Psi Wars: Environments of Broken Communion: Sensations of Death

Following up on my last post, I have suggestions for imagery, sounds, and other sensations that you can use to describe an environment of Deathly Broken Communion. Enjoy!

Vision

• Ruins, wrecked starships, other human constructions in a state of disrepair
• Iconography of death (skulls, bones, decaying flesh)
• Lack of color, stark whites and stark blacks
• Broken down machinery (vehicles, computers)
• Dust, mold, and rot, especially covering artifacts of civilization

Sounds

• Silence (including natural sounds, like animals and the wind)
• Howling or moaning winds
• Calls of carrion beasts, like jackals and vultures
• Phantom battle sounds, screaming, and other sounds without obvious source
• Crunching and snapping sounds, like breaking bones

Smells

• Rot and decaying flesh
• Formaldehyde and other embalming agents
• Sulfur, rotting eggs

Touch

• Dry, crumbling textures, like dust
• Soft, easily torn textiles
• Hard, brittle bones
• Soft and wet slimes, rotted wood
• Icy chills

Psi Wars: Environments of Broken Communion: Death

One of the most fascinating aspects of the Psi Wars setting is Communion, the gestalt super-consciousness that influences the world in ways both subtle and grand. Of the three major strands of Communion, Broken Communion is particularly interesting to me, since it touches on aspects of the world that humans find disconcerting and alien to their experience.

This naturally leads to the question of what you find when an environment is particularly strong in Broken Communion (High or Very High Sanctity in game terms). Some answers may be gleaned from Mailanka’s posts on Broken Communion and Broken Communion Paths, while others can be found in the relics such places produce. Further insights can be found in the Planetary Environments series.

The limitation to all of these is that places of Broken Communion are more of a sidenote to the main point of the post. This is fine, but it also whets the appetite for more details and a deeper look into what these environments are like. So, in this series of posts, I’m going to delve into Broken Communion environments, and describe how they can be created, what phenomena occur in them, and why you might want to visit them.

First on our tour are environments of Death, places of destruction, mass deaths, and extinction of humanity.

Creating a Place of High Sanctity to Death

It takes more than simple death to mark Communion so strongly that it begins to resonate with the path. Even a graveyard that has seen many generations buried there is not going to be high sanctity to Broken Communion, because these are natural deaths. Growing old and dying are simply part of the cycle of life, and the pain of these losses heal in time.

Places sacred to the path of Death are places of unnatural death. The mass graves of a terrible war, the burned out cinder of a world ravaged by nuclear fire, and other places of large scale death are the most common locations for a place sanctified to Death. These events cause so many deaths that each one is meaningless, and it’s this lack of meaning that fuels Broken Communion.

Smaller scale events can also create places sacred to death. The room where a noble hanged herself is a prime example, especially if her servants then shunned it for fear that it was haunted. Over time, this belief would feed on itself, until the room became a place of poltergeist activity and disturbing visions. Left unchecked, it might even spread to the whole building or the surrounding estate.

Sites of particularly gruesome deaths are another candidate. The place where a whole family was slaughtered and torn to pieces would leave its mark on Communion, for one example. For another, you have a ship lost in space, low on supplies, and its crew forced to turned to cannibalism to survive. When the last of them dies, all that remains is a place strong in Broken Communion and Death.

Phenomena of Death

Communion Voids

Nothing sears Communion like death, for Communion of all types comes from the minds of sapient beings. When they die, especially in large numbers or in horrific ways, Communion itself begins to break down. This often takes the form of Low Sanctity to Dark or True Communion, but in severe cases you instead find Communion Voids, which are places of No Sanctity to Dark and True Communion, and even Broken Communion may be at Low or No Sanctity in such a place.

Attempts to use psionics are at -5 or worse in such place, and any failure counts as a critical failure. Instead of the standard critical failure table, use the rules on page 422 of the Basic Set for Duration of Crippling Injury, substituting Will for HT. This represents how long it takes for the power to recover after having its energies drained by the Communion Void.

Some psionic abilities are hazardous to use inside a Void even without a critical failure. Any attempt to use ESP powers within a Void causes a Fright Check as they can only see the empty nothingness of the Void around them. At the GM’s discretion, other psionic abilities that involve sensing the environment may also cause a Fright Check.

Even if you wisely refrain from using psionics within a Void, such places are draining. Every hour, make a Will+5 roll, at -1 for every hour spent within the Void. On a failure, lose 1d of energy, taken first from any Psionic Energy Reserves, then from FP. While inside a Void, you cannot recover either FP or Energy Reserves.

Sensory Deprivation

Places of death are oppressive and can dull the senses.At the low end, they mute colors, dim the light, numb touch, and dampen sound. At the high end, they extinguish even the concept of sensation, making it impossible to recall speech or remember the path you took to reach the place.

