writing this because I've started a new game. Well technically since the Numenera game I think this'll make the second or third. What's exciting about this is that I'm not running. Which in and of itself is something amazing. I've been running for this group (and I define the group kinda loosly) off and on since high school without anyone else running anything. I've played a couple times during this period (I was involved in a multi-year Vampire: the Masquerade elders game over Skype for example) but only with other groups. So this is very nice. [fake edit- I just went back and looked at my previous posts, turns out I ran a Warhammer Fantasy game using RuneQuest 6...honestly I completely forgot about it. I guess it was successful. :-P]