Sola Scriptura XIII: DF 3, Chapter 5: Advancement

Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level

Chapter 5: Advancement

The book rounds itself out with some guidelines about how to award character points. First, it emphasizes that these guidelines are for points for killing and looting, not for good roleplaying. Thus, GMs, it's your job to make sure disadvantages are disadvantageous. I think these should be as game mechanical as possible.

As a GM, I don’t mind some guidelines for reaching goals, though I don’t want a game to be all about killing and looting. Suum cuique.

Battle: Losing, fleeing, or beating up a few fodder monsters is worth nothing. From there, it goes up, to hordes of boss monsters being worth 3 points. Each death docks the group a point.

So kill, don’t be killed, and don’t be a wuss and run. That’s the goal. I’d say that overcoming, not only fighting, the foes should be the point. Or points. Anyways, if PCs get what they want from such foes without swinging a sword or casting a spell, that should be the same point value.

Impressive Feats: This is for overcoming other challenges. They’re all a point; boo on saying that negotiation or trickery that avoids a deadly foe is only worth a point. I don’t care how they get the stuff, just get the stuff! If anything, tricking Orcus into giving you his wand should be worth more than killing and looting him. It's clever play.

More interesting are the ideas of “bonus areas” or “quest items.” What is a bonus area? I keep thinking the Secret Cow Level in Diablo II, or rooms 9-13 in Caverns of Thracia. A quest item? I think of Wave, Whelm, and Blackrazor from White Plume Mountain. Neither term came into my gaming world until this PDF, so maybe someone has other ideas.

Completion: Basically, making it through the dungeon and everybody getting at least $150 each (after paying off any backers and topping off power items) gets 5 points apiece. For a game about looting, that seems like something is missing. There's some points dinged off for dying and for not clearing the dungeon, but if the gang walks away with a $50,000 haul, that's supposed to be its own reward. 

At the bottom right is a sidebar about Changing Professions. If you're buying power-ups off a template whose multi-class lens you've bought, you have to spend points on all the basics of its template before getting its power-ups. 

This dovetails well with the start of the next section, Adding New Abilities. There's a short blurb about niche protection. Basically, it means that PCs can have the abilities on their template, and any template whose multi-class lens they have bought. If you want other abilities, buy another multi-class lens. Then we get a short shopping list.

Attributes and Secondary Characteristics. You can always buy them. I'm a little queasy about that, since back in the 3e days, we'd always buy up attributes over skills then lament on rec.games.frp.gurps how all the characters looked alike. I haven't seen any problems in play nowadays, however.

Advantages and Powers. Only take the stuff on your template. Sounds fair to me. It points out talents specifically, which are a cost-effective way of boosting your character's might.

Skills and Spells. Only take the stuff on your template. Personally, I have a Call of Cthulhu/Runequest-inspired take, that if you make a default roll in play with a difficulty modifier of no higher than +0, you can spend a point on the skill during the next downtime, if you have a point. I'm also liberal with who can take Survival, since it's a big deal in my game. If you didn't start with it, you'll be making enough default rolls against it (even if only to forage) that you'll be able to justify spending the point.

Lens Omissions. If you took a multi-class lens, you can buy the mandatory advantages and skills of the full template that weren't on your lens. Indeed, if you're going to be using your second profession often, that strikes me as a good idea.

Power-Ups. You can buy buy all the power-ups on your template, not your lens. 

New Capabilities. I'm not sure why, but the stuff in Chapter 4 "transcends profession." I can see this for Psionics, but not for something like Spell-Archery, though the prerequisites for Spell-Archery are such that only a few delvers can even thing about taking it.

Last are Training Expenses. It's a scheme for an amount of money per point spent that discourages cost-training. It encourages buying up attributes since those are free, which again makes me queasy. I've been off-and-on with requiring these. I have no trouble charging money for utterly new abilities, like a new spell, but if you use a skill or ability often in play, I don't see the need for training costs. Maybe when raising a skill above the 4-point level (attribute+2 for Easy skills, +1 for Average, +0 for Hard, -1 for Very Hard), as that means a lot of skill and training.

Sola Scriptura XII: DF 3, Chapter 4: New Capabilities

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level
Chapter 4: New Capabilities

After crawling through DF2 and DF16 (and a few others) for skills, I'm back to this again for new stuff. Well, it was new back in 2008, and if your character doesn't have the traits, they're new to him/her/it (seriously on it; playing a robot is totally in-genre; see page 22 of Men and Magic, and the Warforged of Eberron). So a short note on a short chapter.

Mortal Foe is basically a new version of Higher Purpose for highly skilled fighters. It's the Favored Enemy of D&D 3e Rangers. Truth be told, while it's limited to fighting men with high (20+) combat skills, I don't think that wizards who know Fireball-20 taking this would break anything.

Next up, Psionics. There's a whole book dedicated to this, which puts this as part of a template. Psionics are cheap to cast—1 FP—but might bring unwanted (they're all unwanted) Elder Things when you use them. DF14 has some of the Elder Things, which makes the book more useful for GMs whose players aren't making psionic characters.

I'll make an aside, but while "cheesy psi powers are a hack-and-slash tradition," actually using them goes against that tradition. Eldritch Wizardry? That was a system bungled in the communication between Steven Marsh (the other one, not the Pyramid editor) and Gary Gygax. AD&D? I made dishonest rolls on those to have characters with über-cool psi powers, but never once played them since nobody would believe that I rolled those honestly, which was true. AD&D Second Edition? There were two versions of psionics, and I owned both, and never used either. Nobody I knew used them. Even D&D 3.0 and D&D 3.5 had fairly different psionic systems, and one of those (I think the 3.0 one) was the only time I've seen a psionic character at the table. The player got bored of it, in part because it wasn't a mighty character. I don't pretend to care about whatever psionic system there was in D&D 4; I gave up caring about that edition's magic system. Anyways, my long-winded babble's point is that having the psionic system gather dust on your shelf, real or virtual, is a hack-and-slash tradition. While I don't mind the system listed in this book (it's basically another GURPS Powers-type system), I don't need it.

Spell-Archery is the one new spell, and it's for Wizard-Scouts who have bought their Bow skill up to 20, so they're 320-point characters before they dump a point into this spell. (It's a little pricier for Scout-Wizards, who have fewer spells to dump into the arrow.) Cast a spell onto an arrow, shoot the arrow, have the spell affect the target. I've seen that before. Alright, not in play, because the Arcane Archers I saw in play ignored this ability, likely because it's limited. (And they only took a level of Wizard, only to qualify for the prestige class.)