This phenomenon encompasses a spectrum of possible Broken Communion miracles, a few of which are listed below:

• Obscure 1 (Hearing; Stealthy, +100%; Broken Communion, -20%; Requires Concentrate, -15%) [4]
• At this level, it’s enough to deaden sound in a small room.
• Cannot be detected outside its area of effect
• Counts as a Minor Blessing and lasts as long as you Concentrate as a General or Specific Prayer
• 1 point as a Learned Prayer
• Obscure 5 (Hearing; Stealthy, +100%; Broken Communion, -20%; Requires Concentrate, -15%) + Obscure 5 (Vision; Stealthy, +100%; Broken Communion, -20%; Requires Concentrate, -15%) + Obscure 5 (Taste and Smell; Stealthy, +100%; Broken Communion, -20%; Requires Concentrate, -15%) + Obscure 5 (Touch; Stealthy, +100%; Broken Communion, -20%; Requires Concentrate, -15%) [68]
• Applies a -5 to all mundane senses within two yards
• Cannot be detected outside its area of effect
• As a general or specific prayer, lasts as long as you Concentrate
• Requires Broken Communion 10 to learn
• Costs 14 points as a learned prayer.
• Obscure 10 (Vision; Cosmic, Affects Memory of Vision, +50%; Area Effect 16 yards, +150%; Stealthy, +100%; Requires Concentrate, -15%; Broken Communion, -20%) [73]
• All vision within 16 yards fails.
• Recalling vision-based information requires an IQ-10 roll.
• Cannot be detected outside its area of effect
• As a general or specific prayer, lasts as long as you Concentrate
• Requires Broken Communion 11 to learn
• Costs 15 points as a learned prayer.

Visions

The lingering trauma of death can easily push itself into the minds of those who enter these places. While this is normally good for a Fright Check, make it more interesting and pull the players into a scene from the place’s past, probably the one that led to it becoming sanctified to Broken Communion. Use this as a way to teach them a little more about the place, and perhaps give them a hint for the quest that brought them here to begin with!

The Restless Dead

This is a broad category, and too big to contain within one post. I’ll revisit this topic later, but for now, you can use creatures from GURPS Zombies, Mailanka’s Space Ghosts, and any of the undead from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy as seeds for what players might find in Deathly areas.

They shouldn’t just be opposition, though. Consider what motivates them, and how it ties into the events that created the area of Broken Communion to begin with.

Deathly Adventures

What would bring a bunch of player characters into an area sanctified to the Path of Death? There’s many possibilities, but here’s a few:

• Relic hunting: Tombs and battlefields are major places where Broken Communion can arise, and these are prime territory to find artifacts from a bygone area. PCs could be searching on their own or racing rivals, and the artifacts they seek need not be sanctified to Broken Communion…
• The Gauntlet: There may not be anything in the area that the PCs want, but a haunted battlefield might be the only route of escape they have! Can they elude their pursuers and survive the horrors of the Graveyard of Starships?
• Rituals: Symbolically, sites with high sanctity to Death are linked with the Underworld, and it’s common for heroes to have to travel through it, emerging in a metaphorical rebirth. Thus, this can be a milestone for characters walking a path of Communion. Alternatively, they may be trying to stop someone who’s trying to use the site to support their own journey on the path.

Impulse Control in Psi Wars

In Pyramid #3/100, Christopher R. Rice of Ravens N' Pennies wrote the excellent Impulse Control article, which expands on the concept of Impulse Buys from Power-Ups 5 and extends it to other narrative-influencing traits like Luck and Serendipity. This is an excellent system to use in a cinematic game, where the power of plot favors the characters except at those dramatic moments where it turns against them.

As a highly cinematic game, Impulse Control is a natural fit for Psi Wars, especially since it already features Destiny points. In fact, you could just rename Destiny to Impulse Points, use Impulse Control as written, and call it a day. But Impulse Control has so much more to offer than that, so let’s run down the options that fit in a Psi Wars game.

Using Impulse Points

Both Impulse Points and Villainous Points fit, since while the former represents the advantage that heroes have, the latter represent bad luck and dramatic twists against the player characters. Enhanced Refresh for both IP and VP are appropriate, as is the optional rule for faster refresh rates on page 5. Game time refresh rates are not, given the genre’s tendency to gloss over travel time, down time, and other intervening gaps.

For Gaining Points, dramatic in-character actions, staying in-character and in-genre, and trading IP for VP are all appropriate, since they encourage players to do cool, in-genre stuff and offer a chance to succeed at something now that they’ll pay for later. Likewise, Losing Points is all valid. Use the table on page 7 to guide IP awards and penalties.

Since Psi Wars uses the Action framework, including BAD, Really Bad Impulses is quite suitable. Better watch out when accumulating karmic debt, or things may get a lot worse for a while!

