Dungeon Fantasy & GURPS

I was redesigning some of the Pathfinder 1e iconic characters using Dungeon Fantasy, and I had this moment. The iconic Pathfinder characters are perfect in GURPS; they're shockingly good.

I am slowly getting system mastery over characters in this area, and I can express a lot of different weapon combos and fighting styles, along with quick draw options, special attacks, amped skills, advantages to support special combat moves, and armor training to increase protection.

I look at Pathfinder 1e, B/X, 5E, or even Pathfinder 2E. Why?

I feel like a computer programmer going back and being asked to use a "toy" programming language to complete a task. What do you want me to do, roll ability scores, pick a class, and roll hit points?

Why?

I can't do anything with this.

Merisiel was a good example; her bio says, "She isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer." But she solves all her problems with her knives. High DX, drop IQ for skills and abilities. Her IQ thief skills suffer, but her DX ones are great. Her sleight of hand, traps, concealment, and other IQ skills are below average. Her stealth, climbing, and escape skills are all 18-20. Her knife skills are equally high, giving her options for special attacks.

I don't get that in Pathfinder 1e; maybe she has fewer skill points. So what? Well, um, some of the DEX skills she could have bought with those skill points from INT, she can't buy - so she could be better at them. Sorry! INT gatekeeps DEX skills in this version! In GURPS, she buys points in skills linked to DEX. If her IQ is low, so are her IQ skills.

I can work on those and improve them or lean into DX and combat abilities. She may need to do social things. Perhaps she will learn magic? Does she go more dodgy or more armor-skills? I don't know.

The campaign will determine how she progresses.

And every campaign will be different.

She could progress a million ways depending on the story she goes through.

I am not looking at a thief progression chart and planning it all out. I don't know what's coming for her. She could get corruption and a disadvantage and gain dark shadow magic powers. She may lean more into thief IQ skills and need to disarm traps and do all sorts of smarts-thief stuff.

For solo play, this is super high motivation. Her starting character sheet is just that, a starting point. I will probably copy this starting character and use a duplicate for her first campaign. It is a good design that meshes with her gear, skills, and backstory. If I learn things, I can tweak her starting build.

She can go infinite ways, depending on the story's needs and how I will take her.

I look at 5E and B/X, see those build paths and skill progression charts, and sigh. There it is. It is all planned out for me. No imagination, story, or future experiences are needed. Follow the charts or the best build paths on some forum somewhere or multiclass away - you will be fine. You will have high DPS. Your passive perception will spot all traps. That old list of thief skills will always be 50% since modules scale in difficulty anyway.

I am not interested in soloing along a preset path.

I can't do anything with this.

I get this sad feeling that today's players think they know what roleplaying and character-building are. They think multiclassing, some broken class combo the play-testers never found, is "good character building." They don't even know 1% of the joy of building a character and not having a path to follow. The freedom of making your own build. Yes, there are broken things in GURPS, too, but once you find those, you can avoid them for the game's good. Or only dip into them a little and not lean so hard it breaks. But there are a million other ways every character can go.

In level-based games, my fighter will get 5 levels of roleplaying and story XP and somehow be better able to fight and kill. It doesn't even make sense. How did that happen?

If you don't have a say in your character builds, I can't say you are truly roleplaying.

You are just pushing a build along a level track predetermined for you.

And very little that happens to you matters anyway, since your character doesn't reflect those experiences.

Dungeon Fantasy vs. Pathfinder 1e

 

The two fantasy games I have fighting it out on my most-played shelves are Pathfinder 1e and Dungeon Fantasy. 5E is off to the side, and I am waiting for Tales of the Valiant to drop. Unsurprisingly, the final two on my shelf are the games that give me the best character-building options.

Pathfinder 1e has a decade of options and choices.

Dungeon Fantasy has infinite choices.

A traditional class framework is where I begin in Dungeon Fantasy, a 250-point build that gives me the equivalent of a level 5-8 Pathfinder 1e character - the established hero. In Dungeon Fantasy, you aren't starting out as a level-one cannon fodder newbie. This leads to the game being less new-player friendly, but you start off pretty capable and the baseline established hero.

The excellent Delvers to Grow series of books for Dungeon Fantasy solves the complexity problem by creating lower-point starting builds. These are way less capable and will have a higher mortality rate, but the complexity is lower, and the things you start with are much less, so you can grasp game rules better without choice paralysis.

Pathfinder? I like the build system, and I loved the original 1e world before it turned into a modern steampunk setting, an overly safe and non-triggering space. The new world feels far too contemporary for me; the age of adventure is over, and we have moved into the 20th century. The 2010s version of Golarion is far superior to the 2020s, and it still feels like Conan - it is epic, whereas the Pathfinder 2E world feels like a tourist attraction with Harry Potter vibes. The new team just can't recapture the spark of the classic world, and they changed it so much that it lost the feeling of classic 1970s fantasy.

The 2E rules are better than 1e. They are just not my thing.

The 2E world is a YA novel.

I am slowly getting the feeling that what I will be doing is a GURPS-Finder campaign.

I like the rules I enjoy, and the character builds in Pathfinder 1e are good; in a GURPS-like system, they are great. My starting builds are just that, starting points. I can take them in any direction I want from there. If I wish my wizard's following 250 points to be all fighter abilities, so be it.

This is the "taking a character in a new direction" thing, which is why I love GURPS. With d20 level-based games, my story is done at level one - at least in progress. I can read the book, plan my path, and then go through the required number of dungeons to start up the level chart. I know where this character is going; it is a matter of time before the boxes are checked, and I have a level 9 sorcerer.

With GURPS, my sorcerer could get involved in a ton of roleplaying and court intrigue, and all of a sudden, I am spending my following 40 points on social abilities. And I am not "looking for a bard to do it" - I need to improve my character's abilities in those areas. This makes it much more solo-friendly since my character morphs into a set of powers, skills, and abilities I will need for what is happening now and whatever I encounter.

My character's advancement path is their history of adventure.

It's not some book's pre-planned path for me.

It is tough; I have a lot of Pathfinder 1e books, and I like to feel like I am using them. But I greatly appreciate the OG Golarion setting more than the Pathfinder 1e rules. Recolored through a GURPS lens, OG Golarion would rock. You don't have these level 20 superheroes running around sneezing on goblins and killing them without a worry. The artificial power inflation is gone, and everyone exists on a flatter power scale.

But these days, games with pre-planned character progression tracks are lame. This is the same feeling I had in the late 1980s when GURPS 3e killed AD&D and the heavily censored AD&D 2nd Edition. Everyone was playing GURPS after AD&D died.

GURPS, Battletech, and Vampire were three reasons TSR filed for bankruptcy.

The biggest was Magic: The Gathering.

You can also put Rifts and Shadowrun in that group somewhere.

D&D is not immune, nor was it ever.

The arguments against level systems and pre-planned level-based advancement are the same today as they were then. Today, people have given up on being creative and wanting to create their own characters and are content with "gaming the systems" that other people design for them.

Today's gamers? Breaking a game with an exploit is good character design.

Using GURPS to run Golarion is like "Pathfinder: The Movie" or an HBO series set in that world. A producer or director will first tamp the power level to make it realistic and believable. Those who play the game will sit in the theater and wonder where the teleport and wish spells went, and those would have never been even in the script since they would have ruined the movie. Magic will work differently, the fights will be more realistic, and everything will feel "off" to people watching the movie.

Game worlds and movie worlds are night and day.

GURPS is the game every setting ends up with. After everything goes out of print or is pulled from the shelves for licensing issues, GURPS will give the world a system to call home.

