I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I really like the DF series and I believe it will follow the D&D pattern. First it will stick to the standard Tolkien fantasy along with monsters from European myths and monsters. But later when D&D exhausted all they could with orcs and elves they moved on to Oriental Adventures and then they had some setting called Al Quadim in the Islamic world. So I am just curious if or maybe when the DF series will exhaust the fight against orcs and trolls and then move onto a different culture.

I know there is GURPS Ninja but that is just one book.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I can tell you exactly what Kromm's official answer will be: "Yes, it will, if one of our freelancers writes it."

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

The Martial Artist already implies the usual kung-fu movie aesthetic unless you really push the template into an odd direction and a samurai is called out as an example interpretation of the Knight template.

The Wildmen come across as North American sasquatches to me.

Regular DF isn't so much "European" as it is "Olden Days cultural stew".

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Don't forget the Ninja!

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Yeah, CousinX used DF to run a high-power Japanese-themed hack / slash / loot fantasy game (all too briefly; I miss TFOXWX), and it worked no problem, and I've done a partial write-up for a Hindu Mythology theme DF setting using the same rules that I'd like to run someday. If you're asking about official publications, Rasputin has your answer, but in terms of utility the existing products are ready to go as-is. The G is for Generic. ;]

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I wouldn't mind seeing a Nyambe crossover license supplement...

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I could easily imagine an entirely kickass dungeon fantasy campaign using the same tropes as DF, set in ancient Greece with the serial numbers files off only a tiny bit.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Other than equipment list and slightly different flavors of races and monsters, what is needed?

Remember that DF isn't particularly European itself. It's D&Dland. Any similarities between that and any historical period in Europe is coincidental.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

So very seconded. I find DF to be extremely Modern in feel. It has an urban feel rather than a rural feel, pulls in monsters from all over the place, spends a good deal of time on abominable 'things man was not meant to know', by default uses a theological cosmology that draws elements from all over (Good and Evil laid over a pantheon that could be pulled from any one of a number of ancient cultures), and so forth.

If you start playing around with politics, you've left DF.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

It's not politics. It's fashion. The tropes of pop culture outside of clearly identifiable Western sources (kung fu movies, the Arabian Nights, Bollywood mythological epics, etc.) can fit well in the DF paradigm and are evocative in their own ways. They're a kind of fun which, one may argue, has so far been inadequately explored, but they provide ample grist for the mill, so why not? I have little interest in translating specific items from history and mythology into DF terms, but the underlying flavors are ones I happen to enjoy, so I'd be happy to see more DF which partakes of those tropes. More fake Asia to go with the fake Europe which informs a lot of DF! And some fake Africa! And some fake Americas! More everything! Too much is never enough!

That said, I think DF points in that direction more than one might suspect, or at least fails to point away: most templates are fairly culture-neutral (I don't see how one would have to change the thief template to make it conform to pop-culture tropes of feudal Japan or ancient Egypt; the decorative motifs and techniques in DF8 are essentially global) or can be trivially used to adapt them to specific cultures (a samurai is just a knight using a katana; take the axe away from the faux-Viking barbarian, give him a spear and a large shield, and he's a Zulu), a number of bits and pieces are more loudly evocative of non-western tropes than others (shamans, for example), and Mirror of the Fire Demon is in emphatically not-European geography.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

The whole fake Africa or fake Asia thing is exactly what I would be interested in for DF. I would just love to have some touches to make it seem like the PCs are exploring an exotic land. Sure they are kiling monsters and taking their stuff but it is fun to change the backdrop and costumes sometimes. I just bought Ars Magica Between Sand and Sea which is about Mythic North Africa and it is definitely interesting so if there was a DF Arabian Nights to go with that then I would be pretty happy...

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Well, there could be a 'DF: Explorers', covering going off on adventures to far-off lands to find things to kill and loot. It's pretty much in theme for DF.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Well, just to start with, Zulus fought in regimentalized impis and Vikings did not. Vikings never had to run over hot coals and Zulus never tried to found colonies between New England and Russia. So there was a lot of difference in style.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

DF1: Adventurers pretty explicitly states that DF takes place in a non-culture, and removes any and all cultural traits from the templates.

Any cultures applied to the templates or the feel are the reader's own biases, not the writer's.

Martial Arts and Low-Tech provide a list of weapons and indicate what culture they come from. Quite a few of these weapons are Universal - Axe, Spear, Knife, Knobbed Club, Mace, Shield, Crossbow, Regular Bow. Others give counterparts: You want a kama? Use the stats for a Sickle. A Mongolian or Persian scimitar? Cavalry Saber has your back. A Chinese halberd and a European halberd may look different, both both use the Halberd stats.

Mechanically, it's the choices of weapons, armor, and deities that give DF its flavor, and DF7: Clerics is pretty explicit about not giving names or cultural bias to their gods. DF9: Summoners gives tips for making Chinese, Indian, and Japanese elementalists who use elements that are not necessarily the four Classical Greek elements: Metal, Wood, and Void/Ether.

If you want it distinctly non-european, remove blatantly European weapons and armor. No full plate, no brigandine, no greataxe. Encourage PC and NPC names - which DF itself does not provide - in the flavor you want.

The only thing I could possibly think of would be replacing the "classic fantasy" racial templates (Elf, Dwarf, Minotaur, Centaur) from DF3: The Next Level with templates from other cultures: Rakshasa, Tengu, Scorpion-taur. (I'd keep some form of Halfling, as they seem universal, though I might change the template a bit.)

