10-08-2015, 01:00 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: GMT-5
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[DF] What's worked? What hasn't?
Salutations All,
I'm considering starting up a Dungeon Fantasy campaign using most of the supplements in that line. I have read most of the books and some related Pyramid articles. I'm looking for advice from those who have played it. I am particularly interested in any pitfalls that may have been encountered and in house rules that have been used either successfully or unsuccessfully. Some areas that I am curious about:
Also, is there an index somewhere of published DF material? Which Pyramid issues contain which DF articles? (A sentence or two on what each article contains at a glance would be awesome.) Thanks in advance y'all. I really appreciate the thoughtful input this forum has to offer. Last edited by Edges; 10-08-2015 at 01:06 PM. |
10-08-2015, 01:08 PM | #2 | |
Doctor of GURPS Ballistics
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Lakeville, MN
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Re: [DF] What's worked? What hasn't?
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This hasn't been what the DF games I've played in have been about. Being able to do gonzo damage or strike many times in a round are part of the expected set of character abilities (again: in the games I've played). Tamping those down may not be well received. The issue of "too much damage through armor" is most frequently stated in terms of "versus firearms." If you're not comparing a 3d+8 axe blow to an M16, then you probably will have less "that's unrealistic!" and more "that's totally freakin' awesome!" moments. If what you're looking for is to have a more gritty flavored dungeon exploration game, then TLG and the damage/armor stuff may well be a better fit.
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10-08-2015, 01:36 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
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Re: [DF] What's worked? What hasn't?
I've run two long-running (40+ sessions each) online games with DF, and another F2F game that ran through all of Mirror of the Fire Demon and another dozen sessions of homebrew after that. I've played in two long-running DF games online, and another short one face to face. So I have some experience relevant to your questions.
For the supplements, Dungeons is the GM's basic reference, and Monsters (1 and 2) Henchmen, Psi, Summoners, and Allies are each useful for mining for monsters. Treasure Tables often tended to be more trouble than it was worth, and I never used anything from Artifacts. Adventurers, Ninjas, and Sages are excellent articles from the player side, but I never got much out of Clerics, Sages, or Taverns, and I think the templates in Summoners are often a bit odd. I never stuck too rigidly to templates, and dealt with player dissatisfaction by modifying them or creating new lenses to add options. I don't think templates should be straitjackets, and I'm only minimally interested in "reproducing an old school feel" or whatever. I think I'm one of the chief proponents of the theory that the Swashbuckler and Scout tend to overshadow the other templates in a game that involves fighting primitive humanoids in dank dungeons. My solution is make my games about more than that: exploration and physical challenges and varied opponents (homogeneous for the Scout, mind-controllers for the Swashbuckler) force those templates to spend their earned CP on things other than "more destruction!" Of course, then the wizard starts to intrude into everyone else's niche, but I have house rules for that, too. GURPS Magic is generally problematic. Every group has its own big offenders, but Missile Shield, Reverse Missiles, Great Haste, Grease, Shape Earth, and Air-Walk all tend to come up a lot. Peter Dell'Orto has a reasonable set of advisories on his blog. I've also used Divine Favor (which is great and think is highly recommended) and RPM (which I personally hate but your mileage may vary). I like Threshold magic with generous thresholds over FP magic (and have house rules about that...) I haven't played a game with the Sorcery rules yet but I'm looking forward to them. I do use Extra Effort, pretty much as written, except I disallowed Heroic Charge. I used Heroic Charge for a while, but I feel it turns every fight into a dogfight as Swashbucklers move 7+ hexes to run behind their foes and murder them, and I didn't like that. Everything else was fine: Heroic Charge is the problem. I house rule armor. I think everyone should use my house rules. They go some of the way to limiting armor overpenetration, but honestly, half-ogre weapon masters are available out of the gate and will penetrate any armor you can imagine, so I don't know how useful of a goal that even is. I've used a couple of different systems for buying magic items. The best is random availability of useful items and the option to inexpensively transfer enchantments from one item to another (so a Puissant Battle Axe +3 can become a Puissant Longsword +3 if that's the weapon someone prefers to use). I generally make potions and one use items cheaper, and don't allow Quick and Dirty enchantments. I have some tentative houserules for repricing magic items in general, but nothing I'm ready to share. Even so, cheap Cornucopia Quivers take an element away from the game, and the divide between "cheap armor with Q&D enchantments" and "nice armor with S&S enchantments" is so vast that the nice armor almost always ends up getting sold, which is stupid. I don't use the Last Gasp or any harsh realism rules. I'd have a player revolt on my hands, and I suspect they'd slow the game down too much. Feel free to browse http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/...Westmarch_Wiki and http://westmarchsaga.wikia.com/wiki/...est_March_Game for more house rules that may or may not be useful to you, as well as session reports and the like.
