[DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

The question may be unfair because DF never tells us to default to any particular sort of world. But all the same, the GURPS DF game worlds I've seen tend to have similarities. Perhaps the most obvious one is that DF game worlds tend to be much more cosmopolitan than most dungeon fantasy. Due to all the race options for PCs, there tend to be towns where members of all the races live and hang out at the tavern together. A Pixie, an Ogre, an insect person and a half-elemental might easily all be seated at the bar.

So do you think there are distinctive features of the worlds GURPS DF games tend to default to? If so, what would you say they are?

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

IMHO the question is unanswerable. Even within DF there are a lot of options with 21 main books, 4 monster books, 2 Denizens books, 2 Encounters, and 2 settings Settings. (And there is not counting the monster books, the tangental material, or the stuff in Pyramid)

Then there is the fact that DF is GURPS and can be tweaked and altered to the point one could argue it wasn't DF anymore. GURPS Fantasy and Thaumatology allow mammoth tweaking of magic for example.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

That's why I use the word "default". Certainly, DF is a toolkit and you can use the books for all sorts of different worlds. But when I've seen or read about it actually being played, the games seem to default to a certain kind of world.

I get that you can build a world where the only sentient race is Elves. I'm sure somebody somewhere is doing that. But that's not how I'm seeing the game played.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I don't know about other dungeon fantasy, but they are certainly more cosmopolitan that other fantasy settings.



By default, DF leans heavily into good-evil-bunny-squid, and that's not unique, but its probably played up more there than other places.



DF feels a lot more magic heavy than most other Low TL fantasy settings I see in gurps.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I think what's distinctive about it is how unformed it is. It's a great study in soft world building. If you're interested in world building, I strongly recommend the videos by Hello Future Me on this (and every other) subject.

Here's the one on hard and soft world building.

In quick examples, though, Middle Earth is a product of hard world building, where studio Ghibli does soft world building. Much is left unknown, unformed, unexplored. It's deliberate and is better that way. Harry Potter used to be this way too, and was better for it.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I don't play a lot of DF, but I do refer to Infinite Worlds all the time. In my IW-inspired campaign, I use "Yrth-2" as shorthand for "whatever world it is that DF depicts."

Concur with ericthered about the cosmology: OD&D had Elder Things, but not nearly as prominent or as integral to the setting.

DF's demons are somewhat idiosyncratic and different than (say) TFT's.

"Hell gnomes" as dungeon maintainers has a different flavor than the imps of Dungeon Keeper or ignoring the question entirely.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I assembled a list to work from when I was doing my revision of the "Wellsprings of Creation" setting because I wanted to be sure I hit all the tropes. Naturally, I can't find it now. Things I remember include:

• A four-way moral universe (good/evil/bunny/squid); the DFRPG has "the Devil" as the ultimate source of evil, but GURPS DF does not (at least, not officially).
• An East from which martial artists and ninja originate
• A North from which barbarians originate
• Monarchy as the predominant political system

There's more, but not a lot more.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Nordlond is pretty solidly built. ;)

https://gamingballistic.com/product/...oks-print-pdf/

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Thank you. :-)

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I am not familiar with that expression. Bunnies? Squids?

I generally see the DF world as low-density, lots of wilderness with ruins of past civilization.

Societies are not super organized (not as rigid or codified as high medieval era).

I guess I have been influenced by the like of Titan (Fighting Fantasy).

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Druid/ranger 'nature' alignment and Eldritch Weird Stuff alignment.

I find presenting it as a four-way structure odd because the Lovecraft inspired nonsense is generally opposed to good no less than it is to 'bunny'. Makes the the whole thing quite asymmetric.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

The most distinctive thing I've seen or heard of is the DF chromatic magical styles. I found them really interesting

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I fundamentally disagree. I don’t think that lack of detail puts an emphasis on soft world building. That’s just an open field for the GM to exploit as he sees fit.

