Steve Jackson GamesDungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game

Everything you need to play tabletop games with your friends in one box!Disclaimer: I haven't had the opportunity to run through the rules as stacked up to the previous Dungeon Fantasy books, but we do have a GM running us through the older version. I'll update this as we delve deeper into the rules.THE GAME:Dungeon Fantasy is powered by GURPS—Generic Universal Role-Playing System—which is a more mathematically focused roleplaying system than some others. It's played with 3d6, which lends better to probability-based rolling rather than luck-based (d20). I've played a lot of systems, and at the end of the day I keep coming back to GURPS.OVERVIEW:This is a wonderful self-contained first entry into GURPS. It has everything you need to start playing, except for dice for your friends! Treat this box well and it will last you many, many campaigns. I'd suggest this primarily to new players of GURPS; however, if you've purchased the old Dungeon Fantasy books, you'll find that these ones contain some new information and options. This does not contain PDFs of the books purchased.If you love these rules, I'd suggest looking into  GURPS Basic Set: Characters  and  GURPS Basic Set: Campaigns . It's a wonderful ruleset that can handle anything from Space Adventures to Medieval Times, and there's a rulebook for almost every setting you could think to run. My group's favorite books are: Powers (Super Heroes), High-Tech (Various Technology up to 'Modern Day'), and Martial-Arts (Expanded Combat Rules and techniques for hand-to-hand fighting).DETAILS/CONTENTS:The information below is my rundown on pretty much everything you get in the box. If you're looking for my thoughts, they're above!The box itself is of pretty good construction, although I received it with already blunted corners (which had blunted the bottom corners of the rulebooks as well), so I don't expect that it would hold up well to repeated abuse. Right off the bat, it opens to a pair of maps for use in the "I Smell a Rat!" adventure—which apparently are only a portion of what is actually show in the adventure itself. These are nice thick paper, but just paper—I wouldn't use these with a particularly messy group without laminating them, or something similar.There are two separate 'pages' of monster and character tiles, which are dual sided to reflect the front and back of a character or monster. These are super charming and varied, with a small name-plate that gets covered by the hex base (so that they players don't know what they're facing). These images are illustrated by Denis Loubet. The box includes 12 hex bases; enough for your PCs and some monsters. These are made of thick plastic and are designed with good grips inside of the stand so that your tiles don't just fall out.The box also includes a collectors set of 3d6 (the core dice of the system) which have the Steve Jackson Games logo instead of 1's. These are standard white d6, which seem pretty light to me.THE RULEBOOKS:All of the books included are soft-cover, instead of the normal hardcover GURPS entries. Adventurers, Exploits and Spells have proper backs, while Monsters and "I Smell a Rat" are thick covered and heavy-duty stapled at the middle. Be gentle with these books, if you plan to use them a lot; maybe buy or make some covers for them, as I can see them getting wrecked pretty fast if you're referencing them often. I've quickly detailed the contents of the books below:Adventurers covers just that—how to create Adventurers from the myriad of races, classes, and beloved advantages/disadvantages presented. It is primarily for the players, though the GM can use it to make NPCs as well. There are comprehensive weapons, armors, and magic item tables. These are well presented for new users and old ones, with helpful guides.Exploits covers the basic mechanics of the game; how to roll, how to make your characters work, and how to Game Master! It's important for the GM foremost, then the Players after they've created their characters. Page 95 and onward (Section: Tables) is one that you'll often revisit, new or old, as it's a quick reference to modifiers and cool combat maneuvers!Spells is self-explanatory. You'll only need this if you're playing a Wizard, Cleric, or Druid. Magic works a little differently than it does in D&D, so it's good to check in here if you're considering playing those classes.Monsters contains a small selection of pre-made bad-guys for you to use in your campaigns, or draw off of when creating your own. In my own time looking at GURPS products, I've kind of wanted a book like this. Think a mini-monster manual! The tiles included with the box give you tokens for these creatures.Dungeon "I Smell a Rat" is a small, self-contained adventure for running those new to the game through. They offer an expansion of this adventure through the Warehouse23 website, in addition to more maps.

When it comes to RPGs, we always categorize them on several aspects and weight them accordingly to different styles of gameplay. In regards to tools provided to support different playstyles, GURPS has it on combat 8/10 storytelling 6/10 customization 10/10 consistency 9/10.If you are very new to TTRPG to begin with, or only just had D&D 5e as your starting point. Consider this, I score D&D 5e of having combat 4/10 storytelling 6/10 customization 5/10 consistency 8/10. The formatting with so many slashes and parenthesis could make people confused when looking at the stats, you will need to understand the fundamental of the Math before having an idea what those stats means. But I can give you a rule of thumb, all checks are done with 3d6 meaning your result will range from 1-18, and you need to roll equal to or lower than the skill rating for you to succeed.Combats in GURPS is deadly, no hand holding, unforgiving, yet you will find lots of options to work around to increase survivability without being dominated by dice luck. In fact the greatest consistency it can bring you is that from a bell shape probability deviation from 3d6. Meaning all your rolls are skewed towards the mean, creating a very "realistic" diminishing of returns the further you push the limit of an ability. A skill may be easy to learn, but hard to master. The learning curve can be steep depends on how well your instructor is to present the materials. I'd say due to its consistency it is not at all hard to understand how its system works.In terms of storytelling, it provides ok amount of tools to encourage players to play out their characters. Advantages and disadvantages provides substantial benefits/drawbacks to impact your characters, making your customizations meaningful. However I still find it somewhat lacking in comparison to 7th Seas, V5, L5R.For customization, need I say more? With character point system in character creation, you need to weight your priority across two main Attributes DX and INT, then further fine tune your points along derived stats and auxiliary stats like ST and HT, and the point cost are reflected across the board very nicely, so you can in fact grasp a guestimate of where you want to focus on just by eyeballing the cost of each stats. The options provided here is immense. Due to the fact that it is a universal system, the general backbone of customization is provided in basic set: character, which still covers HUGE amount of varieties.So how does Dungeon Fantasy differentiates itself from GURPS Basic Set? Well you can see it as GURPS basic, cut out the sci-fi, superheroes themed materials and add in GURPS Fantasy and GURPS Magic. trimmed down and categorized into more D&D like format. If you are familiar with the franchise, you can consider it the Basic D&D against AD&D of the TSR days. I would say Dungeon Fantasy is a Steve Jackson Games attempt to reformat GURPS into a more appealing simplified version without sacrificing the spirit of its main line. I personally found it job well done. There are however some flaws if you are into GURPS 3e or 4e. The terms don't seem to add up to Fantasy and Magic. Yes, just ditch those and treat DF as the core and you should be able to follow through.

I love GURPS. And I love fantasy and dark fantasy. Naturally I was thirsty to lean over these books. I had heard wonders about the Dungeon Fantasy ruleset and had my expectations too high I guess. Don't get me wrong, is a very nice gurps "engined" fantasy RPG, but it lacks the care it should have received to be a superb game option.It works as a slim version of the Core, Fantasy and Magic books. But the layout and design options looks so amateur that it becomes clear that it is not a game made for new generations of players. Even the Core rules are organized in a "sexier" way than those in this books.The art is as bad as you could get - common guys! It is not that expensive to work with professional illustrators! - and the layout is blunt as hell.Sorry for the english. Not a native speaker here.

I met S. Jackson years ago while he was setting up an ogre game he was GMing in Austin area at a game convention. I have played GURPS before and I wanted to see what this newly released system was about and i have to admit to collecting games as well. I wanted to see something with less rules then other RPGs and more roleplaying and world immersion and this was not what i found. The mechanics were superior to other systems but i was looking for simplicity not realism as the focus. THACOs and descriptions of mangled limbs were what had driven me away from other systems that required GM screens, open books, copious note taking, and memorization just to deal with a simple combat. do not regret the purchase but i did find what i was looking for later in another system.