GURPS Hekinoe 2.0: An Itinerary and Outline

Hello.

One of the problems eye constantly struggle with is the desire to return to Hekinoe, not just the same universe like I'm doing with my Seasonal Arc campaign, but the planet itself. I want to go back there. There are still stories there that need to be told and there are new ways to punish players like Lance and Eric. The only way I'll ever be able to really return to Hekinoe is to finish converting it. In the past, this has been an exhausting process that leaves me scoured out inside with no desire to game. But it's something I want to do. It's something I need to do. It's the only way I'm going to be able to return to Hekinoe to run games or write in. So that's what this post is about. An itinerary and outline of sorts. What I need to do, how I want to organize it and so on. It's not going to be super in depth, it's just going to be a way of organizing and focusing my thoughts. 

Recently I had a brief period where I was going back and forth about Pathfinder Hekinoe vs. GURPS Hekinoe. I had considered, briefly, using Pathfinder. Pathfinder is a more palatable system for players, and it's meaty enough that I think I could make Hekinoe work well in it. I also know it well enough that I can competently and confidently hack it the fuck apart and make it work precisely the way I want it too. However, GURPS is a stronger system overall and doesn't really need to be hacked apart to make work in the first place. I will admit that it can be taxing to navigate all the rules. But, I have a pretty good group of players in mind for the future and I think they can handle it.

So let's get started with my things to do list. The first step is to establish what system I really want to use, and as we've just mentioned, it's GURPS. I am infused with the glory and adrenaline of progress. Woo. 

The next step is to re-map Hekinoe and The Known World. With the changes of Hekinoe 2.0 that I mentioned several weeks ago, I'm going to need new maps for the world to kind of spread out the existing cultures a little and cut out the dead weight (I'm looking at you Plains of Dust). Since we're remapping already and spreading the currently existing contents of the world out a little bit, we can also probably dip our toes into creating a map of the globe as well as putting down continents and such that exist inside my head but have never been placed on a map. Once we figure out where everything is and establish which cultures know where what is, we'll need to alter the main timeline of the world to reflect the various changes that have taken place. We'll also likely need to come up with one or two new continent names as well. 

The next and final step of this very short things to do list, is complete the campaign book. That said, I'd like to also establish a kind of progression guide and chapter list and that sort of thing to kind of focus myself and establish what I'm doing and in what order and that sort of thing. Bouncing around from thing to thing hasn't really worked for me in the past and has left a few dozen out of order documents in my Google Drive folders that I would have to struggle to arrange in a good order. So I want a chapter outline and that sort of thing for this attempt at a campaign book.

So we need to organize ourselves and our chapters to get things situated. For chapter one, I'd like to have an introduction. Who I am and what my experiences have been over the past 20 years or so of gaming. What sorts of games I like to run and that sort of thing. I'd also like to lay down what my expectations are of my players and that sort of thing. Overall I'd like it to be a hey, here is who I am and how I game chapter. Something to give my players insight into how I do things and why I do things certain ways. This seems kind of silly to me, as most of the people I game with have gamed with me since I started, but I've never really laid down why I do things certain ways before. So maybe it'll have value. Who knows. If the chapter ends up being lame, I'll just yank it out. 

After the first introduction chapter, I kinda don't know what to do next. Should I jump right into lore or rules or what, you know? I think I'd like to lead with lore and background material for the most part. So I think I'm going to have chapter two be a fairly large chapter about the races, nations, and continents of The Known World, which is the area of Hekinoe 2.0 that encompasses all our pre-existing material like Kusseth, The Fallen Empire of Man, Serethnem, etc, etc, etc. They'll all be broken up into a few different continents and stuff as I've previously said, but the name will still be used for all the things familiar to us from previous versions of Hekinoe. This chapter will start off with the timeline of Hekinoe and then I'll break it up by continent. This chapter will also be the chapter that includes the racial and cultural templates for the purposes of building characters and that sort of thing. 

I'd like chapter 3 to be about the various organizations and people of The Known World. Groups like The Organization and people like Savage Doc Managan and Laram of Volungshemle. Basically a chapter designed like those old 2nd Edition AD&D Forgotten Realms books Heroes' Lore Book and Villains' Lorebook. I'm not sure if I'll end up including stats and that sort of thing. Part of me wants to, but part of me wants to keep things nebulous and undefined. We'll see. 

I'd like the next chapter, chapter 4, to be about the technology of The Known World. Primarily this is just going to be equipment lists and stats, but I'd also like to talk a little bit about steam technology and electricity and that sort of think. Maybe. Maybe it'll just be gear. Lots and lots of gear. Maybe also some gear specific rules and such. We'll see.

The next chapter will be about sorcery and to a lesser extent, psionics. This chapter is going to go over the lore and history of sorcery and psionics and that sort of thing. The majority of it will be rules material though, as the rules that govern sorcery and psionics and what they can and cannot do will require extensive documentation. Which will be totally fun and exciting to write down for like the fiftieth time. 

The next chapter should be the final chapter involving lore and background material. Chapter six will be about the flora and faun of The Known World. It'll be the Monster Manual chapter. Which should be entertaining to craft. Here is where you'll find all the night fowl and dragon and great ursine stats and stuff. This chapter will definitely include stats, because that's where all the fun is in a Bestiary style chapter of a campaign book. 

The next chapter will be about character creation and advancement. Character creation is pretty straightforward in GURPS, just buy shit, but I want to outline a few aspects and talk about points levels and that sort of thing. The rules for advancement are also pretty straightforward, but I'd like to discuss them in a little detail with my players, rather than rely on them just reading them in the GURPS rulebooks. I want to lay out precisely how advancement is achieved and what some of my opinions and rulings on the topic are going to be. 

I want the next section to a general kind of rules focused chapter. GURPS has a host of optional rules and cinematic rules and that sort of thing. I'd like to talk about some of my rulings on those and kind of lay out which ones I like and which ones I don't. I'd also like this to be the chapter where I talk about generalized rules and mechanics stuff that I've changed from base GURPS. There shouldn't be too much stuff of that nature, as GURPS is pretty solid in my opinion, but what little there is should be clearly documented for players. I'd also like for this chapter to be where I put all the Hekinoe specific skills and techniques, as well as documentation on which advantages and disadvantages are allowed or verboten in which situations. 

