Request: Better Monster Signal:Noise or Information Design

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by beaushinkle

Confession: I find DFRPG monsters difficult to run, especially the more complicated ones.

Then cut them down to whatever 'size' is easiest for you.

It starts with 164 words of description where we find out the following game-relevant information

• they're angry (especially about their valuables) undead
• usually groups of 1 though they sometimes come in groups of up to 6, or more
• intelligent

That's not all the info it gives, but sure.

Notably missing form your truncated listing is "can speak but doesn't bother to", must lay senseless for 8 hours per day, and might ignore delvers who don't bother it.

See that 'might'? That's what Bad Temper and Intolerance (The Living) is for, if the GM wants to randomly decide if the draug gets upset by the living walking past its accursed resting place.


And another tidbit buried in the lead: The draug might be upset because of it's burial state (or in the case of a battlefield worth, their unburial state). Which could give a group a method of dealing diplomatically with a group of intelligent, angry, but capable of speaking undead. Granted they have get passed the Bad Temper and Intolerance first.

... but don't get information about what sort of treasure they might have.

That's for the GM to decide. As is "number appearing". This isn't D&D, if you want 100+ draug on a battlefield, well... that's gonna be a real mess to deal with.

The entries (and this feels like the general theme), feel like an odd midpoint between "the information useful for running the monster" and "build out the monster as though it was a PC".

DFRPG doesn't give us a full mechanical description of the Draug....

Of course it does. What do you think is missing aside from "Treasure Type", which isn't a GURPS thing?

... but it also includes many traits that we don't need in order to actually run it.

All those are still necessary. I'm just going to speak to the things you don't think are important:

Bad Smell: Marginal value here; them smelling bad can be inferred from them being half-rotted corpses. Mechanically, this says the players get a +2 to detect or track the draug by scent, so if that wasn't something the GM could make a ruling on, now it's here (but buried in a trait description).

Firstly, they're all buried in trait descriptions. It's here because it's a trait.

Bad Temper: we already know from the flavor text that they're angry; is the expectation that we're going to actually be rolling Bad Temper checks for the draug (who does not negotiate, according to the notes)?

No, as mentioned above, it's because it's a trait which informs the description, and incase you want to roll check and see if these draug ignore the group that's just walking past with no intent to get all up in the draug's goods.

Doesn't Breathe: marginally useful; it can be inferred that a draug doesn't breathe if this comes up (or the GM can make a ruling on it).

Again necessary. Draug can talk, so they must 'breathe' in air to so (presumably), this just means they aren't affected by asphyxiation or other such annoyances associated with breathing (like being underwater).

Vamps are also quite often Unliving, but also quite often have to breathe.

Doesn't eat or drink: unnecessary; if there is ever (for whatever reason) a question where knowing if draug have to eat is relevant, the GM can either infer it or make it up.

Again, it's a trait, and it means the draug never get hungry, unlike the various hungry dead.

Frightens Animals: unnecessary; animals don't need to be making reaction rolls against draugr, and the GM can decide the behavior of mounts/watchdogs without explicit mechanical guidance.

Not all Unliving frighten animals, also this means draug can never "work with" animals and a group's animal companions will react very negatively to a draug's presence.

Hidebound: mildly useful; I have a hard time imagining when I would need to make non-combat rolls for the draugr...

IQ rolls for developing "cunning plans" to deal with an especially canny group of delvers who've figured out some way to deal with the draug without directly whacking it with sticks.

Intolerance (the living): unnecessary; we don't need to know how other NPCs react to the draugr, we can just choose.

This isn't for other NPC's reaction rolls, it's there so you know when the PCs decide to try to negotiate (from a safe distance) the draug don't like living beings.

No Blood: covered by immunity for most mechanics, gm rulings otherwise (in cases where you need to figure out if a vampire can drink the blood of a draugr)

This is literally so you know it can't be injured via any "bleeding" damage.

Single-Minded: fringe mechanical usefulness

"Chasing delvers" would run against its Single-minded "protyect my stuff/cursed burial ground" so this is just a reminder that draug aren't doing stuff like that.

Temperature Tolerance: This one is confusing to me. Temperature tolerance reduces FP penalties for bad weather, but draugr don't have FP!

Don't have FP to spend or lose doesn't mean "immune to extreme temperature". However a +5 to a HT 15 kinda does mean, works im both blizzards and death valley temps with issues. However, should you decide that worse conditiond could deal HP damage on HT failures... well, you know they're starting at a HT 20 to resist.


Every place you wrote "the GM can either infer it or make it up" is true, but GURPS operates under a very strong streak of "if it's not on the sheet, it's not there" for everything else, so it does so for NPC traits as well.

Personally? I cut everything not directly needed in my notes, so for me a draug's entry might just be:

ST: 22 HP: 27 Speed: 7.00
DX: 13 Will: 10 Move: 7
IQ: 10 Per: 10
HT: 15
Dodge: 11 Parry/Block: 12 DR: 6 (4 vs. crushing) Mail
Shield DB +2
Axe (16): 4d+2 cutting. Reach 1.
Broadsword (16): 4d+1 cutting or 2d+2 impaling. Reach 1.
Punch (16): 2d+2
Grappling ST 23
Dark Vision, Fire x2, most Immunities, Unliving.

And honestly, for most encounters, I don't even need anything other than HP, DR, attack and damage.



As for your suggestions... that's great for you, but for anyone who wants all the Traits, it's bad. So it's better in the long run to let you just whittle off what you don't think is necessary instead of leaving a bunch of blanks for GMs who prefer to not be having to constantly fill in the blanks.