Subset Templated GURPS: GURPS 4.5?

GURPS is going through something of an evolution, and a lot of the PDF releases on Warehouse 23 reflect this style of game being created with the rules these days, and it started with Dungeon Fantasy. GURPS 4.5 "sort of" exists today in the heavily templated and cut-down subset games of:

• Dungeon Fantasy
• GURPS Action
• GURPS After the End
• GURPS Monster Hunters

Dungeon Fantasy is special since it is a standalone game, but you see that influence in the other games on the list. Take a genre, cut GURPS down to the bare minimum needed to support that genre, and all of a sudden you have a more focused and more playable game. The spell lists are shorter and have no cruft, the skill lists are pared down and usable, and the advantages and disadvantages are focused and support the genre. We have templates to make genre-focused archetypes.

When you play, there is nothing extraneous or genre-breaking to distract you.

And then these games expand from that simple starting point and add layers of complexity.

But as you play, you begin to notice options missing that you would have liked to pull in. If you are playing with pen-and-paper, everything is cool, just pull the other book over and write it in. If you are using a computerized tool, things start to become difficult.

It is semi-noticeable with the games still based off of GURPS Basic set; but very noticeable with the standalone game Dungeon Fantasy.

And there are times when I see some of these games expand into different areas adding layers of complicated rules, when I smile and sit there saying, "The base GURPS game does that easier than adding all these layers of complexity."

All the Books?

GURPS can die under its weight of options, and if you ever loaded up GURPS Character Assistant 5 (GCA) with all the base books in a library (Magic, Fantasy, Space, High Tech, Low Tech, Ultra Tech, etc) you are going to know what I mean. The game gets better the more you cut it down. I can't deal with a skill lest a few hundred skills long, that is just way too much - even with sub-lists divided by type.

In short, you play with every GURPS book and you create a game that I feel can't really be played.

The game is better once you cut it down, and begin to exclude things from the experience.

My problem is I love tweaking things. I love designing unique characters. I love some of the options they excluded from Dungeon Fantasy, which is why I hacked my GCA files to create a game that can be played with a few other books to pull in things I like. Even my base Dungeon Fantasy setup has tweaks to use some of the classic GURPS roleplaying disadvantages, like "Hunted By..."

I also like my GURPS Dungeon Fantasy setup in GCA since there is a wisdom in not lumping every spell into "Cleric" - since unholy spells get a cool list of ones that deal with destruction, curses, zombies, dark vision, death-touch, and lots of other "awww cooool" spells.

But oh no, mages can cast healing! Well, you know, just disallow it. Like you disallow letting characters the ability to go de-solid or fly. And great players won't even pick those powers because they know it is silly and it doesn't fit the game's theme. This is kind of like a group coming together and trusting each other to make good decisions and choices to not break the game or immersion.

Clerics buy the things you feel clerics should have. Mages get mage things. This is all based on your world. In some fantasy books, there may be no clerics and mages do healing as well. Or maybe nobody can. You need to do some thinking about your world here and make some decisions.

There are times I love Dungeon Fantasy's focus. There are others I look at my skill and spell lists in my custom GURPS Dungeon Fantasy world and see a game I can expand infinitely, and that gives me millions of more ways to customize characters. There are good parts about subset games like Dungeon Fantasy, but also when you realize the true power of GURPS you see a lot of needless limitations.

And there are parts of the game you may absolutely fall in love with (I hear this about GURPS Thaumatology), that you may never experience or know about if all you play is the subset game.

Limits are Fun World Building

I feel there is this difference between modern gamers that want to be told what characters can and can't do and work within those limits; versus the old school GURPS and Champions players who you can give a game that resembles a box of Legos, and can create a cool dungeon game out of it by putting a few things together.

It makes me feel these toolbox games just are not understood these days, nor do people have the time or the care to invest time to make them work. I can imagine giving GURPS to a group of today's gamers and they would be sitting around the table...

