Table Of Odius Personal Habits for Low-Tech Low-Lifes

 In Gurps, we have a few traits that can cover an awful lot of ground. One of these is Odious Personal Habit (OPH). This is great when you know what you want, but when you're looking for inspiration, its a little lacking. So, to help with inspiration (and with creating NPC thugs, one of the most common foes in all of gurps), I present a list of OPH for Low-Tech Low-Lifes. 

This list has intentionally left out Habits that are high tech, modern, or not befitting thugs. You won't find "Interupts to Correct minor Grammar mistakes", Not because it isn't an Odious Personal Habit, but because this list is meant for a certain class of NPC.

The habits are listed with numbers, mostly for use with random generation. 

1. Constant Demanding Orders
2. Bad Breath
3. Body Odor
4. Slovenly Dressed
5. Constant Cursing
6. Gives Demeaning Nick-Names 
7. Spits on the Floor
8. Constant Insults
9. No Personal Space
10. Constantly Touching Weapon
11. Constantly Whistling
12. Always Dirty
13. Constant Burps and Farts
14. Pokes and Punches
15. Constant Interrupting
16. Obnoxious and Inappropriate Laughter 
17. Constantly Picks Teeth
18. Puts Dirty Boots on Clean Objects
19. Constant Staring 
20. Has Fleas

 I hope you find this useful in filling out the personalities of the thugs in your games. I look forward to using it in mine. Let me know if you have any ones that you like, or if you have ones that you like better. 

 Happy Gaming! 

 

 

Wedding of the Sea King

This is an adventure intended for GURPS. Its not strictly for dungeon fantasy, as there is quite a bit of role-play and social elements, but its meant for that sort of game, and that sort of point values. A secondary element is its meant to be told as a fairy tale: a King looking for a bride, a castle under the sea, and a treaty taken deadly seriously. The story is meant to be set in the town of Gazim, a sea-side desert fortress built on the edge of an evil empire and reasonably hostile to it, but it could be set anywhere with the ocean, even in Yrth (I was actually surprised just how well it fit in Yrth). 

Guildfleet Yeemo, A Psiwars City

Guildfleet Yeemo is another location for Psi-wars. It is a mobile city of Traders built into former warships. I love the Traders, and I built this fleet to explore what such a city would be like. If you don't know what psi-wars is, the best place to start is probably The Psi Wars Primer. The project is great, and if you haven't read enough of it to get its basics, you should, because it's really cool!

Guildfleet Yeemo is a collection of enormous ships transformed into the permanent home of the Yeemo Clan. They eke out a living traveling from planet to planet, peddling their wares and services as they go. 

Yeemo travels back and forth between the trader belt in the core and the nearer portions of the Umbral rim.  It tends not to vary from this route too much, and can occasionally feel a little paternalistic about the worlds it visits routinely.

This article mostly focuses on the locations to visit in Guildfleet Yeemo. This includes small shops, great industries, and places of interest a party might be led to or seek out.

Vulnerability x1.5

This is another one of those house rules that have lived in my mind forever, but I always forget to write down:

you can take Vulnerability x1.5 for half the cost of Vulnerability x2. I most often use this for crushing damage on things like birds and skeletal undead. Double damage from crushing is usually too much, but crushing at x1.5 is threatening without getting the target crippled anytime a blow lands and matches cutting damage

I don't remember if I came up with this number myself, but its useful, and it stuck.

Related side note: I also like to treat vulnerability x4 damage as actually being x5, mostly to make the progression follow the size/range table.

I hope people find this useful, I've been trying to actually write down the house rules I use. Happy Gaming!

Imozu, Ancient Backwater

Imozu is another worked planet for Psi-wars. Its probably a lot more integrated with psi-wars than Highlun was. Its home to both Ranathim and Mogwai, as well as other races and dusty ruins. I wanted to explore what a completely Mogwai society would be like, as well as what an alien rebellion in the core might look like.

If you don't know what psi-wars is, the best place to start is probably The Psi Wars Primer. The project is great, and if you haven't read enough of it to get its basics, you should, because its really cool!

Overview

Nestled in the Trader Band, Imozu has seen empire after empire conqueror it, and promptly forget it exists. But Imozu has accumulated lasting marks from all of these empires, accumulating ancient ruins and stubbornly resilient cultures. Once conquered, the old cultures are usually left to themselves as long as there's no signs of an uprising. Imozu is too poor and too stubborn to be worth the effort.

 Imozu has a fairly typical climate and an abundance of terrain to settle, and most empires that have conquered it have left communities on its surface. These communities are diverse but insular rather than cosmopolitan. Over the Centuries they have each grown in their own directions, distinct from both their neighbors and their mother cultures.

On Recyling PC's

For my current game "Trouble on the Way to La'Moran", I needed (wanted) a caravan full of named NPCs with distinctive personalities. I wanted the characters be easy to play, easy to remember, and hardest of all, easy to build.

So I stole my players characters from old campaigns. I've been playing with this group for a while, and I run relatively short campaigns, so there are a fair number of old PC concepts lying around. The idea kind of got going from my players reusing variants on their characters. A young doctor with an eccentric family. A Japanese officer with a fear of deep water. Then last game we reused the Japanese officer as a joke, and now I'm opening the floodgates: about half of my caravan is named after old PC's with reasonably matching professions and outlooks.

So far, its gone great. The "Nepotism" on display can be humorous at times, as players give namesakes of their old characters more than the benefit of the doubt or go out of their way to interact with or praise them. It also lets me highlight characters that should be treated as mysteries or puzzles: the remaining NPC's are more interesting, because we already know the others. It also helps with the cognitive load of trying to run 20 NPCs.

This doesn't mean that the borrowed characters are "safe" and "known" though. One of them is almost certainly a vampire. Another is likely to blow something up unadvisedly. The Japanese officer is obviously playing some sort of cat and mouse spy game with another character in the caravan (an old NPC uncomfortable ally... and you can guess which character they are more sympathetic to). I've also switched up backgrounds a little: The explosive loving lieutenant from Upstate New York is now a dwarf that smells suspiciously of gunpowder. He's still got the same name, but how much else is the same, how much else is different? The guy from New York was in love with a senator's daughter, does she have an equivalent in a generic fantasy setting with a very different core activity? We'll just have to see.

The campaign isn't over yet, but so far the character reuse has gone well.I've been really surprised at just how enjoyable the experience has been. It certainly helps with the players remembering everyone. I don't think I'll do it every campaign, it lends itself to a little playful levity, but for this campaign, its been great.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I hope this gives you some ideas for new NPC's in your games. Happy Gaming!

Retrospectives: Egg of the Wyrm

I just finished my latest campaign, Egg of the Wyrm. This campaign focused on a heist in a fantasy setting based in medieval Indonesia and with very restricted but impressive magic. It was the first campaign that I've really leaned into meta advantages. It was a wild ride, and I have a lot of thoughts afterwards. We tried a lot of new things, both in terms of game-play, rules, and setting.