Undungeon-fantasyfing your DF game

[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?

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

[Juan]

Well I guess the easiest way is make 100 point DF PCs and then add 25 points for out of template skills and advantages. I would look at GURPS Fantasy for some guidance.

You can use DF templates as a starting point and then just ignore "class" niche. Or wide it up in prep session!. It will no longer be DF but it will be the game you wanted.

Of course you could use directly Fantasy and play Nordlong focusing on social and political matters.

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?

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

[capnoni]

You could create some social lenses and allow each character to chose one. Example may be the face guy or the information gatherer. Some of these may intrude on the niches of some of the other templates. By using lenses you can keep the point totals more balanced with a mix of Advantages, Disadvantages, and Skills.

[Varyon]

I would say start by defining how powerful the characters are meant to be starting out, probably following the Delvers to Grow guidelines of Novice [62], Journeyman [125], and Master [187], with Veteran [250] as a further option, and build them as delvers (IIRC these also match the point levels available for Henchmen in DF15, the templates for which could be used instead of, or in addition to, DtG). Then give them another pool of points - or perhaps a choice of several lenses - to represent them being people in a non-DF setting, with professional skills, social skills/Advantages/Disadvantages, etc. This will still lend itself to violent heroic fantasy (delvers are fairly combat-optimized), but now the characters can have more meaningful interactions with the world itself. This will maximize the number of DF resources you can bring to bear while still allowing you to run a campaign that isn't about killing monsters and taking their stuff.

[DeadParrot]

Could start your campaign with a band of DF adventurers assumed to have one or more successful dungeon runs under their belts. Use normal DF templates for the starting characters and then award an appropriate number of points for their dungeon runs. The game starts with the local leadership, impressed with the band's recent success and growing fame, tasking them with solving "A Problem". Let the players spend the award points as they see fit. Maybe even spending them as the adventure unfolds and they see what things are useful.

Extra credit if "The Problem" is related somehow to the previous dungeon runs.
Escaped monsters now roaming the country side instead of safely living in the dungeon.
A village that had an agreement with the inhabitants of a dungeon that are now starving due to the party's destruction of the dungeon economy.

[Stormcrow]

I would just drop the Dungeon Fantasy stuff entirely and build what for GURPS has long been a "normal" fantasy setting. GURPS Fantasy will do most of this for you. You can still use the Nordlond stuff as plug-in material for the game, giving you monsters and treasure and so on, but if you're looking for templates, they're in GURPS Fantasy, as are some classic monsters of myth, and so on.

[Donny Brook]

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

[Celjabba]

One thing to consider is that DF characters are basically super-heroes (or rather may end up that way after some xp).

Not a problem for DF game ("Reed Richards is useless" trope is fully active) , but in a "mundane fantasy", the wizard with IQ 25 or the bard with smooth operator 6 and charisma 10 are going to break the game fast once they apply those stats to something else than battle magic or negotiating with elder things ...

Using Delvers to grow help to create starting character fast, and most of the content in the DF/DF RPG books is still super-usefull in a regular fantasy campaign, but I would be very wary of the potential effects from some ultra-focused power-ups, as well as some of the templates "ignore this normal restriction" approach...

[binn05]

Thank you, everyone, for replying.

Sadly, I didn't make myself clear enough, and some of the answers mirror the ones from those topics I linked in my initial post.

I prefer more specific answers on what you would do to undungeon the dungeon (Lol).

Originally Posted by capnoni

You could create some social lenses and allow each character to chose one. Example may be the face guy or the information gatherer.

So, this reply, like the above from capnoni, is more in line with what I would like to read.

From Juan's reply and Varyon's reply

Originally Posted by Juan

...add 25 points for out of template skills and advantages. I would look at GURPS Fantasy for some guidance...

Originally Posted by Varyon

...Then give them another pool of points - or perhaps a choice of several lenses - to represent them being people in a non-DF setting, with professional skills, social skills/Advantages/Disadvantages, etc...

I think a 25-point professional and another 25-point social lens would be ideal.

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?

And for the Social lens, what would it comprise?
Maybe a "Viking" len? Urban vs. country lens? Racial lens?

The way I imagine it, the professional lens represents what you did for a living before you became an adventurer. And the social lens represents how people around you or your culture shaped you.

Originally Posted by DeadParrot

Extra credit if "The Problem" is related somehow to the previous dungeon runs.

Thank you, DeadParrot; your idea is a nice plot hook.

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

...

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

...

What I want is to add on a DF basis, not throw it away.
I like the action-hero (even superhero) vibe you get from the DF base.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Then give them another pool of points - or perhaps a choice of several lenses - to represent them being people in a non-DF setting, with professional skills, social skills/Advantages/Disadvantages, etc. This will still lend itself to violent heroic fantasy (delvers are fairly combat-optimized), but now the characters can have more meaningful interactions with the world itself.

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'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.

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

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.

My previous social/DF game had delve sites, which were usually abandoned or forsaken fortresses and tombs. In one notable case, they had to delve a toxic waste dump of a faerie library in which the preservation spells had reached critical mass and pulled the entire thing beyond time and space. That's not the kind of delve site that can appear every week, but once in a two year campaign? Worked perfectly and was quite memorable.