GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

So, I've been thinking about dungeon crawls, and I was wondering how well GURPS could handle that particular game style. I personally think it would work out just fine, and I'm putting together notes to that very effect.

I'd be curious to hear what others' experience is with dungeon crawl style gaming with GURPS. Does the system improve on any of the traditional elements, especially combat? Are there any particular pitfalls to avoid when approaching a dungeon crawl in GURPS? What options or abilities make for a better crawling experience?

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

The problem I've encountered is that people get hurt in GURPS combat, and healing spells get progressively more difficult to cast in a short period of time. Make sure that adventurers have plenty of healing potions on hand.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

In many ways, dungeon crawls are little more than exercises in resource management and allocation.

The points that Turhan Bey . . . pointed out is not untrue nor unique to GURPS. In D&D, people take hit points still, and magic spells are also limited (actually more sharply than in GURPS!)

The mechanics in GURPS actually tend to work better (especially magic) for dungeon delving, than they do in D&D.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

The solution we came up with in the dungeoncrawl game I'm currently in is to allow "over-the-top" advantages to give them an edge and let them be comfortable with being greatly outnumbered. The spellcasters came up with 2 different solutions: The mage took Magery 7 and Extreme Regeneration (Fatigue Only) with Gadget limitations. The Priest of Ra OTOH just has 51 FP.

This started as a 200-pt game with 4 characters (the two above, a cutlass-wielding rogue and a dedicated fighter) and, while we have been running through adapted 1st-3rd level dungeons, I think we'd crank through 5th-7th level conversions without too much trouble. It's great fun and great combat system practice. :)

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

We've done some dungeon crawl type mini-adventures in our group before. As a GM there's a few things you want to sort out in advance of the session(s):

1) traditional dungeon crawls are filled with horrible monsters and the undead. Establish with your players before hand whether you are using fright check rules, and what it will take before you start asking them to make fright checks.
We had a game where all the characters were specifically created as having no prior experience with the undead, and only one character had a passing familiarity with "the Occult" outside of "civil wizardry". Unfortunately one player didn't really notice this, and was really annoyed when he failed a fright check against "mere zombies". Make sure everyone's on the same wavelength.

2) If you have a D&D DMG, have a look at the environmental hazards section - it's pretty much a good list of stuff you'll want to have in mind in a dungeon crawl situation, especially with players who have prior experience with the genre.

Difficulty modifiers for picking locks should be listed for each locked door. Lock is made for a huge key and gives you lots of room to work inside it? give it a bonus. Lock is rusty? Give it a penalty that can be negated by applying lubricating oil if the player thinks of it.

Give "stuck" doors and barred doors ST ratings if the PCs want to force it open (Quick contest of strength sounds reasonable). Make sure to have DR and HP ratings handy in case they decide to hack it down.

Good trick: create "standard door A" "standard door B" etc references with everything already written up and re-use them ruthelessly.

Any pits that need to be jumped, make sure you have the jumping rules handy. If they're covered, note what penalty or bonus the characters have on their Search roll to discover it. Pre-figure falling damage into the pit, or at least pre-figure the "falling velocity" to save you one step.



The big difference between D&D and GURPS for dungeon crawls is that the D&D DMG already includes what ammounts to a Dungeon Crawls sourcebook, whereas GURPS has all the core bits and pieces, but nothing already written up, in a "grab and go" format.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I've never run a dungeon-crawl campaign in GURPS, but I've run numerous dungeon-crawl adventures or "story arcs" within fantasy campaigns run under GURPS rules. Others have pretty much hit the nail on the head: in GURPS, as in all RPGs, the big challenge of the dungeon crawl is the resource-management exercise. The party has to juggle FP, HP, and possibly character points (if buying successes is allowed); ration abilities that have limited uses (like Luck) or that degrade with use (like Healing spells); and keep careful track of equipment, especially things like arrows, bandages, food, and elixirs.

If you want to have extended dungeon-crawling -- and the adventures in my campaigns have had this element to them -- then the key is to allow the PCs to have abilities that extend or bend the limits on resources. Some of the ones I've found useful, on top of the traditional spells for casters and possible cinematic martial-arts skills for warriors:

• Extra Attack. This doesn't immediately seem like a resource-management aid, but it's a very powerful one. It means that the party takes out more foes per turn in combat, which means fewer chances to run afoul of enemy critical hits.
  
  
• FP. Be sure to let spellcasters have plenty of FP. And consider letting High HP and Healing (p. B424) apply to FP recovery as well, so that in the time that a normal man regains 1 FP, a wizard with 40 FP gets back 4 FP, before considering Recover Energy.
  
