Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown
 

Also hoping for the best for you.
As for a flop, I dont recall anything of yours that qualifies.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown
 

You know, I've been wondering when we'd see something like this for a while.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown
 

Ah! I'm so excited about this - I snapped it up right away, and just started reading it. Much fun!

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown
 

My congratulations to Kromm for getting the rarefied vocab of monadnock and inselberg into a gaming product, a trick that not even the polysllabic EGG ever managed*. If only he had managed to work bornhardt into the list of things it is not... but that would be asking too much.

Anyway, it is a great product and I am very happy to see it. Unfortunately my DF game is on hiatus until the summer, but that gives me all the more time to ponder how to get the PCs here.



*C'mon, where did most of us learn dweomer, weal, demiurge, geas, and milieu?

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown
 

Ha! I laughed at those, too. The whole first chapter is quietly hilarious, in my humble opinion, partly because (rightly or wrongly) it gave me a strong sense that the author had had fun writing it....

It's also a really fun setting for a game, and could totally be run "straight", without the humor, if one preferred. But the writing itself is quite funny, IMHO.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown
 

I have t finished reading it, but I like what I see so far. Surprisingly there aren't many products like this. Typically you get books on whole nations or adventures, rather than just one city. D&D 4th ed did one product like this and it was probably one of the best ones it did. This compares quite favorably

It's fascinating to see the tone which is equal parts irreverent and equal parts old school Greyhawk.

I'm working on my own DF home base, and this has me thinking of ways to help liven it up. Like Caverntown (which is a ridiculous name but it works and I like the touch of other names trying to be used officially but the locals were just like "Nah") I've got a gold rush mentality for adventuring, but this book helps give me ideas on how the local farmers and thatchers react to this sudden influx of adventurers.
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Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown
 

Published a review on my blog:

https://blindmapmaker.wordpress.com/...ng-caverntown/
Warning: May contain ads, depending on your ad-blocker settings (really should make my own site I know). It's only Wordpress, though.

I agree with the things said so far, but I want to stress one thing in particular: This is basically the plug-and-play setting folks have been clamouring for for ages. Go buy it! And if you do, maybe we get a couple of those dungeons fleshed out in a while.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown
 

Ahhhh, this is a delicacy!

I read the first 15 pages last night, falling asleep while mulling the Royal Embassy and Deep Rangers.

One of my favorite bits so far was the potential for wealthy "tourists" to provide quest opportunities:

Both of these tourist roles sound fun. I can imagine creating a recurring dilettante NPC who begins by simply asking for stories (and paying for mementos), proceeds to suggest increasingly challenging quests or dares, and finally asks to come along on an absurdly dangerous journey.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown
 

Oh, yeah.Kind of like some Safari types from back in the day.
Imagine the fun with a dilettante monster slayer using the PCs as 'Guides' and they have to keep him from getting killed while making him look good so he comes back with a trophy and great stories.

Re: GURPS Dungeon Fantasy Setting: Caverntown
 

Assuming the rough default of a 1.25mi (2km) on a side space for Caverntown, and not fiddling with the ratio of height to x-y dimensions, how high is the dome ceiling of the cavern?
I'm noodling around with making a model of caverntown in Blender, but PCs will inevitably want to fly or unleash a giant flying monster or both. How much clearance over houses and how high you can get and make guards/PCs get big range penalties to hit you is interesting (And as always, falling damage! PCs will find a way to take falling damage even on the arctic tundra. True story).

Height also indirectly controls how tall the buildings are going to get. If e.g. the ceiling is 30', and people have a roof patio, they're never getting more than 2 floors (including ground floor, not counting on top the roof) "above ground" and you'll not have a lot of space to maneuver over parapets and any roof-top gazebos. It will also cramp the style of the druids trees.

If the ceiling is 600' you can get some classy aerial dogfights going, and PCs make a satisfying splat noise if they fall.

Side note: The stairs to the surface around the shaft seem to be about 60-odd flights [1], so presuming a 10' rise per flight, the ceiling isn't 600 feet. But that's still an awe-inspiring mental picture.

[1] Someone with a move of 7 and a high enough HT or Running that they didn't have to make significant rest stops can run the steps up the shaft in about 7m 9s. The winner of the Empire State Building stair climb did 86 flights of stairs in 10m 16s, let's say he's our Move 7/healthy runner. That suggests the steps are ~60.5 flights of stairs. Unless I have my math wrong, which I could. It might be 390' instead of 600 ft.