I'd like more spells, or more uses for existing spells. A good way to add more spells would be to look through the tasks for skills, and write spells to handle some of them. Not solve them utterly, but make it easier, with some magical flair to boot.

Two-Weapon Fighting is the cheaper two-weapon fighting in GURPS Martial Arts, put in Dungeon Fantasy. It corrects a bad pricing of the Basic Set.

And now, the sidebar: Unholy Might. This is Holy Might from Adventurers, with bad stuff in place of good stuff. Looking at it, I'd throw the Dread Touch (and my dark sense of humor wants to call it Bad Touch) on an Evil Cleric, and make it leveled, just to be a bastard.

Sola Scriptura XI: DF 3, Chapter 3

Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level

Chapter 3: Power-Ups

This is a short chapter that eventually became its own book. Obviously, when I get around to reviewing that book in detail, I’ll talk about it more, but some notes about this, rather than rehashing what Kromm already wrote:

• This has a write-up for Energy Reserve on its second page, or that FP-like advantage that recharges alongside FP at the same rate and costs just as much. That it recharges separately is the biggest takeaway, or recharges separately as the text has it. A mighty caster will have reserves of both FP and ER. After needed spells, lots of ER is the first power-up a caster should take.
• As DF11 tells in detail, many templates can exceed normal attribute limits. This gets at something that isn’t explicit in Dungeon Fantasy: unless stated otherwise, attributes and attribute-like secondary characteristics (Will and Per) have a limit of 20. Hit Points are limited to being 30% above ST; Fatigue Points are limited to being 30% above HT (casters take heed); Basic Speed is limited to being 2.00 above (DX+HT)/4; Basic Move is limited to being Basic Speed+3. So, adventurers are not normally “godlike beings” as p. B14 calls folks with attributes above 20. If someone wants to make the Epic Level Handbook* for Dungeon Fantasy, the shooting will start at ignoring the original limits.
• Going through the lists, what strikes me is how often Wild Talent shows up: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Holy Warrior, Martial Artist, Wizard. It’s like saying, “These guys can do anything, so screw trying to write it out!"
• Most of the non-casters can buy some Extra Attack, and some level of Enhanced Defenses. Yes, Enhanced Defenses come in levels. Sorry, Enhanced Parry for one weapon and Enhanced Block are still overpriced by a few points.
• Bards have no limit on Charisma. A Bard who splurged on this would almost never have to fight intelligent foes.

* I played in an epic-level campaign of D&D about 10 years ago. It was like playing superheroes in the skins of D&D characters. My druid/ranger (something like Druid 30/Ranger 9) could wild shape into a gold dragon and track so well that Count Humperdinck would give up, like tracking a gnat on the surface of water on an overcast night, while moving at full speed. It was fun but weird; I think folks who like supers would like it more.

Sola Scriptura X: Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level, Chapter 2: Mixing Professions

Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level

Chapter 2: Mixing Professions

Multi-classing. Well, this is GURPS, where there are no classes, so it’s more like multi-roles. Whatever. It’s multi-something, and this is the chapter.

The lenses are all 50-points, and distill the essence of the second template into that. As such, this review will be a little different than the others, but we’ll start with the traditional part.

First is Affording Lenses at Character Creation. Read: either start with 300 points, or spend some of your discretionary points on a lens. Adding Lenses in Play is spending earned points on a lens, either little-by-little, or all at once, if you can wait that long.

There is a sidebar about Niche Protection. Personally, if everyone is alright with this, you can screw niche protection. The easiest way to do this would be to let wizards cast Healing spells if nobody wants to play a cleric. That’s Lend Energy, Lend Vitality, Minor Healing, and a wizard likely already has Lend Energy to learn Recover Energy. Anyways, this sidebar is for theory of all this.

Taking Two or More Lenses is how to be an über-munchkin. My spell-checker wants to call that über-munchkin-munchkin, incidentally, which seems appropriate. The bit mostly notes that after a few lenses, this doesn’t add too much. Lenses and Improving Abilities means if you buy a lens, you can start raiding that lens’s base template for power-ups. Lenses, No Frames is how to handle all this in a game that doesn’t use templates.

Another sidebar, Saving Points on Multiple Lenses, comes at the bottom of this column. The example it gives says most of it: if you buy Combat Reflexes once, any lens with Combat Reflexes costs 15 points less. There’s a bit about akin skills—Alchemy vs. Herb Lore, and Esoteric Medicine, Religious Ritual, and Theology Specialties—and not spending too many points on them.

Interpreting Lenses starts us towards the lenses themselves. There’s a bit about Choice and Marginal Lenses, which tells us to go Bard-Wizard, not Bard-Barbarian. Attributes says the book gives attributes as bonuses, and remember secondary characteristics when upping them. Advantages says there will be a footnote about skill boosts from them. Disadvantages are mostly for Chi Mastery or Holy Might. Skills has a note about replacing Brawling with Karate, and Wrestling with Judo. Special Abilities are for points in those, like Druidic Arts. Special Skills lists two sets of these to save space later: Bardic Skills and Chi Skills.

Now for the lenses, all 110 of them. I’m not going to go into each one, as there’s 110 of them, each one already has remarks akin to what I would write, and there’s 110 of them. That’s 110 lenses, one for each class template combination, even silly combinations like Barbarian-Wizard. Instead, I’m going to write about what I found about these lenses when I reverse-engineered them a few years ago, and I’m sorting these in the order of the class into which the munchkin is multi-classing. The text instead sorts these by the first template, so this isn’t the same.

Barbarians are Strength above all: every Barbarian lens adds ST. The weaker ones (e.g., Bard-Barbarian) add HT as well; a few (e.g., Knight-Barbarian) add Per. Everybody who lacks it gets High Pain Threshold, and most everyone gets Outdoorsman. Their skills are the woodsman kind of skills.

Bards are IQ above other attributes, and everyone dumber than a Thief gets a point. They’re about their Bardic Talent, Charisma, and Musical Ability, and their skills are Musical Instrument, Public Speaking, and Singing. Everyone puts points into Bardic Skills and Bard-Song advantages, and into spells. The text gives Bardic Magery for those bards who want to have a bigger spell list, and Bard-Song Talent for wizards taking the Wizard-Bard lens, since they already can cast from a bigger spell list.