I’d argue that with dungeon fantasy you could just as easily end up with middle earth as hogwarts. In fact, I’d even suggest that groups with mostly power gamers, as is likely for dungeon fantasy, tend to favor hard worlds, because that encourages preparation and planning based on the details and rules established, as opposed to finding out your entire build was rendered useless when you got back to school after summer because the GM decided to change the mood/tone/atmosphere of the campaign (disclaimer: it was more than a decade since I read HP). Bear in mind, also, that the analysis in the video is for writing (where the author has absolute control and readers/viewers are passive) – not gaming (which is an actively cooperative pastime).

Of course, that’s not to say there are no unanswered questions in dungeon fantasy. “Who built this dungeon again, why are there a handful of seemingly incoherent monsters and traps here, and how long have they been surviving on the pure hope that a band of moro-, ahem, adventurers would stumble on their lair wile leaving the rooms intact (not to mention unspoiled...)?”

However, I’d say that these questions might have “logical answers”, but according to dungeon fantasy logic (if, say, making advances in dark magic requires a pact with the devil, among other things, leaving visual markings shunned by the larger society, I’d say a plethora of random dungeons is to be expected). That’s why there’s such a thing as a dungeon crawl genre.

Sometimes details may be left up to the players’ imagination. Sometimes they may be conveniently ignored (monster remains is usually not a commonly occurring feature, unless it’s part of a “creative” solution to the problem at hand). On the other hand, I have no idea how hygiene is handled in minas tirith (sewers carved into the, and while it likely has a detailed answer somewhere in Tolkien’s works, I don’t think that’s the dotted i that pushes it into “hard territory”.

As for the dungeon fantasy world in general, as mentioned by a previous poster, there’s a mysterious east, a frozen north, etc, all centered around a focal kingdom. From there, I might easily improvise that pixies and trolls generally come from a local enchanted forest, dwarves and goblins from the tall mountains, and any of the locations I choose to include may be fleshed out in detail, including pixie society, goblin customs, etc. It may not make sense from a TL8 human perspective, but that may even be the point (it’s not just foreign but another race, sometimes even alien or weirder).

There’s a difference between having unanswered questions on one hand and having unanswerable questions or choosing not to answer them (even when players beg for it) on the other. The later would be more in the spirit of Spirited Away (unintended...).

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Where are those from?

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Depends on how things are handled. The natural inclination is to essentially treat Squid as a variant of Evil, but that's not necessary - Squid can easily be neutrally disposed toward Good and Evil (it doesn't bother making a distinction) but be rather diametrically opposed to Bunny, on account of Squid being fundamentally unnatural (at least from Bunny's perspective). Basically, Good and Evil are almost always opposed, as are Bunny and Squid, but Good and Squid or Good and Bunny can work together, as could Evil and Squid or Evil and Bunny.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Squid-alignment has always seemed to be omni-malevolent in every case I can think of. It's potentially neutral between 'good' and 'evil' in the sense that it doesn't care which one it's eating.

If it's a two-axis diagram, what's in the good/squid corner of it?

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Bunny can be pretty hostile to Good and Evil as well. It's not like Good and Evil are friendly to untamed wilderness. They clear land and exterminate or exploit creatures of the wild.

But no, calling it a four way structure is a D&D joke. Bunny and Squid aren't opposed the way Good and Evil are. I have incidentally considered doing an Order and Chaos opposition in a fantasy setting, but not one which is about obeying or eschewing human laws. Instead the basic split is that Chaos wants things to be more magical, and Order wants things to be less magical.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

The presence of Artificers is an interesting twist in DF. They're not part of the base books, but gadgeteers that go delving are fairly distinctive.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I've also been kicking around a DFish setting idea for a while in which Good and Evil are matters of personal taste but Order and Chaos are of Cosmic Import, with all the deities aligned toward one or the other in ways that ignore G vs E entirely. Rather than pro- or anti-magic, however, the divide is over stability vs change, with the laws of mortals caught in the crossfire like everything else (eg: The local God of Death is Order all the way, the local Goddess of Love is Chaos on steroids - The only one who straddles the line is the God of Invention, patron of the Artificers, but he's been in a coma since the last Gods' War, my stab at explaining why the setting has been frozen at DF TL for a looooong time now).

