Dungeon Fantastic

GURPS DF Session 222, Felltower 140 - Second GFS Assault, Part II

2026-04-27T07:05:00.005-04:00

Real World Date: 4/26/2026

Game Date: 4/11/2026
Weather: Mild and sunny.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (259 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

We picked up with Hannari, who tops the speed order, drawing a spellstone (it would turn out to be Blur 5) as golden swordsmen approached him slowly.

Some foe threw a smoke nageteppo to the front edge of the fight, right in front of the PCs, covering up the hallway between Rogar, Percy, the blinded Thor, and the wave of "Gith" and trorkers.

Percy kept smacking trorkers, but lacking Affect Spirits he wasn't managing much. Thor was blind and unable to find a foe, and wasn't willing to swing wildly to hope to hit one. Rogar was getting swamped in close combat by more trorkers but thanks to Enraged he wasn't backing off to make space. He tried to check one down with his shield but his foe rolled a 17 and fell - good enough.

Meanwhile Vlad spent a few arrows on the golden swordsmen, wounding one with a critical hit but otherwise watching them bat his arrows aside like swordsmen in a Zhang Yimou movie. Hannari was hit with a spell by the lead Gith. A second later, it was clear what it was - Levitation. The Gith moved the slightly-elevated (Walk on Air) Hannari three yards back, leaving only a hovering Vlad (Walk on Air) in the hallway. Five of the six golden swordsmen ran in and filled in the gaps between both sides of the fight - Thor, Percy, Rogar, Chop on one side, Vlad and Hannari on the other.

Hannari tried to move out of sight and into a good fighting spot, but the Gith spun him around and out of the way. The golden swordsmen rushed in, but the one right behind him took a shot at Vlad instead of Hannari's back (see below for a note on this.) Chop used Restore Sight on Thor, and Duncan cast Soul Rider on Chop so he could see without fixing his own vision.

Meanwhile Chop tried Command on the golden swordsmen but wasn't able to get it off the first time and failed to overcome resistance the second time. More foes piled in. Trokers went down under Thor's blade. Then gith moved in to back them. One golden swordsman hacked Rogar in the arm. Hannari took out a kama and did swing/impale to a golden swordsman, and used his grip on his all-metal meteoric iron kama to keep himself anchored to the ground to avoid the Levitation of the Gith. He inflicted 19 control points in the process with a hard hit - he's amped up on a strength potion as well as a dexterity potion, so he's ST 20+ and IIRC DX 26. The swordsman tried to pull himself off and managed to get a few CP off, but then tried to chop the kama to break it. It was parried (ugh, rules issue here). A few seconds later, after Hannari lopped off his left arm, a golden swordsman crippled Hannari's arm on a lucky critical hit. Naturally, a second later Chop healed him completely, but the weapon in that hand was released all the same.

As this happened, Vlad wounded one gith in the eye with an arrow, and Percey smashed one down with a skull-shattering hit.

Duncan started to rip off Great Haste spells, our newer version, on Thor and Hannari . . . and they began to roll.

We left it there.

Notes:

- I dislike how often my NPCs have issues from the VTT. DR 0 when they clearly have DR, especially common when I use the Mook Generator to create foes. Torso DR but nothing else when they're imported from GCS. Oh, and it ran like a slug today for a couple of hours - and basically made the first two runs through the turn order take 50 minutes or so each until I figured out the techical problem.* Aargh, VTTs.

- The GURPS module is doing a good job of adding in the effects of Status Effects. Yay, VTTs.

- Because someone asked, no, you don't get any kind of sense or cue to what effect a spell has on you when you fail to resist, if it has no otherwise visible effect. That's what Identify Spell is for.

- Vlad wondered if these Gith/Masters/Bales/whatever have anything written, so he can learn more about them. You know, they never talk about themselves. They fight and fight and fight and he doesn't really know them. Heh. Anyway, I know all about them. How much is something the PCs can find out? Probably a fraction, but the secret to good characters is to understand things about them not everyone can see, in my experience. We'll see how much they learn.

- MVP was Duncan for his two Great Haste spells that are turning the fight.

- We had a rules disagreement about that turn-Hannari-with-Levitation move and what constitutes a back shot. More another day. But related rulings:

1) You can Wait and use your step to undo some of the movement of a Levitation spell. If you want to attack as part of that triggered Wait, you need to specify what you'll do ahead of time. If you want to use a ranged attack and you want to cover multiple possible targets, it's Opportunity Fire.

2) Immovable Stance doesn't affect Levitation. Immovable Stance just does what it says - and nothing additional. Keep this in mind when someone asks about using this to resist getting picked up after a grapple.

3) Levitation has ST 0 for purposes of moving through resistance. A handhold is sufficient to keep you from being moved around. A hand against a wall will keep someone from moving you up or down while you have contact with that wall; it wouldn't stop them moving you away from the wall. Giving it ST or making it a Quick Contest suddenly makes it a potent grappling spell. No thanks.

* I run in Chrome, which seems to handle Forge best. I eventually logged off, cleared my cache, turned off hardware acceleration, restarted, cleared my cache, turned hardware acceleration back on, and restarted Forge. That worked. No, I don't know why, but I do know I've had the occasional issue with hardware acceleration doing weird crap like this so I just suddenly realized I hadn't tried that. Thank goodness I did. I wish I'd remembered immediately and gotten a few more seconds of combat done.

Felltower pre-summary

2026-04-26T19:02:00.000-04:00

Not much to say on this one:

- we continued the fight

- the formation broke down

- the PCs got swamped by foes

- massively superior PCs are proving the edge in cutting down the swaths of the enemy - think Affect Spirits, Great Haste, max-roll DX potions, Blur 5, Shield 6, etc. - and healing is keeping up the people hit by crits.

