[DF] Advice for first-time Dungeon Fantasy GM

[Stripe]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Do you have any advice for the OP, on how useful the Penetrating weapon Enchantment is?

In my limited experience, PW1 made a big difference in actual play. It's the number one most desired first enchantment in our games.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Doesn't that Wizard or Bard still need to learn three languages the hard way in order to learn the Gift of spells in the first place?

They need three Accented languages, total, which means that in addition to Common, they can drop 4 points on, say, The Barking of Dogs of the Bad Guy Race, and another 4 points on Whatever Demons Speak.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Stripe

In my limited experience, PW1 made a big difference in actual play. It's the number one most desired first enchantment in our games.

Oddly enough, it's an enchantment that dramatically changed between 3e and 4e. In 3e, PW subtracted its level from the target's DR and PD, which also made it an extremely desirable enchantment, but in a totally different way.

[Stix4armz]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Note that "speaking languages" in DF is a role covered by either a scholar using Book-Learned Wisdom, or a bard or a wizard casting a Gift of Tongues or Gift of Letters spell. The possibility of learning languages the hard way is left open, but really, who would bother? Language is mostly meant to be a transitory challenge, not a hard setting feature.

I've always thought that, but then that brings up my question about the scholar. What's the point of having the ability to learn languages on the spot or have Language Talent as an advantage in a campaign that is largely going to ignore languages? It seems like the Scholar's main function is to have an interchangeable list of background skills (Book Learned Wisdom) and the ability to do something random without training (Wild Talent). Those aren't bad necessarily, but they take up so many points and don't seem to come up as a main problem in Dungeon Fantasy campaigns. If language barriers are only going to be an occasional side problem to be quickly bipassed, why am I going to spend so many points on it?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kromm

They need three Accented languages, total,

Sure, that's still the reason that you'd learn two of them the hard way. I was just making sure I wasn't missing something. Thanks!

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Stix4armz

I've always thought that, but then that brings up my question about the scholar. What's the point of having the ability to learn languages on the spot or have Language Talent as an advantage in a campaign that is largely going to ignore languages? It seems like the Scholar's main function is to have an interchangeable list of background skills (Book Learned Wisdom) and the ability to do something random without training (Wild Talent). Those aren't bad necessarily, but they take up so many points and don't seem to come up as a main problem in Dungeon Fantasy campaigns. If language barriers are only going to be an occasional side problem to be quickly bipassed, why am I going to spend so many points on it?

The campaign can ignore languages as a social element for polite interaction – which is their usual role in a less hack-'n'-slash campaign – while still throwing language barriers in the heroes' path as puzzles to solve. The scholar's role is mainly to solve linguistic problems much as the thief disarms traps: to push past a challenge and achieve a goal. The specific language isn't important for this, exactly as Traps "just works" whether the trap is a crossbow or a pit. For instance, the scholar won't be planning his background around his languages, visiting his countrymen during downtime, trying to get his point across to NPC hirelings, etc.; outside of adventures, he speaks Common like everybody else. All that matters is that he can research the dungeon, deduce which Forgetten Languages its creators/masters used, and memorize these for long enough to read the runes etched on the walls and give the password to the specter guarding the treasure chamber.

Put another way, most dungeons probably have clues all over the place in the form of runes, and there may even be old books back in town that nobody can read, describing all the traps and treasures in there. The GM is well within his rights to omit mention of all this if the party has no facility to learn languages quickly, but to bring it up when there's a scholar along for the ride. That's just part of the missing Scholar entry under Making Everybody Useful (DF 2, p. 30).

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Note that "speaking languages" in DF is a role covered by either a scholar using Book-Learned Wisdom, or a bard or a wizard casting a Gift of Tongues or Gift of Letters spell. The possibility of learning languages the hard way is left open, but really, who would bother? Language is mostly meant to be a transitory challenge, not a hard setting feature.

Yet several of the official templates in DF1 and DF:Sages have the Language Talent advantage.

[Joe]

See, this is why I love this forum.

Three days ago I posted a little plea for advice. Then I went out of town. Now I come back to find no less than seventy six responses!

Thanks to everyone for the great advice, and thanks also for the more general DF-related discussion(s), which are really very interesting.

[Faolyn]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

The problem with "discover the world during play" is that this means players can't create characters who have already discovered a lot of the world prior to gamestart.

GURPS DF characters start out highly competent, unlike 1st level characters in level-based RPGs or computer games, yet with the same minimal degree of world experience as those 1st level characters.

That makes it impossible to create one potentially very interesting character concept.

I realize I'm a bit late to the thread, but....

When I made my DF world, I came up a brief document that pretty much covered the entire known world (I'm proud; I managed to keep it to five pages, despite my love of minutiae). It has very little detail, so a lot of it is "discover the world while you play." Then I told the PCs to feel free to make whatever they wanted about the world, as long as it didn't directly contradict what little I did right. Some of them have done so--the gave me quite a bit of info on dwarf and pixy culture that I didn't have to come up with, and it allowed those players to make characters with rich backgrounds. A lot of other stuff is invented mid-game as player asides. I now know more about elven drug culture then I ever wanted to, for instance. :)

So basically, let the players come up with stuff and you then decide whether you want to OK it or not. After all, it's DF; it doesn't have to be meticulously though out.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Faolyn

So basically, let the players come up with stuff and you then decide whether you want to OK it or not. After all, it's DF; it doesn't have to be meticulously though out.

I don't want to "come up" with 7 different Langauges that my Scholar PC can speak and write Fluently, only to find out after the campaign is over, and I'm reading my notes, that the GM never made use of any of those langauges, not even once, and I've wasted 38 CP on them and on Language Talent. That's over 15% of the character creation budget!