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[Disgrunt]

I've done some google-fu, and never really been satisfied by any answers I found.

Has anyone ever played a DF inspired tabletop game? What system?

Do you guys think Barbarians of Lemuria would make a good system for it? I think in that way, it leaves a lot of the fine mechanics of a game like DF to the creativity and discretion of the players and DM.

Link to rules (not pirated, their free): http://barbariansoflemuria.webs.com/bol_rules.pdf

Any other systems you guys would try/have tried?

[Xyon]

I've never really seen any DF table top attempts. There are many aspects of DF you could try to bring to TT.   Do you just make it a pure combat game? Do you make it a fortress building/upgrading type game with resource harvesting? Try to do it all?

[Disgrunt]

That's what I liked about BoL - there are distinct phases where you adventure and then must spend money to advance your character. The way I thought of it, that this could be applied to a fortress or civilization/holdings of the characters within the fortress.

[CyberianK]

We need a board with over 137 z levels

The real Four Dimensional Chess

[Xyon]

I feel like the old DF stat system, strength, agility, toughness, would be good for a board game, as they would be between levels 1 to 6. And its not too many stats as to be unmanageable if you had say... 20 dwarfs on the table?  Maybe a "mind" or "happiness" stat that goes up or down, emotional tantrum chance when it gets too low or reaches zero.

There's about six quality levels, so that fits easy into a game if you wanted to include gear quality.    Skill levels would probably need simplified, 6 or 10 total skill levels would be nice and even for a board game. 

[Robsoie]

There's a lot of world/donjons/cities generators around internet like by example  :

http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/game-programming/polygon-map-generation/demo.html
http://www.d20srd.org/fantasy/world/

http://donjon.bin.sh/adnd/dungeon/
http://davesmapper.com/

http://inkwellideas.com/free-tools/random-city-map-generator/
https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator

that could be usefull to use as a base for the printed maps in case of a DF adventure mode adaptation into tabletop.
Though to simulate the randomness of world/dungeon/cities , it may be better to have many separate world/dungeon/cities printable tiles that you can randomly re-arrange on your table instead of printing a whole generated dungeon that can't modified.

[Disgrunt]

@Robsoie
I was thinking that adventures would still be planned, like your average tabletop. There are just some things that humans aren't as good as computers at, and effortless world-gen is one of them. I would likely initially gen it in DF or one of the

@Xyon
I like the simplicity and open creativity of BoL's health, magic, and armor system. Aspects of it look like good candidates to adapt to DF. From what I've read, warhammer fantasy's hp and career system are a good fit. For sanity/corruption, I think that the One Ring LOTR system is the best I've seen - it's very narrative and tailored to each character.

I'm almost tempted to try and scavenge together a system, but I've got no experience. Might be a fun project though. The biggest challenge would be have to balance the specificity of DF with open world, the gritty realism of it, and the fact that magic has yes to be defined. There'd have to be a system for making monsters on the fly as well, seeing as there are a billion different [insertanimal]-men in DF. Character gen would have to be somewhat random, like 1E DND, but also streamlined because likely you'll be dying quite a bit. You make your character based around your stats, not vice versa. Elves would be shit in melee. Not all races would be able to play together, etc. Maybe a mechanic for the sheer randomness, like the destiny mechanic from Edge of the Empire? Dice could also easily be a pool or simple pass/succeed.

Some things to peak at

http://cubicle7.co.uk/our-games/the-one-ring/the-one-ring-game-system/
http://khorne.ru/2nd/wfrp_web/Core.pdf

The more I talk, the more I actually might have a go at this, honestly.

[Robsoie]

Something that is a trait of DF is the very detailled combat, with layers of armor/cloth/skin/nerves/bones/etc being involved , with people losing limbs, and taking said limbs to strike opponents etc...

While the computerisation of this system in DF make it fast as it's the cpu does all the rolls/calculations for you, i wonder if trying to implement a tabletop combat system that detailled wouldn't only result in very long, dragging and so ultimately boring for the player combat.

I think combat is certainly a section of a tabletop version of DF that will have to get some simplification. But in the same time too much simplification would remove an important trait of what makes DF.

[Starver]

I know where I'd get the figures...

(If you find it easier, go for the fantasy versions, but given they're now off-canon, fan-produced squats/derivatives shorn of their more techy features might be the better option in the long-run.)

[Disgrunt]

I've been reading through the warhammer fantasy pdf, and the class and combat system seems to be very DF-like. It allows for mundane classes, and professions could definitely be boiled down and converted

Including the layers of the body would definitely be overkill, but I think a wound system like WF would be okay. There is a certain level of abstraction that's necessary I feel. Overall Warhammer 1e is pretty convoluted, character gen is random but very tuned to the universe. The same publisher that made One Ring is going to make warhammer 4e in the next year. Maybe that one, or 2e or 3e is a better system to adapt?

World gen would be ludicrous.

[Pyrite]

I have occasionally taken screenshots of my fortresses and used them as pathfinder dungeons.

[Disgrunt]

What do you think pathfinder does better than 5e?

[wierd]

The combat thing might not be too terrible with computer assistance.

the issue I see is how to do random encounters, as the monsters spawn on the map at the edge, then migrate around and are totally avoidable in DF.  Tabletop games rely heavily on random encounter matrices, which DF does not have.

[Rince Wind]

I never use truly random encounters as a DM. I might have some little encounters (usually non-combat) prepared with a sentence or three and roll for them. They are usually made to show an aspect of the world or locale.

No game I ever played in used a lot (if any) of random encounters.

Another good ruleset might be Savage Worlds. It is not free but the core rule book (yes, only one) is cheap, the rules are easy to learn/use and flexible. Combat is not detailed as to make it fast. Most enemies die in one good hit, or take 2 decent ones. (First hit only makes someone shaken, 2nd one kills/wounds. But if you hit roll high enough you can do two or more wounds. Exploding dice make it more likely to do so.)

[forgotten_idiot]

Something that is a trait of DF is the very detailled combat, with layers of armor/cloth/skin/nerves/bones/etc being involved , with people losing limbs, and taking said limbs to strike opponents etc...

I think GURPS is the way to go. With GURPS you can make combat as complex as you want it to be.