Still a lot of fight to go, but the PCs are generally in a good spot.

Felltower tomorrow

2026-04-25T20:42:00.001-04:00

We'll pick up in combat in Felltower tomorrow. Summary probably Monday, unless we end early enough tomorrow. We'll see. Even with a won fight I think we'll go another session after this one. With a slugfest . . . who knows how long it will take?

Repetiton of the Boring Bits & Felltower

2026-04-19T22:32:00.007-04:00

I repeat the same things over and over in Felltower.

"Okay, you head out of Stericksburg through the North Gate, across the dwarf-made Stone Bridge over the polluted Silver River, to Sterick's Landing. You pass the broken remains of a statue of a horse with Sterick on it, only his headless and armless torso remains. You pass through the slums on the north side of the river and up the winding track to the top of the mountain."

Every time.

Then it's picking an entrance, and making your way through the same tunnels, time after time after time.

You want to get to the "apartment level?" You have to walk there, and talk me through getting there. You have to tell me how you open doors, and who makes the roll and who is holding a crowbar or just shouldering it. You have to tell me who touches the doors with the six-fingered hand print to get by.

Every time.

You have to describe it all. No skipping ahead. If a passage is blocked and needs squeezing through, or a Will roll, or whatever, you have to make them.

Every time.

Why?

Players sit up and take notice when they change.

If I only ever mentioned the new things, and glossed over the repetition, they wouldn't have the same impact. You can argue this, but I used to do the "gloss over" thing. I pretty much told you what to pay attention to, because I only told you what was new and different.

But since they are always hearing the same things . . . and then hear different things, it piques their interest. It makes the dungeon feel more alive rather than just a series of connected encounters you can fast-forward to once you've dealt with what's beyond.

They don't always notice. There were signs, for example, that some people took residence in the dungeon for a while. The players didn't really pay too close attention to the differences in descriptions of noises and sights in the upper levels of the dungeon. A few months on, the NPCs finished what they wanted to finish, and left. The PCs did eventually find their camping grounds, but never when they were there or what they did. I said a few things, no one thought they were important ("Stay on target!"), and they missed something. But equally, they've noticed very small differences in the dungeon and made real progress out of them.

Your choices matter.

Did you smash up the portcullis near the main entrance to block some monsters from using it? Now you can't use it, either. You killed off some monsters to get rid of a problem that slowed you down? You get the benefit of having smoothed out your travel path.

This has forced the players to spend time re-opening entrances. It gets people checking little mysterious oddities every time, hoping they'll provide a distraction, a reward, or a shortcut. It gets people trying to solve problems that annoy them on the regular. Yeah, the orcs were a problem for a long time. The PCs smashed them repeatedly. Why? Because they annoyed the shit out of the players every session they had to pay a toll, or deal with orc patrols, or blockede. If getting deeper in the dungeon was just a quick, "We pay our toll and now we're on level five!" or whatever, they wouldn't have done it. They cleared the well to make their path deeper easier. They make lots of decisions based on the repetitions.

I know for a fact this has cost me players. Not everyone has stuck my game out because of this. But it's okay. I like the two benefits I get. And if it costs me some players, it's okay. My style of game isn't for everyone. I don't try to make it so. I think it's how megadungeons function well. And it's how Felltower has evolved to be, and I like it.

GURPS DF Session 221, Felltower 140 - Second GFS Assault, Part I

2026-04-13T18:58:00.003-04:00

Date: 4/11/2026
Weather: Mild and sunny.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (259 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

The PCs gathered in town, swapped rumors, and commiserated over Thor's new shield being delivered tomorrow. They suggested wait a day or two before going into the dungeon, but decided not to [when the GM said, "Okay, see you guys on Tuesday, then!"].

The group used the well entrance, and made their way down to the "gate level." They noted the air was fresh, not the stale air they're used to.

A few rooms later, they opened up a door to a chamber with a black hemisphere on the ceiling. Inside the room, guarding a nest, where a pair of horse-sized eight-legged lizards, with bright blue hides tinged with white. Shock slorn! The slorn hissed, the PCs attacked, and a short fight erupted. Rogar and Thor rushed in, along with Percy, and Vlad and Hannari contributed ranged attacks. Chop and Duncan whipped Resist Lightning spells on themselves and likely targets. The slorn didn't last that long. A zap of lightning apiece and they got shredded. Percy and Rogar bashed one's skull apart, and Thor stabbed the other to ensure it was dead. A quick (and cheap) pair of Prepare Game spells left them a pile of hides, bones, and meat. They took the hides and a pair of eggs they found in the nest. The room was especially breezy, and the air felt light and fresh, if a bit ionized.

They noted the black hemisphere didn't shoot them, so they left it alone and headed to the "Will Wall" - an illusiary that required a Will roll to pass through. After a few tries and some Strenthen Will spells, they all made it through. There they deposited the shock slorn hides and eggs.

Next they headed down the second GFS, and into the door beyond the first landing. They were hit with two spaced out Dispel Magic spells which wiped out a lot of ligthstones, but they managed to get off their Walk on Air spellstones and moved into the rooms. The exits were blocked with a gossamer, smoke-colored but opaque material hanging directly from the walls and ceiling. Thor cut the first and second down with his sword as they moved to their left, a faint and low chime going off the whole time.

It was here they first encountered the enemy. From behind, four norker brutes charged up, yelling loudly. Vlad wounded one and the others continued on, as the party revered to face them. As they did, trorkers backed (way back) with a few "Gith" moved up to join them, coming from the corridor opposite the stairs. Then a half-dozen golden swordsmen appeared from the direction the party had headed originally.

