Dungeon Fantasy or just Fantasy?

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by GoblynByte

In my opinion, the "standard" fantasy RPG has taken on a slightly more "over-the-top" approach in the last 10 years (starting with D&D 3.0). This has steadily perpetuated a more power-based mentality that diverges from the more understated skill-based mentality of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Again, this is purely my own take on things.

Your experience with early RPGs, then, was very different from mine. Back when I started in the late 70s, the play style was all "kick in door, kill monsters, take treasure, repeat." More recent RPGs are certainly better written to support acquiring power in a detailed, systematized fashion than older ones, but recent RPGs are better written to support anything; true old-school games were equally bad at pretty much everything.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

Though LT is going to have vast quantities of rules about and examples of weapons and armor, I think that DF will retain considerable relevance for fantasy campaigns precisely because LT limits itself to reality. Even in a vaguely historical or "realistic" fantasy campaign, there may be magically-produced unbreakable materials, materials which neutralize magic, and so on. DF has those; LT won't.

Agreed. Some of the hottest arguments in playtest was when playtesters suggested that a combination of technology and concept could be made that would yield a certain result. Historically minded folks pointed out that no extant examples of such things had ever been found, therefore not only didn't exist, but effectively could not.

That second view won more often than not. Bring up "armor piercing arrows" (or don't...just revisit the threads) and you'll see a good example of what I'm saying. But other examples did exist.

Dungeon Fantasy doesn't limit itself to a historical pathway like Low Tech did.

[Gudiomen]

Oh, I have no dobut that LT will be quite rigidly historical and won't feature fantastic materials or unreal weapon balance, mail that has impossible qualities...

But if you're playing outside standard DF those are more guidelines anwyay. GM's will probably want to create their own materials and fantasy traits for weapons, armor and gear. However, realistic traits are common to both historical and fantasy genre. Some fantasy doesn't even have fantastic materials.

Right now, DF is the only RAW way to make a Very Fine spear... with LT I expect that will change.

[Refplace]

Also a lot of the books in the series have useful additions to other less simple games,.
Think of DF as GURPS Lite with more rules added and lots of concrete examples for combat and adventuring activities.
I liekd the Allys for adding animals and such.
Summoners I hear adds lots of potential monster builds.

[sieurin]

DF has a great deal of discussion of the "adventurous" use of non-combat skills - why your character should know Jumping or Merchant or Scrounging. That is *very* useful. Its examples of fantasy races is also useful for seeing how it is meant to be done, so to say.

While older fantasy gaming had a huge focus on kicking the door in, it also had an obsession with "play balance", the idea that you should "earn" your power, and often a rather antagonistic attitude between GMs and players. In many cases that lead to thing like, say, RuneQuest, much beloved by me, in which you had a percentage-based game where it was an *optional rule* that PCs started with more than what in GURPS would be default in *any* skill (to make a non-D&D example).

That's pretty much different from, say, D&D 3+, Exalted or, yes, DF GURPS.

Erik

[Phaelen Bleux]

I am pretty opposed to the hack-til-its-over style of play which is more or less DF (sheesh, just play a video game). However, I have tossed my gaming dollars into the pot just out of curiosity and found many of them to be quite useful to me--especially Allies, Sages, Treasure Tables, and Artifacts, which can all be used for essentially any campaign. Many of the templates are over the top at 250+ points, but they make a nice starting point to flesh out an arch-enemy for the party. And, I have to covert them back to 3e--but still find them helpful.

[GoblynByte]

Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company

Your experience with early RPGs, then, was very different from mine. Back when I started in the late 70s, the play style was all "kick in door, kill monsters, take treasure, repeat." More recent RPGs are certainly better written to support acquiring power in a detailed, systematized fashion than older ones, but recent RPGs are better written to support anything; true old-school games were equally bad at pretty much everything.

Fair enough, but the act of repeatedly killing the monster and taking his treasure (even kicking in the door) is a essentially mundane act (if not a rather vapid one). That isa classic approach that is emulated well by DF.

But in older games you could do that (and more) with little more represented on your character sheet than the mundane ability to wield a sword, pick a lock, or cast a spell (yes, in traditional fantasy RPGs the casting of magic is a rather mundane quality).

It wasn't until later that the acquisition of powers (not the "acquisition of power" which a decidedly story-based element, not a trait-based element which is what I'm talking about) became the focus of the rules rather than the focus of the adventures themselves.

In DF you're dealing with characters with similar over-the-top powers that are also present on the character sheets of more contemporary characters, and that were essentially absent from pre-3.0 games. The powers have become a focus of the characters in the same fashion as the d20 generation of RPGs. If my history is correct, such "powers" began to creep into the game with D&D 2.5, which may have been the progenitor of the 3.0 "feat," but the "power" mentality was still largely absent until the late 90s.

[Polydamas]

Dungeon fantasy is not like traditional D&D ... its about high-powered dungeon adventuring. Characters start out worth 250 points and skip the long "beating slightly superior numbers of orcs because you have good armour and a cleric to heal you" phase. Its suggested that everything be a bit tongue-in-cheek and that events in town be mostly abstract.

DF 2 adds simplified rules for adventuring feats like bashing doors, bending bars, pulling yourself up onto ledges, fighting in bad light, and so on which are useful in any campaign.

Fantasy and Thaumatology are designed for building worlds and magic systems. They have rules for spell-slot systems, divine intervention, and so on.

[CousinX]

My two cents is that any conversion from D&D (or other "stock FRPG") to GURPS can greatly benefit from the whole DF line (with the possible exception of DF4: Sages, which I look at as more of a "Guide to Two Somewhat Rare Kinds of NPCs." YMMV.) Basically, DF is a deconstruction of FRPG tropes into GURPS terms, and whether or not you use the templates and rules as presented, it provides a large and useful toolkit for converting basically anything in any FRPG into GURPS.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by GoblynByte

In DF you're dealing with characters with similar over-the-top powers that are also present on the character sheets of more contemporary characters, and that were essentially absent from pre-3.0 games. The powers have become a focus of the characters in the same fashion as the d20 generation of RPGs. If my history is correct, such "powers" began to creep into the game with D&D 2.5, which may have been the progenitor of the 3.0 "feat," but the "power" mentality was still largely absent until the late 90s.

That's probably exaggerated a bit, it's roots go all the way back in the form of what was in your spellbooks, and magic item inventories filled much the same niche. But yeah I'll admit to noticing something of a transition too. I think I'd credit the WW WoD splatbooks more than anything.