Clerics are also about IQ, much like the Bard. This is the same for all the casters: Bards, Clerics, Druids, and Wizards need IQ. Their key advantages are Clerical Investment and Power Investiture, and everyone who doesn’t already have it needs a disadvantage for Holy Might. Points go into Holy Might advantages and spells. 

We’ll break for a sidebar about Evil Clerics, which gives us a 0-point lens to make your clerics eeeeevil. Mostly, we call all their abilities “Unholy,” and swap a few skills to be a little more evil. Oh, yeah, and they have Social Stigma (Excommunicated) instead of being goody-two-shoes. As this chapter is about lenses, there’s a bit about Evil Clerics in Other Careers, which is for Evil Clerics taking a cross-class lens, and Is Evil Cleric Right for You?, which is about other templates taking an Evil Cleric lens. The next page has Evil Clerical Spells. They can’t heal, but can cast Mass Zombie and Summon Demon with enough Power Investiture.

Back to the list. Druids need IQ. Next to D&D, all casters seem more alike because they use the same attribute. Nothing like Wizards using Intelligence, Clerics and Druids using Wisdom, and Bards and Sorcerers using Charisma. They need Power Investiture (Druidic), use Druidic abilities and spells, and have a bunch of religious and nature boy skills, like Naturalist and Theology.

Holy Warriors have a broad base of attributes, and everyone taking a Holy Warrior lens has to buy at least one attribute, but it varies. Casters and Thieves get ST and HT, the others buy IQ. They have their Higher Purpose, Holiness, Schtick, and their Holy disadvantage. They have skills relating to being holy (Exorcism), being hunters of a foe (Psychology), and fighting (Strategy, Melee Weapon).

As Evil Clerics get a sidebar, so do Unholy Warriors. It has a 0-point lens to make a Holy Warrior bad, just like Clerics have. There’s New Horizons for Unholy Warriors, which handles Unholy Warriors taking a lens, and The Legions of Evil Want YOU!, which are for other templates taking an Unholy Warrior lens.

Knights need ST; casters and Thieves also take HT. Already strong folks like Barbarians and Holy Warriors take DX. Combat Reflexes and High Pain Threshold are the defining advantages, and those with spare points also take Born War Leader. After some complementary skills like Armoury and Leadership, most of the templates (other than Barbarian) goose up their Melee Weapon skill.

Martial Artists aren’t defined by their attributes at all. No template that takes a Martial Artist lens spends points to boost their attributes. Obviously, this makes lower-ST templates, like Bards, and lower-DX templates, like Clerics, less feasible as Martial Artists. They all take Chi Talent, Trained by a Master, and Disciplines of Faith, as well as points in Chi advantages and skills. Everyone also takes Karate and Judo, and usually Acrobatics and Jumping too.

Scouts tend to have good DX scores, so Barbarians, Holy Warriors, and the caster templates take a point of it. Some of the dumber templates take some Per. Everyone takes Heroic Archer; Thieves, emphasizing their skills, also take Outdoorsman. Everyone takes Bow and Fast-Draw skills, and most take others, like Camouflage and Survival.

Like Scouts, Swashbucklers have high DX scores. They have Enhanced Parry and Weapon Master as their key advantages; a few templates take Weapon Bond and Combat Reflexes too. Their key skills are Melee Weapon and Acrobatics.

Thieves have good DX and IQ scores, and everyone taking a Thief lens puts points in one or both of them. Everyone takes Flexibility, and most folks also take High Manual Dexterity too. There are many Thief skills, and folks will take many of them: Climbing, Forced Entry, Lockpicking, Pickpocket, Stealth, Traps.

Wizards have high IQ, and many templates take extra for a Wizard lens. The other caster templates take some extra FP too. Of course, anyone becoming a Wizard takes Magery, and points into spells. Alchemy, Occultism, and Thaumatology are the Wizard’s main skills.

Sola Scriptura IX

Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level

Chapter 1: Nonhuman Races

I like to take a bit of credit for this chapter. When DF1 first came out, I asked, “Where’s the elves?” Kromm said, “They might come later."

I’m sure I had nothing to do with it, but hey. They came about two months later.

First up is Affording Racial Templates. We’re dealing with buying templates that are a hindsight to the class templates. Action, and I assume Monster Hunters and After the End (I have neither of the last two), baked background lenses right into the templates. The first way is to use some of the Advantage Allowances; all templates have at least 20 points there. There are the Disadvantage and Quirk Points; only if you’re close, man. There’s Skimping on about a third of special abilities and spells, and there’s Overlap, as in, my ogre barbarian doesn’t have ST 27 but a bit less to let me afford to make him.

Next, we have a section about Choice and Marginal Professions. It's mostly about pointing out the obvious, like orcs are good in a fight but suck with spells, while elves are good with bows. There's also a short sidebar called Races from Other GURPS Books, which says that those races aren't all about killing and taking stuff so they might not work.

Let's dive in. Cat-Folk are anthropomorphic cats, made for anime fans, which focus on their DX bonus. Coleopterans are bug-men who are tough but dumb. Corpse-Eaters are creepy, culinary-challenged folks. Dark Ones are somewhat like the drow—nimble and demonic. Dwarves are, hell, you know all about them. 

Elves, the other white meat, are the first race we meet that has subraces. The text encourages making more elven subraces as well, to make elves more unpredictable. All elves but Half-Elves have a perk that lets them get elven gear 10% off, and a talent (Forest Guardian) that adds to elven skills—Bow, Camouflage, Fast-Draw (Arrow), Stealth, and Survival (Woodlands). Yes, there's a weapon in the talent. Dwarves and Dark Ones also have akin talents and perks, though the Dark One perk is Better Power Items instead of 10% off creepy goods. Anyways, there are Half-Elves, High Elves (elves with an IQ bonus), Mountain Elves (Telescopic Vision and Perfect Balance), Sea Elves (underwater), Shadow Elves (20 point drow), Winged Elves (what it says on the tin), and Wood Elves (Legolas). Winged elves bring a short sidebar about Winged Races; mostly, how to whack their wings off.

Now, before we get to Pixie Hollow, there's another sidebar: Tiny Tools. Making a supplement with many short races means making short weapons. These rules are downright mean next to the ones in Low-Tech Companion 2. Not only do their weapons do less damage, but they're also can't get through armor with Armor Divisors less than 1. They have thinner armor, a three-dimensional lowering, for only a two-dimensional lowering of the cost. There is a way to get rid of the Armor Divisor, which is to have Faerie make instead of Mundane. That keeps cost the same, but still lowers damage.

