d20 or Bust?
- Thread starter 3catcircus
- Start date
pdkoning
First Post
sparxmith said:
There has to be SOME difference between the PC's isn't it? I think classes are a great system, what else would you prefer? Almost any (C)RPG has a kind of classes.
sparxmith said:
They work, but only for D&D-like games, where the hero runs around the land, slaying monsters, if you do not get to higher levels (more hitpoints) it is impossible to defeat big monsters. Maybe the problem is that some monsters have so extremely many hitpoints.
About not fearing the sword that is swunging at you, you can use the vitality point system.
3catcircus: My group sticks to d20. Here's why:
- We have outside lives. A couple of us have time to learn other systems. Not all of us do. Whether the system existed before we knew of it is not relevant. We know d20, we're happy with it, and we can play D&D, d20 Modern, or some other d20 game that pretty much gives us the happy, and we pretty much know how stuff works by now. If we were all in our teens and this was our big hobby, then yeah, we might have time to learn something else -- or, heck, design something ourselves -- but we don't.
- Support. Surprised that you think that support is a bad thing. Complaining about lots of products being available sounds a bit like the introduction to one of those silly daytime commercials that start "Tired of putting on pillowcases by hand?" and then cut to a confused-looking old woman grimacing in frustration while doing a completely ineffectual job of putting on a pillowcase, all in an attempt to make the PilloWrap 2000 look that much cooler. This isn't coming from somebody who uses a lot of stuff, either. To use Psion's standard, last session I used.... d20 Modern. That's it. That book. And not even all of it. I suppose you could say that I used the D&D SRD as well, since one currently offscreen monster is a rewritten version of a D&D monster, but that's it. No splatbooks, no Compleats, no Area books -- I'm like a d20 Producer's worst nightmare. I bought the core books to D&D, d20 Modern, and M&M, and c'est tout. But if I ever need new stuff, I've got access to it.
- I also like it as a roleplaying system. It does what I need it to do, and when it doesn't have something I want, I can add that in myself (like adding in DC modifiers for performing skill-stuff in a shorter amount of time than normal; no, it's not in the book, but you can look at the way that they came up with most DCs and say, "Hey, sounds like doing it in ten minutes instead of an hour adds +10 to the DC!"). While I personally would like classless, I know that some people in my group need the classes in order to get things to click for them mentally. I've got no problem at all with Level-less, since it tends to make things easier to gauge, power-wise, when constructing challenges to throw at a party.
So if I see a system that is incredibly massively better as a system and is supported as much as I need, it might one day be worth my time to make the whole group learn it. Until then, not so much.
- We have outside lives. A couple of us have time to learn other systems. Not all of us do. Whether the system existed before we knew of it is not relevant. We know d20, we're happy with it, and we can play D&D, d20 Modern, or some other d20 game that pretty much gives us the happy, and we pretty much know how stuff works by now. If we were all in our teens and this was our big hobby, then yeah, we might have time to learn something else -- or, heck, design something ourselves -- but we don't.
- Support. Surprised that you think that support is a bad thing. Complaining about lots of products being available sounds a bit like the introduction to one of those silly daytime commercials that start "Tired of putting on pillowcases by hand?" and then cut to a confused-looking old woman grimacing in frustration while doing a completely ineffectual job of putting on a pillowcase, all in an attempt to make the PilloWrap 2000 look that much cooler. This isn't coming from somebody who uses a lot of stuff, either. To use Psion's standard, last session I used.... d20 Modern. That's it. That book. And not even all of it. I suppose you could say that I used the D&D SRD as well, since one currently offscreen monster is a rewritten version of a D&D monster, but that's it. No splatbooks, no Compleats, no Area books -- I'm like a d20 Producer's worst nightmare. I bought the core books to D&D, d20 Modern, and M&M, and c'est tout. But if I ever need new stuff, I've got access to it.
- I also like it as a roleplaying system. It does what I need it to do, and when it doesn't have something I want, I can add that in myself (like adding in DC modifiers for performing skill-stuff in a shorter amount of time than normal; no, it's not in the book, but you can look at the way that they came up with most DCs and say, "Hey, sounds like doing it in ten minutes instead of an hour adds +10 to the DC!"). While I personally would like classless, I know that some people in my group need the classes in order to get things to click for them mentally. I've got no problem at all with Level-less, since it tends to make things easier to gauge, power-wise, when constructing challenges to throw at a party.
So if I see a system that is incredibly massively better as a system and is supported as much as I need, it might one day be worth my time to make the whole group learn it. Until then, not so much.
3catcircus said:
My group is mostly hardcore D&D'ers from the early days on. We play D&D because that’s what the group wants to play, not because it's d20.
I would be very open to playing or running something non-d20, but that has only happened once; we played a couple months worth of Deciphers LotR right after it came out. Any other time I’ve mentioned the possibility of playing something else (even if it’s d20), I’ve been met with indifference or downright refusal simply because everyone would rather play D&D...not that that's a bad thing.
Ranger REG
Explorer
You could try to find another group in your area that plays a different game. Just make sure there is no conflict between the two groups (meeting schedules, sense of abandonment, etc.).
Ranger REG said:
I'm not sure if this was aimed at me, but if it was...Don't think I haven't thought of this; I'd love to find another game to play in addition to the current one. But there is this annoying thing called life that keeps getting in my way (that and my wife would kill me).
I'm not unhappy playing D&D, although an occasional respite would be nice (it'd be nice to play once in a while too), but I'm quite happy with how things are.
Sorry if this is too OT...
3catcircus
Adventurer
Ranger REG said:
Yeah - there is that issue. I currently am involved in 3 different games. I alternate running Spycraft and playing D&D on Thurs. nights and running a different D&D game on Sundays. The Thurs. night D&D group absolutely refuses to play *anything* other than 3.x D&D. d20 CoC? No!! TW2K? No!! Rolemaster? No!! Traveller? No!! Heck, they won't even give a different campaign setting a try... Harnworld? No!! Kalamar? No!! Not even one-offs.
My Spycraft guys *are* willing to play other games (they play in the Sunday game, as well). Given the situation w/ the Thurs D&D group (recent in-fighting, haven't actually played in weeks), and the fact that I have the opportunity to play CoC on the weeks I don't play Spycraft, I'll probably end up abandoning them (especially since I end up getting home at 1am when I play D&D Thurs. nights...)
3catcircus
Adventurer
Talmun said:
Agreed - I think an ideal situation would be alternating 2 different games every other week - with 2 different GMs - it allows for the GMs to prepare each session but is frequent enough to prevent any loss of memory regarding the last session.
Last edited:
Ranger REG
Explorer
Well, I'm not saying you should try to fill every weekend with a different group to satisfy your desire to try other games. Heck, my group only meets two weekends a month. At mid-30's, I'm already an oldtimer (started my RPG hobby since 13).Talmun said:
I guess I should be lucky that my current group (been with them for 5 years) have brought with them their varied RPG experiences and share with us. Granted, we play mostly d20 games, and of them mostly D&D (although we take turn on different campaign settings), we occasionally break out a non-d20 game so we can have a respite from d20, and not get burned out or wane our interests.
For the people I play with, mostly they are too lazy to learn a new ruleset. Just this weekend I had an epiphany, brought on by another player. We already knew half the group wasn't interested in anything except DnD and d20 DnD at that. Then come to find out the guy who likes Runequest, Hero, Palladium, CoC and other things I like and dislike says he doesn't like DnD. Well crimeny, that pretty much means all the gaming we've done in that group for the last few years has all been a bunch of compromises.
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