Blog Update 12/16/24

     Going to take another break today, it's another day of celebration here. I will still make a "mini post" as I have some things to share. I am super excited to go into the new year, though, I am moving into a twice-per-week schedule. Once on Thursday and once on Sunday. As of today, one of my posts hit *fifty reads!* This is insanely impressive and awesome to me; I never thought my writing would be that interesting to people! In addition, recently, my blog hit five hundred total views! 

    I have views from Germany, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and even Luxembourg! Thank you to everyone who has read my blog so far; it is one of my main motivators. If you want to see anything or hear anything on my blog, let me know, I have taken requests from readers for posts before, and they have come out great. Have a great new year y'all, I will see you next Sunday!

And on the twelvth day of GURPSmas the blogger gave to me...

     ...a continuation of yesterday's adventure! At the point of starting here, the players are recommended to have at least five or so extra points, being rewarded for good deeds, creative ideas, role-playing, etc. If you haven't already, read yesterday's part of the adventure if you want the proper build up. If you just want the dungeon and surrounding information, you can start with this post. I recommend against reading this post if you intend to playing this as a player.

And on the eleventh day of GURPSmas the blogger gave to me...

     ...the first half of an adventure! It has finally come, the ultimate end of GURPSmas! The final surprise is an adventure playable in GURPS (theoretically, in any other system as well.) Today, I will post mainly the setup for the adventure, with the second half (a short dungeon) and enemies being posted tomorrow, as the final GURPSmas present. The adventure is called "The Mines of Tosid", Tosid meaning Armor in dwarven-speak. DO NOT click read more if you intend to ever be a player in a one-shot of this, as there are spoilers ahead. This adventure's power level is recommended at two to three characters with 150 total points, but higher is okay. TL can be anywhere from TL1 to TL4.

And on the tenth day of GURPSmas the blogger gave to me...

     ...more dwarf lore! Now, this is quoted from a document called The Codex and is pre-written, so some things will be changed, but personally, I really like the lore I wrote for these dwarves. Now, this plunges you straight into my world of Thalmar, so if you have questions, I will answer them for you. Otherwise, read on! 

    "Jernoxse (formally called the Stoneborn Kingdom of Jernoxse) is just short of a mystery to any citizens not born into nobility. Very few are allowed entry, with fewer being able to learn how they operate. A major part of dwarven culture is to be hospitable to friends, with neutral figures being as good as enemies. Why this is, is not quite known, although many suspect it’s due to their distrust of many humans due to some allying with elves.

    Some may think the dwarves' hatred of elves is just another mythos, but to most scholars, it is well known that it is intrinsic for dwarves and elves to hate each other, although no man, elf, or dwarf has truly figured out why. Some say it is because elves have some features of orcs, although others say it is due to their mellow and peace-loving nature.

    If one thing is true about dwarves, it’s that they love to dig. Coming with digging deep, they tend to often be mad with lust for gems, gold, and wealth (called guldlyst or perlelyst by the dwarves) which can easily become the end of kings, noble houses, or entire cities and fortresses. A famous one is the Icy City of Myria, which fell due to the greed of their king. No one is truly sure why they fell, but they know that deep within Myria lies the Dræber, a mythical weapon that drinks the blood of foes to strengthen its power. It was said to drive the king mad, but what caused the collapse of the fortress is unknown.

    The greatest foes of the dwarves are the kobolds of the deep, which are scaly orange creatures that tend to raid and pillage dwarven settlements under the earth. They don’t wear armor, as their scales provide much defense against anything cutting or piercing. This has given way to dwarves preferring hammers and axes, due to their powerful ability to deal damage to the kobolds despite their powerful armored scales.

    They tend to also use Handgonnes, a weapon using 'fire power' to blast iron and fire everywhere. They are rather short-ranged and often have an axehead attached to the bottom of the front, due to their reload times. All kingdoms besides the dwarves refuse to use firepowder, mostly because of its cost.

    Making firepowder requires kobold scales, the flesh of a Wiederganger, and the essence of a Nachzehrer, none of which is cheap. The teeth of a Nachzehrer are four hundred crowns per pouch as it is, with everything else becoming much more expensive. Two thousand crowns of resources barely produce enough 'fire powder' to fuel twelve men.