Think of the First Hobbit Legion for a bit. Frodo and friends would have swords that seldom get through orc armor, not only owing to low basic damage, but also to orc armor being worth fivefold against it. (The orcs would wear leather that will have DR 10 against the hobbit swords.) Either one alone is enough to make the orcs sure winners. Both, and the hobbits' DR penalties (I can't see them even bothering with armor), make no survivors when the orcs come to town. And no, the Halfling racial talent doesn’t do enough to make up for the orcs’ gifts.

I use the rules in Low-Tech Companion 2.

This is giving me a thought about the world this implies. Orcs would have hobbit slaves making their food for them. The orcs would often cut down poor hobbits to keep down the number of "Useless Eaters." (Shades of the Hunger Plan.) This is an even shittier world than I thought. Moreover, men would ward the hobbits, but there'd be payment for this. They'd be like thieving oompa-loompas, working for the men with the funny hats.

Maybe short people do have no reason to live.

And now the short people. First up are Faerie Folk. All of these have Dependency (Mana) and Sense of Duty (Nature). The latter has a write-up in the Elf section, and the former has a short note to start this one. A world could have No Mana zones set up to keep out faeries. Fauns, aka satyrs, are horndogs with goat legs who would be good Bards with their Musical Ability. Leprechauns are little (SM -4) guys with Ridiculous Luck and magical gifts who live on the covers of cereal boxes. Nymphs are Very Beautiful (and Kromm, you need to put the level in words in the trait write-up of the stat block) woodland faeries that likely are part of the reason Fauns are so horny. Pixies are pint-sized (SM -6, so that's literally pint-sized) winged faeries that—well, I'm not sure why you'd play one, to be honest. They may be strong for their size, but they're still weak, and they're not any better at being Wizards than anyone else other than racial Magery 0 is. Thieves, I guess, and for those of us with Tinker Bell-loving daughters who want to get them to play.

Gargoyles are stony men with wings. Barbarian is a choice profession for them, and that makes sense with their DR, Blunt Claws, and Tail Striker. Gnomes are, well, gnomes: little guys with a special talent (Widget-Worker) that helps with Lockpicking and Traps, among other things. The text suggests Thieves; Gadgeteer, in DF4, springs to my mind.

After the Gnomes, we have the Goblin-Kin, which is the main bad-guy fodder race of the world. First up are Goblins, who have Cowardice. Oh, yeah, and they're SM 0, which goes against D&D.

Going against D&D doesn't bother me, but it leaves a gap—there's no little bad guy who's nasty in hordes. I suppose the Horde Pygmies in DFM1 fill some of that gap, but there's something to be said for a more generic monster doing that job. I'd suggest Kobolds appearing in a later supplement to handle this, like DFM3.

Moving down the list are Half-Orcs, which are the Goblin-Kin without an IQ penalty. After them are the truly stupid Hobgoblins, who are the biggest and strongest of the Goblin-Kin, then the stock Orcs, who are, well, Orcs. They're kind of big but not too big and kind of dumb but not too dumb. All of these races make good delvers, since they all have either Infravision or Night Vision (that's the Half-Orc for the last one). That isn't a minor consideration, as it ends worry about a light source.

However, there is another issue in the sidebar Almost Monster. The Goblin-Kin, among other races, have bought their strength and Infravision with reaction penalties. Racial Appearance and Odious Racial Habits apply to almost anything happening in town, and make the Goblin hard to disguise too. Social Stigmas affect rolls for the whole party. Half-Breed hurts most reaction rolls at -1, while Infernal takes a -2 hit and -3 to helpful clerical spells. Both give a -2 to skill rolls, presumably back in town again to do things like find backers. Savage and Monster not only give harsher penalties, but also have a chance of not letting the party into town. Lastly, A Monster's Life says that anyone with a -3 or more in reaction penalties from racial Appearance, Odious Racial Habits, and Social Stigmas should get the shaft every now and then. Princesses might kiss frogs, but not orcs.

Since orcs and the like can't always get into town, there might be orc camps along the road outside of town, or an orc brotherhood. This also discourages orcs from becoming civilized, making their savagery a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Heck, what are the racial reaction bonuses and penalties for all races? For fun and learning, here's a list, first giving only those for Appearance, Odious Racial Habits, and Social Stigma, then giving an updated version if other traits that always bear reaction bonuses or penalties (like Voice or Stubbornness) are included:

• Coleopteran: -6
• Corpse-Eater: -5
• Dwarf: 0 (-1 with Stubbornness)
• Half-Elf: -1
• High Elf: +1 (+3 with Voice)
• Mountain Elf: 0 (react to others at -2 due to Loner (12))
• Winged Elf: +1
• Wood Elf: +1
• Nymph: +5 (+10 with Charisma)
• Pixie: +1
• Gargoyle: -3
• Goblin: -4
• Half-Orc: -3
• Hobgoblin: -4
• Orc: -4 (-6 with Bully)
• Celestial: +1
• Minotaur: -4
• Ogre: -7
• Half-Ogre: -4
• Dragon-Blooded: -3 (-5 with Disturbing Voice)
• Lizard Man: -3 (-5 with Disturbing Voice)
• Troll: -5
• Wildman: -3

So, everybody loves Nymphs, and everybody hates Ogres. Again, I play a failed Bad Temper self-control roll as a dropping of a rung on the reaction table where applicable, which comes out to -3. The only race that I found would react to others badly would be Mountain Elves, though I'm sure I'm missing something.

Anyways, moving on to Half-Spirits. It starts with a short note saying, among other things, that these templates are stackable, so you can be half Elder-Spawn and half Corpse-Eater. Celestials have a horny angel as a parent, good stats, and can spend their spare points on many advantages, but demons will go after them and they have a Weakness around Evil sanctity. Elder-Spawn have a, aw, hell, let's quote the tale of Old Man Henderson:

The Deacon then, and I'm quoting the GM here (in the only good line he had the entire game), gave Henderson a Look. A look that can only be summed up as 'Dude, I fucked a Shoggoth and you're creeping me out'. -- A Self Called 'Nowhere' 

Anyways, they have the usual stuff from their squid parent: Double-Jointed, Slippery, Frightens Animals, Weirdness Magnet. They have that Innsmouth Look. Infernals are like Celestials, only that mommy got it down and dirty with a devil that wasn't just a bad date, but really was a devil. He might have been THE Devil. He left Damien Junior with 75 points of stuff, including Dark Vision.

