Help with a Grim Survival DF Setting

[The Benj]

If you are going to use Power Items, they could be recharged by a shaft of Holy(TM) light that shines down during the food delivery. If you've proved you deserve to eat, you've proved you deserve a recharge.

[DAT]

Originally Posted by Varyon

There's grim, then there's "Don't bother putting thought into the character." For the former, we only really care about the guys that manage to reach the bottom of the shaft - a character that gets whacked with a burning bail or falling body is one that, as far as I'm concerned "died during character generation." If you prefer the latter, of course, feel free to have a random chance of each character getting killed during the descent.

Like I said in an earlier post, I'll be doing more of a three strikes your out on the chain ride down, rather than auto kill. I do want to leave the PCs with some agency.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Not a horrible idea, although a lot of the Redeemers will be desperate enough to try and fight back as soon as they're armed and armored up. As far as those of the Faith are concerned, this is likely an unnecessary risk. They may let them armor up before descending, however.

Very good point. I think I'm decided with Armored, but not armed, up top. Grab an available weapon down at the bottom.

Originally Posted by Varyon

PC's only - the NPC's are doing a bit of wounding and being wounded (and killed) during the fight, but it's the PC's actions that really matter for this. If you'd like, you could have the tigers' MP gradually decreasing at a constant rate during the fight to represent the NPC contribution.

Yes, I think I'll target a certain casuality rate if the PC's don't do anything, and work back.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I think you're making this more difficult than it needs to be. The important thing should really be what the PC's are doing. Once a PC lands, he'll have somewhere around 3d6 seconds to find a suitable weapon (either from the pile or from an already-defeated Redeemer) before he's set upon by a White Tiger. While the PC's will probably land at different times, it will be in their best interest to group up as soon as possible - assume a newly-landed PC manages to find the group 3d6 seconds after arming up (faster if he dispatches his foe).

Me make it more difficult on myself ... hardly ever, ... okay sometimes, ... well okay most times, ... hey I'm a GURPS GM, what do you expect :-)

Originally Posted by Varyon

For the tigers, I'd probably roll 1d3 per PC; this is how many tigers that PC faces. The first tiger shows up as above; if there are more than 1, the next shows up 2d6 seconds later, the final 2d6 seconds after that. Each time a tiger is wounded, it attempts to retreat; if successful, it will be replaced in 1d6 seconds by a fresh tiger. If a tiger is slain, it takes 2d6 seconds for it to be replaced. Once the PC reaches the rest of the group - or dies trying - his contribution of tigers joins those fighting the group (if one character has 3 tigers and another has only 1, the two together will face 4 - and these tigers won't favor any character over the other).

Yes, I like this abstracted approach. Not too complex, but keeps the players on their toes.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I missed the Trustees in my previous analysis; I'd say they follow a similar trend to the Martyrs, suffering incapacitation (and later death) at certain thresholds of total casualty values. Assume 5 of them are killed before the PC's get involved. After this, every 5% of casualties incapacitates one, who dies 10% later. That is, you have 10 Trustees to start. At 5%, you have 9 up, 1 down. At 10%, you have 8 up, 2 down. At 15%, you have 7 up, 2 down, 1 dead. 20%, 6-2-2; 25%, 5-2-3; 30%, 4-2-4; 35%, 3-2-5; 40%, 2-2-6; 45%, 1-2-7; 50%, 0-2-8; 55%, 0-1-9; 60%, 0-0-10. Assume that, once the tigers are driven off, the Martyrs prioritize the healing of the Trustees, and all the incapacitated ones are healed back up enough to survive (note this means you could actually ignore the Wounded in the above analysis, making it so the first Trustee dies at 15%, and another dies every 5% beyond that).

The Trustees will take it on the chin, since they are trying to defend the Brother Martyrs. I'm thinking they are all killed by the overall 50% casualty level. I'll tweak the other rates to come up with my targets.