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Yeah, I think you're missing the point of DF here. We're not talking about real Vikings or real Zulus here any more than DF knights are real knights who have to deal with the strictures of manorialism or DF clerics are worried about homoiousion vs. homoousion. These are fictional archetypes, the Vikings and Zulus of pulpy adventure stories. The political sophistication of the historical Zulu kingdom and extensive trade networks of the Vikings don't enter into it.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

DF 16: Wilderness already covers hieing off into unknown wildernesses.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Not actually what I was talking about, though, except incidentally (Wilderness would be important to Explorers, but it's not the same thing). Explorers is about hieing off to find unknown civilizations (in general, think the Age of Exploration, only in a DF style).

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

The mythos-specific monsters alone would probably justify doing culture-specific DF supplements, but as someone who once ran a bit of d20 Nyambe, I think there's a bit more to this than that. The unarmoured warrior with the completely iron spear, the wizard who had to worry about not being mistaken for a sorceror, and the priest who could transform into a baobab tree, gave the thing a distinct flavour.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Yeah I'd argue DF is just a filter that is added on top of a setting/culture (since it is setting agnostic).

Some DR character troupes might be a better fit for some cultural settings than others, but I willing to bet most cultures are actually broad enough encompass them with a little thought.

I.e I reckon I could do Vedic swash bucklers, Vietnamese barbarians and Viking martial artists if I tried.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I think DF went to the level to have its own official setting. Maybe testing it with a Recap of Banestorm, calling it Yrth-DF or something like that with a 24-pages PDF to "adjust" the level of Banestorm with DF style and after that, create an entirely setting "à la Forgotten Realms" or something similar based entirely on DF materials - keeping the Dungeon Crawling materials but involving politics, storys, adventures, and so on...

I know it's "one kind of thing that Sci-Fi player don't use" but I think DF is a great and popular line. The next step of evolution of DF could be a setting of it's own.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I personally would love to see as DF setting, even if I might not use it exactly as written (but I might, if it's real good, and knowing SJG's high standards, I don't think they would release something half baked). I would, at least mine it for ideas and locations.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Or Egypt. Wasn't Kromm's inspirational campaign a sword-and-sandals sort of thing?

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I would love a Middle Eastern setting like GURPS Arabian Nights that would also include older cultures and faiths like those in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Persia. Islam would be the law of the land but there would be all sorts of monsters and cults from the ancient cultures.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Here is a link to Ars Magica Lands of the Nile which would be awesome for a DF setting IMO.
http://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG0313.php

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

On the other hand, we're not trying to write a book of ethnic clichés in the style of some of the more toe curling efforts from early D&D (or other systems) ... mechanically I suspect the differences can be quite small and, as noted, DF is no respecter of real world cultures.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

If the mechanical differences are small, if the clichés are already well-known, and the characters don't largely interact with a larger setting (that is, there's no plans for a GURPS DF: Courtly Intrique DF:Town Economics or DF: Religious Heresy anytime soon), then what's the point?

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Potential pyramid articles all.


I kind of feel the 'DF setting' is a skerry in infinite worlds with populations transported by banestorm. Its probably notorious for reality quakes too. Infinity quarantined it, but it's great for I swat recruitment.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

This would be so easy to do in this thread that it is IMHO not worth publishing. I'll even work on it myself, when I'm not busy, if nobody beats me to it. Your capacity for ideas coupled with your lack of ambition has made me sad for years.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I imagine an adventure where an ancient Egyptian king built a pyramid with a false crypt and some small amount of treasure. But beneath the false crypt there would be a dungeon stocked with all of the monsters of the Pre-Islamic age like sphinxes, mummies, etc. The way to the pyramid would have bandits and ghuls and bouda (hyena men) along with all types of jinnn. The catfolk would be an ancient race that served Bast and they could be used as adventurers instead of elves. Also there could be half-jinn instead of half-elemental and half-demons for PC races.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Within the genre of Dungeon Fantasy, different cultures are mostly bestiaries and flavor text. The earliest 'genre' dungeon I can think of off-hand is The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan, and other than style of the opposition, it's a basic dungeon crawl.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

These are first associations, that come to mind, when someone asks a question related with fantasy. Knights, wizards, elves, dwarves and orcs. These are commonplace in our history and popular culture so it is only natural when someone mentions fantasy that you see it like this.
If D&D is any indicator; looking at number of books they published on classes and races I wouldn’t say they exhausted everything. And I’m just talking about 2nd edition. Then there are 3 - 3.5 edition books that made their own spin of things. Then we mustn’t forget 3rd party publishing and now there is Pathfinder that also made tons of books with their own spin of things (and there are 3rd party for Pathfinder).

I think they got bored of them. Or to make it more specific their customers would get bored so they needed to make it fresh to keep their clients. Why would I buy Paladin book #3? Is there something groundbreaking and new in it that it is necessary to have it? If you eat pizza all the time you will soon be fed up and will acquire taste for something different. Same goes with everything else we consume. Even rpgs.

This is what I would describe as having or experiencing “visual saturation”. You become sick of seeing knights, peasants and dragons and now you are looking for something else. So you play around with feudal Japan, Arabian nights, Ancient Greece or Rome for example.




As you can see before I even posted there were already people stating opinions similar to mine. You must remember that different culture usually doesn’t change the structure of the story. Mostly what is changed is the visual input. And that is only the outer layer.

Visually knight, viking, samurai and roman legionary look different from one another but still they all fill the same role. They can have different background but in their core they are same. They are warriors. You can change the name but warrior still remains a warrior.



Few years ago I had epiphany. To give it context my group usually plays few different campaigns at the same time. To avoid burnout and allowing GMs to plan their games every few weeks GM would finish a story arc for his game and other GM would step in from where his campaing stopped. So we switching between game campaigns (sometimes even game systems).

One day it just clicked to me that we could play any of those particular stories, change the culture and visuals while the story in its core would remain the same.




I’ll give you an example, of what I'm talking about, from popular culture.

https://cdn3.artstation.com/p/assets...jpg?1443930654 If for have time placing this scene it is reimaging of opening scene of New Hope.