There's a subset of Half-Spirits that are Infused with elemental might. Therefore, mommy had a hot date with a fire elemental, or daddy found a hole in the ground that turned out to be an earth elemental. We have Air-Infused, whose conception I can't even imagine and I've seen some sick shit, and who can Walk on Air; Earth-Infused, who can get naked and walk through stone, Fire-Infused, who can set themselves on fire and never #feelthebern, and Water-Infused, who can live underwater. Well, I might be messing up the politics here. With Flaming Hair, the Fire-Infused might be Trump backers. Water-Infused, of course, backed Rubio. Regardless of voting habits, they're all a bit alike: they all have DR against their element, and a Reputation with elementals of their element.

You know something? The whole business of half-races is filled with squick.

Kromm has said that Joe Pesci in Goodfellas inspired the Halfling, so instead of Tolkien-esque Cowardice, these have Kleptomania. Add Curiosity and Unfazeable, and you have Dragonlance kender. (Odious Racial Habits at your own choosing.) Minotaurs are somewhat boring, truth be told: they're big men with the heads of bulls. Ogres are big (SM +1) and pretty much beg to be Barbarians. Half-Ogres aren't as big, aren't as dumb, and lack Magic Resistance.

Reptilians are two races: Dragon-Blooded and Lizard Men. Both share Claws (Sharp), DR (Tough Skin), Nictitating Membrane, Peripheral Vision, Teeth (Sharp), Disturbing Voice, and Social Stigma (Monster). Dragon-Blooded are smarter and get to breathe fire; Lizard Men are stronger and faster. The shared traits are helpful for those who want to make their own Reptilians. Troglodytes? Take the shared traits and give them Bad Smell and a skunk-like attack.

Trolls are ones who aren't too big, regenerate, and don't like fire. Wildmen are primitive men, something like how we once perceived Neanderthals to have been.

This is a good list of most of the man-like races of fantasy. There are a few overlooked. The evil little guy niche is mostly open, and Kobolds are the most obvious ones to fill it. There are no Centaurs, though with their odd builds, they might not be suitable for going into dungeons. I could have said the same about Winged Elves and especially Aquatic Elves, however. 

This list also serves as a small bestiary, but it needs something else: roles. Not quite DF15: Henchmen, since we don't care about point costs for foes. Indeed, we want to keep choices to a minimum. More like Appendix B in the D&D 5e Monster Manual, or the NPCs in the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide. I like the D&D ones better since they're less frilly, but either gets the point over. The NPC henchmen in the back of Mirror of the Fire Demon or those in DF10: Taverns are in the same vein, but the idea is to take an NPC formatted like a monster, pick a weapon, slap on a racial template, and play. Anyone can add roleplaying details and traits beyond the minimum that must be on the template (say, Duty for a Town Watchman), of course. The NPC's needed gear is also on the template. Call the supplement DF23: Foes or something like that.

Sola Scriptura VIII

Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons

Chapter 2: Mastering Dungeons

This is the part of the book that the players aren’t supposed to see. Frankly, I don’t see the issue since the details won’t be the same from game to game, dungeon to dungeon.

Anyways, diving in. First up is Dungeon Design, and the first choice is Archetype. The book gives some quick ones, with few GURPS stats: Cave, Cellar, Labyrinth, Mine, Prison, Sewer, Tomb, and Warren. The only thing remarkable is a note that it is “traditional to give the party a clue when they change sectors” and goes on to suggest skill rolls. I’ve never heard of that tradition.

And now, a sidebar, Tavern Tales and Moldy Books. This is about Rumors and Details of the dungeon. It’s basically a note to say that you’ll need these. Here’s one where I’d want to have some advice about what is a good rumor or tidbit that a Research roll would find. I’ve seen too many crappy, irrelevant rumors, and frankly I’ve written those on tables too, only to ignore them when I get that roll to my horror.

After that, we get a bit on dungeon Maps from the GM’s perspective. Other than Walls, which have DR and HP for walls (duh), none of this is GURPS-specific. For the record, the E-Heads are Scale, Walls, Ups and Downs, Area Labels, and Legend.

The Area Information has a little more. There are Doors and Locks, which again have DR and HP for those, as well as for Metalwork. There’s a graf about Inhabitants. After these are Nasty Surprises, and those start to get a little interesting. There are Traps and Curses, which will get more detail later, and Evil Runes. Christopher Rice’s article “It’s a Trap!” in Pyramid #3/62 gives quite a bit on these; it’s a needed part of the Dungeon Fantasy line. There are also bits on Gunk and Tricks; Gunk especially would be a good, short Pyramid article.

Beyond this are Obstacles. The big takeaway I get from the start of this is that you should have the height and width of any obstacles written down. In case you haven’t gotten the memo yet, but dungeon adventures often have a lot of detail with them. But for those who don’t feel the need to fret this stuff, there’s always the One-Page Dungeon. Anyways, there’s a new table for Falls, which beats breaking out the calculator to calculate falling damage, and notes about both Pits of Death and Water.

Next up are Special Features. There are the old standby of Altars, then Enchanted Fountains … hold on. Here’s something that’s unique to dungeons—the idea that folks go around jumping in strange fountains on a whim. And there are loads of D&D monsters that are hats or cloaks or other pieces of clothing, because after all, the first thing you do when you find an intact hat in a dungeon is put it on your head. Anyways, back to special features. There are changes in Mana and Sanctity, weird Statues, and Natural Features, which include ore veins and weird fungus. Here’s another oddity of the genre—folks eating random stuff in a dungeon. If you see a glowing blue-green fungus, the first thing you’d do is eat it? And yes, I have played a character who did eat the fungus. Trust me, it was in character for him.

After all this, there are two more bits. The first is Secret and Concealed Doors, which just repeats the stuff in the last chapter. There’s a note about Booty, which says that there well might be some.

The next section is Fiendish Traps. If you’re thinking that I just talked about traps, you’re right, I did. Now going through this closely, I must say I’m more impressed with the organization of the first chapter than of this one. I do suppose that bad organization could be an homage to Gygax, though this isn't stuff that's hard to find, just redundant.

Back to traps. The subheadings have how to Detect the trap, how to Disarm it, how to Circumvent it if you know it's there, whether you can Evade its Effects if you do set it off, how many Shots it has and if you can Rearm it, and whether you can Steal it. This is top-notch writing of the game mechanics of traps, and should be in the Basic Set, as it would work well in any genre. One thing that sticks out is how the Traps skill floats to many attributes: to Perception for spotting, to Dexterity for disarming, to Intelligence for stealing. This shows a 4e idea that some folks missed.

