Goblin Racial Template

When I was running an orc-based campaign where all the PCs played orcs, there was a great chance that they'd run into goblins, either as enemies or allies (or slaves, more likely), so I made this racial template. I wanted to make goblins a little different from what they were in D&D, but I enjoyed some of the cliches that they had. I mostly wanted the goblins to be more intelligent than they normally are represented, but have some bizarre compulsions. They're actually smarter than the orc template that I had made (although I might revise that in the future).

Magical Sacrifice

Lagertha sacrifices for  the Great Heaten Army

In my games I generally don't shirk away from human sacrifice (or, since I'm running a campaign based around orcs, sapient sacrifice). Maybe I'm just weird and unethical, but when I imagine back to the willing sacrifices of the long-dead pagans I can't help but think of them as noble. They surrendered their lives so that, according to their worldview, the gods would not sunder the world or grant their families and their people safety and abundance. That's the sweet thing about sacrifice, especially in the pseudo-literary improv world of RPGs. So nobody thinks I'm a monster and despite it being obvious -- human sacrifice is bad and there were plenty of people that were sacrificed to gods against their will. In fact, after winning a battle, the Celts would sacrifice half of the enemy survivors to the gods in thanks for victory (how badass is that?).

In an RPG, however, sapient sacrifice can be awesome, or, as some put it, 'fucking metal'. I first started wondering how I would replicate or translate sapient sacrifice into the mechanics of the game when I was trying to prepare a fusion world of Celts and Vikings (using the Celtic Myth and Vikings supplements to help me figure it out). I then discovered the wonderful resource that is GURPS Thaumatology. I cannot recommend Thaumatology enough for the GURPS GMs who want to tinker with the magic systems of their worlds or attempt to find better ways to replicate magical worlds into GURPS. The Celtic-Viking fusion campaign never wound up taking off. Instead of making my won setting for that fusion, I realized I could just use Banestorm and elaborate the Nomad Lands. That didn't wind up taking off. So I decided, since I have Celtic and Viking parallels in the D&D setting, Lumaras, that I had made, why not just run the Celt-Viking campaigns from there. The only difference was that there were no Christians, which was both a shame and a relief. The mention of Christians in the rules below reflect that I had written them in preparation for a campaign involving Christians in the setting (Banestorm). So, using the Thaumatology toolbox, I came up with the following rule-set for the interaction of mana, the gods, and sapient, material, and animal sacrifice for my Lumaras GURPS Fantasy campaign "An Orc's Lot." References to GURPS Magic are abbreviated as M# (where # is the page number). I believe I didn't explicitly say that the energy from a sacrifice could be directed into a Powerstone for fears of unbalancing the game. But honestly, now I don't know whether it really would. Maybe comment below and weigh in on the non-controversy.

Orcs had practiced sacrificial magic for so long as any orc can remember. The orc gods often demand sacrifices, anyway. The practice of directing the sacrificial energy into Manastones is a practice imported from goblinkin mages.
Sacrifice works according to Thaumatology. Not only living sacrifices grant energy or ‘sway with the gods’. You can specifically ask the GM for an energy total when you perform a sacrifice after the sacrifice has been performed, and only for sacrifices which grant mana. You can perform sacrifices to empower spellwork or to ask for aid from the gods for a vague boon (such as “grant us victory against the Christians” or “let the winter be mild” or “fatten my pigs and let my harvest be bountiful”). These vague supplications will amount to various bonuses on relevant rolls or alterations in story or outcome.
The energy value of living sacrifices is based on intelligence and mass or health: for creatures of IQ 5 or less, it is equal to IQ multiplied by the lower of HT or HP; for creatures IQ 6+, it is equal to IQ multiplied by the higher of HT or HP. Certain aspects, such as beauty or purity (as interpreted by the entity to whom the sacrifice is sworn), provide a modifier to the total energy value. A willing sapient is worth twice it's typical energy value.
Sacrificial energy may be stored in Manastones (M70). Any quirks will generally relate to death, troubling emotions, and may cause inconveniences towards those who practice sacrificial magic (if any sacrificial victims were unwilling). These manastones are chalky in texture, have an otherworldly color, and, if examined, a foreboding and unnerving presence.
Finally, those sacrifices sworn to a deity as part of worship or broad supplication rather than magic do not grant energy; the energy is absorbed by the deity. Two examples: Sanktulo The Devout sacrifices Timmy (ST 9 IQ 10 HT 11, Willing +100%, young +50% for, unbeknownst to the player, 265 EP directly to the god) in honor of Grokolok, asking for survival through the winter or a victory against a rival tribe, or on a selected day to stay a hungry god’s wrath. Sorĉadanto the Arcanely Profane sacrifices Timothy (ST 10 DX 10 IQ 10 HT 11, HP 10 FP 11) to Kalgazgro or one of his agents for 110 Energy Points; he either transfers this energy in a manastone for later use (if he knows the spell) or uses it immediately to cast a powerful spell.

