First Impressions
 

I received my copy of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game yesterday Sat. 16, 2017 and wanted to share my first impressions and excitement.

Obviously after more inspection, a full review may change, but its hard to contain my comments to later.

(You can also leave your first impressions in this thread if you think it's an appropriate place.)

The development of this game was a long time coming, and there were so many directions that could have led to a final singular outcome. There were so many opinions being shared on the forums and doubtless within the company.

I'm sure that I won't be satisfied with every decision made, but I reminded of a David Letterman feature where they would raise the curtain and ask, "Is This Anything?" The answer for the DFRPG is that it is definitely something!

There is a unique, original, and somewhat epic quality about this product.

Because some existing Dungeon Fantasy material can tend toward more dense formatting and content, I was very relieved to see that the books inside were clear, easy to read, and provided an introductory guidance that was crucial to this product.

The most interesting aspect was how the content resisted (for better or worse) the introductory simplification of rules in many boxed sets. This is no-holds-barred GURPS directed at a single genre.

So it seems a bit refreshing that this product solidified its own identity against many competing goals.

If this item wins awards or sets a standard, it will be because it provides a thorough, rules-centric approach to covering all the basic aspects of putting players, characters, and GMs through the hobby.

In the current roleplaying milieu where narrative seems to trump mechanics, the DFRPG seems to reinforce that rules and mechanics are the tools that initially separated this hobby from other forms of fiction, acting, and creativity.

It'll be very interesting to see how this game is received long term (and I'll be including myself in that anticipation.)

Re: First Impressions
 

Great topic!

Having received my Dungeon Fantasy RPG boxed set, GM Screen, and Companion volume on Friday, I share many of your impressions. It is truly a wonderful physical product, no doubt about it. The box, inserts, dice, cardboard heroes, bases, GM screen...all that physical stuff is industry standard or above. Some well above! They don’t appear to have cheapened out on anything.

As for the books: the layout, colors, and fonts are all well-chosen (and will be reassuringly familiar to GURPS aficionados). The art varies from average to top-notch. The covers are gorgeous! As for the interior art, I almost never say this, but I wish there had been room for a little more. The books are somewhat text-heavy at points, and a bit of well-chosen and -placed art would have broken it up nicely.

I do appreciate the one biggest difference from typical GURPS books (and, indeed, RPG books in general): the back cover of each book is a quick reference sheet for the most-needed charts and tables. What a great idea! That’s something that wasn’t seen much even back in boxed sets’ heyday. Yet it makes so much sense! The books are sold in a box, so there’s no need for marketing text on the back covers. Most game producers simply left the back pages blank. But not this time! The folks at Steve Jackson Games used that space to the greatest advantage, and I'm sure many gamers will be thankful for it every time they play.

And now, we come to the contents of the books. What's in there? Well, what you get is partly what an experienced GURPS GM could make with the GURPS Basic Set, GURPS Low-Tech, GURPS Fantasy, most of the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy line, and a few other bits of the GURPS product line. But what you also get is the expertise of the Steve Jackson Games team in simplifying, clarifying, distilling, and presenting the rules. In other words, it's a pre-made fantasy dungeon exploration and adventure RPG that is definitely GURPS but which is also easy to learn and use, especially for those new to the game.

Dungeon Fantasy RPG has all the rules you need, and none you don't. There are logical simplifications where the more general-purpose rules of GURPS proper would be overkill. There are also simplifications by way of implementation. One example is the Fright Check rule. Where the Basic Set has a table with 33 entries, Dungeon Fantasy has one with seven entries. It provides the severity of effect in terms of Disadvantage points inflicted, then leaves the specific choice of Disadvantage to inflict on the character up to the situation and the GM's discretion. This simplified rule makes perfect sense for the game.

But the great thing is that a GURPS GM could absolutely substitute the rule from the Basic Set without any issues whatsoever. The same is true throughout. Pull out the magic system and substitute one of GURPS' others. Add some monsters. Use different combat rules. You can do those things because it's still GURPS!

But as-is, it's GURPS that's been finely honed to the dungeon fantasy genre, and presented with an eye for helping those new to GURPS learn the system. And that's a great thing, because GURPS has the finest tactical combat system I've ever seen in all my decades of GMing. It also has one of the most flexible and logical game engines ever created. And, bottom line, it's tremendously fun. So if this introduces GURPS to more people, the gaming world will be better for it.

Re: First Impressions
 

So, I got my copy with the GM screen on Thursday, and I only got a chance to look at it today. Good bits and bad bits as follows-

GOOD BITS-
*Production quality is high. I mean, really, really high. Kudos to SJ Games.
*Everything is well laid out and the first adventure is a perfect setup for second and third and fourth adventures.
*The rules are clear, straightforward, and coherent.
*Lots of potential for neat expansion materials.
*The game feels like a classic form of "Dungeons and Dragons" and that is a good thing.