The Joy of Equipment to the Last Pound

I am in the minority on this, but, oh, do I enjoy creating equipment load-outs for my character to the last pound. In many games, they write for the "please make it easy" crowd; those games just don't do it for me. They will simplify encumbrance straight out of the game, handwave it to coins to movement, or ignore the weight of essential gear.

Yes, crafting an equipment load takes time.

But this is just as enjoyable as character creation, especially if your weight matters. And you are playing a system where you can point-buy your strength up to levels where your combat statistics and movement improve, and you can see that improvement on the battlefield. GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy are like that. My low-level tanks are slow and unable to dodge. They are designed to drop those backpacks to at least get to light encumbrance so they can get an extra point of movement.

My first priorities are buying strength and the character's basic movement allowance. If I get magic gear that is lighter, great. If I can upgrade the armor, I need to recalculate. I may earn money for new stuff, and shopping is a character improvement.

Look at that loadout. I added six rations after this and spent 12 copper, but those went in the backpack, and I am ready to go. This loadout is "dressing for success" in an old-school game - and your weight allowance game is the difference between life and death.

I've lost half the people reading this by now; I know that equipment list is atrocious. This is the GURPS Character Sheet, by the way (please support the creator on Patreon, this is an awesome application, far more worth subscriptions to anything), and it makes organizing and picking gear easy. I organized the list so pouches would go on the belt, the backpack would be last in case I wanted to drop to get to light encumbrance, and my weapons and armor would come first.

She is a cleric with a light spell; no torches are needed (sorry, Shadowdark). This candle-like light isn't torch-worthy, but it will keep her out of the dark. And I know the image below is a plate mail set when my gear says scale. This is later in her career.

Note to gamemastering games like this. Don't you dare make those heavily armored orcs have a complete, unencumbered movement allowance! That is not fair! If the players are tracking to-the-pound weight allowances, knock points off the move/dodge EVERY humanoid enemy depending on their armor and load. Stronger enemies will have fewer points knocked off, but armored (usually fast) goblins may suffer more.

This isn't D&D where goblins can run in full plate at full speed.

If I am running one or two characters in a solo play, I can manage this. That gear list is a part of the character design. My gear will force character point spending. If my STR goes up, my move and dodge improve, and so will my melee damage, so I get a triple benefit. Better equipment will change her load out, especially magic items.

Gear, once set, usually doesn't change all that much. Typically, it will be "X pounds of treasure carried" in a dungeon, and when the adventure is over, we go shopping and recalculate our gear. This is also "character improvement" without raising the power level as characters improve their gear and optimize.

In games like GURPS, I don't give out too much magic treasure. I am rethinking that and will be more generous in my solo games since magic items are fun.

If you simplify the gear game, a lot starts falling apart. The Fantasy Trip simplifies gear but has the GURPS assumptions built in. Armor sets movement rate. You have limited slots for items; some take up more 'item slots' than others. The gear game is here, and it matters. It is simplified for multi-unit skirmishes, but the design principles are the same.

Dungeon Fantasy and GURPS are built on that core assumption, but the game goes into more detail. You track encumbrance, and strong characters can negate the movement penalties. There is a concept of dodge linked to the encumbrance level. You can drop backpacks before you go into battle. You can increase base speed. Character points let you play with these values so you can level up and tweak your gear load and build.

Some games handwave it all off for simplicity, and there is a market for that. I find that many 'ease of use' OSR games toss out that complexity, and there isn't much to replace it. Movement and hauling treasure, the core of the OSR dungeon game, is simplified to an extent where all the tactical (and escape) options are meaningless. It becomes walk up and bonk each over the head until the bag of hit points is depleted. Having archers to target fast enemies isn't needed. Your tanks being slow isn't a consideration in tactics, battle movement, and evasion.

It's all just too simplified to the point of being bland.

Solo Motivation

Or, more specifically, a lack of motivation.

I have tried playing solo RPGs, but it is challenging to get them to work. The more charts a game has, the worse it gets for me. This doesn't bode well for many chart-heavy games, like Shadowdark or DCC, and in some games, I freeze up and quit playing because of chart paralysis.

It blows up whenever I go high concept with a pre-built group of 'fun' characters. Four characters are my party limit; everyone at spot five and up gets ignored.

I do better with single-character games. Survival. A focused experience on one person and their challenges. Games that are balanced for parties are tricky since they force me to play more characters or solo-friendly classes (cleric, paladin, etc.). I can feel the missing character classes in some games in my experience. No rogue in the party? Who is opening the door, then? I guess we are hosed when it comes to any situation needing stealth. No cleric? Who is going to heal us?

Add to that most modules are written for 4-6 characters. Designers will think nothing of tossing 8 orcs in a room; the CR is good; we are done here. In addition to being a dull encounter for a solo player who is a meat grinder - especially for classes without that sleep spell this encounter is supposed to mitigate. A lot of D&D's design is predicated on the spells the game gives you, and designers of the old tournament modules would give pre-gen characters resources and one spell that should be used in one room for maximum effectiveness. It was the same with a flask of oil, a rope, and iron spikes - all of it had a use somewhere to 'solve' a room like a puzzle.

For solo play, I am looking at an encounter of 12 giant rats and asking myself, how many should there be for a solo character? The answer is always one to three, and with oracle dice determining if some hang back or watch, to avoid a video game-like "rubbing the character out" like this were a game of Gauntlet.

I still love GURPS, especially Dungeon Fantasy. I had both on a storage shelf and recently pulled DF out and put it on one of my play shelves. I like the character designs, the detailed equipment for dropping backpacks of heavy gear on the ground, and the tactical combat. I love the point-buy characters with dozens of skills and traits. I love building custom advantages and disadvantages.

What trade-offs do you make? What limitations do you pick? How do you set up your gear? How do you fight? Do you fight? Are you more of a task or social character, or a mix? How are your survival skills? Does it make sense to have them? How much money do you have in types of coins? Where do you keep it? Do you have a set of nice clothes for social encounters? Where are you staying tonight? Can you cover the cost of a more comfortable place?

Every character is like a mini-game design.

The freedom is unparalleled.

Point-buy games are more compelling for me to play solo since I can build characters who do a little bit of everything. I can work on the skills I need. If my cleric in a GURPS game needs archery, I have something to spend character points on. If they need stealth, that skill is right there for my next skill purchase. Do they need survival skills? Buy them. Don't go looking for a ranger. The concept of certain classes being good at some things to the exclusion of others - sucks.

So you are telling me a nature domain cleric has no survival skills and will get lost and die in the woods? Are you telling me a follower of a thief god has no thieving skills? That a barbarian can't have magic shout powers or blood magic? I should multiclass if I want that. Why? Because your game is broken fundamentally and can't express certain character concepts?

And then the answer is that a new book is coming out for you to buy for those options.

If you want those skills in a party, you must create another character to have them. It is more paperwork for my solo game and another character to keep track of. I would rather have one ultra-detailed character than twelve simple ones.

Give me a world and system like Skyrim, where one character can be a master of many things. I can play Dungeon Fantasy with one character easily. They will be skilled in many areas of my choosing, and if they know a little magic, all the better - if I want it, I don't have to invest there and be very good in a few areas.

Is it 5E? Can I run a party of characters? Can I run a dozen? Do I have all these monster and treasure tables? Do I have hundreds of adventures at my fingertips? Are combats fast? Are the rules intuitive?

No, to all of the above.

