Fallout Denver Session Notes 4: Wherein Our Heroes Obtain Information and Goods Before Fleeing Dangerous Situations

This is a record of a GURPS campaign set in a non-canonical version of Denver in the Fallout universe. The last part is here, or you can start at the beginning.

Once the party decided to stay on in Borealis, they ventured to a corner of the settlement where they were told public bounties would be available for consideration. On the way, they stopped off at a maintenance area where Gadget convinced the local smith to let her make modifications to Drengo's powerfist. His already powerful weapon would be equipped with a vicious blade for future encounters. They also did some trading with a local protectron shopkeeper, who seemed desperate to find a buyer for a surplus of life vests.

This done, they spoke with a local member of the town's administration team, who presented them with an array of possible public requests to look into.

For starters, they headed to a ghoul settlement that had lapsed on paying protection money to Borealis. Once there, they found a terrible malady spreading through the population that caused an outbreak of ghouls going feral. Drengo, as a ghoul, could pass without notice among the ferals, and Remington was able to sneak through the area with little trouble. Gadget and Chance kept watch at the perimeter, and missed Drengo's near-fatal encounter with a ghoul doctor.

Doctor Malone and his team had been desperately seeking a cure for the outbreak. Yet, when Malone found himself the last of his team, his focus shifted from treatment to quarantine. Upon Drengo and Remington's arrival, they found a ghoul who had shackled himself to the wall of a basement laboratory, and who tried to shoot them both to keep them from leaving the town as possible carriers of the mysterious plague. Remington and Drengo managed to survive the encounter, and flee without taking the doctor's life. Their questions answered, the party returned to Borealis to report the fall of this unnamed settlement.

Next, they sought out an abandoned RobCo plant. Borealis had an open bounty on electrical components useful to building the town infrastructure. On arrival, the party found a factory half buried beneath the ramped dirt at a crater's edge. Through the front doors, they took a left, and a shotgun immediately fired inches from Remington's face. The fear left Remy doubled over and retching for long seconds while the rest filed into an office-turned holdout shelter to salvage for useful equipment.

Scattered through the facilty, they found some assorted knick-knacks, and found protectrons roughly dismantled. The damage to the destroyed units was hard to identify, but the party was ready when they found an active protectron defending a small office unit. Beyond that, they caught a glimpse of what had fought against and beaten the protectrons. The back wall of the plant had been destroyed, and in the dirt behind it, tunnels spread, and a teeming colony of giant ants swarmed.

With armloads of tech, and no reason to loot ant corpses, the party decided to nope right away from that anthill, and return to Borealis with their spoils. Of course, they couldn't resist the allure of seeing what would happen if they shot a power cell with a 9mm pistol on the way. The results were colorful and radioactive, and the party decided to keep that option in mind if that level of firepower were to become necessary in the future.

The Orcs of Benighted Ur'alek: A Tale of Tulkas

(This is a story told by Tulkas, son of Gorgas, wardrummer of the clan Kalthas-Kor. He is a half-orc bard that I play in a D&D campaign in a homebrew world)

Benighted Ur'alek beyond the sea,
whence orcs of old did keep their ancient seat,
before the orcish lives of piracy,
before the gods of old did taste defeat.

O, Ur'alek of war-cursed, night-locked coast
where no orc e'er so brave would stand to post,
How dark against your former glory bright
Beyond the southern sea on shores of blight.

When glory in your old environs shone,
when Malor sat the honored coral throne
when Malor held the silver spear of kings
when orcs knew not of deep and maddened things.

When Ebir, son of Malor, sought his fame
when Nabak, and Ibakae with him came.
With Adiok, and Dolzayeh, and Kurr;
with Vozrid, and the traitor Raldanur.

All seeking trophies from the goblin-horde
all seeking glory from the goblins gored.
Each one an orc to kill the goblin theives
and crush the vermin skulls 'neath leathern greaves.

A cave three days from Ur'alek did break
and hearing howls from darkness, orcs did quake
yet, spurred to boldness by Ebir they went,
to darkness and to madness boldly sent.

Two days they searched the cave til Nabok shrewd
did spot a loosened stone within the gloom.
Together, all the orcs pried loose the way,
and at the stench-foul darkness all did sway.