Imagine Star Wars in Feudal Japan.

Japan is under civil war. Spies of Rebel Forces, opposing the Shogun, have stolen plans detailing structural weakness to the Death Star, a heavily armed and armored castle placed on strategic position enabling it to attack, and lay siege on any of multiple adjacent regions. Princess Leia, in possession of those plans, is taking shelter in castle that is currently under siege by shogunate forces led by Darth Vader. Before the castle falls she gives the plans to her two retainers R2-D2 and C-3PO and sends them to Tatooine province.
On their way two retainers are unfortunately captured by slavers and sold to rice farmer Owen Lars. Luke Skywalker, Owen’s nephew, overhears two retainers one day and hears them talking about how they need to find a person called Obi-Wan Kenobi. Luke wonders if she is referring to Ben Kenobi, a hermit and ronin who lives nearby…

Obi-Wan tells Luke of his days as a Jedi, who were a faction of former shogunate peacekeepers ...

Han Solo is river smuggler. .. Jabba is local yakuza boss… Millennium Falcon is fastest river ship… Chewbacca is from china and only Han Solo knows Chinese… Imperial Forces burn down city of Alderaan...


As you can see nothing in basic structure changed from the original movie. Same goes for Dungeon Fantasy. You don’t need 400 classes based on different cultures. You only need to figure out how to play dungeon fantasy in particular theme.



Out there exists books written on every common setting and theme known. Hell, there are multiple books written on same theme. So there is no reason for Dungeon Fantasy to make culture books. You can read other rpgs and historical books for that. And if you think this is tasking and doing unnecessary research just remember when you are reading any GURPS book you are also doing research and learning about that specific world. So there is no difference.

And what is great about GURPS is that it allows you to use those books for setting and adapt it to this system. And if you want to stay GURPS purist you even have GURPS book line that pretty much already covered all common settings you can think of (Age of Napoleon, Arabian Nights, Atlantis, Aztecs, Banestorm, Camelot, Celtic Myth, China, Egypt, Greece, Ice Age, Imperial Rome, Japan, Middle Ages, Old West, Robin Hood, Russia, Swachbucklers, Vikings).

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

b-dog,

You are talking about pruning DF, not adding to it. DF already contains everything you say you want here; just shape the specific game into the aesthetic you want and go. If you really want published source material, there is 3e Arabian Nights, but even that is a little setting-heavy for DF unless you really know absolutely nothing at all about the genre and just need to skim the high points, IMHO.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

What is wrong with wanting some aesthetic books? For me, I really enjoy interesting details and touches. Not everything has to be about gaming mechanics.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Does that require a DF specific book? If it's aesthetics you're after, 3e Arabian Nights or Aztecs would still provide a sense of those aesthetics.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Nothing. They just aren't Dungeon Fantasy.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I'm with Railstar and Anthony, b-dog. Dungeon Fantasy is not the only Fantasy out there, and using the DF books as a resource does not automatically make a game into a DF game; conversely, using a setting book in a DF game does not automatically make it a non-DF game. Use the slew of 3e setting books and even books in the history section of the public library's non-fiction shelves (to quote Conan the Librarian*, "Don't you know the Dewey Decimal System?") to help flesh out your game for the feel; that's what they're there for.

Far too often I see people who think "Dungeon Fantasy is the only fantasy", or that using a DF resource (such as Allies or Summoners) means the whole game is centered around kick-in-the-door hack-and-slash when it's not. The fact is the DF books are written in a cultural-agnostic manner; the cultures applied come from outside the DF line.

That said, an Egyptian, Hindi, or Chinese-flavored dungeon would be a nice touch visually. Books dedicated those those cultures, however, are not necessarily going to be Dungeon Fantasy books; at most, they'll have sections for how to apply the culture to DF, another section for how to apply it to Action!, a third to sci-fi settings, etc.






* from UHF, a movie starring Weird Al Yankovik and that guy who went on to play Kramer in Seinfeld. Pure classic stuff in that movie. I recommend everyone see it at least once.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

What if the culture DF just distilled down all of the useful stuff for DF adventuring? Like this is what a town in an Arabian Nights setting is like, this is what the store that the PCs buy stuff from is like, this is what the mosque where you get cured is like, this is what the Dungeons might be like, these are the things likely found in dungeons in this culture these are,the monsters and treasures and so on. Then you can whip up an adventure in a,new culture rapidly.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Nothing is wrong with it, but you aren't playing DF at that point.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Well, firstly, there are no details for Town aside from it being Town and you buy/sell stuff there. Want DF-arabia? Call Town al-somethingia. Arabia is a desert; want DF arabia dungeon? Make it sandy and hot. Df has no culture so that is a moot point. Your DF Arabia book now consists of two sentences. That's probably another reason there aee no DF "culture" books.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Your DF and my DF are radically different beasts.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

DF1: Adventurers has this to say about cultures:

Emphasis mine.

Nowhere in any of the DF books that I've read does it say anything about culture. In fact, perusing the lists in DF1, Chapter 2, Delver's Cheat Sheet, a lot of social traits - Status, Rank, Duty, etc. - are missing. Cultural Familiarity is listed, yes, but nowhere in any book can I see a listing of cultures, especially not one that says, "this is the default".

Is there a medieval European-esque bias to what is written? I have not detected one from an objective standpoint, so I am of the opinion that it might be people projecting their own biases onto the writing. It is true that plenty of our standard fantasy tropes and races have origins in ancient Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Norse sources, but the inclusion of such things as Elves, Dwarves, Ogres, Trolls, Minotaurs, Centaurs, Satyrs, and Pixies does not automatically mean "European". I could probably run a Mongolian-based DF game with Elves, Trolls, and Centaurs and still have it have that Mongolian feel.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Sorry, but it is actually possible to walk a line that gives you something that's very clearly "dungeon fantasy", or near as damnit, while also providing a large dose of cultural flavour and a strong specific aesthetic. Things like Al-Qadim and Nyambe existed for precisely this reason, and were not entirely unsuccessful.

