State of the Gorefest Dungeon

With the new season coming up, we're going to be discussing what we would like to see and how we would like to go fowards. First we will start with what books we are currently using in a major fashion. Basic Set: Characters Basic Set: Campaigns Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level Dungeon Fantasy 5: Allies Dungeon Fantasy 7: Clerics Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables Dungeon Fantasy 11: Power-ups Dungeon Fantasy 13: Load-Outs Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen Dungeon Fantasy Denizens: Barbarians Martial Arts Low-Tech Low-Tech Companion 2 Low-Tech Instant Armor Low-Tech Loadouts Fantasy-Tech 1 Thaumatology Thaumatology: Magical Styles Magical Styles: Dungeon Magic Pyramid: Pyramid 3-60: Dungeon Fantasy III Pyramid 3-61: Way of the Warrior Pyramid 3-64: Pirates and Swashbucklers Pyramid 3-68: Natural Magic Pyramid 3-72: Alternate Dungeons Pyramid 3-89: Alternate Dungeons II Plus quite a number of other supplements where only a few rules have been taken from each time. There are a few very restricted books, including the Power-ups 1: Imbuements supplement. The current topic is to take a look at what the mission statement of Gorefest Dungeon is striving for. Three to five players are requested. We'll meet every Saturday at 6 p.m., CST. New players are welcome , but characters must be built in advance of game day, so contact me if help is needed; I've taught several people how to play GURPS. My e-mail address is <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1026202/gorefest-dungeon#post-1026202" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1026202/gorefest-dungeon#post-1026202</a> Behind having fun, my secondary goal for running this game is to further my ability to balance combat encounters for a generic, standard Dungeon Fantasy party of three to five player characters. In that regard, the game will be a plain hack-and-slash dungeon with very little role playing, almost no background story or creative descriptions, and really very little rhyme or reason for monster population. However, there will be plenty of traps and puzzels, so it's not quite pure combat. Take advice from some of my former players: a well-rounded party will be absolutely necessary for survival. I design each dungeon floor—and almost every room—to contain challenges for most character templates. A Knight's sword arm will get a workout as will a Scout's bowstring, but without someone to keep a lookout for traps or without a magic user or healer, the party isn't going to get far . . . Maybe not even past the first room. This is the 1986 Ghosts 'n Goblins game for the original Nintendo Entertainment System in tabletop RPG form. As one player described it, and I quote, "Ultimate f***ing challenge while having a heart attack." First room of the original killed one PC and had another at 0 of fewer HP—even the Wizard was injured, not to mention at 1 FP. Again, that's the first room. In another area, crushing walls set a "time limit" of sorts while three skeleton archers and an undead mage guarded the lone doorway on the other end. In between was a pit of opaque, fetid water with some type of squid creature lurking beneath. Welcome to level one of Gorefest Dungeon, ladies and gentlemen. This is Stripe initial request for character creation: Character Creation Please use only the Basic Set, Magic, and DF 1-7 with DF 8 and DF 13 for equipment. We can use DF 11 for later advancement, but not generation, please. Please do not use other sources, including Pyramid or other DF or GURPS books such as Low Tech or Martial Arts . However, we will use the extended combat options from Martial Arts in game play. Characters can be created with the standard 250 point budget with a -50/-5-point disadvantage limit. Please follow the templates to the letter. If choosing a racial template from DF3 , please make certain there's enough points in the character template. See the Affording Racial Templates section of DF3 . You may follow the Skimping rules if needed. Please try not to create super munchkins to astound the most experienced GURPS scholar as I'm trying to balance combat encounters, so incredibly clever (or terrible) builds won't help me. We don't need any trip/dodge/parry/throw/stun monkey builds. We need a Knight, a Wizard, a Scout, and a Cleric. So, don't make a character that isn't a Knight, Wizard, Scout or Cleric until those positions have been filled. Since then we have switched to Low-Tech armor, opened up more of Martial Arts, allowed for more of the standard DF1 templates to be taken and allowed for a replacement of the Thief template with the Rogue template from Pyramid. As it stands there is a discussion on the table for part of the future of the game, one of which is if we want to tighten up the rules and what supplements we want to use. We're also looking at how we would like to continue to advance. Whether we'd like to stick to a 250 basic template restart, if we'd like to move to 300cp new characters since we've gotten to that point. Or if we'd like to move for something in-between.

