The Tyrants of Syracuse: Part 1

by on November 20, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

It often seems to me like Sicily doesn’t get a lot of attention, now or in the ancient world, even though it’s a very prominent land-mass that dominates the middle of the Mediterranean. This is more an accident of our fascination with Athens (whose worries were often more eastern than Mediterranean) and Rome (who made the Mediterranean a peaceful backwater for centuries), than a lack of importance. Both Athens and Rome actually spent a great deal of time and military effort to get control of Sicily, though their efforts tend to get lost in the tale of fighting closer to home.

But of course, Sicily had a population of its own, and the Greek colonies there tended to be quite wealthy. Of these, Syracuse was the most prominent and powerful, and so it is there that Jeff Champion focuses on, in what naturally extends to be something of a history of the island. While the title of this book indicates that it’s about the period from Gelon to Dionysius (Vol 1: 480-367 BC), he does give a good background of Greek settlement of the island, beginning in the 8th Century BC. This introduces the troubles with the native population of Sicily (which I would like to know more about) as well as the general character of Greek government.

From there, Champion spends a chapter on the earlier tyrants of Sicilian cities other than Syracuse, before launching into Gelon’s rule of Syracuse. After Gelon’s short (and popular) reign, Syracuse returns to democracy for a few years before coming under control of Dionysius, one of the more infamous tyrants of the Classical period. Much time is spent with the Athenian siege of Syracuse, and the back-and-forth of Syracuse’s efforts to dominate its neighbors, and its struggles with Carthage.

This is distinctly a ‘popular’ history book, aimed at laying the course of events out in a clear fashion by integrating the main ancient sources. As such, there’s no real thesis here, or ‘point’ being made. But, it does a great job at untangling a history that is often only presented with Sicily as a side show, when it was center of its own tumultuous events.

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Dungeons & Sorcery Spells 3

by on November 16, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: GURPS

This is the third installment of ten spells to go with my Dungeons & Sorcery system for GURPS. This time, they’re based on a mix of 1st and 2nd level AD&D spells.

Blindness (C)
Phantasm, Verbal, Resisted (HT)
42 points/level
Casting Time: 2 seconds
Casting Roll: Innate Attack (Gaze) to aim.
Range: 50 yards
Duration: Permanent

Successfully casting this spell on someone causes their sense of vision to shut down, rendering them blind. If you hit the subject with this spell, roll a Quick Contest of your Will + Talent vs his HT; if you win he goes blind and sees nothing more. This is not an illusion of ‘nothing’, nor a condition that can be cured magically or medically. Sight can only be restored by successful use of dispel magic or similar, or entering a No Mana area.

Each level of this spell past the first adds a -1 penalty to the target’s HT.

Affliction 1 (HT; Disadvantage: Blindness, +50%; Extended Duration, Permanent, +150%; Malediction 2, +150%; Reduced Range, 1/2, -10%; Requires Magic Words, -10%; Sorcery, -15%; Takes Extra Time, x2, -10%) [4.15×10]
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Two Rounds of River Centrites

by on November 12, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

Well, Patch and I did another round of Commands & Colors: Ancients between bigger games. This time, it was River Centrites from Expansion #6 (and the Anabasis). It’s a very unusual scenario, with the Spartans caught between two forces, who retreat towards both of the regular board edges (the Armenians towards one edge, and the Carducians towards the other), while the Spartans retreat towards a river in the center of the board. There’s a lot more Persians than Spartans, and they start on hills, but they’re spread out, and generally not as good as the Spartan units. (Certainly, they have no hoplites.) The game goes to seven banners, but if the Spartans can get their entire force on the Armenian side of the river, they win.

I had the combined Persian forces for the first game, and drew all three Line Commands straight off. Patch started with Inspired Right Leadership to press on the Carducians on that side, doing one damage to two units while taking three blocks across two units. I attacked in the same corner, but only did one block. Patch then Out Flanked to continue to retire a depleted unit and do three damage to a Warrior, while moving is left force towards the river.

I used Line Command to engage the few Spartan units in the center with the Armenians, but only did one block to a Spartan Hoplite in return for taking a loss on Warriors, and nearly having an Aux wiped out. Patch Ordered Light to knock out a Carducian Warrior and force my leader there off board while getting a LC behind my line in the center. I used Line Command on the Armenian line again, knocking out the Spartan Hoplite, forcing his LC back to the river, and did three damage on an Aux, but I lost the Warriors and a block on a Med in the process. Patch Counter Attacked to activate his center, and knocked out a Med while doing two more blocks to the damaged one while doing a block to another Spartan Hoplite.