  
• Fit. This doesn't help regenerate FP used for magic, but it surely helps regain FP spent on Extra Effort in Combat (p. B357), which in turn helps heroes hoe through fodder monsters without taking a scratch.
  
  
• Gizmos. Let alchemist PCs use this to justify making one elixir per Gizmo per game session from moss, roots, ground rocks, dead monsters, etc. And let them do so quickly, perhaps in mere seconds, if they have Quick Gadgeteer as well.
  
  
• Healing. The Healing advantage has one huge edge over healing spells, which is that it's open-ended. It's still at -3 per use after the first in a day on a given subject, but while Major Healing might be capped at 4 FP healing 8 HP a pop, Healing can suck up 10 FP and heal 20 HP, and still count as "one use."
  
  
• HP. There's no shame in allowing big warriors to have lots of HP. This lets them do what big warriors do best: tank for everybody else. And don't overlook High HP and Healing (p. B424) for those with 20 and 30 HP. A use of Healing that would restore 20 HP to an ordinary man would restore 60 HP to a warrior with 30 HP!
  
  
• Luck. The simple expedient of being able to reroll one's defense against a dire attack or spell that would result in the party having to expend limited resources to restore or heal you is among the most powerful of resource-saving abilities.
  
  
• Metabolism Control, Reduced Consumption, etc. For monks and the like, these traits are a useful way to reduce food and water requirements. Don't overlook that 10 lbs. less food means 10 lbs. more arrows or healing potions . . .
  
  
• Patron (God; Highly Accessible, +50%; Special Abilities, +100%). Give clerics the patronage of an indulgent deity who -- as long as the cleric is slaying Evil and cleansing Bad Places -- is willing to listen to petitions for aid. This may be in addition to or instead of spells. When you've overestimated the party in your role as GM, and they're limping along barely half of the way in, you can make amends in your role as the god -- say, by performing a group healing.
  
  
• Serendipity. Just happening to stumble upon the remains of the last adventuring party to come this way, or a secret cache belonging to monsters, can be a life-saver. When the heroic archer is out of arrows, even a dead elf with 20 half-rotted arrows giving -1 to skill is a welcome sight.
  
  
• Shticks. Things like "Can always strike a flame" can be surprisingly valuable after the party has just trekked through a chest-deep slime puddle. And then there's "Medic!," which lets a healer rig ordinary but sterile bandages from just about anything: moss, goblin hide, ration wrappers, etc.

The other enemy of dungeon adventures is player boredom if combats take too long. Things like Extra Attack and Weapon Master help a lot to speed up the fighting, but some GM complicity helps. Make lots of unnatural monsters Fragile (Unnatural), and simply have them turn to goo or fall apart at -HP rather than fight on by making HT rolls. Only let intelligent boss monsters use Deceptive Attack, Rapid Strike, etc.; everything else just makes constant Attacks, and some things always All-Out Attack and don't defend. And save two classes of foes for use as bosses or end-of-level challenges: those that regenerate quickly, possibly by leeching, and those capable of draining resources or disintegrating items.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I give dungeon-crawling adventurers the benefit of the doubt whenever past experience would matter. I only ever use Fright Checks if some monster has the Terror advantage, and I always assume that the PCs have familiarity with common items used with their skills. This includes such things as familiarity with common demons and undead when making Occultism rolls!

And be willing to wing it! If a player wants her PC to force a door or jump a pit, just say, "Gimme a ST roll," or "Roll against Jumping." If it's supposed to be a tough door, or a dangerous pit with sloped sides and spikes, toss in an arbitrary -1 to -10. If it's designed to be circumvented by subtlety -- and brute force isn't meant to work -- don't miss a beat: "You have some serious misgivings . . . That means the roll is at -20. Still want to try?" But let 'em try! If they fail, well, the monsters beyond the door become alerted and get a free salvo, or the PC falls into your trap, and the players will respect "minor" foes and "obvious" traps a lot more. If they succeed, they have a great story to tell!

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Oh sure, that's probably the safest way to go as the GM, especially if you don't have time to tell/ask your players (or don't want to give away that there will be zombies/whatever) - this way it's a pleasant surprise when they find out, rather than a nasty one.

The important thing is if you rule otherwise, you should go out of your way to make that clear to the players so they are prepared to occasionally fail fright checks.

