The Barrow I

The party set out the following morning. Miguel finds he's slightly overburdened, so he places his rucksack in the wheelbarrow for Garret apologetically. The big lad's a little grumpy, but it doesn't slow him down significantly, and he would have been far more annoyed if they'd taken longer to travel because Miguel was walking slowly. 

Weather: 7, passable. 

Travelling at a leisurely 2 miles an hour, they make it to the outskirts of Old Man Rutger's land before lunchtime. The barrows are visible behind his fields, although you wouldn't recognise them as such unless you knew what they were beforehand - they're sufficiently covered in turf that they barely stand out from the sometimes-hilly landscape. A handful of sheep can be spotted grazing away happily on their slopes, and the sounds of chickens clucking can be heard from the gate. "Looks normal to me," says Garret, as he trundles the wheelbarrow up the rough path towards the farmhouse. The house itself has seen better days - the roof needs re-thatching, for one. The grouchy farmer never was happy with how anyone else did it. Garret goes up to the front door - a creaky wooden affair - and raps on it heavily with his knuckles. 

Lottie: Vision, vs 13: 10, success by 3. 

Garret: Vision, vs 10: 12, failure by 2. 

Miguel: Vision, vs 10: 11, failure by 1. 

Elias: Vision, vs 13: 11, success by 2. 

As they stand around awkwardly in the yard, waiting for a response, Lottie's eye is drawn to the chickens strutting and pecking around the side of the building. The coop door lies open, and judging by the lack of marks on the ground, has done for some time. But despite their apparent open-door policy, and the prevalence of foxes in the area, there were no chicken carcasses; no discarded piles of feathers. The only sign anyone had disturbed the chickens was a single black stain on the earth just outside of the coop, and a trail of smaller dark spatters leading out of the barnyard and towards the fields, where the trail became impossible for her to follow. She's about to relay this to the rest of the group when the silence is broken by a shout from inside the house, through the front door. "Bugger off!" came the old man's cry. "I'll have no visitors today!"

The party look at each other expectantly. "Farmer Rutger?" Garret calls out. "I'm Garret, Anton's son from the other side of the village. We came to check if you're alright."

"You've got your answer, boy. Now piss off, lest I set the dogs loose." Miguel, not from around here, looks at Garret quizzically. Garret shrugs. "Your farm looks a little worse for wear, gaffer," he says, with an exaggerated glance around the yard, in case the old man was watching. "Is there anything we can help with?" 

Lottie interjects. "Yeah, your chicken coop's open. Do you want us to put them away for you?" There's a moment's pause. "I'll need your help least of all, girl. Begone!" 

Garret, as stubborn as ever, decides to put his foot down. "Farmer Rutger, if'n you don't open the door, we'll stay here until you do. We can stay here all day, and you've got to come out sometime!" He looks over at the chicken coop. "'Sides, your dogs seem to be showing their age. Looks like a fox got one of your chickens."

"There's no foxes round here, boy, not since -" 

Rutger stops suddenly, and Elias and Miguel, previously leant against the fence in boredom, perk up. Garret presses further. "Not since what?" 

"None of your business, lad. Now go home to your father. Stupid sod clearly can't teach manners." 

While by no means a farm boy at heart, Garret is quite fond of his parents, and this sets off his temper. He steps back towards the door and slams his fist into it hard enough to shake the frame. "You'll come out and say that to my face, old man, or you'll be hanging a new door!" He doesn't give Rutger a chance to respond before grabbing Miguel's crowbar from the wheelbarrow and making the choice for him. 

Garret: ST, vs 15, +2 (crowbar), -1 (bar DR) = 16: 6, success by 10.

Bar: HP, vs 14 = 14: 9, success by 5. 

The barred door resists his entry - but not enough. With the sound of splintering wood, the nails bend and give way, and the bar clatters to the ground on the other side as the large man bursts through. A cloud of dust is kicked up by his entry, motes of dust illuminated by holes in the window shutters. It's clear to the party, as they file into the now-silent building, that no-one's been in here in quite some time - weeks, at least. The smell of rotting meat permeates the air, and as their eyes adjust to the light they can see bluebottles buzzing around two hairy piles on the hallway floor - the corpses of two wolfhounds, surrounded by dark stains on the warped floorboards. Miguel waves the flies away to find large puncture wounds on the dogs' flanks, probably from a sword, or a spear. Elias mutters a short prayer as they search the farmhouse for signs of Rutger. 

The rest of the house is untouched, at least since whatever killed the dogs left. There's no sign of habitation; the bed is neatly made and the dining room table is clear, although the food in the kitchen has long since gone off, and every surface is covered in a layer of dust, which Lottie rubs off of her fingers as she explores. 