So this is what we're looking at:

Things To Do

1. Figure out game system. GURPS. Duh. 
2. Re-map and rename stuff for Hekinoe 2.0 changes.
3. Adjust the timeline of Hekinoe.
4. Complete the fucking campaign book. 

Campaign Book Outline

1. Introduction to me and how I game and why I game and what I expect of myself and my players. 
2. Continents, nations, and races of The Known World. Racial and cultural templates go here, towards the end of the appropriate section. 
3. Organizations and people. Not sure how long this chapter will be or how long it will take. I only have a vague idea about the majority of the cults and secret societies and such of The Known World. 
4. Technology of The Known World. Gear and equipment and stuff. 
5. Psionics and Sorcery. Background information and rules information about sorcery and psionics. 
6. Flora and Fauna of The Known World. Monster Manual/Bestiary chapter. 
7. Character Creation and Advancement. Creating characters and making them better, faster, stronger. Etc. 
8. Rules, as well as other bullshit. 

It doesn't really look like much, if I'm being completely honest. But it's something. It's an idea of how to proceed and what I need to do. It's not some vaguely defined unwritten idea that I should do something or complete something or poke and prod at something. Ideally it will help me focus and organize my thoughts and get me making progress on the changes to Hekinoe 2.0 and converting Hekinoe to GURPS and writing it all down somewhere in a way that people will eventually read and hopefully understand. 

We'll see.

House Rules: Initiative Score

So one of the concepts I really like from GURPS is a static initiative score. It is derived from DX and one or two other stats if I remember right. I don’t necessarily dislike 5th Edition (or any edition’s) initiative system of d20 + Dexterity modifier + whatever other random modifiers there are. But I would like something a little more comprehensive and something that doesn’t involve rolling. Initiative has always been a chaotic time in my groups. Whether I’m running games or participating as a player, people just roll and then yell numbers. It is chaotic and confusing and detracts from a DMs ability to set up a fight because he’s trying to assign numbers to voices to characters while doing the same for his NPCs. DnDs system of initiative is also super abstract and doesn’t incorporate real time modifications to your ability to react and stuff. Like you can roll a 20 for initiative, get subjected to a sleep spell, miss four rounds of a fight, and then pop back into the fight at the highest initiative as if your character isn’t just waking up and going “What the fuck happened just now?”

Just as a heads up, I’ve already created the majority of these rules for my Seasonal Arc campaign. This blog post isn’t so much about creating the rules as it is about going over my thought process during the creation of them and refining what I currently have. 

So, let’s work on creating an initiative score. This is a static number that won’t change much from fight to fight. My theory being that attentive characters with an ability to rapidly respond to events will tend to always be attentive and able to rapidly respond to events, while slow unobservant characters will tend to always be slow and unobservant. Unless the former are completely surprised and the latter are doing the surprising. 

So the first thing we need is the base of your initiative score. We need to factor in your physical ability to respond to the events surrounding you as well as your awareness of your surroundings. That’s one thing DnD’s initiative lacks in my opinion. It measures your ability to respond to your surroundings via Dexterity, but doesn’t factor in whether or not you are aware of the events surrounding you. So let’s do something simple. We’ll start with a base of 5. Obviously we’ll add in your character’s Dexterity modifier, because duh. The other ability score modifier I want to add is your Wisdom modifier. This is like when you make Wisdom (Perception) ability checks. It represents your awareness of your surroundings. 

So your base initiative score is as follows 5 + Dexterity modifier + Wisdom modifier. Plus any other relevant modifiers like that one feat Alertness and that Rogue archetype ability that adds your Charisma modifier to initiative checks. 

One thing I should mention before we continue is that I’ve house ruled in some modifications to armor and how that works. It just seemed to make sense to me that if medium and heavy armor affect how much your Dexterity can improve your AC, they should also affect how much your Dexterity affects initiative and Dexterity saving throws. Being unarmored has no effect, wearing light armor limits you to applying a maximum of +4 from Dexterity modifier to initiative, saving throws, and AC. Wearing medium armor limits you to +2 and wearing heavy armor limits you to +0. Don’t wear full plate and try to pull off flippy ninja shit. Hmm, should I limit how much of your Dexterity modifier can carry over to ability checks as well? 

So here is where I get into a bit of an argument with myself. My current iteration of these house rules says being unarmored grants a +1 to initiative, wearing light armor has no benefit or penalty, wearing medium incurs a -1 penalty, and wearing heavy incurs a -2. My logic here is that armor is heavy and would slow your reactions down a bit and that I’ve never moved as fast as I have when I’ve been streaking. However, this portion of the rule kind of goes against 5th Edition’s design goal of not having a bunch of little situational modifiers shitting pluses and minuses all over the place. I think I might simplify it down to say that being unarmored or wearing light armor has no additional penalty to initiative, but wearing medium or heavy armor incurs a -1 penalty to initiative, -2 if the armor in question has a Strength requirement and you do not meet it. That still does the whole modifier thing, but it’s a little simplified. Kind of. Fuck off, it’s my game.

So one thing that bothers me that I mentioned above is that spells and effects that knock you out and restrain you have no effect on your initiative. My current rules have a bunch of penalties to your initiative that depend on how long you’ve been affected and what type of effect it is. Just like above with armor, this flies in the face of 5th Edition’s goal of reducing the modifiers that are all over the place. So here’s my idea for how to reduce that. If you are physically restrained in a way that prevents you from interacting with your surroundings, but are still aware of them (like if you are paralyzed or restrained), you lose your Dexterity modifier to your initiative score. If your senses are impaired, but you are still able to physically interact with your surroundings (like if you are blinded or deafened), you lose your Wisdom modifier to your initiative score. If your senses are impaired and you are physically impaired (like if you are unconscious or something) your initiative becomes last place. The only caveat to this is that if you can get out of these effects by the end of your turn or the end of your next turn if you are afflicted with them on someone else’s turn, they do not change your initiative. 

I like that, it’s a little simplified, but it keeps the core idea that if your senses or physical mobility is impaired, you’ll naturally be impaired in combat.  The final issue I have is the question of whether or not your initiative goes back to normal after these effects end after you’ve been affected by them for a few rounds. Like I said earlier, you shouldn’t just pop up from being unconscious/asleep/dying and be back in first place in the initiative order. I think with being unconscious, you’ve missed too much to hop back into the initiative order. With your senses being impaired and your physical ability being impaired, you’re still aware enough of your surroundings and stuff that you can get back into things quickly enough. That seems reasonable. I think for simplicity’s sake instead of the lines about ending the effect before the end of your next turn not impairing your initiative in the impaired senses and physical impairment sections I’m just going to say that whenever the effect impairing you ends, your Dexterity modifier and Wisdom modifier are restored to your initiative score. 

