Pramas: D&D his way??

[Lord Mhoram]

Here's the thing: 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder, d20 Modern, Star Wars Saga, are all compatible with each other. You could reasonably stat up, say, a Jedi, put him on a Lamborghini Diablo and have him hunt down undead in Heart of the Nightfang Spire before facing the Red Hand of Doom and then taking down the Runelords.

Sure, some things work differently within each subset, but they're close enough that you can play with books from all games above.

I did that kind of stuff way back when. I was using the first star wars with 3.0 - basically importing Jedi. It worked fairly well.

 

[Khairn]

Here's my $ .02. The world doesn't need another d20 D&D rule set. I don't think I'd be interested in a d20 fantasy knockoff that is his version of "D&D done right".

~snip~

I think that there is a problem with the notion of making a D&D product with the "right feel" and that is that no one really knows (or there is no consensus) what D&D is supposed to feel like.
.

WotC, Monte, Paizo, C&C, Goodman, Pramas and many others, are all trying to give us "D&D done right". But there are so many interpretations of what "right" truly is, that I think attaining the goal is a dream. Still, we have more than enough space in the marketplace for another grab at the Brass Ring.

So go for it Chris! Show us what you got!

 

[Banshee16]

.....

 

[Banshee16]

One thing that impressed me about WotC is that they seemed to be prepared to sacrifice sacred cows to make a better game, it seemed (to me at least) that they were prepared to strip the vehicle down and rebuild from the ground up to make a better game. Paizo seems more interested in maintaining Legacy. It’s a design continuum (with Kevin Sembedida(?) and Palladium at the extreme end) that I’m not interested in. With Paizo and this potential Green Ronin product it would be like “well we fixed part A cause it was broken, but we left Part X cause it needs to stay to feel right.”

I'm not sure that I agree here....how is what WotC is doing any different than what Paizo is doing? Yes, they're taking it apart......but they're *really* doing that, so much that a fairly vocal group of people are concerned about the direction in which the game is being taken. At the end of the day, 4E is really just the "take on D&D" that has been developed by the current batch of designers at WotC. I'm very conscious of the fact that a lot of the hype is marketing, and plan on waiting to see the dust settle before making any decisions. When 3E came out, it was supposed to be the one that fixed all the problems of 1st and 2nd Ed. But now it's insufficient?

I'd generally contest that there are probably few players that will agree on any edition of the game.

At the end of the day, until we've all tried the 4E rules, all we have is the word of the officially sanctioned developers working for WotC as opposed to that of developers working at companies like Paizo and Green Ronin. What makes one developer's word more valid than the other's?

If I rip apart a Mustang GT to try to improve on the vehicle, and make a better car, and when I put the pieces together I've got a Civic, I'd contest that I've just wrecked a good car

Banshee

 

[Dave Turner]

Paizo is soliciting the support of the largest designing body there is - the players.

It's a bit hyperbolic to call the online fraction of D&D's fanbase "the largest designing body there is", isn't it? Frankly, I wouldn't trust 99.9% of the material "designed" by the fans.

 

[Gundark]

If I rip apart a Mustang GT to try to improve on the vehicle, and make a better car, and when I put the pieces together I've got a Civic, I'd contest that I've just wrecked a good car Banshee

Well that's one way of looking at it. How I see it is you buy a really cool looking car then realize that the engine is sub-par. You can get the oil changed, or you can install a great engine to match the body.

Different strokes I guess

 

[Mephistopheles]

Chris has summed up where I'm at regarding D&D at the moment.

I don't like where 4E is going. I'm not so keen on Pathfinder RPG. I'm also not so keen to just keep on keeping on with 3.0/3.5E. I'm willing to wait and see how 4E turns out and what shape Pathfinder RPG eventually takes before writing either of them off but realistically I feel I'm not likely to play either of them.

That's left me thinking of either playing an older edition of D&D or another system altogether. Most recently I've been reading rulebooks for all the different systems I have around with the intention to start tinkering with a homebrew system from scratch. I've no idea how far I'm going to get with it but it's been fun so far.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

If I rip apart a Mustang GT to try to improve on the vehicle, and make a better car, and when I put the pieces together I've got a Civic, I'd contest that I've just wrecked a good car

Banshee

There's also the problem that honest to god, I'd rather have had the civic in the first place.

 

[dm4hire]

You know when 2e came out all I wanted at the time was for them to streamline 1st into as few as possible books and that was it, preferably one book if possible. I was happy to see 2e but at the same time I was sad.

I was thinking the other day with todays technology the next evolution of D&D would become design it yourself books using print on demand and PDFs. Visit a website and choose the rules you want to include in your book and in what order you want. Then you click a button and it creates the PDF and another sends it to the printer, shipping it to you in a couple of days. You could then order the exact game books for your group with the rules you will use.

Anyone who does this has to give me a percentage, nothing big, just enough to pay off my student loans. That's all I want.

 

[rounser]

I'm not sure that I agree here....how is what WotC is doing any different than what Paizo is doing?

WOTC seems to be attending to legal meta stuff like trademarkable names and IP. e.g. "Shifting Badger Wallop", delivered by an "Eladrin".

To them it's probably just irrelevant, but IMO such stuff really affects the tone of the game, negatively and non-trivially. Paizo, being small, doesn't necessarily have to make such compromises, I'd assume.