Quote:
Originally Posted by Mailanka
Purchased, but I'm going to reserve judgement until the second comes out, because for each campaign framework I read, I always find the second the most riveting and important. It provides the context for me to really grasp the intent of the first one.
|
It's more mixed for me. Yes, the 2nd volume (Action 2, DF2, MH2) provides a huge amount of meatiness in the form of GMing procedures for how to resolve situations likely to come up and making sure that
purchased abilities see use, but the 1st volume is the one that indicates the
types of characters that are
meant to be created, and whether the focus is on simulation or not. MH makes use of Bang! skills, for instance, a concept I dislike.
Generally the first volume establishes what's kosher and what's not, in terms of character abilities, and also in terms of character concepts.
For instance, Action vol. 1 suggests that you
can have a player character who's job description is "investigator". Yes, he has to have a point or two in Guns (Pistol) and in Karate, but it's not presented as an oddball choice, as an optional template that you have to ask for the GM's permission to choose, but rather as a
core element of the play experience, thus indicating that GURPS Action is meant for a
fairly cerebral play style, rather than for 99% fighty fighty (e.g. as in "The Expendables" movie franchise). The Bard class in DF1 does some of the same, although less clearly (a lot of the Bard is, unsurprisingly given the D&D inspiration of DF, about magic, with only some being about social skills and advantages).
Sometimes it's misleading, though, as with DF1 not offering any support for non-Human player characters. That can be taken in many different wrong ways, including the absolutely ridiculous assumption that the DF series is quite compatible with historical fantasy.
Non-Human species templates did show up in the first actual DF supplement, though, volume 3 (and are actually quite good - none of them stereotypes the species towards one particular profession in a 1:1 sense), and it's likely that they were left out of DF1 simply because of page count concerns.
So I do think that a lot can be gleaned just from the first volume of any such GURPS "distillation" product.