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Change for change's sake has never worked for me as an ideology. You need a direction for your desired changes. Otherwise you are just randomly wiggling around. That's why I picked more versus less magic.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

No sane in-setting mortal sees Chaos as an end in and of itself, and Fanatics of any of the Gods tend to be trouble. In case you can't tell, I was re-watching B5 when I started the project. :)

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Well, there's the question of whether your oppositional poles are supposed to be self-contained ideologies, or whether they're just extremes of a particular component decomposition of ideologies.

Insofar as DF has such a thing it seems closer to the former. But the Other Game influence often leans to latter sometimes. ISTR that the fictional antecedents for Order vs Chaos had it as the sole great cosmic polarity and turning it into a two-axis structure originated in gaming, but I could be mistaken there.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Order vs Chaos originated with Poul Andersen and Moorcock. In Andersen "Order" consisted of keeping the world habitable for humanity while "Chaos" was monster-infested wilderness where his version of elves could survive thanks to their magical powers but things like agriculture were impossible. In Moorcock, when Order had the upper hand you could have advanced if not necessarily realistic technology, while Chaos allowed magic. But if the balance tipped too far, as in the end of Elric, every mortal dies.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Order vs Chaos depends very much on how you interpret those terms.

Order can be safety, predictability, morality. It is the community that protects each other.

Chaos can be destruction, opportunism, hedonism, insanity. It is the escaped fire that burns down the city and its inhabitants alive.

Or on the flip side...

Order can be tyranny. Uncompromising arcane laws. An elaborate spider-web of highly organised corruption. Or turning humans into something lesser; mindless cogs in a machine. Or death itself as time itself goes into stasis.

Chaos can be innovation, flexibility, the necessary force topples tyranny of evil Order and prevents evil from ever getting prefect hold of the world. Chaos is often said to be the origin of all that exists, and Chaos might the force of life itself.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I think even the D&D morality can be made interesting, but generally the bias of the authors tends to ruin it. (Hurr, dur, Chaos is random/stupid/extra evil. Or all the various "Lawful Stupid")

Example:

Lawful Evil. The count of a corrupt domain. He tries to bind down everything with rules to keep all those under him in line and play them off against each other. He himself will cheat rules, but claim otherwise and his corrupted court of law will make sure he always gets away clean.

Lawful Good. The count of a fair domain. He tries to promote good productive behavior through an elaborate array of laws and rules to which everyone must obey without fail. When faced with corruption the count will try to handle it in the most legal manner.

Chaotic Evil. The count of a ruthless domain. He uses displays of force to keep those under him in line, and makes violent displays of those who might appear to challenge him. Laws might exist, but everyone knows that they are meaningless; what matters is who you are useful to, and whom you might offend.

Chaotic Good. The count of a idealistic domain. He tries to promote the ideas of 'doing the right thing'. There might be rules, but ultimately what matters the most within the domain is essentially a popularity contest; whether or not someone seems to be 'decent person' and 'good for the community'. Obeying the rules isn't considered terribly important as long as you are 'good', and a person seen as 'bad' who obeys the rules will find they provide little shelter.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

That didn't originate with Anderson. It's an extension of the medieval world view to include more elves and such and fewer demons.

