Still Not Designer's Notes for GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 17: Guilds

I've been the beneficiary of a recent wave of GURPS-related reviews, notably for the new book. The common thread is about how it nudges the Dungeon Fantasy line in the direction of social complexity, world-building detail, and more non-combat interactions. This leaves me thinking that I wasn't clear enough about the book's intent.

I mean, yes, it does point in that direction for those who want it, but the objective I had was, basically, weaponizing social connections. Rank is a power-up. ARs allow adventurers to get their hands on some extra gear or other benefits at the beginning of an adventure, and guilds can send them on adventures where they get to keep all the loot. Apparently, the postmodernists were right about the author's intention and interpretation not being definitive.

Anyway, I have some additional thoughts about Guilds and it's relationship to Boardroom and Curia. I'll try to get those out there in the next few days.

Comments

Peter V. Dell'Orto said…

If it makes you feel better, I'm all about weaponizing it. I'm just not using all of it, because my game doesn't need that many social connection weapons. :)

December 14, 2015 at 11:23 AM

Dungeon Fantasy RPG PDFs to Backers!

It is, at long last, out! Sort of! PDFs of the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game have been released to Kickstarter backers. I don't think it'll be generally available until next month, but since it's in the wild in at least a limited way, I feel I can talk about this a bit more like a customer than someone involved in the project.

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG is a complete fantasy tabletop roleplaying game. It's based on GURPS 4th edition rules, but it's a stand-alone game, requiring no other books, or even prior knowledge of GURPS. I've already made some general comments elsewhere (I got an advanced peek for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I was called on to write some follow-up material coming out later). I'll expand on that here.

For those unfamiliar with GURPS, it's a point-buy system rather than randomly rolled, class-and-level, or life path, and pretty much everything in play boils down to "try to roll a target number or less o…

The Occasional Dungeon: Overview

In order to get some more GURPS out there and play with some maps, I started toying with something. I've worked up a large map ("ground level" is below; I may need to poke around with image hosting to keep enough maps at the proper scales) of a dungeon complex. From time to time, I'll post magnified excerpts from the map with details in GURPS terms, with specific reference to Dungeon Fantasy (that is, mostly stocked with things from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 8: Treasure Tables and the Dungeon Fantasy Monsters volumes, but occasional pointers elsewhere). They may prove useful to somebody somewhere under some odd set of circumstances.

This dungeon is set in a fairly steep, rocky hill. The natural caves underneath it have long been home to a variety of creatures, natural and otherwise, but pretty much all horrible. There's also a large natural cavern accessible through a very large opening at the top of the hill where the surface caved in. It has been home to a number …

Silk Road Miscellaneous Comments

GURPS Hot Spots: The Silk Road is, at long last, out, after languishing for some months behind the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game. There's a more substantial bit on this forthcoming, but I've got some other thoughts that didn't make it into that, so...

The Silk Road is something of a departure from previous Hot Spots volumes. Instead of a single city, it covers a large, more vaguely defined, and much more culturally diverse region. In the pitch I sent to SJ Games, I described it as being more like GURPS Conan than any of the previous Hot Spots. It's more about trends and areas than specific people and events. And I think that actually makes it a much better setting for setting adventures. It's more of a sandbox (indeed, the Taklamakan desert is one of the world's biggest sandboxes) where the GM is relieved of the weight of specific historical events. And the specific nature of this region and its time make it easy for anybody from that time (or, at least, any …

Tetsujin no Llama

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