However, GURPS isn't a game; it is a toolkit. The rules are designed in a way where you choose which sections to ignore. When you use a real-world toolbox to fix something in your house, like tightening a screw, do you need to use every tool in the box? No. I can run the hyper-realistic GURPS combat like D&D, roll to hit, and apply damage. Most advanced rules are there if you want them, but it's okay if you ignore them.

Most 5E groups have no idea how to play a game like that. But this is old-school and mirrors how we used to play AD&D back in the day. Rules were simply a collection of things we used to run a game - and these rules could come from multiple sources - the game itself, articles in Dragon magazine, house rules, supplemental games like Arms Law, and even other games like Aftermath. Most of the time, a group's rules were the group's game collection and hand-written notes.

People today "think" B/X was followed precisely by the book and need a reference guide to ensure they are "playing it right," but they are so lost. I am like the ancient Egyptian coming to the future telling you that you are reading all those hieroglyphics wrong, and you have no idea.

These days, most OSR games sell you the fallacy that buying the book will give you an authentic experience. That is so far from the truth it hurts.

I need to put a sister game in here, Savage Worlds since this is also a point-buy game. Anything I say about GURPS or Dungeon Fantasy character builds applies to Savage Worlds. This is also far easier than GURPS but more conceptual and abstract.

Most B/X damage dice and hit point ranges are acceptable for GURPS, and the combat skill can be 10+HD, modified up or down by a little to account for danger. AC can be figured out relatively using GURPS armors.

Grab the free Basic Fantasy PDF; you will have a ton of monsters and treasures to use directly with Dungeon Fantasy. Convert them to your heart's content, and don't worry about using a character sheet designer to get these designs to the point. It does not matter.

An orc from Basic Fantasy?

• HP = 10  (10 x HD)
• Attack Skill, Parry = 13 (10 + HD, I added 2 for a somewhat skilled fighter)
• Dodge = 8 (estimated)
• Damage = 1d6+1 (by weapon, use the GURPS charts; I added one for strength)
• DR = 2 (heavy leather)

An ogre?

• HP = 40  (10 x HD)
• Attack Skill, Parry = 16 (10 + HD, I added 2)
• Dodge = 6 (estimated)
• Damage = 2d6 (I used B/X damage, this is powerful)
• DR = 3 (one better than the orc)

My hits numbers are a rough calculation and possibly more suited for parties. Many "designed" monsters typically never have more than 20-30 hits, so 40 seems like an outlier. Then again, 40 hits will not be enough once modern firearms appear.

But why GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy?

For solo play, I lose interest if I play a too simple game. Take a dirt-simple game; you pick a class. Anything your class can do, you succeed on a 1-4 on a d6. Anything you can't? You have a 1 in 6 chance. For a character to survive a hit, it is 1-4 on a d6. For a monster, hit and survive is a 1-2 on a d6. My game is a variation of B/X d6 skills but applied to everything.

It needs a lot of tweaking and improvement and at least 300 pages of random tables to fill out the game. I also need to pay a lot of YouTubers to promote this as the next big thing. Ah, the grift is high in the hobby currently. But it is sorting out since we are in the "creators fighting with each other" phase, which means the grift is declining.

I am not playing more than 5 minutes, and certainly never playing that for an entire campaign. No matter how good the game gets, it has no depth and can't keep my interest.

In Dungeon Fantasy, I could run a maximum of three characters. One is ideal. Two is okay, but I need to start juggling a lot of variables. Three would be my absolute limit. But the one character, the hero, Buck Rogers, Conan, Flash Gordon - this is a story of a hero.

And the single hero who can do it all is the ideal. In party-based play, you need role protection to pull in multiple players. In solo play, I am better off with a point-based system that lets me improve in areas the campaign challenges me with. If my game turns out to be 90% social, I can focus on improvement there. In D&D, if that is the case and I am a fighter, I am out of luck, so campaign over or roll up a social tag along NPC to use as a roleplay puppet.

Most NPCs? GURPS Ultra-Lite. Even PC allies. Use this for enemies, spiders, rats, orcs, and goblins - all can be GURPS UL characters and mesh perfectly with the complete rules. NPCs and opponents do not need to be anything more than this.

If you know how to cut and fold paper, your GURPS NPCs can be zero work, and you will have a lot more fun playing the game. You can hack in advantages and disadvantages with a pick cost or extra pick.

I am a lot more motivated to play with heroic, single-player games that do not use character classes and role protection. Open advancement also appeals to me greatly since my character is a product of the campaign - and they do not drive it.

If I pick a fighter class in D&D, and my game turns out to be exploration or social-based - the game breaks. In DF or GURPS, I buy skills and abilities in those areas, and my character improves organically. And I am not 'forced' to 'create fights' in a campaign just because 'I have a fighter, and they should fight something.'

Part of the problem I had staying motivated was feeling forced into a role with no path forward if the campaign changed or a particular skill became essential to continue. A game's direction can change with one dice roll in solo play.

A Game of Skills, part 4

We are still discussing the example of play in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy in the Exploits book on pages 103-104.

So the party reads the runes on the walls (no skill roll needed) and finds out they are in the right place: the tomb of a vampire who may have come back to cause trouble. We are doing marching orders and readying weapons, and one of them is maintaining a light spell for free while using the Cartography skill to map. The GM notes stealth with light is impossible, but they are blind without it.

Thank you for avoiding the modern 'make it easy' curse of everyone having night vision. This is why people play Shadowdark over 5E, and Dungeon Fantasy also smartly avoids this problem. Torches and light are instant drama!

We get a section of GM's advice, smartly saying that their opening the door and going into the tomb awakened the vampire. The vampire is moving around in the dark, but a secret quick contest between the vampire's Stealth skill versus the two wary party members looking for trouble - the mapper is busy and does not get to roll. One of the party members hears movement and calls for a stop.

Light, darkness, sounds, shadows, and detection of things moving around out there - the dungeon is alive! An enemy is stalking them. The light gave their location away. Making the dungeon a 'sim environment' is critical to enhancing the mood and adding to the fun. This also allows the party members to use their skills, even though the dice rolls here were secret. As a GM, I note everyone's Perception scores to make these rolls secretly instead of asking for them during play.

Before we get into combat, it is imperative to highlight that dungeons are a 'home-field advantage' to those who live there. They could have patrols, warning bells, secret escape routes, ways to come up behind the party, traps, animals or creatures to set free, doors to lock, or other devices and tactics to use when protecting their home turf.

The example of play here highlights parallel movement in secret outside of the party's vision. Too often, we stick an encounter in a room and wait for the players to walk in and 'activate' the room like it was some sort of MMO where one goblin can't see the other goblin being killed 10 feet away. Light, fires, spells, the sounds of battle, the smell of food, and even the party talking among itself can attract attention, and some monsters can see heat or smell fresh meat from a long distance away.

Once monsters start sneaking around the periphery, the entire area 'lights up' and becomes alive. Also, some monsters may need light to move and act, so this is a two-way street. A party hiding in the dark from orcs using torches to search for them is a tense moment!

And remember the players being creative with their skills and actions during these moments! An intelligent thief hearing movement may alert their party quietly and melt into the shadows with stealth. Weapons and shields need actions to be ready. Spells can be cast. Traps can be set or caltrops thrown down to deter a charge. Someone could bar a nearby door. Those characters who need to drop backpacks for movement and extra dodging ability should start planning to put them down now.

Remember what happens to the lights! A dropped torch could go out or land on the ground, giving off less light. A light spell that needs concentration to maintain could be disrupted if that wizard loses focus. A torch can be thrown toward an enemy, leaving the arty in darkness, and the oncoming creatures lit up (or hit by the torch for damage). A dropped lantern may break and spill flaming oil all over. New torches may need to be lit in combat.