What are we playing? A dungeon game? Okay, if you buy ten levels of duplication and five levels of extra attack, you will be able to attack 50 times a turn! I am buying insubstantiality and flight along with mind control, so I can fly through walls and scout ahead! You buy invisibility and 20 levels of damage resistance! No one can see you or damage you!

And I would be sitting here asking, "What are you guys doing?"

And I would be met by a table of blank stares and the answer, "Playing the game."

Forget it, we are going back to D&D 5 tonight.

Mail Room: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game

The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is a game I always wanted to get into, and they say you can play this solo, so it looks fun. The game is revised, and this is the new version, and the reviews say the entire experience is polished and a lot smoother to play.

These sorts of things are why I went back to Paizo. This company delivers fun and exciting things to do on a consistent schedule. They also put a lot of excellent game design and joy into every release. Instead of a cable package, I keep a few subscriptions up and enjoy the boxes I get until the next one arrives. They are not perfect, but right now, they fit my vision of fun and keep delivering me new experiences to have.

vs. Magic: The Gathering?

Also, I am not into Magic The Gathering or all the spin-offs and one-offs, so those are outside my experience and world right now. My brother was more into that than me, and I never really saw myself getting into that game. We did buy sets and play, but they went out of print so fast and were unsupported that we never felt we could keep up or have any chance of getting cool cards.

With this game, from what I know, you get all the cards, and there is no rarity game. There is even a custom-card creator over on Drive Thru RPG that sounds cool and lets players expand the game. I love the idea of a card game that fans can support and develop.

Month after month, I see a lot more I want on Paizo's site than I do Wizards, so I gravitate to where my interests are. Also, I didn't play 5E and missed that boat when my brother passed away, that was going to be our next game together, and we never got the chance. I respect 5E and love that people have fun with the game, but I don't play it and chose to check out 6E when that comes out.

Otherwise, I have too much to do with the things I do have.

vs. B/X?

I wish there were B/X companies that did this much work as either Wizards or Paizo and could put this much effort into the main rulebook and consistent product support with roadmaps and product innovation. I want everything: expansion, new classes, adventures, worlds, new mechanics, card games, plushies, figures, pawns. Many of my B/X books are now on my storage shelves; I don't really have much to do after playing through them. I collected as many expansion books for B/X as I found. As a result, my collection feels disjointed and for several different games.

The only company that comes close to Paizo's level of support in the retro-space is Goodman Games with Dungeon Crawl Classics, and I can always count on them to keep the adventures coming. I wish they did more in terms of expansions and other product support. I think Goodman Games' philosophy aligns with my feelings on B/X, use the past to create something entirely new - but don't be too beholden to history. I feel a lot of B/X games are satisfied with history and stop there. We may get a game that has a few differences and better presentation, but nothing really new and nothing extraordinary to look forward to seeing next month.

I want them to think big!

I feel myself drifting away from B/X just a little as a result. While I love the classic rules and they will always be fun, I like to read and play with new things as a reader and avid hobbyist. Would I love an adventure card game based on B/X? Hell yeah! If I could find one...

vs. Pathfinder 2e?

This is not a card game and is not meant for solo play. This is more of a social game, and that is cool. I love the character building and tweaking. This game feels like you can lose yourself in a unique character much more than a 5E or B/X, and from what I see, it plays better than on a tabletop with battle maps.

On the downside, the complexity feels higher. While yes, I am used to Pathfinder 1e, and this is supposed to be streamlined, I have been playing D&D 3E, 3.5E, and then 3.75E since the first books came out for each. I plan to run duo groups until I get used to the system and increase complexity until I find my happy place.

The card game feels more "crack open the box and play" than a solo oracle system with a full pen-and-paper game. This is why I tend to like hex-crawls with my solo games since if I am at a total loss on what happens next, I have unexplored hexes and a few random charts to get me started. Stories and missions can then be spawned from filling out a hex, and each one can generate a new story arc.