After that we have three sample traps: a concealed crossbow, frozen runes, and an illusion-covered pit. In light of traps being new to GURPS as a statted element, I would have liked more, so again I guide you to "It's a Trap!"

I don't want to blow off this section so lightly; it's one of the handiest in a GURPS book. One of the marvels of Dungeon Fantasy and Action (I don't have Monster Hunters; the genre doesn't interest me) is how Kromm gets so much utility out of so few words. Much of it is because most of the background work is in the Basic Set. It's a shame that it took so long for him to come up with the worked example supplement. Had Evil Stevie published something like this back in 1989, when there were more tabletop RPG players in general, it could have pushed GURPS higher in market share. It would have been behind D&D, of course, but it could have picked up GMs that GURPS's genericness and toolkit approach otherwise put off.

There's a short blurb about Monsters and Player Knowledge, which says to change up monsters to screw with the peeking munchkins. Then it's on to Perilous Encounters: the monsters. 

First up are Encounter Types: Wandering Monsters and Set Encounters. Kromm rolls 3d to see if a wandering monster shows up, which seems cumbersome to me. It does allow for players to be stealthy to shun encounters, though that means always shifting the target number for clues, which should usually be possible. Maybe an encounter usually happens on a 7 or less, which a Stealth roll can change, while clues always happen on a 14 or more? Regardless of the number of dice, rolling more often for loud or otherwise obvious parties makes more sense to me than raising the target number. I did like the idea of “9 or less chance of 2d orcs,” which would enhance the idea that monsters in the dungeon have lives.

Creating Monsters gives not only advice for doing just that, but it also gives a new (well, new for December 2007) stat block and some advice for using it. The biggest changes from the Bestiary chapter in Campaigns are putting DR with the attributes and writing out attacks. That last one should be in a new printing of Campaigns, no waiting for a new edition. 

There are monster classes, which are mostly for skill rolls to recognize them. Some folks take these classes more seriously than I; to me, many of the monster classes are too generic to mean much. Both dragons and orcs are Mundane. In terms of identification and basic effects? That's fine. In terms of trying to handle them in-game, or build a new monster off existing ones? Don't kid me. One of the reasons to have pre-written monsters is to use them as a base for new ones. At a minimum, the hit location table involved needs to be in the notes if it isn't obvious.

A few more notes on this format. In the right stat column, there's a blank spot in the middle. You can make use of this. In the official bestiary format in the Steve Jackson Games formatting template, you'd put the weight there. For most monsters, this isn't a big deal. Also, if your monster has a Block defense, you'd put it on the line with the other defenses, and move up SM and DR. The shield-bearing monsters in Mirror of the Fire Demon have this.

Another minor quibble is that, at least in this book, the monsters don't have how many hexes they take up on a battle mat. Likewise, melee attacks herein lack Reach and ranged attacks lack Range and Accuracy (and Rate of Fire and Bulk, when those would be relevant). 

Now, onto the Sample Monsters. First up is the Acid Spider, which is, uh, a big spider for the third act that injects acid when it bites. Then we have the as-Sharak, or the rakshasa, a weretiger/demon. There’s the Crushroom, a big walking mushroom. There’s the staple of the Dire Wolf, then Doomchildren, which are little demons that explode when you kill them. Think of the Bomb Bobs from Marathon, for those who remember Marathon. The next page has four monsters that are exactly what they say on the tin: Erupting Slime, Flaming Skull, Flesh-Eating Ape, Foul Bat (Batchala). The next page also has four monsters that are exactly what they say on the tin: Frost Snake, Giant Rat, Golem-Armor Swordsman, Horde Zombie. Next we have the Mindwarper, a mind flayer knockoff, the Peshkali, a six-armed demon, and the Siege Beast, a giant with a hammer riveted to its hand. And then we have the Stone Golem, which should need no introduction, the Toxifier, a demonic poisonous cloud, and the Triger, a nasty three-headed tiger.

This is a good starter list of monsters. Personally, I’d like for someone to crack open the Chainmail fantasy supplement and make versions of the monsters therein. These are basic monsters, and common for what many folks want to do with Dungeon Fantasy: play old D&D adventures. There needs to be some more Plants and Faeries, since there aren’t many of them yet and they have some common characteristics. They could have supplements like Dungeon Fantasy Monsters 2 was for Slimes.

Oh well. You do reviews with the supplements you have, not the supplements you don’t have, and back to this one. Balancing Encounters has some notes about, well, balancing encounters. There are entries for Offense, Defense, and Mobility, but I can sum all of this up in that if it can’t do damage to your players’ characters at all, or if your players’ characters can’t do damage to it at all, maybe it isn’t a good combat encounter. The text gives three levels of toughness: Fodder, Worthy, and Boss. There isn’t hard-and-fast advice for what monster gets what level, nor should there be. Think about D&D Challenge Ratings and all the hell they make. I'm not big on encounter balance anyways. Players gotta know when to walk away and know when to run. And for that, I'd offer up GURPS Action 2: Exploits, which has a chase system in it.

More relevant on this page is the sidebar about Combat Rules. Trademark Moves means your players should come up with their common attacks in advance and write them down. I was in a D&D game about 10 years ago wherein we got higher attributes if we did this, so think about awarding character points for a player who does this. Dumb Monsters means monsters shouldn’t try stuff like Deceptive Attack or Feints. Personally, Deceptive Attacks and Feints should be characteristics of monsters with IQ 10+, not for your common ogres. “And Stay Down!” says that fodder monsters should go down with any damage, while worthy monsters should die at 0 HP. I have all fodder and worthy monsters dropping at 0 HP, which saves rolling, especially as few such monsters would make their HT rolls more than once or twice anyways. Having fodder monsters drop after taking even a point of damage leads to metagaming, which was common in D&D 4e games with minion monsters, which had this rule in effect.

And now there is another section about Treasure. Among the notes are that Rare Artifacts might be objets d’art. Uh, that isn’t the definition of Rare Artifacts that I’ve always understood. Mine’s “rare and mighty magic items that can fuck up the world and corrupt you if you abuse them.” Weapons and Armor need their stats right away. Magic Items and Blessed Items will want prices to become power items. Magical Writings and Potions are what you expect. Unique Items are more in line with my idea of artifacts. You don’t always need the underlying spells and the prices, though power items need prices because their FP is keyed to their non-magical price. Is there a quick and dirty way to estimate prices of magic items?

