[DF] Advice for first-time Dungeon Fantasy GM

[Joe]

Hi forumites,

I'm going to be GMing my first Dungeon Fantasy mini-campaign soon. Has anyone out there got any great advice for me?

I'm a fairly experienced GM; I've just never GM'd DF before.

(By the way, if anyone is currently in Stockholm, Sweden and wants to join in, speak up!)

[sir_pudding]

• Revel in the looseness of the genre and don't sweat the small stuff.
• Respond to any attempt to poke holes in the facade with "It just is!" or "A wizard did it!".
• Don't worry about PCs dying. They can always make a new one.

[mlangsdorf]

Use a varied opposition. Don't throw endless hordes of orcs at your players, but mix it up with Stone Golems and Toxifiers, flesh eating apes, and things that are immune to magic.

Throw in some varied challenges, too: tricks, traps, long tunnels in no-mana zones that need to be climbed, etc. Give everyone a chance to shine.

Keep an eye on your wizard's spell lists. Its the spot in the play of the game that is going to challenge your assumptions the most.

Figure out if your players want a challenge or an escapist romp, and plan the encounters for that.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

What those guys said, but also:

- the PCs are badasses right from the word go (I had a Knight start with Two-Handed Sword-21, Weapon Master (Greatsword), and ST 17 - nevermind the Magery 6 wizard). So expect that - it's pretty high powered, so monster will die. Embrace that - you can throw more monsters next time.

- follow Mark's advice about varied non-combat challeneges even if the PCs aren't designed to tackle them. You need to scout and didn't make one - oh, this'll be extra-tough. Part of the badass thing is that sometimes the challenges aren't to your core competency.

- decide ahead of time how you want to award experience. How you award XP will drive behavior - if you give extra XP for killing everything in the dungeon, expect that. If you give XP for exploration, expect that, too.

- Have fun with it. DF is dungeoneering with a nod and a wink to old school silliness. If you try to run it as a dark, serious, gritty game, you're trying to ram a square peg into a round hole. It works better if you just take it a little lightly and focus on the kill monsters, take treasure, go back to town aspects.

In addition, a bunch of us running or playing DF have blogs about our games - there is a link to mine in my signature, and it has links to the others (including Mark's).

[Mailanka]

It's not D&D. Don't expect it to be D&D. Mages aren't artillery, fighters aren't "tanks" and thieves aren't "damage dealers." It's a considerably more "strategic" than tactical game. Don't approach a dungeon as a series of unconnected fights, but as a more cohesive whole.

GURPS really works more like a game of Shadowrun or other "hiest" games. Characters have certain specialties in a broader scheme, and they will use them. Magic-users are more about crowd control and bringing unconvential solutions to the problem. Thieves and scouts and barbarians and even swashbucklers, to an extent, are about bringing "mobility" to the dungeon, allowing them to get around obstacles through sheer physical prowess and skill. The combat-oriented types are very lethal. Throw a knight or a swashbuckler against any reasonable group of orcs, and expect them to mow through at least one a turn (the minion rules aren't there to make this sort of thing easier, but to reach the inevitable conclusion with less muss and fuss: one hit from a knight with high striking strength, weapon master and a great-sword is going to destroy anyone not similarly badass): The reason you can't afford to ignore the knight isn't because he has you "tagged," but because he's going to kill you if you turn your back. This isn't to say that mages and thieves don't have their combat uses, they do, but fighters are about fighting, and so expect them to be very good at combat.

GURPS has never been a "pile of HP game," and it isn't here either. They will win because they're not being hit (or being hit too lightly for it to matter), because they're dominating the battlefield, or because they evaded it completely.

At high level play, expect ruthless exploitation, and design your monsters accordingly. When I tossed together monsters in my thread, I made quite a few that I found spectacularly ridiculous, like dragons with a DR of 20 and such, and I have since watched DF veterans rip them apart like they're nothing ("DR 20 and how much nictitating membrane? Dead!").

It's a great game, but don't expect it to play anything like D&D beyond the typical "Go into dungeons, kill monsters and take their stuff." It's still very much GURPS, and GURPS is about thinking about how things would actually play out. Do the same in return.

[Kromm]

As the series' creator and primary author, I would endorse all of the advice so far, especially this stuff:

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

• Revel in the looseness of the genre and don't sweat the small stuff.
• Respond to any attempt to poke holes in the facade with "It just is!" or "A wizard did it!".

Indeed! DF isn't about consistency of setting or logical abilities. At most, it's about the consistency of illogical abilities.