Oh heck yes. But even better is not having to wing it because you thought if it already. ;)

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I think the key thing is that if you're trying to simulate That Other Game™ -- where it seems that the PCs (not just the players) routinely know all the special abilities of common monsters, and willingly go hunting liches and greater demons -- you don't want to mess with Fright Checks and familiarity penalties to monster-recognition skills. You just want to go along with the whole silliness of clerics lumping undead into taxa, and immediately identifying them and their abilities on sight . . . and professional "monster slayers" who actively seek brain-eating squidfaces. That's as big a part of the dungeon-fantasy subgenre as piles of HP and artillery spells. There are adventurers and then there are no-account Joes who make up most of the world, and adventurers are qualitatively different. Where entire villages pick up and run from a single monster, Fred the First-Level Fighter just shrugs and sticks it with a sword.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Woah. And here I thought GURPS was fairly anti-dungeon. There's a sidebar in Characters that sniffs at kick-in-the-door play.

I'd almost decided that what that sidebar meant was the "giant dragon in a 10-foot room" semi- or totally-random dungeons, and that a giant underground complex stocked with monsters, traps, and loot was okay if it had a good plot, not just one of those "find the mystic wand of eye pokeage" quests.

And now here's the Line Editor hissownself saying that dungeon delving is perfectly okay.

That has relieved me of a whole lot of stress about maintaining a gigundous plot with more threads than the FSM has noodly appendages. If I can blow off steam by cribbing from my collection of adventure magazines, then that's fun for me too.

Thanks!

TWK

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

If I were starting a campaign right now -- and not running my existing one -- I'd be tempted to run a dungeon-smash game. Between my health and my work hours, I have neither the time nor the energy for complicated plots just now.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

That was the reason we started ours, plus teaching a newbie the combat system. It's a great de-stresser: blow the crap out of things, take their stuff, repeat. While there are plot concerns, they're all character driven and not a high priority.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I've been running one in That Other Game™ and occasionally running GURPS Hack 'n' Slash as a demo for this very reason.

GURPS Hack 'n' Slash can be quite fun. Since the combat system has quite a bit of detail, you're using tactics other than "I whack him with my greatsword!" The things I most noticed:

• Size matters. Per another thread around here, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Even SM +1 creatures, like ogres, have plenty of ST/HP and some natural DR. Your halfling rogue will have problems with that.
• Powerstones. They rule so badly that it isn't cool. A one-point Signature Item is a fine quarterstaff enchanted with the Staff spell and set with a 4-point powerstone. And woe betide the wizard who didn't drop a point into Recover Energy.
• Lighting. This almost always works against the PCs. Have the party wizard cast continual light on his Signature Item staff (see above) the day before the poundfest. I usually have monsters douse the light as a standard operating procedure when adventurers enter the room.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I've always wanted to run a GURPS Xcrawl game. Xcrawl is sort of like WWE meets D&D. Big over the top adventures that are planned out by in game Dungeon Masters. Seems like it would be lots of fun.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I've always included dungeon crawls in my GURPS fantasy campaigns, and they've worked out well. I typically would alternate between some good old fashioned dungeon crawling (monsters, trap, monsters, trap, treasure) and some NPC interaction above ground. Don't just hand the PCs the dungeon, make them have to find it by talking to the right people, etc.

I'm building a new fantasy world now in fact where I plan to "borrow" some adventures from That Other Game system ;-) I intend to have plenty of high fantasy dungeon crawling in it as that's what I've had a hankering for for a while now.

Bobby

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

There really needs to be an official GURPS 240-page hardback on this. I'd pitch it if I had any expectation I'd have the time to write it.

But I don't.

But GURPS really needs it. And it would sell.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Do you think there is enough pertinent material to justify a full-size book? I wouldn't think so, unless you fluffed it out with extraneous stuff like beasties and loot.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Beasties and loot are not extraneous to dungeon-crawling role-playing; they are a central feature. ;)

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I think I own four different books about the theory, design, and execution of dungeon crawls, dating back to AD&D 1e. I own all four because all of them bring something new to the discussion, and yet none of them have some of the totally awesome useful tidbits I found in GURPS Egypt and GURPS Undead, and I don't think any of the above mention that chinese emperors tomb with the lake of mercury and IIRC even loaded-crossbow traps (Which admitedly had rotted away to uselessness).

I would expect a GURPS book on the subject to deal with REAL "dungeons" of the type adventurers are actually likely to explore, from the catacombs of Paris to Egyptian pyramids to the above-ground necropoli of New Orleans (which are just begging to be turned into a location for a modern dungeon crawl). Also actual subteranean living spaces, rather than burying spaces - fortresses and mines are the only common things I can think of, but I think there are at least a few instances of modern humans not only moving into cave systems, but altering them and expanding on them (building houses over the fronts, leveling floors, etc).

