Felltower & the SJG Stakeholders Report

On Friday I posted about the bad news for the DFRPG in the Stakeholder's Report.

How will that affect DF Felltower, which we switched over to the DFRPG as our basic core of GURPS rules?

How it won't

On one level, it won't affect our game at all.

We switched to the DFRPG because of how much it simplifies book buying, book reading, rules understanding, and rules look-ups for the GM and player. I can turn someone loose with Adventurers and the Race List and say, make up a guy. I can say, "Read Exploits and this one House Rules document you'll know how the rules play out." I can say, "Read Spells to see what magic is like."

It's really pretty simple.

And I can and will still do that.

I think the basic rules chassis is excellent and comes with some much-needed focus that helps my players operate with having to ask me legitimate questions about what's in play or not.

How it will

It's just a little demoralizing to say six months ago, "This great new thing is here, and we'll use it!" and have the company say, "That new thing was a failure. Kiss it goodbye." I won't lie about that.

I also see how the lack of print copies could mean less interest in official support. That means I'll get less DFRPG-based gear, monsters, rules articles, etc. out of Pyramid. I'll need to adapt DF books as they come and I like them. I do that now, but I was expecting more DFRPG material.

It will make it harder for new players to "just go buy the boxed set." They had better put these books out in POD quickly (and affordably) or I am in worse shape than before we switched.

And it probably means an official set of GDFs for GCA is not going to happen soon. We'll keep limping along with GCA 4 and me trying to patch the files manually when discrepancies come up.


So overall, I think this is a negative, and it'll have some effects on the logistics of adding new players to Felltower. Day to day, though, it should not affect us.