I have a fanatic dwarf scout/ 'cavern commando' lying around somewhere that I'd like to play. Wouldn't mind playing anything else, I could keep Welet -- he's got some thief skills that he can develop. If I had to play a wizard though, I would like to use Dungeon Magic again, since they're easier to make. I'd like Martial Arts open for the weapons, they're cool and don't add too much bulk. I think that they're listed in DF8 as well? I wouldn't mind closing Low Tech honestly.

i love progresstion it gives a sences of well progressing lol so to keep playing kritty would be great and i have no probrlem with other ppl ether keeping their hero or makeing new ones constantly lol :D

I'm good with continuing as it is, or starting at 300 points, or resetting at 250 points. As said i'm not too fond of "four templates obliged". However, we do definitely need a support/healing caster and a generalist caster, ala cleric/wizard. And yes, I do agree with Stripe's point of making a balanced party. Would be nice to have someone that is competent in melee and competent in ranged.

What I would personally like to see is a good mix of characters using the Guild Hall system. We don't always have to have a full three characters, but if you're not fielding one of the four requested templates, then at least look into building one to have in reserve in case it's needed. I would also like to have the classes and niches set up properly. I know that in the original post for GF Dungeon, that DF4 was allowed for character creation, probably mostly for items that we may need, but in any case I don't see us really fielding a Scholar or Artificer. DF3 introduced Unholy Warriors and Evil Clerics, which probably aren't too much use at the moment but are still technically fun to play. Trying to classify it, I wouldn't mind seeing trying to separate out the characters into the specific niches as such: •Melee: Knight Holy Warrior Barbarian Swashbuckler Rogue Martial Artist •Ranged: Scout Martial Artist •Arcane Caster: Wizard Bard •Divine Casters: Cleric Druid Now as we can see, the majority of the templates are focused on melee combat though there is some overlap, namely with the Martial Artist template for the Melee/Ranged. Beyond this, the thievish skills can probably be split between either Melee or Ranged using either the Scout or the Rogue template, or allowing for their purchase by the Swashbuckler. What I would like to see, since the ranged Niche doesn't quite have a whole lot of love is to allow some of the alternative presented in Pyramid 3-89 for the Scout class (Page 19). With vanilla Scout, you're generally stuck with just using a bow, by using a suggestion from that Pyramid's Eastern Adventures (EA) article, it would expand it to allow for scouts that utilize either crossbows or throwing weapons.&nbsp;This can help increase the draw to that template by giving the Scout a bit of flavour beyond an Elven Robin Hood traveling around in tights with sheep. The downside is that this brings in yet another supplement that we'd be using for an alternative template. Considering that we're already semi-using it for Martial Artist power-ups it shouldn't be that bad to use it for other reasons, although care must be used not to abuse them or allow for the other classes to use the EA alternative templates on a case by case basis.

Maybe a weapon martial artist with throwing art and striking strength ?

Naryar said: Maybe a weapon martial artist with throwing art and striking strength ? Which is why Martial Artist is on the Ranged category. I've got no problems with them being such a character just as long as there's a thievish character somewhere. So if the Martial Artist ends up being the ranged, you'd have to make sure that there's another character on the team that has traps, lockpicking, forced entry, stealth, kleptomania, poisons. . . so on and so forth.

Christopher D. said: Naryar said: Maybe a weapon martial artist with throwing art and striking strength ? Which is why Martial Artist is on the Ranged category. I've got no problems with them being such a character just as long as there's a thievish character somewhere. So if the Martial Artist ends up being the ranged, you'd have to make sure that there's another character on the team that has traps, lockpicking, forced entry, stealth, kleptomania, poisons. . . so on and so forth. Would that be the Knight, Cleric or Wizard? Lockpicking is on one Template only. We can't buy off template for beginning characters. Which means someone being a thief.