Refusing to admit that there's any kind of cultural flavouring to a dungeon fantasy game just reduces the whole thing to an abstract wargame; the characters just become playing pieces. Even computer games have progressed beyond that.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Um 1001 Arabian Nights is set in the Sasanian Empire before the rise of Islam. Sassanid Zoroastrianism was the religion of the elites. The irony the setting more Persian than Arabian.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Actually, it's "set" all over the place - China, North Africa, the Indian Ocean... The vaguely assumed default location for about half the stories is early medieval Iraq. All depicted with about as much realism as a Saturday morning kids' cartoon, mind you. (And Zoroastrians tend to be depicted as moustache-twirling bad guys.) It's a collection of popular stories that developed in medieval Syria and evolved in late medieval Cairo. The Persian (and Indian, and Yemeni...) roots are buried pretty deep.

Oh, and it features a couple of dungeon expeditions.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

However all the versions centre around Shahryar, whom the narrator calls a "Sasanian king" and his new bride Scheherazade, the vizier's daughter who beings telling the king a story and not finishing that night the intince the king not to execute her the next day as was his custom, and keeping it up for 1001 nights.

Aka Persia. long before it even though of itself as Iraq.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Persia is Iran, not Iraq. Iraq is more Babylonia.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

opps yes. However the Sasanian Empire did control Iraq of the time however the Elites were Persian/

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

The framing story uses a couple of Persian names. It then gets largely forgotten as most of the stories gallop off into the Gold Age of Haroun al-Rashid. Don't ask how a possibly pre-Islamic Persian lady is telling stories set in the Islamic era; the chronology of the Nights is notoriously shot to Iblis and occasionally circular.

Ye gods. Just try telling people in Baghdad - in 750 AD or today - that they're Persians. They've spent large parts of the last thousand years avoiding being Persian with large amounts of lethal force.

And the "Baghdad" elements of the Nights are usually set in the court of Haroun al-Rashid, largely because that's seen as an Arab golden age. The one ethnic Persian character regularly appearing in those scenes is Jaffar the Vizier. Other overtly Persian characters may well be eeevil Magian fire-worshippers, who are mostly there to try to set fire to the hero before getting skewered. (A particularly gross slander on Zoroastrians, of course.)

Let's not worry about all the stories that are explicitly set in Cairo.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Right? DF won't give you the tool to run Xanth, Game of Thrones, or Lord of the Rings. To say "I want a DF supplement that gives my game a deeper exploration into Elven linguistics" or "I want a DF supplement that allows for courtly intrigue" misses the point of what DF is trying to do.

The point of the DF line is to remove those bits that aren't relevant to killing monsters and taking their stuff. You are always free to add those bits back in, course, to water down the killing monsters and taking their stuff with other bits, but the books you'll use won't be DF books. They'll still work with DF, of course, becaue it's all GURPS.

What exactly would it do? Would it contain any rules? Would it just contain art and setting description? We have books that are nothing but art and setting descriptions (plus some tips on how to run them). An example might be GURPS Banestorm. It doesn't have the "DF" label, but it doesn't need one, anymore than GURPS Martial Arts or GURPS Magic need the DF label.

GURPS is more than DF. It has many branches, all of which are mutually compatible. When you want to move away from killing monsters and taking their stuff, get a non-DF book and use it in your DF game. I swear to you, it'll work fine.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Let's take your word for that for a moment. What would it look like? What purpose does setting provide in a DF adventure? Typically, window dressing, but what windows is it dressing? It typically adjusts the race/class choices, the monster options, the descriptions of the dungeons, and the descriptions of the towns.

For example, GURPS DF Japan would have samurai (Knights, possibly with some variation) and Ninjas and their "Wizards" would have a different spell-set than the vanilla DF set. Monsters might be oni and kitsune (which could also be a race option) and kappas, etc. The towns might have tea houses and delicate geisha who serve the mightly heroes. Alright. And GURPS DF Arabia might have swashbucklers and thieves and wizards with, yet again, a different spell-set, and the monsters might be djinn and ghoula and manticores and sphinxes. The towns might be desert bazaars featuring dancing girls who hide their smiles behind veils. Both might have unique adventures, depending on their nature.

But we already have GURPS Japan and GURPS Arabia. Both of those already alter the magic system appropriately, and they have suggested templates. These are 3e templates, but it's not exactly difficult to use those to pick/adjust the existing DF templates. They both have monsters and discussions of what localities would look like. Why are these not good enough? Why does a whole book need to be made with the DF label slapped on it?

Still, we're asked for something new. Alright, a detailed "fantasy" setting: Not GURPS Japan, but a Japanese-esque fantasy setting.

But why are we making this exclusively for DF? Why not expand some of the setting, touch on the social stuff, discuss lingusitics and... make it available for all GURPS groups to use? You can have a section discussing how best to use it in DF, but why would it have to be uniquely DF? Gun-Fu isn't unique to Action, but it'll work fine in my Action game (and I suspect it was written with Action in mind). The Ritual Path Magic supplement was certainly written for Monster Hunters, but it's not exclusive to Monster Hunters.

So why do we want an exclusively-DF oriented setting? And, more specifically, an exclusively-DF oriented setting using a niche setting. You don't want Greyhawk, you want Nyambe.

Settings already sell poorly. A DF-only setting would only sell to the subset of GURPS that is interested in settings and DF. A DF-only Nyambe would only sell to that subset that is interested in GURPS DF settings about Africa. While a GURPS Nyambe might, at least, sell to people not interested in DF but interested in African settings.