Medieval thought tended to see 'chaos' as being a tool of evil, or as being functionally the same thing.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Not a specific DF expert but my anthropological studies are kicking in... Many great writers and historians weighted in on what a "fantasy" and its underlining myths are and, while there is no clear answer, there are a lot of good thoughts on the subject, in very short and very incomplete version:
- For Furio Jesi, fantasy was a "technical mith": a rebuilt of a never occurred past that was serving (willing or not) a very clear ideology: since some of the most common tropes are divine right, hereditary rule, good vs evil, strength as solution, you can see what he was indicating.
- Umberto Eco was even more drastic: since he was one of the greatest experts on both medieval history and popular culture he added mainstream fantasy in his "Ur fascism" myths: a tale of a never happened "golden age" that was useful both as a tale of a "make back again" myth and as a fabled representation of the future past.

Now I don't personally think that every "Fantasy" is automatically a right wing fantasy (Even if Tolkien studies are attracting literature slackers since the '50 and the main defense against this idea are his personal history and the very troubling fact that he didn't believe in metaphorical readings of his works) but for sure you can point out that the genre has very skewed stereotypes, some of which were already pointed out in this topic.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

I never liked D&D morality as it was too vague and tried to shoehorn 20th century western values into situations where they made little to no sense.

It didn't help that Deities and Demongods had many of the deities of the evil races in Hell. Or the fact that the battles between Gruumsh' and Maglubiyet where the two sides were revived at the end of the battle read like an Orc-Goblin version of Vahalla (each race claims the other loses these battles)

It reminded me of a comic where this doctor dies and goes to heaven but is bored and so takes a stairwell to Hell and does what he did in life - crusade against medical issues. He drives the Devil so crazy that he sends him back to earth. When asked about his near death experience the last panel has "his thoughts go to the brimstone fires and sulphur smoke" and his reply - "It was Heaven." (Basically an inversion of Twilight Zone's It's a Nice Place to Visit)

Even D&D effectively admired that one person's Heaven is another's Hell.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

A big one for me is that Dungeon Fantasy seems a lot friendlier to shade of gray than D&D (certainly earlier editions, I guess Wizards has moved in the same direction with 5e?). This is somewhat related to the discussion of bunny-aligned creatures—Sense of Duty (Nature) is fairly restrictive and going to frequently put characters who have it at odds with most humans. But even "good" and "evil" as they exist in Dungeon Fantasy are ambiguous. "Evil" only needs to have Social Stigma (Excommunicated), and can technically have Honesty and Sense of Duty and so on. Meanwhile a "good" cleric might have Sense of Duty (Coreligionists) while also being a fanatic who wantonly slaughters members of other religions. There's nothing particularly "good" about dwarves (if anything, their Greed makes it seem like they'd be prone to evil), and there's nothing particularly "evil" about goblins.

Beyond that though, it depends a lot on what you emphasize. In fleshing out my setting, I put a lot of thought into the roles of specific types of sapient beings (DF3) and gods (DF7) but decided the vast majority of the occupations from books other than DF1 are rare to nonexistent, with the exception of the Assassin. But you could just as easily create a setting that really emphasizes Artificers, Demolishers, Musketeers, and Psis.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

Regarding chaos, the natural order differs a bit from society.

The laws of nature strive toward the state with the lowest energy (although it may be locally). When it comes to society, change is more about creating a new state with oneself or one’s ideology at the top (ideally, or at least higher than the alternatives including the status quo).

So in a sense, chaos (in the real world) is the process of replacing order with order.

Re: [DF] What's Distinctive About the Default Worlds of DF?
 

For a variation — as I recall (it’s been a while since I read it), Warhammer seemed to have a single-axis alignment that still allowed four terms. Good and Evil were much as most people tend to imagine them on a human scale; nice and unselfish people doing pleasant things vs. selfish and heartless people being unpleasant. Law and Chaos then carried these two ideas off to supernatural or psychotic extremes; everything having a place and individual interests always being subordinate to the interests of the collective vs. the war of all against all and cruelty for its own sweet sake.

(Druids and the like then sat in the Neutral middle because they were more worried about preserving nature than in the selfless or selfish interests of human beings.)