A Pickup and Play Game

Last night, I looked over the rules PDF, and the game feels like a highly simplified version of Pathfinder 1e. You have a set of target numbers on the cards, pass and fail results, and characters have dice in different abilities they roll for combat and challenges. Damage is the difference between the check and the target number and forces you to discard cards. Discard more cards than you have, and your character dies.

Simple. We always thought health counters and countdown dice were a bit extraneous to card games, and I like the health pool as the number of cards in hand mechanic.

One thing that feels strange to me is checking off boxes on cards to level up feats and powers; um, yeah, not doing that. They recommend using a character sheet. Okay, this feels strange and makes the game more like a "card RPG," but I will give you this as your "one thing" you can do outside of a regular card game-style playstyle, which is fantastic.

I thought checks were on a d20 for some reason. Apparently, they are straight d4 to d12 style checks with modifiers and extra dice added due to powers or gear. There are also rules for continuing campaigns and improving characters.

Expanding the game on Drivethrurpg with professional print-and-play user-created cards? A genius and bold move. Thank you!

This one looks like a lot of fun, and I am happy I dove in and looking forward to cracking this open when the box comes.

Hero Forge

I love Hero Forge, and while their custom figures are a bit pricy, the designer and other tools are excellent. I am considering subscribing on a fundamental level to make, organize, and download images for my pawns. This is a service I would support with a small monthly fee, just because they are here for us gamers, and this is my hobby.

When you have an idea for a character in your head, there is this or DAZ, and DAZ can get expensive.

The above is my cleric survivor from my upcoming Dungeon Fantasy game (based on my first Aquilae playthrough), and she came out fantastic. I plan to move the scenario over to my Ultimate Norse Campaign's world and start there completely in Dungeon Fantasy and use the Nordland supplements with the Svilland world.

Mail Room: Savage Worlds Pathfinder

The boxed set for the Kickstarter finally came, and it is an amazing box packed with fun. It is huge!

Part of me now wonders "why I need this" since I am buying in on Pathfinder 2, but once I am reading a lot of Pathfinder 2 the more I am realizing the second game is a true steampunk world and nothing like the 3.5 we were used to and loved.

A lot of the adventure paths for Pathfinder 2 have guns and gears like crazy, gunslingers, cowboys, robots, steampunk mechs, self-powered wagons, flying ships, Gatling guns, and trains or blimps would not surprise me at this point. Golarion has moved on a tech level to the Victorian level with Pathfinder 2 and it is not going back. I am seriously going to play Pathfinder 2 as 100% steampunk, with the Victorian sensibilities, the pomp and dress, Absolom as the British Empire, and all sorts of plots involving machines and magic.

I do miss the old 3.5 Golarion though, and the ability to drop in Pathfinder to any medieval fantasy setting and have it work. So again, what do you do with this set? Well, exactly that.

Anything that needs a pulp adventure set of rules for the fantasy genre this would work. Like a Savage Worlds version of Mystara would work well. So the common traits are:

• Pulp adventure
• Fast, fun, and furious
• Fantasy
• No technology or steampunk
• Traditional 3.5-style feel
• Prefer Savage Worlds to Pathfinder 1e

I could do Greyhawk or the Realms with this set easily. I would probably leave Golarion out of the equation here since I have both the Pathfinder Card Game and Pathfinder 2 to cover that. If you don't want steampunk or Pathfinder 2, love Savage Worlds, and want a set of fantasy rules with all the fixings this is perfect.

Part of me feels tired of the steampunk and dungeonpunk tripe though. I see a lot of games do these just because they want to be lazy and make it easier for players to have their "magic cell phones" or "magic air travel" and other modern conveniences and enable this player tech-entitlement thing where nobody really has to roleplay living in a world without technology. When steampunk is doing new, amazing, cool, I have never seen this before stuff - that is great. When they are using it as an excuse to recreate  "fantasy" cell phones, the Internet, cars, Uber Eats, Twitter, or other modern innovations - that is just horribly lazy writing and terrible world creation.