I'm sure you could make it, but I don't see the point of making a request thread for what would amount to a labor of love. And I say this as someone who makes pretty extensive settings. Most of the time I tell people about them, even when asked, most people just smile and nod their heads, because my setting work isn't useful for their campaign. And I think that's the core of why DF stays away from setting material, by and large, because you have more than enough material to build your own campaign. There's the entire GURPS line to let you do that, and your setting needs are likely to be more specific than what DF can provide.

You can do it yourself, if you feel you really need a specific setting that doesn't just grow naturally out of the campaign, as usually happens in these games. If people really, really preferred not to do this, wouldn't we expect the setting books to outsell (or at least sell apace with) the mechanics books? But the opposite is true.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Well, on one hand I understand b-dog, in that his tastes differ from DF slightly, and so wants something that does slight changes to the line. I also want SJG to publish "the book that handles my campaign perfectly", but alas, SJG publishes what they think will be profitable enough to justify costs. On the other hand, Mailanka is exactly right in that it's either window dressing, or if it diverges enough from the core assumptions, it's a separate line.

We might someday have Dungeon Fantasy Monsters: Arabian Nights, or Fantastic Japan, or Age of Myth. I would buy those books, and if properly framed, I have no doubts that they would sell well enough. They would, as usual for DF, only pay lip service to the actual sources, taking the cool stuff and turning it up to eleven. They would discard anything that detracted from the goal of having foes to kill and take their stuff.

Setting books for DF would be something else. If they ever happen, they would probably not sell well enough, because for all that gamers want settings, they want the setting that exists in their heads, only to have someone else do the hard work or putting it to paper and deal with the inconsistencies and contradictions.

The sweet spot would be a fantasy setting that took DFs assumptions and indiosincracies (there are many kinds of elves, there are goblin-kin, there are all sort of weird humanoids running around, etc. and they more or less get together well enough for racially diverse groups to be a thing). The tech level is a weird mishmash of technologies that never existed together. The setting that comes from these assumptions will probably not look like anything from actual history, if you're consequent, but will be it's own thing.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

1) Because having to convert 3e templates isn't a viable answer. One of the goals of the DF line is to have grab-and-go character templates: pick a job description, select some specific capabilities from short menus, and play. Having to dig into a similar-but-not-quite-the-same version of the game and coming up with your own conversion while not really knowing how well it'll fit with the assumptions of DF is the opposite of the "we've done the hard work for you" goal of the line.

2) Current and forthcoming historicals don't go OTT. I've written two Hot Spots so far and I've got a third in progress. They were written with my Serious Historian hat on, so they have real history and only gestures in the direction of more fantastic campaigns. They've got color and detail, but not all the specific kinds of color and detail one would desire from a DF book. So while, for example, the book on Florence could have delved into wildly speculative clockpunk weirdness appropriate for artificers, it didn't. For that, some other product is needed.

That said, I think you're looking at this topic far too narrowly. There are many ways to handle adding fake-Indian, fake-Japanese, fake-Kongolese, and other such elements to DF beyond writing full-blown settings. Notably, books in existing lines could easily expand things in certain pointed directions. A new Monsters might be packed with critters inspired by tropes from the subcontinent without explicitly being labeled Monsters From India. A Denizens about martial artists would almost inevitably expand coverage of East Asian tropes. A Treasures volume could easily be written on clockpunk wonders, which would fill a potential gap between Renaissance Florence and DF without limiting itself specifically to that location.

And individual locations and adventures could be written in suitable faux-non-western locations. Mirror of the Fire Demon, for example, takes place in a vaguely Middle Eastern desert, which pretty much hits the target for how much "culture" DF wants to take on. Similar things could be written concerning an adventure starting from a fake sub-Saharan trading post or during a faux-Aztec demon outbreak. And being DF, they don't have to fit into any larger context. The run up to them can simply be "the adventurers were wandering around and they ended up here."

Now, that may not satisfy someone who specifically wants, say, DF in Tang China or Cairo under the Mameluks, but it certainly provides ample scope to someone who wants "oriental" or "African" adventures.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

It also gives the person with more specific tastes some things that are a closer approximation of their interests than the generic, somewhat western material. It's not exactly what they wanted, but it's better for someone trying to do basically grab-and-go DF to be able to say "like this template, except change these two or three things" than to have to say "like that template, except change these twenty things".

Shaping by successive approximation isn't just an animal training technique :)

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

This would be a commercial message were it not for the fact that it's no longer available, but I think that sort of DF setting would look a lot like the Wellsprings of Creation setting I wrote for web-Pyramid. The key is that it's less a specific setting rather than a framework into which there are potentially slots for every trope and cliche you can imagine, with a pretty map and specific names attached to things. Zombie kingdom's down here, valiant but squabbling knights are over there, hydraulic empire is in that corner, dwarf kingdom is under that mountain range, etc.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

You can overdo it, though. It makes some sense to do this for broad appeal: A bunch of monsters that people can just do (if they can't be asked to fidget with their own). But when you start narrowing that down into something like Nyambe, I question the viability of it.

I'm looking at it that way because that's what's being discussed. We already have DF Ninjas and some of the monsters in the Monsters book already strike me as having a non-Western vibe (like the Watcher at the End of Time or the Horde Pygmy). I would not object to further Monster books, or adventures set in specific locations, or Adventures set in distant lands, or a quick pyramid article suggesting ways in which you might turn your DF adventurer templates a little more Japanese or a little more Aztec, or whatever, beyond my usual grumbling about too much DF.