Alright, let’s talk about a tricky issue: surprise. I’ve gone back and forth with a few ideas about this. The surprisers gain a +5 to initiative score. The surprised have a -5. The surprised lose their Wisdom bonus to their initiative scores. Etc, etc. Most of the options I’ve toyed with fly in the face of 5th Edition’s reduction of situation modifiers. Apparently I can’t escape my let’s have all the situation modifiers of my Pathfinder/3.5 roots. 

This is awkward. I’ve just discovered that they have changed the surprise rules in 5th Edition. In past editions, the surprisers had a surprise round where they could take one action before normal initiative starts. In 5th Edition, if you’re surprised, you can’t move or take an action on your first turn of combat, and you can’t take a reaction until the end of your first turn. This actually works quite well in my opinion. I don’t really feel like it needs any additional modifications from my own house rules. It penalizes those that are surprised in combat enough that I feel like adding anything additional to how surprise and initiative interact might be too much. I could probably make a case for granting an initiative bonus to the surprisers in combat, but that feels kind of unnecessary. I think surprise works as is in terms of how it affects combat and initiative and whatnot. We’ll leave it as is. 

There are a couple more odds and ends, but nothing too noteworthy. When you critically hit in combat, your initiative score gains a +1 and when you critically miss, your initiative gains a -1. Just like normal, when you delay or ready your action, your initiative becomes one higher than the triggering action. If an effect would normally grant you advantage on initiative rolls, you instead gain a +4 and if an effect would normally impose disadvantage on initiative rolls, your initiative score gets a -4.

I think this has been productive. I’ve refined the rules I had already come up with, slightly. I discovered a rule change I was previously unaware of. Good times. 

House Rules: Death and Dying In the Desert

So one of the things I’ve always been irritated with DnD about is the abstract and completely divorced from reality nature of hit points and dying. In the current edition, you drop unconscious at 0 hit points and then have to make death saves. Which are DC 10 d20 rolls  where you either stabilize or die. Three failed death saves in a day and you die. There are other rules for rolling bad on death saves, being attacked while at 0 hit points, rolling a natural 20, and so on and so forth. But here’s the thing that really bugs me, the thing that has always bugged me. Regardless of what your current hit point total is, how many death saves you’ve failed today, and how many hit dice you have left, you are as fine as you are when you’ve just finished a long rest. You operate at peak efficiency regardless of how numerically rough your health is at a given moment. I understand it, but it aggravates me. There should be a cost to getting into combat repeatedly and throwing yourself into the meat grinder with wild abandon, and there isn’t.

On a side note, would you like to know the name of a system that abstracts health and wellness and death and dying but has statistical penalties for having low hit points and low reserves of energy and treats combat like it is always a dangerous thing to engage in? Fucking GURPS.

GURPS treats combat like it is deadly and risky and you can get pretty fucked up in any fight because fights are chaotic and deadly and you’re never a giant sack of hit points. You can always die by being stabbed once or twice and a super high HT only serves to make it slightly easier for you to survive being grievously injured. GURPS was designed to make combat difficult and dangerous. DnD has a different design goal. DnD rules are designed to have X amount of encounters each scenario with the assumption that each encounter will consume Y of the party’s resources with only combat encounters that are specifically designed with a certain level of difficulty in mind having the risk of player death. Basically, DnD is weak sauce easy mode. Which has been the case for the past few editions. In 2nd Edition do you know what happened when you hit 0 hit points? You died. No death saves, no you can still be healed and pop back up, etc. You died. You ran out of hit points and you died and the group's Cleric had like six spell slots total. You still operated at peak efficiency whether you were at 1 hit point or 90, but still. Anyway. 

So my goal for The Seasonal Arc has been to portray Hasta as a deadly world of harsh deserts and murderously hungry desert creatures. Part of the way I want to portray that is to make the creatures tougher and nastier, the combats more difficult, and the death and dying rules a little more aggressive. I also want to slightly increase the player’s capabilities to show that the races of this world have evolved to be tougher just like the beasts have. 

The way I’ve decided to show that being at low hit points is bad is by leveraging levels of exhaustion. There are six levels of exhaustion and at level one your ability checks (skills) have disadvantage. The negative effects scale up until level six, which is death. So I’ve instituted a house rule that says when you’re at half your max hit point total, you gain one level of exhaustion. This level of exhaustion is removed when your hit points rise above half your hit points. This makes it risky to remain at low hit points in battle. But it’s not something that will completely cripple a character and mark him for death immediately. 

The other aspect of health and wellness in DnD is death saves. There’s no real mechanic for showing that you’re in rough shape if you’ve failed two death saves. A character with max hit points, max hit dice, and no failed death saves should be in better shape than a character that’s used a bunch of hit dice and and has failed two death saves. This is all abstract, but it should feel like that second character is closer to death, shouldn’t it? I feel like it should. But that’s just me. 

There are two ways I’ve thought of going about this. The first, and this is the one I currently have listed in my house rules for The Seasonal Arc, is to say that every failed death save you have imparts one level of exhaustion. This means that a character at 0 hit points with two failed death saves will have disadvantage on ability checks, their speed reduced by half, and will have disadvantage on saving throws and attack rolls. The second way I’ve thought of doing this is that each failed death save you have reduces your maximum hit point total. So one failed death save reduces your maximum hit points to ¾ normal and two failed death saves reduces your maximum hit points to ½ normal. 

Part of me, the sadistic part I suppose, is screaming to do both. I feel like both is too much though. With access to unlimited healing, the reducing of hit points isn’t that much of a penalty. It just ties up the characters with cure wounds and healing word studs more, which has value I suppose. I think we’ll just stick with the levels of exhaustion for failed death saves. It’s the quickest and easiest and doesn’t bog down combat with a bunch of “how many hit points do I have right now and how many can I have total” questions and math. 