For Spending Points, use the rules on page 6 as is. Appropriate expenditures of points include:

• Big Entrance/Exit (Pyr. 3/100 p. 8)
• Buying Failure (Power-Ups 2 p. 4)
• Buying Success (Power-Ups 2 p. 4)
• Cursing Mooks(Power-Ups 2 p. 6)
• Deflecting Disadvantages (Power-Ups 2 p. 10)
• Dooming Foes (Power-Ups 2 p. 5)
• Favors in Play (Power-Ups 2 p. 8)
• Flesh Wounds (Power-Ups 2 p. 10)
• Lucky Break (Pyr. 3/100 p. 8)
• Perking Things Up: Buying Success (Power-Ups 2 p. 6)
• Player Guidance (Power-Ups 2 p. 7)
• Power Boosting  (Pyr. 3/100 p. 8)
• Roll Bonus (Pyr. 3/100 p. 9)
• Trading Points for Money (10% of starting funds) (Power-Ups 2 p. 8)

Divine Intervention (Power-Ups 2 p. 9) is also appropriate, but it can only be used by player characters with Communion and uses the rules for influencing Communion rolls given in Psi Wars - Heroes.

Modifying Templates

Using The Buck Stops Here (Pyr. 3/100 p. 8), any Destiny, Luck, Serendipity, or similar traits are converted to the appropriate form of Impulse Points. While Daredevil is included in this list, I suggest leaving it unmodified.

All non-psionic templates have Luck, which becomes either IP 3 (Aspected, rerolls only, -20%) [12]. Add 3 points to be spent on optional advantages. The options to upgrade Luck become Remove Aspected for 3 points, Enhanced IP Refresh (Per Session) 2 or 3 [10 or 20], and Enhanced IP Refresh 1 (Per Hour) [20].

For all templates, Serendipity 1-2 becomes IP 1-4 (Aspected, Player Guidance Only, -20%)  [4/level].

In Disadvantages, add Villainous Points 1-3 [-5/level] to the list of options.

For the Con Artist, the prerequisites for Fool’s Luck become IP 3 and Enhanced Refresh 1 (Per Hour). Improve Extreme Luck to Ridiculous Luck becomes Improve IP 3 to IP 5 [25] for 10 points and improve Enhanced IP Refresh 1 (Per Hour) Enhanced IP Refresh 1 (Per 30 minutes) [40] for 20 points. Destiny 1 (“The Price of Fortune”) becomes Villainous Points 1 [-5].

For the Mystic, Psi-Hunter, and Space Knight, Destiny and Luck become IP [5/level] and Enhanced IP Refresh 2 (Per Session) [10].

For the Heroic Lens, Destiny 3 becomes 15 points spent on additional levels of IP [5/level] and Enhanced IP Refresh (Per Session) [10/level]. Alternatively, remove 5 points from the list of advantages and spend 20 points on Enhanced IP Refresh (Per Hour) [20/level].

Psi Wars: Gotta Collect Them All: Relics as Sets

A common convention in fantasy literature and tabletop games is the idea of items that are part of a set, where the individual pieces may have power in their own right, but the full collection is more potent still. But why would you do this?

One answer lies in the way it lends itself toward a meaningful narrative arc. The desire or need to collect all of the lost regalia of the First Emperor means that the story doesn’t stop with the first piece to be recovered. Instead, there’s more to follow, as the heroes and their rivals race each other to be the first to retrieve the next piece. It also lets the heroes fail occasionally without bringing the tale to a grinding halt, since their rivals may beat them to one piece, but next time will be better!

Taken to an extreme, this sort of collection quest can form the basis of an episodic narrative, where the heroes are trying to find the most recently discovered treasure from the Ancient Starfarer’s lost Ship of Wonders, and perhaps piece together the clues to discover the location of the ancient vessel itself.

Another answer is the way that power grows slowly, a consideration important both for dramatic tension in literature and balance in tabletop RPGs. Instead of immediately gaining access to all the power of the Great Usurper, the treacherous councilor who supplanted the dynasty the First Emperor founded, they instead only gain a fragment of it when they take up the tainted blade he wielded, still burning red with the blood of those he betrayed. For the rest, they need to seek out his scepter, cloak, and mask, each with their own powers.

Given this utility, I would like to propose a few guidelines for creating sets of relics in Psi Wars.

When is a Set a Set?

The first question is what defines a set of relics, and the answer is ultimately “Whatever the GM says it is.” But that’s unsatisfying, and so here are a few questions to ask yourself when considering whether relics are standalone or a set.

1. Do the relics have a shared story?
2. Are they better known as part of the collection, or do their individual stories stand out?
3. Could they reasonably be used together at the same time? Alternatively, are they mutually exclusive, where drawing on the powers of one limits your ability to use the others?