But that's not what this thread (it seems to me) is asking for. It was a GURPS DF Nyambe or a "GURPS Aztecs, but DF-ified." And that's what I object to, and it seems to me that you object to it too, that you find that too narrow a view, and on that, we're agreed.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Pish on what DF1 has to say! The toolkit does not tell the artisan how to craft his masterpiece. (Though one is 'limited' by one's toolbox)


When I said, "Your DF and my DF..." the emphasis should be read on the "Your" and "my", not on the "DF". I can put culture, intrigue, politics, romance, etc in my DF and it will still be DF. I just have to realize this is a plot best (or most likely) solved by swording the bad guys and not talking to every NPC.

Just like with D&D.


I'd pay for these supplements.


I don't see a need for "DF Setting" books. I don't even see a use. You could cover all the setting changes needed to 'run' a particular cultural flavor with DF in Pyramid article.

DF Sengoku Jedai? Lens switches for Knights and Swashbucklers need a few background skill changes (Poetry, Calligraphy, etc skills); some small work on switching Clerics and Holy Warriors over to the appropriate 'magical style' (scrolls, etc used by Miko, Shugenja, etc), Wizards become either Kototama practitioners ("power-word" wizards) or Mahōtsukai (evil blood witches!), the Ninja is already done... etc.

DF Aztecs? All 'fighter' types lenses probably get Survival, and Clerics and Holy Warriors probably have Status, Wizards come in two flavors: Good Soothsayers and Evil Sorcerors!

Etc.

Or it just gets dumped. In my DF campaign there are no Goblin-kin, it's Orc kin (Orcs, Hobgoblins, and Gargoyles), Goblins are lumped in with the Fey, etc. But then I'm also still using my old GURPS Gamma World Fantasy setting... so... all the culture, races*, and such work was already done on my part. And I kept my cultural lenses... but I did add a few 0 point lenses because... 'templates' (I don't normally use templates so I wanted make sure PCs could afford a cultural lens without cutting into a template).


* I did rework my races to bring them 'inline' with DF 3.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

To be clear, I don't object to them as such. I mean, I do agree that they would seem unlikely to sell very well, simply because settings/locations/adventures don't sell as well as chunks of rules, though ultimately that'd be something for SJ Games to decide. On the other hand, as a consumer, I'd be interested in seeing such things (if, say, Phil Masters were to write Dungeon Fantasy Settings 1: I Can't Believe It's Not Africa, I'd buy it), and as an author, I think DF settings or just GURPS settings created with an eye towards DF compatibility would be hella fun to write.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I would like 'faux fantasy Japan' with monsters and sample quest ideas and such oh my . . . I more or less run into issues as a DM such as instead of 'you run into a group of works with great axes' it becomes 'you run into a group of works with naginatas'

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Why do you think I was pointing saying the Elites were Persian not the People.
Just like for a large part of Medaived England the Elites were Norman but not the People.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I'm not sure if T.B.C. was advocating or explaining, however, I would love to see some DF books "Monsters of India" or "Adventures- DF Japan: Hunt for the Blood Lotus"
with worked examples of foes, monsters & treasures.
The biggest problem for me is knowing about those things as I'm not familiar with the culture as I am with Western, Middle Eastern, and American ones.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Usually, in my experience, convincing the players that they're playing a recognisable character, with some kind of (possibly colourful) cultural background, rather than just a numeric artefact with the ability to diminish the "HP" attribute of other numeric artefacts.

Because, as TBC says, they're rarely if ever oriented towards the sort of play that Dungeon Fantasy implies. The intergration and adaptation process isn't as trivial as you seem to think.

Remember that we're talking about the Dungeon Fantasy PDF line here. A "book" can easily be a 20-30 page document. Honestly, a good set of template modifications, some revised spell lists, a bunch of fun monsters, a couple of pages of GM advice on getting the flavour right, and a glossary of terms to slather on to make sessions sound right, would fill that with no trouble at all.

I came to this thread thinking in the abstract, not worrying about commercial viability. But actually, given the sales numbers that I see for DF material as compared to those for some other lines, I think that a product which sold to a modest fraction of the maximum DF market would be considered fairly viable. Plus, I think it would sell to more than just people who wanted to run complete campaigns in the setting. DF characters are great wanderers; "This week, your characters go on a ship to Darker NotAfrica. I'll run you through a couple of dungeons there, you can pick up some cool throwing blades, and oh yeah, Fred wants his new character to be a Pseudo-Zulu, so be prepared to meet a big friendly guy with a short spear and a yen to travel..."

I didn't start this thread. I'm just running with someone else's suggestion, to see how it might fly.

You forgot an essential qualifier at the end of that sentence: "...and that someone competent offers to write." Believe me, that's a bigger factor than some people seem to think.

The ruling elite in Abbasid Baghdad were Arab. The civil service elite were largely Persian. And the Arabian Nights, being created in its extant form for the entertainment of street folks in Damascus and Cairo, positively drips with Arab chauvinism. Heck, it seems to demonstrate prejudice against folks from the "wrong" bit of North Africa.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I'd buy it too!
Not to bee too much of a kiss-ass, but I love the stuff you write.
I'd be interested in seeing setting adventures from YOU. MoFD was awesome.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

As a GM I find this to be very true, it can be a big PITA.

I think this is very true. Also, given the complaints about a lack of a Beastary or enough Monster Manuals, getting a few more creatures never hurts.
I am always on the lookout for Adventures or Creatures. I buy every gurps book with them.

One thing I've done for DF that has helped me as GM was take old D&D adventures & use them for DF. It's a pain to re-stat the monsters but much easier than starting from scratch.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Perhaps I should be clear on my own position:

I don't see Dungeon Fantasy as anything other than "go there, kill stuff, take their loot, don't die, rinse, repeat." I'll use the books as a source.

