The Lounge III
I think the delay of Dungeon Fantasy was a painful misstep.
Also, despite the fact that I do enjoy Dungeon Fantasy (and I own virtually all of it), sometimes I ponder if it were a different direction than what a potentially larger fanbase may have desired.
I believe that dungeon fantasy (the genre; not the product) tropes are among the most popular. However,I am uncertain if the Dungeon Fantasy power level and style was necessarily what was desired. One of the
This is strictly my own opinion, but I base it upon what I see around me and how I've watched both D&D (and Pathfinder) evolve over the past few editions. I also base it upon what the reasons were for me, as an individual, deciding to buy into GURPS. While I love fantasy and "dungeon fantasy" tropes, themes, archetypes, and stories, a lot of the issues I've had with D&D were why I wanted to play a different system.
-I loved D&D 3rd Edition at the time I was playing it. The amount of options and cool ideas was awesome. Unfortunately, not all of the options which looked cool on paper were actually cool in actual play because of flaws in the rules. The power curve between levels was often too sharp, and the difference of one or two levels could be drastic. In theory, I could do things like build a castle, have followers, or be a knight on a horse, but the reality of how the game worked turned actually attempting to do those things into nonsense; any castle I'd build or army I would lead would be virtually worthless against any of the threats I'd face as a higher-level character. High levels too often turned into what I've seen other people call "rocket tag" - meaning that fights turned into a race to see which side could land a "save or die/suck" spell or an epic attack. Don't get me wrong, I still had a lot of years of fun with the game, but there were things I wanted to do -both as a player and a world builder- which I did not feel worked well with the system.
-I had a love/hate relationship with D&D 4th Edition. Some of the changes from 3rd to 4th were things I thought were awesome. The lessened power curve between levels was nice; it meant that -as a DM- the party gaining a level or two didn't necessarily mean that I had to re-write my entire campaign. I also (to the dismay of many others) actually really liked the lore and cosmology of 4th Edition; it felt epic and mythological. The whole "points of light" from the preview books was cool. However, it was my experience that "points of light" as an idea did not really make sense in the context of 4E rules; the game very quickly started to feel more like a super-hero game wearing a fantasy disguise. While the individual characters were closer in power to each other than their 3rd Edition counterparts, the enemies and monsters often failed miserably to provide a challenge which lived up to what the fluff claimed. While later books started to fix this, the edition was already starting to draw to a close. Even had it been fixed, some parts of the rules still clashed with the style of game I wanted to play and run. There came a point when I felt as though my 4th Edition characters were essentially immune to the world around them. I eventually came to enjoy 4th Edition, but I came to enjoy it because -at this point- I had started to play GURPS and accepted that the two systems were meant for different styles of play.
-I bought GURPS 4th Edition after looking through the books at a local gaming store. I liked that it had the possibility of options like D&D 3rd Edition, but I could also enjoy the lessened power curve between levels that D&D 4th had because GURPS had no levels at all. Even in a fantasy game with crazy powers and monsters, I could still build a world in which things made sense to me. The "high level" GURPS fighter might very well be able to fight several guys at a time, but he still wasn't fighting entire armies by himself (unless that's the type of game I wanted). As a player-character, investing in allies and property made sense because those things weren't so easily outpaced by number inflation. The easiest example is the classic trope of a knight on horseback. In D&D 3rd Edition, having a horse turned into a liability because basically anything I'd be fighting with a high level character could likely kill my horse even with an ability which my horse saved against and took half-damage from. In 4th, the game was built in such a way that my character should trade my horse in for something else as levels progressed.
I'm starting to ramble; I apologize.
What I'm getting at is that I think Dungeon Fantasy sometimes tries too hard to mimic other game systems. While I see the value of that, I also think that GURPS has some advantages over those systems which start to get lost with DF. There comes a point when it starts to feel a little like the D&D 3e "rocket tag" again; monsters and PCs are trying to land a killing blow. Either an attack does nothing or it does everything. The other issue I've found is that there comes a point when it's difficult to have the world still make sense. If I'm wearing uber-magical-armor that no weapon can penetrate, do I care that the local town guard doesn't like what I'm doing?
I think the general concept of DF is fantastic, but I think a more grounded approach, an approach which used the strengths of GURPS as a system to world-build a setting which "makes sense," would have been a better approach. You could still have templates for the various jobs and races and monsters just like you do now, but build all of those things as part of a world instead of building them as a set of things which levels-up beyond what the baseline world can ever hope to touch. By all means, have epic heroes fighting multiple foes at a time and being head and shoulders above the common man, but find a way for them to still feel as though they are attached to the world in which they live.
I look at what D&D 5th Edition turned into, and I feel as though my view isn't so crazy. There are many aspects of it which I do not enjoy, but I think the basic mentality behind the early design of it is at least in a similar ballpark to what I'm talking about. (Some of the newer products are breaking from the mold and it's starting to feel as though some old problems are creeping back into the product, but that's a different conversation.)
My point is that I think GURPS should have embraced what makes it different and used the strengths inherent in the system rather than trying so hard to mimic how other games worked. Yes, have the DF tropes, character types, monsters, and everything else, but ground it all in the aspects of GURPS which influenced me to buy GURPS.