BAD BITS-
*The cardboard bit in the bottom is too big. I'm going to have to do surgery to make it a bit smaller so that I can fit in the GM screen....except I won't be able to fit in the cardboard heroes if I do.
(Slight revision after looking at it again...maybe if I pop the cardboard heroes out of the sprune and put them in the spacer box that is there to hold things up, I can maybe squeeze in the GM screen.)
*The Delvers To Go should have really been a part of the boxed set, not the GM Screen.
*The moment I even suggest this game to the people at the (only) nearby FLGS, they will be running, screaming to the hills about "GURPS! MATH! IT BURNS!"

(The local gaming groups all seem to play only fratboy Pathfinder.)

So, finding people to play this with may be a tad difficult.

Hopefully with find somebody to play it with soon.

Re: First Impressions
 

I threw the interior card board away, I now have space for the extra dice, CBH stands, I ordered along with the stuff with the GM's screen, plus screen, a note book, pencils, and a tablet in my box.

Re: First Impressions
 

That certainly would be nice, though I imagine it'd raise the boxed set price above a desired target point.

Also, while only SJG can say why the GM Screen got what add-ons it got, I'd guess that including something with brand-new content was a goal, to boost the value of what's otherwise a compilation of existing content. Delvers fits that bill.

That said, I suppose one could wish that the "bonus content" included with the GM Screen was pure GM-centered stuff. Delvers has some value there, giving the GM instant NPC adventurers, though I don't know how much use GMs will actually make of these as NPCs...

Hmm, what else might have been good as part of the GM Screen package? A booklet of NPC-only characters? (Bandit, Orc captain, city guardsman, cultist, serf, hirelings, etc.) A booklet of adventure seeds / mini-scenarios? A pack of small battle maps (individual dungeon rooms, a bit of cave, some forest trail, etc.)?

Re: First Impressions
 

I really wish the cardboard figures had the monsters in the monsters book and the pregens in Delvers to Go.

Re: First Impressions
 

I had exactly the same feeling when I realized they didn't mirror the Monsters book. Hadn't really thought about the Delvers to Go, but now that you mention it... I wanted that too and didn't know it.

Re: First Impressions
 

Sigh. Welcome to modern American society. It's even worse teaching students at a liberal arts college -- people in college mind you -- and they get angry when you have the audacity to think that they should know how to do basic algebra and fractions.

The ironic thing is that to GM or play GURPS, the amount of actual math you do is less than what you do in a typical Pathfinder game, particularly at higher levels. Once you get to a moderate level (6 or 7), buffs and conditions come and go very regularly, and you're adding a whole bunch of penalties. Your attack bonus is likely two digits as well.

In GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy, almost always the penalties are single-digit. When you're creating your character, most of the time you're adding +1 to +4 to your attribute to get your skill. (Or -1; subtraction is hard, though, right?) OK, the 80% for figuring out your Move when you're at light enumbrance is a bit harder... but you do it once, whereas the 1.5x damage bonus to vulnerable creatures is something you're doing all the time in Pathfinder or D&D. (To be fair, you're doing 1.5x for cutting damage a lot in GURPS as well... but again with smaller numbers.)

If you sit down to design systems or things like vehicles, then, yeah, the math in GURPS (which is nearly always still arithmetic, sometimes a wee bit of very simple algebra) becomes frequent. But for GMing and playing, the reputation GURPS has as being more mathy than the most popular games is entirely undeserved.

Re: First Impressions
 

It's a really fun looking / feeling box and set, from a 1st impression standpoint. The cover really sells the set for me.

I also get a very old school SJG and even sort of a Fantasy Trip done awesome when I look at it, especially the GM Screen.

Re: First Impressions
 

From the FLGS gamers perspective, I suspect that it's less "math" and more "thinking". But, the math is an excuse to run for the hills.

(And, I've run and played and taught people to play HERO FRED-once you can teach them that, everything else is easier.)

Re: First Impressions
 

I just got done trying out the new game with my regular group and I gotta say it was an amazing success!

It was kind of a spur of the moment decision. We where going to continue the newly started cyberpunk campaign I was running, but one guy couldn’t make it, and he’s the hacker. Sure, I could have made rolls for him but that didn’t sound like any fun, so I sprung this on the guys instead.

They made characters. I have the PDFs so I was able to loan out my laptop and tablet so multiple people could look things up as needed. I put them to work on it while I familiarized myself with the dungeon, which I hadn’t had the chance to read yet.