The first question is quite natural, since if the relics don’t share an origin, a wielder, or something else to bind them together, they clearly aren’t a set. The second addresses whether people talk about the Regalia of the First Emperor, or if the First Emperor’s Scepter is something of note in its own right.

The third question is more subtle. A force sword and buckler can clearly be a set, since they’re meant to be used together, especially if their bearer favored that style of combat. The Ten Rings of the Dark Reaches, made as gifts for the queen of a depraved, hedonistic society, might also be a set, even if the power each possesses prevents the others from being used.

Ultimately, these are suggestions, and you’re free to decide what qualifies.

Power Divided

Now that you’ve decided what counts as a relic, you need to decide what fraction of the power of the whole they possess. First, consult my previous posts to determine the point value of the set. Then, take 1/2 of that value, and distribute it evenly among the component relics.

This means that relics of a set are much weaker on their own, but if they’re very old and storied, that can still be a significant amount of power. If you have a 200 point relic, divided among four pieces, they can each have 25 points worth of abilities, enough for a single psionic ability or several levels of Destiny.

Combining Powers

What happens when you start to bring relics together? The number of points that you have for abilities grows, with every piece of the set past one unlocking a number of points equal to the value of a single piece.

There’s several possibilities for how you can use this points and how they interact with existing abilities:

1. New abilities are unlocked
2. Existing abilities become stronger
3. Existing abilities become alternate abilities
4. Identical abilities add their point value to the total

At its simplest, you can add new abilities with the new points. More levels of Destiny or Higher Purpose, new powers, and so on are all appropriate.

Alternatively, you can improve an existing ability, like adding additional levels to a leveled psionic power (Surge, Psychic Hunches, to name a few).

If individual pieces of a relic set have the same ability, and it doesn’t meaningfully add to itself or has a cap on how many levels it can have, then add the value of extra copies of the ability to the point pool.

The most interesting possibility is that the pieces have abilities that can’t be used simultaneous. If you can only use the Aspect power of the First Emperor’s crown or the Suggestion ability of his scepter, but not both at once, then that’s an example of them being alternate abilities.

To decide how many points can be used on alternate abilities, total the number of points in abilities that are mutually exclusive, add in any amount of additional points, and then take 2/3 of that number. Each piece can have alternate abilities worth a maximum of that value.

This is a quick and dirty way to calculate the maximum value for most small sets of relics (2-6 pieces). For a more exact way, determine the total number of points available for alternate abilities. Then, for a set of relics with N pieces, the maximum number of points each relic can have in its abilities is:

(Total points * 5) / (5 + N - 1)

This reflects the fact that the first set of abilities is full cost, while each subsequent one only costs 1/5 of its regular value.

Review: Psi Wars February and Mid-March Patreon

Daniel Dover at Mailanka’s Musings runs a Patreon for those wishing to support the Psi Wars project, and over the past month and a half he’s released quite a bit of material to backers. Like his blog, it shows careful thought and a great deal of skill in roleplaying game design, setting building, and creative writing.

There’s four tiers of support, and since each level gives access to progressively more material, I’m going to cover them in order from lowest to highest.

Dreamers ($1/month)

There’s three posts at this level, covering behind the scenes thoughts on running capital ships, expanding on Communion, and the design of two power-ups for Psi Wars characters.

Rethinking Capital Ships starts with the premise that an Officer should be able to stand on the bridge of a capital ship, and have her abilities make a meaningful difference in the battle. The new rules deliver on this in spades. Building off of his revised system for spaceships, Officers can now use their Leadership and Tactics to bolster the performance of their crews and outmaneuveur and outwit their foes.

You’ll also find rules on how to handle large squadrons of fighters, which is absolutely essential when commanding dreadnoughts, who could easily carry hundreds or even thousands of smallcraft within their cavernous hangars. These rules have yet to make it into a public release, but add quite a bit for these large ships!

Rethinking Communion outlines the design for social engineering campaigns that give bonuses to Legendary reputation, and is interesting as a window into how Mailanka works. The actual rules and the 24 (!) new Communion miracles are included in the Psi Wars Iteration 5 documents as well.

Power-Ups: Conspirator and Magnate introduces two new power-ups, with the first focused on characters who don’t have a direct connection with Communion but are so favored by it that things tend to go along with the story that Communion has for them. With a good reaction roll, this support can take the form of very dramatic Communion Miracles! The second, Magnate, is for those characters who have so much wealth or pull within their organizations that they have access to the biggest and best toys, and influence on a large scale. This is where you’ll find your dreadnought captains and influential senators. Again, what you’re mainly getting here is the design process, since the rules are in Iteration 5.

The discussion of the thought process behind these design choices is quite valuable in and of itself, since it will help understand why they were made and how you can use them in your game.

Fellow Travelers ($3/month)

At this level, you get to see early drafts of Psi Wars material. At the moment, this includes drafts of the Patron-designed Trader alien race, the history of the Psi Wars universe, and an early peek at the Empire!