    Dwarves are extremely industrious, with one dwarf at a cheap smithy out-producing three men in their best workshops. Dwarves are also extremely clever, using anything they have in their arsenal to their advantage. It is even said a dwarf can turn bronze into steel if he tries hard enough, and that may even be the truth. Dwarves are the only people who have discovered the secrets of steel, using this to their advantage by selling resources to any nation willing to pay their ludicrous prices for their steel, iron, coal, and anything else they mine. It is even said that they have the secrets of the old to forge Adamantine like their ancestors.

    Any dwarf can forge, but only Guildmasters get positions to use the ancient magic forges. They were created by Merlin the Sorcerer to create magical items, although now they are just used to magic alloys (without proper magical properties) like Black Bronze, which is used by burning Ebonwood magically, then mixing certain metals magically to produce a black alloy that makes no noise when swung, dropped, or otherwise maneuvered. It also does not shine, being perfect for dwarven spies attempting to assassinate their rivals."

    I did edit a lot of content in this post; that's why it took me all day. This came straight from an unrefined document I was working on from September to October, which still needs to be refined. It is the source book for the world of Thalmar, that I run in my campaign which is called "Tales of Adventure - A Thalmarian Tale", though you will most likely find nothing on that anywhere, unless you know exactly where to look.

And on the ninth day of GURPSmas the blogger gave to me...

     ...a spin on dwarf fantasy! Yes, yes, yes, you all know by now that I love dwarves. Dwarves this, dwarves that. But today, as a prelude to things to come, I will write about a specific world that I no longer use, due to the campaign being stopped, but it is interesting nonetheless. Imagine a normal fantasy world. Elves, dwarves, humans, goblins, orcs, kobolds, etc. Magic ran rampant through the world, goblins and kobolds (also known as Cave Goblins) hated dwarves, elves and dwarves often fought, humans were human, and so forth. There is one major convergence in this world: The Great Frost.

    The Great Frost was a great ice age that wiped out most of everything besides dwarves, kobolds, and goblins. No one knows how the goblins survived, but they inhabit the surface realm now. The dwarves and kobolds live in vast underground labyrinths, fighting each other in an endless pointless war. Both cultures generally don't venture out of their homes too much, but those that do tend to not be able to return, as the dwarves don't like outsiders, even if they are dwarves.

    The outside world is completely uncharted and mostly abandoned, though there are some pockets of goblin civilization left in abandoned human cities. One notable encounter with this was the then-party going into an abandoned city together to search for things, finding a pack of goblins inhabiting a city block, where they almost died, but a party of bold adventurers held off the enemy forces. They ended up making it out, traveling back to a small camp of dwarves and goblins that they were helping set up.

    Now, this was before I really focused on intricate parts of my worlds, so there were gaps at times in my world lore, but I personally think it was interesting. Now, for the juicy parts. In the world, the dwarves were not inherent craftsmen, but rather fortuitous and magic-resistant warriors who had a strict way to do everything, hating anyone who strayed from order and being a guildsman. They also had a 1:10 ratio of dwarven women, because of an unexplained genetic defect, making dwarven women rare. I, sadly, no longer have the racial template, but I remember that it wasn't just the generic dwarf template and had things about magic resistance and innate abilities to use blunt weapons.

    The world itself was rather generic for the most part, but it was really fun to play, especially coming from playing lots of Dwarf Fortress. I would love to revisit the world in the future (wink), but currently, today's post of a prelude took precedence. Currently, I am feeling some GM burnout and want to be a player in a campaign, but that will take a while to find. As usual, thank you for reading my blog. I appreciate it a lot, the notion that people actually read my blog is really helping my energy to continue writing.

    

And on the eigth day of GURPSmas the blogger gave to me...

     ...an example of the system presented in yesterday's post! I am going to run through a scenario that actually happened yesterday using my system, which I am simply calling Cosmo's Severity System, or CSS. It works best for medieval or historical fantasy games, or anything Low TL and not high powered. Also, if anything here was not presented in yesterday's article, mention it to me, I will have to append that later.

 

     Example: D'varok the Dwarf is a Dwarf with ST16 and HT14, meaning he has an MI of 448. During combat, he charges toward the Unknown Horror that he faces, making a charging attack. He succeeds, but it does no damage to the powerful Unknown Horror. The Horror turns and swings at the Dwarf, succeeding. His severity dice rolled is (18)*1.5, or 27. The knee was targeted with it's sword, meaning that he is targeting a Lesser Limb (meaning that it is less than half the body part in total). To lop the limb off, he needs to deal a wound that is equal to or greater than 89 severity.

