Old-School D&D style game

[Carlos]

I really love Dungeon Fantasy. Seriously, I have not enough words to say how much I love it.

My only "complain", however, is that unarmed martial arts don't receive enough love, despite the fact that not only D&D but many other games presents monks that use his bare hands in their whacking way. I may be wrong, but at least for what I recall from my PMs/posts to Kromms about unarmed martial artists, it seems he thinks that such character is a foolish way to be a martial artists. Again, I may be wrong.

I also wish to see how good would be a DF wizard using Ritual Path Magic. I never had the chance to play using that system and I wonder how good is RPM to a setting where magic is everywhere. I really would love to try one day. The only thing is that RPG seems much more complicated (and therefore, less newbie-friend) than the standard magic system. Perhaps "sophisticated" would be a better word.

Just wondering... If those DF templates would be equivalent to level 5th or 7th to D&D, what would be a 1st level D&D character to GURPS? 50 points??? How would you create a monk with that?

A level 20 D&D character would be a 1000 cp GURPS character? Geez, I can't even imagine how would be Elminster in GURPS.

Originally Posted by soulnafein

1) 250 points characters are complex for beginners

That's why there are those templates on Dungeon Fantasy 1. Kromm created them just to make things eaiser. Players just need to customize their characters spending some few points and everything is done. It's not that hard.

[mr beer]

I started running D&D games using 3e GURPS nearly 20 years ago and never looked back. This system is just so much nicer for fantasy ultra-violence than D&D.

Now I'm moving over to GURPS 4e because of course it's better than 3e. Martial Arts adds some great depth to fighters.

I've run everything from 150 point characters, up to 1,000 points and it's always been fun.

I just ran Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and it was great BTW.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Run, not walk, to the D&D Conversion page at the GURPS Repository.

My personal guideline for converting D&D levels to GURPS CPs is:

GURPS CP = 25 x (D&D level) + 75

Thus, a 1st-level D&D character would be 100 points, a typical "heroic" GURPS character with 150 points would be level 3, while a starting Dungeon Fantasy character would be level 7.

Sounds about right to me.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

GURPS CP = 25 x (D&D level) + 75

Thus, a 1st-level D&D character would be 100 points, a typical "heroic" GURPS character with 150 points would be level 3, while a starting Dungeon Fantasy character would be level 7.

Having run quite a bit at low (125-160+ so far) point levels, characters are weak. I'd call 125 points to be 1st level, which dovetails nicely with the templates in DF15. Lots of foes will swamp them faster, but their magic comes back faster, though the limitations in the healing spells will slow them like in D&D.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by Carlos

Well, it's your game, but... Why just don't use DF 1?

Originally Posted by soulnafein

Obviously Dungeon Fantasy came to mind but two things put me off it in this situation:

1) 250 points characters are complex for beginners
2) Old school 1st level characters aren't that complex

That's pretty much why. If they're new to GURPS, the tactical combat might overwhelm them at first. He should stick to the Combat Lite chapter at the end of Characters for the first session or two, then add back in options.

[Infornific]

Wildcard skills are another way to simplify. Knight!, Thief! and Barbarian! (made into a generic Survivor! skill) are pretty cost effective and make good class markers. In general if you want to keep it simple it's mostly a matter of stripping away Advantages and some of the templates.

[Carlos]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

That's pretty much why. If they're new to GURPS, the tactical combat might overwhelm them at first. He should stick to the Combat Lite chapter at the end of Characters for the first session or two, then add back in options.

Well, I don't think it's complex. It's not like they will take 250 cp and start from zero. With all those DF1 templates, in fact they will just spend some few points after all in order to customize their characters.

[weby]

I am currently running a long term "DF-style" campaign where we have had so far 173 gaming sessions with normal length of about 9 hours.

The campaign started with 100 point characters and the characters are now almost 2000 points.

What I found was that at least my players appreciate fairly rapid advancement as it gives a feeling of character developing, So I am basically giving 1 point/hour of play+some extra bonus points.

I did find that the Gurps default magic system does not scale well to high points, as it becomes a game of:
fire away as many as possible tries of "save or you lose"-spells, preferably as low as possible cost so you can repeat them many times. Things like:
Sleep: 4 FP and allows a free kill.
Sickness: 3 FP. But the enemy can still run away just not fight.
Basically when a lot of the enemies have saves close to 16, the mage will mostly need defenses to survive and as many as possible tries for the enemy to roll badly and lose.

Other parts of the system do not break at higher points, but actually scale fairly well. (Of course some parts of the system like the sense rolls and stealth are broken from the start...)

The 100 point characters definitely felt like "1st level":ish and the current 1900 point characters feel like maybe "15th-20th level":ish in personal power.

The starting skills were in the 10-14 range, where even the basic actions often failed. Currently the best skills are slightly above 40, with a lot of skills in the 30s, where a mere -10 is a low penalty.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Having run quite a bit at low (125-160+ so far) point levels, characters are weak. I'd call 125 points to be 1st level, which dovetails nicely with the templates in DF15. Lots of foes will swamp them faster, but their magic comes back faster, though the limitations in the healing spells will slow them like in D&D.

While low point value characters are weak, so are 1st level D&D characters (except maybe in 4E). At 3rd level (150 points in my scheme) they stop being utterly fragile, and at 5th level (200 points) they start being fairly tough and competent.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by Carlos

Just wondering... If those DF templates would be equivalent to level 5th or 7th to D&D, what would be a 1st level D&D character to GURPS? 50 points??? How would you create a monk with that?

A 1st-level D&D character could be anywhere from -100 to 150 points depending on class. Or even way higher with good rolls for high ability scores.

A first-level D&D monk in GURPS could just be Karate(DX)[4]-11, 2-4 points each in a handful of melee weapon skills like Staff and Tonfa, Trained by a Master[35], and Disciplines of Faith(Chi Rituals)[-10]. Just look at the lenses in DF3 and think "apply this to an average joe off the street" rather than "apply this to an accomplished super-competent DF character". Or it could be the full monstrosity in DF1.

A first-level wizard might easily have only Magery 0[5], one of Knife, Thrown Weapon(dart or knife), Shortsword, Broadsword, Axe/Mace, or Staff at DX, one spell known at (IQ)[4]-10, and the Vows: Knives, Darts, and Clubs Only[-5], Do Not Wear Armor[-15], and Do Not Use Shields[-5].

A first-level fighter would likely have almost every weapon skill at DX (everything other than weapons deemed "exotic", all low-tech weapons, all weapons ever, all things that are remotely related to killing people, or four+INT bonus distinct proficiencies depending on edition).

Really we're a lot better off recreating the spirit and flavor of the D&D archetypes in GURPS than we are trying to port them over on a mechanical level. I do think 250 is crazy high as a starting point, but I always was one for preferring to play D&D as first-level characters and generally got bored once we started hitting level 4 or so.