[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.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by 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.

Small-d, small-f "dungeon fantasy" doesn't have to be a silly genre; GURPS Fantasy has tons of support for serious fantasy, some of which could take place in a dungeon. Large-D, large-F, italics, boldface Dungeon Fantasy™ is a specific product line for people nostalgic for hack-and-slash, kill-and-loot gaming; it isn't explicitly silly, but you can't get very serious with a subgenre whose defining features are (1) murderhobos and (2) magic as a casual art that's taught to thousands and so common that it's sold at shops. It's important to be aware of the distinction. Nobody has ever said that dungeon fantasy has to be played silly; however, Dungeon Fantasy™ is not a generic product but a specific worked example, a narrow subset of dungeon fantasy. Trying to map all dungeon fantasy onto Dungeon Fantasy™ and then complaining when it doesn't fit is a bit like trying to map all soda pop onto Coca-Cola™ and then complaining that Coke™ doesn't taste like ginger ale.

GURPS inherently supports completely non-silly dungeon fantasy out of the box. It isn't a silly game, and it has tons of rules depth. Because of this, many gamers – especially newcomers to the system – felt that it was a poor fit to the sillier, murderhobo kind of dungeon fantasy. Dungeon Fantasy™ was created as a demonstration that GURPS could go there, too – as a way of reaching a market who might have otherwise overlooked GURPS as hopeless for beer-and-pretzels gaming involving beardy dwarves, fireball-chucking wizards, and heal-bot clerics. There's always the rest of GURPS for those who aren't in the market for beardiness and pretzels.

[b-dog]

Could there be a GURPS series about high fantasy with dwarves and elves and dungeons that is done in a serious manner? Maybe GURPS Heroic Fantasy where you could play a wizard who fights monsters and the forces of evil? But done in such a manner that at least attempts to make sense. Maybe something like Ars Magica or Pendragon or Stormbringer?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by b-dog

Could there be a GURPS series about high fantasy with dwarves and elves and dungeons that is done in a serious manner? Maybe GURPS Heroic Fantasy where you could play a wizard who fights monsters and the forces of evil? But done in such a manner that at least attempts to make sense. Maybe something like Ars Magica or Pendragon or Stormbringer?

There's a difference between "doesn't take itself too seriously" and "silly," and I think that Sean is using them interchangably here.

Dungeon Fantasy is not slapstick, and the game you say you want to play feels exactly like the DF game I'm currently playing in. If you read Peter's game reports on his blog, I would be very surprised if you called his play reports "silly."

What DF doesn't do is get nose-in-the-air snooty about metaphysics or some half-baked "realism" or economic consistency. You have these small squads of murder-hoboes running around, likely sleeping, traveling, fighting, showering, and likely having nookie with trancendentally beautiful half-nymph ninja babes (or at least wanting to) in full armor and no one cares. That can be described as a bit 'silly,' but what I think it really means is that it's not pretentious. It's a framework that can be used to have some serious fun without getting crotchety about it.

The existing DF series can be used as-is to play the kind of game you seem to want. Full stop. Many of us on this forums, and at least two campaigns I know well (one from playing, one from reading about it weekly) are quite far from "silly," even if we embrace the tropes and stereotypes quite fully.