    He manages to roll 183 (Major Wound) with a high chance of success with his severity, severing the knee, causing D'varok to fall down, but D'varok succeeds on a grappling success roll to bring the Horror down with him, making them fight on the floor. Every turn D'varok is without treatment for his wound, he takes one point of bleeding severity per turn. His companions, Karla and Jonas, manage to slay the beast with some lucky rolls, but D'varok is forever without a leg.

 

    If you like the system, go ahead and use it, I think it is fun and creative. With all the stuff in GURPS, there are few chances for me to innovate or make something new mechanically, but this system is good in my opinion for the types of games I run. It does slow down at the table if you have higher powered players as well, but it works rather well for what we tested. If you have any luck with it, please let me know. I'd love to feature you on my page! Happy GURPSmas, y'all!

And on the seventh day of GURPSmas the blogger gave to me...

     ...a complex damage model! Personally, I love Hit Points. But, there are times where I think I could take a crack at my own. Today's post is a long-winded one, that will be spread over two posts. Today, is the set-up for it. It is similar to Douglas Cole's Conditional Injury, but it is different (to a degree). The major difference from GURPS, is using d10. As well as this, it switches up the base hit-point system. 

    A few things to preface before that is, this system changes a few things vital to GURPS. It is a work in progress that is attempting to be used in not just GURPS, but another homebrew system me and a friend devised recently. As well as that, keep this in mind. This system is specifically meant for low powered games; you will have limited success with this in high powered games. For all math presented, round up.

    First up, is the basics. To start, let's look at damage, called Injury and Severity. First, you need to find out what your Potential Impact and Impact are. Potential Impact (PI) and Impact (I) aren't the same thing. Impact (not PI) is multiplied by any relevant multipliers from hit location or damage type AFTER you calculate PI. To calculate PI, first roll your GURPS damage dice. That number is your Potential Impact. Then, add your yards moved last turn to your PI, subtract any Damage Resistance from that, to get your Impact.

     Now, you might be wondering: How is this different from normal GURPS? Well, this is the more complicated part. Now, you need to calculate your Maximum Injury, which is (HT×ST)×2. For a basic human, it is 200. Once you have gotten the maximum, you need to calculate your: Digit Max (MI/50), Hand-Foot Max, (MI/10), Lesser Limb Max (MI/5), and finally your Greater Limb Max (MI/3⅓). Each one of these acts like a health-bar, getting crippled once you reach the MI maximum. At MI×2, it has been severed. The neck is a lesser limb, the head is a greater limb. Once you have written all these out, you can continue onto the next step. Damage towards the Maximum Injury is simply called SP (Severity Points or sev.)

     Third, is what makes this system more difficult to handle for lesser complicated games. You will need either a separate sheet to track your injuries and how close you are to death or a custom made sheet that has these parts written in. As you reach that Maximum Injury level, you will slowly accumulate Injury Severity Ranks, or just called Severity. These ranks will give you penalties to everything (anything purely mental has halved penalties). The penalties are as follows: Minor (MI/5), Major (MI/2½), Severe (MI/1.6), and Fatal (MI). A Fatal wound kills you, instantly. A blow severing the neck or head counts as Fatal.

    At the rank of Minor, you have -2 penalties to all tasks. At Major, -4 penalties. At Severe, -8. When a limb is crippled or a blow does damage to reach any of these, roll against HT minus the penalty. Now, unlike GURPS, if a limb is lopped off and it is enough to "kill you", you don't just die. If you have 180 sevs, and you have an MI of 200, a blow of 20 sevs to your arm lopping it off doesn't kill you. It does lower your maximum, but only after this fight has been completed. Tomorrow I will provide examples for these.

    Finally, Weapon Finesse is to be taken into account. The normal item qualities of GURPS (Fine, Very Fine, Cheap) provide bonuses or penalties to your I, as does anything else that modifies damage. This might be periodically updated, edited, or flat out reworked later down the line, as this is still in the works, but one of TWO surprises that I have up my sleeve for y'all. I am hard at work, just stay tuned. Thank you for reading this, seriously. If you've gotten to the end, it means you really do care. Again, thank you. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns, contact me on discord at "basedcosmo" or on the forums as "FritzBC". If you spot a spelling mistake, issue, or contradiction in this post and point it out to me, I will put your screenname in a paragraph at the end of this post and the next, to commemorate your help.