Practising my art upon the gnoles

I can't imagine what possessed me to perpetrate this act of creative vandalism. Converting Lord Dunsany's gnoles to Runequest stats -- by Mung and his Beast, the very idea! My only excuse then is that I was young (it was the early 1980s), I was editing the Rune Rites column in White Dwarf, and there was a constant demand for new material -- especially monsters because RQ's hit location rules makes it pretty hard to improvise them as you go. But even so, what a wretched crime against a great fantasy author. And I really have no excuse for publishing it now except as a warning to others... Do me a favour; please at least read the story (and preferably pay for it; it's still in copyright) before you spoil it with these stats.

GNOLES

ARMOUR: 2 point skin; sometimes also leather (2 pts.) on body & limbs  

SPELLS: Befuddle; Healing 2; Shimmer 2; Darkwall

SKILLS: Climbing 80%; Listen 80%; Camouflage 90%; Hide in Cover 80%; Move Quietly 90%; Tracking 100% (in forest); Spot Hidden 50%

Travellers who have journeyed through the very deepest and most gloomy forests sometimes claim to have caught a glimpse of large beings moving with uncanny speed and agility through the trees. These are the fabled gnoles.

The reclusive gnoles care nothing for other races and are content to ignore anyone who is not determined to bother them. However, their hidden dwellings are often sought by avaricious and overconfident adventurers who covet their great treasure. Those who survive the other dangers of the forest and succeed in reaching one of the gnole lairs rarely live to brag of it, for the gnoles have several unique abilities that aid them in disposing of intruders...

Gnoles cannot be surprised. They are so aware of the forest and all its signs that they get several hours' warning when anyone is approaching. Moreover, gnoles almost always surprise their opponents; at a distance of 25 metres a gnole is 90% likely to be undiscernable when stationary.

Gnoles cannot see anything further than 20 metres from them (although their hearing is very acute and so they will still be aware of beings beyond this range), but closer than this they have full 360° vision, even through solid objects. They also have Detect Enemies to a range of 20 metres; this ability operates continually at no POW cost.

A gnole lair will contain 4-24 gnoles, all in permanent Mindspeech with one another. In appearance, gnoles are a mottled brown-black. They are slightly larger and more heavily built than an average man, but stand somewhat shorter owing to their stooped posture. They have prehensile hands and feet which enable them to climb rapidly in spite of their bulk.

7URPS

For our gaming group, GURPS is the role-playing system of choice. We grumble about it from time to time. Combat can be very fiddly, especially when you venture into the maze of special cases involving grappling. As the referee, it's hard to apply commonsense rulings without seeming arbitrary because the rules are so precise, yet they tend to produce absurdities at high skill-levels (in the case of stealth, for example) that risk unbalancing the game if allowed to stand as written.

And yet - it's hugely versatile. (Well: "Generic Universal..." What would you expect?) Steve Jackson and his team have done a heap of work so that you can just get on with your game. It's such a gift to a harassed referee just trying to get the work's adventure ready. Do you want to figure out the relative damage of a Wogdon Dueller or Nock's Volley Gun? Thought not.

For years, the big flaw at the heart of the system was the way it is built on just four stats. This is an evolution from Jackson's earlier Fantasy Trip system, which had its origins in tabletop games. It's simple - but it's a fake simplicity, given the baroque detail layered onto that narrow base. In a nutshell: if you are a great archer, chances are you'll also be a great swordsman and great sneak thief. If you are a great scholar, chances are you'll be sharp-eyed, strong-willed and exceptionally empathic. That's because dexterity (DX) and intelligence (IQ) pretty much drive everything else.

I figured that a little bit of extra detail in the roots of the system would make for more interesting variety between characters without adding any complexity to the game. And so leapt forth 7URPS, a set of quick notes that lets you alter GURPS into a 7-attribute system with the addition of agility (AG), empathy (EQ) and willpower (WL). Take a look for yourself here, and if you think it could be your cup of tea, you can get Frazer Payne's almost magically self-calculating 7URPS character sheet here. A caveat: it will mean nothing to you unless you already have the GURPS rulebook, so go and get that here.

Oh, and the pronunciation? We say "zurps".

A forgotten year

We don't plan on running posts about Edwardian fantasy comic Mirabilis here, firstly because it's got its own website and blog, secondly because it is not one of the properties owned by the Fabled Lands Studio, and thirdly because at the time of writing the project is in darker limbo than the bilges of a Uttakin slave ship. You can get a little bit of the flavor of the thing from "A Wrong Turning", a ghostly strip that Martin McKenna and I originally intended to fit into the same world as the main comic but which is now officially a standalone story and absolutely positively nothing to do with Mirabilis. It's free. Click on the pic to your right, Dwight.

Anyway, you fantasy connoisseurs may appreciate the whimsical vignettes on offer at the Royal Mythological Society site which lies adjacent to Mirabilis itself. A green comet is causing the barriers between imagination and reality to blur, and month by month correspondents from around the world write in asking the professors' advice. For instance:

Dear perfessors

I hope that you may help me with my Trouble and do not object to a letter from one as does not know you. I have the agreeable position of regular employment at a public house by the Strand, name of The Three Gypsies. My duties there in the main being the stabling of horses, polishing brasses, & co. I also do in the taprooms and some private bedrooms that are kept for travellers, though not so frequent as in former times, now that the coach stand is not there no more. In the morning I rake out the fires and carry the ashes in a pail, which I have been in the habit of tipping down the drain that is in the street near the entrance to the yard.

Only the other morning I went out that way and saw what had the look of two sooty, or I should say ashen, footprints on the pavement outside. Scuffing at these with my foot had no effect to remove them, and thinking no more I went and poured the ashes down the drain as per usual. Then on the next day I found two bare feet standing there. Just the plain feet, you understand, and not with no body above them, the feet being grey and looking to my eye to be made of ashes. Subsequent to that, having visited the drain on my purpose some other times, the feet have now been joined by ankles and the lower part of the legs, that is the calf.

Mr Bardley, him being the landlord, says not to be tipping the ashes that way no more, but I have become quite driven with Curiosity to find out what will come. Today I tipped out another pail of ashes and in the morrow I’m in expectation of a pair of knees. Do you gents think this is advisable, or is Mr Bardley right?

Yours, Joe Gammock, Raven Row E1

Dr Clattercut replies: Mr Gammock, I have no direct experience of exactly such a phenomenon as you describe, but I implore you to consider all the ways that it could turn out if you continue as you have. One does not have to be an avid reader of the works of Mr Bram Stoker to foresee something rather chilling. There are many bad endings to the story and few good ones.

Prof Bromfield replies: Hmm. You do not say as much in your letter, but I surmise that the pedal extremities in question are feminine, and reasonably shapely. For once I have to agree with Clattercut. If this goes on, Mr Gammock, I feel it could be a case of curiosity killing the cat.

As you can see, despite the usual label applied to any fin-de-siècle fantasy, Mirabilis is not steampunk. This is 1901. Motor cars are the latest thing, not steam trains, and anyway it's more pukka than it is punk. It really belongs to the traditions of English fantasy exemplified by Lord Dunsany, Sidney Sime, A J Alan, John Collier and John Whitbourn - to name a distinguished few. If you like Mr Gammock's tale, there's more in that vein right here.