Lottie, Per-based Traps, vs 13 = 13: 9, success by 4. 

???: Traps, vs 13: 12, success by 1.

As she explores the living room, she finds a suspiciously misplaced rug on the floor, and nudges it aside with her toe to find a heavy, ironbound trapdoor set into a stone frame. Calling the rest of the party over, she gives it a tug and hears the rattle of a padlock on the other side. This one's sturdier than the other, although Garret isn't above giving it a try. 

Garret: ST, vs 15, +2 (crowbar), -9 (lock DR) = 8: 16, failure by 8. 

Lock: HP, vs 18: 15, success by 3. 

It's far too sturdy to wrench open, even for him. Miguel suggests simply breaking it down. Lottie and Elias disagree, on the grounds that doing so would be incredibly loud and if there was anything on the other side, they'd be waiting in force. 

Miguel: Stubbornness, vs 12: 7, success by 5. 

He eventually relents, although he continues to grumble. "They'll have heard us anyway," he says, as they return to the front yard. A chicken clucks as it pecks away near the door, tilting its head left and right as Garret drags the bodies of the dogs outside. While he searches for a spade to bury them, Elias and Lottie take a walk over to the barrows to survey the area. There are about a dozen barrows in the field of varying sizes, most of them too small to contain much more than a single mortuary house, but the largest is roughly oval, maybe three times the length of the others. It stands closest to the farmhouse, although it's hidden from view by a small copse of birch trees, planted many years ago by a superstitious shepherd. Farmer Rutger was never one to believe in ghosts, but he could never quite bring himself to cut the trees down either. The largest barrow has had a strip of turf sliced from one slope and peeled back like a hangnail, revealing a rubble masonry frame, into which is set an ancient wooden door. 

Lottie: Per-based Traps, vs 13 = 13: 12, success by 1. 

???: Traps, vs 13 = 13: 9, success by 4. 

Lottie: Hearing, vs 13, -2 = 11: 15, failure by 4. 

Trap: hit location, 9: chest.

Trap: crossbow damage, 1d+2 imp: 8, x2 (impaling) = 16 injury. 

Lottie: major wound, vs 10: 12, failure by 2.

Lottie gives the door a once-over and tries pushing against it. There's a slight resistance as the door scrapes against the threshold, but then it swings loose - accompanied by the snap of a door wire, which looses a crossbow aimed at the door. The bolt sinks deep into her chest, sending her crumpling to the ground. Elias is in motion almost before Lottie is, yelling for help from Miguel and Garret before cradling her in his arms. "God above, girl," he says, yanking the bolt from her ribs before the shock wears off. "Hold still." He says a few words of healing prayer, sighing in relief as the wound begins to close. 

Elias: Major Healing, vs 13: 6, success by 7. Restores 8 HP to Lottie.

Miguel and Garret appear moments later, rushing through the field. "What the hell happened?" Miguel asks as he takes Lottie's upper body - Garret takes her legs. She's barely enough to encumber them; they lift her carefully and carry her back to the farmhouse, past the hole Garret was digging to bury the dogs. They lay her on a bench and Elias removes his first aid kit from his pack. Half an hour passes as he binds her wounds and makes her comfortable before blessing the bandages. 

Elias: First Aid, vs 14: 9, success by 5. 

Elias: shock treatment, 1d-3: 1 = 1 HP restored. 

Elias: Minor Healing, vs 14: 6, success by 8. Restores 3 HP to Lottie. 

"That's all I can do for her for now," he says, washing his hands in water brought for him from the well. "God frowns on the overuse of healing magic."

Garret grunts sardonically. "Too many mulligans makes you forget the danger, I guess."

"Well, there's a lot more words dedicated to it in the good book, but something like that." The monk sits down, exhausted. "See if there's anything in the kitchen that's still good. No good wasting the rations," he says to Miguel, who clears out the cupboard and returns with a block of cheese and some hardtack, with which they make dinner enough for the four of them before discussing their plans for the following day. Lottie still winces when she takes too large a breath, but she's in no danger. Until they return to the dungeon, anyway. 

Miguel takes stock of their situation. "Well, there's no more food in the cupboards, but there's no sense setting up the tents in the woods when we can stay in the farmhouse." Garret tilts his head at the black stain in the hallway. "We won't even notice the smell. After a while," says Miguel, looking away. "Besides, we don't know what might come out of the barrow at night. This place is more defensible."