This boxed set is cool. A set of fantasy rules where I can drop this in anywhere and have fun. The Savage Worlds engine running things. The 3.5 style tropes guide character development. Lots of treasure, magic, and monsters to use in my games.

Simple, clean, and cool using a set of rules I already know.

What is not to love?

Highly recommended.

Pathfinder 2e Solo

I can run four characters solo with Pathfinder 1e. I tried running six, but I started to feel that stress on the brain, and I found two of the characters began to get ignored every turn as I focused on the front four. Even with five, one inevitably did not have much to do, and it was often because of not having enough front-line space in tight dungeon corridors.

Thematically and story-wise, four always felt better and what the game was designed for.

I would rather play with fewer characters and scale encounters down than create a lot of work for myself and have to scale encounters up. For a solo game? Get the flavor of the encounter and story, and keep your life simple. Many adventures are designed for four characters, so I do not have a problem managing this, and it works well.

Pathfinder 2e Solo?

I struggled with Pathfinder 2, I will admit it. The action economy and the tight game tuning mean you need to pay attention and make good choices every turn. That action economy will likely be different for different classes and builds. Since you have three actions per character, a party of four means up to twelve decisions for your four solo characters every turn.

Yes, in a Pathfinder 1e game, you have your three actions, but the types of each one are strictly defined:

In a normal round, you can perform a standard action and a move action, or you can perform a full-round action. You can also perform one swift action and one or more free actions. You can always take a move action in place of a standard action.

So most of the time in Pathfinder 1e, one attack per turn and one (optional) move are safe to assume. If you are on the front lines, ignore the movement. For many characters, a turn means just one attack and moving on to the next character; for four to six decisions a turn, if a few characters in the back ranks shift or take swift actions.

With Pathfinder 2e, I see many people stress taking those actions, and being smart about them means the difference between success and failure. So you need to make all twelve per turn for a party of four, and you need to make sure you are using them wisely. Yes, some actions take multiple actions, but I would rather have time to consider options than tick through a dozen per party turn.

That feels like a lot for me, especially since I started to zone out with a party of six Pathfinder 1e characters and begin to ignore two of them. I have this feeling most turns two characters will likely be playing sub-optimally.

Solo Play as the Duo

I am likely playing Pathfinder 2e as a duo. I have no problem cutting an encounter in half in terms of numbers or solo monster hit points and focusing on a dynamic duo that learns to work together. That feels good to me, and it cuts down on the overload I feel with Pathfinder 2 solo games. This caps my actions at six per turn, making this task manageable and matching the per-turn average I was handling with Pathfinder 1e games.

This is like your typical "buddy cop" movie, like having a cranky dwarf and arrogant elf learn to get along and work with each other. This also avoids one falling unconscious and the adventure coming to an immediate end, as one could help the other.

At most, I would have three work together, but I would keep my party size to two since there will be times the duo gets an NPC for a while to assist in the fight. If you put your max at three, that NPC raises it to four, and you are back to a heavy action load to manage each turn.

Also, I may adjust the bonuses given by actions that provide party modifiers. There is a vast difference between giving four party members a +1 to a turn's actions versus just two. If I play duos, I am possibly increasing those bonuses to +2 with parties of one or two and +1 for three or more - and calling this the Buddy Rule. We ran into this problem with D&D 4E as well, and this is something I wish I would have done back then for small party sizes.

Plus, with a duo, with every action you take, you are asking this one question, "Do I help myself, or do I help my partner?" Forcing yourself to ask this question helps enforce the "team play" focus of many actions, and you would not get these options if you were playing with one character alone. Since teamwork is highlighted in the game, if you play a single character, many choices you can make with the action economy (and many powers) will be pointless since there is no one else to assist.

Also, in that two-person theme, the entire buddy-cop "helping each other" story of the game advances every time you make choices that force them to work together and realize they are better with each other than they are alone.

