Shadows of Eidolon - a GURPS Shadow World feature

wrathchild · Post by **wrathchild** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 4:35 am

This thread will contain postbacks from a GURPS campaign unfolding in the setting Shadow World* - this post marks the second session** using MT, and a post/thread about our first outing can be found here.

This shows F2F use of MT, with not much prep time. Simplest of backgrounds with a different texture to simulate a dirt road. Also, it was done with the player image projected onto a wall, for a big, big image to see. Nice

The encounter was devised as a showcase for the group's ranged capabilities, and wasn't intended as a serious challenge.

This is the image of the battle as it stood when we ended the session. This is basically the situation at the end of the first pass by the riders. The central group is all but wiped out, and the two flanks are being decimated - the horses that is. Only two of the riders are really out, but the battle plan is in serious disarray

. The PC's will make short work of this. Well, maybe.

MT angle: It is just great to be able to pause like this and be able to just continue the next time. Everyone can just look and go "Ah - there we were". This also marked the first use of InitTool, and it works fine, even though I still have to master the basics - but I'm getting there.

The session had it's speed problems, but those were related to us all handling two complicated PC's with players absent. MT got even better reactions than last time.

One thing that I noticed was that I was able to game a trio of traitors in the caravan (the pink halos). These token I just let dissappear from view at one point as they his behind carts to get into positions for surprise attacks - and no one noticed for a couple of turns - very "chaos of combat"-like.

The halo-hex-thing has been mentioned elsewhere - not so pretty, looking forward to an update

And looking forward to the "projector view" option - that will be really great.

'Till next time!

* Shadow World is an old campaign world. It is cinematic high magic fantasy, but with a wider technological spread (almost up to fledgling industrialism in places, and even an interstellar civilization surrounding it in secret if you want to include that, and furthermore remnants of ancient super-tech). This makes it very suitable for GURPS.

** This second session was short due to two cancellations (out of five players) and another player having to leave early to be with wife and newborn. So we really only had acouple of hours to game this big and complicated encounter.

The session started on a cliffhanger. The PC's had been escorting a small "caravan" of hand-drawn carts, transporting crates full of bicycles (yes, bicycles). This is of course valuable rarities in this world, and the bicycles have been commisioned by the head of state in a land inspired by medieval China/Japan, so honour and prestige ride on these prescious items reaching their goal - which of course means that the political opposition in the land is working hard to foil the delivery of the cargo. The cliffhanger - and thus the starting point for this session - were the appearance of 15 horsemen armed with bows and swords, intent on attacking the caravan.

The horsemen charged in three groups of five, on two flanks and down the middle, wanting to use bows to score some early kills. Well, that was the plan.

RPTroll · Post by **RPTroll** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 8:35 am

Halos are almost required for top-down tokens. I started using them to surround bad guys in red so they don't submerge into the background graphics.

Did GURPS lend itself well to maptool?

Post by **trevor** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 11:26 am

That's really cool wrathchild.

I love the feeling of scale in your image, it gives a great sense of freedom of movement. Clever about turning off the visibility of your tokens to sneak around

wrathchild · Post by **wrathchild** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 12:06 pm

RPTroll wrote:Did GURPS lend itself well to maptool?

IMO MapTool and GURPS is a match made in heaven

. The only area with "some assembly required" is the vision/lights issue, as GURPS don't have hard and fast ranges, but uses modifiers on success rolls, giving the effect of spotting things at different distances given the same conditions. There _is_ a Perception/Eyesight stat, however, and it is not too much of a stretch to define Visions based on this one.

Also different conditions might call for different methods. IN the encounter above, where weather and all make for good, clear, open conditions, I think I will come to prefer that little trick of simply turning off visibility.