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10-08-2015, 02:04 PM | #4 | |||||||||
GURPS Line Editor
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
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Re: [DF] What's worked? What hasn't?
I have a few comments stemming from the (very) long-running fantasy campaign that inspired GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and served as a testbed for the supplements I wrote alone or with Peter (DF 1-4, 6, 11, 14-16, and DFM 1-2).
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As my campaign's power level rose, I felt a strong need to invent the content that now appears in DF 6 and 11, and the scariest critters in DFM 1-2. I'm glad I did! If you plan to keep the power level low, though, those selfsame supplements might prove less useful or even useless to you. Personally, I'm not a fan of "pets" for adventurers and so never had any use for the stuff in DF 5 or 9. I also don't mix psi with my fantasy, despite having written DF 14. Oh, and I think DF 16 is absolutely essential if your campaign is more about roaming the world than raiding dungeons, which mine was. And DF 15 is a good idea, too, if in eschewing supernatural and summoned "pets" – as I did – you create a need for PCs to retain NPCs. Quote:
Yes, I had lots of fights with human bad guys – and yes, those favored PCs with high weapon skill and impaling weapons. But most of the fights that mattered were with horrors who had many and varied forms of Injury Tolerance, or who were ghostly, shadowy, or otherwise not material. I used a lot of undead – corporeal and incorporeal – as well as demons and magical automatons. Just as important, I threw in a lot of social and leadership situations that would be dominated by what DF calls the bard, or at least a holy warrior or knight with lots of Born War Leader and Tactics. I also presented puzzles and research challenges worthy of very capable artificers and scholars. In fact, I'm pathologically incapable of not doing that. :P Quote:
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My setting had no magical economy at all. All magic items were found and not easily sold. Quote:
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10-08-2015, 02:19 PM | #5 | ||||||
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: [DF] What's worked? What hasn't?
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Bards with Mind Control sucks. I have banned Mind Control in all my games from now till forever. It just takes all the fun out of roleplaying. It has been abused way too often and with no way out except for me to plant Will 20 NPCs everywhere, which also takes all the fun out of purchasing a trait if it's only allowable when the GM permits it. Quote:
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I've found with the Layering armor rules, cheap DR levels and buffing magic that it's actually quite hard to deal damage to creatures. If you don't like how much damage your ST-based PCs are doing, add another layer of armor. Quote:
Also, anything that was totally cool gets CP. Swinging from chandeleers to strike down foes is a worthy goal. I find that "fast" advancement is more fun. PC's can gain crazy cool abilities faster and seem to really "level up" every other session. This is more fun for me and my players. YMMV. Quote:
as to the clerics we've had: a basic cleric from MotFD (eaten by a demon in the end), Brother Mainard (called Mayonaise) a 250 point cleric I used from Adventurers (died in the desert from something, probably an orc), Friar Tuck (a 125 point cleric) (lived!), Saint Patrick (burned up by lava), Saint Sick (Zombie cleric) ("drowned" at sea), Saint D**K (A mean Saint Patrick) (knocked a PC unconcious and then had his throat slit), another cleric that shot harpoon guns (I think this guy lived, but probably died fighting pirates), Paedric (Thief Cleric) (died in end boss fight at campaign end). |
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10-08-2015, 08:40 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Northern Virginia, USA
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Re: [DF] What's worked? What hasn't?
I'm running a DF game, which has been going for just over 2 years, but very sporadically. (Only about 15 sessions.)