The main point of this post is to figure out what I want to do with hit dice. I have instituted a house rule that says long rests restore all your hit points, but only restore hit dice equal to your Constitution modifier, minimum of 1. But that’s not really a penalty. If characters have access to unlimited healing magic, they won’t really need to spend many hit dice. So the rule is effectively pointless. But hit dice are tied to health and wellness and recovery and stuff. They represent reserves of energy, I think. So I need to represent that in some way. 

The easiest way to do that is to say when your hit dice are low, you gain a level of exhaustion. Just like with hit points. But again, we run into the issue of hit dice aren’t going to be used as much because of unlimited healing magic. We could go the 4th Edition route and say that healing is done by curative magic allowing you to spend hit dice and boosting the effect of spending them. But that’s silly to me and fuck 4th Edition. It does tie in with what we see in a lot of fantasy novels where healing exhausts the person being healed. But that’s not really the way magic works in my universe. 

Another option is to take a note from GURPS where prolonged periods of exertion like combat and stuff drain your hit dice. But this runs into the problem where in a group of characters, the Wizard with a Constitution of 8 has the same amount of energy reserves (hit dice) as a Barbarian with a Constitution of 16. Fourth level characters will all have four hit dice, regardless of hit points and Constitution and whether or not they are a physically tough class or a physically fragile class. I like the idea that hit dice represent a reserve of physical energy. I like the idea that if they run low or out, maybe just out, it would impact your overall physical capabilities. When you’re exhausted, you don’t run or fight as well as you would you’re well rested and full of vitality. 

Hit dice are a restorative mechanic in 5th Edition. They’re useful because the game isn’t designed for characters to have unlimited access to healing from magic. So it’s pretty safe and easy to completely change how you gain them and what they’re used for. 

So let’s do a little spitballing here. They’re not really dice anymore, but let’s keep calling them that because I feel like it. How about each character has hit “dice” equal to the highest number on their hit dice. So Barbarians have 12 hit "dice" and Rogues have 8 and so on. Let’s also say that you increase/decrease your hit “dice” by your Constitution modifier. So the Barbarian with a 16 Constitution has a total of 15 hit “dice” and the Wizard with a 8 Constitution has a total of 5 hit “dice.” Let’s also say that when you run out of hit “dice” you gain a level of exhaustion. Because you are exhausted.  

Ok, hold up, I’m being stupid. 

So we’ve established that, at least in my opinion, hit dice exist as a form of more limited healing for characters to recover from fights because healing is not infinite. They’re not used for anything else as far as I can tell. So in the first place, limiting their recovery and having negative effects for using them is kind of pointless. They’re not something that’s going to be used often enough to really have an impact except in that one irritating instance where the group splits the party in the middle of the desert and can’t safely take a long rest or walk into a clinic in one of the towns or cities. In talking about this all with some other DMs, Lance also made the point that hit dice and the healing they provide are a mechanic designed to help prevent the 15 minute adventuring day where healers would expend all their spells on healing and then everyone would rest and reset all of their abilities after adventuring for an hour or two.

So if hit dice are essentially useless in a campaign setting where the PCs have access to unlimited healing and spell slots, why bog down the game with additional mechanics tied to hit dice and how they affect you when you run low on them? A more sensible solution would be to just remove the hit dice as a mechanic of the game. This also serves to make those extraordinarily rare situations where the players do not have access to unlimited healing more difficult and a little tense because the players and their characters know that they can’t spend an hour resting and restore all their hit points with their hit dice. 

I like it.

This has been productive. I’m glad we were able to do this. Usually I spend so much time adding rules to games and modifying existing rules. It’s kind of a strange experience to be removing a major mechanic like hit dice from the game. 

Hekinoe 2.0

Hekinoe 2.0, eh? We're doing this? Really?

Apparently.

So here's the thing. I keep stalling out on converting Hekinoe to GURPS. I'm not sure why. I go and go and go and I blog about it, I get hung up on races or sorcery or psionics or Nel or what the fuck ever. Then I stop blogging for a year and don't touch GURPS Hekinoe for a year. I've get an idea that I think might help me get back into working on Hekinoe and moving towards a point where I can run things in Hekinoe. 

So let's talk about Hekinoe for a bit.

Hekinoe is a little bit busy. We've got lots of continents. Myrecenar, Fendojon, The North, The South, The Known World, Ieangetniv, Grenaldeen, Orcunraytrel, Fresgulen, The Known World, Yarrom, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. The thing is, most of these continents (aside from Orcunraytrel, The Known World, Grenaldeen, Fresgulen, The North, and The South) are of very little importance and are very poorly fleshed out. Ieangetniv definitely has nostalgic value though.

So Hekinoe is a little busy, lots of places and names with only a very few fleshed out thoroughly. Let's talk about those fairly fleshed out areas. The Known World is super crammed with shit. Orcunraytrel is a little less so. So what we're dealing with here are a few highly concentrated regions of stuff and then a bunch of poorly fleshed out continents. It's kind of a poor way to have a campaign world set up. It would make sense if we were primarily focused on The Known World, which we kind of are, and they were exploring the rest of the world and learning about things, which they are currently not. The problem is that with the technology level of The Known World, they would be exploring the world around them and countries there would have colonies and that sort of thing. Trade and travel and exploration would be occurring. But they're not. We have eight or more fairly powerful nations crammed into a landmass only a little bit larger than The United States. It's not completely unbelievable (I think), but it does make for a very very busy continent with lots of bits and pieces moving and interacting.

I've had a thought, and it has gotten some positive reactions from some of my go to people. My thought is that I remove all the useless, vaguely defined bits of Hekinoe that don't interest anyone and then spread out all the nonsense of The Known World. So remove Myrecenar and Yarrom, and that one continent that I forgot the name of, and then turn most of the nations of The Known World into their own continents. So Kusseth, The Fallen Empire, The Fell Peaks, The Old Empire, etc all get their own continents and The Known World becomes a continent of colonies.

This has the benefit of spreading out the world more, so it at least seems more filled in. Additionally, turning The Known World into a place of colonies makes it more sensible for countries like Serethnem, Vyanthnem, and Steeltown to exist. So when the Rankethlek fled the Fallen, instead of moving like 25 miles west of their undead masters, they moved to another continent. Serethnem and Vyanthnem already work pretty well in The Known World because their rulers fled a different continent. By spreading out the main empires of Hekinoe we also make it much more reasonable for Haven to exist. If more sea travel and trade and exploration occur, the pirate nation has much more believable viability as a country. 

