[DF] Beyond the Dungeon

[Phantasm]

I got burned out on dungeon crawls even before DF1 came out, but I love what's been done in the DF line. In my own non-DF fantasy games, I use the Adventurers, Allies, Clerics, and Summoners books, and occasionally dip into Henchmen.

That said, I don't think Action! gets the love it deserves from the writers. I would pay good money for an Action!: Space Opera, Action!: Old West, or Action!: Swashbuckling Adventure book (among the many possible examples), expanding the rules to cover action movie style campaigns outside the modern-day action thriller it seems to cater towards.

[Nymdok]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

That said, I don't think Action! gets the love it deserves from the writers. I would pay good money for an Action!: Space Opera, Action!: Old West, or Action!: Swashbuckling Adventure book (among the many possible examples), expanding the rules to cover action movie style campaigns outside the modern-day action thriller it seems to cater towards.

Agree, but understand ALOT of action is covered by other books already. Id love to see Action! : Super Secret Secret Spy.

Nymdok

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

It pretty just like the OSR in terms of how the rules are used. You have the core, the Dungeon Fantasy RPG, then you have the rest of the GUPRS lines which are compatible along with targeting different genres and sub genres at varying levels of details.

What I mean is that Dungeon Fantasy is a single product and not the diverse array which constitutes the OSR. Also the GURPS rules make it apart from it in various senses.

With OD&D all you got is Charisma and along with does what the player is saying as his character make sense to adjudicate with. Dungeon Fantasy RPG will be a buffet of tools to adjudicate roleplaying in contrast.

I agree with this. And it's one of the reasons to not limit the scope of what it's possible to get from Dungeon Fantasy campaigns, which the obsessive usage of "silly" and diverse debasing expressions do.

Finally I don't if you aware of it but gonzo is a major subgenre of the OSR.

Yes, however personally I'm more interested in the AD&D style.

But as you see, I'm not denying it.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Now this is where it's pretty clear that you aren't using "serious" in anything like the same way. Mission: Impossible is a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster

As big-budget movies, they aren't B-movies. You can't distinguish them from other action movies, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, etc., which have been used around here as examples of the GURPS Action sub-line.

Which you then lead into a discussion of symbols and themes. Figuring out what the symbols "really mean" and what the theme is is literary criticism.

No, it's not. Literary criticism has no clue about symbols —as I said answering to Nymdok's allegory and in contrast with it, they aren't acknowledged at all in contemporary western society—, it being anchored to the aforementioned psychologism. And symbols aren't foremostly nor exclusively literary things: here you're showing a literary prejudice.

Not worrying about that stuff at all and just having fun, is the essence of "beer-and-pretzels" games.

Of course you can ignore these things and still have fun, but the essence is right there even if you don't care or don't see it.

Also, to be aware of such things isn't "worrying", it's very fun actually and matches with what I said of escapism, which again, isn't the one you prefer.

At the risk of going full crazy vet here, interpersonal violence has had a major impact on my life

Look, I also know what I'm talking about when it's about interpersonal violence and trauma.

So you can't really tell me that I wouldn't have that in a serious game about professional killers, because I can't escape my own demons so easily.

I fully agree. After all, how and why I would ask you to limit the scope of your game? If you want to implement it, feel free to do it!

a word that means "not serious but cool"

So your understanding of myth and their corresponding structures "isn't serious". Again, all your points fall inside the scope of your particular, personal "understanding".

As you seem to be towards me.

I've been addressing your replies adjusting my answers to your statements, while you don't.

OTOH I'm not requesting seriousness, but just to drop the absurd "silly" label for making the forums a more welcoming place when it's about Dungeon Fantasy.

This bit restarted because you responded to me, responding to trooper6

Yeah, well you have been pretty insistent demanding attention for already made points, and that put the other thread at risk.

Anyway I'm content to drop this. I did get a good idea for an article or something out of it, so thank you!

You're welcome! Now, I hardly can think that it will be related or worthwhile, at least since you seem to not grasp what I mean, again placing your own interpretations upon what I'm really saying.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by trooper6

I've been saying all along not that DF *is* a mechanistic rinse and repeat of doors/kill/loot with nothing else, but that it is *marketed* that way. I find the persistent *marketing* of DF as nothing but doors/kill/loot baffling because I think it is not an accurate description of what can be done with DF, I think it alienates a portion of potential new players, and this can be fixed by adding in one or two words to ad copy without changing the actual game itself. I'm not saying DF should market itself like Microsope or some indie story game. But I'm saying that it should at least market itself as other dungeon fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons do: That is a game that is about epic adventures that are super fun.

I fully agree with this post. To acknowledge that Dungeon Fantasy is also epic is enough actually.

Now, when I have entered briefly into anagogy and such things it has been for addressing the extreme insistence and mind-boggling inaccuracy of sir_pudding's replies (*) —the same we can see when he wrongly attributes to you the claim: "Dungeon Fantasy is like Descent".

(*) I guess that Anders has been able to note the ardor of them!

