CandyLaser
2016-12-20, 09:15 PM
My latest meatspace campaign (a game of Shadow of the Demon Lord) is going to be coming to a close in a couple of months. That means it's time for a new game. My players are very interested in an old-school, classic megadungeon crawl, something along the lines of Undermountain, Dwimmermount, or the various Temple of Elemental Evil modules (or the original Diablo and Torchlight, for computer game examples). I'm interested in running that sort of campaign as well.
However, I'm not settled on what system to use. Here's what I'm looking for. First, I want planning and preparation to be important. I'll be tracking encumbrance, light source availability, and the like, so games that hand-wave that away won't work. (Note that games that track these things abstractly could be fine - so for instance, if instead of tracking exactly what food the PCs have, we just used 4e's survival days, that would suffice). Second, I want combat to be quick. Battlemaps and minis are fine, but we shouldn't need hours to do every battle (high level D&D 3.5, I'm looking at you). Third, I'd like to include some nods to old-school D&D. Race-as-class would be great, for example. Fourth, prep and dungeon stocking should be easy. Finally, I want characters to be customizable. It shouldn't be the case that any two fighters are essentially interchangeable, for example, mechanically speaking.
I'm looking for suggestions for what I should run or of things I've overlooked. Here's what I've been considering, along with the pros and cons that I see.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: It's designed for just this sort of play. Characters are incredibly customizable, but templates give archetypal "classes," and adding race-as-class is just a matter of having a "dwarf" template. It supports very detailed gear tracking and interesting combat. Downsides: I'm worried that it goes too far in terms of tracking detail. Finally, and this is the main problem, my players and I don't know the system, and there are tons and tons of rules. I know you don't need to use them all, but just using the various templates in the main Dungeon Fantasy sourcebook requires you to know what plenty of different advantages do, and don't even get me started on the various different magic systems.
D&D 4e: Some level of resource management is baked in. Using survival days (and a similar concept I'm calling light hours) I can track resources at an acceptable level of granularity. Dungeon stocking is easy as pie. Plenty of character customization and interesting fights. But fights can be slow, and it's about as far from old-school flavor as you can get.
D&D 5e: My last game before SotDL was 5e, and while I like 5e it doesn't do quite what I want for this game. I'd do 4e over 5e, any day of the week.
D&D 3.5/Pathfinder: Nope, not doing it, but included for completeness. I've run campaigns from 1 to epic and I don't want to do it again; prep work is just way too involved.
Adventurer, Conqueror, King (or some other OSR game): gets the old-school feel with some modern innovations. Character customization is limited, though, and I'd have to do some work examining spell and magic item lists to get rid of things that break the conceit of the megadungeon setting. They might be too old-school, as well - games like Dungeon Crawl Classics have way too much randomness for my tastes.
d6 Fantasy: This is an outlier. I'm familiar with d6 Space in the form of the old WEG Star Wars game, and the fantasy setup is interesting. But I have no experience with it directly, and I can't find much discussion of it online. Plus, its spell lists and bestiaries are a bit anemic, which means more prep work for me.
Torchbearer: I love the theme, and it's designed to handle deep dungeon delves. But it's a bit too grim for what I have in mind, and I don't like how it handles conflicts. I may steal its encumbrance system, though.
D&D systems other that 4e are the only ones I'm dead set against. Thoughts?
However, I'm not settled on what system to use. Here's what I'm looking for. First, I want planning and preparation to be important. I'll be tracking encumbrance, light source availability, and the like, so games that hand-wave that away won't work. (Note that games that track these things abstractly could be fine - so for instance, if instead of tracking exactly what food the PCs have, we just used 4e's survival days, that would suffice). Second, I want combat to be quick. Battlemaps and minis are fine, but we shouldn't need hours to do every battle (high level D&D 3.5, I'm looking at you). Third, I'd like to include some nods to old-school D&D. Race-as-class would be great, for example. Fourth, prep and dungeon stocking should be easy. Finally, I want characters to be customizable. It shouldn't be the case that any two fighters are essentially interchangeable, for example, mechanically speaking.
I'm looking for suggestions for what I should run or of things I've overlooked. Here's what I've been considering, along with the pros and cons that I see.
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy: It's designed for just this sort of play. Characters are incredibly customizable, but templates give archetypal "classes," and adding race-as-class is just a matter of having a "dwarf" template. It supports very detailed gear tracking and interesting combat. Downsides: I'm worried that it goes too far in terms of tracking detail. Finally, and this is the main problem, my players and I don't know the system, and there are tons and tons of rules. I know you don't need to use them all, but just using the various templates in the main Dungeon Fantasy sourcebook requires you to know what plenty of different advantages do, and don't even get me started on the various different magic systems.
D&D 4e: Some level of resource management is baked in. Using survival days (and a similar concept I'm calling light hours) I can track resources at an acceptable level of granularity. Dungeon stocking is easy as pie. Plenty of character customization and interesting fights. But fights can be slow, and it's about as far from old-school flavor as you can get.
D&D 5e: My last game before SotDL was 5e, and while I like 5e it doesn't do quite what I want for this game. I'd do 4e over 5e, any day of the week.
D&D 3.5/Pathfinder: Nope, not doing it, but included for completeness. I've run campaigns from 1 to epic and I don't want to do it again; prep work is just way too involved.
Adventurer, Conqueror, King (or some other OSR game): gets the old-school feel with some modern innovations. Character customization is limited, though, and I'd have to do some work examining spell and magic item lists to get rid of things that break the conceit of the megadungeon setting. They might be too old-school, as well - games like Dungeon Crawl Classics have way too much randomness for my tastes.
d6 Fantasy: This is an outlier. I'm familiar with d6 Space in the form of the old WEG Star Wars game, and the fantasy setup is interesting. But I have no experience with it directly, and I can't find much discussion of it online. Plus, its spell lists and bestiaries are a bit anemic, which means more prep work for me.
Torchbearer: I love the theme, and it's designed to handle deep dungeon delves. But it's a bit too grim for what I have in mind, and I don't like how it handles conflicts. I may steal its encumbrance system, though.
D&D systems other that 4e are the only ones I'm dead set against. Thoughts?