Intro: May the FNORD Be With Us

Over Apr 6-7, I went down to FNORDCon, Steve Jackson Games’ first gaming convention that they planned and ran themselves. Originally, there wasn’t going to be any GURPS/DFRPG content at all – maybe not even any roleplaying – but I and one of my authors, also a MiB, volunteered to fix that right up. He was going to run two sessions of his upcoming The Dragons of Rosgarth, while I’d do one session each of Hall of Judgment and one of the almost-ready Citadel at Nordvorn.

Both sessions of mine were really, really full. I have a bit of a policy that if you come to one of my games, you play in one of my games. Especially with so few opportunities for RPGing while there. So both games had 12-13 folks in them.

I’ll be reaching out to my other players tonight, and we’ll see if anyone else has thoughts.

If you like what you read below . . . preorders for Citadel at Nordvorn are open!

Session Report by Carl Patten

My background going in: Backed Dungeon Fantasy Monsters II and backed the Citadel of Nordvorn based on recommendation from there. I am very familiar, if rusty, with GURPS, and own Dungeon Fantasy but hadn’t played it in a group yet. My wife has played several D&D campaigns but has only played GURPS once.

First of all, congratulations on running a session with 12 people that actually got stuff done! It’s really easy to get bogged down in details in DF and GURPS, and my wife appreciated the “GURPS super light” approach you took. You also were able to consistently answer our basic rule questions off the top of your head, which kept the pacing fast. Similarly, starting with “you’re all together on a boat, which is being attacked by another boat” successfully got us into the action right away without needing to reach a consensus first. The discussion afterward about what to do with our brand-new boat was hilarious!

Next, the setting rocked! We were the two Minnesotan expats in the room, and even though we may not have actually encountered the Minnesota/Iron Range references during this session, knowing they were in there got us pumped! The time you spent storytelling, describing the setting and why people acted as they did, was just as entertaining as the time we spent as characters in-game. This also paid off in the story hooks; hearing the story of the lady whose father shamed her suitor in public legitimately pissed us off! I’m going to have to run this setting just to find out what the hell is happening there!

We very much enjoyed the pre-made characters, my wife the “mace to the face” cat folk and me the halfling scout. I was worried that as two odd-ball characters we might miss out on some of the Norseness, but no, we were fully included! The descriptions and design notes were fun to read and helped us both jump into these characters immediately.

Minor character highlight was the great big lady wrestler who showed off what the Fantastic Dungeon Grappling can do. Sold me on checking it out, that’s for sure.

The Warding Temple quest to defend the village against 12 hobbs and 3 trolls was a mixed success. It succeeded in reuniting the party after we went a few different ways in Nordvorn, and ending on a big fight was a satisfying wrap-up so I’m glad we went there, but I got confused on where our party started in relation to the fey (ironic since I was the scout!), and that made it tough to sort out what to do other than just “shoot” or “run up and hit/bodyslam them”. Maybe a simple “who’s charging in and who’s staying back” table on the giant notepad would have helped? Fortunately the spellcaster next to me concussed the snot out of half the bad guys (and a few of us too) which helped us win the fight and end on time.

One last highlight: we arrived at the dock of Nordvorn with that brand new ship and the official asked us where we got it. We were standing around hum-hawing because, although per custom we’d claimed it fair and square, we weren’t sure exactly how to explain it. Suddenly you as our NPC boat captain whom we’d saved jumped in with “LET ME TELL YOU THE STORY!” It was an awesome moment of GMing and got us through that awkward pause while making us feel like righteous Norse heroes.

In conclusion, this was a tremendously exciting setting and session. Thanks for running it!