I’m going to cover the Traders in more detail when I get to the Companion tier, but seeing how Mailanka takes the ideas and votes of his Patrons and weaves them into a cohesive whole is absolutely fascinating. The Traders themselves are pretty neat, walking a line between attractive and unsettling, with an ancient, proud culture that has seen better days.

Psi Wars History 1.1 is an overview of Psi Wars history extending back almost 6000 years. It paints a picture of a deeply cyclic universe, where empires rise, prosper, decline, and then fall either from internal crises or the pressure of external forces. It also gives a glimpse at the major civilizations that now coexist with humanity, which I’m not going to spoil here.

Hot off the presses as I write this is the first draft of the Empire! Here, we have our first look at the force dominating the Psi Wars setting, and while it naturally has echoes of the Star Wars empire, it is very much its own entity. Part 1 provides new options for creating Imperial characters, ranging from simple Citizens to commandos working for the dread Imperial Black Ops.

The history of the Empire is light on details, but this is mostly because the key figure of the Emperor is a current topic for Companions and up to vote on (More on that later!) The structure of the Empire is fascinating, since while there’s a strand of meritocracy and the benefits of technology, the whole system is shot through with corruption, oppression, and fallout from those advances. It’s founded on good ideals, and is actually nice if you’re a member of the privileged classes in the core worlds, but that polish is quickly stripped away once you move out of the public eye.

This is a very long document, and outlines all of the major organizations, capabilities, and philosophies of the Empire. Standard operating procedure for the Imperial war machine, the interplay between the major organizations, and the difference between ideals and reality in the Empire are all laid out in detail. While there’s no way to fully cover an entity as vast as the Empire, this is a very good start and gives you plenty of material to play with.

Companions ($5/month)

This is where the real fun of being a Patron begins, since not only do you get to see Psi Wars as it’s being made, you’re given a voice in the process!

The first round of polls focused on the alien race known as the Traders. Starting from the simple concept of an alien race that used to hold power in the galactic core, but was defeated by humanity and now roams the stars, they quickly evolved through several rounds of polling into a distinct culture and personality. They are now an ancient race, proud of their traditions and valuing honest dealing, with the ability to quickly process information and a talent with robotics that far surpasses the rest of the galaxy.

The reason that this is so fun is that each poll serves as a writing prompt as well, and Patrons (include myself) are enthusiastic about jumping in to offer their own take on the options presented. The fact that Mailanka then takes these ideas and weaves them together with the poll results to create a cohesive whole is impressive, and end results are a delight to read.

For one example, the votes to decide on the social structure of the Traders were fairly evenly split between Family, Trade, and Patchwork. But in the comments, you could see a strong preference for a blend of these ideas, where the Traders were organized into fleets that were nominally familial, each with their own craft, and the occasional meeting to swap ideas and members. Mailanka then took all of that feedback and created the Kin-Fleets, the descendents of old corporate fleets that became refuges for the Traders. Over time, the bonds took on a familial status, with the leader of each fleet being called Grandfather.

It’s just so much fun to watch this process in action, and now we get to do it again, this time with one of the most important figures in the Psi Wars universe: the Emperor himself! Over the next few days, Patrons can vote on his origin, abilities, agenda, and heirs. I’ve already posted some of my own ideas, and I’d love to see what other people want.

Disciples ($7/month)

There’s nothing yet at this tier, but it comes with the right to a place in Mailanka’s game when he runs one, and I’ve been told that there’s plans to let this tier write up signature characters for the setting, which I think will be an absolute blast.

Conclusion

Mailanka has put out a lot of good content on his Patreon, and the opportunities to be a part of the creative process are more fun than I thought they would be. So, if you like Psi Wars and want to support its creation, join in. If you want to add in your own touches to the setting, now’s the time to join in!

Review: Pyramid #3/98 Introduction to Dungeon Fantasy

Back in September of 2016, Steve Jackson Games ran a Kickstarter for their Dungeon Fantasy RPG, which is a standalone version of the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy gameline. One of the stretch goals for the Kickstarter was a promise to release three Dungeon Fantasy themed Pyramid articles over the next year. Pyramid #3/98: Introduction to Dungeon Fantasy was the first of these to be released, and as the name suggests, it’s all about helping new players and GMs get started with Dungeon Fantasy.

Let’s take a look at what’s inside, shall we?

You All Meet At An Inn

By Matt Riggsby

Meeting in an inn has long been a cliche of fantasy tabletop roleplaying, but Matt Riggsby offers a fresh spin on the concept. Instead of the party all meeting and deciding to adventure together, in this scenario adventure comes to the inn instead! Can chance-met travelers band together to fend off and then put a stop to the danger?