During combat, someone may hear alarms nearby being shouted, and more trouble is coming their way. Don't stop the 'dungeon sim' when combat starts or in this preparatory phase - the whole dungeon is alive, dangerous, and reacting to the sounds and lights of the battle raging in a part of it. Some monsters could lock doors, set traps, and bar themselves in a room. Others could send scouts out or establish guards in different areas. Enemy mages could be preparing spells. An enemy VIP may take this chance to flee. Neutral monsters, such as giant spiders, may be attracted by the heat and noise to pick off the unwary from the darkness.

The 'dungeon sim' never stops and reacts to events, and if things quiet down - it could return to semi-normalcy. This isn't all 'anti-player' events; the other side could make mistakes, too - we will see more of this soon. We are in a pre-combat phase, but everything here impacts the combat. This also raises tension and creates uncertainty.

This is old-school gaming at its best, bolstered by a robust set of skills that never stops working for the player - and the other side, if you play them smart. Since GURPS is a more realistic game, you get a gritty, dangerous, and realistic experience highlighting how risky this dungeon-crawling business is in reality.

A Game of Skills, part 3

We are still discussing the example of play in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy in the Exploits book on pages 103-104.

So, the Observation skill for spotting dangerous things from afar and the Search skill to search through the room's contents are all we need, right?

The example continues with the GM asking a player if they can read the Ancient language and then reading what the runes on the wall say (keep out!). Your rooms should be filled with little fun chances to use skills, and some of these should reward the players with valuable information, warnings, clues, and other benefits if the players apply a little logic.

Let's say the players find a trapdoor with orc writing next to it. If they know orc, they will read, "Climb down to the second tunnel; do not go all the way down!" Instant clue and possibly how to avoid dying in a trap down there, or being fed to hungry alligators. They don't know orc? Well, next time someone will think about buying it and catch these things, don't give them the answer! Nobody will spend character points on these fantastic skills if you tell them what it means anyway!

There are many skills you could put these "Easter eggs" in your rooms, room contents, doors, and hallways. Here are a few:

• Connoisseur - To appraise items.
• Current Affairs - To make sense of scouting and news reports.
• Forgery - To recognize forged works.
• Heraldry - To identify groups, bad guys, and enemy forces.
• Herb Lore - To identify special herbs.
• Naturalist - Wilderness lore for outside.
• Occultism - To identify the supernatural.
• Thaumatology - To identify magic and spells.
• Poetry - Hey, there may be poems in here.
• Physiology - Find a dead monster? Want to know why?
• Poisons - To detect and identify poisons.
• Prospecting - What is that mineral in the wall?
• Theology - The study of gods and the divine.
• Traps - These places are often trapped.

Hidden Lore needs to be called out as a special one since your campaign will typically have quite a lot of this, and it will have specializations - such as the Ancient Lothanian Empire, the Cult of the Serpent Eye, or the Mystic Seers of Kalaman-Du. Nobody knows these extraordinary things, but your character may have some knowledge. Before the game, you need to have a rough outline of these and allow characters to take Hidden Lore in these areas if interested.

When a character identifies an eye staff of a Cult of the Serpent Eye priest, they will feel special, and the points spent on that skill will have paid off - especially if that staff turns out to be valuable or essential to the story later. If characters spend the points on skills, give them chances to use them and shine! Make those discoveries crucial to survival and the plot.

Religious Ritual is another you may not see a use for, but characters with Clerical Investment will be able to bless or purify a shrine. If you find a corrupted shrine giving power to evil, then doing this should impact the grand scheme of things, cut off a power source for a villain, and generally be regarded as a 'good thing' by the character's religion.

5E clerics are like, oh, corrupted shrine, who cares? Is there treasure under it? Or bash it with a hammer! Most will walk right by and take a short rest.

The rules of a game can limit your thinking. Once you go outside the box, your mind expands.

As a GM, you must make your rooms rich with plenty of skill opportunities and pay attention to apparent uses. If a player makes a suggestion that seems appropriate, such as asking if an orc chieftain's room has a cache of maps, notes, and other essential documents - let them try and find it and make sense of them! Refrain from settling for bland, empty, 20x20' room descriptions as a player. Ask questions! Does this look like a storage or guard room? Was this a shrine? What did they do here?

Push to use those skills!

GMs, give them plenty of chances to use them, and places where skills they don't have may have been helpful!

People hate GURPS because it has a lot of skills. This is one of the system's strengths, and this skill system puts 5E to shame. The 5E game is too simple and basic to do specialties and low-level, specific, and granular skill checks and masteries. GURPS gives you the tools to create a mage who is an expert at that ancient serpent cult, and that specialist has motivation and usefulness far beyond just being the party's 'magic user.'

We got three articles from the first column of the example of play, and there is a lot to pull out and think about here. This example is great since it illustrates many essential points about the game, but it is so dense that pulling it apart slowly teaches you much more than you would think.

A Game of Skills, part 2

We are still discussing the example of play in GURPS Dungeon Fantasy in the Exploits book on pages 103-104.

We are at the point where we are checking a lock for traps, and this part really deserves a closer look. Note how the thief is being asked to do a perception-based Traps skill roll to find traps and then a dexterity-based Traps skill roll to disarm them.

My scout character (created by GURPS Character Sheet) has this entry for his traps skill:

Skill        Level    RSL        Points    Page Number
Traps       9           IQ-2        4             DFA92

So he rolls 9-minus for his Traps skill, based on IQ (his IQ score is 11). This is the default skill level for identifying traps and figuring out how they work - NOT finding or disarming them. Since he has a DX of 15, his disarming roll is four higher (15 - 11 = 4), resulting in a 13-minus. For finding, his PER is 14, three higher (14 - 11 = 3), so a value of 12-minus.

I thought all rolls were 9 or less for this skill!

Huge mistake.

This is something that never really clicked inside my head about GURPS until I slowed down and read this carefully. This is HUGE for this character, especially when finding and disarming traps - he knows more about doing that than how they work, just from his attributes. A 12 and 13 minus for these skills also means, as a player, I will rely on this skill more than they were if I assumed ALL rolls were 9 or less.

And assuming a 9-minus for everything - like my character sheet shows - was grossly unfair to my character.

This rule is mentioned on page 71 of the Skills book (and not in the Exploits book), but it never really clicked in my head that this was how GURPS worked. This is a massive change in how I view the entire skill system in GURPS and it makes the system a lot more flexible and fair for some character types.

I get the feeling this is one of those things that 90% of the people that try GURPS and end up hating it miss. You can never do anything! A low score means, why even try? None of that is true. You are much more capable in most skills than you assume.

This is it for today for pouring over this example of play; this is a huge piece of how to understand GURPS.

A Game of Skills, part 1

For those of us wondering how GURPS Dungeon Fantasy plays and trying to grasp what is going on with this game, please take a moment to read the Example of Play in the Dungeon Fantasy Exploits book on pages 103-104. And don't blast through this; slow down and read it action by action - you will learn a lot.

The first interaction with the thief refusing to touch the locked door unless the mage scans it for magic tells us a lot about the game - this is a game about information. The more you have, the better your chances of success. This is the heart of GURPS, and good game masters will use this fact to leverage success in skill rolls to advantage in avoiding danger, getting the advantage in combat, solving problems, and completing the mission.

