Undungeon-fantasyfing your DF game

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by binn05

What about using the Income jobs from Fantasy pp138-139 for the professional lens?

It lists the jobs of Armorer, Beggar, Barmaid, Courtier, Farmer, Fisherman, Mercenary, Priest, Smith, and Tavernkeeper.

Which other jobs would you use?

Low Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics looks at a lot of things that would be relevant for such a game, including a number of other professions. I think that just lists what skills/traits you need for the profession as well as what it pays rather than giving full templates for individuals of the profession, but that should work for this. Note that [25] is likely to be rather high - while some professions do call for above-average attributes (which will eat into that budget quite readily), I'd imagine you wouldn't need those boosts compared to your starting attributes from being an adventurer (I believe the Armourer has above-average ST, but then you'd expect any adventurer who is also an Armourer to already have at least that much ST anyway).

Originally Posted by binn05

And for the Social lens, what would it comprise?

Area Knowledge, Current Affairs, appropriate Savior-Faire (in some cases this will be integrated with the profession as well), Contacts, Reputation, Social Regard, etc. Exact details would depend on the characters and setting.

[binn05]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

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 think that professional lens shouldn't give boni that will min/max even more the DF templates. Probably stick just with skills?

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.

Can you talk more about your experience?

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

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.

I liked your dungeon rationale ideas, and they can be used together depending on where on the map the PCs are.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Low Tech Companion 3: Daily Life and Economics looks at a lot of things that would be relevant for such a game, including a number of other professions. I think that just lists what skills/traits you need for the profession as well as what it pays rather than giving full templates for individuals of the profession, but that should work for this. Note that [25] is likely to be rather high - while some professions do call for above-average attributes (which will eat into that budget quite readily), I'd imagine you wouldn't need those boosts compared to your starting attributes from being an adventurer (I believe the Armourer has above-average ST, but then you'd expect any adventurer who is also an Armourer to already have at least that much ST anyway).

Area Knowledge, Current Affairs, appropriate Savior-Faire (in some cases this will be integrated with the profession as well), Contacts, Reputation, Social Regard, etc. Exact details would depend on the characters and setting.

You made good points. Will look into them and try to create something.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by binn05

I think that professional lens shouldn't give boni that will min/max even more the DF templates. Probably stick just with skills?

Again, the wizard gets a lot more of Fast-Talk-IQ [2] than the knight does. The knight needs IQ or talent boosts to be decent at influence skills.

Originally Posted by binn05

Can you talk more about your experience?

Well, I was maintaining a blog at the time, so my notes on setting up the game and session write-ups are available:
https://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.co...&by-date=false

If you have questions after that, I can answer specific questions.

I will say the game was DF inspired, but I used my own templates and didn't worry about Status at all. So it's not perfectly suited to your idea but the broad strokes worked fine. One of the sessions was an actual murder mystery.

[sir_pudding]

"Traits For Town" in Pyramid #3/58 and Dungeon Fantasy Collected may be useful here.

[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.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by binn05

So, as was discussed on this thread: Thoughts on Starting a Nordlond Campaign on the DFRPG forum, and a bit on this one Creating a Fantasy Campaign: Fantasy vs Dungeon Fantasy, how would you add more tradition fantasy on top of your Dungeon Fantasy game?

I'll give some more specific parameters here:
1. I would like to play a more traditional fantasy game using Nordlong as a setting.
2. What I mean by traditional is less dungeon/hack-and-slash and more real-world with consequences.
3. I'll use GURPS DF or DFRPG templates as a base.

Things that pop up in my mind are:
1. Status and Rank.
2. More social skills on the templates.

What would you add or subtract from the templates/game world?

It seems the simplest way to build off the DFRPG system would be start with templates and add on a 25 point lens to cover social background and skills. So you might have a lens for Aristocrat with appropriate Status & social skills, another for a Criminal Background, perhaps with a contact and other related skills, etc. It depends on what rules you have. If you have the henchman supplement, you could use those plus a 25 point social background lens to create 150 point characters. If using Delvers to Grow, just require that one "power up" is a social background lens. With a lot of assistance, I wrote up a bunch of 25 point low tech lenses earlier this year but those were more focused on professions than social skills so I'm not sure that would be helpful. I assume you would not want to go with full blown 250 point dungeoneers to start with. I also think adding on is easier than subtracting.

Originally Posted by binn05

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

For a grand scale concept, I'd go with a magic Gamma World explanation. A few centuries ago there was an advanced magic empire that dominated human civilization. This was responsible for creating a lot of magic items and possibly monsters and even nonhuman races. There was an apocalyptic, magic fueled war that demolished civilization, leaving behind a wasteland. Places like Nordlond were backward hinterlands before the End and thus missed most of the damage. They are oases of relative civilization amidst the howling barbarism of the shattered empire. The dungeons are the ruins of the old civilization, the treasures the old wealth and artifacts. The monsters are likewise remnants of the old empire, occupying the ruins. Lower level adventurers get employment dealing with monsters who wander in from the old Empire. Higher level ones will actively enter the wastelands and search out old dungeons.

Note this is also an excuse for why PCs can't create magic items or use certain spells - that knowledge was lost.

Premise swiped from an otherwise unremarkable old rpg called Fifth Cycle.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Throw out the templates.
Throw out the character classes.
Throw out the DF books.

This.

Go back to Gurps classic.

[Blind Mapmaker]

As a variant of ditching DF / DFRPG rules, keep using Exploits (or GURPS DF 2: Dungeons, 16: Wilderness Adventures and part of 3: The Next Level), all the loot you feel like and a selection of other rules. You will be building the templates from scratch anyway and Douglas Cole's Delvers to Grow series won't be very helpful either, since those are also focused on superheroes (street-level maybe, but still very much larger than life).

The hard part are the monsters. It's not easy to find much in DF that's a good balanced encounter for 75 to 125 points characters. You can, of course, use smaller numbers of horde monsters and regular humanoids. My preference would be adding fatal flaws to bosses that can be researched beforehand.

[thom]

Originally Posted by Blind Mapmaker

The hard part are the monsters. It's not easy to find much in DF that's a good balanced encounter for 75 to 125 points characters.

QFT. This is by far the biggest difficulty I've found in trying to play a 150-pointer DF-like game. Even with Doug's superb Nordland Bestiary, I struggle with figuring out how to "downsize" monster stats...

thom