"What about the trapdoor we found?" asks Elias. "Something could come up that way, if it's locked from the other side." Garret stands up, collects a mallet and spike from the wheelbarrow, and pounds it into the stone, wedging the trapdoor in tight. "Doesn't seem like an issue to me," he says, when he returns to the dining room. The party collects their sleeping gear from the pile and lays it out. There's some argument over who gets Farmer Rutger's bed, which ends rapidly when they find the ransacked bedroom, the mattress sliced into and the insides thrown about all over the room. The bedrolls begin to look like a more attractive option. Elias, Garret and Miguel split the watch amongst themselves, leaving Lottie to rest. 

Wandering monsters, vs 9: 12.

The moon rises over the old farmhouse, and the chickens return to their coop, settling in for the night. The party keeps the fire low, and the night passes eventfully, broken only by the gentle crackle of another log being placed on the fire, and the crunch of the poker. 

Today's lesson: Even after checking for traps, let the fighter go first. 

Commentary: Next!

In between writing the first post on this site and the actual scheduled release of it, I wrote five more posts, and scheduled them all out up until next week. That's when Helldivers 2 came out, so now I'm down to only the one post left in my buffer. So it goes. At the very least, the game helped me lay out some thoughts in my head - some of which will have to wait until the party actually enters the dungeon, or else I'd be spoiling things. Lottie's unfortunate accident today is as good an excuse as any, though, to compare the relentless meat-grinder of Malevelon Creek to a typical RPG dungeon. 

The first delve into Sternvale Monastery left Werner, the unfortunate scholar, unable to walk. As his part-time GM, part-time player, I found this hilarious - being shaken around like a dog toy by giant rats because you didn't get the people with actual combat skills go first is a great way to go - but if this had been a normal game, with a GM and separate players, that player may well have been frustrated, with good reason. You do spend some time and thought making your paper man, and it sucks when your genuinely neat idea for a PC gets deleted in some ignominious way. GURPS can be especially bad for this; character generation can take a long time, involve a lot more thought than "roll 3d6 for stats and pick a class, then buy gear", and the nature of GURPS combat means that not only are you susceptible to lucky hits, you can be left in limbo very easily, rolling to break stun for no real reason because you're obviously dead anyway, or rolling hopeless active defences. Even if you survive the immediate danger, crippling and dismemberment mean that you can be rendered completely useless for lengths of time that exceed most games (unless you have access to high-end healing magic). Werner's not dead, but he's not playable, either. 

In Helldivers 2, each player enters the game with 5 "lives", representing fresh-faced recruits given nominal training and equipment and dropped from orbit into an active combat zone where they will immediately be punched in the face by a giant robot or run over by a six-ton insect or die in some other horrible fashion. It's certainly possible for you to get through a mission without being blown to pieces and replaced by the next guy, but it's far more likely that you'll be dropped in, pick up your unfortunate predecessor's equipment and continue without missing a beat, Eastern Front-style. Helldivers are literally kept on ice on a conveyor belt and defrosted as necessary. They do get a pickup at the end of the mission, but the reward for escaping with your lives is less than the reward for completing your objective. It's simply not a priority for your commanders. 

I find that this is the mindset needed to play a game like GURPS Dungeon Fantasy as the rules suggest. There's just too many ways to die, too many sneaky enemies, too many devious traps and lethal fungi and 18d cliff edges. Making a stable of player characters you want to try out is a good way of spreading the pain if and when your character dies. Yes, most of them will end up as derivative Dwarf Fighters or Elf Bards, but their tragic backstory will never be the focus of the game anyway - their interactions with the other player characters will. And those are an emergent property, not something that you can invent beforehand and get mad about when your painstakingly-plotted hero doesn't get a chance to fulfil his destiny. 

A character's death is an opportunity to try something new. One of the beautiful things about GURPS is that, twenty years after the release of 4th Edition, there's always something new to try, always some new combination that makes your guy fun to play. "It's a shame about Stab-boy Crunchman, but I've had a mage-slayer in the starting block since the start of the game and I'm really interested to see how he synergises with the holy warrior Dave brought out last week." Equip him like an expendable Helldiver with quirks that fit the situation and drop him into the dungeon - he might do better than you think!

Of course, it's sometimes challenging to drop a character into an ongoing situation. An early death in a session might condemn you to hours of sitting, useless, making witty commentary on the situation to keep yourself interested in what's on the table - or, unfortunately, scrolling Twitter until it's time to go home. And even in between sessions, it's not always appropriate to drop a new character in - the Fellowship losing Gandalf in the Mines of Moria didn't walk round a corner and find Bandalf all ready to go. This is one reason why I'm very supportive of the idea of having hirelings in every party - they provide backup temporary PCs. They might even stick! Not everyone has to be the same level in the party. 

In short, don't take the game too seriously. Have fun, experience the highs and lows, but keep a guy or three that you want to play in your back pocket just in case Dave the Druid gets dissolved, in whole or in part.