The most valuable GURPS books have been DF1-3, DF 15, DFM1, and Magic. Also the DF Pyramid issues. And the Pyramid with underwater combat rules. (There's some water in the dungeon, but the PCs have mostly avoided it.) Haven't really used much out of the other DF books. DF16 looks good but our game doesn't have much wilderness (yet). I'm running a converted D&D 3.5 megadungeon, so the D&D monster conversions on the GURPS Wiki have been great, as have the various D&D SRD sites. The starting PCs were right off the templates. The players were fine with that. Our group is small, so I'm not very concerned with niche protection since there's plenty of screen time for everyone. The group is Knight, Wizard, Cleric, and an NPC fighter they rescued and adopted as an honorary PC. The Knight is way better at combat than everyone else, at least when fighting things that are vulnerable to cutting damage, but that's okay since that's her job. (She's also good at Forced Entry. And identifying which weapons are treasure. And lifting heavy things.) The Wizard is good at everything (IQ 15 is kind of silly), except fighting things that don't burn. The Cleric is good at Healing, reading obscure things (Gift of Letters), talking to monsters (Gift of Tongues), finding secret doors (See Secrets), and turning undead. The fighter is built on way fewer points than everyone else and so isn't super-effective at anything, but helps keep the monsters off the squishier PCs. I didn't explicitly disallow any templates but I encouraged the players to stick with the basics the first time around. I haven't used Last Gasp with DF. I don't think it really fits the genre. I think the way it would interact with Magic would be to make mages less effective since magic burns FP and Last Gasp gives another place where it's needed. A lot of spells in Magic are ill-defined and a few are kind of broken. I encourage using the prereqs lists from Pyramid 3/60 if you want to keep Wizards from taking Minor Healing "as a prerequisite" and upstaging the Clerics. (Or not, if you don't have any Clerics and want to keep the PCs alive.) I've avoided Extra Effort. Because it's extra stuff to track and my players aren't tacticians. We use the armor from Basic. Fortify +1 and Lighten 25% are really cheap, so all the PCs used them on their starting armor. I don't have a problem with high ST penetrating armor. If you paid for ST 16, you deserve to kick ass. This does mean that high-ST enemies are very dangerous, but they should be. This is why I encourage PCs to buy Luck and save it for emergencies. I tend to give about 4 CP per PC per session, half for the NPC. Occasional bonuses for major accomplishments. My players almost always spend the CP immediately rather than saving up. So they tend to pick up things that are cheap, like putting 1 or 2 points in a missing utility skill (Observation, Search, Traps, Gesture, Hiking, Merchant, etc.), learning new languages at Broken, buying a HP, buying a level of Lifting ST to avoid being encumbered, etc. I let PCs buy any skill that they've practiced in play, regardless of templates, which encourages picking up skills that can be practiced at default. To avoid wizards buying 4 new spells every session and ending up with huge spell lists the player can't remember, I only let wizards add new spells if they've found a scroll or spellbook or teacher. I let PCs start with magic items, but nobody bought Wealth or piled lots of points into cash, so that just meant minor armor enchantments and a staff with the Staff spell. There's a wizard in town who sells potions and recharges power items. No better items have been available for sale; they've all been found in the dungeon, except for one that was given as a quest reward. In practice this means the PCs have been slowly accumulating cash since they don't have much to spend it on; maybe I need to start introducing more cool things to buy. We don't use any harsh realism rules. Doesn't really fit the genre IMO. Healing isn't a big problem because the group has a Cleric who's good at it. Plus each PC carries a healing potion or two. In practice, a Cleric with Minor and Major Healing-16 can fix up the whole party in a few hours, if no wandering monsters interrupt his rest. My house rules: No piece armor enchantment, to avoid silliness like helmets and gloves being dirt-cheap to enchant. Do the whole suit at once. Mage spell list from Pyramid 3/60 The only rules from MA we use are committed / defensive / telegraphic attack, slip/sideslip, the bigger weapon table, multiple blocks, and allowing weapons with reach longer than C to be used in close combat at a penalty. Illiteracy does not count against the disad limit (but all the PCs so far have been literate). No choosing to roll on the random hit location table. Relative SM is in play, meaning a SM-1 creature gets +1 to hit SM 0 humans. Signature Gear costs double, once for the money and once for the plot protection. (So nobody takes Signature Gear when they really just wanted more stuff.) I let players cash in attributes when upgrading, as long as nothing goes down. For example, you can pay 2 CP for +1 HP, then 3 CP for +1 Lifting ST, then 5 CP and trade in the others for +1 ST. Town is not abstract in our game: it's got a name, a map, and a bunch of well-defined NPCs, a few of whom are now the PCs' friends. The PCs probably spend a quarter of their play time there, mostly just talking to people. |
10-09-2015, 07:44 AM | #7 | |||||||||
Join Date: Nov 2013
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Re: [DF] What's worked? What hasn't?
