d20 Hatred near you?

[Henry]

Thanks for the replies!

Okay, first of all, for my own clarification. Can I say that OGL = d20 but d20 != OGL?

I ask because I thought that CoC was OGL, not d20, the same as Mutants and Masterminds, because both of them had rules on character creation, which isn't allowed under d20. And don't those have different rules?

Second, does DND = d20? If so, where does the SRD fit? I mean, the SRD does list spells, so if DND = d20, doesn't that mean that the spells are d20? Even if they don't have to be included, aren't they a part of it?

I could be wrong on these points, IANAL, nor do I claim to understand OGL or d20 licensing.

First of all, to protect my own rear end, I'm not a lawyer either, but I think this is correct.

The Open Gaming License (OGL) is a license under which rules mechanics owners can release rules in reference documents, and other people can take these rules, and within the bounds of the license, use them any way they see fit to make their own system. WotC has released the system reference documents under the OGL, and the owners of a game called the Action system! have released some of their mechanics under the OGL, as well. Mongoose publishing has released a set of horror rules under the OGL. The list is growing.

There are fewer restrictions on it than the d20 license, but one of the stipulations is that you cannot make any claims that would violate trademarks, intellectual property, etc. Call of Cthulhu uses a d20 based rules system, and was released via a special license between Chaosium and WotC. It is NOT OGL, meaning it's not covered under the license, but it is a d20-based system, created by the owners of all d20 trademarks (WotC). Did I make the distinction clear enough?

A released product can be released under the binding agreements of the OGL, but doesn't have to be d20 licensed. It doesn't even have to be d20 based rules!

The d20 System Trademark License is a seperate document, and says that if you follow certain rules (about content, character creation, morality codes, etc.) then you can publish a product that says it's compatible with the d20 system, and it requires the Player's Handbook. You must be under the OGL, if you're using the d20 STL, but not vice versa.

To most gamers, however, if it uses a d20 plus mods to beat a target number, and if it originated with the SRD's, then it's d20, whether legally you can say so or not. However, as years go on, and more publishers release Open Gaming Content, the distinctive connection between OGL and d20 is going to disappear.

As for vampire, well, I don't know it well. I thought that diablerie only lowered effective generation, nothing else. That's all I have ever seen it described as doing. I might have to look more, not that it matters.

It also raised your max blood pool, and several other things. I'd have to get someone with the book to complete it for me.

Again, I probably appear to be d20 bashing but I am not. It is a fine system. It is not the end all be all system for me. I don't know that any system, core rules, is such a system for me. I tend to tinker, though, and usually have some house rules.

That's all! Thanks for the discussion!

Have a good one!

edg

You don't appear to bash at all; as you say, it's not an uber-system, and some things don't come off well with it. It's fit almost all my needs so far, and I'm glad for it, and happy to educate others with just how much wider open it is than detractors say it is, but I also play other games too. There's only so much STR/DEX/CON/INT/WIS/CHA that a gamer can take, after all!

 

[SSquirrel]

Vicissitude ... doesn't follow many of the rules because it's more of a disease with game benefits that simulates a discipline than a true discipline. And I'm thinking I may have been confused between parts of the diablerie system presented in Dirty Secrets and the Viccissitude trurth.

Interesting note. Buddy of mine works for White Wolf and he told me that the Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand (which is the book that started the whole Vicissitude as intelligent disease) was basically disavowed a year or so after it was published. I believe (I'll have to ask my friend again for clarification) that the author wrote that book and several others in a direct effort to screw with the storyline due to some disputes. Not sure why it was published if that was the case, but oh well. So the guys who have been in charge of the system for Revised didn't pay any attention to that aspect of the power when doing that edition. DIrty Secrets was a 2nd Ed book.


Oops forget this comment I was gonna make:

Rules - 3E simplified die rolls and characters, imo, to a very nice degree. No more explaining 5 saving throw categories! And they make more sense, imo! I also think there are more rules with regards to combat than were mentioned, such as AoO, grapple, modifiers, etc. but again, perhaps that isn't d20. My point here is that trying to explain what there was in d20 to new, very casual players, was still a lot.

This is a very good point and one of the reasons why 3E has made such an impact over 2E. Ease of use. Higher is always better. 1 die to rule them all (except for damage). Etcetera.

Now the reason why combat is more complex in 3E than in 2E is that you are able to do SO much more. You had things like modifiers and grapple and such in 2E (sometimes multiple versions of the same basic rules), but you didn't have things like feats. I knew many DMs who you would ask if it were possible to do a Spring Attack kind of move and they would say no. WHen questioned as to why they would state it wasn't in the book. I know, bad DMing.

At the same time, if you had a system that supports these neat tricks that were previously only at the DMs discretion, you can have a lot more flexibility. This does mean taht many extra rules will creep in. Remember there's still more optional rules just in the 3E corebooks that are unused standardly that could make combat even more complex.

Hagen


Hagen

 

[reiella]

Interesting note. Buddy of mine works for White Wolf and he told me that the Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand (which is the book that started the whole Vicissitude as intelligent disease) was basically disavowed a year or so after it was published. I believe (I'll have to ask my friend again for clarification) that the author wrote that book and several others in a direct effort to screw with the storyline due to some disputes. Not sure why it was published if that was the case, but oh well. So the guys who have been in charge of the system for Revised didn't pay any attention to that aspect of the power when doing that edition. DIrty Secrets was a 2nd Ed book.

Hagen

Actually, much of the metaplot remained consistant at least. It just resulted in Yet Another Siege on Enoch .