Dungeon Fantasy spells are fun and much better than the simplistic 5E magic and MMO-like cantrips. You have a lot of magic, all particular and helpful spells, and they can all be used in many ways. Each spell is a skill, and building your mage will shape who you are - a unique and memorable magic system that offers casters infinite creativity when using spells in fun ways. Spells can also be more minor, scoped, and specific, helping out in a single situation like detecting magic on a lock (or anything else).

Environments and situations should be littered with little things that use skills, writings on walls, history, footprints on the floor for tracking, construction features for engineering, and every other skill on the list. If characters don't have it, they will want it when it comes up, and everyone fails the skill roll. Activities like navigation, map making, survival, social interaction, history, dungeon engineering, research, and activities that use every skill on the list are essential!

Every skill roll you make ticks up that invisible victory point total that a GM should keep track of in their mind for the adventure. Every skill roll you make should be reflected as a tangible advantage in the game or contribute to a good outcome overall.

Also, note that disadvantages are roleplayed! GURPS is never a "self-insert" game like D&D or Pathfinder, one where the company encourages you to "put yourself in the game" and "the game is an identity brand." GURPS is more like the Sims, where you create a unique character with flaws and advantages and "sim" the character through a situation. You are always a step removed from the character, and it is never ever "you as the character."

Understand this. This is a clear break between today's corporatist lifestyle-brand games and GURPS. One character in this example of play has a laziness disadvantage. You know what would happen in today's landscape, "Are you calling me - the player - LAZY?!"

Triggered! X card!

No, the character you designed has a disadvantage in the game called laziness. This is not you. This is your "Sims character," and you are responsible for directing them around the dungeon. No one is calling a player lazy. This is a simulation game. Take a step back. Their disadvantages could get them into bad situations like in the Sims. When we picked that disadvantage for character points, we accepted the risks and outcomes and looked forward to seeing it used in-game. 

This is the fun of GURPS across any genre and any setting.

This is also why we can never have a GURPS 5th Edition. Everything remotely challenging to our well-being would be removed from the game; it would no longer be the "character simulator" we love. GURPS is not a rose-colored mirror reflecting a fake cartoon fantasy that invites you to self-insert. It is an untouched photograph with warts, wrinkles, stretch marks, scars, bad hair, dumb expressions, out-of-focus pictures, and everything else that Wall Street uses Photoshop, newspeak, and AI to erase. The Sims have a kleptomaniac and lazy disadvantage, as do GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy. This does not say anything negative about this condition or people with it in the real world - but it reflects this trait in reality.

To take that away ruins the game.

We are flawed, beautiful people. I play games that accept that and reflect us. To be perfect or 'play yourself' is tedious and leads to people moving on from the hobby when something else that caters to self-inserting comes along. Corporatist games make every character perfect, happy people - and thus, everyone is miserable.

I accept my flaws; why can't I do the same for my character? My flaws make me beautiful. Those flaws make us who we are, and we love them as a part of ourselves. They make our characters memorable and exciting. The imperfections make the sparkles of the diamond.

And we love GURPS like we love the Sims since watching characters fail because of their shortcomings - and dealing with the aftermath - is a massive part of the fun.

And we love seeing them succeed despite them.

This is what makes us heroes.

I Tried Walking Away, but I Can't

Dungeon Fantasy is just too good of a game.

I get 5E; character progression is a theme park ride on rails. Sometimes, it is an enjoyable ride. The second time through, it is meh, mostly the same unless you are following someone's multiclassing guide and breaking the game. Pathfinder 2e is balanced with good options all the way up, but the class complexity and dozens of unique tags and conditions killed the game for me.

Yes, GURPS characters are complex. The 250-point starting characters are equivalent to 8th-level characters in D&D and are highly capable. They are also a lot to handle for new players, with tons of skills, powers, spells, and special abilities to manage. Combat and damage use a more realistic system, with parries, blocks, and dodges being important.

Despite all its detractors, GURPS has done something right to last nearly 40 years. This is still the same game as the first version, and despite a few subsystems and options, it has mostly stayed the same. The 4th Edition has lasted nearly 20 years, outlasting D&D 3, 3.5, 4, 4 Essentials, and 5E.

And when I play GURPS and the fantasy-themed version Dungeon Fantasy, I am taken back to the 1980s when AD&D sucked, and a point-buy system like GURPS was much more fun to play and craft characters in. Those of you who weren't there just don't know, and those rose-colored glasses of nostalgia blind you to so much.

If the kids in Stranger Things were cool, they would play GURPS. And Car Wars. Then again, shows you what the writers know about the 1980s. Everyone played Car Wars in the pre-Battletech days, post-Atari and pre-NES. Back when you had to go outside to have fun, nobody had phones in their pockets, and kids could just be kids.

Everyone did have a hand calculator, though. I still have one, and it still works after 40 years.

Back to using GURPS to play fantasy. Every skill matters; the skills you choose matter. You can play a social-focused campaign with no combat. You can play a skill-focused game more on stealth and subterfuge. You aren't forced to pick combat skills and become a killer the game designer forces you into. You don't have to solve all your problems with blood and violence.

Combat is deadly, which heightens the risk and danger - and forces you to think of other ways to resolve problems. Firstly, with your skills. Combat is something serious and not to be engaged in lightly. D&D abstracts death to the point where we become desensitized to it. Combat is 'for fun' and is 'exciting content!' We hurl fireballs into rooms of goblins and laugh. Tactical options are exciting and cool! Healing? Don't worry about healing; a "short rest" will cure a shotgun blast to the face! Death is hard and healing is easy!

Roleplaying games selling combat as gameplay sounds like fascist dictators trying to get people to join the army for glory, wealth, purpose, and excitement. They downplay the soldiers who die and those maimed for life and sell this fantasy escapist dream of military adventurism.

This is me talking from the 1980s. This was true back then and is more true today than ever.

This hasn't changed, and D&D was always too focused on death - and still is. A considerable part of the realism movement in roleplaying games in the 1980s - and GURPS was one of them - was to get us to question our bloodlust. Today's average roleplaying game is a party of killers like multiple versions of Jason Vorhees.

GURPS gives you tools to escape the D&D reality and makes you question it. Some people dislike GURPS just because it does this; it puts a price on death used for escapism. The complexity is part of the price. They want to be inside the cave, and while that is okay, people need to understand what motivates them psychologically.

We gave up D&D in the early 1980s for games like GURPS, Aftermath, and Champions, and D&D was a limited, killing and loot-focused, level-based game. that didn't do much of anything else but "kill for treasure." These days, the treasure is gone, but it is still "kill for power" and story is secondary. GURPS did fantasy far better than D&D, and coming back to it - it still does.

The type of fantasy we liked.

One less focused on death, more on character and story, and one where every skill matters. This wasn't a 'power collection contest' or a curated 'leveling experience' - you got a pile of character points as a reward, and you were set free in a toy store of options you could pick from. Your fighter wants to dip into magic? Go right ahead! Some lame game designer won't tell you what to do or force you to cheat the game by multiclassing. You won't become an 'invalid character' with your choice.

The points are yours to spend in any way you want.

If your fighter knows a few spells now, and they help him light up a dark dungeon hall or heal himself, those abilities are a part of his story - cool. If it makes sense story-wise, go for it! You take a level of wizard as a fighter in D&D, and it can feel like a dongle that weakens your character in high-level play. It makes no sense. It breaks your build.

Sadly, many of the fantastic OSR games fall into the D&D trap. I love Dungeon Crawl Classics, but I can do more satisfying corruption stories in GURPS that are much more nuanced and meaningful. Just balance points of 'dark magic' with disadvantages, and pretty soon, your mages are growing horns, being hunted by witch hunters, gaining all sorts of compulsive behaviors, and serving dark lords of alien evil. DCC opened my mind to the possibilities, but GURPS made those more meaningful and expressed them with game mechanics.