How Much? advises us to not worry too much about Monty Haul campaigns, which is mostly right and contradicts Gygax’s biggest fear. Playing Hard to Get deals with hiding the treasure. Dead Bodies need a Search roll. Containers have stats for common ones. Handily, there is a rule for how to handle fragile items in trunks that players have smashed. Troves are, well, piles of loot, maybe behind a door.

Beyond the Dungeon has advice on two other kinds of adventures. The first are Wilderness Adventures, which again are in DF16. Town Adventures mostly talks about the “urban dungeon crawl,” which aren’t quite all of town adventures. I suspect a supplement sometime down the line. Making Everybody Useful is a graf for handling each template and making sure someone playing them has something to do.

Sola Scriptura VII

Dungeon Fantasy 2: Dungeons

Chapter 1: Dungeon-Crawling (part 2)

In our last part, we’ve gone into the dungeon, after traveling the world. Now, we get to meet interesting monsters and kill them.

Oh, yeah, and take their stuff.

We get a short definition of Monsters to start off this bit. After that, we get Recognition about how to know your foe. There are some skills that do this, and which one depends on the monster: Heraldry, Hidden Lore, Naturalist, Occultism, and Thaumatology. The system reminds me of D&D 3.5e’s system of using Knowledge checks to identify monsters and tell their weaknesses.

Next up is Negotiation, the part where you try to reason with it. I see a fundamental difference between Dungeon Fantasy as written and my games: the reaction roll is at -5, and is an afterthought. I roll the reaction roll if I don’t think the monster is automatically going to strike, like the hobgoblins in the dungeon under the mines, who obviously didn’t want the PCs to grab them. Here, the reaction roll happens only when the PCs ask for it. I don’t think I like this approach, having spent too much time reading OSR blogs and having them influence me a bit, though the -5 is a handy modifier for what the reaction would be if the PCs meet the monster on its own turf.

There are three points under this heading. One is Language: you know, remember to apply the penalties for not having a common tongue if these monsters don’t speak the common tongue. Another is Making Deals, which is a Diplomacy roll. The last is Skeevy Bastards, for when the monsters are dishonest. Kromm sure does love the word “skeevy.”

For when the player characters are skeevy, we have Trickery, and some quick rolls for quick tricks. After that, there is “Good (Three-Headed) Doggie!” which is trickery against beasts. Call of the Wild handles Animal Handling, Doggo handles Disguise (Animals), and Soothe the Savage Breast (and yes, it is “Breast” in my copy) lets Bards use Musical Influence on animals. (Or on boobies; take your pick.)

Doggo reminds me of the Binder of Shame, which you all should read. Specifically, this bit:

Deviant Boy: “Candi the mage has two great skills. One is casting prismatic spray from her crotch-”
Me: “For the last time, no it’s not.”
Deviant Boy: “Fine, then her only great skill aside from magic is making bear costumes. Now she carries two of them with her at all times. One is for special occasions but I think that in this case she’ll make an exception.”
Old Yellowbelly: “So we put on the bear costumes to try and fool the bugbears into thinking we’re part of the pack?”
Deviant Boy: “Exactly.”
Old Yellowbelly: “That’s so crazy it might just get me killed.”
El Disgusto: “Either your character does this or my ninja gets his murder on.”
Old Yellowbelly: “Rats. Ok I suit up.”

Alright, time to kill some shit, because now I'm at the Combat section. After the preliminary words about how you'll need the Basic Set to handle combat, we get Exploiting Weaknesses. First off, there's a reminder that Higher Purpose gives a +1 to rolls (hit, damage, defend, resist) when its relevant. Duh; this seems like padding. Then we have Supernatural Flaws, which is using Hidden Lore to learn weaknesses, which is an extension of the rules under Recognition. Turning Undead explains how True Faith (Turning) works, which is a rehash of the same rules in chapter 4 of Adventurers. At the end of this section we have Vitals, which says to roll against Physiology to know where the Vitals are for weird beasties.

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL,” and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy.”—Arlo Guthrie

Starting the next page is a sidebar, No "I" in "Teamwork" (No Profit Without It). This has three rules for helping out: With a Little Help From My Friends for having a helper roll on a related skill, Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem for having skilled delvers cover for unskilled ones, and Pulling Your Weight for feats of ST. The first two of these are greatly handy for any kind of skill roll; all three seem out of place in the Combat section. For example, I use Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem for Hiking rolls, rather than six rolls that will give me six movement rates, when all I truly want is the lowest one.

Next up we have Medic! for handling fast (1 second) healing at -10 to a roll. A better lead sentence for this paragraph would have been about "Onward to Victory!" which talks about helping out in combat. Advice is rolling Tactics to grant a boon, Encouragement is rolling Leadership to roll against Fright Checks and the like (which in my game would also be morale, since I use the same target number as a Fright Check), and Observation is rolling Strategy to guess the foe's plan. As these are the skills of a Holy Warrior or a Knight, a non-fighter who wants to help out isn't going to roll against these skills, and needs to find another way. He could instead be Playing Dead, which is as it sounds. 

Wizards can roll against Thaumatology for Recognizing Magic. For Thieves, there's a section about using Roguish Skills in Battle. First off is Backstabbing, which involves rolling against Stealth (almost always at a penalty) to duck out of combat, then to make a strike at a weak spot on his foe. This is a Telegraphic Attack, almost explicitly named in the rules but without the note that critical rolls aren't helped. Hidden Weapons deals with hiding weapons with Holdout. Practical Poisoning would have helped Laertes slay Hamlet faster, keeping him from a last monologue. Traps is for setting up simple traps for an ambush.

Now we have a few grafs that help Martial Artists, Swashbucklers, and Thieves: Speed is Armor! (If this is true, you’re gonna see alchemists brewing greenies.) There’s a note that the first dodge after any of these is an Acrobatic Dodge, which sweetens the pot to try these tricks. Let’s see … Acrobatic Evade is evading with Acrobatics instead of DX, Acrobatic Guard is something akin to an All-Out Defensive Feint, an Acrobatic Stand is a kip up, and Athletics in Combat says that the Dungeon Parkour tricks can be part of Move or Move and Attack maneuvers in combat. Tumbling looks like something I really regret overlooking—a successful Acrobatics check lets you add your Move to your foe’s range on the Speed/Range table.

