So...GURPS D&D?

[Gavynn]

Well, I won't go so far as to say that if you are interested in Medieval Fantasy to just stick with D&D. It was not a lack of interest in the genre that made me switch to GURPS. I still love the genre, it is just that GURPS (I think) has a better rule set. With GURPS, I can get a great rule set and apply it to my favorite genre.

There are lots of people who are still interested in Medieval Fantasy, but don't really care for the D&D rule set. Fairly regularly we have people pop in here on the boards looking for exactly that same kind of thing. They want to "covert" GURPS to D&D, and by that most of the mean - How do I play a GURPS game about the traditional subject matter of D&D? These new PDFs really help out with that. It lets someone cut to the chase if that genre is what they are looking for.

It is true that the templates given for the heroes start at 250 points. I'd like to see 50, 100, 150, and 200 point templates of each of the templates, but that is easy enough to do since it would be subtracting from the existing rather than adding to.

For me there is still a certain amount of nostalgia associated with D&D, and at one time I thought about running a AD&D game for old times sake, but couldn’t really bring myself to do it. Instead, I though I needed to create a guide for your traditional dungeoneering fantasy game to run in GURPS, but that never got off the ground because of time constraints. With these .pdfs, I really feel like I could give them to my players (well not the GM part, obviously) and have them make characters, and pull one of my favorite AD&D modules off the shelf and be up and running in a very short amount of time. The best of both worlds.

[Pmandrekar]

Originally Posted by HardMaple72

So my suggestion is if you want to remain in Medieval Fantasy, I won't recommend a change to GURPS.

Nobody is pushing you to adopt GURPS for your Dungeon Fantasy, but I've found a lot of holes in the logic of how D&D 3.5 works in our campaign. I am encouraging my friendly D&D 3.5 DM to consider switching our Dungeon Fantasy campaign over to something being run in GURPS, for a number of reasons. I prefer the system, obviously, to D&D, but more to the point, you can make everyone happy with GURPS as a system. The Storyteller type players (I am one) get to roleplay a character with flaws and advantages, the Tactician in our group already seems to be loving the system, with its many options for warriors in combat, and you could still run a campaign with enough of a point total to satisfy the Butt Kickers in the group.

So, considering the player styles in our group, my suspicion is that GURPS might be a better ruleset than D&D for running a dungeon crawl with a roleplaying aspect to it.

-P.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by nmoody

I'm not sold on the GURPS Dungeons products. I mean, I keep hearing how it pushes the rules to show what can be done, but is it really pushing the rules to turn GURPS into D&D?

Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, but this is one product (or series of products) that doesn't interest me.

But...convince me. Is there anything useful to running a Banestorm game in these pdfs?

The point of Dungeon Fantasy isn't to turn the game into D&D. The point is that there's a popular gaming subgenre that, in GURPS, requires you to plough through a 576-page set of generic core rules (the Basic Set) to find gear and applicable options, plus a 240-page book on magic (Magic), while borrowing elements from a 240-page genre guide (Fantasy), a 240-page book on powers (Powers), and a 256-page Fechtbuch (Martial Arts). What Dungeon Fantasy does is boil down the really vital elements of all this stuff to a few 32-page PDFs that reduce your overhead to just the Basic Set and Magic, and that minimize your page-flipping and maximize your play:preparation ratio when using those tomes.

It sounds like your real criticism is "I don't run dungeon fantasy games." If you're not into the subgenre, it's probable that you won't find much use for a game aid-cum-genre guide intended for it. Even so, you might find DF: Dungeons of value, since it includes a lot of simplifications of athletic feats, shopping for gear, traps, travel, and hundreds of other tasks encountered in nearly every action-adventure subgenre. It would probably be of use in a 1930s pulp campaign or any other campaign where the heroes travel, explore dark places, and run into foes. You probably won't find DF: Adventurers useful . . . so it goes.

[nmoody]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The point of Dungeon Fantasy isn't to turn the game into D&D. The point is that there's a popular gaming subgenre that, in GURPS, requires you to plough through a 576-page set of generic core rules (the Basic Set) to find gear and applicable options, plus a 240-page book on magic (Magic), while borrowing elements from a 240-page genre guide (Fantasy), a 240-page book on powers (Powers), and a 256-page Fechtbuch (Martial Arts). What Dungeon Fantasy does is boil down the really vital elements of all this stuff to a few 32-page PDFs that reduce your overhead to just the Basic Set and Magic, and that minimize your page-flipping and maximize your play:preparation ratio when using those tomes.

It sounds like your real criticism is "I don't run dungeon fantasy games." If you're not into the subgenre, it's probable that you won't find much use for a game aid-cum-genre guide intended for it. Even so, you might find DF: Dungeons of value, since it includes a lot of simplifications of athletic feats, shopping for gear, traps, travel, and hundreds of other tasks encountered in nearly every action-adventure subgenre. It would probably be of use in a 1930s pulp campaign or any other campaign where the heroes travel, explore dark places, and run into foes. You probably won't find DF: Adventurers useful . . . so it goes.

