Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game Discussion Thread

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by Tom H.

I have a question for anyone who knows or wants to speculate.

What do you see as the strengths of the new Dungeon Fantasy powered by GURPS over Dungeons & Dragons.

In other words, what reasons could we give a D&D player to play Dungeon Fantasy in addition to or instead of D&D?

I'm several iterations out of touch with D&D, but here's what I've got:

You play an active role in your own defense. Instead of being protected by just my AC, there's a menu of defensive as well as offensive choices, so I can do a lot of things to keep myself from being hurt.

Single currency for character development. In D&D, you get experience points. Somewhere along the line, your experience points accumulate into enough for a new level. That level translates into a semi-random number of hit points, certain scheduled increases to specific abilities, and depending on the edition of D&D possibly a free-ish selection from a menu of feats and skills. In GURPS, it's just character points. Want to improve skill with a weapon? Spend points on your weapon skill. Want to get generally stronger? Spend points on your ST. Want some other ability? There's a price for that in character points.

Related to that, player-controlled character development. Within potential campaign-related constraints, you can spend your points as you see fit rather than being tightly constrained in a specific progression. My magician can specialize in a handful of spells or dabble in a wide range as I see fit.

Weapon damage is based on ST modified by weapon attributes, not based on the weapon modified by ST. I don't know why, but that was always huge for me.

Skill defaults. There are well-defined rules for at least attempting tasks outside of my area of specialty.