GURPS: Caravan to Ein Arris - Starter RPG Review
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- čas přidán 31. 10. 2023
- Caravan to Ein Arris has been the quintessential starter adventure for GURPS for decades. But does it hold up by today's standards? Is it worth running, or even porting to another system? Find out in my review.
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warehouse23.com/products/cara...
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Your rewrite sounds fun. It would be great to see it fleshed out and given the full treatment on your website!
I agree that an Arabian Nights feel is very appropriate to the Lantara setting.
Those are some very good suggestions on improving that adventure. For myself, likely I will adopt those and also I plan to go through and completely revise the NPCs to reflect the current thinking on GURPS NPCs found in How to be a GURPS GM (ie no Broadsword-15/16 bandits! Those guys should be no better than Broadsword-12 or maybe 13 at the very most). I am pretty strict on the rule that characters only get 20% of their starting money for adventuring-style portable stuff and cash, with the rest taken up in larger, fixed things back home like a share in a shared field, a house with payments still left on it, or maybe I'll even let them buy a horse and tack with that 80%, but it for sure can't be cash so paying out $2 (plus $5 per horse or mule, remember) is a lot bigger hit when they start with $200 minus whatever they paid for their sword and armor and bedroll and whatever. I might also use the "Languages as Skills" optional rule from whatever issue of Pyramid that was and so use the language material from the 3E version of the adventure.
I do want magic, but I want to use a personal system based around Visualization (with Blessing/Cursing available), Medium/Channeling, Spirit Empathy, and similar advantages - a lot like some of the abilities of the Mystic/Practitioner in GURPS Horror - along with various spirits (that don't normally have anything much more than TK 1 or 2, Possession, Suggestion, or other such limited abilities; still, being able to use spirits to communicate, spy, and so on is pretty impressive, assuming you can get the spirits on your side), and adding the ability to use the Exorcism skill as an Influence skill similar to Intimidation against spirits even without Spirit Empathy. As a result, I probably won't allow it for starting characters, in part to give them a chance to experience the setting first but also to put off supernatural events until later on. I've also got some ideas on how to handle religion, but for the most part it'll be through GURPS Social Engineering. Special powers will be centered on things like dream divination at special shrines and temples or the trance-induction stuff from GURPS Low-Tech Companion 1 for most people, or versions of Blessed, True Faith, Imbuement (Ghostly Weapon only), and such for the specially chosen.
I am just finishing running Caravan to Ein Arris. I only really have the final battle left now. It has been a good intro to GURPS for me, and I did a number of changes, especially to building NPC relationships with players. I wasn't really confident enough with the system or gming to make major changes (first ever experience with GURPS and first time gming something longer than a one-shot) but my players really have enjoyed it. I did insert more challenges that were not combat focused, and tried to make the combat easier (especially early on, with three players and only one combat focused). I am excited to try out other adventures in this system though! I do like how it runs.
Good, honest review and good advice for fixing it. Your criteria for starting adventures is thought provoking when applied to I Smell A Rat. I'd love also to hear your thoughts on improving I Smell A Rat.
Yes, though I’ve run that one it’s been a few years. I’ll dig it out again and take a look.
Very nice review. I especially liked your advice on improving the story. Good work.
Warm regards Rick
Lots of great advise. I've been playing GURPS since first edition and have never ran Caravan to Ein Arris. As a GM I just couldn't get into it. The changes you have suggested make it a much easier to run and play it. Thanks
that was my first thought: that she is kidnapped during wedding ceremony. so logical
thanks for the advice and comments on how to improve this. One other thing, a starter adventure should also presume a starter GM as well, so lots of support and structure is pretty critical.
Yes! Totally agree. Short, showcase a few different encounters, and have lots of GM advice.
At 14:07, when you mention the choke point in the "tax-collector" fight, you show an image of the bridge map. This map is used for the rendezous with the brigands for the ransom, not the fight with the tax collectors. The tax-collector fight map is not included in the 4th edition version of the adventure; you need the toll-booth map from the third edition Basic Set. The reference to the map on page 15 is an error in the adventure.
Good call-out! Thank you!
Too many adventures present hooks for the players that are week or implausible. That's the hard part of writing any adventure so it's the reason I will pay money. I'm usually disappointed and frustrated. They need to do better and we need to demand better. They're supposed to be professionals but the best they can come up with "the wizard is throwing a party and needs you to fetch Ice". Sorry, that's the Witcher Adventure compilation that I just sold on ebay for $10. Aaaand another thing, too many adventures instruct the GMs to simply not allow the players to do something. That needs to stop. Ranting because not enough people are talking about this. Gamers are not all 13yo kids with low expectations anymore. In the few adventures you wrote that I've read or prepped ( haven't played The Last Command yet ), you meet my expectations, and I thank you. Rand over. Take 5cps.
The wizard wanted you to fetch ice? Hahaha. Ok that made me laugh, I may have to find a copy just to review it. But yes, good plot hooks are hard and published adventures should do better there.