They melee'd a few norkers and trokers down, right after Hannari put down five of them with a sleep grenade. Duncun put up a wall of earth, 1' thick, to cut the "rear" area down to a single hex width. Hannari rushed into the gap. But then a Gith tossed a blinding dust grenade and blinded Thor and Duncan, each for 1d minutes - Percy made his HT roll by enough to resist it.

Blinded Duncan turned his wall to stone, Vlad shot a golden swordsman only to have it parry his arrow with ease (the other missed with a 17, a rare normal failure.) Hannari deployed a flash nageteppo but it didn't bother the golden swordsman. The whole fight had gone earily quiet except for the sounds of metal hitting flesh or shields, as the norkers quieted down.

We ended there as it was 6 pm, our preferred cutoff time.

Notes:

- We knew this would be a multi-session delve. The new rules for multi-session delves, with a +1 XP per session after the first, has really taken the sting out of longer fights.

- Good rolling on a DX potion and high stats has put Hannari at DX 26. Yeah. Ironically, Chop was maneuvering so Hannari could fight Trokers - with Affect Spirits on one of his weapons - and Persistance could fight the golden swordsmen - with their swords, weak defensively against his flail, which currently lacks Affect Spirits. Oh well. His his DX will certainly help.

- Prepare Game is ridiculously fast and cheap, especially for a spell which completely eliminates the utility of a bunch of skills. Typical.

- MVP was Hannari for suggesting they stash the shock slorn hides and eggs "beyond the Will Wall" to ensure nothing bothered them that couldn't pass that. Good thinking, honestly. It could have been Duncan's player, for suggesting that "Sword of Slorn" is a great band name. I suggested that "Beyond the Will Wall" - their second album - was clearly SoS's best work, if a real departure from the standard death metal of their first album and a more lyrical, psychadelic rock opera approach. And yes, someone AI'ed up a logo for them and we all kind of want t-shirts for them. "Name three songs!" should be a fun exercise for that shirt.

Felltower pre-summary

2026-04-12T18:43:00.002-04:00

Full summary tomorrow, but:

- a crew of seven PCs entered Felltower

- they killed a pair of Shock Slorn and found some slorn eggs

- they made it through the "Will Wall" and down the second GFS

- they got into a brawl with norkers, trokers aka thorkers, Gith, and Golden Swordsmen.

It's going to be a long fight, so we ended it on time and we'll spend the next session(s?) resolving it.

What color is paut? Sigh.

2026-03-02T20:43:00.000-05:00

I think when you've played with a group long enough, and they've asked every question imaginable, they imagine up new ones to torment you.

Actual question from game on Sunday:

What color is paut?

My answer? I don't know. And I don't want to rule on it because, somehow, this will come back to haunt me. It'll be a specific color and then people will ask if it's paut because of the color, is this paut colored, if it's paut colored is it magical, can I get poison that is paut colored, can I get food coloring for my paut so it's a different color . . . aargh.

Look, it's probably blue because of Diablo. But honestly, I don't care. It won't matter. If people really need to know the color - in this case, so they can tell the casters what color the paut is in their bag in case they're unconcious and the casters need to sort the paut from the other potions - they can just tie ribbons of a specific color on the bottles or label the freaking bottles PAUT in large, friendly letters.

But geez, what color is paut.

Oh brother.

GURPS DF Session 220, Felltower 139 - A brief foray

2026-03-01T20:35:00.008-05:00

Date: 3/1/2026
Weather: Mildly cold and wet.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (367 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (355 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (373 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

We started off in town, with the PCs hoping for Percy and Rogar but neither could be found - Percy was way and Rogar was sick.

They decided to head down to the beholder's cave area, and explore the humanoid-filled nearby tunnels.

That's what they did - they headed down, first checking to see if the Lost City gate was open, and then heading down past the fire gate.

They found the tunnel, hidden by a curtain of hide. A quick Glasswall spell at the curtain revealed noisemakers on the far side. They put Silence over it and Thor tore it down. Vlad moved past the rest of the group and into the narrow tunnel beyond. He moved around a tight bend sideways to fit through and saw and stepped over a cord at ankle height covered with noisemakers. Beyond was a small group - a pair of gnolls with bows, a pair of norkers with stone axes, and a distorted-looking orc with warped features. Vlad put two arrows into one of the gnolls, dropping it, and the norkers closed in. The other gnoll loosed an arrow at Vlad but he dodged, hemmed into place by the ankle-height cord he'd stepped over. He stepped over it and backed up as the norkers swung at him. A critical hit by one sliced him badly, and then a normal hit he failed to dodge crippled his left leg. He fell just in view of the other PCs, still standing in the Silence zone. They launched into action.

Hannari tossed a hatchet at the norker he could see but it deflected the toss with its off hand. Thor rushed forward. Chop healed Vlad from the back ranks. And Vlad, prone, shot the norker with a pair of arrows (Heroic Archer allows a lot.) One hit and the norker dropped back, onto the tripwire, and a deadfall fell on Vlad. He rolled away, just as the stones fell.

They gave up on the humanoids, also fearing the noise would bring the beholder and gargoyles. Not wanting to be boxed in, they fled to the stairs and back up to the level above.

They headed back to the gate level and around the level, lit with light stones but also - critically - Thor's flaming sword. They took a shortcut through a cave marked as having an "acrid smell." Vlad went in, Thor followed with his flaming sword, and FWOOOOOOSH! The "air" burned, inflicting 14 burn on Vlad and setting him on fire. A quick Resist Fire saved him, they had a big laugh, and headed on . . .

After that, they headed to the second GFS, and down to the level where they fought their last big battle with the Gith and Trorkers. They did a brief exploration and headed back (see below.)

