Templates in DF

[blacksmith]

If you are thinking about running a DF game, are you planning on useing templates?

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Yep. Quick and easy. Here's your genre-appropriate character; now go kill something.

[dravenloft]

I'm in the process of choosing the lens to apply to the race and "class" templates for my character in Ziresta's DF game.

[kmunoz]

Originally Posted by blacksmith

If you are thinking about running a DF game, are you planning on useing templates?

I did use templates in my DF one-shot, but not the ones in DF. I was trying to go for a "level 1 character" feel, and the templates in DF have far too many points for that. They're good templates, just not the ones I used.

[KDLadage]

Probably not. I showed them to a couple of casual players and their eyes bugged out.

Honestly, I have asked Kromm why wild-card skills were not the default, instead of an option in this set of publications. If you can, in Dungeon Fantasy, reduce the total number of skills you are dealing with to (say...) 15-25 or so with liberal use of wild-card skills then build the templates with those to keep them short and save space (as well as the number of numbers that need to be maintained) it would have been an improvement.

In my very humble, and easilly ignorable opinion -- expecially given that what I would like to see and what will sell are often very, very different things.

[blacksmith]

Oh I am not arguing against templates, I think that they are useful at least at giving good ideas what to think about, but I can not imagine using them rigidly.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by blacksmith

Oh I am not arguing against templates, I think that they are useful at least at giving good ideas what to think about, but I can not imagine using them rigidly.

For me, esp since I use GCA, making a character is almost always an exercise in:

1. Get character description from players; figure out signature ads/disads.
2. Add a bunch of templates as appropriate for the character
3. Remove some of the default disads/ads adn replace with the "signature" stuff provided by the player
4. Ensure stat and skill levels are appropriate, color with info from description
5. Ensure point total is within 20% or so of target

[Bruno]

I'll be giving my players the option of template or no template, but I'll be encouraging the "off template" players to work with one of the templates as their baseline.

I'm not sure why KDLadages casual players were overwhelmed with the templates, other than the fact that they're for 250 point PCs. I will bet money that they'd find creating a 250 point PC without a template far more mind boggling.

[KDLadage]

Bruno: you are right, they would.

This was a group of old-school D&D players (who all get together to play Supers via M&M occasionally) and I asked if they would like to try some GURPS-flavored old-school dungeon delving.

They said they would think about it. I showed them DF1:A -- and they promptly said "no thank you" and that was that.

[KDLadage]

From Kromm in a Private Message:

Originally Posted by Kromm

My reasons were pretty simple (feel free to share them):

1. Wildcards only exist by reference to other skills and don't actually save you having to look stuff up; they just save space on the character sheet. In fact, because you have to do two steps -- look up what skills the wildcard covers and then look up each skill you're using -- wildcards are actually more page-flippy than ordinary skills. I didn't feel that cleaner character sheets were worth that steep price. (And yes, I could have described all the tasks in little essays for each wildcard so as to avoid the secondary lookups, but those would either have been too long and detailed for a brief PDF or so devoid of modifiers and details that the first half of DF 2 wouldn't have been worthwhile.)

2. Wildcards are big chunks and broad strokes. Frankly, if casters get to be defined by all kinds of funky little spells and powers, and ditto bards and martial artists with their keen special skills, then it's only fair for thieves and warriors to have similar room to customize and focus. While I didn't want to go whole hog with freeform point-build, the charm of GURPS is that it doesn't thrust a narrow class definition upon you. The way I did things, you can have a whole party of thieves, one focusing on doors and locks, another on acrobatics and cat burglary, a third on backstabbing and assassinating, etc. And to be blunt, that's what it takes to compete with all the feats and skills in That Other Game.

3. DF is in a way an entry point to GURPS, and wildcards don't teach GURPS. They're not a simplified concept but an advanced one. I don't think they're the best first exposure to the game.