The "tax collector" thieves aren't master swordsmen. They're expert swordsmen, yes, and why wouldn't they be, given their line of work? But the thieves have no ranged weapons, and they are fairly cowardly and flee after only a little damage. This fight is not as deadly as everyone makes it out to be.
14:36
My entire group hates taxes so much in games, that when we were stopped by some tax collectors in a campaign, we murdered them, all except for one, who we forced to bring us to the city.
You have a Savage Worlds 1-shot! I'll have to try it.
I do! But Savage Worlds isn’t a system I’m super familiar with so let me know if you see anything goofy with it!
one other question about a starter adventure. (and this may have been tried before, if so please forgive my ignorance )
Would there be interest/utility in reskinning (and in some cases adding or removing some challenges - optional supernatural encounters for example) Ein Arris to several different genres? So there would be the classic low fantasy, but also a more high fantasy , something set during the 1800's (gunpowder), 1930's pulp, modern era (with telecom) and then a possible future space opera/traveler era. This would highlight the "universal" part of the system and also let a GM pick an era that the players may want to play in.
(at that point it would not really be Ein Arris anymore probably, but the bones would be there).
My gut says the effort to try to make it truly generic could water down the adventure too much, depending how far you stretched it. Some genres might make sense. You could take Caravan and make it a wagon train in the old west, tweak Halmaro away from having multiple wives, and then turn all the bandits into black hat outlaws. But to do it in the 1930s, you need trains and vehicles, and to make it pulp you'd want high adventure, death traps, and over-the-top evil villains. I don't think it would work in that setting and still "feel" right to players.
what is name of warhammer starting adventure?
It's called "Making the Rounds" and it's in the Starter Set
Was this a review or a master class in how to build a better starter adventure? I offer two coins for your answer, sir, or we shall have to fight.
Your review is top notch. Too bad Ein Arris is weak sauce.😢
I always thought "caravan" was weird because it presumed brand new game players in the 1980's were going to want a middle east setting for some reason, and there's not even any magic in it. Is this supposed to be 1001 Arabian Nights? Is this supposed to be Conan The Barbarian? Is this supposed to be a REAL obscure place in the middle east we've never heard of because in the 1980's americans would need to consult a detailed atlas of the mid-east at a fancy library to find out. And WHY would the players want to be playing THIS with G.U.R.P.S. instead of a generic D&D style campaign? BECAUSE it's Generic and Universal, they should have done something that was going to enrapture players, such as Star Wars with "Lazer Swords" to file the Lucas-serial numbers off of the otherwise copyright violation. They could have done a knock-off Battlestar Galactica campaign, "Around The World In 80 Days" done "Raiders Of The Lost Ark"-style pulp fiction, or "80,000 Leagues Under The Sea" done that way.
....and speaking of campaigns, why doesn't the starter rulebook provide a starter CAMPAIGN for the G.M.? Why would any player invest all of the time it takes to create a character, especially in GURPS where that's a huge investment, if the game is COMPLETELY OVER in at most 1 single adventure of at most 2 sessions?
And I think the "starter adventure" that gets included IN THE RULEBOOK needs to teach -=> the new Game Master
I personally never minded the desert setting - but was confused why it wasn’t in Yrth, with magic and some more interesting characters. And while I think one shots make for good starter adventures, a longer campaign to graduate to would be very welcome. Like you are saying, it’s a ton of very hard GM work to go from running Caravan to creating your own adventure right afterwards.
It doesn't have magic because that makes it much more complicated. It's not set on Yrth because when this was written Yrth either wasn't a thing or was only a nascent thing.
Yrth predated this adventure - it was in Orcslayer which was published for Man to Man, and could have easily been set in the Nomad Lands. Also, I don't think magic necessarily adds complexity. Again, Orcslayer had an acid spewing swamp monster in it, and that game didn't have any rules for spells or magic at all. Adding a magical flaming sword, monster, or a ring that created illusionary tax bandits to seemingly outnumber the PCs could add flavor without complexity.
@1ShotJC Yeah, as I said: Yrth wasn't a thing or was only a nascent thing. By that I mean that while it existed, it wasn't "The Official and 100% Exclusive Fantasy Campaign Setting off GURPS in Liw of All Others." Is kind of like how The Keep on the Borderlands wasn't set in any particular setting. It was retroactively out into other settings later, when this became the norm for the industry. But at the time, it was fine to just have an adventure that was its own thing. There wasn't yet the now-common desire for constant continuity of settings and modules.
Setting Caravan in Yrth would also have required a lot of explanation of what Yrth is that wouldn't really have much benefitted the adventure.
I really don’t get why so many GURPS adventures insist on having such brutal combat. The system is sold on being a game where you can be anything but if you’re not some kind of warrior then you’ll just get killed off as soon as negotiations fail.
That's an interesting critique. Do you have a favorite low combat adventure from another system?
@@1ShotJC Most Call of Cathulu adventures disincentivize direct conflict on account of how brutal the game is. There are still fights from time to time but it’s clearly not meant to be a draw for the system outside of Pulp Cathulu.