Very, very important! For instance, don't feel as if the lack of a spellcaster with the right countermagic means you shouldn't throw unavoidable magic in the PCs' path . . . if they go in without Stone to Flesh or Remove Curse, and end up statues or cursed, too bad. And if nobody can hack through the DR 20 on the golem, because nobody is a high-ST barbarian, so what? Make people think.

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Keep an eye on your wizard's spell lists. Its the spot in the play of the game that is going to challenge your assumptions the most.

And don't be afraid to say something like, "Your Seeker spell doesn't seem to work. You suspect that there's a no-mana area in the way," or, "You feel your Shape Earth spell warded by a powerful force. Your Thaumatology skill tells you that this area has a guardian earth spirit with countermagic at skill 50 or 60." Magic is cheap and commonplace in DF . . . it's Just Another Ability, like stabbing and stealing. Casters enjoy no guarantees that their spells will always work as advertised outside of their nice, safe towns.

Originally Posted by Peter V. Dell'Orto

the PCs are badasses right from the word go

That's the flipside to unexpected challenges and spells that get blocked: Sometimes, the PCs' abilities should work exactly as advertised . . . and then some! Make sure that there are as many total blowouts, easy wins, and encounters with foes who can be mowed down in hordes as there are troubles that nobody can deal with and hand-waving barriers to magic. The GM's job isn't to be a jerk, but to maintain balance. Balance doesn't mean that every encounter has to be exactly on a par with the PCs, though. It means that while encounters will average out that way, a good many will be tough or very tough, and a similar number will be easy or very easy. Numerically, don't aim to make everything a dead-on 5.5 out of 10; as long as every 1 has a 10 and every 7 has a 4, you're good.

Originally Posted by Mailanka

It's not D&D.

Definitely this, too. D&D – especially AD&D – was an influence on DF but not the dominant one. (I'd put it third behind Diablo II and NetHack, probably, and tied with Tunnels & Trolls.)

Originally Posted by Mailanka

GURPS has never been a "pile of HP game," and it isn't here either. They will win because they're not being hit (or being hit too lightly for it to matter), because they're dominating the battlefield, or because they evaded it completely.

Yep. Don't worry if some PCs never, ever lose even 1 HP. What other games represent through HP, GURPS very often represents with active defenses and resistance rolls.

Originally Posted by Peter V. Dell'Orto

Have fun with it. DF is dungeoneering with a nod and a wink to old school silliness. If you try to run it as a dark, serious, gritty game, you're trying to ram a square peg into a round hole. It works better if you just take it a little lightly and focus on the kill monsters, take treasure, go back to town aspects.

If you ignore all the other advice, pay attention to this. DF isn't designed to be super-serious, or involve economics or politics, or otherwise go past killing and looting. Its rules support this view. If you want more, you would probably be happier with GURPS Fantasy.

[b-dog]

It is disappointing to hear DF as a silly genre. I feel it can be silly if you want it to be silly but you can play seriously if you want to.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

• Don't worry about PCs dying. They can always make a new one.

Back when I was working on Modern Action RPG, a homebrew RPG in many ways similar to the later GURPS Action, I had in mind writing an official rule saying that each player had to create a backup character, before the campaign begins, so that he can get right back into participating if his first character dies.

Would that be a good idea for DF?

I'm thinking the main benefit might actually be signal value, if I'm going to GM for some players I've never GM'ed before, or some players who have no experience with the system used (GURPS, Sagatafl, or hypotethically Modern Action RPG), telling them very strongly and directly that "this is for real, this campaign takes place in a dangerous world, and your characters can die."

Making a backup character for vanilla GURPS is an involved process, and I don't think many players who are GURPS fans will want to do that. Making a backup character in Sagatafl takes even more effort (whcih is why any such rule there would be a guideline, and would usually give the playes a month or 6 weeks extra time to make the 2nd character, after gamestart), but with the detailed and fairly flexible templates in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy volume 1, it's not very ardorous to make a backup.

So would it be a good idea? Specifically for bog-standard GURPS DF campaigns?

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

So would it be a good idea? Specifically for bog-standard GURPS DF campaigns?

Sounds good to me. You could give the players the option of making a backup character, or selecting one of a few GM-made characters. Having backup characters made ahead of time also gives you the option of including them as NPCs - they'll drop by in the tavern, chat about their own adventures, etc - so that if they're called on to join the party they aren't complete strangers.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Westerhaven

I'm a fairly experienced GM; I've just never GM'd DF before.

How much experience do you have GM'ing non-DF GURPS?