So...GURPS D&D?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Taliesin

First off, Dungeon crawling is what most people do. We can pretend that we do a lot of intellectual stuff but most game time is spent killing things and taking their stuff. There's a reason there are 10 million people playing WoW.

How can you be sure that those 10 million people aren't playing "World of Warcraft" because when they play that game, they get away from the nasty and harmful and utterly stupid "GM is God"-meme?

(Hint: You can't be sure of that.)

[vitruvian]

Likewise, I'm very disappointed to see that there aren't any pre-built advantages for Monks and Bards; instead, players must build them themselves, then do the arithmetic, and then submit the final advantage builds to the GM to see if he approves them.

Huh? There's a whole Power writeup each for Monks and Bards, with limitations already applied to abilities and costs figured out for you. They may be a little plain for your tastes, but they're there.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I'd love to see a GURPS Thrillers series that covers Hollywood's weird mix of poorly differentiated intelligence, police, and security officers that run around foiling an equally weird mix of poorly differentiated mobsters, spies, and terrorists. Not really GURPS Action! . . . I don't mean kung fu and gun fu (although that would be cool, too). I'm talking about a parallel to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: Adventurers -- call it GURPS Thrillers: Agents and Officers -- with templates (analyst, cleaner, detective, hacker, infliltrator, sharpshooter, social engineer, surveillance expert, technician, etc.), a simplified system for credentials (Legal Enforcement Powers-Rank-Security Clearance), a boiled-down gear list, and a table full of modern cars. And a parallel to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons -- call it GURPS Thrillers: Missions and Ops -- with quick-and-dirty rules for break-ins, car chases, dead drops, detective work, EOD, interrogation, sniping, surveillance, etc.

Too bad I'd be the world's worst author of everything after the templates and credentials system! I love dumb thriller movies that start out like bad jokes: "So there's this FSB guy, FBI guy, and SAS guy, see, and they're working together for this secret U.N. task force to bring down these Chinese spies funding Iraqi terrorists through the Russian mob . . ."

Does anything need to be after the templates and credentials system? You can always refer people to GURPS Espionage if they wnt to knowa bout FSB and FBI, and to GURPS Special Ops if they want to know about SAS.

The templates and credentials, and the distillation of the generic GURPS rules elements, would be exactly what makes such a PDF attractive.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Sure, but the two Dungeon Fantasy books don't replace Magic in any way, or even the pertient parts of Martial Arts.

Note that this wasn't their goal. Paul and I have said repeatedly here and on RPGnet that, were we shooting for a self-contained game intended to go toe-to-toe with D&D, it would look nothing like DF.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I'd much have preferred to see a version of GURPS Dungeon Fantasy that did away with spells, and handled everything with Advantages.

Well, since part of our marketing goal with DF was to raise the profile of GURPS as an FRPG and ultimately sell more copies of Fantasy and Magic, that wouldn't have been a good approach.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

GURPS already has Healing, and Speak With Animals/Plants as ready-to-use advantages, so with some extra work put into it, you could have built ready-to-use advantage versions of Offensive Fire Magic, Fire Shield, Lightning Bolt, Invisibility, Illusions and so forth, and of course also pointed out the most obvious enhancers for Healing (such as Ranged, and Accurate to give a bonus to the roll).

That wouldn't have made GURPS look half as attractive to FRPG players, though. Magic contains well over 800 spells! There's no way I could include that many abilities built from advantages in a PDF.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

As for Martial Arts, re-printing the 2-3 most crucial pages of Techniques would do the trick (at least you did reprint the archery advantage, but that's not enough).

Techniques are a fussy advanced concept. They're really not very attractive or easy to understand for those not interested in full-bore Martial Arts action.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Likewise, I'm very disappointed to see that there aren't any pre-built advantages for Monks and Bards; instead, players must build them themselves, then do the arithmetic, and then submit the final advantage builds to the GM to see if he approves them.

Did you perhaps not read pp. 21-22 of the PDF? All of the abilities for Bard-Song and Chi Mastery (and also Druidic Arts and Holy Might) are completely worked out, with all of the modifiers and point costs. All players have to do is write them down and pay the points.

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Oh, and by the way, where are the "racial" templates?

Coming in a future installment. This is a PDF series -- which might go to dozens of PDFs -- not an all-in-one product.