ANd of course "dungeons" don't have to be underground. Anywhere you can restrict the players choice of direction of travel (and usually line of sight/line of fire but there are fun things to do with that) is a dungeon. This is probably why DMs traditionally get a little flustered when their players bring mining picks and start breaking through walls.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Yes, exactly! The idea that monsters and loot are extraneous would kill the book. They're central. It would really need to deal with:

- monsters (yes, including wandering monsters)
- loot (including random generation)
- traps and tricks (including a big-ole table of modifiers to combine when building traps)
- unlocking and bashing down doors, with examples and lock difficulties.
- dungeon construction, both realistic and modern gaming style. Examples of play running from self-aware dungeon bashing (The Order of the Stick, Another Day Another Dungeon) to more realistic crypt robbing. Historical looks at underground complexes and their uses. Expanding the dungeon to non-fantasy environments, as a one-off (the supers get dumped in a dungeon crawl) to a whole environment (Doom).
- disposing of loot - expand a little on BASIC SET for selling off loot and replacing your own loot.
- templates for dungeon-bashers, scaled up and down from "realistic" to "all the mages have extra pools of mana and Fatigue-only Regeneration and the fighters all start as Weapon Masters."
- heck, even have pre-made equipment packs, with cost and weight, for grab-and-go adventuring. If it worked for Rolemaster Companion I, it'll work here too. Specialist dungeon gear would help, too.

I can see filling 240 pages easy. It's a big topic, and if it is done with a real love of the game type - not "well, if you REALLY want to be racially motivated thugs murdering dungeon-dwelling creatures for their money, I guess we'll help" but "this is why this is fun and cool" - it'll sell widely. It'll get based for trying to "do D&D" but who cares? That's a valid playstyle, and people can and do play this way with GURPS. Help them and sell them a book, maybe get some of the guys who play D&D because it's got all this stuff done for them over to GURPS by giving them the same ready-made tools for play.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

See for example the discussion of adventure types in Chapter 8 of GURPS Fantasy, where the dungeon crawl, characterized in almost exactly those terms, is the first listed adventure type. Which I suppose ought to count as an official endorsement of using GURPS for dungeon fantasy, by the way.

Bill Stoddard

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I'd love to write it. Unfortunately, the company doesn't like to fund staff writing, and I have other writers' books to edit. I doubt I'll ever get the chance. :(

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I don't hold much hope, but I've sent in a query letter on this very topic. I figure I have to give it a shot. It's such a great idea.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

*blink* Just the idea?? ...
Whoa... I'm either a near-pervasive power, or plain political persuader ('demigoddery' or demagoguery*)... Just Kidding! :)

My thought was that including more than a few pages devoted to statting such things seems contrary to the general marketing philosophy shown in the books published so far. Especially monsters, which I would think would be constrained by the prospect of a new edition of Bestiary. Loot might be more open to expansion in such a book, but still... the discussed Low/Fantasy-Tech would subsume a lot of the pertinent material, wouldn't it?It is a cool idea... and, shoot, I'll buy it if it comes out ;) I'm a bit skeptical of the ease of filling a standard size book on the subject, but I'm willing to believe that a talented and driven writer might pull it off.

* Sorry Mr. Mencken... I didn't see you standing there :(

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I think this is a very good idea for a sourcebook, but I'm more than a bit skeptical of this either deserving or justifying 240 pages. As Sean has said, the rules you'd need are already totally covered in the Basic Set, just split up a bit. So this would be a pure advice/genre book for a "genre" that's about as shallow as they come. I'd expect it to come in closer to 40-60 pages. This sounds like an e23 product to me... and one that I'd readily buy if done well.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I was personally thinking more along the lines of discussing monsters, their role in dungeons, how a GM can use "trash mobs" (simple creatures with no significant treasure) and/or random encounters to control the pace of the adventurers progress, creating "theme" or "ecology" dungeons, things like that.

Designing combat oriented encounters is another thing - how to structure them, crowd control, designing encounters based on party capabilities, etc.

There's meta stuff you can discuss about loot too. Why are you giving out loot at all, what form (portable, vs non portable) and why to use one or the other, how much loot vs how much expenses are the players going through (Remember, dungeon crawls are resource management games!) and that ratio controls how quickly they progress towards a certain goal, GIVING the players goals to save up for and adjusting progression accordingly...

An example from World of Warcraft, for I am a total addict. You can learn to ride a very fast flying mount (a gryphon, a small chimera, a small dragon, etc) but the only NPCs that will teach you the skill want to charge you a ridiculous amount of money for the training (5000 gold, which is an ENORMOUS amount of money). However, shortly after introducing this apparently impossible-to-achieve goal they also introduced some new ways of earning money to bring it within reach if you spent about half an hour a day for a few months on saving up for it.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I'd love to see them TRY to fill all 240 pages on it. You can cover a shallow topic broadly, or get into a lot of the really interesting meta levels.