Mark W. said: Would that be the Knight, Cleric or Wizard? Lockpicking is on one Template only. We can't buy off template for beginning characters. Which means someone being a thief. Not entirely true. Remember that you have 5 points worth of quirks to work with. With these points, since I've been here at least, you're able to purchase whatever you would like, within reason/GM approval, including off-template items.

My big issue with the 4 mentioned classes is that it is supposed to be well balanced. If the group stated above enters a dungeon full of traps, locks and no undead, what exactly are they doing there? A four man team will not be able to be completely rounded. There will always be a hole somewhere. All the templates include a ranged weapon skill of some sort. All of them have some sort of melee skill. When it comes to specialty skills that every group needs, only certain templates have those. (Lock-picking-Thief, Tracking-Barbarian or Scout, Merchant-Bard or Thief)

Swashbuckler can also be really good at thrown weapons, considering they get Weapon Master and pour most points into their Weapon Skill. Also, I managed to get Sundays free so I might be able to get back in for real this time.

If not having a thief PC is worrying for you, hiring a 125 point 'procurement expert' would probably work. I have a buttload of characters generated over time, so filling a stable wouldn't be very difficult but I just didn't want to commit anything this last season.

Heck Archie, I've even pulled from Banestorm and Fantasy for inspiration for 62 point "procurement experts" if you want them on the cheap, the only issue would be getting them to the doors and treasure chests alive, and keep in mind that DF15 takes a dim view of a party using Henchpeople as disposable lock-picks. Mark, Stripe, and I did have a nice conversation about a thieves and thief skills in general after everything was over with Mark noting that only Thieves, Druids, and Evil Clerics get the lockpicking, poisons, and a couple other Thief skills while Stripe insisted that whatever a thief could do could be done by others in the party. In the past, and probably in the future, we should probably note that while we don't strictly enforce Niche Protection, there is still some protection in there such as only Wizards are allowed near unlimited access to spells and only Clerics can be a walking bandage. The only exception has been the Thief skills where we have allowed everyone to purchase them if they wish. This included that one declaration in the middle of the Gorgon dungeon that everyone was free to take a point in Traps skill as though it were bought in town and on template for every character, though I believe that only a couple of the folks took Stripe up on that offer. I've also noticed that while Scouts do get the Traps skill, they don't get much in the way of anything else. If I were allowed to alter the templates, I'd be tempted to just put things like Lock-picking and Poisons in the Scout's mix bag of Background Skills at 1 point each. But since I'm not Kromm, I don't think that such a suggestion would be appreciated. By the way, if you want to sell things for better prices in town, I'm sure you may want to look into getting an&nbsp; Agent .