Additionally, I'd remove The Plains of Dust from The Known World because no one has ever been interested in the horsemen of that land and I literally have no background information on them. Like seriously. There's a flag Jeremy made for me and that's it. Clearly that region is not vital to the lore of Hekinoe. In the same sort of thought process, I'd remove the lizardfolk of Mawknell in Orcunraytrel and probably one or two of the Asosan But Not Asosan kingdoms as well.

So this isn't exactly a reboot or a new campaign world, it's more of a heavy modification of a pre-existing one. This change will unfortunately negate all of the super cool maps Jeremy has made. Sorry dude. The lore and everything will for the most part be unchanged. Keroen Skathos is a thing that exists, Kaleshmar fell, The Fallen are made of Elduman, etc, etc, etc. Just the physical shape of the world will be altered. Hopefully it will make Hekinoe feel more fleshed out and less like the only place anything remotely interesting is happening is in The Known World.

I dunno, I have really positive feelings about this idea. I might almost be described as being excited about this.

The Myth of the OP Player/Build/Etc

One of the things I'm doing to get back into blogging is going back and finding unfinished drafts of posts and seeing if there are any I want to finish. This one was originally started on 12/27/2013.

One of the things you run into a lot with RPGs is min/maxers. The guy who tweaks every little thing to finagle the maximum amount of whatever out of the rules. This problem is a lot worse in point buy systems like GURPS because the nature of the game allows for a lot more customization than a rigid, class based system like Pathfinder or DnD. You can only min/max so much in Pathfinder core rules, mostly just in terms of ability score, as there aren't any sacrifices you can make anywhere to boost something else up. 5th Edition is even less min/maxable. It's actually kind of impressive how little you can actually tweak your character to secure advantages.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with min/maxing and trying to make your character awesome. That's the point of these games on some level, to be badass. To leave bodies on the floor in your wake. To be awesome and more competent than everyone else. That's what player characters do, or at least try to. Now, it's one thing to find sweet feat combinations, and completely another to play a Fighter with an Intelligence of 7 and a highly boosted Strength or Constitution and then come up with really well thought out tactics and plots. Mental retardation is a real thing, and I'm not making light of it, but there is a reason we don't put people with IQs of 50 or 60 in charge of armies and groups of soldiers. I only take issue with min/maxing when it gets ridiculous and ignores my background material or the character is a collection of stats and not an actual character.

Players often try to find complimentary feats and class abilities and racial abilities to leverage the most power against their foes. Power in this context is a general term for the character's schtick. Karrak's power is shooting things. Donovan's is talking to things, and Karl's is magic and shooting things (with magic). Eran's power is obviously master debating in the woods, while shooting way better than everyone else, and being sneaky. 

Often, you'll hear someone say "that is so over powered," usually as an exclamation indicating they are pissed and feel it is unfair, or an exclamation indicating they think they are brilliant little fucks for coming up with it. Now the problem with finding something over powered and thinking it is unstoppable is that it often ignores a few things about the nature of the game.  

The first thing it ignores is that experience  (I use the word experience here as a catch all term for advancement) should only be rewarded if there is a challenge in the scenario. If a group is consistently walking through encounters, or a certain type of encounter (combat, social, trap, etc) without taking damage (and not because of crafty tactics during the fight or brilliant plans for getting around the encounters), if there's no risk in a situation, why should they get rewarded? That's the whole point of leveling/advancement systems. As you overcome challenges, you get better at things. If there's no challenge to anything, you shouldn't be getting better, because you've plateaued and aren't challenging yourself. It seems pretty straightforward to me. So fine, you're monstrously powerful. Cool. Prepare to be stuck at level three for the rest of the campaign. 

The second thing it ignores is the GM. Assuming something is OP/unstoppable/makes you invincible ignores the fact that the challenges a party faces are not random meaningless situations (assuming your GM isn't a fucktwit). They are built by a thinking creature that typically has a much better understanding of the game as a whole than the players. We're ten levels into the campaign and Eric still can't figure out where to find the cost breakdown for adding new spells to his spellbook. Lance thought for some reason that armor class is  calculated differently for animal companions so his wolf companion had an AC of 7, despite AC starting at a base of 10 and his wolf having +2 worth of natural armor and a Dexterity of 17 and the Dodge feat. I'm not saying this to poke fun at them or to indicate they are big dumb heads. I forgot how Craft skills function last night. Nobody is perfect. However, the nature of the GM's job demands that he know the system of the rules better than the players. Which means, quite literally, anything you can do, he can do better and also that you're probably doing it wrong. Cary used to blast me constantly with OP builds of Pathfinder characters, generally they were solid and functional for what he designed them for, but at least a solid 25% of them completely failed due to him not really understanding relevant rules or even being aware of rules.

Obviously I only deconstructed those failures for him about 50% of the time. You never know when it'll be useful to completely break a player's build and knock their sense of special snowflake entitlement down a peg. 

Thirdly, players are arrogant useless fucks that are predisposed to think that they are brilliant and crafty little fucks that can pull a fast one on the GM. I kid. What I mean is that people, myself included, are predisposed to think they are brilliant and cunning. Unless they are so full of self loathing that they GM Pathfinder games to punish themselves. So yeah, when you find a little bit of synergy you never noticed before, you assume no one else has, and that you've won everything forever. The problem is that these little synergies typically only apply to one aspect of the game. 

Cary and I were just talking about mythic characters and he explained a build to me where an attack has to do over 80 damage to him before he can start taking damage. Which is pretty impressive if someone shoots or stabs Donovan. But what about hold person or phantasmal killer? Finger of death? What about poisons that deal ability score damage? What about negative levels? What about non-combat situations? What about a Fighter that has the feats that lets him stun or daze on a successful attack roll? Will this stuff function if he is unconscious and the Fighter performs a coup de grace? What if he is submerged in water due to a trap and begins drowning? So yes, assuming it works like he thinks it does, his build does possess a power level of over 9000. But it only applies to a small piece of the game, direct damage. If direct damage is the only thing you're leveraging against your players to challenge them in a campaign, you fucked up.

The fourth thing OP builds ignore is the world around them. In this instance, the world around them can be the environment, foes, NPCs, etc. Fine, you've got a combat monster character with  power level of over 9000 thousand. What happens when your goal is to get information from an NPC rather than curb stomp them until their insides squirt out their butthole? What happens when your NPCs have a better understanding of tactical combat than your player's combat monster collection of stats?