But I suppose I should remind myself that I'm a WoW Raider. I essentially live and breathe dungeons; dungeon design, dungeon theory, dungeon tactics. I am by definition In The Minority.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Heh, I have an outline for 240 pages on my HD. It's most of 5,000 words, which is a big outline. Looking at it, my worry would be not bloating to 256 pages . . .

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I've heard of that too, but can't recall where. Somewhere in the MidEast I think, basically a whole village underground.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Weren't Masada and other mountain fastnesses backed up by cave systems?

Kind of like a Helm's Deep in the desert, surrounded by Roman legions, and with a grimmer outcome ....

TWK

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Probably the most famous example is Petra, the ruins of an ancient city mostly carved into the sides of canyon walls.

The only recent and active (almost wholly) underground town I know of is Coober Pedy in the australian outback, where they are mining opals and it's just too damn hot to live above ground (and when they are digging most of the time anyway...).
They even have underground churches, which might be the location for a dungeon crawl. :D

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

There's a reason for a physical book here: this one might actually sell to folks who do not play GURPS right now. e23 is not the place for such a book.

Plus, the crunchy bits will easily fill the book. These would be spells, equipment, magic items, monsters, plus GM aids like generic locations and stock NPCs (see the d20 Star Wars Galactic Campaign Guide for what I mean). One could easily write the one guide that Some Other Company wishes it wrote for Some Other Game.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

It has been written; the latest one I own is AEG's Dungeon, for 3.0, but I'm very sure there are others - they seem to get written every 3-5 years.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I'd love Gurps: Dungeon Crawl. I've wanted to try a decent 'classic' hack-em-up, but D&D is still just an MMORPG in homework-form for me to bother with it.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

If it ever does get made, it should be called "GURPS Dungeoneer"

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Too bad you can't post it online. I'd love to try to build from it.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Another one in the "Indefinite Future" pile *sigh*

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

For comparison, the 256-page GURPS Martial Arts final outline was slightly over 2300 words.

Filling 240 pages isn't the problem. Filling only 240 pages while covering the topic in enough detail is.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I've had my best dungeon crawling experiences with GURPS. I did a traditional three level dungeon, town, village, and ran that for about four years. (Most of the 4e combat mechanics were tested in this campaign, such as the new defense rules, actually).

The one thing to avoid is that some of the magic spells can make things a bit too easy in GURPS. We banned invisibility, for example.

Also, you have to think carefully how monsters will convert. D&D is full of critters that do very low damage in GURPS terms and due to GURPS DR stopping hits, you have to either not use them or be creative. For example, my carrion crawlers use grappling to pull off a helm before paralyzing, while my cubes and slimes took some careful thought to figure out how they worked.

We used full tactical combat for some crucial encounters and GURPS really shines in those areas, where all the rules for weapon reach, etc. work nicely in a confined space.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Sounds like they might be the only people to survive Cobalt Thorium G.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Great ideas from Dr. Kromm! I especially liked the 'quick alchemy'...

This might result in some undesirable metagaming concerns; clerics choosing to heal fighters simply because they'd get more bang for their buck. To me it makes sense that it takes more effort to heal an elephant than a cat.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Your warrior isn't an elephant, he's a man sized man with 30 HP. More importantly, he's a SM 0 creature. Minor/Major Healing are Regular spells, their costs increase with the size modifier of the creature. It DOES cost more to heal an elephant than a cat, even if you have a freakish elephant with 10 HPs (and a freakish cat with 10 HPs).

EDIT: Also, your clerics should be able to concentrate healing on the warriors anyways, as the warriors should be taking the lions share of the damage. The clerics however won't skimp on healing the mages or archers or whatever, however, because they're doing most of the damage and therefore control when the combat ends (if it's a fight to the death, which it usually is in a dungeon).

The faster you kill the enemy, the less healing you need to do at all - if one of the mages draws aggro, you want to keep him alive until the warrior can get aggro back. If you loose your fire support, your fight duration could double or tripple, requiring you to burn far more energy keeping the warrior(s) up.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

As Bruno points out, if your fighters aren't taking the majority of hits to begin with, you're doing something wrong.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

A cat has SM -3 and spells costs are ×1 on him. He has 4 HP. To heal his full 4 HP requires 2 FP worth of Major Healing (4 HP requires 4 HP of healing, and 4 HP of healing costs 2 FP).

An elephant has SM +3 and spell costs are ×4 on him. He has 45 HP. To heal his full 45 HP requires 24 FP worth of Major Healing (45 HP requires only 12 HP of healing, because healing is ×4 for high HP, and 12 HP of healing cost only 6 FP, but that's ×4 for size, for a net 24 FP).

