Gorp!

[Bohemond]

So I’m adapting the old River of Cradles campaign to Heroquest (it’s a good introduction for fairly novice players), and I’m wondering how to handle the gorp. In RQ, of course, gorp are resistant to almost everything except fire and Disruption spells. But Disruption doesn’t exist as such in HQ (although a PC could have a spell that does something similar), and that would leave only fire. And it also seems that doing a literal port from RQ to HQ is probably not the best approach. So do people have any suggestions for how to handle this issue?

Is it as simple as saying that gorp have a Very Hard difficulty against all magics except Fire and Disorder magics? That would mean that Water magic can potentially solve the gorp problem, and as I read the scenario, part of the point is that Zola Fel has very few tools to confront gorp directly, and so the god brings in outsiders who have other skills.

Thoughts?

[Simon Phipp]

I’d make them immune to anything but Fire and Magic.

However, cunning heroes should be able to use their abilities to defeat, trap or avoid gorp in clever ways.

[Paul]

If I remember correctly the challenge with dealing with the Gorp is more to do with the PC’s approach rather than what spells they use (even though I assume many here have read River of Cradles I’ll retain from listing the details). So I agree with Simon, it’s about how your players tackle each encounter with their own skills.
I would ask the group to outline their plan, then I would set a difficulty based on how appropriate it was. Reward lateral thinking and cooperation

[Mark Mohrfield]

I would imagine lightning magic would work as well. I seem to recall a comment in the old Cults of Terror intro that stated that during the Great Darkness Zaburr once showed High King Elf how to enchant away the gorp, so perhaps there’s a grimoire with anti-gorp magic.

As Simon and Paul have said, encourage player creativity. Maybe someone will figure out a way to bottle the gorp.

[Phil Nicholls]

Hi Bohemond,

If you want to stay close to the original Gorp, then you could just rule that it is immune to all the other types of magic. I would not even roll for this, as by allowing a role, you are acknowledging that there is a possibility of victory.

Thus, the Heroes are either going to have to use the right magics against the Gorp, or be very creative. Resistances when using Fire magic will be a lot lower, reflecting the Gorp’s vulnerabilities. In all other cases, it will depend upon the creativity of the Heroes.

When describing the Gorp, especially if it is attacked by other types of magic, I would be sure to specify that the immunity is a rare phenomenon. This is to reassure Players that this is intended to be an unusual challenge. You are not intending to regularly shut down the Heroes’ magic in this way.

Best of luck, and I hope your Players are up to the challenge.
Phil

[David Scott]

Going back to the source (RuneQuest 2 page 81) and then HQ2ing it

GORPS
An amorphous blob of protoplasm. Gorp attacks by moving next to a victim and trying to enveloped it. Anyone caught by the gorp may become enmeshed and digestion by acid then begins. Armor will protect the character until it is eaten away. Gorp can only be killed by fire or magic. Weapons will just pass through it, taking damage from its digestive juices. Because of its acidic nature, acid has no effect on it at all. A gorp has a 10% chance of having a Chaotic feature.

So any magic you can convince your GM that would effect them you can use or burn it. I’d allow players to blow them to bits with wind magic, Earth magic to crush them, Water magic to dilute them to nothing, Change magic to metamorphose them to something else, etc. Fire and Fire magics are obvious.

Bohemond (@aelarsenmac-com), note that it’s all magic that can effect them. It just being Disruption is a mechanical holdover from RQ as it was one of the few spells that reduced hit points.

As for their difficulty level, as normal it should depend on what you want the outcome to be (and/or the pass-fail cycle). I’d certainly allow the Storm Bull warrior in our group to wade through them with her anti-chaos augmented sword with a difficulty of simple/easy, but the Herders get it harder.

[Bohemond]

David, thanks for the thoughts on this. But if any magic can affect them, doesn’t that seriously reduce their threat. Almost everyone has magic in HQ, so if any kind of magic works, then they’re not particularly scary.

[David Scott]

I think they are still scary, framing the contest is an important part of HQ2 – so although they are affected by magic not all of it’s going to be effective. Clearly Rune magic based upon Fire, Earth, Water, Death, Disorder and Air are going to be good, but Life, Harmony, Darkness (freeze them maybe), Movement, Stasis, etc are going have little effect if your players are not imaginative enough (mine would try until they died). Charms and spells are going to be hard to use unless directly relevant. Charms that make arrows more accurate like In the Eye – aren’t going to work. I’d probably run a Gorp fight as Group Simple contest as it’s likely to panic them more. Gorp are the slow creating chaos death, and you can always add a few more…

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