DF Novices

      It's been about six months since I was here last. I see this blog has developed quite a layer of dust.

    Anyway here I am, planning to run another DF game. In the meantime, I've run a couple of one-shots when one of my D&D 5e GMs was unavailable. One of those was DFRPG using Delvers to Grow to create 62-point novices. I like how relatively simple that character creation process was. The idea grew on me to use that to start a longer DF game at that "beginning adventurer" stage (AKA Level 1 in some Other Game), rather than the "experienced adventurer" starting point of the default 250-point DF characters. Hardly an original idea on my part, I admit; plenty of other DF GMs have been doing that for years. So why now for me? Delvers to Grow.

    Based on my experience of GMing a group of players who had minimal prior GURPS experience, in a game of DF with PCs which started at 250 points and went up from there, I feel that starting at a lower level may help to mitigate some of the problems I faced with that game. I had made a decision in that game to start every player with a pre-generated character, with the idea to give them a feel for the system before they tackled the chargen process, which is arguably the most complex part of GURPS for a new player. However I think in hindsight this merely delayed the inevitable, and also created knock-on problems. It also didn't remove that fact that whichever way you build it (or have it built for you), a 250-point PC has a lot of stuff on the sheet to learn all at once, especially for a player who is new to GURPS.

    As much as GURPS feels fairly intuitive to me, I have to accept that is not necessary the case for players coming with expectations from games with other character generation and task resolution mechanics. I feel that starting at a lower threshold of capability may help with that learning curve. Delvers to Grow looks like it will do well at getting players up and running with a new PC pretty quickly. And if a 62-point novice dies, well then hopefully the next PC will learn from their predecessor's mistake. It should also be an easier experience for the group collectively, if the newest would-be party member takes less than 30 minutes to make up.