Notes:

The raid on the 2nd GFS first landing wasn't supposed to be short. But the headed off the edge of the battlemap, and I tried to expand it . . . and this frelled up the whole map. The walls got moved off, the PCs dumped in a corner, ugh. I had to delete the whole map and re-do it. I couldn't do that during the session, so we ended early. I gave the players a choice - take a re-do, undo the expended potions and so on, and get back to town . . . or stay in the dungeon and do the whole "roll to see if people can join in" approach of a split session. They went with the leave and come back, since they can arm up and if we're delayed enough, get some ordered equipment. Fair enough. I shouldn't have been trying to play with the scene during play.

MVP was Thor for setting Vlad on fire.

Felltower updates

2026-02-22T20:44:00.002-05:00

I did a wee bit of Felltower work today.

- updating rumors

- restocking prep

- double-checking the maps

- and planning for our next game . . . on 3/1. Yeah, our pace has slowed down a bit. But we'll keep gaming.

Thorker Research

2026-02-15T19:20:00.005-05:00

The PCs captured and returned to town a thorker. They paid a sage for research on the critter, and this is what they got back.

Thorkers – probably more correctly called trorkers, are a form of hobgoblin with armored skin and nictitating membranes over their eyes. Their blood strongly resembles that of trolls. While they are definitely living creatures, they have traces of undead traits about them. The sages posit they are a strange mix of norker and troll, with infusions of the essence of wights.

- They are strongly magic resistant vs. wizardly and bardic magic. Sleep effects ignore this.
- Their touch paralyzes (resisted by HT), and direct skin contact isn’t needed.
- They’re exceeding hard to kill but sufficient damage will kill them.
- They shrug off a lot of injury (i.e. they have Damage Reduction) but this can be bypassed with fire, direct magical damage (like Dehydrate or Frostbite, for example), or using Affect Spirits.
- They regenerate quickly – slower than trolls, but only a little slower.
- They’re fearless and don’t seem to have any “human” reactions to anything – pain, included.
- They’re unaffected by poisons.
- They can see in the dark via Infravision.

Notes:

- Yes, they're inspired by Thouls from Basic D&D. I took them my own direction.

- The sleep effect was a thrown-in so they'd have some interesting weakness. I have a reason why that's the exception, but I doubt it'll be discovered. I always like the idea that you couldn't just get good mutations, you also get bad ones, in games like Gamma World. I like downsides to upsides.

Black Company Playtest: Summer of Riots

2026-01-26T20:07:00.004-05:00

We playtested the rules for the Black Company RPG. This is the first, partial release of rules v.1, from 2025-11-26. As requested in the rules, I'll add:

"THIS IS A PLAYTEST, NOT FINAL, IT MIGHT CHANGE!"

Let's see how it went. SPOILERS FOR THE PLAYTEST ADVENTURE ABOUND! And for the first chapters of The Black Company.

Date: 1/25/2026

Characters:

Jumpy - NPC, controlled by all players
Pops (VL)
Big Dog (OL)
Princess (JM)
Lovebird (DC)
Redeye (ML)

We started when the Black Company was in the service of the Syndic of Beryl, on a hot summer day, not long after lightning had struck the Necropolitan Hill and possibly let loose . . . something. According to rumors (from Otto, who heard it from Tom-Tom), a demonic cat-woman-thing called a forvalaka was loose. Six of the company were hanging out with the remainder of their squad. Elmo, senior company sergeant, showed up and voluntold their corporal, Two-Hand, for a special mission. He voluntold the PCs they were in his group of men to for that mission.

They were led off to the Syndic's chambers, where a keen-eyed and sneaky member of the group (Princess or Redeye, I think) sidled up to a window and saw a quinquereme with a sail with a ruby-eyed skull on the sail.

They were assigned to escort Sabine, the spoiled teenaged daughter of the Syndic, 2.5 miles to her lessons at the Conservatory, where her tutor lives and works. They headed out with her carriage. The streets were tense, packed, and hot. Rumors of evil stalking the night, all too many signs of the Blues - rivals to the Syndic's Reds faction - were along the route. And the soldiers spotted coordinated looks between folks on the streets and in the upper floors. Meanwhile a bored Sabine tossed food to dogs following the carriage, in full site of angry, and hungry, impoverished folks. Good PR, Syndic's family.

(The PCs were marching in armor, in the heat - making it hot and miserable and impacting their rolls. BC RPG uses the Advantage/Disadvantage system. It also uses a group roll system where the lowest skill is rolled if numbers hurt - stealth, or forced marching for speed - and highest if numbers help - spotting things, for example. Sometimes it wasn't clear which case was intended. You can accumulate Stress, which slides you down towards loss of control, from some failures or from forcing a better roll.)

The PCs came across a barricade by the Urban Cohorts, who resent the Black Company, who in turn look at them with contempt. They wanted to know what was up with the carriage, and gave Two-Hand a hard time. Pops stepped in and intimidated the lot of them, warning them about the dangers of messing with them. The cohort decided to let them pass unmolested. (The PCs knew they wanted to get by without a fight, but it wasn't clear what mechanic to use. I offered up what the system allowed for in the adventure, and they picked that.)

Past their, they made it to the Convervatory but only through an angry mob of people who threw rocks, shit, and rotten food. Redeye was stunned, and the PCs kept their cool, and didn't kill any of the rioters. They made it in and set up patrols and bodyguards for the poorly fenced-in building. They knew they'd never get the carriage back out through the mob that was locked outside.

A few hours later, lessons were over - but in the meantime, a frightened scholar claimed to have seen something, and heard a woman's voice, and was unnerved. Forvalaka? Also, some Urban Cohort members came up and offered to the patrol group to escort them to safety. The Soldiers didn't buy it (no roll, it's stated to be patently false.) And the riotous mob had clearly turned into a full-fledged riot across the city.