Gorefest Dungeon will celebrate its two year anniversary in about a month; our&nbsp;first session was at 5 p.m. CST, Saturday, July 26, 2014. At that first assembly around the virtual table top is when&nbsp;I met Archie and Chris. Our next session included Brandon. Not to skip mentioning a bunch of&nbsp; fantastic &nbsp;current and past players, but our newest player, Mark, a.k.a., "Whisper," joins us from a play-by-post game that started in 2008. That's all to say we've spent a considerable amount of time together, enough that I consider Gorefest Dungeon players more than just Internet&nbsp;acquaintances. I wouldn't sell whiskey to Brandon underage, but I'd let him crash on my couch for a night.&nbsp; If I didn't care about everyone's opinions, the way I'd start next season is by wiping the slate clean, nixing all material not in the original looking-for-gamers thread, and beginning the new characters—the first four of which would be a Knight, Cleric, Wizard and Scout—at 250 points following templates to the letter. Of course, I most certainly do care about everyone's opinions; my ultimate goal is that all Gorefest players have fun, as stated in&nbsp; Gorefest Dungeon's three-prong mission statement: 1. That everyone has fun while playing. 2. That we, the game masters, learn to better create fun, interesting and challenging encounters and scenarios for a standard party of three to five delvers. 3. That we provide an entertaining and informative experience for a wide audience via a webpage, blog or vlog. Number three has so far never come to fruition, and since my blog is now being squatted upon, I'm not sure when, how, or if it ever will. No biggie; we're having fun and keeping an excellent record of our adventures for now.&nbsp; Gorefest Dungeon is "ours," not "mine," and that's even more true now than ever before considering Chris is the acting primary GM—and players have been left in good hands with him. However, if this gaming group was an orchestra and it had a conductor, it would be me. If this were a physical hangout rather than a virtual one, I would be the host. Let me assure everyone, I continue to have the same goals and visions for our upcoming third season as when we began nearly two years ago. This is the post I intended to make before the end of the current season for me, but the way it worked out, we spent the end of last session (June 26) talking about the upcoming break and eventual start of season three this coming October, if I had to guess at a month. That might sound like a long way away, but Chris is still running one last dungeon— Gorefest's current season hasn't ended. Hell, he might keep running dungeons all the way through the (my) off season, perhaps. That's up to him, but the doors are open and I'll keep paying the light bill. Whatever the case, the way I envision events now, there will likely be some sort of reset at the start of season three, and that means some type of difference with characters and some type of difference in the rules and how things are done; however large—or small—that amount of difference is has yet to be determined. Like I said, I don't want characters starting much over 300 points or so. I know Luke's Swashbuckler, Kritty, is already there. If Chris continues to run official Gorefest dungeons for official Gorefest characters, they might climb considerably higher. However, I'm only interested in learning from my actual in-game experience as a GM and player here, so I'm not going to start PC's off at a higher point level than that with which I am personally familiar. That means, no matter what we do, we're starting no higher than about 300 points. Throughout most of Gorefest Dungeon's history, we've had a GM and either four or five players. Four players is perhaps best, but five is good too. Three is just not quite enough while six is just a bit too many. Six with multiple Allies was&nbsp; way too many, we found. All that considered, and like the mission statement says, I'd like to create dungeons balanced&nbsp;for a "standard" party of four PC's knowing that sometimes, we'll have three or five. While Mark noted in yesterday's conversation that every four-man party will have some weaknesses, I think we can all agree that some parties are more "balanced"—that is, able