The Future of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game?

[Purple Snit]

"I strongly suspect you are wrong about this for a significant chunk of the market. DFRPG fills a role that GURPS DF, which I love and am three years deep in a huge campaign on, simply can’t."

I would be curious to read more on why you think this is - you already play DF - why would a changed, "rules-lite" help that?

On the subject of adventures - I just concluded a short Pathfinder campaign, and the reason I quit [and, I suspect, the reason for the "railroady" adventures] is because of the necessary progression of characters on the class/level track; you can't reuse low-level monsters or challenges at later levels, because they are no threat or obstacle to the PCs, so you have to constantly elevate the levels, and write up new opponents/obstacles, and this doesn't encourage straying from a clearly defined path. I don't want to turn this into system wars - different strokes - but for me, GURPS offers a lot more leeway for making stuff up off the cuff and reusing opponents. And I'm looking forward to getting 5 new players into the game with a DF campaign.

[Dominator]

These say it for me. Another vote for some sort of 3PP options.

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

I have zero doubt that DFRPG will be played a decade from now, even if SJG terminates the line tomorrow. Now, is there a way to increase that play and make SJG money?

To me and those I can see using it, the upsides to DFRPG are:
1. Self-contained: It requires a limited number of books to have “complete” rules and options.
2. Curated: Every rule, template, and item has been looked over by a single intelligence, in light of lots of feedback.

Originally Posted by robertsconley

There are people willing to put in the time and effort to write adventures. The more open that process is the more adventures that will be available. If there only a single source then there will be always "reasons" to be found to do something else other than writing more adventures.

Originally Posted by finn

First, to have future GURPS Dungeon Fantasy PDFs to be compatible to use in a DFRPG game. Without it, I will not be likely to buy new GURPS Dungeon Fantasy PDFs (with maybe the exception of adventures).

Second, to issue a "how to use GURPS Dungeon Fantasy in DFRPG" PDF with guidelines for each GURPS Dungeon Fantasy PDF published so far. It doesn't have to be complete, but enough so GMs will feel confirtable in introducing new elements to DFRPG. This should give incentive to DFRPG owners with no GURPS experience to purchase GURPS Dungeon Fantasy PDF, and maybe buy into GURPS in the future.

[Dominator]

I agree for what that is worth. Presentation might be important to some authors (mood, emphasis, clarity).

For those that don't have a strong opinion, then they have the template to use if they want - or if they are aiming to get published by SJGames or Pyramid, rather than 3PP.

Originally Posted by robertsconley

Given clear instruction and a little coaching sure. However what if you disagree that the way to format adventure. Or your opinion is that the template is a detriment to the presentation of a good adventure. Or even with instructions and coaching, you find the template stifling to creativity.
...
What is need is experimentation. My Scourge of Demon Wolf was a GURPS adventure for 125 point 3rd edition fantasy characters. I did nothing to change it for OD&D aside from figuring out the level ranges it best worked with it (3rd to 5th).

If I wrote it for GURPS, I would use the same format I using now because I believe it is the best way of presenting that adventure. But it is not the way is outlined in the template.

[afschell]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

I strongly suspect you are wrong about this for a significant chunk of the market. DFRPG fills a role that GURPS DF, which I love and am three years deep in a huge campaign on, simply can’t.

I agree. Advantages like "Tough Skin" described in a single paragraph without having to dig through a page of "Damage Resistance" rules to find that limitation makes character creation and play much, much simpler. Not to mention less intimidating for new players.

DFRPG, imho, is all that players need. If you are GMing, you will probably need additional material.

[afschell]

Originally Posted by Purple Snit

"I strongly suspect you are wrong about this for a significant chunk of the market. DFRPG fills a role that GURPS DF, which I love and am three years deep in a huge campaign on, simply can’t."

I would be curious to read more on why you think this is - you already play DF - why would a changed, "rules-lite" help that?

On the subject of adventures - I just concluded a short Pathfinder campaign, and the reason I quit [and, I suspect, the reason for the "railroady" adventures] is because of the necessary progression of characters on the class/level track; you can't reuse low-level monsters or challenges at later levels, because they are no threat or obstacle to the PCs, so you have to constantly elevate the levels, and write up new opponents/obstacles, and this doesn't encourage straying from a clearly defined path. I don't want to turn this into system wars - different strokes - but for me, GURPS offers a lot more leeway for making stuff up off the cuff and reusing opponents. And I'm looking forward to getting 5 new players into the game with a DF campaign.

I don't think that clarifying the rules (i.e. my "Tough Skin" example above) is really rules-lite. Same overall effect but with much, much less to sift through. (Although I may missed this GURPS advantage being modified in a DF module.)