Two-Hand consulted with the group and the scholars to find a way out. They wanted to get to the Bastion, rejecting getting to a nearby estate friendly to the reds. (They could have gone to the Rubbish Gate, but they didn't even consider it). Instead, they snuck out a back way, with Sabine and her servants, leaving the carriage behind.

The soldiers headed out into the streets. Along the way, they ran into a couple guys with a wagon full of corpses - blood drained and torn up, by a cat according to Redeye, the medic. No throats, little blood, no hearts or livers. Yikes. They made reasonable time - 6 hexes, 1800 yards, in two hours, dodging rioters as best they could. Next, another 1800 yards, and they found a group of Blues guarding a cat-headed statue. Lovebird tried to scare them off with tales of the corpses they'd seen, but the Blues attacked (Lovebird rolled about, oh, call it two or three successes and a Berylian assload of failures.) Their best trooper - Princess - risked Stress to seize the Initiative. They put down a large number of Blues in the first round, fended off a couple attacks from the remainder, and then put a few more down and the rest fled. Big Dog killed a few Blues still hanging around. (In retrospect, this was probably a chance to remove stress from him, but place it on others - see my notes.)

Things slowed down from there - as it got dark, they repeatedly rolled 1s to travel only 300 yards in two hours of furtive movement, avoiding crowds, and maneuvering past barricades. Things got ugly . . . and angry mob split them up (critically failed Soldiering roll to maintain order) and grabbed their VIP, Sabine. Two-Hand lost it and ordered them to kill everyone. They tried. They didn't succeed, but they killed a good number of rioters and rescued the girl. But Jumpy had gotten seperated and knifed badly (he went from fine to Wounded, two steps from dead.) They further ran into a vigilante squard trying to kill a merchant and his family (and killed a bunch of them to "solve" that problem, creating a lot of matryrs for the Blues and anger against the Company.) And they ran into the forvalaka. It pounced into a crowd, killed one rioter, and then tore open a screaming victim, drinking his or her blood and then eating the liver and heart to finish it off.) The PCs tried an orderly retreat and failed, turning into a bit of a confused escape that got them lost. They reformed, but almost all had picked up a lot of stress (see notes.)

In the end, they reached the Bastion, only to find a partial squad of fellow Soldiers stuck outside the stuck main gate, engaged with a bunch of Blues. The PCs blew an attempt to close with them by surprise but still got into a fight. A couple of fellow Soldiers went down and they killed a few Blues and scattered the rest.

From there, they set up a defensive line, got Sabine stashed in temporary safety, and turned to face a few hundred rioters in the waning hours of the night. The rioters came in waves. The soldiers gave up ground and lost a few NPC soldiers before breaking the first wave. The second and third broke as well, but they took a few more soldiers down.

In the end, the riots ended with a deluge of rain, cooling down the anger of the day and night. The PCs got chewed out by the Syndic, but not by Elmo, so who cares? They'd survived.

Notes:

- Some of the scenario was a bit hard to parse, like how the squad PCs are listed and 1st squad, 2nd platoon but the scenario calls them 1st of the 3rd. And it occasionally buries the lede - like telling you what someone's doing before you know what they look like. It made it tricky at times but I'm used to that. What was trickier was when it wasn't clear who was doing what - was the whole squad going? Just six guys? I split the difference by sending a larger group but the PCs did all of the actions.

It was also a railroad. So much so that there while you do have a variety of paths you can choose at one point, you end up needing to be at one specific place or adapting the adventure to another spot to make it work. In other words, it gives the illusion of choice - whereever you go, you get the same encounter at the end.

- The stress mechanic is excellent. It needs some getting used to, but it was interesting to see how much on edge everyone was, knowing that even though they could shrug off some combatants with ease they couldn't get out of everything without stress. Having to risk stress levels to get things done - or let a better person instead of the the worst person roll for some tasks - or as a result of failure meant that rolls felt important. It made even a successful fight with no injuries potentially a cost for having engaged in it.

I also love that almost all of the ways to remove stress are negative. You can complain to relieve stress, but you pass on it on to the one you complain to. You can brawl, or gamble, but they can result in injuries or money loss. You can attend a reading of the annals, but that's a monthly thing. You can't just take a short rest and recover fully. Add to the fact that you're always risking stress to get things done without potentially incurring injury or worse stress or bad outcomes, and it becomes central quickly. It's enjoyable even when it's not perfect.

- Combat is cheerfully quick and lethal. The PCs admittedly fought lesser foes most of the time, maybe all of the time. But they took it very seriously. Initiative and Morale are important, so the PCs risked Stress to gain Initiative, and cut down enemies as quickly as they could. Foes went down often appalingly quickly, but that suits Glen Cook's writing in general - fights are more often slaughters than battles. It was clear how quickly it could turn, though. Also, only the players roll - they roll offense when attacking, and defense when attacked. Makes you wonder how you'd resolve a fight between two PCs if one resulted, maybe as a result of some mind-bending effect (Spoilers: think Booboo's "Love Me" effect), or how major NPCs are handled. Still, it was fast. We had, uhm, four or five fights and then a mass combat, and played only 4 hours start to finish. GURPS with the options on it is not.

- Several times I just straight up listed some options to the players. Not great GMing, but it was clear people didn't know how to leverage their abilities to do things. It just wasn't clear what you'd use to do what, so no one knew what they were good at.

- Overall, the game is a lot of fun. I put in some concerns about issues that came up in play . . . but we liked it. I hope to see more, and I could see running a side game of Black Company if this remains the main core of the system.

Black Company playtest pre-summary

2026-01-25T19:50:00.001-05:00

Six of us played The Black Company RPG playtest rules.

