Tone whip-lash

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Wait, is there a Dungeon Fantasy procedurally generated dungeon product I'm missing? And if not why not? And what would it look like? How would it work?

Colour me intrigued.

Dungeon Fantasy Encounters 2 is very obviously inspired by procedurally generated dungeons though it's a very short supplement (selling for just $4 on Warehouse23!) and it's missing some stuff I'd expect in a full-length treatment of the "proc gen for your tabletop" concept.

[Balor Patch]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Wait, is there a Dungeon Fantasy procedurally generated dungeon product I'm missing? And if not why not? And what would it look like? How would it work?

Colour me intrigued.

I think a deck of cards would probably be a little too limited. The capacity to generate some internal plot loops would be interesting. A series of tables that reference to other tables would probably work and fill out a book well. A set of map tiles with a key booklet with monster stats might also work. My Warhammer Quest experience says fixed size squares work better because you never get weird overlaps. I think custom dice are probably too costly and limited in information density. A set of d20's with monster type, room shape, treasure, and trap icons might have value outside the Dungeon Fantasy market.

The GURPS DF / DFRPG Random Dungeon Generator thread at https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=158217 includes links to a dungeon generator.

[David Johansen]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

The GURPS DF / DFRPG Random Dungeon Generator thread at https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=158217 includes links to a dungeon generator.

Ah but is it a GURPS dungeon generator with GURPS stats for things? I'm asking for a friend :D

[pawsplay]

I did not glean the concept from the blurbs written for this game that it was intended to emulate a procedurally-generated dungeon game. I took it as more of a general take on hack-and-slash, tactical, mostly underground fantasy. It's an interesting choice.

[Rupert]

For what it's worth, I like the tone of DF and DFRPG.

Also, FWIW, games of D&D that treated the nearest settlement or friendly fort like DF treats 'Town' were pretty common back in the day. Likewise games of Aftermath!, for that matter.

Then there were the early CRPGs that had friendly towns that were just (nested) menus of services and their prices.

I assumed that was the sort of game DF was emulating, albeit without the initial 'zero to would-be hero' stage most of those inherited from D&D.

I'm all for a game with Elven Clotheslines, Balanced Fine Elven Composite Bow-Harps, Dwarven Rations, and Monster Drool.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Kromm

All I can say is that as someone who has played countless hours of hack 'n' slash games – both digital and tabletop – and who very definitely builds his PCs toward specific power-gaming goals when playing said games, I was smirking as and not at that style of gamer. I don't consider gaming that way a thing to be ashamed of.

Unfortunately that tone kept me from giving DF more than a cursory glance until someone pointed out DF 16 Wilderness Adventures had rules solving an issue I was digging into yet again (my ever present quest to refine travel time), and it's tone rather walked in the opposite direction of DF 1 (DF 16 feels more 'over-the-top' action cinematicy rather than munchkiny to me, which os more of my preferred genre)..

I then gave the first three books a longer look and decided they weren't 100% per munchkin nonsense and I could just add proper social rules back in... also I'd spent the last almost decade slowly becoming less and less enamored with free-form chargen... so templates no longer felt like a curse word in my mouth.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by Kromm

However, those are not my words as the developer and lead writer. My top influences were probably Tunnels & Trolls First Edition (1975), the venerable Rogue (1980) and NetHack (1987) computer games, and the more recent Diablo series of computer games (1997-2023), any one of which got more hours of my time than all editions of D&D put together.

As a player of Nethack (I can't speak to the other games mentioned), I would point out that, while it has no above-ground town, it does have settlements in the dungeon, and interaction with the people therein. On the Nethack wiki (an obsessively detailed wiki for an obsessively detailed game), the page for Shop mechanics alone has a greater word count than the entire town section in Exploits, and that's without considering the discussions of Temples, Minetown, and so on. Just because you're playing a procedurally generated dungeon crawl doesn't mean you have to ignore the social side of things.

[DarbyMcD]

I want to come in as a vote in favor of the tone. In fact, it was one of the things that drew me into the product, and into rediscovering GURPS. As others have pointed out, this is a product about the big, and let’s be honest, sometimes cartoonish, tropes of the genre. I think it is a wonderfully mature authorial voice that is self-aware that this is what we are talking about, but in a way that embraces the tropes, warts and all, and doesn’t fall into sarcasm or self-inflating dismissal.

That is not always an easy thing to do. Loving a subject but being aware of its inherent limitations is a very adult perspective that is not always present in the role-playing milieu. I think it comes across here but also in most GURPS products in a way that speaks to the market segment they serve, a bit more mature audience that probably has a different relationship to the game than many 5E players, for example….

It would not be appropriate for all products, but it isn’t all products, it is this one.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

Wait, is there a Dungeon Fantasy procedurally generated dungeon product I'm missing? And if not why not? And what would it look like? How would it work?

Colour me intrigued.

I'd be interested too. From my perspective a glaring omission from the Dungeon Fantasy boxed set is that there aren't any random tables for generating dungeons, or treasure in dungeons, or monsters in dungeons. There are online resources of varying quality to generate these things, and an experienced GM can just make up their own, but a procedurally generated dungeoneering product needs procedures in order to onboard new players.

[namada]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Or even mostly!
...
It's true that people often describe it that way. However, those are not my words as the developer and lead writer. My top influences were probably Tunnels & Trolls First Edition (1975), the venerable Rogue (1980) and NetHack (1987) computer games, and the more recent Diablo series of computer games (1997-2023), any one of which got more hours of my time than all editions of D&D put together.
...
Those examples illustrate the feel I was aiming for.

However, unfortunately, 90%+ of CRPG games, which are mostly dungeon crawls, are also based on D&D. So, I genuinely feel it is 100% natural to compare DFRPG to D&D. It's obviously going to happen, no matter how little you want it to happen. :shrugs: