Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy
 

So, just asking for some advice from the GURPS Forums. If I wanted to run a Fantasy Campaign, but not necessarily a "beer and pretzels" game of mostly dungeon crawls, would Dungeon Fantasy still be useful?

Like, I enjoy having the various DF templates, but at the same time, I don't want to use the "niche" tropes of restricting "arcane" spellcasters away from the Healing College.

So, would you recommend me sticking to GURPS Fantasy, or consider Dungeon Fantasy?

Re: Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy
 

As someone who is doing this, I would say that DF is still quite "useful", though you will obviously have to screen some stuff out.

Re: Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy
 

If you consider the templates useful, it's hard to see how using them would be a problem.

It's possible that you'd want to beef up some of the skill lists though, if you're planning to use parts of the GURPS skill space that DF doesn't take much interest in.

Re: Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy
 

I don't think this is an either/or choice. GURPS Fantasy tells you about constructing a fantasy world. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy gives you a series of rules for running high-level, D&D-style adventures.

By "rules," I mean of course things like monsters, templates, lists of treasure, and summaries of how to use the rules of GURPS to handle dungeon and wilderness adventuring. You can lift any of these out of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy to be used in more "serious" games. If you happen to like the stuff in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, why wouldn't you use it?

Re: Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy
 

If your PC's are built like hammers, all of your adventure hooks will be viewed like nails.

Edit: Something to keep in mind while utilising GURPS DF templates in non-DF campaign.

Re: Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy
 

DF should work fine, although depending on the focus of your campaign, you may want to put aside some points (either by giving a larger budget, or weakening the templates) for the kind of stuff DF doesn't focus on, as others have mentioned. This can also be useful if you want characters to be able to branch out from their templates' niches - indeed, it may be worthwhile to have the players pick one of the [125] templates from Henchmen and give them a nice chunk of additional points to build on top of those. Removing some of the niche-protection mechanisms from "arcane" spellcasters may mean players will likely be a bit more likely to play such spellcasters than the classes who benefited from the niche protection, but as long as you're fine with this going in, I wouldn't expect it to be terribly unbalancing/disruptive.

Re: Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy
 

I dont run DF style games but still find several books useful for fleshing out fully realized campaign worlds.

Re: Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy
 

Joining the choir here... I rarely run straight dungeon crawls but love DF (DFRPG in particular). This is especially true for casual players and people who are new to GURPS. (Most of my players are in this category.) It's so much easier to just give them a few slim rulebooks than to overwhelm them with the Basic Set, Magic, a pile of PDFs, and documents listing all of my customizations and house rules.

We regularly have sessions with no combat and I'm very flexible about the template niches as long as all the players are on board. (For example, we allow healing spells for non-clerics and I often add wizard spells to the clerics for different deities.) I pull in material from the DF line and the rest of GURPS, but for the most part, the players don't have to deal with it unless they want some added flexibility for their characters.

Re: Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy
 

But yeah, a lot of the content from the DF line would be useful in many non-DF fantasy campaigns. Like the stuff in Allies, and clerics (forgot the number), and lots and lots of equipment.

Also, things like the Magical Styles: Dungeon Magic, is awesome.

I would probably not use the templates as such, as they lack in social aspects of the game, if you're thinking about using them, but using the templates with Dungeon Fantasy on the Cheap and then adding in some points for social and other abilities ignored by the DF-line would probably work well.

Re: Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy
 

I use DFRPG as a starting point for my non-DF games. Cutting the ~800 pages of BS + Magic down to 300 pages simplifies things a lot. Various DF books also add stuff that basic fantasy has no treatment for - the above mentioned Allies; Wilderness Adventures is a great book.