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

I would pay good money for an Action!: Space Opera, Action!: Old West, or Action!: Swashbuckling Adventure....

Does Pyramid #3/74: Wild West go any distance toward sating the second desire?

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by demonsbane

And it's one of the reasons to not limit the scope of what it's possible to get from Dungeon Fantasy campaigns, which the obsessive usage of "silly" and diverse debasing expressions do.

They do not. They are only limitations because you choose, in your own particular view, to make them so.

Plenty of people have described using Dungeon Fantasy material in campaigns based on a more "heroic" style. Plenty of people have explained how "silly" in this instance means "implausible" or "lacking a detailed, logical basis" rather than "ham-handedly humorous" or "worthy of ridicule." The evidence abounds that Dungeon Fantasy is limited neither by its own materials, nor by your perception of them.

Plentiful magic would generally cause radical changes to feudal socioeconomics; the size, scope, and abilities of kingdoms large and small; military tactics in general and castle architecture in particular, etc. Yet, in much Dungeon Fantasy, they don't. That's "unrealistic" in a basic sense, even "silly," but doesn't mean it can't be fun. Mega-dungeons that have existed for generations in a world with roving bands of powerful adventurers are, when you think about their origins, stocking, maintenance, and so on, more than a little ridiculous in strictly real-world terms... but, again, that doesn't mean that gamers who choose to can't roll with the flow.

And the two types of tone can even exist, at different times, in the same gamers. Someone who thoroughly enjoys a good dungeon romp, without worrying about levels of loot like the Spanish conquest of the New World wrecking the economy of the local palatinate, can ALSO thoroughly enjoy a more rigorous look at the intersection of real and modern economics, such as Charles Stross' Merchant Princes story. The two are very different milieu, but that doesn't mean that someone who enjoys one can't also enjoy the other. There's no prohibition there, unless someone chooses to make one for himself or herself.

As big-budget movies, they aren't B-movies. You can't distinguish them from other action movies, featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, etc., which have been used around here as examples of the GURPS Action sub-line.

Yet all these movies share exactly the sort of diversions from reality for the sake of plot that Dungeon Fantasy employs! When someone trained in military tactics, or computer networks, or crowd-control techniques, or sometimes even basic logic, chooses to watch such a film, she has to hang her suspension of belief from a rather tall crane in order to enjoy the story. It may make dramatic sense, but it often doesn't make logical sense, within the knowledge and practices of the real world.

And that is what makes it, too, "silly." That's not a term of opprobrium, only of shorthand for its tone, which abandons a core of real-world logic in favor of the much thinner veneer of "verisimilitude."

OTOH I'm not requesting seriousness, but just to drop the absurd "silly" label for making the forums a more welcoming place when it's about Dungeon Fantasy.

Rather than striving to limit others' speech, perhaps you should instead respond with positive speech of your own? Proudly exhibit, as others do, evidence of the work you've done, or will do, with Dungeon Fantasy materials, to create the tone and the opportunities that you desire.

A wealth of choices, and a bevy of examples, are likely to be far more welcoming to newcomers, than would be a long argument over semantics.

[demonsbane]

Proteus,

That seems to me like a gut reaction. I have to say that I seriously doubt that you have been reading my answers here, since you're tackling points I already addressed.

[PK]

<MOD>

This post is directed primarily at demonsbane and sir_pudding, but everyone else involved in this debate (both here and in other DF threads) should take note as well.

You are arguing in circles, and have been for some time. That by itself would be a minor issue, if not for (A) the repeated passive-aggressive remarks that you both keep making to egg each other on and (B) the fact that neither of you can can see such a remark and simply let it go, agreeing to disagree, rather than launch into another debate about it.

As a rule, I don't like stifling debates, particularly ones about our games; so I'm not shutting this down, but be aware that other forumites are complaining about this. So as a bit of preventative damage control, I'm declaring that from this point forward, this is the only thread where this (neverending and unresolvable) debate about "silly/serious DF" is on topic. Don't drag down other threads with it.

(Note: trooper6, this includes the related "DF is being marketed as silly" tangent that you continue to bring up.)

</MOD>

[PK]

Originally Posted by PK

As a rule, I don't like stifling debates, particularly ones about our games; so I'm not shutting this down

I do want to emphasize that (speaking as a fellow forumite and not as a mod) I encourage you to simply drop this. You've said everything that can be said on the topic and made absolutely zero progress at convincing the other side that you're right -- because this isn't a debate about facts, it's a difference of opinions.

[booboo.tigger]

And remember, when you are used to DFRPG, you can easily transfer to GURPS. Or you can convert something like Social Engineering to DFRPG. I think people like to do a bit of work themselves.

Can you easily transfer to GURPS if none of the 4e hardbacks are in print? The support DFRPG needs to expand beyond hack and slash is to have the 4e books back on the shelves at your FLGS. That's the fallout I'm looking for if DFRPG and the next Powered by GURPS genre box succeed. If several 'worked examples' of the broader toolkit attract new GURPS GMs, then the system will thrive again. That would be a much bigger deal than DFRPG Town Adventures or some such.