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From there I worked with them to get their individual characteristics and such, preserving the core of what "role" they wanted to represent. Quote:
Much like Kromm, my setting has much of the "opposition" being mythical monsters, beings from the Void, demons/devils, extraplanars, spirits, undeads, elementals of sorts, constructs, psicometabolic enhanced humanoids without nerves or feelings, and much, much more on this line which makes this type of combatant somewhat underrated in these situations. That said, not only I make sure to balance the campaign flow and encounters that they manage to encounter humanoid-types of Bads so that they can shine but also to make these type of characters shine and be useful in another situations, going beyond strict combat effectiveness. Our current swashbuckler type is a party-hard-seductor-singer and the player actually has more fun and considers more highly when he manages good scenes and returns off-combat (he actually keeps a tracking score of...ahem..."done" targets). He's also the groups face often times. Templates will follow your setting and rules. Or should. None of them have an intrinsic flaw or OPness that would warrant a straight ban like that. If you don't want to deal with spirits, nature spells and summoning...don't allow Druid template, for example. Or don't want players dealing with magic, don't allow Wizard, Druid, Bard...and so on. Not really. Don't use them. Quote:
Yes, I do have 5 different magical systems in my world: - My "true" magical workers that can see reality raw matrix use a mix between Path/Books with RPM magic, of sorts; - Quintessentials, which are basically my setting elementalists, use Powers-as-spells following 5 primary Elements; - 2 ancient races developed an intricate language capable of performing magic, using Magic base system structure with many spell cuts and/or modifications; - Half-spirit race has access to a very small list of spells/rituals that allow to commune and bargain with spirits to perform magic for them; - Universal planar ritual magic, capable of being done by anyone if they can gather the materials, be in the right places in the right times; Quote:
All "Body of" spells (many inconsistencies, like what you can carry, what you actually gain with them...) Air Vortex All Missile spells (Either mages can't compete with archers and fighters or they have so much FP/ER they can nuke bomb stuff, needs tweaking) All Shapeshifting Spells (Just watch Gorilla-arms barbarians and similar, but I use it in my games) Shrink/Enlarge spells (Normally 2 cheap for the gains) Enchantment spells (Brake DF, basically) Possession Spells (Players can start jumping bodies for extra stats or dominating other players or NPCs...) All Jet Spells (I completely redone the mechanics of Jet spells because their descriptions is fuzzy, at best) The "Gate" School (remove from game for easy...can bypass most encounters or stuff you throw at players) Regeneration Spells (Careful, otherwise players loose the sense of danger if they can recover from anything) Resurrection (Normally a setting definition...can or cannot res?) Divination (I don't mind, but some GMs have problems with this) Drain Mana (Can get funky if players decide to be a pita) Telecast (brake spell mechanic rules which can be a hassle) Hang Spell (needs attention, but I like it and allow in my games) Maintain Spell (needs attention, but I like it and allow in my games) Throw Spell (needs attention, but I like it and allow in my games) Bless (It's basically +1 for everything that matters for the players...do you want or do not them to have that?) Suspend Magery (usually reserve this kind of effect to more "roleplay moments" outside of mechanics) Linking Spells (needs attention, but I like it and allow in my games) Charm (needs attention, but I like it and allow in my games) Enslave (needs attention, but I like it and allow in my games) Flight Spells (gives A LOT of freedom and changes how encounters are tackled...handle with extra care) Flying Carpet (same as Flight) Great Haste (It's basically ATR with much less cost....it's a power creep and your players will reach a point where they can use it every encounter for everyone - I use in my games) Ethereal Body (allow freedom, entrance in forbidden places...) Teleport Spells (same as Flight) Cloud-Walking/Vaulting spells (same as Flight, but a bit more restricted) Missile Shield (Hinders bows/throw useless...options I normally use are give good defense bonus to the caster or allow the caster a second defense roll against its effective level in this spell against projectiles or cap how much projectiles per turn it can protect...) Reverse Missiles (same as Missile Shield) Force Dome (unbreakable physical barrier...do you want or do not want players to have this level of power?) Force Wall (same as Force Dome) Utter Dome (Cosmic-level dome...same thought of Force Dome but stronger effect) Utter Wall (Same as Utter Dome) Breath/Spit Spells (Same as Missile Spells) Invisibility (watch carefully, different from DD you can attack while being Invis and perma-Invis can be reached) Blocking Spells (sure-fire, safety-proof, cosmic defense spells... do your casters need this to survive or can they wear armor, weapons to defend?) Resist Element Spells (Immunity to elements... I normally change for a big resistance bonus) As previously stated I use many alternate systems and they work great for us. Allow casters to be quite different while still being relevant and equivalent in power. Quote:
