Last PDF of 2007, and it's GURPS doozy!

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Paul

More than four months.

...
*faint*

heh, jk

[splattergnome]

Can we have any more hints on what is in Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons? Can we ever expect any more of this series such as Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeon Beasts or the like?

I agree with the suggestion above of making a seperate "complete game" GURPS Dungeon Fantasy with everything you need to play, with character templates, playing information, monsters, items, quickstart pregen characters - this would be a good "grittier" alternative to D&D and fans of GURPS (actually, that would be an ideal Powered By GURPS product).

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by splattergnome

Can we have any more hints on what is in Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeons?

With 32-page items, it's hard to give out useful hints without giving away most of the PDF, but I'll try. DF: Dungeons will have two distinct parts:

• Dungeon-Crawling is about what the PCs do in a DF campaign. It focuses strongly on using skills and gear -- especially skills found on the templates in DF: Adventurers, and gear from that book. Major sections: "Getting Ready to Go" (buying, stealing, and making gear in town, and finding a dungeon to raid in the first place), "Travel" (how to make outdoors-oriented PCs useful, in essence, with notes on quick-and-dirty travel times, foraging, camping, and tracking), "Exploring the Dungeon" (the non-thieving parts, like light sources, marching orders, maps, and searching for secret doors), "Breaking and Entering" (the thieving parts, like climbing, picking locks, and bashing doors), "Traps and Hazards" (how to cope with things other than monsters that try to kill you), "Monsters" (how to recognize and deal with monsters before the fight starts -- parleying with dragons is a classic, after all!), "Combat" ("how to" material on recognizing monster weaknesses, feigning death, backstabbing, taunting, etc.), "After the Battle" (namely, tying up live baddies, searching dead ones, and healing allies), "Loot" (all about extracting, identifying, and evaluating treasure), and "Disposing of the Spoils" (what to do when you get back to town with your haul). A few little boxes address odds and sods that don't quite fit into the above categories.

• Mastering Dungeons is advice to the GM on how to run a DF campaign. What's innovative about it, IMHO, is that it refers back to the previous section for most of its rules; thus, the GM will design dungeon adventures by setting challenges to be met by skills, which will in turn give each type of delver a niche. Major sections: "Dungeon Design" (basic dungeon archetypes and how to map them out, with crunchy advice on doors, locks, monsters, traps, obstacles, secrets, and loot), "Fiendish Traps" (mainly a system for how to think about stats for traps, so that you can quickly come up with just about any kind of trap without forgetting important details), "Perilous Encounters" (advice on random vs. set encounters, how to stat monsters, and how to balance combat encounters), "Treasure" (brief advice on what to give out, how much, and how it works), and "Beyond the Dungeon" (short notes on wilderness and town adventures). Again, there are a few boxes, these ones oriented toward how to run quicker combats and protect PC niches.

That looks exhaustive, but I'm sure I've omitted things. Also -- and this is crucial -- everything here is crunchy. "Advice" does not mean "vague, feel-good fluff," but in fact often comes with specific skill rolls, tables of stats, and quick-and-dirty rules for assessing stats.

Originally Posted by splattergnome

Can we ever expect any more of this series such as Dungeon Fantasy: Dungeon Beasts or the like?

I'd love to see those. I've hinted at DF: Monsters, DF: Traps, and DF: Treasures . . . but whether these ever get written hinges on how well the first two PDFs do! I can make no promises at this time.

Originally Posted by splattergnome

I agree with the suggestion above of making a seperate "complete game" GURPS Dungeon Fantasy with everything you need to play, with character templates, playing information, monsters, items, quickstart pregen characters - this would be a good "grittier" alternative to D&D and fans of GURPS (actually, that would be an ideal Powered By GURPS product).

That's another thing that depends on sales. If the first two PDFs do so well that we decide that there should be two or three more, and if the full set does so well that we feel inspired . . . well, who knows? I agree that tossing in a special version of Lite -- with magic rules, and tailored to the tasks and templates covered by DF -- would create a cool PbG product. But that would only happen if interest levels were so high that we couldn't ignore the hue and cry.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by Kromm

With 32-page items, it's hard to give out useful hints without giving away most of the PDF, but I'll try. DF: Dungeons will have (...)

I'm in love with this sort of summarized "Table of Contents".

It has even stuff related with monsters!

[Þorkell]

After a friend bought this, and I got to glance at it. I broke down and bought the damn thing.

Even after saying this

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

After a friend bought this, and I got to glance at it. I broke down and bought the damn thing.

Even after saying this

All is forgiven :)

Where is that fattened calf?

[Paul]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

After a friend bought this, and I got to glance at it. I broke down and bought the damn thing.

Even after saying this

What changed your mind?

[zilkoski]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I'd love to see those. I've hinted at DF: Monsters, DF: Traps, and DF: Treasures . . . but whether these ever get written hinges on how well the first two PDFs do! I can make no promises at this time.

The first one seems to be doing quite well already, so... there is hope.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Paul

What changed your mind?

After seeing the book I saw that I had slightly misunderstood the blurb on e23. Also we are about to begin a fantasy campaign that uses things from the PDF. It also was pointed out that when we play fantasy games it isn't too far from what this PDF is about.

[Greg 1]

I bought it and found it a very enjoyable read. The best parts of the book for me were the new powers and the templates that used them, which helped me better understand how to apply GURPS Powers.