Taunt and Bluster is kender taunt against all kinds of foes, and the text allows for a choice of skills to do this. There’s a whole graf on Intimidation, which has a few special rules. The list of skills even cites Singing, though that rewards high skill for some reason. I can see someone with Incompetence (Singing) having a special kind of Rapier Wit to annoy the hell out of his foes on a failed Singing check. Speaking of which, there’s no mention of it at all in this section. I suppose because it stuns foes rather than makes them strike you, but still.

After the Battle often has things that need to happen. Healing is the first thing of which I thought, but Prisoners is the first one that Kromm listed. Chains and Irons is about tying up foes. Whips and Thumb-Screws is about torturing them (hey, if you wanted Lawful Good players, you would have made them take Honesty and Code of Honor). Elbow-Length Gloves is about, uh, looking for treasure where the sun really doesn’t shine.

Patching Up is about healing. Owing to the many ways monsters can hurt you, there are many ways to heal up. Antidotes is about finding Pharmacy (Herbal) in the woods to cure poison. Bandaging is how it sounds. Bandaging in Dungeon Fantasy is TL3, so we can assume that for calculations and variables, Dungeon Fantasy is TL3, though with some TL4 goods. Bleeding says to ignore Bleeding except for special cases, and how to handle the special cases. Horrible Grubs are for when the GM goes full Gary Gygax and gives the Thief a case of ear seekers; it takes Surgery to get them out. Weird Afflictions need a Diagnosis roll to identify. Likewise, Poisons identifies poisons and Thaumatology identifies magically-induced misery. Fido and Ol’ Paint say you need Veterinary to patch up your animal buddies.

Two more sections before we get to the loot. Searching the Bodies … do we really need rules for this? I’m serious. Any idiot would find things, and if something is hidden, we can all guess that the skill involved is Search. Dead Monster Bits is turning a monster into a frog in a tenth grade biology class. There are rules for Poisons (Poisons and Hazardous Materials (Magical)), Mundane Parts (Naturalist, Physiology, Survival, and Surgery), and Magical Parts (Thaumatology and Surgery). You can look in the text for just how they work.

And at long last, the Loot. There’s a sidebar called Cracking Chests and Vaults, which talks about opening the container. The most notable thing here is that a trapped lock gets only one roll, that being with the lower of Lockpicking or Traps. Maybe it speeds things up a lot in some games, but this sounds like making intentional walks in baseball automatic rather than having to throw four balls—not much speed-up.

Identifying the Good Stuff has many ways of doing just that, and these make full use of a character’s combat skills. First is Coin, which gives us the copper/silver/gold monetary system of the Dungeon Fantasy world. Stones says that Merchant handles knowing which stones are gemstones. Connoisseur handles Luxury Items and Rare Artifacts, Armoury governs Superior Weapons and Armor. Folks with Holiness or Power Investiture can spot Blessed Items with a Perception roll, and some prayer and a Religious Ritual roll tell their stories. Magic Items are somewhat akin, as a Per + Magery roll spots them, but the Analyze Magic spell identifies them. Alchemy can do much the same, while Hidden Lore (Magic Items) identifies "legendary" items, whatever they are. Hidden Lore (Magical Writings) identifies just that, while anyone with Magery spots spell scrolls. There are rules for time it takes to read scrolls. Those with Magery can spot Potions, while Alchemy tells their effects.

Naturally Occurring Money handles Prospecting, something that earned a few words in old Judges Guild pamphlets, but there isn’t a hard number for how much the munchkins get or how fast they get it. Merchant handles Determining Value.

Now, I assume after getting back to town, folks need Disposing of the Loot. Keepers has the generic advice about splitting treasure, and Fixer-Uppers talks about refitting armor for new wearers. Hmmm … according to this, I shouldn’t have let the armorer cut down the suit of mail for the midget barbarian. Oh well, it played better, and makes some sense for something like mail.

Getting a Good Price does say that the munchkins need to get the loot back to town, so it looks like I made a good assumption. Its next graf says, “Coin always fetches its full value,” and everything else depends on the delver’s Wealth trait. This varies slightly from what the first book said at the bottom of page 23, that the Wealth trait determines the percentage that delvers get for coins and gems. That’s an important discrepancy, and as folks who played original D&D and AD&D might recall, gems (and jewelry) were the real treasures to haul away, as they brought more moolah for less weight.

After this, there are ways to “bend the rules” and get more money. “For you, a special price!” says to make a reaction roll at the start of a spending spree and that a 16+ gets more money. Haggling is a Quick Contest of Merchant with a generic skill 15; winning gets more money, losing gets less. Black Market is the same thing as Haggling, but with Streetwise. The Temple lets those with Clerical Investment sell items “suitable for a temple” and blessed items for more money, except not for money but for credit.

There are two more ways of getting money. Scrap is about carting off all the junk from a dungeon and selling it in town. Considering that the rate is $1d×100 per half-ton, that isn’t too good a way to make money. Copper is worth about 180 times more than scrap, pound for pound. I suspect that Naturally Occurring Money is worth the same as scrap. The delvers can also try Selling the Tale, which even the text says doesn’t earn much money.

Now, one last sidebar, Last Ditch, before some last thoughts about the world of Dungeon Fantasy. Seeking Guidance is a way to get an idea of what to do on a Meditation or a Theology roll. I’d gather Philosophy would work the same. It’s like a light kind of Common Sense. Praying is the chance of “god call.” Altars and Shrines handles turning unholy shrines into holy ones. I think it makes them holy; it would make more sense if it made them first not-unholy, and then holy. Pass the Plate reminds munchkins who got some godly help to give some moolah the next time they are in town to ensure they can get help the next time they’re in trouble.

We definitively have a TL for Dungeon Fantasy—TL3—and have the common coinage of the realm. Folks have a need of scrap, though it doesn’t pay well. I don’t know if it isn’t that needed, or there really isn’t that much money to give. I’m guessing the latter; using Writing to write a tale gets $100, or $500 on a critical success. A critical success doesn’t even cover a month’s Cost of Living. That’s bad by any standards. Again, this is a crapsack world. The world has armorers skilled enough to handle resizing; the text doesn’t say how much an NPC armorer would charge or how long that takes. That would be something handy to know.

There are gods, and they play an active role in the world. Kromm writes, “There are no atheists in dungeons.” I suspect that there aren’t any atheists in the world at all. Houses of worship are in towns and take donations, and have enough economic might to grant credit for goods in town. (Credit would be more common than actual money in this world, the more I think about it.)