In both cases, the actual FP:HP ratio is 1:2, but restoring the elephant to full HP is very costly and requires six full-strength Major Healings -- five of which will be at penalties for repeated castings, unless you have piles of healers.

However, the elephant got his ST and HP and 30% off for SM. A man with SM 0 but 45 HP didn't get the discount. Since he paid full price, he presumably gets some benefit. The benefit is that he doesn't suffer the downside of high SM. Thus, healing him 45 HP requires only 6 FP of Major Healing (45 HP requires only 12 HP of healing, because healing is ×4 for high HP, and 12 HP of healing cost 6 FP). This represents warriors being hardy, which is part of the archetype.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Were I to run a dungeon-bash in the style of That Other Game, I'd disallow Signature Gear, and Wealth ads/disads, though I'd allow characters to buy cash with points at chargen (I'd also allow them to buy down their starting cash at the same ratio) up to 10 points for +100% starting cash. Also, everyone would be assumed to be a wandering type, and thus have all their starting wealth available for gear.

Now, the wizard can still blow his cash on an enchanted Staff ($40) with a 9-point ($1900) dedicated powerstone (18 energy for spells cast through the staff). However, in a normal mana zone those points come back slowly - one point of the base energy per day so in any one excursion, once the energy is used it is gone. Unless the party is willing to bail every time the mage's stone runs dry, and wait a week before returning the stone's a limited resource in the shorter term.

Last time (over a decade ago) I participated in a fantasy game with a professional adventuring mage, he bought a whole bunch of small powerstones, and didn't even try and recharge them until he got home after a 'job'.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I'd probably be okay with Signature Gear. The number of unremovable family heirloom items on Baldur's Gate NPCs might be influencing me here, but it does seem to be a common enough occurrence in hack n' slash fantasy. Actually, I kind of like the idea of all wizards' staffs being Signature Gear that somehow find their way back unless forcefully broken. (Gee, where did that thought come from?)

But I'm in agreement on Wealth. I think it's fairly meaningless . . . along with most social traits. Dungeon crawling does "societies" about as well as it does "ecologies."

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

The traditional answer to that is to have a continual parade of 'random' wandering monsters turn up to see what the fuss is about. Just like if the players decide to take a rest after every encounter.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

It's interesting to see that someone sees that spell the same way I do--amazingly powerful for it's cost within the context of GURPS mechanics.

I didn't go so far as to outright ban it, but I did change it somewhat. IMC, it more closely resembles the same spell from The Other Game. It has the Fringe effect (from Powers p57) and it automatically dispels after the Invisible character attacks. I find that works a lot better.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

If I could go back and change it to this, I would. In fact, when a PC recently got a Great Wish and asked for some kind of concealment power, I gave him Invisibility with Fringe, a "dispels after attack" limitation, and fatigue costs. This also opens the door for Improved Invisibility (or call it True Invisibility) for really powerful opponents who lack the fringe or the dispel limitation. As a spell, you could probably cost at at double the cost of Invisibility as written and it would still be amazingly useful.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Maybe. I just prefer the feeling that mages, like fighters, upgrade their gear as time goes on. I suppose this could reflected by letting people pay more points into their Signature Gear advantage to make a new find their 'signature'.

Exactly.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

This is where the spell Manastone is your friend.

If you know the spell yourself, you can cast it to "recharge" an appropriate vessel. Costs 5 fatigue, means you can do it every 25 minutes when you're resting.

Incidentally, if a Manastone is put into a wand, it simulates Wands from That Other Game very well.

Kilopoint fighters: what to spend it on?
 

I've been looking into how to do these things myself lately, and there's something I'm wondering about. I know I'd personally much prefer an advantage-based magic system for this. And I've figured that a very-high-level wizard from That Other Game can easily come in at some 2000 points.
Now, what I'm wondering about is how to build a fighter-type character on so many points, particularly one that doesn't use magic, divine powers, ki, psionics, etc. Even with high attributes and all kinds of cinematic abilities I'm finding it hard to fill much more than some 500 points for a "mid-level" and 1000 for a "high-level" fighter. Any suggestions for expensive stuff?

Re: Kilopoint fighters: what to spend it on?
 

Agreed.

Generally, I'd say that a high-level fighter from That Other Game isn't worth as many points as a high-level mage.

Mages at 18th+ level are almost an order of magnitude more powerful and versatile than Fighters.

If I was simulating That Other Game, I'd just accept that if I wanted character point parity, high-level Fighters travelled with mid-level mages, and if I didn't care about point totals, the wizards were simply worth two or three times as many points as the warriors.

But as for suggestions on how to spend CPs for a powerful warrior, I'd suggest the following:

Some method of imbuing every weapon he wields with extra damage, Armour Divisor and minor magical effects. Done with Innate Attack (ST-based).

