d20 Past - Anyone using it?

[Kanegrundar]

I could see WotC staying away from WW2, if only because there are so many competing versions. Plus, two of three settings taken directly from Poly games strikes me as overtly lazy.

Unless a person subscribed to Dungeon during the days they printed Poly material in it or were a member of the RPGA when there was still as Poly mag, the overwhelming majority of gamers out there wouldn't have this "lazily' reprinted material. You do realize this, right?

Kane

 

[SWBaxter]

Anyway, one man's dreck is another man's idea mine. I'd rather have d20 Past as it is, than a big, thick tome of sleep-inducing, overly detailed history condensations.

I'd rather have it as the previously mentioned toolkit than either of those.

I don't need to be hand-held or spoon-fed by games designers.

So getting a few sketchy settings is OK by you - great, more power to you, I hope you get a lot of enjoyment out of them. But noting that those sketchy settings are (A) not useful to every gamer in the world, and (B) not a particularly good treatment of "the past" is hardly the same as asking to be hand-held or spoon-fed.

 

[The Shaman]

I'd rather have d20 Past as it is, than a big, thick tome of sleep-inducing, overly detailed history condensations. I don't need to be hand-held or spoon-fed by games designers.

I'd rather have it as the previously mentioned toolkit than either of those.

Quoted for...well, you know.

The second-to-last-thing I wanted from WotC in d20 Past was chapters of history than I can just as easily retrieve from an encyclopedia or a Google search.

The very-last-thing I wanted was a book that was mostly tissue-thin, FX-heavy campaign modules and a too-brief toolbox of game mechanics for historic characters and gear filled with egregious mistakes and poor judgement.

Guess what I got? :\

As Gertrude Stein wrote, "There's no there there." The travel rules gloss over important details while importing the wrong mechanics for handling non-lethal damage from environmental effects, the weapons lists leave huge gaps and contain several errors while repeating equipment already published in the core book, most of the non-FX AdCs and starting occupations are nearly word-for-word reprints of material that could be purchased as backlist from Paizo and aren't balalnced with the AdCs in the core rules by the author's own admission.

That said, I really looked hard at it to see if I could create the game I wanted to run, which is an offshoot of the "Age of Adventure" campaign module in Past, and there simply wasn't enough material to make it worth my while - if I decide to run my game as conceived, I'll end up homebrewing everything instead. It's pretty sad when the book doesn't even provide enough crunch to run its own campaign modules...

 

[Ranger REG]

For those of us that make d20Modern our game of choice, I'm already getting used to going to 3rd party publishers for fleshed out product to base a game off of. Modern is an odd duck because it's capable of assuming so many faces. D&D is D&D is D&D ... people have done "other things" with D&D, but that's not the norm, so publishing D&D books has a ready market.

D&D has an established market.

d20 Modern unfortunately has to compete with other established markets: GURPS, Megaversal, HERO, etc.

WotC wanted d20 Modern to be embraced by d20 publishers, but so far only a handful of known publishers support d20 Modern exclusively. Business-wise, it's better to appeal toward the millions of PHB owners than just thousands of d20 Modern owners.

For d20M you've got a million possibilities for a million players. WotC takes the broad and shallow shotgun approach. Personally, I think they got their hand burned with Urban Arcana, but I don't know nuthin'.

Meh. Urban Arcana wasn't welcome initially, but nowadays, it's a decently accepted product. I guess fans back then wanted something spectacular because d20 Modern was supposed to separate itself from D&D. To WotC, business-wise, Urban Arcana was a safer bet because of their customer base. I can't really fault them, considering what they have already observed from TSR's business decisions.

But they also got burned with d20 Future. Though bigger than d20 Past, it's 200-plus pages are not enough to satisfy fans because in an attempt to cover all elements of science fiction, they sacrifice depth. It's like in order to fit a hundred heads in a VW Beetle, the rest of the body must go.

Fans have high expectation of what a product should be. That's why they expected d20 Past to cover ALL significant periods from 1450 to 1950 ... in 96 pages (actually they hope that was a typo in the catalog and on WotC's Product Library web page). Which is why I try to know beforehand what that product will contain. Then decide if it is worth paying for, so I won't lament what the product should have.

As for me, I'm satisfied with d20 Past, and I hope that WotC will continue to make more d20 Past books, covering other periods that other fans might like. After all, d20 Future did cover apoc elements briefly but d20 Apocalype will cover it in detail as well as many aspects (hopefully, including biblical apocalypse ... I'm spoiled by the Revelations TV series as well as Charles Rice's Blood and Relics sourcebook).

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I'd rather have it as the previously mentioned toolkit than either of those.



So getting a few sketchy settings is OK by you - great, more power to you, I hope you get a lot of enjoyment out of them. But noting that those sketchy settings are (A) not useful to every gamer in the world, and (B) not a particularly good treatment of "the past" is hardly the same as asking to be hand-held or spoon-fed.

You didn't enjoy the book, and I can respect that. What I wanted to emphasize is that I'd much rather have what you consider sketchy material than yet another oversized book that covers a subject in exhaustive, and all-too-often, creativity-stifling detail. In my opinion, there isn't going to be all that much that has to be added to the d20 Modern ruleset to cover the past. I simply don't see huge holes in the basic ruleset when considering them for use as a way to game in the past. Some adjustments here and there in the areas of weaponry, FX, and character options are all that would be obviously needed in a generic sourcebook like d20 Past, and that is what I got, for the most part. If the book seemed heavily weighted towards the supernatural or fantastic, I don't see that as a problem; that's really the only type of stuff that would require more than a brief article and a weapon chart in a magazine.

