The Hard Sell
almost 3 years ago
– Wed, May 19, 2021 at 01:34:51 AM
I want to come in hard on this, and be unusually forceful on my pitch here, because I firmly believe what I'm about to say:
This is an absolutely game-changing book for those who like GURPS and the Dungeon Fantasy genre, but find that the 250-point expectation is a higher-power campaign than you like to play, or find that you and your players get frustrated with character creation.
Kevin has penned a system that allows chargen in Powered by GURPS to be fast. TFT Fast. OSR fast. 1st level D&D fast. Five to 15 minutes to a playable, robust, interesting character with only a few decisions required.
It's the best on-ramp to GURPS that has ever been written.
Yes, I think it's that good. I hope you do too.
You can do pick-up games at conventions or your FLGS with this book and have each newcomer make a character on the spot. Despite a "Nordlond" flavor to the art and examples, this is 100% exportable to any DFRPG and most DF games with no alteration. This is the recruiting tool you've been waiting for.
Delvers to Mow Down II: Grinding More Meat
almost 3 years ago
– Wed, May 19, 2021 at 01:34:36 AM
Over at Kreios' Lair, he continues to document the blind-test for Delvers to Grow. I'm going to link it here:
Go read it for a pretty darn entertaining look at what happens when the GM really is out to get you, and the price of failure is a few moments delay to quickly make a new character.
But I want to repost his conclusions here, because they're important:
Conclusion
That was incredibly fun - not serious roleplaying, obviously, but a very nice romp nonetheless. We saw these 9 characters in play:
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The Knight incredibly survived throughout the game despite his horrible luck (his parries were cursed, he often missed, and he rolled minimum damage multiple times) and almost being cut in half. He was quite amusing.
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The Backstabbing Thief did what backstabbing thiefs are apparently booked to do in this game: Disappear behind one enemy, killing them instantly, then being killed themselves. This one by being hacked apart by cultists.
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Thwock the Barbarian, our only surviving start character, showed why you need more armour in this scenario. He was already on fire, though, which hurt his chances and was sliced to death (well, stun) over multiple turns.
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Olaf Treehuggir (Druid) was already out of FP on the wall and stabbed surprisingly effective with his spear. He was decapitated by a demon.
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The Wrestler (me) was a very fun character, throwing cultists down the wall all day long. I feel these were pretty unique circumstances. On the other hand, he’s very amusing to play defensively, with at least 8 DR against everything but crushing while keeping no encumbrance. All-out attacks are still a risk for him, but less of one.
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Sven Wodenson (Martial Artist) was introduced into the fight by killing two cultists, and he continued doing so throughout. He killed at least five cultists. Then, he too was decapitated by a demon after being stunned by the Mage’s concussion and therefore at -5 to defend.
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Sir Cumstance (Knight) seemed unlucky, too. He was hit early and then soon stunned. He did kill at least one cultist, though.
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Slickfingers (Thief) is the only character that wasn’t stunned by the Mage. He’s quite damaged.
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The Mage’s main contribution was to stun almost all of the delvers. He did take out four flying demons, though, which was nice.
I want to stress that this is a very unique way of playing. Being in combat almost constantly, and being mobbed by these cultists, means that you have to prioritize armour and defences to survive. At the same time, since you’re playing disposable characters, you don’t much care about saving them.
From a character building PoV, which is what the book is about, this was incredible. People were building their characters during play, and everyone (except me, because I was trying to post everything live into discord and managed to survive anyway) had characters ready to go the instant their previous characters died. It was extremely fast and streamlined.
Oops. Wrong thing
almost 3 years ago
– Wed, May 19, 2021 at 12:14:30 AM
Nothing to see hre move along
It's a Roleplay Rescue! Delvers to Grow with Che and Doug
almost 3 years ago
– Wed, May 12, 2021 at 09:48:37 AM
Hello Rescuers! Yes, I’m pleased to say that it’s another bonus interview episode. This one’s popping up during the Interregnum between seasons because… well… there’s an excellent Kickstarter opportunity that I wanted to make GURPS fans - and, actually, any fan of fantasy roleplaying - aware of… and it’s from Gaming Ballistic.
