Undungeon-fantasyfing your DF game

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Then give them another pool of points - or perhaps a choice of several lenses - to represent them being people in a non-DF setting, with professional skills, social skills/Advantages/Disadvantages, etc. This will still lend itself to violent heroic fantasy (delvers are fairly combat-optimized), but now the characters can have more meaningful interactions with the world itself.

I think this is a good approach, but I'd strongly suggest customizing the lenses to each profession or at least set of professions. A lens that gives a swashbuckler IQ +1, Charisma +2, and some points in influence skills makes for a charismatic swashbuckler who can contribute in social scenes; the same lens applied to a bard makes the bard much more powerful in most circumstances; and applied to a wizard is a straight up power boost. Low IQ fighting types need different lenses from high IQ spellcasters.

I've run a mixed DF and social game before; it works fine if you tone down some of the arbitrary, video-game conventions of DF and make sure the PCs have social skills beyond Carousing and Intimidation.

Also, if you keep the dungeons, what rationale would you use for them?

I'm not up on Nordr lore, but presumably there's some semi-rational reason for them. Why not keep that?

If not or you don't like it, there's a bunch of potential reasons for dungeons:
1. Monsters in the wilderness reproduce via spontaneous generation and don't need food as such. They just congregate around and do violate things to resist the approach of civilization. I've used this reason a lot in my games, because it has a nice pre-modern feel to it.
2. Some hostile force or forces is attempting to intrude into reality, and dungeons are expressions of those intrusions. This can be a little video-gamey, but I've read a couple of book series that pulled this off reasonably well and it's a good explanation if you want more gamist dungeons.
3. Dungeons don't exist, but delve sites do, and there's all kinds of reasons for delves sites. Troll caves, dwarf mines lost to dragons or demons, tombs of undead traitors, spider infested caves, bogs filled with the dead of ancient battlefields, and poorly garrisoned watchtowers are classic examples from Tolkein and give a fair range of sites. So your players don't explore "Bandit Dungeon B14", they explore "Dragonhead hill, looking for the bandit camp" and you have a bunch of outdoor encounters with traps, cursed areas, wild animals, and bandit guards.

My previous social/DF game had delve sites, which were usually abandoned or forsaken fortresses and tombs. In one notable case, they had to delve a toxic waste dump of a faerie library in which the preservation spells had reached critical mass and pulled the entire thing beyond time and space. That's not the kind of delve site that can appear every week, but once in a two year campaign? Worked perfectly and was quite memorable.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I've run a mixed DF and social game before; it works fine if you tone down some of the arbitrary, video-game conventions of DF and make sure the PCs have social skills beyond Carousing and Intimidation.

Our DF games had a fair degree of social interaction, because there weren't many dungeons: we spent most of our time clearing wilderness and setting up a realm (the GM was using the Pathfinder: Kingmaker Adventure Path). The wizard had the social skills, but the IQ 10 knight wasn't stupid, and sometimes said the right thing while the wizard was still considering options.

[jason taylor]

Have truces. Time to bargain over ransom, talk shop, etc.

One emir told an emissary from a Christian kingdom: "Your ships are our horses, are horses are your ships." That's miltaristic shop talk and very intelligent too.

Have a reason why you are fighting in a dungeon (the tactical situation of fighting underground is in fact fascinating; as long as you have a social context).

Don't make the characters outlaws in their own hometown (Vikings are respectable folk when they return from plundering).

Give the PC's home connections.