Dungeon Fantasy: The Ultimate Norse Campaign

I liked my Aquilae game because of the entire Norse-themed area I created and the intense survival adventures I had up there. I started this game with Pathfinder 1e, but I stopped when I realized, "Hold on, there is something bigger here." The rest of the world seemed small, and my interest in those areas lessened. Up in the icy north is where I wanted to be.

So I planned to switch to Dungeon Fantasy, then I decided maybe not, then I re-decided that my original feeling to switch to a more visceral and point-based system with detailed blow-by-blow combat was the right one all along. I don't need a few thousand Pathfinder 1e monsters, items, and spells - most of which would not thematically fit into the experience. And I wanted the detailed skills, and the intricate combat builds that a GURPS system could bring to the table.

And then something interesting happened...

Nordlond

With Gaming Ballistic's line of Dungeon Fantasy books, we have a rare gem of a series that covers Norse-based adventuring called Nordlond. There is an adventure series, the excellent Delvers to Grow book, a book of Nordic fantasy races, and a fantastic extraordinary Norse-themed bestiary.

In short, everything I need. I get a mini-campaign sandbox, NPCs, a series of adventures, monsters, and more Norse-themed content that works with Dungeon Fantasy than I could ever dream of having. And I have to convert nothing into the game; it is all ready to use! And I can add my fabulous collection of Dungeon Fantasy PDFs from Warehouse 23 to add to the fun.

The races book is a fun treat and gives me many flavorful modern-ish varieties of fantasy races. This is not a "hardcore" selection of races that limits me to Norse mythology, but more of the traditional fantasy mix of races re-imagined in a Dungeon Fantasy lens. We have wolf-blooded, dragon-folk, halflings, traditional elves, gnomes, dwarves, cat-folk, raven-folk, and a bunch of fun choices that are a little on the cartoony side but very cool, and they feel great to me for a more "expanded" worldview on Norse mythology. I love the choices here, and they will mix well with anything else I can come up with in Dungeon Fantasy.

It gets better, a nearly 200-page traditional fantasy bestiary, in full color, with an excellent B/X assortment of monsters that feel like I always wanted Dungeon Fantasy's missing monster manual. All monsters are Norse-flavored, but the selection here is fantastic and blows me away. I always wanted this, and it has none of the monsters I will skip over. This is truly one of the best Dungeon Fantasy books out there and worth getting even if you do not play Norse-style campaigns since it does the whole monster manual thing right.

It gets even better since we have a book with Norse-themed gods. This is a shorter book, but it hits all the best choices for Norse gods and presents them slightly more generic than having a list of dozens of specifics. I like a smaller selection of gods since it creates clear decisions, and you don't get as many minor-but-similar pantheons competing for attention. And considering you build clerics focused on the gods, the differences are apparent and thematic.

Great stuff; I am all set, right?

I Need a World

Putting Aqialae to the side hurts, but I have a great replacement. If we dip into the world of 5E for a moment, we find the fantastic Svilland Campaign Setting by DRS Publishing. The 5E market is vast, which means books where they spend a lot of money on art and looks, and this book is flat-out unique and beautiful.

It is a sort of a "dark Norse" setting for D&D 5E, but I won't play this with 5E because my heart is set on Dungeon Fantasy and Gaming Ballistic's fantastic work with their line. I won't use the gods or races here either, as my Nordland Folk and their simplified but similar pantheon will make this their home quite nicely. Everything else from the dark feeling, strange cults, battle-scarred lands, excellent locations, city maps, and stunning art for sites and places is all mine. There are adventures, too, I can convert, along with a few sourcebooks that fill out areas of the world.

Now why replace Aquilae? If what I love about the world is just the tiny 20%, why not spend all my time there and focus on that? If I have an incredibly thematic and beautiful setting, this will be a perfect replacement for the one I worked hard on, but there is so much to get excited about here, and the art and maps are fantastic.