The article starts with a brief description of the inn that the adventure starts in, and while short, it provides enough detail to run it without issue. It even comes with the HP and DR of various parts of the inn’s construction, which is a welcome touch for any group of delvers inclined to smash their way out of problems.

The action kicks off as the delvers are settling in for the evening, with a zombie attack! The initial group of zombies should be an easy fight for the delvers, but there’s more on the way, with no end in sight. Now, they could try to escape, or they could try and find the source of the attacks, which just so happens to be beneath the inn itself.

I think that realizing where the source of the zombies is may be a potential point of failure for the adventure, since it requires that the delvers make a roll or look in the right spot. A few more hints would not have gone amiss, especially as the adventure makes it clear that escape is a much more dangerous approach.

The search for the source of the zombies takes the delvers on a short dungeon crawl, which is sufficient to introduce them to most of the ideas of dungeon fantasy, like traps, puzzles, and monsters. At the end, they face off against the source of the zombies, and upon its destruction, all of the zombies deanimate.

Several maps are included, two of the inn’s levels, one of the temple. They’re simple but functional, but the floor textures in some places make it hard to see the hex grid. Also, it’s unclear what size the maps are meant to be, and there’s very noticeable compression artefacts at higher levels of zoom. There’s no key, either, which is a mixed blessing, since it means you can reuse them elsewhere, but you need to do a bit of work to match the descriptions with the places on the map.

On the whole, this is a solid intro adventure, with plenty of potential for DMs to add in their own touches. The inn’s location, the temple, and more are all deliberately kept generic, allowing you to easily drop this into any suitable campaign.

The one potential drawback for new DMs is the need to get Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 1 and Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 3 in addition to DF1 and DF2, but those books provide a wealth of monsters and are worthwhile in their own right.

Using this Article

As Written: It’s an intro Dungeon Fantasy adventure. Round up some players, make characters, and go.

Monster Hunters: The same general premise could just as easily be used in Monster Hunters as well, and if your campaign is in a sufficiently remote, old-time area, then the inn can even be used as is. You might want to beef up the monsters, though, since 400 point champions should make light work of foes built for 250 point delvers.

The Monstrous Monstorum

By Christopher R. Rice

One thing that Dungeon Fantasy DMs can never have too many of is ideas for monsters, and Monstrous Monstorum adds fifteen more to the menagerie. They range from nuisances like the bandit snatcher to the terrifying stone sharks, and from mundane pack hunters like the bouda to the eldritch grü. Whatever your needs, you’re likely to find something of interest to torment your players with in this article.

A common thread among many of the monsters is that they’re likely to have lingering effects that will make delvers regret running into them, above and beyond any damage they may take. Curses and diseases are regular occurrences, and what the excremental can do is just plain wrong.

All in all, Monstrous Monstorum has something for everyone, and if you’re at a loss for ideas, then you’re likely to find one (or more!) within this article.

Using this Article

As written: These are Dungeon Fantasy monsters. Drop them in and go!

After the End: Some of these creatures would be very appropriate in a post-apocalyptic setting, like the excremental, though you may need to tone them down.

Monster Hunters: Another genre where having a variety of creatures is useful. Just remember that 400 point champions are likely to stomp on these monsters if you don’t buff them first.

Grave of the PIrate Queen

By David L. Pulver

Another short intro adventure, this one takes adventurers on a romp through a network of seaside caves containing the grave and treasure of pirates and a temple to a nasty old god of the sea.

As adventures go, this one is pretty straightforward. The adventures roll into town for one reason or another, hear about a seaside cave complex that’s recently been uncovered by an earthquake, and off they go! Once there, the delvers find a combat-heavy series of encounters within the relatively small series of caves.

One downside of Grave of the PIrate Queen is that it’s light on non-combat challenges. There’s no interesting traps or puzzles for the delvers to contend with, so thieves and the like will lack for things to do.

On the upside, this adventure gives a nice selection of hooks for further adventures. As the name suggests, only the pirate’s queen is buried within the caves, and the fate of her crew is left unstated. Perhaps they left more buried treasure somewhere? Alternatively, the delvers may find themselves contending with the cults of Tentacle Beard.

This adventure also comes with a map, and unlike You All Meet At an Inn, this one is keyed, making it easy to reference in play. Unfortunately, it also suffers from compression artefacts at reasonable levels of zoom. There’s also a nice, unlabeled sketch that you can give out to the players as an in-game map. It’s accurate, but gives no information beyond the layout.

Using this Article

As written: Another intro Dungeon Fantasy adventure. Drop your players in and have at it.

Variants: You could just as easily use the concepts of this adventure in a swashbuckling high seas campaign, or perhaps a Monster Hunters game with a nautical focus. Just make sure to tune the challenges accordingly.

Building a Long-Term Dungeon Fantasy Game.