That being said, I love bestiaries, especially ones that are not primarily rehashes of stuff from previous bestiaries (one of the biggest complaints I had with WotC's Monster Manuals 4 and 5 was that they were just adaptations of stuff already published, with very few actual new critters). That's why, of all the DF books, Allies and Summoners were at the top of my to-get list; I think I might have gotten them even before Adventurers. 3e's Dinosaurs is one I turn to a lot, not just for dinos but for all kinds of exotic prehistoric fauna - especially megafauna - to pepper my settings with.

So if someone was to write Dungeon Fantasy Monsters: Monsters of the Orient/the Amazon/the Andes/the Himalayas/the Congo/Mongolia/Polynesia/India/the Middle East/Australia/etc, yeah, I'd snap those up in a heartbeat.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

So it's either colorful cultural background, or you're a numeric artifact? Given that DF has not had "colorful cultural backgrounds" up until now, how well has DF faired without "colorful cultural backgrounds?" Has it been a disaster? Has the line lost a lot of sales?

You're excluding the middle.

Citation needed. I do this sort of thing all the time, so I'm either underestimating my skill, or there are quite some people overestimating the difficulty of GURPS.


Fair enough. But given that it would be a pretty small document, how does this fly with your previous statement that it would be "harder than I think?" Given how trivial you make it sound (that sounds about right to me), and given that books like GURPS Japan already have revised spell lists, a bunch of fun monsters, and GM advice for getting the flavor right, all you'd really need to do is adjust the templates (and there's example templates right in the book to guide your modification) and the monsters to suit the power-level of DF. Is that really as hard as you said it was in your previous statement? I don't think so.

As an aside: I'm worried that the GURPS line is beginning to divide: the standard line, which has books like Monster Hunters and Action, where people borrow them and modify them for their given campaign needs, and the DF line, which seems full of people who need books, specific for DF, for everything. They need a monsters book, because the piles of monsters published already for GURPS aren't DF enough. They need setting-design books, because GURPS Fantasy isn't DF enough. Now we need a DF Japan and a DF Arabia, because Japan and Arabia aren't DF enough.

Given that settings don't sell well at all, I'd be surprised. I will give you this: DF has something the other GURPS materials don't, and that is assumptions. Since you know what you're writing to, and what you're writing to is popular, a DF setting might sell better than a vanilla setting. Still, given the troubles THS and Banestorm have...

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Banestorm and THS are edge-case settings though. THS is very hard sci-fi with a density of 'background' that makes even hard sci-nuts (like myself) wince, and Banestorm has Christianity with a twist in it. As I've discovered you tend to get 4 types of people playing 'magical fantasy rpgs': Those that hate 'real world' religions in their fantasy, those that take Christianity very seriously, those that don't care, and b-dog. Banestorm puts off the first 2 and doesn't add much to 'D&D' fantasy that the third wants. It's the 'b-dog' type that are drawn to Banestorm, they want to explore Christianity/Catholicism (both modern and ancient) in a quasi-medieval fantasy setting... and that's Banestorm to a 't'.


Personally I'm drawn more to settings like The Madlands. Weird stuff, not just more blehneric 'kitchen sink D&D'.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

It wouldn't even come close to running the fantasy campaign idea I've currently got back-burnered. None of the templates have Guns or Driving skills, there's no advice for running investigations, the magic is a couple orders of magnitude too fast, and elves. None of the 3 pick-up-and-play lines does me much good, actually.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Its also worth repeating that Dawn of Magic drew heavily on classical and Aztec and Lovecraftian influences, not just medieval ones. So DF starts out as something other than generic pseudo-medieval fantasy minus monotheism (its more "Kromm's vision of D&D land" and D&D broke away from its original inspirations a long time ago), and there would be nothing wrong with creating a worked example of pulling in another set of tropes and monsters and powers.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

That's the thing, though. People jump up and down and say "You know what GURPS needs? A setting!" So we give them a setting. We give them lots of settings. And they turn up their nose at each of them. "Ugh. Hard Sci-fi? I wanted something sillier. Tales of the Solar Patrol? Ugh. Who likes the 50s anymore!?" Or "Banestorm? Meh, it's too real-world. Madlands? Isn't that just D&D with Winnie the Pooh? Meh." Japan takes too much work, Banestorm is too "real world", Madlands isn't real-world enough. What are the chances that the GURPS setting writers will now hit exactly the right tone? Or is there a right tone? Sometimes it seems to me, as Kuroshima points out, that some people want Phil Masters or Bill Stoddard to write their campaign for them, but that seems, to me, an impossible task.

So that's why I want to know why we think this time, this time, it'll be different. If I had insight into how well the Mirror of the Fire Demon sold, that might help. Adventures have the same problem as settings: Nobody buys them because an adventure (like a setting) needs to fit the campaign vision and assumption of the GM and his group. But if Mirror of the Fire Demon sold well, that would tell me that, indeed, this time it could be different, because the people who buy DF are fundamentally different from the people who buy most GURPS products, or at least their campaign needs are (less customized, more generic, more easily served by pre-fab settings/adventures)

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I don't know about impossible; I'd imagine that both Phil and Bill like a very large paycheck.

That said, we've collectively wasted more text on this subject than it would've taken us to write up a pretty good free version of DF: Arabia or DF: Africa.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

That's also why I think it'd be best as Pyramid articles, quick lenses, short setting descriptions, light rules touches.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Uh, yes?

Well, a cultural background of some sort. "Colourful" is a bonus, because colour sells better than black and white.

Totally false assumption. DF has a cultural background; cod-medieval Europe with some Renaissance bits and a few classical twiddles. Which is a perfectly good and fairly colourful cultural background, but doesn't preclude offering a few alternatives. It may well be that having more than one of these in play helps people come up with unique snowflake characters, because even if Fred's Zulu warrior and Jim's Viking warrior have nearly identical stats, everybody's mental images of the two warrior guys will be very different.


Ah, proof by personal incredulity. I can do that too.

