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Delvers to Grow (Dungeon Fantasy RPG, Powered by GURPS)

Created by Douglas H. Cole

Fast, modular character generation. Would-be heroes from 62 points and higher as player characters, henchmen, or supporting cast.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Ooops. I posted the wrong link in the Bestiary announcement
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 04, 2021 at 02:59:48 PM

Please click here to follow the Bestiary Kickstarter and be notified at launch

My last update on a few of my prior projects - including this one - included links to VERY PRELIMINARY full drafts of the project campaign page, which I'm intending to revise, because the structure and pricing should be simplified if it can be.

What I'm hoping is that I get enough campaign followers that it's obvious the project has a fighting chance of either hitting two volumes at 128 pages each, or one big one of 240 pages (or more).

The pricing structure of $20 for a PDF and having it expand is fine, but the add-on physical structure is...more complicated than I want. A lot more than I think backers want, or will put up with.

In any case, the feedback on the campaign page has been welcome and is valued...but please do click the "follow the campaign" link here so I can get a feel for the demand.

Thicker books will need to have prices adjusted accordingly. I'm also working hard to identify opportunities to lower the preliminary goal targets, which are almost entirely driven by art costs, that will help me achieve a balance of kickstarter pricing and goal targets to maximize the value of the book, as well as increase the chances of funding success.

Thanks for bearing with me, and I deeply apologize for any confusion!

A whole lot of monsters: A bestiary for Nordlond (and other fantasy campaigns) for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 04, 2021 at 02:58:36 PM

The Nordlond Bestiary was accepted on Kickstarter this week!

This enables the pre-launch page, so that you can follow the campaign and be notified when it launches.

As many of you have backed a bunch of my projects, maybe even follow me on Kickstarter generally, I'd like to make a request:

I would really (!!) appreciate if you'd click that button if you're interested in the book. To do it like the monstrous, um, manual I think we've always wanted for Powered by GURPS and the Dungeon Fantasy RPG (mockup on the right!) rather than small thematic volumes, this project will need a lot of support.

(Apologies if you see this update several times - but it's important that I can fully gauge the interest level in the book so I can plan the simplest, most effective campaign that gets us the book.)

Almost all of that support is for artwork. What do I want? I want to custom-commission a new creature image for every single page of the book. Some of the monsters are good-to-go as-is. Some of the images I'd like to re-do to freshen them up, and let the artists show off their development over the years we've been working together.

But mostly, I want a really, really big gorgeous book filled with monsters, like this one from Forest's End.

I have writeups and text for well over 200 creatures. I'll need to stat them out (that takes my time), and get images (that's art cost). If we get a lot of interest, as revealed by pre-launch followers, I'll push to get it all started right away, and change the campaign structure from a more risk-averse one to "Boom. You lookin' for this?"

Help me out by clicking the link, and following the campaign.

More Details for the Curious

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a fantasy roleplaying game in possession of dungeons, must be in want of more monsters. No, more than that. Even more.

Whether riffing off Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, or the more genre-appropriate Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith, there’s no question that a giant book of creatures is a boon to gamemasters wanting to keep their campaigns fresh and exciting. For a long time, the classic big books of monsters have been hard to come by as a fully supported work for Powered by GURPS games.

No longer.

The Dungeon Fantasy RPG is purposefully generic: It is Powered by GURPS, after all. The Norðlond setting is not generic, borrowing from the literary tradition of the Viking culture. The sagas of looting, pillaging, and raiding for wealth and fame made a natural match for a game with a tag-line of “Smash Evil for Fun and Profit.”

Even with that in mind, the monsters here can be—and should be—repurposed and transplanted to other campaigns. Many of them are thinly disguised transplants from other cosmologies anyway: The nautamaðr is clearly based on the Minotaur; the Blóðughúfa, or “bloody hat” is the redcap, a fixture of Northumbrian folklore, perhaps derived or parallel to the Irish fear dearg, meaning “red man,” said to wear a red coat and cap.  Animals—normal, giant, and dire—don’t require any work to move between campaigns. Much as the player characters pillage loot, GMs should pillage the worked examples here to make their lives easier when running games in any campaign.

That's what I hope to bring to the Dungeon Fantasy RPG through a Norðlond lens. Oh, and many of the creatures correspond 1:1 with creatures from That Other Game. So if you just want to pick up a module or adventure path and run it, referring to this book for instant stats?

That's one of the things I hope to enable here.

As we get closer to launch (and launch is probably on the order of two weeks away), I'll post up how the development of the project is going. Patreon Subscribers will get previews of the fluff, the stats, and take monsters for test drives to see what they need or what they have too much of.

Until then...I hope you follow the campaign so that I know if I can go for the full book all at once, or have to split it into multiple shorter volumes.

Tower of the Moon (for TFT) Product Launch runs through Sept 30
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 03:44:35 PM

Just a friendly reminds this Tuesday that the product launch for Tower of the Moon (for TFT and the OSR as two separate products) is underway through Sept 30. This isn't exactly a Dungeon Fantasy RPG product ... but all of my Dungeon Fantasy RPG material is available there as well, in case you didn't get your fill through prior KS campaigns. However ...

Tower of the Moon is a product launch, not a Kickstarter! People who order PDFs get them immediately. Those who order physical products other than the OSR version of Tower of the Moon have their stuff ship out nearly immediately - sometimes the next day!

Everything made by Gaming Ballistic - plus a few choice items from Steve Jackson Games - are available. Again...the link says "pre-order," but only because I can't change it!

https://towerofthemoon.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

I have already shipped out one large retail order ... and would be very happy to do more, if your favorite local game store is up for it.

This is an experiment to see if a direct launch with instant gratification (or close to it) is more attractive than a crowdfunding campaign. If you want to see more like this, please let me know!

GCS Files Distribute to DTG-Core PDF backers
over 2 years ago – Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 11:09:51 AM

I got poked on this, so I asked my Patreon Subscribers, and they all felt that the GCS files that Fantell has been working on are ready for general distribution.

These are 100% fan generated, and apparently are pretty slick. So if you're a GCS (GURPS Character Sheet) user, they should make character generation with Delvers to Grow even faster.

GCA users will have to hunt up a volunteer - coding this stuff isn't my skill set.

Even so: Look for a download link from  Backerkit. 

If you have questions, you can poke in at:

Gaming Ballistic Discord (this link expires in seven days)

or

GCS Discord


I'm not quite sure when the files will be uploaded to the main GCS hub ... but they exist, you now have them, and how you use these tools are now in your own hands!


Thanks again to Fantell for making this happen!

UK/EU Books update
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 01, 2021 at 01:49:42 PM

The Good News

The books arrived at Kixto last night, and the owner didn't have to drive for two hours to physically pick them up. 

So, now that we settled a few outstanding issues there, he can start shipping the books. 

The Bad News

Naturally the box was damaged and we took some losses. I anticipated SOME of this, and packed two extra copies of each, but we lost four each of Krysuvik and Smart Delvers.

I told him to just pack up the orders as if the books were good, but to try and concentrate the damaged ones in (a) the UK, and (b) the smallest number of people possible. That should be two. 

I will, upon learning who this lucky individual is, immediately dispatch replacements directly from the USA via USPS. I'll also let them know who won the damaged goods lottery.