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Old 07-31-2019, 07:25 AM   #1
namada
 
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Default DFRPG-GURPS DF adventure/monster compatibility

So, I know there's I Smell a Rat in the boxed set, and I know there's Against the Rat-Men to follow it up, but what about the GURPS DF adventures: Mirror of the Fire Demon and Tomb of the Dragon King? Do they work well as immediate follow-up adventures, and as a good Adventure Path/Campaign overall? Or does it take a bit of work to go from the two linked DFRPG adventures to get the GURPS DF adventures to make some degree of logical sense? Has anyone done this and have it work well? I'm also curious about point-totals PCs would be at after the 4 adventures were completed.

Also, a question on monsters. I know there's a Monsters book in the box, and the DFRPG Monsters 2, but how do the GURPS DF Monsters series (1-4) fit into the whole? Are those all totally new monsters that could be added to the game so that you'd have 6 monster books in all, no repetitions? I'm not complaining, if there are repetitions, just curious.
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Old 07-31-2019, 07:38 AM   #2
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Default Re: DFRPG-GURPS DF adventure/monster compatibility

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Originally Posted by namada View Post
So, I know there's I Smell a Rat in the boxed set, and I know there's Against the Rat-Men to follow it up, but what about the GURPS DF adventures: Mirror of the Fire Demon and Tomb of the Dragon King? Do they work well as immediate follow-up adventures, and as a good Adventure Path/Campaign overall? Or does it take a bit of work to go from the two linked DFRPG adventures to get the GURPS DF adventures to make some degree of logical sense? Has anyone done this and have it work well? I'm also curious about point-totals PCs would be at after the 4 adventures were completed.
The DFRPG adventures are linked, but there's no particular link or ready similarity between any of the others. Indeed, the two DF adventures (and, while we're at it, Pagoda of Worlds) are written specifically to be dropped into a campaign, not to be a part of an ongoing long-term thing. One might create links, of course, but they're not written in.

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Originally Posted by namada View Post
Also, a question on monsters. I know there's a Monsters book in the box, and the DFRPG Monsters 2, but how do the GURPS DF Monsters series (1-4) fit into the whole? Are those all totally new monsters that could be added to the game so that you'd have 6 monster books in all, no repetitions? I'm not complaining, if there are repetitions, just curious.
There's a lot of overlap between the DF Monsters book and the DFRPG monsters. That is, there's not a lot in the DFRPG that isn't already in DF Monster series. Can't speak for Monsters 2, though.
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Old 07-31-2019, 09:39 AM   #3
Dalin
 
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Default Re: DFRPG-GURPS DF adventure/monster compatibility

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Originally Posted by namada View Post
So, I know there's I Smell a Rat in the boxed set, and I know there's Against the Rat-Men to follow it up, but what about the GURPS DF adventures: Mirror of the Fire Demon and Tomb of the Dragon King? Do they work well as immediate follow-up adventures, and as a good Adventure Path/Campaign overall? Or does it take a bit of work to go from the two linked DFRPG adventures to get the GURPS DF adventures to make some degree of logical sense? Has anyone done this and have it work well?
I've run a lot of GURPS DF adventures using DFRPG. I do own the full DF library, which helps in the few instances where there is a monster that isn't in DFRPG, but it's easy enough to swap in other monsters anyway.

If I knew that I was going to run MotFD after the rat adventures, I would make the following (mostly cosmetic) adjustments:
  • The town with the inn is Wadi al-Sheik. I might make the town a bit bigger than the one described in MotFD (finding a happy medium between the town description on p. 4 of I Smell a Rat and p. 6 of Mirror of the Fire Demon).
  • Turn Lee into one of the sages from MotFD. She could be Hsian Fa, "a merchant who passes frequently through the town and knows the area well." If it makes sense for her to be older, Merle could have been her brother, not her uncle.
  • Insert references to caravan routes, increasing dangers on the roads, etc. Adjust subtlety to the needs of your group.
  • Ooh, this would be fun: introduce one or two of the "rival adventurers" from MofTD in one of the preceding adventures. Perhaps Mirko the Fingers (the Exceptional Thief) follows them into the sewers, attempting to score some loot, or Gygga-Khyak (the Dark Artist) was a buddy of Merle's who wants to protect the Peshkali, or Gracious Mother Lunthilde had been suspicious of Merle for some time and is searching for the evil that she sensed beneath the inn.
Honestly, after skimming the adventures, it would only take a few minutes to link them into a pleasing path. Apply the same technique to Dragon King and pretty soon you'll have to print your PDFs on glossy paper in a WoTC-style hardcover tome.