Some of the art in this book is Free League level jaw-dropping work.

Svilland Campaign Setting, page 117

This is the best Norse setting for 5E, and I am thrilled to borrow it for my game. If I were playing 5E, this would be my setting it. It is that good. But I get this feeling the gritty and brutal combat of Dungeon Fantasy will feel right at home here, and it may do a better job of telling the story I have in my head for this game. With 5E, the rapid recovery of spells and health would work against how I see the world working - a brutal struggle to manage scarce resources and survive.

Do Nordfolk Break Immersion?

The Nordland Folk do break the feeling just a little by being a bit on the toony side, and the gods from the Hand of Asgard are not as extreme as the ones here. I like that, though, since I want the greater diversity of races and character types to all to have a chance to make this their home. There are no "boar people" or "cat folk" in the Svilland setting, as it tries to take that already toony nature of 5E and dials it way back to an intricate level of immersion and realism.

Raven-folk followers of Tyr? I got to have them. I am sorry, realism and folklore, this is just too much fun. And they are statted for Dungeon Fantasy. Great stuff! Plus, I would rather have toony characters doing awful things to each other than real humans doing the same. The shock value is higher, but also, the connection to the characters feels better than in a primarily human-focused world.

If terrible things happen to my raven-folk character because of mistrust and intolerance, I will feel really bad. That is a good thing since that will be the conflict I fight against. If a dragon attacks a town and the town rounds up the dragon-kin as possible "collaborators" because of a loud-mouth instigator, that is a terrible example of all-too-familiar suspicion and distrust. That is a wrong that screams to be righted.

These are the things heroes fight for.

Are they upsetting and triggering? Yes, but you get to take action, fix the problem, and root out the evil who tried to sew distrust and division.

And you bet I would make that evil secretly influenced by the demons, evil cults, and devils looking to weaken society and drive these divisions between good people and townsfolk.

Dragon-folk and half-demons? Those work, and given a little grit and tarnish, will make great outcast societies and outsider types. Those work, and given a slight grittiness and tarnish. Cat-folk and the other beast races also can see tribes of them wandering the north or taking islands for their own lands. I intend for some cities to be more melting-pots (due to trade) and other places to be a little more suspicious to fit the darker theme. But there will be places they all can come together and interact. I want to keep that sort of dynamic between the cultures that allow a lot of interaction being more vital in trade and culture, while the more isolated and fearful realms have that distrust and suspicion.

Everything fits and is fantastic. This is an epic-level replacement for the theme-park style of the world I built for Aquilae and one I still intend to use, but I have so many A+ pieces for this setting and game they fit in with what I loved about my Nordic survival game, so much.

Conflicts

About 85% of this all fits together nicely with rules and stats. The only part is meshing all of this in the Svilland setting, but once you say "population can be anything" and open your mind to the possibilities, things open up quickly and become very cool. There will be a conflict in this world between "peoples coming together" versus "those who isolate and turn inward," and I will pick a few factions that embody each.

Some of the races will be caught in the middle of these conflicts. Do dragon-kin feel beholden to the chaotic dragons who destroy towns? Some isolationist clans will accuse them of being one and the same and see them as a future threat as a potential draconic army. Like tieflings and devils, some clans will decry them as impure and see them as spreading devil worship. The beast races may be seen as friends of violent humanoid tribes. There will also be mistrust those who use sorcery and magic outside the gods.

I need these divisions reflected in my game since the factions and communities that accept people's differences will ultimately have the best of everyone and be more robust than those who want to divide and isolate. I need to give players something to fight for and the sinister forces of intolerance to fight against.

This won't be a happy world, but the happy world the players dream of will be one they can fight for.

A Strange Brew

This is a bizarre mix, you have a 5E setting that feels like it is pushing back against the norms of the 5E aesthetics by going hardcore Nordic realism with a human-based world, and you then have a Dungeon Fantasy setting that pushes back towards the 5E aesthetics by making things more diverse and exciting with animal-characters and all sorts of fantastic options.