When I first heard of d20 Past, my initial reaction was negative. I expected what I've been criticizing in this thread - yet another big hardback of unnecessary crunch. When I saw that it was thin, and covered its subject in what I consider a concise way, I was heartened. Again, I hope more publishers would follow the GURPS sourcebook example rather than what we've gotten all too much of.

Beyond additional rules, all that would be left is setting info. Given that, as many have said, real world historical information of high quality is so readily available, I don't see any need for such material in a book like d20 Past.

Now, don't get me wrong; I don't think the book is perfect. I just don't see it as being as bad as others have said it is. I feel it covered its subject matter precisely the way I expected - and wanted - it to. Given that I didn't think the subject matter was something that justified an entire book devoted to it in the first place, that's a big positive.

Now, if only they'd give us a book like GURPS's Alternate Earths...

 

[ColonelHardisson]

The travel rules gloss over important details while importing the wrong mechanics for handling non-lethal damage from environmental effects, the weapons lists leave huge gaps and contain several errors while repeating equipment already published in the core book, most of the non-FX AdCs and starting occupations are nearly word-for-word reprints of material that could be purchased as backlist from Paizo and aren't balalnced with the AdCs in the core rules by the author's own admission.

That said, I really looked hard at it to see if I could create the game I wanted to run, which is an offshoot of the "Age of Adventure" campaign module in Past, and there simply wasn't enough material to make it worth my while - if I decide to run my game as conceived, I'll end up homebrewing everything instead. It's pretty sad when the book doesn't even provide enough crunch to run its own campaign modules...

That material that could be ordered from Paizo would cost you more than d20 Past, since it includes material from at least three different issues of Dungeon that I know of.

I'm not trying to be obtuse or particularly argumentative, not in an unfriendly way, but I just don't see the huge gaps you speak of, and the glossing over of details doesn't seem all that egregious to me, given that d20 doesn't devote all that much space to such detail in general, when compared to some games.

All that said, I'll agree that the errors that are there, which you and others mention, are inexcusable, especially given the brevity of the book. Could it have been a better book? As I've said, yup. I just don't think it's a matter of too little material, but rather a lack of concision in some places.

 

[Maester Luwin]

If people are looking for a less fantastic & more history from their games I might suggest the products from Avalanche Press. They cover various eras well & their prices are reasonable. I have many of them & found them useful. I also have Sidewinder Recoiled (it's great by the way) & Skulls & bones (very good also). So I can see why Wotc went with a more general book. But for those of you looking for something more specific I hope the above helps! I do not currently own D20 past partly because I own so many of the products mentioned above so it wouldn't be fair to comment one way or the other. Thanks Maester Luwin

 

[SWBaxter]

You didn't enjoy the book, and I can respect that.

I see. So you believe that comparing other tastes to a desire to be spoon-fed or hand-held is actually an indication of respect. Well, perhaps it's a communication problem, then - where I come from that would be considered a personal insult. Good luck with your d20 Past campaign, and be sure and let us know how it's going.

 

[Roudi]

I'd like to get back to the original topic.

I don't have d20 Past yet, but if & when I should acquire it (hopefully as part of an SRD update), I plan to use it to detail a setting based on the War of 1812. Flintlock espionage, native forces, Redcoats versus Yanks... I think it could be fun.

That, and I wanted to base a setting on Elizabethan England. Mostly because I'd love to have a setting where Shakespeare himself is a major NPC.

Here's a question: If d20 Past was everything you wanted it to be, how would you use it?

 

[The Shaman]

That material that could be ordered from Paizo would cost you more than d20 Past, since it includes material from at least three different issues of Dungeon that I know of.

I considered running a pulp heroes game using Pulp Heroes, before deciding to use Mutants and Masterminds instead - the only issue you need is #106, if you want to run it with the Modern ruleset.

The other issues were the original, 3.0-based rules and the "campaign setting" city description.

I'm not trying to be obtuse or particularly argumentative, not in an unfriendly way, but I just don't see the huge gaps you speak of, and the glossing over of details doesn't seem all that egregious to me, given that d20 doesn't devote all that much space to such detail in general, when compared to some games.

An example: overland travel sums up carts and wagons with single line about hourly and daily movement rate.

First, in the minds of the design team, there is no difference between a prairie schooner pulled by oxen, a donkey cart pulled by a lone burro, a sleigh pulled by reindeer, a stagecoach drawn by teams of horses, a hansom cab with a single horse, and so on. Second, there are no stats or tactical rules for helping players stage something like a carriage chase through the streets of Paris or bandits pursing a stagecoach across the desert, not even so much as a purchase DC.

Now I can create these rules myself, but with a true toolbox ruleset I don't have to - this is the kind of material covered in the core rules, d20 Future, and even Menace Manual and Urban Arcana to some extent (providing vehicle plans and stats). IMHO asking for a book that is consistent in presentation and content with the preceding books in the line isn't shooting for the moon.

I think if they cut the campaign modules down to a three or four pages max (and remove the execrable adventures altogether) and expand game mechanics relating to life in the time period the book purports, then they could cover a lot of ground in ninety-six pages. The book doesn't need to be bigger - it just needs to be much, much better.