I used Leadership any Section to move my right side Carducians forward, and ended with a Spartan Hoplite and my Warriors reduced to one block each. Patch used Inspired Left Leadership to move the stricken Hoplites out of the way and finished off the warriors, while also getting my wounded Med and picked off a loose leader with archery. I used Order Two Right two move up a LC and finished off an Aux. Patch then Ordered Two Center to pick off a depleted Aux. 2-7

centrites-1

For my turn as the Spartans, I started with Order Three Right to try and press on the same force that Patch had good luck with, but no damage was done. Patch then used Leadership Any Section, to activate that entire corner, wiped out a Spartan Hoplite, and did three damage on a second while I did one damage each to a Warrior and Aux. I Ordered Four Center to attack the Armenians, and start moving forces over the river, doing three blocks to a Light, while taking one in return. Patch Double Timed to get the rest of the Armenian center into play before I could force the hills, and reduced two Spartan Hoplites to two blocks while taking one damage on each of two units (with help from a First Strike that also drove off an attacking Med).

I used Order Mounted to get more forces towards the river, and traded a weak Spartan Hoplite for a Med plus leader, but took one hit for no gain on a momentum attack. Patch used Order Three Center to finish off my remaining Spartan Hoplite, and got my leader. I used Out Flanked to get a new Spartan Hoplite across the river, and wiped out the Carducian Warriors that had given me trouble, while also doing a block on a LS with a momentum attack.

Patch Ordered Light to kill a LC on a banner (no place to go  in the river), and reduce my right-side Spartan Hoplite to a block. I Ordered Two Center to move up, and Patch yelled I Am Spartacus to order a Med, Warrior, and an Aux to finish off the wounded Spartan Hoplite. I used Line Command to move almost my entire remaining force towards the Armenians, and knocked out a Med at a cost of one block. Patch forced my abandoned right-side leader off-board with an Order Two Left (well, assuming you count the river as a normal board edge, in which case he Leader Evaded “off-board”; if you call it a blocked evade, then the game ended right here; I think the former is right though).

I Double Timed up to the the center hills, did a block to a LB in exchange for a block on an Aux, did a block to an Aux, in exchange for three on Spartan Hoplites, did two banners to the same Aux to force it to lose a block on the board edge, and then did another hit to it in momentum, when he did a hit back. Patch Ordered Two Center, but couldn’t get a hit on my 1-block Spartan Hoplite. I Ordered Light to very nearly get across the river (only two units still on it), and did a hit each on a LB and Aux, and also did two to a Light. Patch Ordered Two Center again, but only did a banner to the weak Spartan Hoplite (who took it to get out of the way), and a hit to an Aux. I used Coordinated Attack to wipe out a 3-block Aux, and then get wipe out a 1-block Aux on momentum, I then finished off a LB by forcing them off the board. 7-6

centrites-2

Afterword:

It’s a very interesting scenario. The Spartans are surrounded, but the Persian forces can’t really go toe-to-toe with them. Patch had fairly good dice in both games, and I was thinking I was going to go down hard again in the second game when I started breaking up the Armenians. Since they’re also the effective ‘goal line’ for the Spartan army, the pair of Mediums just doesn’t last long, even with hills.

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In the Ruins

by on November 8, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

In origin, this is half a book. Each volume of the Crown of Stars series was longer than the last, and here at the end it finally got too long to put under one cover.

It’s also hard to figure out how to treat this section of the series. The major world-changing event was the return of the Ashoi (or not, with the potential of destroying the planet in the process), at the end of the fifth book. Is this this just a denouement? As usual, the entire, by now very large, cast of characters show up with their individual threads running forward. While things happen with all of them, most of them don’t get any kind of recognizable arc in this book, which shows its ‘part one of two’ nature.

But… one of the major themes of the series brings it over to what I call “dynastic fantasy”. One of the major concerns has been control of the conjoined kingdom of Wendar and Varre, and with the last couple of books, Aosta as well. With the death of King Henry at the end of book five, this is now a major question as none of the obvious heirs are in a good position. This shows better development, with power struggles in Wendar, Aosta, and among the Ashoi all being much of the focus of the action, and the end promises a better focus on Wendar itself for the end of the series.