Against or For the Barrow King: Module Inversions & Hearing Both Sides (of Good & Evil)

In my GURPS "An Orc's Lot" Campaign, I wanted to include as many aspects of what an orc typically does in most fantasy literature, excluding the typical "mook existence." I should say that Orcs by Stan Nicholls was in part a great inspiration for me in preparing this campaign. One of the tropes of orcish existence is finding employment by ugly non-orcs with a lot of wealth and little conscience -- and generally a psyche mostly fueled by vengeance to a perceived unforgivable slight. I had the idea that the PCs should be enlisted to work for some unscrupulous monster (a human, but likely less ethical than the orc PCs) and likely have to fight against comical bands of demi-human adventurers who enact their own tropes. I never really got to the part where adventuring companies started raiding their boss's stronghold of evil and dread, though.

So, with that idea in mind, I started looking through some D&D modules that included orcs so I could invert it. A helpful tool was the website that was Matt Colville's brainchild and was built up and coded by his fans -- a wonderfully collaborative project with a great purpose in mind -- was the Adventure Lookup website. In the end, I chose a D&D 3.5 module from Alderac Entertainment Group -- "Against the Barrow King" from Adventure I. I had read through this adventure before and decided that the gruesome details in the module perfectly served my purpose. I fleshed out the map of the dungeon, converted the NPCs into GURPS and developed their personalities, and clutched Mass Combat close at hand for preparation for when the orcs and their monstrous co-workers would attack and subjugate the village.
I started the adventure by having the PCs be hired off by their Orc Chief to some strange evil human cultist. The human cultist had them, and a few other orcs who'd been hired, brought to through the desert and plains that is the Orclands, and then they passed into West Chetsia, a human empire modeled after the West Germans (Saxons, Franks, etc.). During the travel, I have the PCs chat and get to know each other (it was still a little early in the campaign and there were a couple new characters) and get to know the Orc NPCs who had also been hired by this evil employer. I had counted the orcs present in the module, subtracted the number of PCs, and set half of the orcs as other hirelings of the evil employer and the other as devout members of his evil cult.

A Chirurgeon from the module.