You seem to have a weird idea about what DF was supposed to be. It's meant as an extended series of inexpensive game aids for gamers who've bought all kinds of GURPS books -- especially Magic -- and just want to see a subset of that stuff gathered in one place to help them kick off a classic campaign type. It isn't meant as a book replacement, a one-volume game, or anything like that.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Sadurian Mike

Sounds like the old "Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes" or "Danger International" genre. I loved those, mainly because the lines were so blurred.

I borrowed Hero System's "Danger International" from a friend in 2006 and was quite unimpressed with it, because almost all of the book was stuff that I already knew very well from the Hero System 5th Edition rule book.

There was one section that I really liked, however. Really, really liked. I think it was 6 or 7 pages, detaling the state of the world in a particular year in the mid 1980s, talking about various geopolitical problems and the balance of power. Top stuff for any espionage or international intrigue campaign set in that exact period (which is probably the period where I'll set my modern era RPG campaigns).

If I could find Danger International for $10 or less, plus reasonable shipping cost, I'd buy it, just for those very few pages.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

I certainly agree that there are better "serious fantasy" books and settings for GURPS... after all, "serious" and "realistic" are things that GURPS does very well. However, Dungeon Fantasy is _fun_, and doesn't seem to be intended to be serious. For me it captures both the simple-but-effective rules of my AD&D days (back when dinosaurs walked the Earth) and the sometimes munchinky silliness of 3.5 D&D.
I think of DF as the GURPS "killer app"... it's likely to appeal to a large group of D&D players (both former and current) that might not otherwise touch GURPS. There are also a number of people abandoning D&D (because of 4th ed.) that might be willing to play DF (especially a DF with GURPS Lite) but aren't so likely to play GURPS otherwise.
My players are certainly enthusiastic about DF.

One major attraction of Dungeons & Dragons, from 3rd Edition onwards, is that the rule books are full of pre-approved character design elements that players know they can freely assemble. All Feats are legal. All spells are legal. Any and all combinations of Feats and spells are legal.

That gives a tremendous freedom, and sense of freedom, from GM censorship, and from the horrible, evil, harmful "GM is God"-meme that pervades most of the rest of the RPG community.

And that is something that GURPS Dungeon Fantasy isn't trying for at all, which is why I disagree with you. GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is not the killer ap for GURPS 4th Edition. It could have been, if Kromm had gone the crunchy bits route. But he didn't.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

I wasn't particularly impressed when I first skimmed DF: Characters (although I've since gone back and liked it more) because it seemed to be mostly templates and rules for creating clerical powers, etc., with no rules added from the Basic set. DF: Dungeons impressed me a lot more with new rules, equipment rules and options, magical items, etc. Crunchy bits, as it were.

-Max

The most disappointing bit about the two GURPS Dungeon Fantasy PDFs is exactly that they contain almost no crunchy bits at all.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy is not the killer ap for GURPS 4th Edition. It could have been, if Kromm had gone the crunchy bits route. But he didn't.

DF is plenty crunchy: 11 detailed templates are crunch, the new wildcard skills are crunch, the division of magic into three types with distinct spell lists is crunch, the four powers with completely worked-out abilities are crunch, and eight pages of gear stats -- including customization rules for armor, shields, and weapons -- are crunch. You must be using the term very differently from 99.99% of gamers if you don't see this. DF just isn't a dweeby rethink of fantasy that uses only advantages and powers with dozens of befuddling modifiers, and techniques that require understanding advanced combat to use. For the sorts of players who like that stuff, I wrote Martial Arts and Powers. DF is my break from writing stuff like that.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Kromm

DF 3 is now written, edited, checked and handed along for art and layout. Unfortunately, I don't think this coming weekend is an attainable goal. Perhaps by next weekend?

What's in it????

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Kromm

DF is plenty crunchy: 11 detailed templates are crunch, the new wildcard skills are crunch, the division of magic into three types with distinct spell lists is crunch, the four powers with completely worked-out abilities are crunch, and eight pages of gear stats -- including customization rules for armor, shields, and weapons -- are crunch. You must be using the term very differently from 99.99% of gamers if you don't see this. DF just isn't a dweeby rethink of fantasy that uses only advantages and powers with dozens of befuddling modifiers, and techniques that require understanding advanced combat to use. For the sorts of players who like that stuff, I wrote Martial Arts and Powers. DF is my break from writing stuff like that.

"Crunch" is a very poorly defined word, and hence I never use it. I also try, as much as possible, to discourage others from using it, since it carries no meaningful information.

"Crunchy bits", however, is a term with a very well-defined and easy-to-understand meaning, coined by Robin Laws in a book published by SJ Games. It is a very useful word, and I wish more people would use it, and much more often.