By Peter V. Dell’Orto

This is an excellent collection of advice for anyone looking to run a Dungeon Fantasy game, including suggestions on how to keep it easy for players to pick up, how to make some of the more situational classes useful, and how to keep the game’s scope from expanding if you don’t want it to.

While mainly useful for new DMs, there’s enough in here that’s worth a peek for the more experienced folk as well, especially if this is their first Dungeon Fantasy campaign.

For people wanting more, I recommend also checking out Dell’Orto’s excellent Dungeon Fantastic blog, which chronicles his on-going (and long lasting!) campaign.

Back to Basics

By Steven Marsh

This is a short article on mundane but potentially useful prep work that you can do for a game, whether you’re a player or a game master. Advice on building cheat sheets and useful props is included, and the uses for items like glass beads and dice in tracking game information could be quite handy.

Ravens N' Pennies March Patreon Review

Every month, Christopher R. Rice over at Ravens N’ Pennies releases a selection of goodies for his Patreon backers. Befitting the blog’s namesake, they are an eclectic bunch, and no two months see quite the same things covered. So, what do we have this time around?

The Hurt Locker - More Psi-Tech I

In this article, you’ll find a collection of gizmos that are either useful for psis or make use of psionic phenomena to operate. This first issue gives you the Obfuscating Material Coating for the sneaky sorts, Telekinetically Bouyant Textiles that gives psychokinetics a way to carry loads more easily, and the Sonokinetic Sound Baffler that, funnily enough, muffles sounds in its area of effect.

On the whole, this is a neat collection of useful toys, and if you’re making use of GURPS Psi-Tech, these will fit right in. If not, then reflavor them for your preferred brand of paranormal phenomena and use them anyway.

Boil and Bubble: Thaumaturgic Ritual Path Magic

Christopher loves creating variant forms of Ritual Path Magic, and they’re always interesting to read. Thaumaturgic Ritual Path Magic is no exception, which reflavors Ritual Path Magic and tinkers with its rules to suit a form of Christian magic that invokes angels to power its spells. It’s well worth a look as a basis for spirit-invoking Ritual Path Magic as well as an interesting variant in its own right.

The one disappointment I have is fairly minor. While it lists patron angels for a few of the Paths, it doesn’t do so for all of them.

GURPS 101: Alternate Alternate Form Rules (June 2016 Special #1)

A guest entry from Emily Smirle, Alternate Alternate Forms is one of the most elegant rules I’ve ever seen for GURPS. Treating alternate forms as alternate abilities is a simple yet brilliant idea, and there’s a good bit of advice on how to use this variant. If you have shapeshifters in your campaign, this article will be very helpful, especially if you’re running a high point total game with correspondingly powerful alternate forms.

GURPS 101: More Telepathy Powers for Psionic Powers (June 2016 Special #2)

As Christopher notes in the intro, there’s never enough powers for Psionic Powers. So, this article presents two more Telepathy abilities. Affinity gives you a telepathic bond with a person of your choosing, while Telelinguism lets you learn any language given enough exposure to it. Both come with suitable techniques that increase the usefulness of the two powers.

If you’ve got telepaths or telepathic creatures in your game, give this a look. They’re very thematically appropriate and have many applications for the creative.

GURPS 101: Dungeon Fantasy Styles - Zodiac Styles

A long guest piece by Hal Batty, Zodiac Styles details six martial arts for Dungeon Fantasy, based on animals of the Chinese Zodiac. To say that this is a fun article is an understatement. Each animal style comes with its own set of skills, perks, and power-ups, perfectly suited to the animal in question. The strong, tough Ox, the fleet-footed Rabbit, the cunning Snake, and more all make an appearance.

My favorite of the styles may be the Snake, with their focus on cunning, sneaky tricks, and rapid, precise strikes that leave their foes unable to effectively strike back.

If you have martial artists in your Dungeon Fantasy, this will give them some fun options to play with. If you don’t have martial artists, make a few as adversaries so that you can play with these. And if that’s still not an option, consider allowing other characters to learn these styles. That’s just how much fun they are.

In fact, the only real downside is that the other half of the Zodiac doesn’t get their own styles. On the upside, that gives you room to create your own styles, using these as inspiration.

Psi Wars: Balancing Player-Created and Found Relics

After sharing my previous post on empowering artifacts, Mailanka noted, quite correctly, that an artifact should have the same point cost to possess, regardless of how it was obtained. I’ll counter by noting that the point cost for player created artifacts is spread out over the course of play, while a found artifact has to be paid for all at once, and a player created artifact ends up being much more fine tuned for their character.

That said, this is still a fair objection. Let’s take a look at the existing rules for artifacts in Psi Wars and see how we can adapt them for use in play.