The fact is, if you do this thing all the time, then you spend quite a lot of time doing this thing. Many people don't have that sort of time. Other people may have the skill and the time, but lack the confidence. Other people again may just want worked examples to get them started, or be interested to know if they've missed any tricks.

If SJGames never published any material that people could do for themselves, they wouldn't publish any GURPS material at all. Very little of what's written for the line is all that intellectually demanding to create, once one gets started and does the research. Getting started, doing the research, and putting the results down in comprehensible form, is what GURPS writers get paid for.

For a start, 20-30 pages is simply a commercially viable minimum. Actually, I think a decent attempt at this sort of subject-matter would run to the high end of that range, or a little longer. But I'll leave the numbers there for the sake of argument...

Small is not the same as trivial. The GURPS PDF line is full of small books, and actually I gather that the company would like more. Each represents less work than a big book with similar information density. They still represent some, non-trivial amount of work, for which, it turns out, a reasonable number of people are prepared to pay money.

I do. So there.

Re-engineering the sort of quasi-realistic, low-key cultural specific material that appears in most 3rd edition culture/setting books into the high-power, action-oriented framework of 4th edition Dungeon Fantasy really doesn't strike me as a small task. Maybe you can adapt three '90s GURPS supplements to DF use before your first coffee of the day, in which case, good for you. Other people are different, and their money is just as good.

Worry as much as you like, but judging by the sales figures I've seen for my own work, the DF line sells rather well by GURPS standards. Clearly, people want this stuff, and don't regard creating for themselves as trivial. Well, not so trivial that they aren't prepared to pay someone else to do it for them.

Settings don't sell that well, and there's good reasons why the company's submission guidelines discourage people from bombarding them with proposals for new setting books. (Most of them would probably be cookie-cutter jobs with one implausible twist each. I don't blame Kromm for not wanting to spend all his time explaining why people's pet campaign worlds really wouldn't turn into the next big thing.) But that's not the same as not selling at all.

I only have access to my own sales figures, but going by those for my own setting books (which the company were happy to publish), some settings books do okay, some are a bit disappointing. It's presumably a matter of catching enough people's imaginations, and that remains a dark art. And I don't know where you got your ideas about Banestorm and Transhuman Space, but from what I've seen, Banestorm actually did okay, and the company is still happy to look at proposals for ancilliary books for that setting. Transhuman Space could sell better (I wish it did), but it's not a disaster; you'll note the the sub-line is still considered active, and indeed we've just published a new TS supplement within the last month.

But in any case, culture-books for Dungeon Fantasy wouldn't be "setting books" as usually imagined; they'd be ways of adding colour and variety to the fuzzy DF meta-setting, with the option for people to focus things down to settings for their own games drawing heavily on that cultural material. I personally think they'd do okay, if anyone wants to write them.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

And with that, you blow away all of my arguments. I tip my hat to you, sir. You are truly the king of the internet.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

You're the one who resorted to disproof by personal incredulity...

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

I wouldn't even bother with setting descriptions. I don't think DF Ninjas bothers to describe what world Ninjas exist in (if it did, I missed it). You put "Ninjas" on the front, people know what you're talking about. You create an article with a samurai (knight), geisha (bard), onmyōji (wizard), repeat the spell-list choices from Japan (possibly edited to be more appropriate to 4e and DF in general), and you're done. People already know what it is. They don't need a description of Not-Kyoto or Not-Edo. That's too much detail for a DF adventure anyway.

Where you run into what I would consider a serious problem, worthy of substantial word-count, would be monsters. Several people have pointed out that they need more monsters, and from what I understand, the monster books do sell well. And when you're going to an exotic locale, it's not enough to just see the sights and hear the descriptions ("The castles aren't big stony european things, but those Japanse castles with the sloping roofs! And he's not a king, he's a daimyo, and this is not a kingdom, it's a province" "Oh, okay, if you say so.") It's by interacting with the setting. Therein lies your problem with a DF setting book: 90% of the stuff you'd put in it, most people wouldn't care about. Villages are for selling stuff, landscape is for transversing to get to the dungeon, kings are just ways of getting quests, etc. Most of it doesn't matter.

Except the monsters, and maybe the loot. Monsters and loot are the way DF characters most often interact with a setting. You go into a crypt? You fight skeletons. You go into the sewers? You fight giant rats. You go into the cloud cities above the Titan mountains? You fight sky-giants. The history of the crypt, the logistics of the sewer and the geography of the Titan mountains are largely irrelevant. But the monsters are not.

And if you made the giant rats and the sky giants and the skeletons all basically the same, the players will be disappointed. They should feel different.

The same is true if they go from Not-Europe to Not-Japan or Not-Africa. This is a different realm, with different rules. It should feel different, and that difference will primarily be in the monsters, and monsters take a lot of work.

I suspect if you created bestiaries that drew from other cultures, and paired them with those little pyramid articles, 90% of your demands for this (to whatever level those demands are) would largely be satisfied. They would have the added advantage of creating more monsters, which would please those who just want more monsters for the sake of more monsters. DF players seem to have an insatiable demand for monsters, and creating a good DF monster is trickier than creating monsters for other games.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Agreed, Monster Books should be books.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

TSR seemed to do very well out of their compendia of setting specific monsters for AD&D2... I recall an Arabian one, a Japanese one, several for more pseudo-European settings and there may have been a Mayincatec one as well...

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

One of the things I treasured the most about my D&D Insider subscription was Adventure Tools' big database of monsters. And then they stopped updating that, but I still love it and mine it for ideas.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Yes. Me too!

I also would snap up Adventures or Mini-Adventures, like MoFD, with Beastearys of associated monsters. In fact I'd like the adventure books even more than "just monsters" books.

Re: I wonder when DF will do non-European fantasy
 

Well, someone could just do an update to GURPS Fantasy Bestiary, and then do sequels.