And, as for adventures, I think any adventure path type will have those issues. Which is why I, personally, try to go for sandbox type of campaigns. A bit more work on my end but I find them much easier to GM and also introduce new PCs when needed.

[tbone]

I'm sad to hear that DFRPG isn't meeting the bar for continuation and expansion. To be honest, I'm not shocked; as pleased as I am with the product, there's a flood of new products washing over us these days. If I weren't already a GURPS player, would I even have heard of DFRPG?

I have no insights on the health of actual product sales, but it's worth reading SJG's announcement closely, and looking at DFRPG's not-so-shabby showing among the company's top products. The boxed set is #6 by dollar volume, and the GM Screen #27. Note that there's only one GURPS product among the top 40, and it's below the DFRPG GM Screen!

It looks to me like DFRPG isn't failing to deliver sales; it just carries too high a cost (money, time, attention) relative to those. (Or in terms we can all understand: Castle DFRPG is yielding a fair haul of gold pieces, manticore organs, and magical knick-knacks – but at a sacrifice of too many HP, paut potions, and mauled henchmen. The party has decided to seek out less costly dungeons.)

(Side thought: I'd prefer to see DFRPG's category in the Report to the Stakeholders labeled "Disappointments", not "Failures". But financially, yeah, one's the same as the other.)

==

I have no idea whether more simplification, or a lower price, or a more detailed game background, or a different adventure, or a dozen other possible changes, would have helped. Such changes wouldn't have helped hugely, I suspect, if a market glutted with games means that just getting people's attention in the first place is the prime obstacle.

One way to get attention, of course, is to grab more retail space with more product, and grab more online attention with more product announcements and reviews. That's where one suggestion in this thread comes through clearly: More published adventures! Non-GURPS newcomers in particular, I think, want published adventurers. Alas, it's chicken/egg: How to justify writing and publishing lots of adventures when the core product hasn't yet proven itself? It'd have meant even more resources and an even bigger gamble...

I love the idea of freelancers* coming up with adventures, but I don't know what the point of publishing DFRPG adventurers would be if the market will never expand beyond buyers of the game's initial print run.

==

There's still DF, though; long may it live. More adventures for DF would be great. (And to anyone saying that there's but a bare handful now – Mirror, Pagoda, and the DFRPG Rat duology – I'd add a reminder that there are many more in Pyramid. I think commentators often forget about Pyramid when discussing support for the GURPS line.)

Perhaps there can be no more official support for DFRPG, but I'd hate to see any buyers feeling burned by that. I guess what I'd like to see is this: Let ongoing DF support give some attention to DFRPG. That is, create DF supplements – adventures, especially – that would fit into DFRPG, with footnotes or sidebars on whatever changes or clarifications are needed. There shouldn't be too much to say; the two are hugely compatible as is.

The same applies to bloggers: If you write any material for DF, it'd be great if you could gear it to work with both DF and DFRPG. (Minor example: I wrote an article suggesting new talents for the thief profession, taking care to include only skills included in both DF and DFRPG.)

By doing this, it seems it'd be easy for SJG (and bloggers, etc.) to show ongoing support for DFRPG at very little cost, while easing them into the greater DF/GURPS world.

In short, I hope gamers who aren't GURPS players but who bought DFRPG anyway will be able to appreciate that they didn't spend a lot on a one-shot product; they bought a great foothold into a hugely expansive, well-supported game system.

==

*Side thought on the discussion of SJG's WYSIWYG template for writers: I certainly empathize with those who wish it weren't MS Word. Still, I understand SJG's requirement that the file format support certain features, and that the software be something reasonably widespread; I can't blame the company for going with the lowest common denominator that does the job (and in this case, I do mean lowest). I'd like to see consideration of an Open Office preference in the future; in the meantime, I hope any potential new writers can just grit their teeth and plow through it.

Originally Posted by Purple Snit

The way I see it, the DFRPG suffered from an identity crisis. If you already played GURPS DF, you didn't need a streamlined version of the rules. And if you weren't already inclined to be a GURPS player, it didn't have anything new to pull you in....truth be told; I don't need "rules lite" GURPS.

The proposition of DFRPG is much more than just "streamlined" or "lite" rules, though. It's a streamlined product (not just rules), a streamlined purchasing and playing experience. It's doing away with two big GURPS Basic Set books, plus Magic, plus several DF books, plus the need to scrounge dice and draw up play maps and find something to use as figures. Everything is provided, curated, and organized for quick dungeoneering.

I think that is something to pull in newbies: GURPS itself, without countless pages on high-tech gear and an Infinite Worlds background and a hundred options unrelated to old-fashioned dungeon delving. All demanding that you extract and organize the stuff you need, on your own.

(Then again, just because I think lots of newcomers should want that, doesn't mean that a lot actually do...)