What actually holds this book together, however, is the weather. Between the giant storm and volcanism caused by the return to earth of missing pieces, and spells to keep the skies clear at important positions, much of the continent is under a perpetual cloud cover for the several months of the book, with signs that it might change only coming at the very end. Concerns and reactions to this are one of the constants through the majority of the different threads.

Overall, this book reshuffles the furniture a bit to cover several now-dead characters, but continues reaching for some form of final climax. Frankly, there’s so much up in the air, I’m not sure how it can be wrapped up in one book.

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GURPS Pokemon Bestiary First Pass

by on November 4, 2016 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: GURPS

For the past little while, Pseudonym has been posting various Pokemon moves as GURPS Sorcery spells whenever he gets stuck for something else to say.

Along with Smudge’s continuing Pokemon Go adventures, and now the both of us playing the more recent 3DS games, it’s left me wondering just how to emulate the game relationships in a more full fledged system. It’s not too hard for GURPS: each Type is a meta-trait that defines the vulnerabilities and resistances, and then the moves get a type Power-modifier to hook into that.

To keep things from getting absolutely humongous, this is just my general thoughts on how to get the creatures to work, without trying to figure out a proper campaign framework. Don’t expect to see a second pass.

The general Pokemon meta-trait looks like this:

IQ -2 [-40], Hard to Kill 1 [2], Hidebound [-5], Social Stigma (Valuable Property) [-10] = -53

This gives an average Pokemon an IQ of 8 (a bit slow or simple, but quite able to understand what all these humans are doing), and a 6- roll to come up with something new (which is fine out in the wild, where instinct is all you need, but in a Poke-battle against a new opponent you want a trainer calling out instructions). Hard to Kill helps with generally ‘non-lethal’ nature of Poke-fights, but if you want to emulate the setting, you should use as many non-lethal ‘switches’ as possible (no bleeding, no crippling… and possibly rule everything automatically falls unconscious at 0 HP; the TV series especially is a Bonk-only universe).

The brute-force method is to define a meta-trait for each Type with Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction (2) (Occasional) for each Type ‘not very effective’ against it, and Vulnerability, x2 (Occasional) for each Type that is ‘super effective’ against it, which are worth 20/-20 points each. To emulate the fact that Pokemon are better at moves of their own Type, the meta-trait should also have two levels of [Power] Talent (5 points/level) for the appropriate Type. So a Type is worth 10 points + (very effective – super effective)*20. (As a quick example, Fire Type is 2 levels of Fire Talent [10], Damage Reduction vs Bug, Fairy, Fire, Grass, Ice, and Steel [20 x 6], and Vulnerability to Ground, Rock, and Water [-20 x 3], for a total of 70 points.)

This reverses the normal situation in GURPS, where the limitations on a Power are usually built into the power modifier, but here the meta-trait defines what you’re vulnerable to. While this does get most of the effects (immunities would still be part of the power modifier), they can also be modeled by more general ideas, though they may not be as systemic as this.

The obvious reworks are that Normal Type shouldn’t be a meta-trait at all—they’re just ‘normal’—and Ghost Type includes Insubstantial (Affect Substantial, +100%; Always On, -50%) [120], and most power modifiers include ‘Affects Insubstantial’ for +20%. And the Ground power modifier gets ‘Accessibility: Target is on the Ground, -20%’ (as opposed to ‘Not Flying Type’, which would be the normal way to represent an immunity in the brute-force approach). The odd part is that Ghost Type attacks can’t affect Normal or Fighting (which seems like Insubstantial Only) but do affect everything else, so that’s ‘Affects Substantial (Not Normal, Fighting), +35%’… and have fun explaining it.

Another obvious idea is to have Fighting Types use an actual unarmed MA style, but that’s beyond my GURPS knowledge. Going further, you can start representing a lot of these effects by making sure to build them into the abilities, like representing the vulnerability of Flying Types to Ice simply by making sure that all Ice abilities cause problems for flight (reduced visibility, Side Effects that shut off Flying from icing up, etc.), but that would be relatively tricky.

Purely physical moves (Tackle, Pound, etc.) should be represented with some innate unarmed skill. Moves with low PP scores should cost an FP to use (or more). Optionally, all moves can cost Fatigue (akin to Sorcery), but that’s probably a bit much (and would demand the use of Energy Reserve and the like).

And then the fun part is figuring out the game-stats all the wildly varying physical forms of Pokemon out there. So here’s some sample writeups, that don’t try to account for differences in the in-game stats like speed and attack power:
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