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I'm also curious about point-totals PCs would be at after the 4 adventures were completed.
I didn't do those particular four, but I ran a group of 250 point characters through You All Meet at an Inn (Pyramid #3/98) followed by an original one shot and then the complete Mirror of the Fire Demon. I was fairly stingy with CP, typically giving 2 CP per 3-hour session. They earned a bit over 40 points in 20 sessions.

Quote:
Also, a question on monsters. I know there's a Monsters book in the box, and the DFRPG Monsters 2, but how do the GURPS DF Monsters series (1-4) fit into the whole? Are those all totally new monsters that could be added to the game so that you'd have 6 monster books in all, no repetitions? I'm not complaining, if there are repetitions, just curious
You can browse the amazing catalog of monsters put together by Rasputin (and made dynamic by Bruno); if you sort by Page you can get a sense of which creatures are in overlapping books. The key is below the chart. I don't believe they've added the monsters from DFRPG Monsters 2 yet. (I use this resource all the time!)

Last edited by Dalin; 08-03-2019 at 08:34 PM.
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Old 07-31-2019, 10:13 AM   #4
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Default Re: DFRPG-GURPS DF adventure/monster compatibility

Good notes, Dalin. And, yes, that catalog is sweet.
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Old 08-02-2019, 10:29 PM   #5
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Default Re: DFRPG-GURPS DF adventure/monster compatibility

The DF Companion arrived in the mail today - I hadn't realized it had Against the Rat-Men inside, so that's nice, saves me a step. With this thread, I was trying to figure out a good, fairly logically linked, but also fairly short campaign to run when the box arrives - I guess this could do - I Smell a Rat, then Against the Rat-Men, then The End? Or would that be way too short?

I read a bit from the Companion adventure and it suggested there were some adventure seeds in the adventure that comes with the box. Do you guys think that would provide a satisfactory mini-campaign, more of less just for folks to get their toes wet with the system, and see if they like it? So change the above to:
I Smell a Rat, then Adventure Seeds, then Against the Rat-Men, then The End

Would you think adding You All Meet at an Inn before all of that would be a better mini-campaign experience for noobs? So change that to:
You All Meet at an Inn, I Smell a Rat, then Adventure Seeds, then Against the Rat-Men, then The End

The Warehouse23 description says:
With "You All Meet at an Inn," expectations flip when the heroes find themselves desperately defending a tavern.
Can someone elaborate a tiny bit more on that?
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Old 08-03-2019, 09:01 PM   #6
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Default Re: DFRPG-GURPS DF adventure/monster compatibility

Quote:
Originally Posted by namada View Post
The DF Companion arrived in the mail today - I hadn't realized it had Against the Rat-Men inside, so that's nice, saves me a step. With this thread, I was trying to figure out a good, fairly logically linked, but also fairly short campaign to run when the box arrives - I guess this could do - I Smell a Rat, then Against the Rat-Men, then The End? Or would that be way too short?
I've lost you with The End. What adventure is that one? (Or, are you just saying that it would be two adventures and then you'd wrap up the campaign? I may be misreading this.)

Quote:
I read a bit from the Companion adventure and it suggested there were some adventure seeds in the adventure that comes with the box. Do you guys think that would provide a satisfactory mini-campaign, more of less just for folks to get their toes wet with the system, and see if they like it? So change the above to:
I Smell a Rat, then Adventure Seeds, then Against the Rat-Men, then The End
The seeds in I Smell a Rat are pretty broad and basic: "You could have branching passages here that lead to other funky adventures." If you have some fun ideas in mind, then you could certainly insert a short adventure between the two. Especially if you wove in an encounter or two with some rat-men.

Quote:
Would you think adding You All Meet at an Inn before all of that would be a better mini-campaign experience for noobs? So change that to:
You All Meet at an Inn, I Smell a Rat, then Adventure Seeds, then Against the Rat-Men, then The End

The Warehouse23 description says:
With "You All Meet at an Inn," expectations flip when the heroes find themselves desperately defending a tavern.
Can someone elaborate a tiny bit more on that?
I really enjoyed You All Meet at an Inn, but it wouldn't easily work with I Smell a Rat. It may also be a somewhat harder adventure. The basic idea is that the PCs are at a random inn which unexpectedly turns out to be the focus of a zombie apocalypse. As the party attempts to secure the place against the walking dead, they realize that there is a secret basement dungeon that must be explored to stop the mayhem. I've run it more than once for different groups. It can be an awesome starter adventure because the adventure lands on the PCs, though the first underground encounter is pretty tough. (I've nerfed a few things for the groups I've run through it because they were new to DFRPG.)