Originally Posted by Purple Snit

It's a shame it didn't succeed, but I would hope that SJG will continue to give us Dungeon Fantasy expansions in the future, and not give up on the genre.

Agreed 100%! I'm among the many who think that GURPS/DF/DFRPG does D&D better than D&D does. For me, there's just no better way to dungeon.

[DocRailgun]

Every few months there's a "if this game would only have some published adventures, it would take off like a shot!" Yet, noone writes and submits these adventures.

Go back and look at the forums when Df came out and you'll see the same plantive cries, but I still don't see a bunch of DF adventures written by new authors.

"But I don't have time to write adventures, so I just convert other games' adventures to GURPS/DF/DFRPG". OK, Let's make it easy - go find the folks that write the many Pathfinder or older edition D&D adventures and have them write the adventure then convert it to DFRPG and THEN pitch/submit it.

This supposedly urning desire for adventures rings hollow. If there was a market for them people would be writing them and bugging the heck out of SJG to get them published.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by tbone

I love the idea of freelancers* coming up with adventures, but I don't know what the point of publishing DFRPG adventurers would be if the market will never expand beyond buyers of the game's initial print run.

Do remember that the DFRPG survives in PDF, like everything else. It just won't be a physical product on store shelves. That's unfortunate, but it can certainly expand to buyers beyond the initial print run.

And that's the lasting achievement of the DFRPG, I think. Yes, it won't be in stores, but the hard work of making "GURPS Medium" (for fantasy) has been done. The on-ramp to GURPS through a focused genre game has been built. And this is why I think the lasting sadness of it ending up too expensive to stick with is the very strong implication that we won't be seeing more on-ramps like this for sci-fi, supers, spies, and so on.

Originally Posted by tbone

I'd like to see consideration of an Open Office preference in the future

I don't think I understand this. Open Office and Libre Office can use Word formats, and I've been using them to write using the SJ Games template for years. Are there notable differences between how Open/Libre Office works normally and when using Word templates? I haven't noticed any, though I don't work deeply with a lot of features.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

Every few months there's a "if this game would only have some published adventures, it would take off like a shot!" Yet, noone writes and submits these adventures.

Around these forums, I mostly hear people agreeing that existing GURPS players prefer to roll their own adventures, and that the kind of newcomers who are attracted to GURPS will likely do the same.

I think there was a lot of hope, though, that DFRPG would attract a different kind of player – one not interested in "toolbox GURPS" but willing to buy an all-in-one game – and that this sort of newcomer would be more interested in published adventures. Or so I've heard some speculate.

Either way, I think it'd be swell if more people would submit adventures*, but I don't know how badly SJG wants them. (I'll note that DF: Adventures and Adventures in general are on the GURPS Wish List. So are a lot of things...)

*Yes, this makes me officially One of Those People Who Says 'I'd Like to See More Adventures' But Isn't Writing One.

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

Do remember that the DFRPG survives in PDF, like everything else. It just won't be a physical product on store shelves. That's unfortunate, but it can certainly expand to buyers beyond the initial print run.

True; the door is potentially wide open for future PDF supplements, even adventures. But it'll be interesting to see whether SJG is interested in future DFRPG-specific PDF products, or just DF, or hybrid products expressly designed for both of these.

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

I don't think I understand this. Open Office and Libre Office can use Word formats, and I've been using them to write using the SJ Games template for years. Are there notable differences between how Open/Libre Office works normally and when using Word templates? I haven't noticed any, though I don't work deeply with a lot of features.

I'm simply thinking of how "compatible" can often mean "has wee issues that don't matter for simple home stuff, but don't even think about Serious Business Use". If the SJG template + Open/Libre Office works perfectly well, with no complaints from SJG, great! Good to hear that from someone with experience.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by tbone

Either way, I think it'd be swell if more people would submit adventures*, but I don't know how badly SJG wants them. (I'll note that DF: Adventures and Adventures in general are on the GURPS Wish List. So are a lot of things...)

I'll point back to Kromm's comments on adventure proposals above. SJ Games is willing to publish adventures and adventure-like content, but there are apparently issues with the quality of proposals.

Originally Posted by tbone

I'm simply thinking of how "compatible" can often mean "has wee issues that don't matter for simple home stuff, but don't even think about Serious Business Use". If the SJG template + Open/Libre Office works perfectly well, with no complaints from SJG, great! Good to hear that from someone with experience.

I suspect that when people complain about "the template," we're hearing a summary of a range of complaints which aren't really about it being in Word. There's a profusion of styles which can be intimidating to the newcomer, and there are any number of structural issues from complex formats for various entities (NPCs, spells, organizations) which are easy to get wrong to the admittedly unintuitive way in which content is to be organized for adventures.