In my quest to find a #ttrpg to run next year, I bought the Dungeon Fantasy (GURPS) and Mongoose Traveller 2E Bundles of Holding -- both very good deals.
Some initial reactions:
DUNGEON FANTASY
The initial adventure, I Smell a Rat, seems pretty good. While no plan survives contact with the players, it tries to enumerate various things that might happen. It's set in one location that will be easy to translate to any standard fantasy world built before or after running it.
The rules, though ... maybe crunchier than I wanted. The general rule is "roll <= the appropriate skill on 3d6", but there are a STAGGERING number of modifiers in the 114-page "exploits" book. There are also some very weird corner cases, like:
"If a supernatural attack permits a resistance roll and the subject is living or has IQ 6+, there's a cap on the attacker's effective skill: 16 or the defender's actual resistance score, whichever is greater."
Normally rolling low is good and modifiers are applied to the target number (rather than the dice), but for reaction rolls both of these things are reversed. Why?!
Maybe with time one internalizes the 33-page combat section, but I'd be reluctant to spring this on an audience that didn't have experience with RPGs.
MONGOOSE TRAVELLER
I went with the deluxe version of this bundle, which is huge: 15 books!
The campaign that comes with this bundle (part of the Starter Set), The Fall of Tinath, is set in a new subsector half a galaxy away from charted space. I can see that they did this so that new players wouldn't feel intimidated by the lore, but on the other hand it means that the vast majority of setting books published by Mongoose and its predecessors are irrelevant. That complaint aside, it seems (on a light skimming) to not simply hand all the work to the GM as often as other Traveller adventures.
It all still feels a bit dry in a straight-to-VHS-80s-movie way.
@peterdrake Traveler has pretty much **always** been the universe that the GM builds or chooses not to. Even so... the iconic taglines on EVERY edition have resonated with me for decades "This is Free Trader Beowulf. calling anyone... Mayday. Mayday... We are under attack... Main drive is gone... Turret number one note responding... Mayday ... Losing cabin pressure fast, calling anyone... Please help... This is Free Trader Beowulf..."
That tag line is the reason I bought my first Traveller black box, in 1977. Read the tag line and thought "I gotta have this".
Even now when I read the tag line, I see a little movie trailer play out in my mind's eye.
@nyrath @peterdrake Seems legit to me. :)
@jonharmon What do you like for medium crunchy?
@jonharmon I ran Numenera before Fate. The books are *gorgeous* and the artwork is imaginative, but a bit too much is left up to the GM. Having a monster represented by one number wasn't crunchy enough, and I didn't like constantly multiplying or dividing by 3 because the designer wanted to keep the number of levels low but also wanted to use a d20.
I don't know BRP, but it's now on my radar!
We used GURPS for low-crunchy story-telling 30 years ago(*), so medium-crunchy should also be possible. The meta-rule of GURPS is the rules are all optional; one can use the crunchy rules (only) when the Story calls for crunchy.
(*)(We= my wife handled plot & most NPCs, i handled mapping and what mechanics were called for.)
For low-crunchy today, I'd probably be looking at FATE? (I liked the look of FUDGE years ago, and FATE is the evolution.)
Medium crunchy, IDK.
@peterdrake I've not picked up that dungeon fantasy bundle yet - definitely will do.
The thing about gurps is how much you can ignore (though not sure how this applies to DF specifically). For combat I'd probably start by using just the rules in the free gurps lite booklet and gradually expand the rules as the table gets accustomed to them. Gurps _can_ be low crunch if you use it that way - it is just a tool set after all
Maybe check Chris Normand on youtube too for modulating crunch
@tomhanney Do you have a particular video in mind?
@tomhanney The third edition GURPS Basic Set book differentiates basic and advanced. It looks like fourth edition abandoned this.
@peterdrake @tomhanney
4e also differentiates. I don't think the Dungeon Fantasy set does.
@tomhanney @peterdrake
It pretty much works as well for me in Dungeon Fantasy as it does in #GURPS
I may be odd, but not every session in my games has consistent crunch. Something else I find useful is the GURPS game aid for foundry. While I didn't use that for my game in the FLGS, I have used it pretty much all my games for the last 2 years.
I recognize that not all players or GMs like maps, but I do. I'd say about half my players do also. (The others don't care either way.)
@woefulhc @tomhanney (But whatever I run will be face-to-face.)
@peterdrake @tomhanney
That is completely fair. For a while I had two F2F games. The one in the FLGS I did without electronics. This was more to ensure that people without such could still play. For the one at friends' houses, I did use the VTT, largely because then it didn't matter as much if they lost their sheet.
@peterdrake GURPS is notorious for its fractal multiplication of rules. Though in its base it only had three roll types: skill/characteristic roll, damage roll, reaction roll.
@peterdrake I am not a #GURPS author. I have been playing/running it since 1989. My guess as to why reaction rolls are reversed is to keep beneficial things positive, harmful things negative and to allow both very high and very low results.
So far as the modifiers go, when I returned to running/playing (after kids grew up) I was using the GM sheet here: https://www.themook.net/gamegeekery/color-coded-gurps-gm-screen/. Note while this is 8 sides of 8"x11" paper, in practice I used 1 or 2 sheets most sessions.
@peterdrake With respect to #GURPS and DFRPG the system is modular. If people are having fun, you are doing it right. The same site with the GM screen has some excellent tutorials on melee and ranged combat. Similar video content is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWI5GHDCnAA&t=3s with the specific combat one here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYQU_SBbXfE&t=3s
At this point, when I run a combat, I ask the (new) player what they want to do, then I tell them what to roll. I usually suggest new GMs and players
@peterdrake play/run a couple of combats with "disposable" characters. These could be pre-gens, or ones made simply to try out a new/unfamiliar skill or aspect of play. I have had some people insist they want to do this with the characters they plan to use in a campaign. That is valid, however if the goal is to explore the rules, that can sometimes be more easily done if the opportunity costs of a mistake are lowered.
Another discovery: the Dungeon Fantasy bundle include the Dungeon Fantasy Companion, which includes Against the Rat-Men, the sequel to I Smell a Rat.