to take on the widest assortment of challenges—than others. For vulnerabilities, there are gaps, and then there are gaping chasms. I don't want to restrict the party to first filling the roles of a Knight, Wizard, Scout and Cleric—perhaps the most well-balanced DF party of all. However, I also don't want a party that isn't well balanced or that is so wildly unique that our audience has difficulty relating to it. There is a wide variety of ways to go about making characters each of those four templates (less so for Scout, admittedly), and we'll often play with a fifth character as well, but there are also other templates that can adequately fill the necessary roles in a four-man team. For example, maybe we have a Holy Warrior instead of a Knight and a Druid instead of a Cleric. In that case, we'd still have a strong melee character up front, a fair amount of healing between the two, and a strong divine caster as well. Such a team would have roughly the same amount of melee, healing, and divine support—as well as a Scout for ranged combat and a Wizard for being a Wizard.&nbsp; At the start of the current season, I basically told players to make what they like, within reason and without adding too much to our already voluminous library of GURPS books. It didn't go quite as well as I'd have liked, nor quite as well as it could have for the team. Players may not have made characters in a vacuum, but the party wasn't (isn't) well optimized. It went through patches where it was worse than it is now. I learned my lesson. We'll have written character creation rules for the start of the third season—but that's four or so months away so we have a long time to figure out and agree upon what those will be.&nbsp; Luke, our mascot, wants to play Kritty the Swashbuckler for a third season. I'd like that. I heard no objections. So, we know we probably have a strong melee attack character who relies mainly on swing-cutting damage at reach 1, and whose defenses are largely "dodge or die." We're not positive when he returns that it will be the exact character sheet as before, so we'd rather not rely on his character for trap detection and disarming. That role would be better suited for a Scout or Thief/Rogue, or perhaps a character using mixed profession lens such as a Scout-Thief, especially if we start out at 300 points. If I remember correctly, Chris said he'd like to reprise his role as Hobbes the Holy Warrior, which I'd like as well. With Kritty and Hobbes, not to mention his ally, we'd have melee covered. That's no surprise; DF parties are usually melee-heavy, it's been my experience.&nbsp; I agree with what Chris said about filling team roles rather than prescribing templates, but I'd add two categories:&nbsp; Melee Combat Ranged Combat Trap Detection & Removal Wizardry Magic Divine Magic Healing There are a lot of other canonical aspects of playing Dungeon Fantasy (e.g., buying and selling in capital-'T' Town), but those are the live-or-die essentials as I see them. Note that divine magic doesn't necessarily mean healing and vice versa, but it often ends up being the same. Also note that the two "Magic" categories are extremely &nbsp;broad in scope.&nbsp; Yesterday, Chris reiterated a concept initially mentioned during our first-season "planning session," that of a character stable where players can pick and choose a balanced party from among a pool of three characters while the party is in Town. As has been previously stated, that adds some work for both the GM, who must plan the dungeon, and the players, who must make the additional characters. Mathematically, it would also mean that PC's won't reach as high a point total by the end of the season, and I wouldn't want to advance characters who aren't delving for a number of reasons. It's a good concept, though. Something to continue to think about.&nbsp; We'll figure it all out by October, I'm certain. Until then, the second season is still ongoing. We have the off season to play arena games and one-shots.&nbsp; Gorefest Dungeon is and will remain all about killing monsters while avoiding traps to gain power, fame and wealth&nbsp;in episodic "down-and-town" dungeon exploration, looting and liberation sessions. It's a dungeon crawl. Not all that much is going to change come Autumn.

