Originally Posted by JMason (Post 2137691)

Pretty much any D&D setting works fine. I've used material for the "Known Lands", "Forgotten Realms", and Pathfinder's "Glorantha" with just a few tweaks to me liking.
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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin (Post 2137696)

Before somebody takes te right turn at Albequerque trying to get their the current Pathfinder world is "Golarion".

"Glorantha" would take you to the original world of Runequest and that has some pretty eccentric assumptions of its' own even though much dungeon delving was done there (i.e. The Big Rubble and others)

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf (Post 2137648)

I ran my first 30+ sessions of Dungeon Fantasy without a map, more than a sentence or two of background material, or anything else like that. People delved and had fun.

So yes, while you could use a map of North American circa 1380 AD as a basis for a setting, I don't think you need to through that much effort.

Your background can be as simple "There is a Town on the edge of a wilderness." That's all you need before you write a dungeon and come up with some rumors and start playing.

Originally Posted by Qoltar (Post 2137760)

Guess I'm just used to having a lot more background detail before starting a game session.

In the past the default assumption is that every so-called 'one-shot' game session might lead to a campaign. With a campaign my most loyal one or two players like to have maps and interesting cultural details.

Does this mean I should give up on running DF and run typical GURPS 4/e instead?

-OR-

Just go ahead and run one or two DF sessions and not stress out about background universe details?

I did make the investment by buying the box set and the GM screen package. Should at least try to put it to use.

- Ed C.

Originally Posted by Kromm (Post 2137638)

The campaign that directly inspired GURPS Dungeon Fantasy – and through it, the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game – was set in a world designed to support dungeon crawls: It had a trackless central desert, northerly regions held at bay by strings of fortresses, steamy jungle nobody ever returned from, impenetrable mountain ranges, and five sets of unexplored islands. It was in its second age of magic, but remnants of the first age were hidden everywhere: lost jungle pyramids, caves sealed with magical forces, straight-up dungeons . . . even the great cities, supposedly safe and well-engineered, were built upon the ruins of ancient settlements, and their cellars and sewers mingled with dungeons. The magic was giving rise to many monsters. This world was a palimpsest, its new face drawn hastily over a hack 'n' slash realm where might and magic trumped civilization.

Well, one of my secrets is that the campaign itself was the spiritual descendant of not one but two campaigns set on Yrth. I more-or-less saw Yrth the same way, and had the capital-B Banestorm be simply the latest in a long strong of small-b banestorms. Humans were there before . . . and so were other things, and sometimes Things. The latest human religions had social power but not magical power – that resided with the Old Ways. The Old Gods and Elder Gods were both immanent, if subtle; I put GURPS Religion to good use making sure there were real clerics in the world.

So I think Yrth is workable for DF if you're willing to mess with it a bit. You can still use its civilizations and social structures, but it's a lot of fun to have those be a veneer that flakes off once you get very far away from cities and patrolled trade routes. Set the real action of great and supernatural importance in the Blackwoods, Djinn Lands, Great Desert, Orclands, and Ring Islands, and far beneath Zarak, while the political struggles of the civilized kingdoms and empires are just a sideshow – though of course the kings and emperors probably don't see it that way.