The power could be yours right now! All you have to do is accept these few disadvantages and say yes...

What could go wrong?

Questioning power? Like the notion that 'power at any cost' is not worth it? We are back in the 1980s again and in that counter-culture movement where roleplaying games dared to do this. D&D even back then, D&D gave you this mentality that if you obeyed the rules and stuck within the classes they gave you, you were given power. That is precisely what governments and corporations want you to do.

You may see a pattern here.

I still play a little 5E and OSR games, but it is mostly junk food. It never lasts, and when I am eating it, I know it is a short-term thing, and there are better, more satisfying options. GURPS is my home cooking. It takes a little longer to get into, but the enjoyment is something I savor and look forward to. DCC, again, is a great game, and I love it - but it is still class and level-based.

With GURPS or Dungeon Fantasy, I can also question the narrative, shape it, craft my game into something that reflects me, and break free from the hobby's corporatist, death-glamorizing, blind obedience, and more problematic roots.

GURPS: The Specialist

One key difference between a 5E and a GURPS-based game like Dungeon Fantasy is that you can create viable non-combat characters in DF. In 5E, everyone has the 'default dungeon skills' baked in, and everyone knows how to fight.

What fun is a non-combat character?

Or, is the only fun of a typical 5E game combat? If 5E has a weakness, combat is the game's default playstyle, followed by 'messing around' in social situations where everything is handled so softly that the game is more community theater LARPing than a game with rules.

I was creating characters in Dungeon Fantasy (and GURPS Space) today, and it wasn't that bad. GURPS Character Sheet has package deals, and while sorting through them isn't as easy as GURPS Character Assistant (you are more sorting and deleting in the former, where the latter has guided choices), I got through it and ended up with characters I was happy with.

I like mixing and matching games in GCS and pulling in things from other books if I want them; with GCA, you strictly define the books you use before you even start creating characters (and GCA's scripts will delete unused things in a library via the scripting system). GCS goes along with the assumption that GURPS is one colossal game: do what you want. GCA adheres to the model: GURPS can create tightly defined subset games out of book collections, with valid choices only applying.

There is a 'must have' advantage in GURPS called combat reflexes, which I would only allow combat veterans to have. It raises all your combat-related reflexes and bonuses and is a must-have for frontline fighters (in any genre of game). You could play an entire campaign and never need that advantage, and some support and mage characters may never even consider it.

My characters were more skill and social builds and were not the front-line fighters. My bard was a total urban and social skill monster, and I realized the character may never step one foot into a dungeon or seriously fight anyone - and I could still have fun playing them. They may learn to fight later, but it isn't needed. They had basic defense skills and could use a short sword and buckler, which was good enough.

Same with my space pilot. Knew how to shoot a blaster but had some extraordinary pilot abilities that would make any adventure with the character unique and fun. Did I need the combat-focused Starfinder engineer build or assume piloting skills? No, I paid points for some fantastic pilot abilities, and they will get used.

Both characters were 'combat light' and could function defensively. I always have the option to turn them into complete fighters if I want or keep going with their specializations. I could invest my following 200 points with that bard and make them a sword-swinging ninja barbarian (who sings), which is my choice. Or not. I could take my pilot and make them a power-armored, missile-launching, mobile ground forces Starship Trooper (who can pilot), which is my choice. Or not.

I could make the starship pilot a bard.

Oh, class-based systems, how you suck the life out of the hobby. My mind is back to 30 years ago when we first played GURPS and discovered how class-based systems are terrible and limit your imagination. The more significant point is I can play a game in GURPS that isn't focused on combat and killing and still have a great time. 5E is so damn bloodthirsty it is almost shocking, but it covers up all the violence in a veneer of no-bloodshed, family-friendly, fun adventure art.

That squarely focuses on killing and combat.

I could play games with my pilot or bard and have many things to do. They can fight defensively. Given the campaign threat level I establish, they can buy as many combat skills as they need to get by. But they can play the starship or social game quite effectively, immerse themselves in those worlds, earn XP, and improve quickly without taking a single life.

I don't feel bad about taking a non-combat specialist because I always have the option to turn them into a cold-blooded killer. In a class-based game, forget it; that choice you made at level one sticks with you for the whole game; enjoy sucking at combat your entire life, wizard.

On the flip side, if I spun up a space soldier or fighter good at combat, they could do something else for the rest of their career. Become a mage. Learn how to be a ship captain and free trader. Learn how to be a thief. Become a space doctor. Or a ranger. The combat skills are there; maybe they get used occasionally, but I am not being forced to become an epic dealer of death with the slow treadmill of XP turning me into a killing machine every passing day.

You can play GURPS as a to-the-point, hex-by-hex game of death and violence hyper-optimized murder simulator. But it doesn't force you to. If all you want to do for your following 200 points is buy skills that help you become the best florist in the universe, go right ahead. Get some plant growth powers from the supers book, and create plant minions. Whatever you want to do!

And referees don't need to constantly up the need for better combat skills either. The game is deadly, and the power curve can be as steep as you want. The combat challenges can stay "low level" for the entirety of the campaign, and there is no power curve. It is up to the group and referee how hard they lean into combat play.

You could play the bard with basic defensive skills and do an entire campaign that way, with only a few fights here and there. The bard could entirely focus on defense, disarm foes, knock them down, use magic to subdue them, convince them to surrender, dodge or block all attacks, and fight non-violently. Give them a code against killing as a disadvantage and lean into it as roleplay. Earn XP by dealing with problems intelligently and with creative use of skills. Leveling up does not mean more deadly; it means more effective. It reminds me of Adam West Batman.

5E and B/X can't do that. The power curve is built in, and the game forces you to take 'combat power' and forces these false, MMO-like, higher-level challenges on you.

Off the Shelf: Dungeon Fantasy

This is a challenging game. I like GURPS, and the character design is so good it kills 5E for me. Why am I wasting my time with a preset level one to twenty design done by game designers I don't know and who have a different idea of what fun is than me? Or is the only joy being multiclass exploits found by the community? Why do I need to wait for new versions of games and spend all this money on a patch?

I can design a better character myself.

I don't need levels or classes, even though Dungeon Fantasy tries to do 'classes' as templates - you do not have to follow them or obey the guidelines. If I want to pull powers in from GURPS Superheroes or the main GURPS rulebooks, I can.

But all this comes at a price. Characters are so in-depth an electronic character creation tool is needed. I have been using GURPS Character Sheet (GCS) and learning that, which is pretty handy - consider being a backer if you use this. The nice part about this over GURPS Character Assistant (GCA) is you can access every book without defining a library of books (and worrying about conflicts). You need to know where everything lives, so the learning curve requires a little system knowledge of what is in what book.

GCA is more new-player friendly once you understand libraries.

GCS has features you want if your shelves are full of GURPS books.

Both work fine with Dungeon Fantasy.

Most people also use an electronic character sheet with 5E, so this is not a considerable drawback beyond the learning curve. The more important factors are the rules, combat, 3d6, and the game's learning curve.

Conversion from B/X monsters is trivial:

• Hits = HD x 10
• Attack Skill, Parry = 10 + Attack Bonus
• Dodge = 6 to 10, estimate
• Damage = As listed, plus special effects as needed
• Special Damage = 1d3 or 1d6 per HD (or 5 character points per HD for a power)
• DR = estimate based on armor

You don't need much more than the attack skill. You need special attacks, defenses, and any other skill level - base those on the creature's attack skill. Does it have 3 HD and a special attack? It does either 1d6+3 or 3d6, depending on how frequently it can be used. Not everything should be handled "by the rules" to the letter, and you don't need a complete character sheet for every monster - a rough estimation of a few numbers is really all you need.