In my current 5th Edition group, there is a belief that archery is overpowered, which I don't agree with. The example is the Fighter archery fighting style, which confers +2 to ranged attack rolls. This combined with an archery feat that confers -5 to ranged attack rolls and +10 to damage creates a pretty deadly archer. There's also a feat that ignores all cover except full. 

Ok. That is impressive. You might even call it OP. But guess what? It is completely negated by stepping behind something. Unless the archer has a decent amount of elevation, you can completely negate the archer's power by sitting down on the ground behind a waist high wall. This relates to my fourth point because NPCs are intelligent. Even animals are going to either try to eat the face off the deadly archer, or run the fuck away from him. More intelligent enemies are going to utilize cover. Players kind of tend to see the NPCs populating the world around them as bland and faceless. They forget that any tactic or thing they can do can likely be done by the citizens of the world around them to some degree. My point here is that if something doesn't work, the foes of the players are going to try something else.

I dunno, I'm kind of all over the place here and there's a little bit of overlap between my four points. The ultimate point of this post is that creating an OP build is kind of a myth in my opinion. You might be able to be good at one single aspect of the game (combat, talking, etc), but that's about it. It also doesn't necessarily make you unstoppable in that area either, because there is more to the game than high damage or hit points or AC in combat or high skill bonuses in non-combat situations. There are always going to be impossible tasks that you can't succeed at, there are always going to be lies too unbelievable (whether due to the outrageousness of the claim or because the NPC has information the player does not). If you the GM are doing it right, the game is varied and interesting and not guaranteed to play to the player's strengths at all times and characters that specialize to an extreme degree to get that extra edge are going to suffer. 

The Difficulties of RP

One thing I've heard mentioned and agree with in my current group is that we don't really RP much. Role-playing, getting into a character and speaking and acting as that character, is not something everyone is comfortable with. Even those that are comfortable with it are comfortable with it to different degrees. I'm comfortable describing Navere violating the fuck out druids whose lifestyle offends him on every level, and I'm comfortable representing Andorian and Evandor as homosexual (even though their species doesn't really have meaningful sex designations), but I'm not comfortable describing Navere or Andorian and Evandor having a physical relationship that I describe. At least not in front of other people. If you go back a bit on the blog you'll find a few posts where Keroen and Callifay get a little handsy with each other, but that's something I wrote and thought about and didn't produce on the fly in front of six other dudes. So there are varying levels of comfort that further vary depending on the situation. 

So there are a few problems that I've identified with the lack of RP and I'm going to go over them here on the blog with myself, because aside from last week, I haven't posted in about a year, so who is really reading this? No one. Maybe. 

The first problem I've decided exists is that no one is willing to take or has taken the first step. No one has stepped outside of "Navere/Sven/etc says X" or does X or whatever. We'll do minor role-play. Kevin will make his voice a bit gruff when he speaks as Bjorn (spelling?) or I'll describe Navere in the midst of a fight as having this wild and savage grin on his face or I'll voice Navere's internal struggle with doing one thing and doing what's best for the pack. But no one has stopped in the midst of the session to say anything like: 

Navere sits down on his bedroll and motions everyone over. As everyone sits he says, "We haven't really discussed this place and what it means that we're here. I won't lie, I'm fearful of this place. I wholly suspect we've died in battle and are being punished in some way. I have no idea what our overall plan should be, and I fear we're just going in circles trying to remain busy until something finally ends us and we no longer need to worry about how we'll escape this place or if we even can." 

And then for a solid half hour, the characters discuss their fears and hopes and plans, rather than the players discussing plans for their next move. That's the distinction in my mind, speaking as a player or as a character. To be fair, the line can get pretty blurry at times and it can be hard to identify when someone is speaking as themself or their character. 

I don't really feel like this group is resistant to RP, I'm definitely not resistant to the idea of it. My Orcunraytrel campaign has literal thousands and thousands of words of RP. I feel like everyone is open to it. I just feel like no one has made it normal in our sessions. Our sessions are fairly short, and we like to do things to actually achieve goals and such. There's definitely a focus on doing, rather than talking. I truly feel like if someone steps up, the group will roll (heyo!) with it and it will become the new normal way we do things. 

The second problem that I see with the group is that our campaigns are short. Typically six to nine months, maybe a year in length. Which is fucking short in my opinion. One of the big reasons I've never come up with a background for a character until Kyle made me for Navere was because our campaigns are short. I kept playing a variation of OG 4th Edition Erevan the Bard because I wanted a sense of continuity and I enjoy the pleasantly homicidal ridiculousness of that character. For me, I feel like what is the point of becoming invested in a particular character and their history and emotions and feelings if the campaign is going to be over in ten or fifteen sessions? I'm not sure everyone in the group would agree with me here, but this is my two cents.

The third problem I think we have is comfort level with each other. Don't get me wrong, I think we're all friends and whatnot and we all seem to like each other and we all seem to be able to relate to one another. Personally, part of my comfort level as a GM stems from always having gamed with the same set of four dudes, or a variation of that group, for the past twenty years. I'm super comfortable around those guys and can say and do things with them that I normally wouldn't with random people. There are even versions of that group that I wouldn't have felt comfortable enough with to RP a gay relationship.

Anyway. So yeah, we're all friends. I'm friends with Kyle, Kyle is friends with Kevin. Jacob and Dave are friends with Kevin, Andrew is Jacob's brother, and Chase is friends with Andrew. We're all friends, but we haven't all been playing DnD with each other for decades, or even five years. We're all friends and we like each other, but there's still a little bit of distance simply because we lack that long term association that breaks down a lot of boundaries that self doubt and a sense of shame bring out.

So those are just some things I see that I think might be partially responsible for why my group doesn't really delve into lots of RP during sessions. Which is ok. There's nothing that says a group must RP extensively. If the group just doesn't feel like really in depth RP is its thing, there's no law saying they're fired from DnD. These are just my opinions and they could of course be way off base. They're also completely irrelevant. Ultimately, I think we're having fun and that is what's important. 

GURPS Hekinoe Racial Templates: Elduman

Alright, so this one is just another one I've previously completed. The Elduman.

Elduman

Origin: Elduman originally came to The Known World due to their empire of Kaleshmar being destroyed by a sorcerous cataclysm and partially crashing into The Known World when it fell from the sky.

Favored Regions: Haven, The New Empire, The Old Empire.