So, DF:A is sort of a subgenre book? A step-down transformer, if you will, of the high-tension lines that are GURPS? Well, at that price-point, a whole series of books, not just DF, might be useful. Sort of a replacement for all the historicals and genre books of 3rd ed?

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by demonsbane

The above posters are right.

Personally, my main interest is running serious fantasy campaigns (4e Fantasy is my central GURPS book, for saying it in some way), and myself am a Dungeon Fantasy enthusiast because... it is strongly useful in the type of game I want to run.

I agree. It primary appeal to me is that it saves time. It's not like we have all day to stat up every thing or come up a new combination of Magic, Advantages and Enhancements to build our worlds and adventures.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by Pmandrekar

Now, by contrast, D&D is a specific set of rules that were originally designed to do Dungeon fantasy. Sure, people use D&D for all sorts of other campaign types, but the original intent of D&D was to design a system that allows you to run adventures where a group of party members head down into a dungeon/cavern/series of tunnels, whatever, fight monsters, and take their stuff.

That not entirely correct. Original D&D was designed to expand on the fantasy and man to man rules of a medieval miniatures wargame. The reason that that minatures game got fantasy is so players could run battles in Middle Earth. The dungeon came about because going into the dungeons of Castle Blackmoor or Castle Greyhawk is what started the focus on individual characters.

However the second activity everyone was did was use the loot to go carve out a barony and build a castle. Using D&D for fighting monsters and clearing out lairs and Chainmail for fighting any battles that were needed.

However when D&D spread beyond the initial circle of wargamers people focused on the dungeon element. Miniature wargamers became a minority in the D&D hobby.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by HardMaple72

Personally I will continue to use D&D 3.5e for medieval fantasy games (I'm not even interested in 4.0 since 3.5 does what I want it to do). So I can't help you there.
.....
So my suggestion is if you want to remain in Medieval Fantasy, I won't recommend a change to GURPS.

That a good choice. But Dungeon Fantasy can done in GURPS and done well. I been doing it since 1988 when I switched my main fantasy campaign over. I have some notes on different aspects here http://home.earthlink.net/~wilderlands.

The Dungeon Fantasy pdfs are great because now I have a firm benchmark to set my stuff too. Monsters have always been a problem either too weak or too strong. Most of my adventures in the past have revolved around human or humanoid opponents.

The reason I even used 3.0 in 2000 a couple of times is that it was enough like GURPS to suit my GMinng and now I have all these shiny monsters and modules to play with.

But frankly I built so much homebrew stuff for my own game that it was just wasn't worth the hassle of the switch. Also I had issues with the power curve of 3.X after 10th level. In the end I returned to GURPS where I happily remain to this day.

Recently I ran a conversion of Blackguard's Revenge (Dungeon Crawl Classic #12). With GURPS 4th.

[Pmandrekar]

Originally Posted by robertsconley

That not entirely correct. Original D&D was designed to expand on the fantasy and man to man rules of a medieval miniatures wargame. The reason that that minatures game got fantasy is so players could run battles in Middle Earth. The dungeon came about because going into the dungeons of Castle Blackmoor or Castle Greyhawk is what started the focus on individual characters.

However the second activity everyone was did was use the loot to go carve out a barony and build a castle. Using D&D for fighting monsters and clearing out lairs and Chainmail for fighting any battles that were needed.

However when D&D spread beyond the initial circle of wargamers people focused on the dungeon element. Miniature wargamers became a minority in the D&D hobby.

Well, sure. My use of 'original', I had meant to use as the original assumptions behind the existing ruleset. Certainly if you go back to the origins of D&D, it is in a wargame. But D&D 3.5, for example, was designed to be a bit closer to Dungeon Fantasy than to Medieval Fantasy.

-P.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by Pmandrekar

Well, sure. My use of 'original', I had meant to use as the original assumptions behind the existing ruleset. Certainly if you go back to the origins of D&D, it is in a wargame. But D&D 3.5, for example, was designed to be a bit closer to Dungeon Fantasy than to Medieval Fantasy.

Ok, makes sense now.

[Sadurian Mike]

Originally Posted by nmoody

So, DF:A is sort of a subgenre book? A step-down transformer, if you will, of the high-tension lines that are GURPS? Well, at that price-point, a whole series of books, not just DF, might be useful. Sort of a replacement for all the historicals and genre books of 3rd ed?

I see the Dungeon Fantasy line as genre supplements in the just the same way as GURPS: Steampunk, GURPS: Celtic Myth, GURPS: Traveller, or whathaveyou.

Dungeon Fantasy is such a well-established part of pseudo-fantasy gaming that it has taken on a life of its own, even the language has infiltrated other games (the 10' pole is a ridiculous thing to take down a cave system, yet it is fondly associated with dungeon crawling).

There are two options if you have a system which covers the same territory as "old school" D&D dungeon crawling; ignore it and blithely turn your back on its conventions, or embrace it as a ridiculously contrived yet lovable genre. SJG have done the latter, and all power to them.