So...GURPS D&D?

[nmoody]

I'm not sold on the GURPS Dungeons products. I mean, I keep hearing how it pushes the rules to show what can be done, but is it really pushing the rules to turn GURPS into D&D?

Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, but this is one product (or series of products) that doesn't interest me.

But...convince me. Is there anything useful to running a Banestorm game in these pdfs?

[Mailanka]

The "brilliance" of them isn't turning them into D&D. It's making a game out of them, and focusing GURPS onto one thing.

Let me offer another example: Imagine GURPS Tournament Fighter. It slims down all the martial arts to what works in combat, and slims down powers to reflect Chi techniques. You get cinematic ninjas, cinematic monks, cinematic strong-man soldiers with no-nonsense styles, and cinematic dancers with over-the-top beautiful styles (what have you). The GURPS engine is honed to focus on one style of play, a style it could already do, but this takes alot of the unnecessary work out of it. Thus you can grab the book, pick a template, a style, and get to fighting in a relatively balanced and interesting manner.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy works the same way. It hones the engine to focus on the resource management, hack-n-slash strategies of dungeon crawling games, whether those are Warhammer Quest, D&D, Hackmaster, Diablo or Dugneon Seige. It doesn't change anything: There are no levels, no classes, no new rules. Instead, it shows you how the GURPS engine can already do this sort of game, and provides what amounts to a cheatsheet to do it even faster.

Even if you have no intention of running a dungeoneering hack-n-slash game (Nothing wrong with that), the ideas, templates, monsters and advice can prove useful for any game that even has leanings in that direction. It's a terribly handy supplement, and extremely cheap besides.

[RafaelLVX]

Good point.

[Lonewulf]

I like it just for the interesting of ideas for "How-can-I-do-this"? I also like the system where spells are based more on level than on prereqs.

I'd also note that there is absolutely no "pushing" here. No more than making Banestorm was "pushing" GURPS into fantasy...

[Extrarius]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

[...]no new rules.[...]

Not quite true - the item modification rules in DF:A do add quite a lot, and though they are obviously most appropriate to dungeon fantasy, they easily could be used for any game where similar types of weapons are used.

In a lot of ways, I think DF is like some of the historical supplements: They break out which things are appropriate in that setting, give templates, maybe add a few new advantages, skills, and so on, and mainly just take the huge amount of stuff available and list only the parts that apply to that one setting. DF covers a hugely greater number of settings since it's a genre book, but it still does basically the same thing - it chops down more than it adds to make it easier to handle that one specific genre.

However, it also includes tons of advice and other information that might be helpful in any campaign, whether used directly or as inspiration.

Finally, considering that the templates are 250 pts, you're not exactly starting out at anything equivalent to a D&D "level 1".

[HardMaple72]

Personally I will continue to use D&D 3.5e for medieval fantasy games (I'm not even interested in 4.0 since 3.5 does what I want it to do). So I can't help you there.

But this system fits my needs for post-apocalypse settings, and its better than d20 Modern IMHO in all of its time-periods (World War, Future, Colonial, Elizabethan (not sure if that's a word) ).

So my suggestion is if you want to remain in Medieval Fantasy, I won't recommend a change to GURPS. But if you want to stretch out into a different genre this is an excellent choice. And if you will be moving between games with different genres including MF, this is also the best choice.

[Pmandrekar]

Originally Posted by HardMaple72

So my suggestion is if you want to remain in Medieval Fantasy, I won't recommend a change to GURPS. But if you want to stretch out into a different genre this is an excellent choice. And if you will be moving between games with different genres including MF, this is also the best choice.

HardMaple72 is making my point for me, and I thank you!

What you want to do with these rules is up to you. I personally would be interested in playing in some of the D&D based gameworlds, but with the GURPS rulesets, because the type of the campaigns that I love to play have a lot of social interaction, as well as a lot of things in them that D&D wasn't necessarily built to handle. At the same time, a lot of people are going to stick to D&D 3.5, or whatever system fits the campaign that they're playing, and that's an equally legitimate choice...

Cheers,

-P.

[Gavynn]

Well, I won't go so far as to say that if you are interested in Medieval Fantasy to just stick with D&D. It was not a lack of interest in the genre that made me switch to GURPS. I still love the genre, it is just that GURPS (I think) has a better rule set. With GURPS, I can get a great rule set and apply it to my favorite genre.

There are lots of people who are still interested in Medieval Fantasy, but don't really care for the D&D rule set. Fairly regularly we have people pop in here on the boards looking for exactly that same kind of thing. They want to "covert" GURPS to D&D, and by that most of the mean - How do I play a GURPS game about the traditional subject matter of D&D? These new PDFs really help out with that. It lets someone cut to the chase if that genre is what they are looking for.

It is true that the templates given for the heroes start at 250 points. I'd like to see 50, 100, 150, and 200 point templates of each of the templates, but that is easy enough to do since it would be subtracting from the existing rather than adding to.

For me there is still a certain amount of nostalgia associated with D&D, and at one time I thought about running a AD&D game for old times sake, but couldn’t really bring myself to do it. Instead, I though I needed to create a guide for your traditional dungeoneering fantasy game to run in GURPS, but that never got off the ground because of time constraints. With these .pdfs, I really feel like I could give them to my players (well not the GM part, obviously) and have them make characters, and pull one of my favorite AD&D modules off the shelf and be up and running in a very short amount of time. The best of both worlds.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by HardMaple72

So my suggestion is if you want to remain in Medieval Fantasy, I won't recommend a change to GURPS.

However, I do! ;-D

With some sourcebooks, GURPS definitely can run more appealing, detailed and depth Fantasy campaigns.

DF 2: Dungeons is in a way more useful than the D&D's Dungeon Master Guides.

Even GURPS melee combat (basic for Heroic Fantasy settings) is uncomparable, and even more if you are using some Martial Arts combat options.

Of course, all this IMO! And anyway, I acknowledge diversity is a good thing.

Originally Posted by Pmandrekar

Nobody is pushing you to play GURPS rules with your Dungeon Fantasy. It's an option. It's there if you want it.

Of course nothing obligues any GURPS player to use DF material.

Originally Posted by Pmandrekar

Frankly, I'm hoping that GURPS publishes these supplements in hardcover and puts them right out there at the FLGS. Not to do D&D, but to give players more options to go with their Dungeon Fantasy. More options is a good thing.

Me too! Perhaps as a single volume after the third PDF Sean is working on, or maybe after the fourth (a bestiary?).

Cheers

[Pmandrekar]

Originally Posted by HardMaple72

So my suggestion is if you want to remain in Medieval Fantasy, I won't recommend a change to GURPS.

Nobody is pushing you to adopt GURPS for your Dungeon Fantasy, but I've found a lot of holes in the logic of how D&D 3.5 works in our campaign. I am encouraging my friendly D&D 3.5 DM to consider switching our Dungeon Fantasy campaign over to something being run in GURPS, for a number of reasons. I prefer the system, obviously, to D&D, but more to the point, you can make everyone happy with GURPS as a system. The Storyteller type players (I am one) get to roleplay a character with flaws and advantages, the Tactician in our group already seems to be loving the system, with its many options for warriors in combat, and you could still run a campaign with enough of a point total to satisfy the Butt Kickers in the group.

So, considering the player styles in our group, my suspicion is that GURPS might be a better ruleset than D&D for running a dungeon crawl with a roleplaying aspect to it.

-P.