The ground rules for buying relics (which I’ve been calling artifacts for some reason) as Signature Gear are quite simple. For every character point you spend on Signature Gear, you can have a relic with a cost of up to $25,000. The cost of a relic is determined by the base value of the object, plus its value as a self-powered psychotronic generator based on the rules on Psi-Tech p. 13-14.

To buy a player created relic with points, you still need the “Relic of Communion Perk”, but now the relic’s point cost is based on its dollar cost. Since a relic can start with up to 2 points of abilities, you must spend at least enough points to cover that amount. For example, a force sword costs $10,000 on its own, and as a Small, self-powered psychotronic generator, it costs an additional $3,750 per point of abilities it possesses. Thus, 1 point of Signature Gear lets you have a force sword with up to four points of abilities, more than enough to cover a starting relic’s two points.

Make a note of that maximum value, though, since relics grow in power over time, using the rules in my previous post. If they exceed that maximum, the player must spend additional points on Signature Gear sufficient to cover its full value. For convenience in determining the number of points of abilities each point in Signature Gear gets you, see the following table.

Size	Points of Abilities Per Point of Signature Gear
Mini (SM-6)	6
Small (SM-4)	7
Portable (SM-2)	9
Semi-Portable (SM 0)	12
Large (SM+2)	17

If this kind of book keeping seems more trouble than it’s worth, assume that the initial investment in Signature Gear covers up to 4 points worth of abilities and each additional point of Signature Gear allows up to 8 additional points in abilities. This reflects the likely bias towards portable, personal objects as player-created relics.

Psi Wars: Empowering Artifacts in Play

Last time, I looked at how to assign point values to Psi Wars artifacts on the basis of their age and significance. A player may look at the Recent Events modifier and say, "Hey! I'm part of recent events! Can I say that one of my things is an artifact?"

To which I say: Sure! If you've bought the item in question as Signature Gear and buy the perk "Relic of Communion", then it can have up to 2 points of powers, no questions asked. Since a player character is by definition a Major Free Agent, their possessions have a base value of 4 points, modified by 1/2 for being part of recent events.

This represents the beginnings of a player character's legend, and the investment of power by a Communion that is just now taking an interest in their deeds. Which form of Communion powers their artifact is up to the player to decide, though be warned that artifacts of Broken Communion are always corrupting!

Milestones

Now, what if players want to increase the power of their artifacts? Two possibilities are using the rules for Named Possessions from GURPS Fantasy or enchantment in GURPS Thaumatology. Unfortunately, I don't have either book myself, so I can't comment on how useful they would be.

What I do have is the concept of milestones from Mailanka's Building Paths post. These are significant events that represent important parts of an archetype's legend, and after achieving one, the character can investment more points in path-related abilities. Extending the concept to player created artifacts, a milestone is an event that reinforces the object's legend.

The question then becomes: What qualifies as a milestone? The paths have examples already given, but what's a suitable milestone for the scavenger's favorite pistol that they've modified time and again over the years? To judge whether an event qualifies, use the following criteria:

1. Is the event significant?
2. Does the event fit with the character's concept and story?
3. Is the artifact's presence important to the outcome?

If it's something that people will be telling stories about for years or generations to come, then the answer to the first question is yes. For the second, a character using their template's abilities to accomplish a major plot point in a way consistent with their personality and stated goals counts. For the last question, the artifact's role may be active or passive, but either way, it must have meaningfully contributed to the outcome.

To continue the example of the scavenger, using their pistol all the time doesn't count as a milestone, since that's not what people will tell stories about. Using it in a climactic duel with the marshal who's been hounding them for years, resolving the conflict once and for all? That definitely counts!

For another example, a spy may have a necklace handed down from her mother. If she was wearing it as she charmed her way into gaining access to Imperial archives and then stealing the blueprints for an Imperial superweapon, that would count as a milestone for the artifact.

The effects of a milestone are several. First, the player may spend character points up to half the artifact's base value per milestone achieved to improve its abilities, to a maximum of twice the artifact's base value. Second, if the milestone impacts events on a planetary level or greater, it may increase the base value of the artifact accordingly. Third, if the milestone belongs to a path and the artifact is part of the character's regalia, then the artifact becomes aligned to the path and the player may spend an extra 2 points.

So, after their duel with the marshal, the scavenger can spend 2 points to improve the powers of their pistol, since the event was primarily of personal significance. Our spy, on the other hand, has taken part in events that have ramifications for at least an entire planet! Accordingly, the base value of her necklace rises to 6 points, and she may spend 3 points on its abilities.

The intent of these rules is that after three milestones, an artifact can be considered to be of historical significance, and so can have abilities worth up to twice its base value. Those will also be more significant to the player, since they earned them through play and the artifact is specifically suited for their character.

A final note: at the GM’s option, the character points spent on artifacts can be given as a bonus for the session in which the milestone is achieved. This allows them to be much more immediately impactful, without having to worry about whether you have enough points saved up to take advantage of it.