GURPS Dungeon Fantasy has Arrived!

This isn't a review as much as a summary of my impressions of Dungeon Fantasy, Powered by GURPS.  

I've been a long time GURPS fan.   Way back in my AD&D 1st Edition days, I wanted a different system and spent a lot of time researching options.    I finally chose GURPS and it was everything I wanted.    While in recent years, I've switched to a lighter system, mostly because finding players was getting difficult.   I spent as much time researching the alternate system, however, I've still would rather play GURPS.  I have nearly everything released for fourth edition and most of 3rd Edition Revised.   I gave up trying to complete my 3rd Ed Revised collection, it was getting too hard to locate things.

When they announced the Kickstarter for Dungeon Fantasy Powered By GURPS, I immediately backed it...and waited patiently for it's arrival, and today was that day.

The Kickstarter

While there were a few people that had minor meltdowns during the campaign, especially around the inevitable delays that most projects suffer.   From my perspective, Steve Jackson Games ran the campaign dang near perfect compared to many others I've backed.  I would call it one of the more professionally done projects on Kickstarter.

The Packaging

This is always hit or miss but my box came from the USPS days ahead of the original schedule, and was pristine.   The packaging was a Center Special Slotted Container (CSSC) which just means that both the inner and outer pair of flaps meet in the center of the box.   To me, this offers more protection than the Regular Slotted Container (RSC) where the inner flaps don't meet.   I'll leave it to you to search if you don't know what I mean.  Inside, I found the Dungeon Fantasy GM Screen, How to be A GURPS GM, Dungeon Fantasy Powered By GURPS Boxed set, 3 bags of extra dice (six each), and two extra bags of  bases, and Dungeon Fantasy Companion (the addons from the kickstater).    

The DFpbG box is sturdy, thicker than many of the recent board games.   Opening it, they have sturdy inserts with a central divide for dice/bases and the cardboard heroes..   There's a filler box along the side that was excellent for storing the extra bases. 

The box has enough room for the books, plus the Dungeon Fantasy Companion (The How to be  GURPS GM is part of their standard line and slightly bigger than the DFpbG books.   This is including the unpunched cardboard heroes and the maps.

The Books

GURPS

I'm hesitate to review the system, it's GURPS, and people have formed opinions on it and fans can't agree.    I'll just say GURPS is a lot easier than it seems and this product does the hard work of reducing the rules to what you need.    While GURPS tends to attract gamers that enjoy things such as intricate detail and math, you really don't need it, GURPS just allows for it.  It also can be reduced down to a pretty simple game with very simple rules (roll 3d6, roll low); for players, the work is in the character creation, and in DFpbG (and GURPS 4th Edition as a whole), the use of templates takes much of the load off that.

Art

Art, the subjective topic that garners all sorts of rage.   From my perspective, the art is well done, is immersive in the setting, and there's enough of it.   I'm not an art critic, I just know what I like, so I'm not going to go on about it.

Content

Again a subjective topic, I'm presenting my perspective.    Outside of Companion, the books are full color soft covers and like most (all?) of the GURPS titles, the layout is two column and presented in a well organized fashion.  Having just received it, I have not read any of it yet, but I expect that they will live up to the same high standards of all Steve Jackson Games products with writing and editing.

Summary

It's a great product, and opening the box felt nearly the excitement I had when I got my first blue box D&D game.   While I've been playing a different system the past few years, I finally want to come back home to GURPS.  I must find players now...