Anything else in paticular you were curious about, RP? It is obviously a game that uses a tactical grid (GURPS have several modes of complexity in the combat system, from mostly freeform to tight, wargamelike miniature rules)

RPTroll · Post by **RPTroll** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 9:06 pm

Nothing in particular. I just like seeing how different game systems integrate into Maptool. I've been amazed how easy it is to put just about anything into it. There are some issues with Shadow Run and the way it counts dice and I was interested if GURPS had any similar issues which required work-arounds.

wrathchild · Post by **wrathchild** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 3:40 am

No problems with die rolling. GURPS mostly rolls either 3d6 under or equal to a modified skill level/attibute level for sucess at a task (sometimes opposed by other rolls of the same type), or a number of d6, maybe with a small modifier (-1 to +3, generally) specifically for damage in combat. Nothing fancy there. You might want to be able to tell criticals, but then you would need some function to enter the target number every time (and those fluctuate! In GURPS, the Devil resides in the modifiers), and as the critical rules are also simple, I think it best handeled manually.

I imagine that scripting may at some point be used to create tables (GURPS use a couple of these, mainly critical tables and Fright Checks), but again - I'm looking for a Gm tool to handle some reasonably simple stuff, with maybe a fourish here and there, and as things are generally kept optional in MT, I can do just that. Go MT!

Oh, and as this is a F2F game, people still roll their dice around the table, old skool style

wrathchild · Post by **wrathchild** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 4:53 am

The followup session to the one above has been run, and MT steered us to the end nicely. Nothing new under the sun MT-wise, really, exept some fine tuning of projector placement and such. Still used 1.3.b14

The session did set up for a dungeon delving skit, and here I think there will be use for many of the little tricks and trappings that MT can provide.

Did get around to getting portraits associated with PC tokens, and it is such a nice little touch

Post by **trevor** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 12:14 am

Awesome, good to hear ! Thanks for the report back

Emryys · Post by **Emryys** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 1:13 am

Holy horse carnage!

*I didn't see a disclaimer about no animals being hurt during this game...

Looks like fun

Glanrus · Post by **Glanrus** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:21 pm

I was wondering how the top down models would do for visibility. It makes sense that you use the halos. Neat looking battle.

Glanrus

Hawke · Post by **Hawke** » Sun Oct 28, 2007 10:12 pm

Instead of halos you can add underlays to the token image files if you like. I know it's work if you're doing it for a bunch of tokens but might be a neat effect for the PCs.

wrathchild · Post by **wrathchild** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 1:47 am

I'm actually doing some fiddling with various token styles. Top Down are "realistic", but they often create some visibility issues. Full-body images are nice for visibility, but ...

I'm toying with something in between at the moment. Using actual mini's as a starting point you can create a not-quite-top-down image, from maybe 15% off the apex above the head. This shows muich more of the figure, making it more recognizeable, and taking on a lot of the attributes of the "from the side" images, while still seeming "top-down". The "worst" thing about these is that the perspective can look a little funny - but these may become my mini-of-choice. If they don't I actually think I will come to prefer "full-body-side-on" tokens over top-downs ... but I'm still sitting on a couple of fences here

Post by **trevor** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 9:58 am

Post some screenies of them in use, I'd very much like to see them

wrathchild · Post by **wrathchild** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 10:05 am

AFAICT it should be easy for some of our image wizards to do the "not-quite-top-down"-style for some of their creations also ...

wrathchild · Post by **wrathchild** » Mon Oct 29, 2007 10:15 am

Emryys wrote:Holy horse carnage!

*I didn't see a disclaimer about no animals being hurt during this game...

Looks like fun

Yeah - a testimony to the ... pragmatism (*cough*ruthlessbastards*cough*) ... of the PC team. They are not about letting animal health getting in the way of PC health!

They put down something like 12 horses afterwards.

....

The campaign is one of those old skool "forever"-campaigns, and the PC's will encounter combat in many ways and forms. This was in the wide open, and they have good resources for that.

Next time is going to be wholly opposite - underground, cramped, caved in spaces, crawly-critters, and a couple of surprises best not told yet

. They do not have the same kind of ressources for that.

... hehe ...

... hehehe ...

... ahem, sorry 'bout that ...