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Only three roles, a generic FX system, a single d20 to play and a universal damage track? It's ... at the very least rules-lithe if not rules light. And I'm wondering, what's the situation with the game play wher eyou experience death spiral on the damage tracks? Not that I don't believe...

Well, D&D pretty much ties skills to level by allowing you max ranks, which 99% of players do on their primary skills. SWSE has untrained skills, trained skills, Skill Focus, and feats and abiliites which allow rerolls on specific skills, meaning an effective range of +10 or so not even taking...

Some people do prefer the variability of assigning skill points at will. Personally I'd say go with SAGA but have a sidebar with a skill point conversion.

It's also worth noting the SAGA implementation of "trained only" uses of skills -- that is, there are things you can do with a trained skill that you can;t do with an untrained skill check. This folded very precise skills into broader skills in a way that made sens and stopped you fomr having...

Check the story hour in the sig -- I think you can gank at least the mining town and Oregon abduction storyline. And Tthis may motivate me to finaly wrap up the last bit of the story ..

Off topic, but I LOVED both the setting and game design of PASSAGES.

I was remiss, considering my excellent review of Modern20. In particular, Reputation and Wealth are spiffy. Ad the classes are very nicely designed.

I. Love. ALTERNITY. Okay, I'm on strike, so what else am I doing? I'll toss up some stuff on this this week.

Even as a True20 supporter, I will second the note that the original version of the damage system was both poorly explained and had a few typos in precisely the wrong place, for maximum confusion. As stated, though, the mini-book has a nice, clean version, and the alt system linked above is my...

The book "Keeping it Real" by Justina Robson will help you out. Massive supercollider sccident punches a whole in parallel universes, both modifying earth and allowing the fantasy creatures -- who we are aware of culturally form occasonial crossovers -- to travel back and forth freely.

Hey, just a question I'm still a little fuzzy on. All characters start with 2 perks, except the Star who starts with four. They can then assign those perks to gain the perk-only benefits of skills. Some (very few) Occupations include perks. Are those perks automatically gained in addition to...

Spent my one day of the week off reading this and playing with it. Basically -- BUY IT. NOW. PROS: Skill system is delicious, especially the combat skills. Lethal and non-lethal fix is elegant. Wealth system finally works (I'm biased, I use the exact system as a house rule). Reputation...

I think the D20Modern blandness/power issues to a great deal arose from a design decision that made sense at the time but turned out to be flawed -- classes based on IDENTITY rather than FUNCTION. Regardless of how you build characters or even NPC's, they interact with the rule system when they...

As far as you KNOW, my friend. As far as you KNOW. Just .... keep an eye on her.

Chuck Norris has DR/"anything not Chuck Norris".

As I mentioned in another thread, we need to stop using "video-game like" as either a blanket insult or to denote an assumption of simplicity. There are a heck of a lot of very nice game system advances made by MMO's who needed to figure out a way to streamline conflict resolution systems so...

At least in SWSE, there are multiple ways to regain a "per Encounter" ability -- which in SWSE basically boils down to spiffy Force powers -- in the middle of combat. Take a full round to recharge, there are a few feats and talents, etc. In the example above, there would be a couple ways to...

With all due respect, not "bad design", but "different design", because commercial game designers are working under different contraints for publishable adventures. On a different note, if you just "rolled 40 on my bluff check, why should I specify what sort of bluff I'm using", you should not...

You're probably dead right. Similar to the SPYCRAFT 2.0 system of NPC's, not to mention how some computer game designers work in both MMO's and single player games. And I don't mean that in a "bad, dumbing down for computer gamers" way, I mean as in "these guys have designed a lot, and...

I snagged Monte Cook's WoD today, actually, and plowed through it. As described above, I rather like the "focus" aspect, serving as de facto classes, while the RACES are what we usually consider classes, with distinct "talent" trees -- and no multiclassing. It's very specialized to WoD, but...