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My monsters and "opposition" normally don't use mundane armor, though. Quote:
This gives the players the feeling of a "level up", much like in DD. They like it a lot but I have many restrictions and strings they must abide, to keep things grounded and good, like: You can't spend more then 10% of your character total in a single trait (if they are 250CPs characters, no single trait can have more than 25CPs, for example); no Primary Stat higher than 16 without GM approval; I use a scaled pyramid for skills levels, where they need to bring 2nd and 3rd skills levels to their 1st skill level before being able to raise their 1st skill, cascading backwards... Keep in mind 30-50CPs is a lot, even for DF, and this method only works because of the whole scenario of strings I attached together. But it gives a nice feeling of "level up" and players really feel like they get a meaningful power increase this way. |
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10-09-2015, 07:45 AM | #8 | ||
Join Date: Nov 2013
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Re: [DF] What's worked? What hasn't?
(cont...)
Enchanted items are very special. To build an enchanted item you must first find a Power Material, which I leave very open for the players...it can be the heart of a dragon, the essence of an elemental being, the fang of an ancient predator...whatever big thing they manage to defeat and harvest stuff from. With the Power Material in hands they must find someone that have magical knowledge relevant to what they want to craft and relevant with the material. It's completely outside of mechanical rules and done totally inside the game world. Even the players starting magician can enchant powerful stuff...but they gotta work for it. Quote:
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Personally, in my setting Health potions are almost non-existent and Healing spells are quite limited and hard to learn. Even the casters that can manipulate reality freely have more penalties to amass healing effects, normally take much longer than Magic core spells, have a chance to backfire into the caster and are costly. So far the balance has been good in that players still look after healing spells and effects but also pay a lot of attention trying to get more armor, defenses and flat out not get hurt. Sorry for the wall ^_^ |
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10-09-2015, 11:29 AM | #9 | |||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: The ASS of the world, mainly Valencia, Spain (Europe)
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Re: [DF] What's worked? What hasn't?
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I'll use the following scale: Indispensable (You can't really play DF without it, unless you redo all the work yourself) Almost Indispensable (You can play DF without it, but it adds so much that you won't want to do it) Optional (Nice to have, can add a lot to your games, and if you don't use it, you can feel the void it leaves) Marginal (Niche product. Not bad by any means, but if you don't have it, you will not feel the need for it)
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10-09-2015, 11:32 AM | #10 | ||||||||||||||||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: The ASS of the world, mainly Valencia, Spain (Europe)
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Re: [DF] What's worked? What hasn't?
Damn 10000 character limit
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Also, another problem with GURPS Magic is the clash of expectations. GURPS Magic is borderline overpowered for buffing and for problem solving, but other than that, it's not that good in combat. Dealing damage with magic is a losing proposition, with the best offensive combat spells are those that are "save or suck/die" Quote:
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I like Extra Effort in Combat, as it gives everyone (and not just spellcasters) something to do with their FP. Quote:
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dungeon fantasy, edge protection |
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