sword-dancer said:
Rolemaster Harnmaster Cyberpunk are very deadly systems, but that`s part of the fun of it, the deadliness.
Not the same. In Harn and Cyberpunk, you have systems that don't presume you have magical bonuses. You rely on other defenses. Armor really saves your bacon (heck, it took teflon-coated FN-FAL rounds to scare a properly decked-out solo). And of course, Rolemaster is just sort of a cruel joke GM"s play on their friends.
In D&D, attack bonuses go up, AC does not. It gets easy to hit folks. The arguements that you just don't ever get into fights, don't ever get caught off guard, and print your character sheets on recyclable paper have flaws that are pretty much prima facie IMO.
There are no class defense bonuses, no action points, no fate points, no hit point reserve, no tokens, no little 1" x 2" cards that say "get out of death free" in the Thieves' World Player's Manual.
Hmm. Nice sound bite.
rjs said:
Certainly once you start "unplugging" things from the game you have to incorporate suitable replacements to return to the same baseline. But TW emphasizes a certain play style; dungeon-delving is not appropriate to TW games.
Characters being annihlated left and right, players rolling up new characters after every fight--that's the play style TW emphasizes? It's
really intended to be in a league with Hackmaster and Paranoia? I read Thieves' World novels. Sure, the world was deadly, but the fact is, a lot of times characters
did have fate points, hit point reserves, or some kind of "get-out-of-death-free" card. Characters did actually survive bad luck, hack-n'-slash aggressiveness, and stupid mistakes. How do you tell a cohesive story when the protagonists die in act two?
In Shadowspawn's Guide to Sanctuary, which is a big GM's guide to running games in Sanctuary, I added several optional tools to change to the tone and threat levels of the TW games, including tips for bringing the magic system closer to the D&D default, casting templates based on techniques, allegiances, playing older and younger characters, action points, class dodge bonus, ideas for running TW Games including multiple GMs and incorporating character trees.
All of that sounds interesting. I will check it out.
So, even though the play style may not be to everyone's liking (hack-and-slashers beware), I think we made an entertaining game and I hope you give it a look.
Definitely. like I've said, I actually prefer a good low-magic, grim-n'-gritty settings. Thanks for taking the time to comment.