Appearance: Superficially, the Elduman resemble their descendants of The New Empire and The Plains of Dust that were born from Elduman and Uncout interactions. Like their descendants, Elduman have a humanoid appearance. The most obviously different feature of the Elduman race is that their eyes appear to be uncut gemstones.

The hair on Elduman bodies is actually composed of thin crystalline fibers that appear to be pale shades of normal hair colors such as brown or blonde. This fibrous hair only grows on the face and head of Elduman. Elduman flesh also appears paler than the skin of Uncout and does not tan or burn when exposed to the sun. Aside from this oddity, the flesh of Elduman is fairly normal. It sweats and bleeds and heals. However, it feels somewhat waxy to the touch.

Racial Characteristics: The most well known trait of Elduman is their ability to wield psionic powers. This trait is possessed by some of their descendants as well. These powers are varied in nature and do not appear to be linked to sorcery in any way, despite being able to perform similar effects.

Because the eyes of the Elduman are living crystal, there is no need to keep them moist or protect them with eyelids. While Elduman do have eyelids of flesh, they do not need to blink to moisturize their eyes or protect them from grit. This endless, unblinking gaze has been described as unnerving.

While their flesh appears to be somewhat unnatural in nature, the oddest quality of the bodies of the Elduman are that this flesh is merely a thin covering. Beneath this faux-flesh is a body composed entirely of bluish crystal. This crystal flesh is somewhat flexible, though somewhat stiffer than that of flesh and blood creatures, and flesh-like and contains crystalline versions of muscles, bones, and internal organs.

In addition to their various advantages their psionics and crystalline bodies provide them, Elduman are well adapted to the hot climate of The Known World. The Old Empire is a scorching desert of gleaming sands utterly devoid of shade and Elduman bodies have adapted to survive in similar environments.

Elduman Racial Traits

0 points

Mandatory Traits

Basic Attribute Ranges At Character Creation

ST 8 - 14

DX 8 - 14

IQ 8 - 14

HT 8 - 14

Secondary Characteristics

SM +0 (5’ 6” - 6’ 6”)

Advantages [46]

Alternative Sustenance: Doesn’t Eat or Drink [10]

Crystalline Flesh: Temperature Tolerance 2 (Cold 1/Hot 1) [2]

Elduman Resilience: Damage Reduction 5 (Biokinesis, -5%; Active Defense Roll, -40%; Costs 1 FP/Use, -10%; Requires Attribute Roll: Will, -5%) [10]

Groinless: Injury Tolerance (No Groin) [2]

Immortal: Unaging [5]

Psionic: Energy Reserve 3 (Psionic) [9]

Reduced Sleep: Less Sleep 4 [8]

Disadvantages [-45]

Crystalline Flesh: Fragile (Brittle) [-15]

Shatter Prone: Vulnerability (Occasional Substance: Sonic Damage; Damage Multiplier x2) [-20]

Strange Biology: Unusual Biochemistry [-5]

Vulnerable To Gifts: Revulsion (Occasional Substance: Gifts) [-5]

Quirks [-1]

Stiff Limbs: Stiff Limbs (-1 on Climbing, Escape, and Erotic Art rolls) [-1]

Optional Traits

Advantages

• Enhanced Elduman Resilience [+2/1 DR]: The Elduman may increase their Elduman Resilience up to Damage Resistance 15 and may do so at any time.   
• Passive Resilience [10 - 30]: Some Elduman possess a passive form of Elduman Resilience that functions at all times, this form of the resilience ability replaces the active ability and because it requires more effort and psionic energy to maintain, it is weaker. Passive Elduman Resilience is purchased as Damage Reduction 2 - 6 (Biokinesis, -5%).

Features

Feature: Elduman are psionic creatures and my use all five types of psionics and may purchase a wide variety of advantages as psionic powers.

Feature: Elduman may not purchase sorcerous advantages or access sorcerous energy in any way.

I'm not going to bother with Elduman Descended Uncout. They would normally be next, as these are going alphabetically. Basically they're human, but they have a longer lifespan and a feature that allows them to use some forms of psionic powers. Specifically they have access to a more limited form of biokinesis than Elduman, a more limited form of esp than Elduman, as well as psychokinesis and telepathy. They can also use sorcery, making them one of two races in The Known World that can use both psionics and sorcery.

The next race is the Fallen. They're always where I typically get stuck when doing GURPS versions of Hekinoe's races. This is partly because they're somewhat difficult to craft, as they are completely immortal and that and their transformation to their spirit form is somewhat complicated to craft. We'll see how it goes.

GURPS Hekinoe Racial Templates: Dwenoren

Next up, we've got the Dwenoren, who have appeared on the blog here several times. So once again, we're just going to copy and past without really getting into the nitty gritty of everything. Again, please excuse any formatting or font oddities. 

Dwenoren

Origin: The Dwenoren are native to The Known World and have existed here since before the fall of Kaleshmar.

Favored Regions: Kusseth, Volungshemle, Whurent.

Appearance: The Dwenoren are a relatively short race of humanoids, typically only reaching around five feet in height. They have pale, perpetually moist, hairless skin, no finger or toenails, and though their heads appear normal, relatively speaking, they completely lack eyes and eye sockets.

The fluid coating their skin is not sweat, it is an oil they secrete that insulates them from the cold temperatures in their lightless caves. Instead of empty eye sockets they have a bone plate above their nose that provides further protection to their brains. Their ears are large and wrinkly and are decidedly bat-like in shape. Along their jaws and chins they have thick grey spines, almost like a beard, that are a sensory organ that is able to detect minute shifts in air current and pressure.

Racial Characteristics: Dwenoren possess the ability to emit a form of ultrasonic noise that allows them to sense their environment similar to the noises emitted by bats. Their highly developed hearing and unique ear structure allow them to sense the echo of these normally imperceptible noises as they strike objects. This allows them to form a mental picture of their surroundings. Though completely blind, these noises coupled with their sensory spines allow them to navigate their surroundings.

The Dwenoren race does not have a male/female gender distinction, though they can perceive and understand the difference in other races. Most Dwenoren accept being referred to as male by other races, though they have no gender prefixes in their own tongue. Their method of reproduction is primarily unknown, but the Dwenoren are supposedly related to some manner of worm or grub.

