New DFRPG Release: Shields Up!; also Three Bestiaries launch Oct 13 on Backerkit

[DouglasCole]

Gaming Ballistic is pleased to announce a new release for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG.

Shields Up!

Shields Up!*expands on defensive shield use and also details the often-neglected roles of shields as offensive weapons and active tools of engagement.

Building off of the Dungeon Fantasy RPG and Fantastic Dungeon Grappling, Shields Up! enhances and expands your shield-using experience. Both books are required for play; both came in the Boxed Set reprint.

• Leverage the "shield bind" to open lines of attack, or protect yourself
• New explicit options for treating the shield as cover in combat. Hide from a rain of arrows, or crouch behind your shield to shelter from dragon's breath!
• Use a shield actively to hold a foe at bay, or prevent them from coming into weapons range
• Details on shield damage, overpenetration, and all the goodies you'd expect when the right answer to "shield wall!" is "Thog SMASH!"

Also includes rules for shields as gear, modifying them for particular use, how to treat shields relative to creatures of different size, and more.

This 24-page book in 8x10 format*presents fight-tested rules that give new options for shield-using warriors, while preserving existing rules: You can introduce this to an*ongoing*campaign easily.

Preliminary Backorder Notice:

This product is available in both Print and PDF, but the print version is currently back-ordered. Stock is expected on or before October 19. Shipping times will be "time it takes to get inventory" plus normal shipping.

International Backers may wish to wait until the*Nightmare Fuel crowdfunding*on Backerkit and pick it up as an add-on...it will be printed and shipped from the UK for that project, which is less expensive than USPS.

Nightmare Fuel: Launches Next Week!

On October 13, three new bestiary volumes launch for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG*on Backerkit Crowdfunding!

Gaming Ballistic is pleased to announce the*Nightmare Fuel*crowdfunding campaign launching next week. Read more about it on the Daily Illuminator, or just jump to the landing page.

This is a very art-heavy book, requiring solid support to fund. I'd appreciate it if you'd sign up to be notified on campaign launch, and ideally jump on board opening weekend.

These monsters are fight-tested and tuned against opposition from 62 to 250 points in fantasy games, but are easily portable to horror, sci-fi, or regular GURPS Fantasy.

[sjmdw45]

If Fantastic Dungeon Grappling is required for Shields Up, does that mean I shouldn't buy it if I'm not using the control points rules? Are there any rules in it that are compatible with the regular DFRPG grappling rules?

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

If Fantastic Dungeon Grappling is required for Shields Up, does that mean I shouldn't buy it if I'm not using the control points rules? Are there any rules in it that are compatible with the regular DFRPG grappling rules?

There are some options that don't use control points. The discussion on cover and focused wards port over, as do the equipment design/modification rules.

One could probably adopt the bind rules into the standard DFRPG grappling system, but no effort at all was made to go down that path in the book. Too limiting.

[DouglasCole]

Table of Contents stuff that deals with control points:

Shield Essentials2
• Has a section on spending control points defensively
• Has one of three sections on offensive shield use; one involves shield binds (and therefore FDG)
Fight!9
• Several sections on nuances of shield binds (and therefore FDG)
• Bind Reach
Defensive Options10
• Has an equivalent of grappling parry for blocks
Attacking12
• Has a fairly detailed section on shield grappling
Avoiding Shields13
• Disarms and moving the foe’s shield around can leverage control points
Shields Down!14
• Disarms and moving the foe’s shield around can leverage control points


So really most of the book is still useful

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

So really most of the book is still useful

Excellent and thanks. I'll check it out.

[Anders]

Evacuate the city. Engage all defenses and get this man a shield!

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

If Fantastic Dungeon Grappling is required for Shields Up, does that mean I shouldn't buy it if I'm not using the control points rules?

For the gallery, the FDG control point rules are a lot simpler than the original GURPS Technical Grappling version.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by johndallman

For the gallery, the FDG control point rules are a lot simpler than the original GURPS Technical Grappling version.

This is a post I made on r/gurps in response to "What does TG offer that FDG does not?" Sort of the inverse of the question at hand.

I think FDG is *just better* in terms of ease of assimilation and low-drag coverage of the topic. It does in eight pages what took TG 50 or so to do, and in that 50...not everything went to plan.

So FDG + this cool blog post by The Chaotic GM takes you just about everywhere you want to go.

So, what do you get with TG?

• Detailed rules for facing and posture even within close combat
• Stuff that's in-depth enough on weight and encumbrance that you'll immediately say "that's why weight classes are a thing"
• The outline of the book was developed with the idea of pretty much a 1:1 match with GURPS Martial Arts. That's a great thing if you use all of those rules; the DFRPG does NOT use all those rules.
• Detailed rules for armed grappling that spell out many of the special cases left as exercises for the GM in FDG because 8 pages including art.

TG is a book that is presented like you already know it and must consult it for reference. This is also how Martial Arts is presented. But the control point mechanic, while (ahem) supremely awesome, does require a better explanatory on-ramp, which FDG took pains to provide.

[DouglasCole]

Peter Dell'Orto reviews Shields Up! on Dungeon Fantastic:

Review: Shields Up!