What to use from Hall of Judgment for my DF/DFRPG game?
First off, I'm not going to read the finished adventure end to end. I've read parts, but not the entire thing. This at least retains the possibility that I could play it. I won't run it (I have too much to run as it is), but at least it's possible I could get in there and play if someone runs it.
The rules and monsters? I read them all. What will show up in Felltower?
Short version - not all of it. I've been running my DF game for over 100 sessions and 7 years; we've solved a lot of problems that new rules are meant to address.
Fantastic Dungeon Grappling will inform how we run our house ruled grappling. I like FDG but it does make some decisions differently than how I chose to make them earlier. Doug and I had worked on a simplified TG for DF for a while, and I took that and stripped it down further and did my own thing with it. But FDG deals elegantly with some issues that we didn't directly address, and so we'll use a merged version of them.
Field Dressing Game will see use since one of our players likes to have his character butcher and eat things. Especially weird things.
The Wilderness Survival rules are nice, but I'm satisfied with what we use from Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures. I get why Doug re-invented the wheel; DFRPG didn't have any rules and he probably didn't have access to use the materials from DF16. You wouldn't go wrong using these; but like FDG, I have others already.
From the Bestiary there are some critters I will use. I don't generally use a lot of normal animals, in fact I almost never use them - and there are a lot of normal animals in the book. The various bandits, warriors, etc. I don't need - I use the basic stats for 62-point delvers from DF15 instead. I will certainly use some of the faerie stats, if my players ever figure out a way into (well, under) elf hill, although they should be warned - I'll change them to suit my particular conception of Faerie. The ice alf and krabbari would fit right in with some minis I have, so they go in. I like the vaettr but I'm not sure I can fit yet another wight variation into my game; it's fairly full of them already.
so Hall of Judgment is a solid get for me, even without running the adventure. A good base of faerie critters, a couple of demonic and elemental monsters, and some modifications to my grappling rules. If you don't have you own grappling rules, don't use DF16, and will use the adventure, this is an excellent supplement.
What about the Pregens?
ReplyDeleteI probably won't use any of them. I'm not a big fan of pregens in any case, plus some of these a variations of DFRPG templates and I require strict following of the templates, and some of their gear is HoJ-specific and not being used in Felltower.
DeleteThis is a fairly solid review from someone who's been around the block a few times. I have always been a big fan of "do what works" and in a game as long-running as Felltower, the odds of running into a situation that my rules and creatures address that y'all haven't run into were going to be low. Plus, as you noted, I had access/license to use DFRPG and *that's all*. Frankly, I didn't *want* more, because my pitch to SJG was "Lost Hall of Tyr, but better" and that included the supplemental material.
ReplyDeleteSo if you have no problem getting the nutella of DF in the peanut butter of your DFRPG (as with Peter), "Hrm, nifty, not broken, but not worth the disruption" is par for the course, and "hey, here are some things I can still use" is bonus.
So I take this as a compliment that there's even something in there. And I take, hopefully, the fact that I didn't draw fire for "overly complex" that I have finally managed to tame that particular demon.