Originally Posted by Varyon

At least, the above is probably how I'd run this scenario - but I probably wouldn't be running it in the first place.

I appreciate your insights.

-Dan

[DAT]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

Easiest way to make GURPS grim is take away magical healing or make it very rare. Let people rely on recovery, First Aid, Physician, Esoteric Medicine. That's something that makes combat scary for PCs is when they take 1 point of damage and know healing that is going to be a bitch!

I agree in general. The initial Dragonlance world had that feel.

But the lack of healing can also become more of a pain (i.e., borring) in a group, rather than grim. One PC gets hit in the first encounter, while the other 5 are untouched, so everyone has to go wait for days until the first PC heals. And there is no guarantee that the same won't happen in the second encounter, and everyone have to wait for another X days. It is sort of like 1st level magic-users in OD&D; cast their spell in the first encounter, then go hide for the rest of the day. And then if you impose other contrains, like the need to hunt food, you endup with PCs being left at base camp healing, so some sessions one or more PCs will have nothing to do but sit and heal. It might work for troup play.

For this campaign setting, the only initial healing is via the Brother Martyrs that come down with the PCs. That puts a sever limit on the availability of healing, and will hopefully give some of that grim fealing.
-Dan

[DAT]

Originally Posted by The Benj

I'd be inclined to decide on a Wealth level equivalent, multiply that by the number of PCs, then buy that total value worth of assorted (but not random) stuff and put it in a pile for the PCs to squabble over.

I agree that would work, but I think the random way will be quicker and easier. I expect that after the PCs have a chance to take a breather down at the bottom, they will be trading pieces back and forth.

Originally Posted by The Benj

For "morale" purposes, I'd use a Reaction roll for the white tigers. Reroll when extra mods would get added: lighting up torches, wounding them, killing them, surrounding them/breaking free of being surrounded, etc. Once the roll's good enough, the survivors flee.
How well you do in this (and future all-out, everyone's-involved battles) modifies your relations with any NPCs, plus your access to replacement characters. If you keep it together, work in an orderly fashion and keep the NPCs alive, you have a smörgåsbord of choices for a replacement character. If not, your choices are more limited.

That sounds like it would work too. In either case, I still need to decide how to abstract the PC's actions into casuality numbers.

Originally Posted by The Benj

PS. Enslaving sapient beings is an Evil act. It's not relevant to a GURPS game, but the forces of Light are Lawful Evil, not Good.

This could be its own interesting side discussion: Are the Faith of The Light, Lawful- "Good", "Evil", or "Neutral"?

Gus' commentary on them is that they have old school D&D Paladins on their side, so that implies "Lawful Good".

How I interpeted The Faith of The Light in my background thinking is thus:
1) They are good to their own people (feed and heal the poor, etc.),
2) They are good to most outsiders ("monster" races being the exception) who submit to their laws without resisting (again feed and heal the poor, etc.), and
3) They give the three choices to those you do armed resistance to them.

So in my vision, they are clearly "Lawful Good" when it comes to their people. For new peoples, they are intolerant, but still overall good. Maybe call it "Lawful Good with Neutral tendancies"?

The issue is the third case, how they treat those who resist them with arms. The tenants of The Faith of The Light have that it is a mortal sin to resist with arms, and the only way to remove that mortal sin is via rebirth, helped by service to The Light before hand.

So it is acceptable in the general context of war in a TL3 setting, to kill all who oppose you. So giving criminals the choice of live in slavery, rather than death, is probably not automatically evil in the context of a TL3 society. This would be more clear in the case that The Faith of The Light do not allow for slaves by birth, or if slaves are given their freedom for good service etc. So this is more in the "Lawfull Neutral" end of the spectrum (in their mind they are doing the Redeemers a favor though, so they would still see this as good).

But the counter to the POW slavery issue not being evil, in my opinion, is how they treat the Redeemers being sent to the Underdark. The old cast off supplies, could just be a logistical reallity of the time. Not arming the Redeemers at the top could be a simple security issue. But the overall tone has at least evil tendacies.