Wonder of wonders, upon meeting the rest of the evil cult in the Barrow in which they'd setup their temple to their god of slaughter, they discovered the village of Glenn Hollow. This is the village that the PCs would have found in distress had they been a regular adventuring company. Instead, it was the village that the PCs were paid to distress. The group did a mass combat with the poor villagers and bested them pitifully. After the group dominated the village and attempted to keep any villagers from escaping to get help, the PCs continued their duties of helping their evil employer of guarding the Temple as well as the village. The evil employer set about gathering villagers to either sacrifice to his evil god of slaughter, Voodrith, or to remake into his nasty Chirurgeon monsters (basically flesh golems that served as "new" monsters for the adventure).
Long story short, the PCs did exactly what I was hoping they would do: betray their evil employer and steal his treasures, while one of the stranger PCs (who wasn't raised among orcs, himself) ran off to the humans to warn them about the cult. The PCs and the other orcs who'd been hired by the cult ran off from the evil temple of Voodrith while the PC who'd surrendered himself to the humans brought a sizable (at least compared to the cult which had now diminished due to the orcs' desertions) force to both liberate the village of Glenn Hollow as well as the root out the cult from their barrow-temple. The evil employer and his evil friends all died, and the PC who'd surrendered himself to the humans wound up escaping them with both a power-stone as well as the spellbook of the necromancer.
I would recommend that another GM who's running a campaign that allows grey morality try this out. Including adventuring hooks for both the typical and the inverted forms of a module is a great way to add some dynamism to those adventures and the campaign world. If the quivering villager asks the Party "mysterious bandits are isolating our village and kidnapping us! Please help us! We have 40 gold pieces among all of us, as well as this cow" while the well-spoken cleric promises a fairly well-paying gig guarding him against opportunists and marauders (adventuring parties), who might the Party likely side with? It's the perfect way to have the PCs begin wondering if they're working for the bad guys and to deploy your rival NPC adventuring party. Besides, all those mooks that the adventuring parties would be killing in most any other campaign that uses the module were hired and promised some good old-fashioned gold and glory, too.

& here's a token

Orcish Pantheon

Grokolok

Grokolok is known as the Goddess of the Tribe. Many funeral rites are performed invoking Grokolok. She is a Goddess of both birth and death. Her primary motivation is the survival of the tribe (taken literally to be one’s own tribe) and, more broadly, the survival and propagation of orckind. Many consider the customs and ‘laws’ of orcs to be her purview, though some dispute this and assert that it is the domain of Vruudash.

Gruumsh

Gruumsh is only the god of war. His remaining eye, his condition inflicted by a fallen Lynochian God, is his symbol. Some orcs believe that the berserker rage is the holy spirit of Gruumsh channeling through fierce orc warriors. Gruumsh is believed to be present at every battle, relishing in the bloodshed and watching for signs of dishonor. His angels are said to sweep up the most valiant felled orcs and bring them, at first with an audience with himself and Vruudash, and then ferry them to a special palace in Grokolok’s realm (the Hall of Hallowed Warriors).

Harzdolkar

Harzdolkar is the god of the plains. Worshipped by the herders and farmers. He grants fertility for crops and grasses. He is simultaneously taken to be a god of sedentary agricultural life and semi-nomadic animal husbandry. Modest sacrifices are offered to Harzdolkar for healthy crops and livestock and rain. He is the consort of Grokolok.

Kalgazgro

God of Shadows. Deals with trickery (and many intermediaries with Kalgazgro deal in body control, death magic, and necromancy). According to orcish mythology, Kalgazgro wardens the souls of honorless orcs, keeping them as his slaves. Occasionally, it is said, he will dole them out to intermediary spirits to supply them to their necromantic servants.

Gaku

Gaku is a demonic agent of Kalgazgro. He was originally created by Brozmul, but escaped when Brozmul’s power base collapsed.

Vruudash

Orcish All-Father. Vruudash is said to have created orcs. He is claimed to have set as their destiny to end human dominance and destroy the Lynochians (and its Chetsin off-shoots). However, reasons for the creations of orckind vary immensely. After the Lynochian Gods disappeared and the Lynochian Empire was destroyed and/or shunted out of existence, Vruudash retired, allowing the lesser orc deities to rise to what they are now. Vruudash is rarely invoked, and is rarely counted on to intervene in orcish affairs. He is, nonetheless, respected and revered by orcs, and it is hoped that he still watches with interest the future and conditions of his children.

Orc Society and Status

These are the notes on Orcish Society that I had written for the GURPS Orc campaign, "An Orc's Lot." When I finally clean up the Guide, I'll also post the "An Orc's Lot" version of the Lumaras Player's Guide that I had arrogantly written way back when.

Orc Society

Control Rating: 4/0 (Obedience to superiors is expected, but murder is hardly illegal)

Tech Level 2 (no goddamn tonfas)

Magic

Orc magic has been somewhat stunted. It takes longer for an orc to develop magical styles and spells. The most magically-developed races of the dwarves, elves, gnomes, and humans are hostile to orcs (or vice versa, depending on who speaks). Despite these setbacks, there are orc mages. They often fill the role of shamans, since unlike many shamans, the spells they practice generally take shape. Those who weren’t born with magery often make bargains with spirits and extraplanar entities for powers (taking pacts), or plead with the orc gods to invest them with power.  