It seems to me that it would be hard to make the inns be the same place. How many secret basements can there be? Moreover, it feels like having two (or three) adventures in a row about a secret basement under an inn would get old. Though, now that I think about it, you could easily reskin You All Meet at an Inn... instead of a well to the secret basement, there is a glowing portal in the fireplace (the innkeeper says, "I knew I shouldn't have tossed the purple amulet in there...") to the sacred zombie temple under Mount Evil. So, yeah, this sequence could work with a new coat of paint.
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Old 08-03-2019, 11:17 PM   #7
namada
 
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Default Re: DFRPG-GURPS DF adventure/monster compatibility

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Originally Posted by Dalin View Post
I've lost you with The End. What adventure is that one? (Or, are you just saying that it would be two adventures and then you'd wrap up the campaign? I may be misreading this.)
Yeah, sorry for the confusion, I meant just wrap it up, not any specific adventure. I'm looking to run a mini-campaign with DFRPG. I was thinking that just the two rat adventures alone is going to be too short, but I have other options, if that's truly the case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dalin View Post
The seeds in I Smell a Rat are pretty broad and basic: "You could have branching passages here that lead to other funky adventures." If you have some fun ideas in mind, then you could certainly insert a short adventure between the two. Especially if you wove in an encounter or two with some rat-men.
I see. I'm sure I could whip something up, but my instinct tells me the result would be something too random to really satisfy my tastes. Idk - I guess I really just need to wait for the box...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dalin View Post
I really enjoyed You All Meet at an Inn, but it wouldn't easily work with I Smell a Rat. It may also be a somewhat harder adventure. The basic idea is that the PCs are at a random inn which unexpectedly turns out to be the focus of a zombie apocalypse. As the party attempts to secure the place against the walking dead, they realize that there is a secret basement dungeon that must be explored to stop the mayhem. I've run it more than once for different groups. It can be an awesome starter adventure because the adventure lands on the PCs, though the first underground encounter is pretty tough. (I've nerfed a few things for the groups I've run through it because they were new to DFRPG.)

It seems to me that it would be hard to make the inns be the same place. How many secret basements can there be? Moreover, it feels like having two (or three) adventures in a row about a secret basement under an inn would get old. Though, now that I think about it, you could easily reskin You All Meet at an Inn... instead of a well to the secret basement, there is a glowing portal in the fireplace (the innkeeper says, "I knew I shouldn't have tossed the purple amulet in there...") to the sacred zombie temple under Mount Evil. So, yeah, this sequence could work with a new coat of paint.
Cool, but I agree with your assessments, it doesn't sound like a good mix with the rat adventures, so I'll likely skip that one. Though it certainly seems like inserting an adventure between the two rat adventures should be trivially easy. It's the 'natural feel' of the end-result I'm concerned with.

One other option I'm considering is running The Elven Crystals, which I already have on hand, but that requires conversion work. This is the most dungeon-fantasy-friendly of the Dragon Warriors adventures and I think could work well for something short & sweet, but Idk, I've only read it, never run it, and it'll take some work to make sure it works well with DFRPG, so I was hoping someone here had other suggestions for a ready-made DFRPG mini-campaign - something I could buy, read, learn, & run, all in a relatively short period of time. Something that hangs together well (as I already know the rat adventures do), and has hopefully been tried & tested. It's a rather specific 'ask' I know. ;)
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Old 08-04-2019, 07:37 AM   #8
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Default Re: DFRPG-GURPS DF adventure/monster compatibility

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It seems to me that it would be hard to make the inns be the same place. How many secret basements can there be?
Or just make it a different inn in the same town (they decide to sleep elsewhere while Lee is fixing up Merle's place, she did only give them one week for free). Maybe when the PC's freeloading get's on Lee's nerves, she mentions an Inn up the road that is having zombie problems, maybe the innkeeper there while give them a few free nights stay...
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Old 08-05-2019, 09:53 AM   #9
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Default Re: DFRPG-GURPS DF adventure/monster compatibility

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It seems to me that it would be hard to make the inns be the same place. How many secret basements can there be?
Suggestion: a campaign built entirely out of adventures under inns, instead of adventures in wilderness caves or ruins.
Campaign over-plot: who the heck has it in for all these inns?
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Old 08-05-2019, 12:54 PM   #10
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Default Re: DFRPG-GURPS DF adventure/monster compatibility

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Originally Posted by namada View Post
Also, a question on monsters. I know there's a Monsters book in the box, and the DFRPG Monsters 2, but how do the GURPS DF Monsters series (1-4) fit into the whole? Are those all totally new monsters that could be added to the game so that you'd have 6 monster books in all, no repetitions? I'm not complaining, if there are repetitions, just curious.
The monsters in DFRPG Monsters 2 are almost entirely brand-new. The only partial exception AFAIK is the strix, a version of which appears in Campaigns, but even that got some subtle but important tweaks to enable it to threaten 250-point delvers.
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