Stripe said: We'll figure it all out by October, I'm certain. Until then, the second season is still ongoing. We have the off season to play arena games and one-shots.&nbsp; Gorefest Dungeon is and will remain all about killing monsters while avoiding traps to gain power, fame and wealth&nbsp;in episodic "down-and-town" dungeon exploration, looting and liberation sessions. It's a dungeon crawl. Not all that much is going to change come Autumn. Stripe has said a lot in his post here. And over the past years we have had a good amount of players. As he'll be the first to tell folks, Archie and I joined this game at the same time and we've been here since the start. Brandon came by a week later and through him we found Luke and through Archie we've gotten Valter and Naryar. And then from Stripe, he pulled from his old games to bring us Mark from To Steal a Dragon's Tooth. An old Play by Post GURPs game that he considers his masterpiece, or at least one of the best that he's ever run. When I first replied to the LFG post for Gorefest Dungeon on R20, I'd been looking through all the games that I had access to books for. I went through D&D 3e, 3.5e, 4e, Pathfinder, and a bunch of others before I finally remembered that I had access to some of the GURPs books and had actually taken a look through them and found them interesting. Reading his post informing folks that they would die and that he had specific purposes for starting this campaign, my first thought wasn't to consider that this might be a bit too advanced for me, but instead be drawn by the simple fact that his posting actually had punctuation and proper grammar. That, combined with my rather great inexperience with any sort of tabletop gaming in general actually got me to make a post expressing interesting the literal night before the first session was to start. As time has gone on, Stripe has always been kind enough to try to guide me and the other players, giving suggestions and taking opinions. He has encouraged us to run a couple maps/dungeons. And through this, this is no longer just Stripe's Gorefest Dungeon but he has made it all of ours by inviting us in and now we're looking at suggestions for how to run the future games. ♦Dungeon Design: Season 1 "ended" with an experimental couple sessions, including a "lost session", that took place in town with more NPCs involvement than you could conceivably kill if only because the King's men would take it in a rather bad way. And while I found this fun, it also seemed out of place in a Dungeon Fantasy setting. As far as I can tell, the absolute bare minimum Dungeon Fantasy has a couple components. 1. Town, no name needed and no real map needed because you're not going to be leaving Town. 2. Dungeons. They can be a mega-dungeon, sewers, a tower of some kind. Whatever it is, it is an existence "outside of town". 3. Quests. They may be as simple as locating an "artifact" in a dungeon, killing a specific creature, gathering 20 bear asses, or bringing back moss gathered from the south end of a north bound moose. The later supplements expand this starting in Dungeon Fantasy 10 where they introduce the fact that there might actually be more to Town than it initially seems by introducing named taverns. Dungeon Fantasy 16 goes even further beyond this by insinuating that there might actually be more to the world outside the dungeon and Town by suggesting that Road to Nowhere that runs through the town might go through any number of places. And then Dungeon Fantasy 17 gives us expanded rules for guilds, temples and many other organizations. Personally, I would like to hearken back more towards the original concept of Dungeon Fantasy. When someone thinks of a dungeon crawler, there's probably a lot of games that come to mind like D&D, Elder Scrolls, Dungeon Siege, Fate, Torchlight, Legend of Grimrock now. For me, it all comes down to 2 games. The first is Diablo, and I do mean the original Diablo game, not the series. In that game it has all that Dungeon Fantasy requires, it has a Town, it has a dungeon that you descend down, it has a few quests. What's outside of Town? Well you're informed in the manual that it's part of a kingdom, but since your character is just there to go down the dungeon, then who cares? You got three classes: 1. Warrior, there to bash the hell outta things. 2. Rogue, there to snipe things from ranged and disarm traps. 3. Sorcerer, there to blow everything up. There was no Cleric, and let's face the fact that the reason behind that is because at such an early state, even then people realized that very few would want to play support and instead filled that role by giving out tons of magical staves, wands, potions, and scrolls to ensure that no one would be without healing. The second game is one that probably no one would consider as a Dungeon Crawler and that is the Left 4 Dead series. The reason why I picked this because of the simple fact that it can be considered one. This is because of the core component of the game is appropriately boiled down to: leave safehouse, accomplish objectives to get through level, enter safehouse. You can pick up new weapons in the field, refresh yourself in the safehouse at the start of every level. And in-between you've got a bunch of things to do, especially starting in the second game. But what I would like to focus on is the Safehouse aspect. With using these two games as a inspiration, I like to put forwards towards doing a multi-level mega dungeon for next season. Just try to see how far down we can actually go. Maybe we could even take turns building and running a level of such a dungeon for fun and to keep Stripe from burning out. That would be the Diablo influence. The L4D aspect would be the constant of each level being Saferooms scattered around each level in which the party is able to rest appropriately. I took this approach in designing my Funhouse dungeon by leaving blank rooms and places where the team could stop for awhile before continuing on. ♦Character Design: I'm going to halfway disagree with Stripe here on adding the two new categories. Trap Detection & Removal is not so much a category as it would be a applied lens. As for healing, no team here should be without healing. The majority, if not all, of the templates includes First Aid, even just as a background skill so at least one person should be able to help a little bit. Clerics, Druids, and Holy Warriors also all get Esoteric Medicine to complement things/give a second chance. Though as Sarman has found out, First Aid is apparently harder than it looks. Beyond that, however, I like the idea that as we have broken through the 300 point barrier, then we should put it to a vote about allow starting characters to begin at 300 points with the caveat that the extra 50 are to come from either power-ups or profession lenses to avoid any problems. Alternately, if you want to spend some of them on a racial template from DF3 that normally has a large cost like the Coelopterans, Half-Infused, or the Celestials, then ask GMs. What do you folks think about how to go with character creation from here?

Quick question for you guys. Would you have any problem with accepting some lower quality maps in exchange for quicker modular dungeon making?

i like making maps and such but for my self it would probably be all hand drawn lol and i am cool with hand drawn stuff i use this thing called emanation ;P&nbsp;

"Imagination." I remember using that along with hand-drawn maps.

I do hand-drawn maps. No problem there.

How about sharing player vision across all player-controlled tokens? If you can do that, I don't actually know. It'd make things a bit more open, would let Chris the camera man see the action all of the time (if you haven't already done that) and might let you do that arc of vision thing that I think that you can do in roll20 without things feeling too stifling (+make things a bit more interesting for us folks sat at the back passed out under a cart :U). E: by which I mean, instead of having circular light sources you restrict the arc as we've done with Hobbes' helmet lanterns depending on the character's arc of vision (240 for peripheral, 180 for normal, 120 for no peripheral, 60 or whatever for tunnel...) It was an idea.

Internet is out. Hopefully, HOPEFULLY , it'll be back by the 1st. Service provider is no longer providing service due to a business buyout so I have to find a new one.