So what are other folks thoughts on the alignment of the Faith of The Light?
-Dan

[Joe]

Originally Posted by DAT

So what are other folks thoughts on the alignment of the Faith of The Light?

I'm not sure it matters much to your campaign, but for fun, I would have said clearly Lawful Evil. They obey the doctrines of their state religion to the letter (Lawful) and they enslave others and thrust them into pits full of monsters, never to come out again (Evil).

I don't think having old-school-feeling Paladins on their side matters - you're not playing D&D, you're playing GURPS, so you don't need to be beholden to that. It seems better to say that, in your setting, they're channeling the power of a pretty nasty divinity.

I would also say that the fact that they're nice to folks who share their religion doesn't really matter much - if "good" is going to mean anything here, I think it has to be an absolute rather than relative term, so they have to have a will to be good to everyone. (Though obviously there's a whole big philosophical problem here, raised mainly by old school D&D's oddly literal moral absolutism, with people speaking their 'alignment languages' and so on...).

[Rasputin]

If they're living off the land in the underdark, consider this just like being out in the wild and make them roll Survival (Underground) each day. Results are as in the first graf of the Survival skill on p. B223. Failure will result in possible resource depletion.

[Andreas]

Originally Posted by Joe

I'm not sure it matters much to your campaign, but for fun, I would have said clearly Lawful Evil. They obey the doctrines of their state religion to the letter (Lawful) and they enslave others and thrust them into pits full of monsters, never to come out again (Evil).

I don't think having old-school-feeling Paladins on their side matters - you're not playing D&D, you're playing GURPS, so you don't need to be beholden to that. It seems better to say that, in your setting, they're channeling the power of a pretty nasty divinity.

I would also say that the fact that they're nice to folks who share their religion doesn't really matter much - if "good" is going to mean anything here, I think it has to be an absolute rather than relative term, so they have to have a will to be good to everyone. (Though obviously there's a whole big philosophical problem here, raised mainly by old school D&D's oddly literal moral absolutism, with people speaking their 'alignment languages' and so on...).

What about Lawful Neutral? Giving them Evil aligment just because of the way they treat some of their prisoners might not be a good idea when the rest of their society appears to be Lawful God. Even the way they treat those prisoners might arguably be Neutral.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by Andreas

What about Lawful Neutral? Giving them Evil aligment just because of the way they treat some of their prisoners might not be a good idea when the rest of their society appears to be Lawful God. Even the way they treat those prisoners might arguably be Neutral.

Sure - I guess I can see a case for that. I guess you would say: they value "law" above all else, and are not particularly selfish and cruel, in general; just cruel to those they consider their legitimate enemies.

Fair enough.

[simply Nathan]

I don't see how slavery is an Evil act. Nothing preventing someone from being described as both Lawful and Good; it may be against modern Western social mores to call something slavery but that's a horse of a different color.

[Mister Negative]

Just a suggestion on the 'battlefield scavenged' armor. Presumably, if this armor is scavenged from the battlefield, it was actually worn onto the battlefield, then scavenged by the survivors.

Rather than having genuinely random collections of armor, I would suggest everyone get an actual suit of very light, cheap armor (since that armor would be the least desirable, and the least likely to get taken earlier by someone else, and thus, available to be offered to rabble) and then have a random selection of better armor pieces that everyone can squabble over (one good helmet, one left pauldron, etc.).

To keep up the random, mismatched factor, you could also possibly roll (even on the hit location chart) for their basic armor to determine what was irreparably damaged (i.e., where the blow that killed the last wearer tore through the armor). Putting on armor with a gaping tear covered in dried blood might suit the genre.

This would be easier to track and equip (you have leather armor, except on your left arm, and you have a steel pot helm) and also a little less subject to wackiness (one guy rolls and gets relatively good armor, someone else ends up with a left leather glove and a right boot).