The Frustration of Finding Rules in DFRPG

I have been keying at least one area per day in my megadungeon on my lunch break. It takes just a few minutes to figure out what I want in the room and write some boxed text. But when it comes to adding the rules language for monsters, traps, or even treasure (whether magical or mundane), my lack of familiarity with running GURPS leads to referencing the books quite frequently. 

Dungeon Fantasy started as a line of supplements for GURPS 4e. The books required the Basic set to play and, therefore, assumed you had access to and knew those rules. When they released the DFRPG boxed set, it was supposed to stand on its own as a realized rules set.

My issues with it are two-fold, both stemming from its origins as a line of supplements: the rules are scattered across the books (partly because they utilized the existing texts instead of redesigning the layout for better use) and there is a dearth of examples. 

Scattered Rules Example 1:

The other day I added a lightning trap to a room. I figured lightning damage would have a special interaction with metal armor (truth be told, I knew it did from other sources). I also knew that electrical damage was burning damage in GURPS (as are fire and cold). So I opened the Exploits book and looked for lightning in the index. Not there. Electricity? No. Burning? Yes! Burning (burn) damage type, page 53. No mention of electricity. (It does, however, refer you to page 68 for lots of rules on Fire.) Knowing that there are rules for this, I went to GURPS Basic and found it in the index there. Yep, metal armor provides only DR 1 vs electricity. Went back to DFRPG and finally found the metal armor interaction in the Spells book on a lightning spell. Why are all the damage type special rules not collected in one place?

Scattered Rules Example 2:

I placed a stone slab in front of a tomb to bar entrance and wanted to see how hard it would be for PCs to push it over or bust through it. There is a section in Exploits called Muscle that covers pushing, pulling, lifting, forcing open, or bashing down doors and gates and such. The Bashing rules mention damage bonuses for attacking objects like doors or chests but no mention of what to expect for DR or HP. The Forcing rules talk about overcoming locks, hinges, bars, and wedges with a quick contest of ST. They mention using a lock or hinge's DR or HP as a penalty to the roll and give simple ranges for each in parentheses. Nothing about stone doors or walls.

If you go further into the combat chapter, there is a section on dealing Damage to Objects. It mentions innate DR for objects made from wood and metal. And then it refers the reader to later sections on Walls and Entrances for dealing with damaging walls and doors! Why the hell does Bashing not reference this section and those later sections when the whole point of Bashing is to knock through chests and doors?!

When you go to Walls, it has DR and HP values for stone walls based on thickness (as well as a note on innate DR for stone). And Entrances lists all the lock, hinge, bar, and wedge DR and HP values that were just parenthetical notes in Forcing as well as DR and HP values for using the Bashing rules on doors based on material and quality. Why, oh why did they not add page references in Bashing and Forcing directing you to these sections? Walls and Entrances both back-reference Bashing and Forcing, but honestly, who is looking up Walls or Entrances in the index when they are looking for rules about Bashing?

 

 

The dearth of examples is mostly related to magic items. The list of available magic items in Adventurers is pretty boring and straightforward: potions; scrolls; simple bonuses to die rolls; flat immunity to fire or poison. I wanted to add a magic cloak as part of a treasure but there are no examples of magic clothing (other than armor and amulets) and very few examples (e.g. necklace of fireballs, bottomless purse) of what in D&D would be a wondrous item. In Spells, some spells have an Item entry detailing the cost for an "always on" item that grants the benefits of the spell. These are things like bonus attributes (ST, DX, Will, etc.) or advantages (Ambidexterity, Combat Reflexes) or a few more interesting things (e.g. Steelwraith, Invisibility, Continual Light, Create Food). But how would something like a Cloak of Elvenkind work in DFRPG? How would I figure out the cost if the party wants to sell it? These details are missing (or hidden) and yet they seem pretty basic for the type of game it wants to present.