Because of the cold temperatures found below the surface, Dwenoren are resistant to cold temperatures. This is a byproduct of the oils secreted naturally by their skin. This oil is somewhat thick and also serves to make them rather slippery, giving them an advantage when grappling with foes or attempting to escape bonds.

Dwenoren Racial Traits

25 points

Mandatory Traits

Basic Attribute Ranges At Character Creation

ST 8 - 14

DX 8 - 14

IQ 8 - 14

HT 9 - 15

Secondary Characteristics

SM +0 (4’ 6” - 5’)

Advantages [75]

Echolocation [51]: Scanning Sense (Sonar; Extended Arc: 240, +75%; Targeting, +20%; Increased Range: 2x, +10%) [41], Ultrasonic Speech [10]

Excellent Hearing [2]: Acute Senses (Hearing) 1 [2], Ultrahearing [0]

Eyeless [5]: Injury Tolerance (No Eyes) [5]

Groinless [2]: Injury Tolerance (No Groin) [2]

Sensory Spines [12]: Vibration Sense (Universal +50%; Limited Effect: Front 120 Degree Arc, -30%) [12]

Skin Oils [3]: Slippery 1 [2], Temperature Tolerance 1 (Cold) [1]

Disadvantages [-50]

Eyeless [-50]: Blindness [-50]

Optional Traits

Advantages

Enhanced Echolocation [+2]: Some Dwenoren possess a greater ability to emit and receive the frequencies of their race’s echolocation. These Dwenoren replace the Increased Range: 2x, +10% enhancement of their Scanning Sense (Sonar) advantage with Increased Range: 5x, +20%.

Features

Feature: Dwenoren may purchase Acute Senses for their Scanning Sense (Sonar) and Vibration Sense advantages.

Alright, so that's the Dwenoren. Weee.

GURPS Hekinoe Racial Templates: Children of Volung

Alright, here goes. Forgive any font/formatting oddities here, I'm basically going to be typing these in the main Google Drive document and pasting them here. I've already completed the Children of Volung racial template before on the blog, so I'm just going to copy and paste that into the post instead of getting into the what and why of the various advantages and disadvantages and whatnot. Once I get into some races I haven't finalized before I'll take longer and discuss things as I figure out the precise components of each race.

Children of Volung

Origins: The Children of Volung originally came to The Known World in the year 5006 DK from the distant homeland they refer to only as The North.

Favored Regions: Kusseth, Volungshemle, Whurent.

Physical Appearance: Volung's Children stand head and shoulders above other races, with the majority of them reaching at least seven feet in height when their bodies mature. Their bodies are composed of very tough hide-like skin, lean and wiry muscles, and thick bones that are evidently more durable than the bones of other races. It is said that beneath their skin, their ribcages have an additional layer of protection in the form of bony overlapping plates similar in structure to that found in dragon scales and archaic forms of scaled armor.

Their hair is universally raven black, as are their eyes. The eyes of Children appear to be orbs of solid black with no sign of white or iris. Their lips are thin and like their skin they have a leathery appearance and behind them are the pointed teeth of a carnivore. The ears of their race are long and taper backwards to points.

Like the Uncout and the other humanoids of The Known World, they have the standard collection of humanoid features, two arms, two legs, a head, ears, a nose, etc. Like other races, they require food, water, and air to live.

Racial Characteristics: One of the main characteristics of the Children of Volung is that they are physically immortal. Once they reach maturity, their bodies cease to age. Barring injury, their lives seem to extend indefinitely. They also appear to have an innate resistance to poisons and diseases. This resistance to ailments is fortunate as common treatments and elixirs found in The Known World often work unexpectedly on Children unless specifically designed for them.

Perhaps due to their origins in the distant north of Hekinoe, the Children of Volung possess an increased tolerance for cold temperatures. This advantageous adaptation is unfortunately of little use in the warm climate of The Known World.

Children of Volung also appear to be incredibly durable. Whether this is merely a side effect of their tough skin, muscle, and skeleton, or a separate adaptation is unknown. Regardless, they tend to be more difficult to kill outright or knock out than other races.

The most iconic characteristic of the Children of Volung is their rage. Admittedly, popular culture and gossip makes the rage of Volung’s children out to be more than it is, but as a species, they do possess what might be called a racial rage or bloodlust, though how vulnerable they are to this innate aggression is of course down to the individual.

Children of Volung Racial Traits

8 points

Mandatory Traits

Basic Attribute Ranges At Character Creation

ST 9 - 15

DX 8 - 14

IQ 8 - 14

HT 9 - 15

Secondary Characteristics

SM +1 (6’ 6” - 7’)

Advantages [33]

Hardiness [10]: Resistant (Common: Diseases; +3 HT To Resist, x1/3) [5], Resistant (Common: Poisons; +3 HT To Resist, x1/3) [5]

Immortal [5]: Unaging [5]

Northern Blood [1]: Temperature Tolerance 1 (Cold) [1]

Plated Rib Cage [5]: Damage Resistance 1 (Partial: Torso, -10%) [5]

Tough Bones [5]: Injury Tolerance (Unbreakable Bones; Limited Effect: x1.5 Damage To Cripple Limbs, -50%) [5]

Tough Hide [3]: Damage Resistance 1 (Tough Skin, -40%) [3]

Tough To Put Down [4]: Hard To Kill 1 [2], Hard To Subdue 1 [2]

Disadvantages [-25]

Strange Biology [-5]: Unusual Biochemistry [-5]

Volung’s Rage [-20]: Berserk (Self Control: 12, x1) [-10], Bloodlust (Self Control: 12, x1) [-10]

Optional Traits

Advantages

Secret Access [25]: At character creation, Children of Volung characters may take Unusual Background: 24 [25]. This advantage grants you access to a special selection of equipment available only to Children of Volung. You may not know what this equipment is before taking this Unusual Background, and neither the player nor the character may speak of what is available to other players or characters. Doing so will cause the advantage and the purchased gear to be removed with no refund of character points or marks.

Features

Feature: Children of Volung may purchase up to 3 levels of Hard to Kill and Hard to Subdue (4 levels for player characters) rather than the normal maximum of 2 levels (3 levels for player characters).

Feature: Volung’s Rage is a longstanding biological trait of the Children of Volung, and the Self Control numbers to resist their Berserk and Bloodlust disadvantages may be modified, but the disadvantages themselves may never be completely bought off.

Alright, so that's the Children of Volung. Woo!