Viccisitude as an intelligent disease was established elsewhere initially (it's a Fomor and classified as such in some of the Werewolf books).

Of course, remember, all books are disavowed when they're published by White-Wolf...

They state quite up front that each book is 'from a specific perspective', in order to account for inconsistant rules and meta-plot 'history'. A good idea given how many books they have that redefine/further define items in other books .

[ Add ]
Wouldn't surprise me much either way. I do see alot of the metaplot history matching over from Gehenna book, but it's all a game that changes .

In the revised Vampire, wasn't viccisitude removed?

 

[Arnwyn]

What other publishers are doing is irrelevant.

Incorrect - assuming we're talking about the same thing. As the aforementioned "d20 bashers" will look to what all the different d20 publishers produce. Who cares if WotC didn't say that is what they're attempting - if other publishers are doing it, then that is what will be seen and noted by consumers.

Is d20 "generic" just because BESMd20 (the only d20 product that even comes close to suiting your argument) is sort of generic? I dunno, does d20 suck for supers just because The Foundation was a lousy product? Answers to both: Of course not.

You're probably arguing a level of minutia here that I'm not aware of, as I'm now unsure as to what you're talking about.

People will look at d20 and see:
D&D, d20 Modern, d20 Future, Deadlands d20, CoCd20, Spycraft, Stargate d20, Star Wars d20, Mecha Crusade, other Polyhedron weirdness, etc. (Just BESMd20? What are you talking about?)

This looks like publishers are thinking that d20 is a universal system, able to handle any genre... and if people don't like the results, they can say that d20 is trying to be a universal system (which I'm defining as "able to handle any genre") and doesn't work.

Now, I agree that d20 certainly is not generic (it really does do some genres badly). But I think people can be forgiven when they think that it's made to be that way...

[However, you might be arguing something entirely different than what I think you're arguing, and then we're not on the same page and all this is moot.]

 

[SSquirrel]

Viccisitude as an intelligent disease was established elsewhere initially (it's a Fomor and classified as such in some of the Werewolf books).

They state quite up front that each book is 'from a specific perspective', in order to account for inconsistant rules and meta-plot 'history'. A good idea given how many books they have that redefine/further define items in other books .

In the revised Vampire, wasn't viccisitude removed?

1)Ahh see I always hated Werewolf so I wouldn't know *grin* WOnder if Steven C Brown wrote that supplement too.

2)Like the whole Rasputin thing? I believe the closest word to official that you get about him in the end (after EVERY clan/tribe/etc laying claim to the man) was that he was a high powered Wraith so that he could control different bodies. At various times he controlled bodies of pretty much all the different groups. Hence everyone said Rasputin was one of theirs.

3)No it's still around, just not an intelligent disease. It's merely a way to shape skin and such..and is darned nasty too.

Hagen

 

[Gray Mouser]

At the same time I think there are a number of people who are 'non-d20' haters. These are the people who have been so swept up in the d20 system that they refuse to play anything other than that at this point.

This is too bad, imo.

I've been gaming since the late 1970s and part of the fun was learning new systems. It is especially interesting being able to compare and contrast different rule sets to see how different people handled similar situations. My experience with d20 is, admittedly, limited, but I get the distinct feeling there's a lot less out there to be compared (although I could be very wrong about this).

Gray Mouser

 

[Hardhead]

Evildmguy,

Whether it's levels or "what generation are you?" it's still a measure of relative power.

The difference is, though, in a skill (or whatever you call it) bases system, you can choose to level up specific things. For instnace, say you're a cleric in D&D, but you don't want to fight. You want to be a primary spellcaster. In a skill bases system, you could put your "skill points" in casting, and ignore your attack bonunes (maybe you use the points you save by ignoring attacking to put points into a "Dodge" score, or whatever, so you can wear clerical vestments instead of heavy armor). In D&D, if you want to be a "spellcasting cleric," you have to modify the cleirc class, which is house-rulling the situation. The other option is a PrC, but that leaves you swinging a mace and wearing heavy armor until at lest 6th level, assuming you can find a PrC that gives you what you want.

 

[Grazzt]

D&D is a decent system, without getting bogged down in the "reality" of the game. I hate when people complain that they don't like D20 because it isn't Realistic. If I wanted scientific "reality" I would play the Hero system, because we all want plausible dragons...........

Yeah exactly. D&D has never been about "reality." Its not supposed to be. The entire system is set up so peeps can play heroes and such like the ones from legend/myth (Hercules, Perseus) and stories (Elric, for example). Hit points, falling damage, etc....no where close to realistic.

 

[reiella]

2)Like the whole Rasputin thing? I believe the closest word to official that you get about him in the end (after EVERY clan/tribe/etc laying claim to the man) was that he was a high powered Wraith so that he could control different bodies. At various times he controlled bodies of pretty much all the different groups. Hence everyone said Rasputin was one of theirs.

Actually I was thinking more of Mage, where the magic philosophies come into direct conflict with each other between a couple of the tradition books and when the convention books were introduced.

Same for the Book of the Weaver [WW].

Anycase, this is drastically off topic now .

A cloistered cleric would be a nice core option, however.

 

[barsoomcore]

In a skill bases system, you could put your "skill points" in casting, and ignore your attack bonunes

Right, and in D&D you can't do that. You could pretty easily construct a d20 system that does allow that, however. Mutants and Masterminds already did.

Henry: Thanks for the very clear delineation of D&D, d20 and OGL. I tend to use "d20" to refer to any system that derives from the D&D or Modern SRD's, regardless of trademark application. Sorry to anyone if my usage has been confusing.