Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?

Michael Thayne · 03-02-2021, 01:22 PM

A big one for me is that Dungeon Fantasy seems a lot friendlier to shade of gray than D&D (certainly earlier editions, I guess Wizards has moved in the same direction with 5e?). This is somewhat related to the discussion of bunny-aligned creatures—Sense of Duty (Nature) is fairly restrictive and going to frequently put characters who have it at odds with most humans. But even "good" and "evil" as they exist in Dungeon Fantasy are ambiguous. "Evil" only needs to have Social Stigma (Excommunicated), and can technically have Honesty and Sense of Duty and so on. Meanwhile a "good" cleric might have Sense of Duty (Coreligionists) while also being a fanatic who wantonly slaughters members of other religions. There's nothing particularly "good" about dwarves (if anything, their Greed makes it seem like they'd be prone to evil), and there's nothing particularly "evil" about goblins.

Beyond that though, it depends a lot on what you emphasize. In fleshing out my setting, I put a lot of thought into the roles of specific types of sapient beings (DF3) and gods (DF7) but decided the vast majority of the occupations from books other than DF1 are rare to nonexistent, with the exception of the Assassin. But you could just as easily create a setting that really emphasizes Artificers, Demolishers, Musketeers, and Psis.

03-02-2021, 01:22 PM	#30
Michael Thayne Join Date: May 2010	Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF? A big one for me is that *Dungeon Fantasy* seems a lot friendlier to shade of gray than D&D (certainly earlier editions, I guess Wizards has moved in the same direction with 5e?). This is somewhat related to the discussion of bunny-aligned creatures—Sense of Duty (Nature) is fairly restrictive and going to frequently put characters who have it at odds with most humans. But even "good" and "evil" as they exist in *Dungeon Fantasy* are ambiguous. "Evil" only needs to have Social Stigma (Excommunicated), and can technically have Honesty and Sense of Duty and so on. Meanwhile a "good" cleric might have Sense of Duty (Coreligionists) while also being a fanatic who wantonly slaughters members of other religions. There's nothing particularly "good" about dwarves (if anything, their Greed makes it seem like they'd be prone to evil), and there's nothing particularly "evil" about goblins. Beyond that though, it depends a lot on what you emphasize. In fleshing out my setting, I put a lot of thought into the roles of specific types of sapient beings (*DF3) and gods (DF7) but decided the vast majority of the occupations from books other than DF1* are rare to nonexistent, with the exception of the Assassin. But you could just as easily create a setting that really emphasizes Artificers, Demolishers, Musketeers, and Psis.