D&D General Anyone have the DC20 alpha? What do you think?

[GMMichael]

. . . He has a lot of good ideas. I especially like the 4 action economy and that it recharges at the end of a player's turn. You can use your 4 actions on alot of different stuff. Like making your spells or attacks more powerful, longer reach, give yourself advantage, etc etc. You can also use your 4 actions outside of your turn as reactions, which makes it possible to do combos with other players, protect them with your shield or parry, attacks of opportunity or initiate spell duels when another mage casts a spell.

Those are good ideas! So good that I included them in my game as well, and I have trouble going back to more stilted games. Try them out for free here:

DriveThruRPG

preview.drivethrurpg.com

 

[Jaeger]

I can't fault him for charging for an Alpha. For a creator in his position, I imagine it was one of those things that if he didn't do it that way, it would simply never get made.

I'm not so generous. His given reasoning is specious at best.

I have played entire campaigns with homebrew games that will never see the light of day, written by a friend in their free time.

No RPG system really did quite what I wanted for running Star Wars: So I wrote my own, and ran a 5 year campaign.

If he really wants to write his RPG, he will do it.

But Pazio seems to get away with charging for playtests, so from his frame of reference he may not see it as acting out of turn...

Yeah, charging for alphas and betas is just ridiculous in general. He's got a YouTube channel with however many followers, ads, and a Patreon (I think), so it's not like he needs to charge for the early, early playtest draft of his 5E knock off. Rally the troops and go to Kickstarter when it's almost done like everyone else.

Preach It.

That being said; Eyes of Nine is correct in pointing out that he is absolutely free to do what he wants to, and the market will tell the final tale.

I am also absolutely free to continue calling it ridiculous as well.

I am afraid his reach might be a bit beyond his grasp. WotC and Paizo can playtest and improve their crunchy systems because of their scale.

You do not need to be the same scale as a Wotc or Pazio to turn out a tight, playtested game.

Kevin Crawford is essentially a one man shop. He's turned out Stars and Worlds Without Number, and quite a few other RPG's.

Alexander Macris is also basically a one man shop as well. Adventurer Conqueror King, Ascendant, and now ACKSII speak for themselves.

The people at WotC and Paizo are not in possession of some unique skill set.

I really like it. He has a lot of good ideas. I especially like the 4 action economy and that it recharges at the end of a player's turn. You can use your 4 actions on alot of different stuff. Like making your spells or attacks more powerful, longer reach, give yourself advantage, etc etc. You can also use your 4 actions outside of your turn as reactions, which makes it possible to do combos with other players, protect them with your shield or parry, attacks of opportunity or initiate spell duels when another mage casts a spell.

If he can make it balanced I think this can be a really fun game

I think it is actually quite clever as well. There is potential here.

It will come down to the polish and execution though.

 

[Distracted DM]

Necroing, has anyone else given this system a shot?
I didn't know about it but a player asked about it.

 

[Aldarc]

I posted the pretty much the same question a bit earlier today.

I tried watching some of the Dungeon Coach's videos but found his presentation style way too Millennial Influencer (TM) to sit through, but the way that Treantmonk describes his system it seemed like a savvy, but possibly overcomplicated mashup of 5e, 4e and Pathfinder 2e.

Nah. My impression was less "Millennial Influencer" and more straight up "Billy Mays!" selling me his miracle product that solves everything about fantasy d20.

 

[Reynard]

But Pazio seems to get away with charging for playtests, so from his frame of reference he may not see it as acting out of turn...

No, they don't. They sell printed materials. Their playtest files are always free.