Douglas H. Cole is the owner of Gaming Ballistic, the first licensed third-party publisher for the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game and The Fantasy Trip, working in support of Steve Jackson Games’ popular roleplaying games. His more recent projects include Five Perilous Adventures for The Fantasy Trip and the Nordland Sagas for the Dungeon Fantasy RPG. This time we are talking about his latest project in Kickstarter now!
Many thanks to Doug for coming to talk on the show!
Delvers to Grow (Dungeon Fantasy RPG, Powered by GURPS) by Douglas H. Cole — Kickstarter: kickstarter.com/projects/gamingballistic/delvers-to-grow-dungeon-fantasy-rpg-powered-by-gurps
Gaming Ballistic: gamingballistic.com
"Roleplay Rescue" Theme and incidental music by Jon Cohen from Tale of the Manticore: taleofthemanticore.podbean.com
Roleplay Rescue Contact Details:
Voice Message: anchor.fm/rpgrescue/message
Email: [email protected]
Patreon: patreon.com/rpgrescue
Blog: roleplayrescue.com
MeWe Group: mewe.com/join/roleplayrescue (or search "Roleplay Rescue")
High Praise from the Chaotic GM: Meatgrinder Impressions
almost 3 years ago
– Tue, May 11, 2021 at 06:05:47 PM
New DFRPG Kickstarter: Delvers to Grow
This is a word-for word repost of a blog post by "The Chaotic GM." He's a Patreon member of mine, and I've been part of several forums he's been on (SJGames, Discord, my own Gaming Ballistic forum on Discord, etc) for a while. He always gives great, constructive feedback. He'll tell you what he likes, and what needs to change.
So, without further ado: The Chaotic GM's thoughts on the draft manuscript from Delvers to Grow.
Gaming Ballistic has launched a new Kickstarter project. Delvers to Grow by Kevin Smyth is a DFRPG supplement scratching two common itches: character creation taking too long even with the distilled ruleset and 250-point characters having too many moving parts for players inexperienced with the genre. Both have one thing in common: too many choices, and DtG reduces this down to just half a dozen major ones per character while still producing effective, flavorful characters at 62, 125 and 187 points fully compatible with the DFRPG profession templates.
Art by Ksenia Kozhevnikova.
I had the privilege of running a bunch of playtests at the 125-point level, and I can confidently say that DtG delivers what it set out to do. It was a meatgrinder scenario where characters would die often and each player would create several different characters during a 4-hour session. Some players reported character generation time (including gear and spells) as low as 10 minutes, even complaining that half of that was wrangling with GCS or GCA. Now for first-timers this will likely be higher, 30 minutes seems to be an average. Even for those with no prior DFRPG experience whatsoever or those who get overwhelmed with too many options, it shouldn’t take longer than an hour and they’ll have a fully fledged character ready to throw some dice at the table.
DtG achieves this by having each character built from a base template (one for each of three categories of characters – “strong”, “fast” and “smart” – at each of the three point levels), up to four 25- or 50-point profession and “upgrade” modules, and two -25-point disadvantage modules. Finally, each character chooses a couple gear packages and in case of casters, one of several spell lists available for each profession. Unlike the 250-point profession templates, you get no more than a couple choices within each of the base templates and modules, and many of the modules offer no such smaller choices at all. If this seems too constraining – it really is not, because the way you can mix and match the modules results in a wide variety of builds even within a single profession. You can always loosen it up if more customization is desired – DtG is simply a tool to speed up character creation, not a prescriptive rulebook to follow to the letter or else.
Aside from being a great DFRPG resource, DtG left an important impression with me. While the endless options and fine granularity of GURPS character generation are one of the main reasons why it’s my favorite game, over the last year or two I grew to like “profession” templates very much as a tool for illustrating character archetypes, effective builds and even setting flavor for any given game. I like the chunkier, simpler evolution presented in DtG even more and will seriously consider it for all my GURPS material going forward. And if anyone asks me what should be done to get more new players into the GURPS ecosystem, my first answer will be “this”. So much this.