Sacrifice

Orcs had practiced sacrificial magic for so long as any orc can remember. The orc gods often demand sacrifices, anyway. The practice of directing the sacrificial energy into Manastones is a practice imported from goblinkin mages.

Status

Status and Military Rank are tied (or, if you like, military rank replaces status).

Status Level	Examples
5	Warlord (Lord)
4	Chieftain (Chief)
3	Captain (Boss)
2	Sergeant
1	Warrior (Grunt; tribe-name)
0	Trades/craftsorc (Builder), herdsorc
-1	Serf (Scraper)
-2	Slave

Warlords

Warlords are the Orcish approximation of dukes or minor kings. A warlord is a powerful chieftain who brings to submission other chiefdoms to control their armies. Thus, warlords manage to accumulate fairly large armies. The morale of these armies vary depending on the strength, charisma, as well as a few other qualities, of the warlord. If the warlord dies, the armies typically scatter, each chiefdom independent again and each chieftain scrambling to replace the late warlord. Warlords have Administrative Rank 4, Social Regard 3 (feared) and an Ally Group (Orc Horde, 100-1,000) (which may also be represented by a Patron organization).

Chieftains

Chieftains are the leaders of tribal settlements. A tribe may consist of a number of different settlements, and there may be lower, local chiefs who swear fealty to the Chieftain of the tribe. The Chieftain, however, rules the tribe and coordinates its military. The Chieftain has Social Regard 2 (feared), an Ally Group (50-300), and Administrative Rank 3. If they swear to or are subjugated by a Warlord, they have that Warlord as a Patron. If subjugated, Chieftains have a Duty to a Warlord.

Captain

Captains are the leaders of warbands sent out by Chieftains or Warlords. They command a band of warriors to protect the tribe and to perform raids upon other tribes. There are usually only a handful (3-5) of Captains in a tribal settlement. A Captain has Social Regard 1 (feared), an Ally Group of Orc Warriors (21-50) and a few sergeants (6-10). Captains have a Duty to their Chieftain. Those captains who manage settlements outside of the principal settlement (that one wherein the Chieftain resides) and serve their Chieftain as administrative agents also have Administrative Rank 2.

Sergeant

Sergeants are Warriors who have displayed combat prowess and leadership capability. They can be assigned a very small squad of grunts to command for various tasks. They may take a small Ally Group of Warriors (6-10). Sergeants have a Duty to their Captains or the Chieftain.

Warrior

Warriors are fairly self-explanatory. Warriors follow their assigned (or preferred) Captains to raid, patrol, scout, and defend for the Chieftain. Warriors have Status 1 [10] and often try to cultivate a Reputation among their tribe, and, hopefully, among other orc tribes [variable].

Builders

Builders are a broad social class. They include herders, tradesorcs, craftsorcs, and smiths. If attacked, Builders also constitute the tribe’s militia. Showing bravery and combat prowess in a raid and exhibiting their ability to follow the Orc’s Code of Honor may allow them to improve their rank and status. Some Builders (as well as some Warriors) who serve the Chieftain as assistants or aides also have Administrative Rank 1. Those orcs are known as the Chief’s Free Servants.

Scrapers

Scrapers are the equivalent of human serfs. They are known as Scrapers because they attempt to wrench from the inhospitable earth whatever crops they can. This is to say, the orcs’ farmers constitute a semi-enthralled caste. They have the Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen) and Status -1 [-10]. They are generally seen as tied to the tribe – wherever travels the tribe, the land of the destination is their concern.

Slaves

Most slaves are non-orc captives, taken and enthralled by the warriors who took them. Slaves have little to no chance of emancipation. Slaves take Dead Broke [-25], Social Stigma (Subjugated) [-5] and Status -2 [-20].