IT: Damage Reduction

Luck (Aspected: Combat), several levels.

Resistant (Immune) to a lot of things.

HP, some DR and ST.

Mastering every sort of weapon and skill which could conceivable be connected to combat. Mastering every unarmed style.

Extra Attacks.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Yeah, I think this all makes sense from a rules-standpoint, but I can't help but think that if our DnD group had used Gurps, and had one character with ST 19 and another with ST 20, the one with ST 19 would think it quite unfair the other got double healing.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Problem with every breakpoint.

One solution is to be aware of it and avoid making characters which hover just below a beneficial breakpoint.

A character with Weapon Master and DX+0 level in 10 different weapons may cost more points than one with Weapon Master and DX+2 in his primary weapon, but only the one with DX+2 level enjoys the bonus on damage from Weapon Master.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

If your group is that concerned about this unfairness, I'd suspect they'd see if coming and ST 19 dude would buy +1 HP. In fact, I suspect they'd buy the maximum extra HP they could because it's the cheapest route to 20 and double healing. I know my gamers would - and in this kind of game I'd strongly encourage them to.

Re: Kilopoint fighters: what to spend it on?
 

Weapon Master, Hit points, Ablative DR (or regular DR with or without flexible, hardened, etc), Striking ST or just plain old ST, Extra Attack up to x4, maneuvers (Feats especially are an awful lot like buying a maneuver up to maximum in GURPS)... Melee, Strength Based Innate attacks that require a weapon to execute and include Armor Divisors or Affects Insubstantial or other fun things.

Enhanced Parry, Dodge, and Block (you of course already have Combat Reflexes).

HT. Hard to Kill, Hard to Subdue, Resistant. Magic Resistance. Injury tolerance: Damage Divisor.

DX of course.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

If you want to be neurotic about it, give HP 19 guy 1.9 HPs for every point of healing. This of course leads to HP 18 guy complaining until he gets 1.8 HPs for every point of healing, and so on down. But if you're happy with a calculator, go for it.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

It's more than a valid play style. Let's not forget that A LOT of other fantasy RPG systems also do dungeon crawling : Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Dark Eye RPG, etc. All my fantasy campaigns that I do, sometimes incorporated dungeon crawling. I had my players try the DragonLance series adventures (none of them, even me, ever read the books) in a D&D 3rd edition game and we had a hell of a blast exploring the Fortress of Pax Tharkas, the Ruins of Xar Tsaroth, the ruined tower of Fistandantilus and the kingdom of Thorbadin. I just imagine how much better these games would have been using the GURPS system instead !!!

Re: Kilopoint fighters: what to spend it on?
 

Would you believe I was already incorporating most of these? Having a lot of skills does manage to drive things up more I thought though. And thanks for pointing out ST-based innate attack; should be able to do some nice things with that.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Not quite - it's still an enchantment, so it still takes an hour Q&D. It also means that you take a penalty from having your friends nearby. As Manastone is Very Hard, that probably means 4+ points put into the spell. Overall, I'm not sure it's that wonderful an idea. However, as we didn't have Grimoire at the time all this was moot. :)

I suppose it would.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

So next time points are handed out he pays two points for +1HP. Problem solved.

Re: Kilopoint fighters: what to spend it on?
 

Fit/Very Fit.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I've always heard "the original DragonLance modules" reamed for horrible railroading--trying to duplicate the novel's plot. But GURPS 3e might be better than playing in 2e...

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

They do, somewhat (though parts of the modules simply don't turn up in the original novels at all). However, IMO, the problem isn't the modules' alone - the problem is when you get a GM who also wants to 'play the novels'. That's when things get really dire.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Wasn't it the other way round? That the first novels tried to follow the existing modules as close as possible until the authors realized that wasn't such a good idea and deviated from them more in the second and third trilogy?

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Yes. Page 726 of the Annotated Chronicles, Jeff Grubb reveals that at that point (Silvara has led the heroes into Huma's Tomb and is casting sleep on them), Weis and Hickman, writing the novels, caught up to the modules.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Ah, yes. Darn.

It's still an order of magnitude faster to recharge than a Powerstone.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

For sure, but you really won't want to get bounced during or just after the recharge.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

i know this is thread necromancy, but do any of you have files on ready-to-go dungeons?