Combat can be as straightforward or as in-depth as you desire. One of the big mistakes many make when playing the game is following every combat rule. Download GURPS Lite - this is all you need for combat rules 99% of the time, and most of the time:

1. Attack Roll
2. Defense Roll
3. Roll for Damage

DR and penetrating damage modifiers are the only difference from D&D damage. The attack roll is just like D&D, but a roll under skill. A defense roll is under a target number, depending on the chosen defense. Other combat rules? Shock is a GURPS standby. Major wounds, knockdowns, and stunning are other great rules that add grit to combat. Combat in GURPS is far better than 5E and goes as deep as you can imagine - but it can stay at the default GURPS Lite level if that is not your thing. GURPS has a negative reputation for complex combat, which it shouldn't.

You must understand and reference a fraction of 5E in page count. About 100 pages for all options for all classes. All the spells are about 80 pages of choices. Gamemaster info and rules? 100 pages. And you really only need to read 10% of each to get the hang of it. 3d6 and roll less than a number is 99% of the rules you need to know.

But the character builds are amazing. Whenever I pull GURPS off the shelf, I sit there a little shocked, saying, "Why am I playing 5E? This gives me everything." I am not waiting for powers to be given to my class; if I want something part of another class role for a character, I can have it, and the lame choices a designer being paid by the word isn't going to make my character weak.

Oh, the ranger class sucks.

This class isn't any good unless you dip a level into a warlock.

Why play a rogue?

The 2024 books will fix everything!

Um, why do I trust those designers? I have a book where I can design characters with a point-buy system on my shelf. I don't have to wait for new books or pay for anything more than a single-box game. I am not flipping through a 5E book, taking what the designers give me, and feeling left out because of something I wanted in another class I can't have.

I am 'the' game designer.

I can frankly do a better job than any design team in any version of 5E. Especially with something as simple as a character build. Also, have you ever played a game where a class's limitations made you quit? The class couldn't do everything you wanted it to do, or the mental image in your head was way better than the class the game gave you? The 5E ranger and survival skills come to mind. 5E has terrible exploration and survival rules, and you have to play A5E just to get something halfway decent.

GURPS? Every Minecraft survival skill is there; you can even prospect for ores and minerals. You can fish, set traps, hunt, scout, build shelters, predict the weather, hike, navigate, create maps, and so much more. Creating a map for a trail and prospecting for minerals along the route is an adventure in GURPS, with monster combats and finding lost ruins as icing on the cake. In 5E? We must pay writers by the word to write a module like that. In GURPS, you have skills, baby! Use them.

The adventures in GURPS are 90% using your skill list, and the enemies trying to prevent you from doing that. You may be on an adventure to use a skill at a particular location, and the entire adventure is trying to survive and get there. The best adventures in GURPS are simple tasks with a vast unknown factor that are very difficult. In sci-fi, deliver this mining robot to a remote digging site on a moon in another star system. The adventure is the space pirates, solar storm, micrometeoroid impact, unknown alien contact, engine failure, distress call, and a dozen other things going wrong.

The same goes for fantasy; copy runes from an engraving of this ruin and bring them back here.

If you think you need this giant story to play GURPS, you don't. The game is primarily a sandbox simulator, like Minecraft, and adopting that 'do simple things' mentality where you 'use the skills you are given' gets you a long way in GURPS. Dungeons don't need to be more than a few rooms. You create a lot of the adventure yourself. Your skill list drives the adventure and action. What tries to stop you is the opposition and where your combat fun comes from.

Want more things to do?

Get character points as experience and buy a few more skills. Improve your fishing or prospecting, and sell what you gather. Skin hides and barter them. Sell the maps you make. You could go to a dungeon, take notes on everything rune and tablet in there, use your history skill to figure out when they were made, write a book on it, and sell that to someone interested for a considerable profit. Is this even a thing in 5E? If you paid a module writer by the word to create an adventure like that, maybe - but in GURPS, you have skills, baby! The only limit is imagining how to use them (and make a profit doing so).

GURPS is the game of using your skills to side-hustle the hell out of the campaign world.

Dealing with 5E Apathy

I am dealing with this "5E apathy" and looking at the garbage of old and trying to make the rules compelling to me again. One of the deep-rooted core problems of 5E is the "preset build paths," which force you to multiclass to have freedom. Otherwise, if you stick with a single class, all the "you have no freedom" arguments 5E players use against OSR games apply to 5E.

Dungeon Fantasy powered by GURPS looks like a better 5E at this point. I know, it sucks; this is heresy; all the math; it is not d20; I need a computer program to design characters, and the complex, simulation-nature of the rules all come up. But to tell you the truth, if I want a great 'character builder game,' nothing touches GURPS. I could sink thousands of dollars into 5E for a few dozen build options - one or two I will use - or buy an eighty-dollar box set once and have everything I will ever need.

If I want more, I can mod-in options from GURPS and have anything I want, even superpowers. Even with the extra cost of the base GURPS books, you are still under the typical 5E investment needed to play. If a game is about 'character builds,' don't waste my time, fish my wallet with books that cost sixty dollars, and give me one or two broken new options.

I started paring down my 5E books to a core set of "the best of the best" with Advanced 5E as the core and putting aside my Kobold Press books for Tales of the Valiant release next year. I am doing homebrew for an Advanced 5E setting since many older settings don't feel right with the game. Advanced 5E is my 5E, and my core old 5E books are in storage.

Advanced 5E is the "Windows clean reinstall" version of 5E. I have had enough of the broken, bloated, messed up Wizards version that never worked right, and I felt like people played with X, not Y, Z, not W, and all the other messes the official books made over the years.

Part of dealing with 5E apathy is changing the game and freshening it up. There is a good game in 5E; we have just had so much junk thrown at the system the last 10 years that it is hard to find.

The problem is that GURPS sits on the next shelf, telling me, "You're serious, right? If you want a bard-enchanter-thief hybrid character, I am a skill-based and point-buy system; I've got you covered. You don't need to wait three levels, either. Do you want advantages and disadvantages for roleplay, too? Got chapters for those. Custom powers? Got those. You are not dealing with bad game designer syndrome, too, since you are the game designer, buddy."

The 'bad game designer syndrome' kills 5E for me. This is why we have One D&D, because the 5E design is broken, and likely, what they will ship in One D&D will be broken too. I design a cleric in 5E and am unhappy with the subclass choices. Or did the game force me to wait three levels to pick a subclass? What if I feel the choices and powers aren't that great? I am stuck with what a 'bad game designer' gives me. Sorry. Everyone has to deal with it, so everyone plays the same game.

See also basic-game 5E rangers. You end up with classes where 'everything sucks about them.' And you can't predict which class gets the shaft by 'bad designer syndrome' since a lot depends on multiclass synergies.

To fix it? Buy the 2024 books, please!

With no guarantee, things won't end up broken there, either.

Trust our game designers this time! This coming from a company short on trust this year.

The A5E designers did well with what they had and made an excellent clean-room game. The problem goes deeper, though, down to the root of the post-AD&D 2e design. The core design of D&D 3+ relies too much on skilled designers, and with the tighter numbers of 5E, every mistake or broken synergy worsens things. You need to step back and take a deeper look at the design to know what is happening here.