"Come orcs," cried Ebir, "No dark shall master me.
Orcs, orcs, masters of the land and sea.
What orcish youth, eater of bonemeal bread
would quake to step where goblins bravely tread?

"My spear I'll red, with blood of dead
while fainter hearts tremble a-home, a-bed.
Or did you think the battle a thing so clean,
or yourselves above a task so foul and mean?

"With strength, we'll haul the denizens of dark
to searing light of sunlight's cleansing spark.
Our rivers ours, my homestead mine,
when thieving goblins dead upon the brine.

"Come arrow," cried with beating of the chest,
"Take blood and bone, and carve ye at the breast,
I won't be held by barbs and stinging bites,
but brush away the broken goblin-mites.

"For Ur'alek, the capitol so strong,
we'll charge a slaughter days and evenings long,
and when our wounding game leaves blood-slick stone,
we'll know ourselves the heroes of our home."

His boasting cried, the orcs resounded back,
no goblin-might enough to force them slack,
they stepped into the odor-haunted dark
lighting torches by a peer-shared spark.

Down the depths, and through the cavern-night
the orcish party sought their proof of might,
and at a sound all turned to see their prize,
and hearts all melted at the sight upon their eyes.

A mass of twisted flesh and nonsense shape
gibbering foul blasphemies from mouths agape,
a hunter of an age forgotten long
a thing of darkest lore and unsung song.

The terrible and twisted bulk of ages
kept worshipped by the darkness maddened sages
a god of shape unlike the mortal beasts
a-bed in bony evidence of feasts.

Abandoned by the coward Raldanur,
Nabak and Kurr were killed by tendril skewer
the rest were left to flee before the might
of such great power couched in wicked night.

Their flight to Ur'alek could not them save,
when wakened evil broke free from its knave.
And to the sea, orcs fled the darkness foul,
and vowed revenge on that immortal howl.

And so, the war 'tween orcs and gods began
when from our precious shores we swiftly ran,
and still the orcs avoid the cursed wreck
of land and stone we once called Ur'alek.

Can We Blend Narrative and Mechanical Magic?

Hey all,

This last weekend, I had the chance to watch a pair of videos that made some really interesting points regarding magic in fiction. They were Hello Future Me's videos On Writing: Hard Magic Systems in Fantasy and On Writing: Soft Magic Systems in Fantasy

The general premise of the videos was to break down what makes a rigid and well-defined magic system work, versus what makes a more flowy and ethereal magic system work. A key principle repeated throughout the two videos was Sanderson's First Law of Magic. "An author's ability to solve problems with magic is directly proportional to how well the reader understands said magic." Stated another way, the less well-defined your magic is, the less it can be used to solve problems in the narrative. As a side note to this, magic of any level of mysteriousness can be used to CREATE problems in the narrative with little or no issue.

What made me want to write a blog post on the subject was Hello Future Me's complaint near the end of the videos that few fictional worlds create a series of magical systems within a single world, all of varying levels of "hardness" and "softness". Thinking about that, it's true that there are few, but one glaring example stands out as something that attempts to work a multitude of magical systems into a single universe. It is Dungeons and Dragons (as well as derivative products of D&D).

The wizard is not a sorceror, who is not a warlock, who is not a bard, who is not a druid, who is not a cleric, etc. etc. as deep as the splatbooks go. I see this as admirable. D&D makes a strong effort to incorporate various magical systems that are all meant to simulate vastly different approaches to magic.

All of that said, I believe D&D fails in this effort. This failing, in my opinion, boils down to the core of D&D's magical system, Vancian Spellcasting. Named for author Jack Vance, Vancian spellcasting uses three basic principles.

1) Every spell is a single, distinct unit of magic with a singular effect.
2) Spells must be prepared before each use.
3) Magicians have a set list of spells which may be prepared.

This is a highly specific set of rules. I.e. all magic in D&D is hard magic. To some extent, this is difficult to break away from. To reference back to Sandersons First Law of Magic: if the magic is not specifically understood, its problem-solving ability must be handicapped to maintain drama and tension in the story. Dungeons and Dragons needs magic that can solve problems for the players, and so, it will always need the magic to fall somewhat on the hard magic side.