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I just use off the shelf modules for that other game (which features both dragons and the topic of this thread!) ;-) or any others I come across. You could also search online but your best but will be to pick up a cheap pre-built dungeon adventure from your local gaming store.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Yeah, you pretty much had to "follow the path" although a few options were available. But the maps were pretty cool. Not something I would be able to think myself. Like the Tomb of Derkin which is a floating island with a fortress on it (and even the art of the fortress matches the floor plan !), Pax Tharkas which is some kind of big hollow rampart that can release rubble to fully block the road to the south, Xak Tsaroth which is a city that fell into the ground during the cataclysm (even one of the "dungeon" room was a house that fell on the side), etc. All very cool locations for dungeon crawling.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I play in a GURPS dungeon crawl that is incredibly fun.

1) GURPS combat enhances anything that is combat. I foam at the mouth when I am forced to do more than 30seconds (real time) of combat in any edition of D&D, I can't follow FUDGE's combat... and anything BEER/SAKE engined is too silly to count here.

2) To judge by the nervous breakdown my GM has from time to time, traditional dungeon traps are a bit tricky.

3) GURPS has a poor selection of ready made dungeon fodder in the current edition and I've yet to come into possession of, or even see, a 3e book that contained much in that regard. Be prepared to do some clever converting.

Flavourful differences: 1) no classes, thus parties can be varying sizes based on a combination of point total and exact point spending rather than a default assumption of a particular arrangement of a specific number of specific classes of exact levels 2) more options. It's easier to have a wider variety of races for example. which leads to the fun of coping with a character who can fly like you or I would walk rather than through some finite spell... difficulties the player has to cope with because they've got hooves (I've a centaur and faerie). There was more but something distracted me and derailed my thoughts... oh well... I think I gave the general idea anyhow.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

I once did a conversion of Queen of the Demonweb Pits for use in my GURPS D-Hoppers campaign. The biggest problem I came up against was a difference in expectations. In a D&D campaign, each encounter is an opportunity to gain XP and maybe acquire some treasure or useful stuff; so the module is full of encounters.

My GURPS group was more interested in achieving the goal and quickly came to regard the wandering monsters, and even any room that was not necessary to getting from Point A to Point B, as an annoyance. I wound up fast-forwarding through the "Demonweb" portion of the module because the players pegged it as filler, just marking time until we got to the Big Boss Monster.

Maybe if I had given them something for each spider they squished, as they would have in a D&D game, they would have attacked them with more gusto. But GURPS is not as prodigal with its CP as D&D is with XP. Because of the nature of the campaign I had ported the scenario into, Gold Pieces weren't as important as in a regular dungeon crawl. And there are only so many Magic Items I can pack into a dungeon.

As it was, I had to do some re-adjusting on the fly. Which was not bad in itself; that's how I usually run GURPS games anyway.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

For encouraging dungeon crawl type games, I like a system of "The sheriff is offering a bounty on Orc Ears (or whatever). Each left ear you bring back is worth X." That way I don't have to load the orcs down with ridiculous treasure or equipment to provide a reward for each kill, and I don't have to sprinkle around CP like rice at a wedding.

Another approach is to give out an M&M or other small candy for each monster killed. The last time I ran a traditional dungeon crawl, I had a bowl of mini marshmallows and ate one each time they killed one of the monsters. The look of dawning horror on my players faces when they made the connection "Oh GOD, we're just rewarding her with sugar when we kill things!" was kind of funny, but it points out that there can be other kinds of rewards.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

In general I think this is a good thing - players treating the encounters as obstacles to go around - or through if nothing else works, rather than "XP".. But of course if you do pretty direct conversion of D&D adventures it might be bad.. And if the encounters are just annoyances rather than obstacles they are obviously too easy for the PCs..

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

What starting character point levels do you feel works best for a GURPS dungeon crawl in the spirt of the other game? Standard 150/75 or something higher, like 250/75 or more?

A large number of advantages were mentioned as being key/very important/useful, and having a character with many of them I think would push a character above the standard 150/75 level. Then there are attributes and characteristics, not to forget skills.

The list of advantages that have been mostly discussed fit your front line meat shield character type/ How would the suggested list of advantages change for other specialist character types (e.g., mage/wizard, healer/cleric, sneak/thief/rogue, etc.)?

Or maybe a more basic questions, do most players try to recreate the "traditional" specialist types/classes or do they opt for the GURPS jack-of-all-trades type (e.g., a sword wielding armored mage who can throw a fireball, heal people, and pick pockets)?

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

The one I'm playing in is about 200pt and seems to go fairly well. My characters are believably new to the whole adventuring thing, yet competent enough to show that they didn't beat a plowshare to a sword and go off to have adventures.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Well, at least it's entertaining on that level. They do sound like cool locations. Flying anything is almost always cool.

Re: GURPS does dungeon crawl?
 

Having run a D&D/GURPS hybred all the way back to AD&D1 days I have found that GUPRS forces player and GM to think more. The result tends to something simple like Keep on the Borderlands becoming a death trap.