Dungeon Fantasy vs TFT

[DarkPumpkin]

Originally Posted by KevinJ

So, DF was created to simulate the door kicking style from the early days of role playing games

Not really...in the early days of gaming starting characters were quite fragile. DF starts with a team of proficient door-kickers, and the game is less about the long zero-to-hero arc. Which is great - except that there is still more front-loaded complexity in chargen than a lot of brand new players are comfortable with. Despite all the templates.
TFT doesn't have that problem.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by DarkPumpkin

. . . there is still more front-loaded complexity in chargen than a lot of brand new players are comfortable with. Despite all the templates.

Yeah, even the DF RPG seems heavier than I'd hope/expect on the PC character complexity. I guess the idea is to try to have something like the flavor of D&D- and CRPG-like super-hero PCs, but I choose TFT & GURPS because they're not like that, so... at least there are a few pinchable bits such as monsters, though even those are a bit D&D-like (i.e. kind of implausible and seemingly mainly existing to challenge super-hero-level adventurer PCs...).

GURPS doesn't have to be that way. TFT-like adventuring is how I mostly use GURPS, and it can be relatively simple and lowish power level but still really fun to have violent adventures in, just like TFT but with more crunch & detail. Though AFAIK there aren't many published examples of ready-to-play adventure content in that style.

Originally Posted by DarkPumpkin

TFT doesn't have that problem.

Yeah, though neither does pre-4e GURPS (or 4e GURPS if the GM weeds out all the irrelevant stuff for the players in a player-intro handout). Though perhaps only experienced GURPS GMs know that...

[mehrkat]

Originally Posted by KevinJ

So, DF was created to simulate the door kicking style from the early days of role playing games, but using GURPS instead of the even more bloated D&D versions with 20 rules and 456890709083 exceptions to those 20 rules.

Since DF uses templates, and there are scads of templates and variations to choose from, it's easy to pick a template and then wade in.

With TFT you can also have a complex character with a rich history and backstory, just less crunchy.

There is a fan created "dungeon fantasy on the cheap" I think it's called that provides a list of how to lower most of the templates + a sjgame product called henchmen that I use to god effect to create lower level heroes