However, I have a thought; and that thought is Lasers and Feelings. Lasers and Feelings has a mechanic that is truly wonderful in its simplicity. You have a single stat. If you're rolling one type of check, you must roll under your score, and if you're rolling the other type, you must roll over your score. This creates a mathematically simple solution to making a character better at some things, at the sacrifice of other things.

So, we would need a system in which rolling over your score is needed for specific, scholastic spell-use. This would also include literacy, magical knowledge, and analysis of the magical use of others. Specific spells would all be custom made by the players using a point-buy system similar to what Shadowrun uses for custom spells. These would be the more powerful, less versatile spells.

On the other side, a player would need to roll under their score to cast vague, improvised, or other spells like that. These would be less powerful, but more versatile. A prepared college wizard should be a trained combatant, while a wilder should feel more like a magical brawler, employing the magical equivalent of haymakers and dirty tricks.

As players advance, they would be able to move further toward the extremes of the track, allowing them to succeed more often, and with a greater margin of success in their preferred methods, while allowing their neglected skills to atrophy.

So, what do you think of this solution? Do you think that it capture a sense that magic feels like magic for you? How have you house-ruled magic systems in your own games? Let's chat that out in the comments.

Until the next one, happy gaming, all.

Fallout Denver Session Notes 3: The Regrettable Discovery of Borealis

This is a continuation of my records of a GURPS tabletop gaming campaign. You can see parts one and two at the links.

Having irreparably damaged relations with the pharmacy's Arcade Ganon, the party set out with Brick to cross I-225 and seek out the supermutant settlement of Borealis.

En route to this new area, a small detachment of Angels tried to attack the party, although, one well-placed grenade cleared up the encounter before things had much of a chance to escalate. Drengo interrogated the one survivor of the explosion, and learned of Chance, Gadget, and Remy's past with the dangerous gang. It was apparent, the party could expect hit squads in the days to come.

As the dying member of the Angels gang breathed his last, the party somberly recollected themselves and continued onward to Borealis in Brick's company. As they approached the area, they came into a region of sparse ruins and rolling fields surrounding the town of Borealis for about a quarter mile all around. In the distance, the too-human sounds of a mutated breed of eight-legged horses gave the party chills.

As they approached the town, they were accosted by a band of three supermutants calling themselves "tax collectors". Their leader, Davis, dropped some references to working with "east coast stock" in the form of his underlings, Claw and Break. The party, through Brick's half-remembered ramblings of the Master's Army, began to see a picture emerging of a brutish east coast batch of supermutants, and a mentally and physically superior batch made somewhere out west.

The town itself was built into the side of a crater, and guarded by towers. As the party entered the town, they were surrounded and captured by supermutant guards. As they were led away to locked room, Brick slipped into the crowd in the chaos, reunited with his people and disinclined to stick around.

After twelve hours' wait in lockdown, the party was brought before Mr. Callum, the boss of Borealis. He explained a bit of the bad blood between supermutants and humans, and gave the party an option to prove their good intentions, one mission for the town, and they could have some leeway to visit the marketplace and do business in Borealis.

Drengo and Chance left to deliver a report on behalf of Mr. Callum. They followed the crater's edge south until reaching a small encampment of a gang called the Devil Dogs. They reported, as ordered, that the Star farm had lapsed on paying protection money to Mr. Callum's tax men. They took the Devil Dog's payment for this information, and, at a bluff from Drengo, collected an extra 200 caps to line their own pockets with. Upon their return to Borealis and the delivery of Mr. Callum's money, the team was given the freedom of the town, and encouraged to stock up on supplies and take on a few of the open bounties at the town office to improve their goodwill in the area. The team conferred and decided that, since they were short on leads for good settlements for the inhabitants of vault 4, a little goodwill mingled with getting to know the area couldn't hurt.

. . . and, here, we conclude part 3. Until next time, happy gaming, all.

Special question

Hey all,

This isn't a normal blog post, this is just to announce the exciting news that last Monday's post hit over 500 page views! This kind of came out of nowhere, and I think it's a big enough milestone to do a giveaway. I have a poll for what I should give away on twitter here.

The giveaway will probably be in about a month, as I'm getting together with a blogger friend of mine in mid-February to pick each others' brains, and he's got a little more experience in this type of thing than I do.

Thanks everybody who's been reading, and here's to more adventures to come!