Odhanan
Adventurer
I complement the information about IH: rycanada, if you find IH hard to DM because of the multiple token rules to take care of, I suggest you have a look at Mastering Iron Heroes, available here at DTRPG. It includes advice and tools (such as the villain classes iwatt was talking about) that simplify your life greatly. Don't try as a DM to use everything at once. Take things bit after bit, and learn IH from the ground up.
I hope it helps you out. If not, I'd be more than happy to bring my contribution if you are able to be more specific.
As for Grim Tales, I can't speak of its exact contents: I don't own it. But from the idea I get from it (it uses d20 Modern as a base with a fantasy outlook, sort of), it may be a very good system for another style of gameplay. Iron Heroes emphasizes much more the game itself - token pools, stunts and challenges, i.e. tactical player stuff with options and decision-making that makes the game fun for some people. That doesn't seem to be the emphasis of Grim Tales: it would be more the immersion and relative believability of the fantasy world described by the game.
Again, I'm not judging by the book but with what I believe it's about and what GT's fans are interested in. At least those who post here and on d20 fora generally. They may be able to explain further.
Bottom line, for me the audience of IH is not the same as the one of GT. Not a reason for flamewars and arguments like "this game's dumb, this other one isn't." They're just different.
I own Conan RPG. It's actually not bad at all, but much more of a "conventional" OGL game, so to speak. You get classic character classes derived from D&D's but re-interpreted with Howard's stories in hand. The combat rules aren't really great - they toss the Attacks of Opportunity (I like them, personally) to add some complexity with Parry and Defense boni raising with levels. I don't mean it's bad, it's not. Many people are very happy with Conan RPG (personally I think it's magic system is its best part, by far, probably because it tried to replicate Howard's sense of magic so hard). But I don't get the same feeling of "coherence" or unifying design concept that I get from IH. It may be just a question of tastes, or maybe because Conan was published earlier, or maybe because I didn't follow it the way I follow IH. Who knows, but here you go.
So bottom line, you may be bothered if you try to DM all the rules at once with IH.
With GT, it seems you may end up with a system that is too loose. It seems you need to have a precise idea on what you believe to be a "realistic" setting and go with GT to build your homebrew. So that's introducing potentially another type of DM problems more akin to logistics than refereeing, if you follow what I'm saying.
With Conan, well, you've got the world. You've got a system that's not so bad but kind of bland, IMO. So you may run out of interest or inspiration without being a fan of Robert E. Howard.
I hope this helps.
I hope it helps you out. If not, I'd be more than happy to bring my contribution if you are able to be more specific.
As for Grim Tales, I can't speak of its exact contents: I don't own it. But from the idea I get from it (it uses d20 Modern as a base with a fantasy outlook, sort of), it may be a very good system for another style of gameplay. Iron Heroes emphasizes much more the game itself - token pools, stunts and challenges, i.e. tactical player stuff with options and decision-making that makes the game fun for some people. That doesn't seem to be the emphasis of Grim Tales: it would be more the immersion and relative believability of the fantasy world described by the game.
Again, I'm not judging by the book but with what I believe it's about and what GT's fans are interested in. At least those who post here and on d20 fora generally. They may be able to explain further.
Bottom line, for me the audience of IH is not the same as the one of GT. Not a reason for flamewars and arguments like "this game's dumb, this other one isn't." They're just different.
I own Conan RPG. It's actually not bad at all, but much more of a "conventional" OGL game, so to speak. You get classic character classes derived from D&D's but re-interpreted with Howard's stories in hand. The combat rules aren't really great - they toss the Attacks of Opportunity (I like them, personally) to add some complexity with Parry and Defense boni raising with levels. I don't mean it's bad, it's not. Many people are very happy with Conan RPG (personally I think it's magic system is its best part, by far, probably because it tried to replicate Howard's sense of magic so hard). But I don't get the same feeling of "coherence" or unifying design concept that I get from IH. It may be just a question of tastes, or maybe because Conan was published earlier, or maybe because I didn't follow it the way I follow IH. Who knows, but here you go.
So bottom line, you may be bothered if you try to DM all the rules at once with IH.
With GT, it seems you may end up with a system that is too loose. It seems you need to have a precise idea on what you believe to be a "realistic" setting and go with GT to build your homebrew. So that's introducing potentially another type of DM problems more akin to logistics than refereeing, if you follow what I'm saying.
With Conan, well, you've got the world. You've got a system that's not so bad but kind of bland, IMO. So you may run out of interest or inspiration without being a fan of Robert E. Howard.
I hope this helps.
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