Steve Jackson Games Forums - (DF) Western Adventures

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Re: (DF) Western Adventures

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Originally Posted by Greg 1 (Post 2234957)

Holy Warrior: Can only Christians (or adherents of whatever faith represents Christianity) be Holy Warriors? What are appropriate powers for this exclusive religion anyway?

GURPS Monster Hunters 6: Holy Hunters could help with that.

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Knight: What's the connection between being a mighty knight and status?

I forgot GURPS Camelot in my last post.

Re: (DF) Western Adventures

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Originally Posted by b-dog (Post 2234983)

I think that GURPS people think of the DF series as a discreet separate entity from regular fantasy. In DF you can ONLY kill monsters and take their stuff and then exchange the loot in an abstract town.

Huh. I'm a GURPS person, and my DF game is a crossover with broader fantasy. No abstract towns at my table. The abstract DF town rules have worked well in my non-abstract towns.

I also highly recommend the Caverntown supplement for an awesome worked example of a DF town.

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If you want to make a dungeon setting in medieval Europe the GURPS writers will not write a book on how to set up a town and how to make the monsters seem like the ones from myths instead of being like in AD&D or Lord of the Rings they will just point you to GURPS Fantasy and then say DO IT YOURSELF!

I don't doubt that SJG would publish such a book if they thought there was market appetite for it. Look at the vast library of 3e world books that they published. (GURPS Arabian Nights is one of my favorite and most used RPG books for any system ever.) I consult many of those books in my 4e DF games all the time. Sometimes I need some NPC names, or a generic layout of a hill fort, or some religious fluff for a cultist, or stat ideas for a monster that's not in the DF canon yet. GURPS Celtic Myth, to name another example that is available (cheap!) in both PDF and PoD, is packed with cultural material (literature, fashion, board games, bagpipes...) and plenty of crunch on character types, magic, Sidhe, etc.

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There will be no easy to use book where there are classes that fit into Norse myths and legends along with notes on how towns and dungeons would be like and monsters that fit the Norse myths.

This is more about the marketplace than about the desire of Steve Jackson Games. A book like this would only sell to the subset of GURPS players who want a tightly focused Norse/DF crossover. That's a small group! Mind you, I don't speak for the company in any way, but I've seen dozens of posts from employees (from the CEO on down) about this, and they constantly emphasize that this isn't about "not wanting" to do such things.

Our best way to see more publications like this is to vote with our dollars. I echo johndallman's recommendation to see Hall of Judgment if you haven't already. It includes another example of a non-abstract town and lots of Norse culture to add to the DF stew. I love it and hope to see more like this from Doug. (And I hope jhis example inspires other 3rd party authors and publishers to jump in!)

Re: (DF) Western Adventures

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Originally Posted by b-dog (Post 2234983)

In DF you can ONLY kill monsters and take their stuff and then exchange the loot in an abstract town.

This is false.

Is DF set up to explicitly handle this sort of play? Yes. Is the only sort of play you can run using DF? No.

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With GURPS DF there is no way to incorporate things like culture into an easy to use book.

Also false. And pointedly false with the adventure Hall of Judgement sitting right over here...

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If you want to do that you have to do it yourself.

Until someone else writes. But that's the way of things. If someone else doesn't do it and you really want it badly...

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There is no continuum between hack and slash DF and a historical fantasy, they are completely separate.

Can I say false again? Should I break out a thesaurus yet?

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This is ... oh hang on. This one is true, so far. As in, "no one has yet written a book on how to make monsters from medieval European myth or how to run towns like medieval European fantasy for DF yet".

But I bet that 3e book, Middle Ages 1, would go a very long way in fulfilling part of this. I mean if I wanted to run medieval European DF, I'd certainly start there.

And if I really wanted to go to town, it looks like there is a series out there just for this, City Builder. Though I just discovered this series exists*, so I have no idea how GURPS and/or user friendly it is. I'm looking at picking up number 1 though...

Does anyone know what else the authors have written?

Re: (DF) Western Adventures

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Originally Posted by Greg 1 (Post 2234957)

Good example! There is indeed a lot that could be done with races. Some questions might include:

How do Christians (or the religious groups that represent them) respond to non-humans? Do Elves have souls and can they be saved?

Are Halflings appropriate, or does their non-magical nature make them unlike the little folk of folklore?

What's the relationship between the fae and the divine? Is there a clear line dividing them?

For classes, consider questions like

Cleric: How to make this fantay trope more like a western priest?

Druid: How does this class relate to the celtic nature priests called "druids"?

Holy Warrior: Can only Christians (or adherents of whatever faith represents Christianity) be Holy Warriors? What are appropriate powers for this exclusive religion anyway?

Knight: What's the connection between being a mighty knight and status?

Wizard: How do these relate to the wizards of Western folklore?

I agree that variation accross Europe complicates things a lot. Then again, the Pyramid article covered everything from Japan to India, noting variations.

This aren't the sort of things that should be coming up in a DF game.

Re: (DF) Western Adventures

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Originally Posted by scc (Post 2235262)

This aren't the sort of things that should be coming up in a DF game.

Those are all perfectly fine questions to tackle in a DF game if that's the sort of DF game you want to run.

Re: (DF) Western Adventures

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Originally Posted by capnq (Post 2234690)

at first glance, I thought "western" meant GURPS Old West.

I was going to also suggest the Deadlands series, but those are all out of print.