Technique: Meat Shield

Meat Shield

Hard

Defaults: Dodge-2.

Prerequisites: Dodge, cannot exceed Dodge.

You can use an opponent as cover against ranged and melee attacks against you. To do this, you must be free to move, your opponent must be positioned between you and whoever is trying to hit you, and you must win a Quick Contest of your Meat Shield technique and the potential meat shield’s DX. If you win, the foe you trying to hit you takes a -2 cover penalty to hit you. Regardless of success, you suffer a -1 penalty to all further Dodge rolls and attack rolls this round.

If the foe attacking you through your meat shield misses by a margin of -2 or less, his attack hits the meat shield. The meat shield may attempt any active defense normally available to him, and any successful defense means he is not hit. If he successfully dodges, the attack still hits you, but you can still make an active defense yourself! If the meat shield’s defense fails, he takes damage as if your opponent’s attack targeted him normally.

Build

This defensive technique is built using the Technique Design System (TDS) from GURPS Martial Arts, p. 89-95. The -4 penalty for attacking through an occupied hex is reversed to be a -4 penalty to utilize an occupied hex for defense. Additionally, using this technique imposes a -1 penalty on further active defense rolls for a +1 to default, and a -1 penalty to any attack rolls for an additional -1 to default.

Dungeon Action

By Timothy Ponce

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is all about killing monsters and taking their stuff. It thrives on tactical decisions, die rolls, and letting the chips fall where they may. But what if a gaming group thirsts for more thrilling, movie-like action? Such games can benefit from more abstraction, fast-and-loose gaming, and typically, more social situations. Thankfully, GURPS already provides a line that covers this style of play!

GURPS Action explains how to run games straight out of the movies, but its core assumptions include a modern setting decidedly not suitable for most Dungeon Fantasy, and much of its advice applies only to handling technology absent in traditional fantasy – dungeon or otherwise. By combining parts of both sources that best suit fantasy action adventures, this article provides the best of both worlds: a framework for handling social and urban mini-adventures as preparation for the primary dungeon delve, and it does so with style.

This article heavily references GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons, GURPS Action 1: Heroes, and GURPS Action 2: Exploits, and access to the entirety of both entire lines is highly recommended.

It Lives!

As is usual, it seems, I have dropped off the face of the Earth thanks to a combination of Life, Classes, and Lack of Gaming (this is primarily a gaming blog, after all!). That said, I've decided to post what content I have that has yet to be published by Steve Jackson Games here for free. This material is not extensive, but it does pertain to at least one popular product - namely Dungeon Fantasy. To that end, my next post will be the full text of Dungeon Action, which contains rules for combining Dungeon Fantasy with the Action! series to produce an experience extremely close to that of Dungeons and Dragons. After that will appear rules on creating intellectual property, which are easily adapted to memetics and such (if and when I have time, I'll make that adaptation and post it, as well).

I hope you can all enjoy these. I will get them online as quickly as I can format them.

Shadow-Infused Lens for Dungeon Fantasy

I was going through some of my old materials the other day and came across a lens I made a little over a year ago for a Dungeon Fantasy game. So I figured I'd share it here, since it's GURPSDay after all!

Shadow-Infused

75 points

Choice Professions: Assassin, Martial Artist, Swashbuckler, Thief.
Marginal Professions: None.

Shadow-infused are mortal beings comprised partly of shadow. They are either the offspring of a mortal parent and a shadow elemental or were once moral and somehow become imbued with the stuff of darkness. Maybe they spent too long on the plane of shadows or were in a magical accident. Regardless, they make excellent spies and killers thanks to their ability to hide in the darkness. They're constantly surrounded by shadows, which flit about them or animate their own shadow in strange (and disturbing) ways.

Attributes: DX+1 [20].
Secondary Characteristics: Basic Move+1 [5].
Advantages: Clinging (Mana-Sensitive, -10%; Only in shadows, -20%) [14]; Dark Vision (Mana-Sensitive, -10%) [23]; Fit (Only in Darkness, -20%) [4]; Reputation +3 (Shadow Creatures) [5]; Resistant to Metabolic Hazards (+3) [10]; Silence 1 [5]; Slippery 1 [2]; Temperature Tolerance (cold) 1 [1].
Racial Perks: Limited Camouflage (Shadows) [1]; Shadowplay* [1].
Disadvantages: Supernatural Feature (Animated Shadow) [-10]; Unfit (Only in Bright Lighting,-20%) [-4]; Unnatural Features 2 [-2].
Features: Dark black, gray, or black-speckled eyes. Surrounded by perpetual shadows that seem to cling to them.

* Shadowplay: Your character can manipulate nearby shadows into simple shapes or forms. This takes a DX roll, the better the roll the more complicated the shadow. He can even animate them – but this requires a Concentrate maneuver, 1 FP per minute, and persists for 1d seconds after you stop concentrating. You can animate at most one hex worth of shadows at a time. Those with Artist (Illusion) may substitute a DX-based roll if that is better than their DX.