Dungeon Fantasy is my peanut butter, and Svilland is my chocolate.

Aquilae: Dungeon Fantasy

This is a tough decision and one I have been flip-flopping on. I had originally intended to play this with Pathfinder 1e, but my sudden flash of inspiration at reviving Starfinder with mixed in Pathfinder 1e content means by 1e books are seeing a lot of use, and I am free to play this with another system.

Why not keep playing it with Pathfinder 1e?

Well, there are times I feel I want more out of combat and skill use in a fantasy game, so Dungeon Fantasy becomes a strong contender. Plus, I never really felt this world was really defined by the Pathfinder "stuff" - the monsters, the magic items, the classes - it was designed so they would fit in, but is all that stuff what defines this world? In my first two playthroughs, I used some pirates, a wolf, and a giant crab and I was happy with that monster selection. The towns were more fantasy-medieval normal places. The world felt more gritty and realistic. Nothing was over the top or silly, like Paizo's goblins.

So I wonder if this would be a better fit for Dungeon Fantasy.

What Did You Like?

I played two scenarios, the first one a really gripping tale of survival in the frozen north, and a "new person in town and pirate attack" second scenario, and it did not really feel like it clicked for me - and that probably needs to be rethought and replayed. The winter survival story was very fun, gripping, interesting, visceral combat, and it had a really cool story and battle against the odds.

The monsters here were nothing special, a wounded wolf and a giant crab. Everything else was avoiding exposure, navigation, moving over tough terrain, and survival. Lots of times I was telling myself, skills matter. Nothing in that playthrough really used anything identifiably "Pathfinder" - this could have been done in any skill-based fantasy system with survival rules.

My hero was a level one cleric, and while she had some staying power I had to GM fiat a town nearby and end the scenario. I would have loved to do some hex-crawling and exploration, perhaps put a dungeon out there or ancient ruin that she could explore and find a few resources in - even before she knows about towns or civilization.

There is nothing like not knowing where you are, not knowing how long you will hold out, and being forced to go into a dungeon to find supplies that may not even be in there. And you could get seriously wounded, lose gear, or alert local enemies - and lose more than you risked by going in there.

What I liked about that experience was more the story and situation, and I did not need 30+ books full of stuff to support that experience. In fact, I feel a game with less and a more character-focused build system with deep character customization is going to give me an even better experience. I am not looking to min-max a combat build, or get more spells to solve all my problems, what I want to do is get XP and buy skills and abilities to make my character even better for those types of situations.

With Pathfinder 1e, she needs a high INT to have a lot of skill points to play with. Skills are such important parts of my builds I rarely give any character anything below a 12. With Dungeon Fantasy, intelligence does not matter to skills, everything is on the same point-buy scale. The skill level of IQ-based skills (and the cost to buy up) is based on the score, but IQ does not give you more points in your build.

What Will You Miss?

If I lost Pathfinder 1e for this world? I would miss the huge selection of monsters, but then again, I wasn't using them so I possibly would not miss them. A lot of the random charts for magic items and treasure would be missed. The selections of classic spells and the iconic classes. A lot of that "ease of use" would be gone and I would be home-brewing a lot of things. Enemies would likely be a lot more human or humanoid NPCs, so the gritty factor gets turned up.

I will need to lean on the Dungeon Fantasy and GURPS resources pretty heavily to make up for the lost content, though Dungeon Fantasy does have a cool random magic item chart I may be using.

I have a few monster PDFs for Dungeon Fantasy, but nothing with the selection and organization of even a B/X version of that document. Also, Gaming Ballistic is creating an awesome line of Norse-themed Dungeon Fantasy adventures and a setting book - with a hefty Nordic bestiary.

And I am looking forward to it.

And this may change things again. I may move my character and Norse adventures here instead. I have the PDFs and I am giving them a look now, and I like what I see.

More soon.