We had a GURPS newbie amongst us, and he took to it quite well. He chose the Cleric template and made his character on his own with only having to ask a few questions.

It still took us about four hours before we got to the actual game, but there was a lot of talking and pizza eating as well so that’s not at all bad.

The veteran GURPS players where impressed! They made comments as to how the rules where explained so much better and that it was likely an item to appear on their Christmas lists.

We didn’t finish the dungeon but we plan to play it through in later session(s) now.

Good job!

Re: First Impressions
 

That's great to hear Zarmonic.

How long did you play and how far did they get? (If you don't want to post spoilers, you can just say what page you made it to).

Re: First Impressions
 

Speaking from my experience running the dungeon twice at Gen Con for groups new to the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game but not to GURPS: It's probably a two-session dungeon for most gamers – three sessions if the group tends to find combat slow-ish in any game because they like to weigh all the options. People tend to need a while to reach area #6 owing to the puzzle-y nature of the earlier areas . . . and due to roleplaying through the adventure intro with the quest-giver!

Re: First Impressions
 

We only had a couple of hours left to play so we didn't get past the sewer. They did find Room 4 and now they've decided to return upstairs before moving on. Looks like I'm going to have to come up with some background info for the town, the history of the tavern, smugglers and thieves.

I think it's cool such info was left out so as to make it able to fit in any GM's world, but this was a case where I would have appreciated more detail. Things about the employer are pretty vague. It says in the book how her uncle died but nothing about how everyone thinks he died, or that he is in fact dead and not simply missing. It made for a pretty awkward intro but the players did seem to understand that such petty details where kind of besides the point for this kind of adventure so it worked out fine.

Re: First Impressions
 

Playing in the game now in a PbP... and those petty details are normally ones I'd drill down into.

But since I opted to play the Half-Ogre Barbarian pregen* I'm just rolling with "Let's get to the bashing stuff part guys" and no one else has yet thought to ask those pertinent questions.

So we breezed right past all those 'pesky' RP moments and are poised at the door opening...


* I haven't seen the other pregens as I didn't back deep enough to get the GM Screen (have to buy it later), but there are ... problems with this character's design. Or maybe I just have problems with it's design.

Re: First Impressions
 

It's a reputation gained more than 20 years ago that just won't go. Back then it was perhaps more reasonable, as the popular games of the day tended to use dice pools, and "count the successes" as their primary mechanic, so the players' contact with maths was limited (of course, if you were good at maths, especially stats, you could see all sorts of interesting oddities on those systems that were exploitable...).

Re: First Impressions
 

I was rereading Exploits last night. A little bedtime / stress relief reading.

I do find Dungeon Fantasy to be a really good, fun read, from first impression through current. I hope it does well - I'd like to see some follow-on items or other boxed sets one day.

Re: First Impressions
 

DFRPG got a mention over on ENWorld.

Re: First Impressions
 

... where's this Warrior template he thinks is there? And the 1 point advantages are there still. *hair pull*

Re: First Impressions
 

I think he's referring to D&D classes and comparing them to the DFRPG Professions. Not sure which edition of D&D called the combat specialist a Warrior - I've always been partial to Fighting Man myself. He specifically mentions the Knight profession so I'm not sure what he would have gotten Warrior from.

He also misses that the professions assume you'll take Disadvantages. Quirks are suggested for a few extra points.

Re: First Impressions
 

As I commented there, I wanted to know where this assumed familiarity with GURPS was.

Re: First Impressions
 

None of ‘em, and I’ve played every edition except OD&D. Second Edition D&D had all the classes grouped into superclasses, as it were. Thus, Fighter was a subclass of Warrior, which wasn’t anything you could play. Third Edition had an NPC class called Warrior which was meant for NPC bandits and guards. As Monte Cook later lamented, that was confusing at first, as the PC class was still Fighter.

Edit: to make an aside and get this back to DF, the default DF templates map well to the default D&D classes in 3e and 5e. The only real differences are that the D&D Fighter is split into Knight and Swashbuckler in DF, while the D&D Wizard/Sorcerer (and Warlock, once you get midway through the 3e era, and has been core since 4e) split is meaningless in DF (it’s a matter of one class using Vancian magic and the other not). I consider this mapping to be a Good Thing, since it increases familiarity for D&D players.

Re: First Impressions
 

I've got a young (ten-ish) nephew who, I learned some months ago, had started playing D&D. We can do better than that, I thought, and I sent him my second copies of the DFRPG box and GM's screen. His first impression was apparently great enthusiasm. He's been reading the books non-stop when he comes home from school and is planning a first campaign. So, may have created a new GURPS player.

Re: First Impressions
 

Pathfinder has a Swashbuckler class that maps more directly to the swashbuckler.