Dungeon Fantasy: Size

The one thing I love about Dungeon Fantasy is the size of the books. They are small. There isn't much "game" here, but what we get is incredibly dense, condensed, and straightforward. It feels like an old-school game, where the rules were a tight, concise, dense core of math and procedures - and the world operated by that central node of simulation and rules.

5E and Pathfinder 2 are written like card game rules. The books are endless phases, turns, conditions, exceptional cases, build rules, interactions, and can-and-can't dos. They drone on and on for over a thousand pages of core rules, and they will sit there and waste your time to get to the wording of a rule with a page of fluff text and art. Playing the game feels like you need a search tool. They are not old-school games. These are patched-together messes, built iteratively, and special-cased to death.

Pathfinder 2 demands adherence to the complete set of rules for a comprehensive experience. 5E is more flexible, but GURPS is the epitome of old-school simplicity. If your aim is to roll under skill numbers and roll damage, GURPS caters to that basic play model. Advanced combat rules are optional, as are most of the games. Despite this, there's a misconception that GURPS is overly complex and dense.

Dense it is, but I like that since my time isn't being wasted.

Complexity is not a trait of GURPS. It's a game that respects your time and doesn't burden you with unnecessary intricacies.

The books are far smaller than 5E or Pathfinder 2 and a lot easier to find a rule in.

Are some of the rules complicated and simulation-based? Yes, but this is a sim, not a card game. A sim will have a core set of rules that turn physics into die rolls. Everything in the world works on this model. There isn't some "super special" assumption that some things in the world give you "bonus actions" and "free actions" because a "rule somewhere says so."

The world doesn't work like that.

A card game designer's mind does.

Give me a hardcore physics simulator any day. Once the core "nut" of how the world works is codified, everything else extends from that base model. Difficulties are not defined as "outside the character" as some DC 25 task floats in the nether. A character's skill sets the base chance. Difficulty is applied as a modifier.

You are looking out, not in.

Your character is not a victim of random world DCs. Your character possesses skills that set the base chance for all interactions with it. If you don't have it, you better hope it defaults to something else similar, or you are out of luck. Again, this is the effect of card game designers trying to design a roleplaying game, not old-school game designers. A lock may be tricky with a -4 modifier, but it is never a DC 20 lock. The latter gives everyone in the world a free lockpicking skill.

Dungeon Fantasy is the more straightforward game.

A few small Dungeon Fantasy books do more than a shelf full of 5E or Pathfinder 2 books. And it does so much more than needing book after book of predesigned character options from professional game designers who always seem to have another book to sell you.

Is there a little learning and work involved? Yes, but learning a few small books is easier (and cheaper) than buying an entire library that needs to be constantly searched, sorted, supported, and sifted through. In many cases, subscriptions are paid to have all the options they sold you in an easier-to-use form.

One of the most considerable gifts in roleplaying is companies creating overly complicated rules with thousands of options and forcing you to pay for character creation services to sort through them all. It is a scam, a sham, and a plague upon the hobby of the West Coast "live service" tech company business model.

Roleplaying games were better before the Internet and AAA gaming live service models.

With GURPS, it all comes with the game. I can design any class, subclass, power, monster, special power, spell, magic item, or anything else with the design system in the base game. 5E and Pathfinder 2E will never give you the "secret sauce design system" since they need to keep selling you books. I would rather play a game that allows me to design things and rewards my creativity and input. The base game gives you even more to play with.

GURPS? Batteries are included here.

And creativity is welcome.