[DF] Advice for first-time Dungeon Fantasy GM

[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).