For the last 20 years, D&D has been built on the Wizards model, where designers create rat-in-a-maze 'build paths' from level one to twenty and force players down them. Multiclassing is the only way to 'break the Matrix' in D&D and create synergies, which is what 5E ended up as. Pathfinder 2e showed what a tight, balanced game design could be - but it took considerable revamp and effort to get there. PF2e is still not a great game for me since solo-ability is complicated, and the game plays better with a group.

5E apathy is rooted in that 20-year-old design and over-reliance on the current crop of game designers and their skill at pulling together a game. For 5E, they did a good job and pulled in the best minds from various fields, styles, gaming backgrounds, and experiences. I doubt 'Lightning in a Bottle' can be replicated in 2024; I don't see it. The consultation and design are entirely inside of Wizards this time.

But are people tired of the core design?

This is where I feel my 5E apathy lies. I feel tired of the structure and framework of 5E, and this extends back 20 years to the Wizards model and design theory. I can do a better job at designing a compelling class and experience. The game I move towards will be a toolbox that supports that feeling.

And as I walk away, GURPS adds, "And I do it in fewer pages, too."

Another GURPS Blog

https://anothergurpsblog.blogspot.com/

Check it out!

Sometimes I feel some information is better suited to a dedicated blog, and my love of GURPS is one of them. If I liked GURPS and Dungeon Fantasy (which I do), this would be the type of blog I would read and check up on.

This also allows me to deep dive into GURPS subjects and have the information collected for an audience who likes it in one place.

No, I didn't know what to name it, and this was fun.

And yes, that is graph paper in the background, not hex paper. I still like my graph paper, and as a gamer, that speaks to me on a primal level and gets my imagination going. My hex paper resource would confuse the presentation and distract the eye with that type of pattern; this feels much better to me.

Pathfinder 1e: The End of an Era

https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo6si7v?Paizo-Announces-SystemNeutral-Open-RPG-License

So I get the feeling from the ORC license announcement that Pathfinder 1e development is at an official end. Since the language "1.0a products are fine" is the way Wizards wants to put it, I feel the door is closed on further game development. I hope the books are left in print at a minimum, but that status may be doubtful.

The company is pushing forward with its own Pathfinder 2e game, and 1e is being left to history.

Despite all its flaws and messy design, I still play 1e and love the game, and I know it is broken at the higher levels in many ways. The feat taxes of class builds and imbalances are notorious, and a part of me just wants to move onto 2e and look forward. Pathfinder 1e is a great game, but it shares all the deep flaws of the original OGL and SRD implementation.

I can see why Paizo loves their original 1e game, but I can also see why it is time to move on. This entire OGL mess is creating a new golden age for Paizo and breaking people out of their "5E or nothing" mental bear trap.

Thank you, Wizards, for forcing the world to walk away. In a way, they can have their small group of loyal mobile-game customers and create their "billion-dollar brand" from cellphone gaming. The rest of the world can have something "not D&D" and support the traditional tabletop experience. Both sides will come out on top here.

The 5E rules? Probably the loser here and the children in the breakup.

The 6E rules? Wait until the mobile game developers get their hands on this and start simplifying the game because "that would be too expensive and user-unfriendly to handle on a phone as written." I know software development, and when they start building the VTT, you will likely see tons of 5E rules and content tossed out the window because "it doesn't work in VTTs too well" or "it would wreck the schedule to implement."

If VTT is the game's primary focus, I feel a lot of 5E is getting tossed in the bin for 6E, just out of cost and time concerns. Especially if they want to release a complete experience next year. Do they know software development? Do they know that games can slip years behind schedule? Do they understand that cut-down experiences will generate so much user anger that it is not even worth releasing? Ask any AAA game developer; they know.

Not to mention server bandwidth and launch issues. I sure hope their team is staffed and ready for this. They would be better off partnering with a company (Blizzard, Daybreak, etc) that can do massive launches with an experienced support team. No MMO-style company launches in a year with shoestring support from a bunch of game designers; that is a disaster waiting to happen.

Wizards will either succeed hugely or go down in flames. There won't be a middle ground.

This is a messy customer divorce, but we need this to make both sides happy.

And better, the tabletop community walks away in case it is a disaster.

My goal still playing 1e was to use it for a "dark fantasy" campaign, while Pathfinder 2e was more the traditional light-hearted "adventure fantasy" game. I may be better served by switching my dark fantasy game to GURPS Dungeon Fantasy and leaving Pathfinder 1e entirely.

Pathfinder 1e has many excellent dark fantasy elements, but at this point, everything D&D-aligned leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Part of me needs a fresh start and a non-d20 game to express myself. GURPS can do horror exceptionally well, and the game is relatively well-balanced, has lethal combat, and it has optional rules for just about everything.

I am still dealing with my feelings and the fallout of this mess, which has turned my gaming world upside-down. Part of me feels this is for the better.

I need to move on.

GURPS Character Assistant: Getting Started

If you are just starting with GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, the GURPS Character Assistant (GCA) is a great way to quickly create game characters without many book references. There are a few tips for setting it up and a few pointers I can give you to make the entire process easier to manage.

The Delvers to Grow book is excellent and gives you lower-level starting templates to begin with, so you can have a complete "zero to hero" experience. I find Dungeon Fantasy's starting 250-point characters to be too powerful, with too many options for a new player to pick up, and a simple 62-point template from Delvers to Grow gives you that "level one" adventurer experience with a lot less to grasp when you are starting the game.

Also, a 62-point character is not terribly survivable, so be careful out there!

Delvers to Grow needs a few package files in GCA, so find those under the help menu, check for updates, and choose optional packages.

In Manage Your Library, create a Dungeon Fantasy library and include the "Delvers to Grow" book, plus Companion 3, if you would like to use that too. You do not need any GURPS books, as DF is a standalone game.

From here, you are creating characters, and the flow is listed above. Find a section you want to add items to your character with, choose a subsection, and filter. Then add what you want and move on to the next section. I recommend starting with the templates section first, as those have excellent guided scripts that will take you through the character design process easy and with zero mistakes. You will get a series of dialog prompts asking you to make a choice or a few choices, and then you move to the next.

Keep an eye on the character points spent on the bottom bar, and when you are done, add some equipment to your character, print it, and begin playing! The GURPS Combat Examples page has a bunch of great example combats to get you used to how the game flows. You can play the game as simple or complex as you want! If all you want to do is roll "hit and damage," just do that! Add in the more detailed rules as you like them. Many people play GURPS just like a d20 game, "hit and damage," and forgo many extra rules - so feel free to play how you want.

GURPS is an old-school game; not all rules must be followed as written. This is probably one of the biggest hang-ups many new players have when they are trained to "play rules as written" by newer games. With old-school games, the rules are just suggestions, and you can play with as many or as few as you want. Same with Dungeon Fantasy! Go grab the 100% free GURPS Lite and use that as the task and combat resolution system, you are fine and the game will play great.

It took me a while to become proficient with GCA, but stick with it, and you will find a lot is possible with the program. Dungeon Fantasy is a subset of GURPS, and you may want custom advantages, disadvantages, skills, or gear - and those can all be added in as custom items in the program.

The characters I design with GCA are unique, and the program can be addictively fun. No other game out there does what GURPS does regarding ultimate character customization. If you write a short backstory, you can find mechanics for almost all of your character's unique quirks, traits, and personality choices. That is the beautiful thing about GURPS - backstory mechanics exist and are just not "notes on paper."

Give it a try if you are looking for other games, and you just may find you like this game better for grim and realistic fantasy with a hard edge.