D&D General Has the OGL/WotC debacle motivated you to create your own Fantasy Heartbreaker or homebrew?

[Laurefindel]

I picked up my Twilight Imperium RPG once again, built using once-Cubicle 7-now-Free League The One Ring’s system, but it has more to do with inspiration from all the talk of working on your own heartbreaker than me boycotting WotC honestly.

 

[jdrakeh]

I picked up my Twilight Imperium RPG once again, built using once-Cubicle 7-now-Free League The One Ring’s system, but it has more to do with inspiration from all the talk of working on your own heartbreaker than me boycotting WotC honestly.

Oh! That sounds cool! The official Twilight Imperium RPG by Fantasy Flight Games (waaaaaay back in the day) was a real disappointment. I'll be sure to check yours out when/if you share it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I was talking with one of my players who's been keeping up the most with the OGL saga about what our ideal post-5E system would look like, and unfortunately, it would have to look a lot like 5E, which is the compromise choice between the folks who want a much lighter game than 3E and the folks who want to have lots of player choices in character development.

There aren't any OSR games that can be built up without a lot of work and even Pathfinder 2 looks too crunchy for a bunch of our players.

So our best bet is for an SRD published under ORC that allows Kobold Press to continue producing 5E supplements. Once we have a framework similar to what we have now, including subclasses and advantage/disadvantage, we might build or modify that chassis to better suit our tastes.

If I wasn't actually running a campaign now, I would consider taking Castles & Crusades out to the garage and trying to 5E-ify it, but that's too work for me at the moment at a time when I'm unlikely to switch over my two ongoing play by post games to a new system, not to mention my Discord and live games.

I do look forward to seeing what this new era of D&D clones produces, though, and would happily buy one that works for me and mine.

 

[gamerprinter]

While I do game design, I wouldn't call game design my first calling. So I've only ever supported another game system as 3PP, I've never wanted to design my own RPG. I've never had interest in creating my own game system. I much prefer to be playing a particular game and decide something is missing from the game and I have an epiphany on how to fill that hole. Then as pro illustrator, cartographer, graphic designer, I make the whole with high production values, and able to compete at least visually with the Big Guns, since most small publishers aren't artists and cannot afford too much art (I can pack my adventures with maps and illustrations, because I do them all myself.)

 

[Greg K]

The only game-design work I'm considering at the moment is a port of Modiphius' Star Trek Adventures to Cortex.

Classic, Plus, or Prime?

 

[Greg K]

So who else out there has been motivated or inspired to either dust off or create their own game system, custom rules or setting after this fiasco?

I already had a list of official rules options, third party material (new classes, subclasses, a few spells , revised mechanics, etc), and a few of my own house rules prepared if I run 5e (same for 3e if I were to run it again). However, given everything going on with the OGL, I might be able to get friends to play Savage Worlds, Icons: Assembled, Barbarians of Lemuria, Honor+Intrigue, Tinyd6, Spycraft, or one of several games when I am able to run.

 

[overgeeked]

Classic, Plus, or Prime?

Prime would be dead simple.

Take whatever scale the attribute or discipline is on and match that with d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12. Something like: 1=d4, 2-4=d6, 5-8=d8, 9-10=d10, 11-12=d12.

You could literally keep all the attributes, disciplines, virtues, foci, etc the same and just use them as Cortex Prime traits.

If one of your values comes in, +1d6. If one of your foci comes in, +1d6.

The talents would be the "hardest" part. But rebuilding them like Marvel Heroic SFX would be fairly easy to do.

 

[Aldarc]

I was talking with one of my players who's been keeping up the most with the OGL saga about what our ideal post-5E system would look like, and unfortunately, it would have to look a lot like 5E, which is the compromise choice between the folks who want a much lighter game than 3E and the folks who want to have lots of player choices in character development.

There aren't any OSR games that can be built up without a lot of work and even Pathfinder 2 looks too crunchy for a bunch of our players.

So our best bet is for an SRD published under ORC that allows Kobold Press to continue producing 5E supplements. Once we have a framework similar to what we have now, including subclasses and advantage/disadvantage, we might build or modify that chassis to better suit our tastes.

If I wasn't actually running a campaign now, I would consider taking Castles & Crusades out to the garage and trying to 5E-ify it, but that's too work for me at the moment at a time when I'm unlikely to switch over my two ongoing play by post games to a new system, not to mention my Discord and live games.

I do look forward to seeing what this new era of D&D clones produces, though, and would happily buy one that works for me and mine.

Maybe look at Worlds Without Number and Atlas of the Latter Earth?

EDIT: There is a free version of WWN on DriveThruRPG that covers most character options. There are three full classes: Warrior, Expert, and Mage. There is the Adventurer, which is the multiclass option that lets players be a Warrior/Mage, a Mage/Expert, or a Warrior/Mage. Mages can even go full mage in certain magical traditions (e.g., High Magic, Healer, Necromancy, Elementalism) or take two partial mage traditions (e.g., Healer/Necromancer, etc.).

The paid version has additional character options for partial classes, including a spontaneous-casting "Sorcerer" using spell points, a shapeshifter, a classic D&D-style priest, a duelist, a beastmaster, and a psychic. Atlas of the Latter Earth expands this by providing the bard, a warlock (i.e., the "Accursed"), the anti-magic mage-slayer, plus low/no-magic options like the Alchemist and the Wise.

Plus there are "feats" that all classes can take, and some magical traditions and partial classes have special abilities that they can pick.

All in all, it's a nice balance between 3e-style build options and OSR simplicity.

 

[delericho]

No.

I briefly considered it, but then I remembered that every time I've tried to write my own game, with one exception, it has progressed to a certain point and then failed as soon as it got bogged down. The one time I did complete the thing, I almost immediately realized it wasn't a game I wanted to play anyway.

That said...

What I might do is take the 5e SRD, call it a new game, and then house rule it extensively. That would allow me to continue to play "D&D" without actually playing D&D, and allow me to go ahead and fix all the horrible things about 5e that have been bugging me for years.

(I of course have no intention of ever publishing, so the status of the OGL wouldn't matter at all. Likewise, it doesn't matter if WotC take down the SRD, since I've downloaded it long ago.)

Even so, that feels like it's going to end up being another abandoned project, so I probably won't.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I've been picking at homebrew slowly for a long time. I definitely feel a greater urge to finish the thing I actually got halfway written, and an urge to consider the bits and bobs of design ideas I've had floating around for nearly two decades now.

Whether that will produce work in the end is a different subject.