November 2009 Archives

GURPS One-Shot

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Last night, I ran a short (two hour) one-shot for Jamie and some friends who were almost completely new to role-playing. I decided to run GURPS, and I came up with a scenario loosely based on Russian folklore. It seemed to go over pretty well.

One thing I liked was the character sheet format I came up with for the pregenerated characters. I wanted to cut GURPS down to the bare essentials, so even though I built the characters using the full rules set, anything that didn't inform how to roleplay the character or present additional options was left off the sheet.

You can see the three sample characters I worked up here.

Felgorn

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The felgorn appears first as a bloody bat-like creature with long bone spikes protruding from its wings, but upon closer inspection, one sees that its body is actually composed of hastily combined tissue. Its wings are built from finger bones, with skin stretched between them; its eyes are distinctly humanoid. At the center of the felgorn's mass is a bare, beating heart, the veins and arteries stretching out and coiling around to form the bulk of the creature.

Many assume the felgorn is some sort of undead, but in fact it is a horror created by tiny parasitic worms that infest its body. When a felgorn slashes with its bone talons, some of these parasites infest the wound, digesting and filtering the victim's blood, weakening him. When a creature dies with felgorn parasites in its system, the foul things immediately set to work building a new felgorn from the victim's tissue. Such a creature messily pulls free from the corpse in 1d6 rounds.

Felgorn (Small Horror Flyer/Walker -- 60 XP): Str 8, Dex 12, Con 12, Int 6, Wis 14, Cha 8; SZ S (1×1, Reach 1); Spd 40 ft. flight, 10 ft. ground; Init III; Atk IV; Def IV; Res V; Health IV; Comp II; Qualities: achilles heel (divine), class ability (bloody mess), conversion (killing).
Attacks/Weapons: Talon II (dmg 1d4-1 lethal; threat 19-20; bleed; keen 4), Parasites (attribute draining II; linked to Talon; DC 15 Fort or suffer 1 Con impairment)