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Old 11-06-2021, 08:42 AM   #35
DouglasCole
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Location: Lakeville, MN
Default Re: A Bestiary for more than the DFRPG: Nordlond Enemies Book

Quote:
Originally Posted by DaosusLeghki View Post
As a subset of this, it indirectly addresses the "there's no GURPS bestiary" complaint many have.
I hope it's more than indirect!

From the introduction:

Using the book in other campaigns
The Dungeon Fantasy RPG is purposefully generic: It is Powered
by GURPS, after all. The Noršlond setting is not generic,
borrowing from the literary tradition of the Viking culture.
The sagas of looting, pillaging, and raiding for wealth and fame
made a natural match for a game with a tag-line of “Smash Evil
for Fun and Profit.”

Even with that in mind, the monsters here can be—and should
be—repurposed and transplanted to other campaigns. Many of
them are thinly disguised transplants from other cosmologies
anyway: The nautamašr is clearly based on the Minotaur;
the Blóšughśfa, or “bloody hat” is the redcap, a fixture of
Northumbrian folklore, perhaps derived or parallel to the Irish
fear dearg, meaning “red man,” said to wear a red coat and cap.
Animals—normal, giant, and dire—don’t require any work to
move between campaigns. Much as the player characters pillage
loot, GMs should pillage the worked examples here to make their
lives easier when running games in any campaign.

That Other Game
It’s no secret that the leading fantasy roleplaying game, published
through at least five editions over many decades, has a
wealth of material available in print and electronic format. What
could more in keeping with a game based on Vikings than to
pillage that material for adventure ideas and prepared scenarios
when pressed for time? To that end, many of the monsters in the
book given more Norse-flavored names also have a note indicating
what they might be called in That Other Game System. With
that in hand, playing through material simply referencing the
creature stats and using the “fluff text” and idea flow of existing
material becomes much more streamlined.
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