The PCs:

- escorted a VIP

- annoyed Beryl citizens

- brutually demonstrated that you can't mess with the Black Company

- ran from supernatural terror, proving that maybe sometimes you can

- and had a lot of fun. No, wait, the players did. The PCs got stressed out, and chewed out.

More details tomorrow.

Year in Gaming 2025

2026-01-05T18:05:00.003-05:00

Here we are in 2026, recapping 2025. How was it for gaming for me?

Running Dungeon Fantasy

I GMed 17 sessions of DF Felltower this year.

Session 203, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part III - War of the Robots
Session 204, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part IV - Mechanical Knights, Gnolls, and Cultists
Session 205, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part V - Mopping Up & Pursuit
Session 206, Brotherhood Complex 8 - Raid, Part VI - Exploring & Looting
Session 207, Felltower 134 - Exploring the Gate Level
Session 208, Felltower 135 - Exploring the Air Gate, Part I
Session 209, Felltower 135 - Exploring the Air Gate, Part II
Session 210, Felltower 135 - Exploring the Air Gate, Part III
Session 211, Brotherhood Complex 9 - Chop & Hannari's Excellent Adventure
Session 212, Felltower 136 - Steel Knights
Session 213, Felltower 137 - Looking for Evil Temples in All the Wrong Places
Session 214, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS
Session 215, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part II
Session 216, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part III
Session 217, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part IV
Session 218, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part V
Session 219, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part VI - Walls or Death

We started off finishing a multi-session epic fight that ran over from 2024 and finished with a multi-session epic fight that almost ran into 2026. Good stuff!

Same crew of gamers as last year, plus we added my friend Freddie. Long story short, he used to play in my games back in high school and early into college. We always stayed in contact even if not closely. He was out for a family visit, we did some BJJ together (he's a black belt, I'm not), and he mentioned wanting to drop in on a game session as a visitor. Lo and behold, we play online these days . . . and now so does he. He's a good match for the group.

I'm also well pleased that Felltower has been seen as a lost cause recently, due to lots of dead ends and "can't win" encounters. So what did the players do? This is going to sound crazy, but they put their big boy pants on and got to work on a couple of the thornier problems - a visit to the Air Gate (profitable!), a run at the steel knights (not profitable), and an epic run at the first landing on the second GFS and the maw of the "Gith" area (profitable, but less than hoped.) That really made me happy as a GM. Yes, these are hard problems to solve, and tough battles to win. But edging around the problem didn't help . . . and a straight-on assault of all three made headway. The Air Gate is an active place with a lot to do - even if only "raid more giant's castles." The knights are a problem but they have a better idea of how big of one. And the Gith are a serious, potentially existential threat when engaged, but rich as can be (even just from their arms and armor - nevermind whatever cash they have.) It suddenly looks target rich instead of an empty hole.

Playing RPGs

None. Not one session. Again. Hmm.

Other Gaming

I played a lot of Battle Brothers this year, after finally pulling the trigger on it. I really like it. I eventually added the Warriors of the North DLC and it's fine but I haven't enjoyed it as much since I added it. We'll see. Maybe I'm just getting used to the new backgrounds.

Writing

None. I might be done writing, basically. The opportunity cost in time is high, and the payoff is not great. A sizeable project can net me less than a week's pay at my day job and take many more weeks to do, and a small project isn't an option without Pyramid around any more.

We'll see. I do enjoy the finished projects, so maybe if I get an opportunity for something special I'll take advantage.

Overall, a pretty good year for gaming.

But, not a good year overall for our game group. We lost one of my former gamers. I still don't feel up to writing a post about that, yet. She'll be missed. She hadn't rolled dice in anger since before I started this blog, but she was one of my old game's regulars. I didn't want to say nothing, but maybe that's enough for the moment.

Black Company postponed

2026-01-02T18:14:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately, I caught a cold and I can barely speak. We put off the playtest session until next Friday.

Black Company tomorrow

2026-01-01T20:28:00.002-05:00

Playtesting this is tomorrow night's plan.

The Black Company RPG

We'll see how it goes but I have high hopes for the system as written.

Notes & Oopsies from the big fight

2025-12-28T10:01:00.002-05:00

- A clarification on our XP system - multi-session delves get +1 XP per extra session, not a base 1 per session.

Honestly, a base 1 xp per session wouldn't harm anything, but I'd rather have 0 be a real risk so people don't do bored "let's just check level 1 again" delves for 1 xp when no one's around.

- Big Oopsie. That whole area of the big fight is a Low Sanctity zone. Chop should have been at -5 for all of those divine spells he was casting.

I can chalk that up to a benefice from the Good God, but honestly, it was because I knew I had an electronic map of the area and didn't look at my paper map. My paper map clearly denotes that whole area - yes, including the entrance hallway, and the GFS - as a Low Sanctity Zone. So we'll call it a one-off +5 to Chop's spells because of a special, one-time only, NON-REPEATABLE set of circumstances that allowed him to be so effective in his healing and Lend Energy casting. I will double-emphasize the NON-REPEATABLE statement. My players (okay, Hannari's player) will want to figure out some way to have that effect come up again. GM error is bad enough, I'm not going to make something solvable either with an in-town action ("We pray a lot") or bribe/donative ($1776 to the troops, er, $5000 to the Good God) or in-dungeon whatever when it shouldn't be solvable without a much, much bigger in-dungeon action. And that's if it's solvable at all.

- There isn't a Wall of Stone spell. I'd discussed it as a possibility a while back, but no, we never created one. I don't intend to, either.

- I'm well pleased with our new version of Great Haste. It really does make it worth casting, but not a required spell you need to cast because of its overwhelming effectiveness.

Random Links for Friday 12/26/25

2025-12-26T19:52:00.004-05:00

It's been a while. Here is stuff to read.

- A nice rule for "cooking" a hand grenade in GURPS.

