Delvers to Grow

The Delvers to Grow book series I can't praise highly enough. If you enjoy the low-level, deadly OSR-style dungeon crawls, the Dungeon Crawl Classics 0-level peasants surviving against all odds, and the zero-to-hero gameplay style - these are the books to get!

They take Dungeon Fantasy and turn the game from a difficult-to-grasp 250-point epic hero adventure into something more accessible and approachable for new players. I recommend an experienced GURPS referee because you are navigating the Dungeon Fantasy set plus DTG. For new GURPS referees, stick with either base Dungeon Fantasy or GURPS Lite (or Campaigns & Characters) and learn that first.

But if you want the 0-level horror movie, please let us survive this tense dungeon crawl where you are poking rats with pitchforks and trying to take advantage of every combat rule possible to help you survive, including using a shield-wall fighter. The spear and pitchfork party members stand behind your tank to poke enemies to death - this is where you start.

There are also specialized advantages for OSR trope builds, such as the missile mage, which fires bolts of magical energy every turn. The designer knows the OSR style, builds, and tropes well and combines them with pure GURPS tactical realism and goodness.

The specialized build books are also highly worth it and dive into the tactics each character needs to survive. Some things that may differ in the OSR versus Dungeon Fantasy are also discussed, such as how "mind control bard" builds at low levels are not as effective and may find all of their spells being resisted - making relying on them a risky proposition.

Also, gathering intelligence and using research and lore skills are much more critical in GURPS. Knowing monster physiology may help you identify weak spots, vulnerabilities, and other bits of lore that can help your attackers gain an advantage. Knowledge skills in GURPS are moneymakers and difference-makers in combat. Do you find ancient runes on a wall in D&D? Use a skill roll, decipher them, and hope they give you a clue on how to solve a part of the current dungeon. In GURPS? Make a high-quality etching of them, research them, write a book on them to put them in context, and sell that for 500gp. They may give you a clue, but any information in GURPS matters.

An excellent GURPS referee will use knowledge, lore, mysteries, and information to make them matter in story, combat, and tactics. The intelligence game is one of the "table legs" of a great GURPS experience.

The Strong Delvers build book offers good melee advice from OSR games, and you may need to be made aware that things work differently here. GURPS is a much better set of melee combat rules than D&D could ever dream of being, so you can get away with 2-person tactics like the shield wall and attacker who stands behind them with a reach weapon and makes all-out attacks to decimate the enemy. Don't ignore close combat or fear weapons that must be readied!

Also, how things work in other games differs from how things work in GURPS. Some OSR games will create character archetypes that highlight and build a character around a part of the rules. The Pathfinder iconic characters are like that when you convert the builds in, they will be flawed. The thief, Merisiel, is like that, a low-intelligence, high DX stabby, thrown-weapon thief. Since her IQ is low, skills that depend on those, like traps, could be better. Even her character description, "not the smartest knife in the drawer," hints at her low IQ.

In Pathfinder, her low IQ has little effect on her trap detection and disarming abilities. In GURPS, I would not rely on those skills with her, which shows a flaw in the system. I would take along another thief for traps. She is a typical D&D "combat thief" with inferior IQ-based thief skills. As a result, she would not be my first pick if I had a choice of thieves—I want one with the skills our party lacks.

Similarly, many Pathfinder iconic characters show flaws when designed in GURPS. Valeros has too many weapons and looks like a mess of dual-wielding, bow, dagger, and other options for which he needs more focus. GURPS likes you to have weapons options (especially for close combat), but he looks like he would spend a few turns sorting out what weapon he will be using before the battle begins. He is better converted over, but I still see areas where he could focus more on parry and dual-weapon fighting than trying to be a generic, do-it-all D&D fighter. If he focused on one fighting style, he would be a killer.

D&D and Pathfinder put a low value on knowledge skills or gameplay that relies on those areas. The rules hide the effects of low IQ on skill use and push you into violence and combat. The passive skill system even takes rolling and ingenuity out of the game, making it an assumed action reliant on the DM remembering everyone's passive numbers.

The Fast Delvers book focuses on the different types of thieves and also gives good hints for surviving combat. Rely on light armor, movement, and ranged weapons! GURPS does a fantastic job with combat styles and blending information with battles. The social game is ten times better than D&D or Pathfinder. Where newer 5E-style games (Level Up Advanced 5E or Tales of the Valiant) are introducing "social advantages" in background picks, GRUPS and Dungeon Fantasy go hard and give you a complete character design system that puts their "pick and get one thing" systems to shame.

If you are doing OSR-style fantasy games, this is a no-brainer—get these books; they are amazing. The production quality is ultra-high, the content is packed full of amazing options, and the frameworks rework the game into an easy-to-play, deadly, and addicting low-level dungeon game.

Get these books.

They are 100% worth it if you like fantasy gaming in GURPS.