- A quick rules answer I need to put somewhere besides here - only the consumables in DFRPG Adventurers are available off-the-shelf. Want an Ironskin amulet? Pay for it and await the enchantment.

- These consequences for too much time at sea are really funny over at d4 Caltrops.

Christmas in Felltower

2025-12-25T10:01:00.002-05:00

Merry Christmas from Felltower

You'll be lucky to get out alive, but if you survive, may the dungeons grant you a suit of Magescale in your size, an artifact-grade weapon with minimal downside traits, and a bucket of healing potions.

See you all in the coming year.

Session Cleanup

2025-12-22T17:20:00.001-05:00

Lots to do before our next session.

- I need to go through the VTT and check each and every NPC in the fight for their status so I can update the roster. It was easier back in the pen and paper days, honestly.

- I need to delete the thorkers and re-enter them. I may have to make them up in GCS, which is annoying as can be, so they can properly get their advantages into the system.

- I need to delete the Gith Axemen and re-enter them. Somehow, despite having equipment and DR, their DR shows up as 0 when they're actually hit. It's wrong. My players love this, and I get at least comment per session about how it's really 0, which is odd becuase when they have 8 DR showing up and they really have 9 it's a major system failure. Huh.

- And then I need to do a restock pass at the dungeon, since it will have been months since the PCs last went in. I'm curious what they'll do next, but that's more a "they" problem than an "I" problem and this post is about I, me, mine.

GURPS DF Session 219, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part VI - Walls or Death

2025-12-21T19:45:00.004-05:00

Will the fight ever end?

Date: 12/21/2025
Game Date: 10/5/2025
Weather: Warm and mild.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (362 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (250 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (368 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

We picked up where we left off, at around second 52 of the fight.

Rogar was down, Hannari chasing down some escaping Gith, Thor cornering an axeman, Percy bashing thorkers, and Chop dodging thorkers. Duncan began to move to put up a wall to seal off the room from the "south" (screen down) entrance.

Things went sideways immediately. A number of thorkers rushed out to assist the Gith that Hannari was after. Others stood up from where they'd fallen, healed up enough to get back into the fray.

The PCs pulled back a bit, as Thor finished off the axeman and Percy downed a couple of thorkers. Duncan put up a wall of earth and then immediately tried another, to seal another corridor into the room, but failed. Chop followed, feeding him energy with Lend Energy and drinking paut as fast as he could.

The PCs fought the advancing new thorkers off for a couple of seconds and Duncan sealed off that side, too. Meanwhile, thorkers retreated back, in response to some unhead command, and dragged off some fallen Gith. Hannari and Percy and Thor rushed over, with Vlad providing arrow support, to try and stop them. A tossed sleep grenade by Hannari put one down, but another escaped with two bodies dragged behind.

Duncan turned two of the earthen walls to stone, and then rushed over - still fed energy by a trailing Chop - and sealed the last one off.

They rapidly began dragging corpses of the Gith to the hallway, rescued the fallen Rogar and began to heal him, and prepped to get out. As they did, a few thorkers stood up, and needed Percy to put them back down. Hannari dragged one to the GFS and threw him off the landing and down the deep, deep, deep put to the "domed city" level far below.

As they dragged corpses, though, the "west" wall disappeared - the Gith leader had dispelled or dissolved it, somehow. Thorkers rushed in just as Thor was dragging two bodies. He quickly let them go and ran back to the party, grumping the whole way but knowing the plan was grab and go. They fought briefly in the entranceway before walling it off - Hannari dive-rolling into the safe area and grabbing a sleeping thorker - put to sleep in Part I - to keep him on their side of the earth wall.

Duncan got the wall off, turned it to stone, and they fled with their loot - four dead Gith, and one sleeping thorker. Left behind was probably a dozen fallen Gith, easily a score of fallen thorkers and norkers, and everything they dropped during the fight (like a Wand of Fireballs, Rogar's axe, and some thrown weaponry.)

From there, it was a quick trip back to town . . . no wandering monsters turned up (yes, I roll, Felltower is DF on hard mode.)

Notes:

Short crew today - no players for Rogar, Chop, or Percy, but Vlad and Duncan's players, respectively, stepped in for the last two. Rogar was unconcious until the very end. Normally we don't allow PCs to come along without the player, but we do cover for players who can't make all of a multi-session delve.

Finally, this grindy, epic fight ended. It was a grind but not a slog - it really felt like every turn was a decision point . . . and we ended on the 70th turn for most of the PCs.

The PCs didn't nearly get the loot they "earned" but they did get a lot. Four suits of magescale, a magical Gith longsword, chameleon clocks and stealthy boots, and a live thorker to hand over to a "sage" - vivisectionist - for research. The cost was high - a lot of consumables, a dropped Wand of Fireballs with 14 charges, a number of weapons - but no PCs were killed or maimed. They almost certainly killed a number of enemies - a few decapitated or skull-smashed Gith and norkers, for sure, and maybe some of the thorkers. The enemy will be more ready, but have they taken such heavy losses - dozens of their number down - that they can't muster such a hard-crust defense again? We'll see. The PCs will be back, eventually.

MVP was Duncan for the walls.

XP was 4 xp for loot, +5 XP for 5 extra sessions, for 9 xp each. Not bad, oh, and $22K or so in cash, each, after Duncan took the suit of Magescale in best repair.

Fun stuff! Like I said, this was long, but man, I enjoyed every session. I think my players agree, but they'll be happy to do one-session delves if they can pull them off.

Felltower tomorrow

2025-12-20T19:40:00.003-05:00

A reduced crew of players will attempt to finish out the fight tomorrow. I think it's doable as long as people don't get hung up on:

- kill maximization

- loot maximization

- loot carrying min/maxing

and instead focus on

- winning the battlefield

- quick and easy loot and casualty recovery

- getting away clean

We'll see if they do that. I'm giving away no hints, here - this is all things discussed during the last session. The ideal is win the battlefield so they can get away with loot and their wounded and dropped/thrown weaponry, allow no enemies to escape, and get out with all the possible loot. But it's not an ideal situation and they know it - way too many ways to get flanked (three hallways and an unblockable staircase), a casualty, low amounts of FP and time even with a fairly clean win.

It should be interesting - successful and profitable raid, or overextended attack that leads to tragedy?

Felltower short break

2025-12-07T12:11:00.002-05:00

Folks, we'll be taking a short break from Felltower. One of our regulars has suffered a tragic family loss - someone who was also an important friend to me, as well - so we're just not feeling getting a game organized and going right now. I turned off comments because as much as I appreciate that people will want to express sympathy, this isn't the place for it right now. We'll be back at it when the grief and complications from a loss are at a place that allows it.

GURPS DF Session 218, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part V

2025-11-30T15:59:00.004-05:00

Short session today - all we had time for.

Date: 11/30/2025
Game Date: 10/5/2025
Weather: Warm and mild.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (362 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (250 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (368 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

Bullet points to cover the action in the continuing big brawl:

- before Duncan could put up a wall to block them, a bunch of Gith rushed into the room.

- Percy managed to beat back a few Gith and a thorker with aid from Agar's Wand and Vlad.

- Thor and Hannari killed a Gith or two and pushed back the Gith leader and two of his allies, with Thor crippling the leader's sword arm.

- Lots of nageteppo countered by Purify Air dominated the magical fight for the day.

- the PCs are back to Operation Build a Wall.

Notes:

We had a short session budgeted for today but even so, we couldn't finish the fight. It's a good one, but the PCs have to contend with high-damage-soaking thorkers and high-defense Gith mixed together. Honestly, it's the kind of fight where boths sides don't like how it's been going and don't like where it ends up, but there is no clear way out.

The players seem concerned that the Gith leader, who was driven out of sight, is getting reinforcements, and that even with 3 walls up (they'll do that next time) they'll have scant time to gather some loot, gather up their fallen brother, and get the hell out before foes come upstairs after them. They can't block that off entirely, or even tactically, given so many airmobile foes at this depth of the dungeon.

Speaking of which, one thing that makes delving deeper hard isn't always more lethal foes, but ones that have abilities that counter the usual "win buttons" of early play - foes who can move through the air, see invisible, see in the dark, or ignore or recover from status effects quickly make for a very tough delve. But the loot is better . . .

MVP was Thor for his critical hit that crippled the sword arm of the toughest foe of the bunch.

GURPS DF Session 217, Felltower 138 - Into the second GFS Part IV

2025-11-23T19:30:00.007-05:00

Continuing from the previous session.

Date: 11/23/2025
Game Date: 10/5/2025
Weather: Warm and mild.

Characters
Chop, human cleric (362 points)
Duncan Tesadic, human wizard (346 points)
Hannari Ironhand, dwarf martial artist (360 points)
Persistance Montgomery, human knight (347 points)
Rogar Thane-Blood, human barbarian (250 points)
Thor Halfskepna, human knight (368 points)
Vladimir Luchnick, dwarf scout (333 points)

Bullet points to cover the action in the continuing big brawl:

- The Gith turned their focus to Rogar, with the "main" Gith - blurred, enhanced by spellstones and potions - joining a Gith Lichtor and their axemen in attacking him. Hannari ran over to help, himself doubly boosted by a DX potion (+4 to DX) and a Speed potion.

- The remaining thorkers around Percy and Thor kept piling on to keep them busy, along with a Gith Lichtor.

- The other thorkers mobbed Chop, Vlad, and Duncan.

- Chop kept healing Rogar from afar, Cursing any non-cursed foes, and used Purify Air to clean up a nageteppo used to (it turns out) obscure incoming reinforcements.

- Hannari put down three of the axemen with help from Vlad's arrows right after they finally knocked Rogar unconscious, Percy put down a few thorkers and a Gith Licthor, and Thor decapitated a hapless norker brute and then put a few thorkers down.

- Alarmingly, 10 or so (by Hannari's quick count) Gith came running up, and then shieleded themselves with a layered wall of smoke from nageteppo. And even more alarmingly, a few more thorkers - supposedly bashed into death or unconciousness - clambered to their feet and re-engaged, not much worse for wear from endless head blows, neck shots, and "chop[s] to the hit points."

We left it with 4-5 thorkers up, and a lot of incoming Gith. The PCs plan to hold them off at a hallway so Duncan can temporarily wall it off with stone so they can haul ass and haul corpses out to get a lot of loot. We'll see how much they can take with them, assuming they get to that point, given that they're 100% sure the enemy can get around the walls rather more quickly than they'd like. That is where we'll pick up next time - Operation Build a Wall and Have the Gith Loot Pay For It.

Notes:

10 seconds of combat time. Took a while today - I was lagging toward the latter half of the session and that slowed us a lot.

MVP was Chop for his curses, which disrupted several critical successes by the enemy.

I like that the PCs call their enemies Gith, so I named them all that way in the VTT.

I don't like that one particular group of them shows with their DR under Actors, but when I add them to the map and use them to fight it goes to 0. Editing it doesn't help. Manually typing in DR on every hit isn't fun.

Game tomorrow

2025-11-22T16:16:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow will - hopefully - be the end of the big multi-session battle in the depths of Felltower. The PCs seem to be in a good spot . . . but of course battles can turn suddenly, and they've been spraying resources (especially FP and ER and Paut) all over the place. They only have so much.

Looking forward to seeing what happens!