d20 Past?

[Vigilance]

I wish there was more fluffy d20m stuff. I know chuck has done an awesome job getting the crunchy d20m stuff out there, but there is a lot of areas where we need some fluff.

Bless you my son.

All I can say on the fluff angle is that I have committed to doing a d20 Modern setting and a d20 Future setting (not in that order, the Future setting will come first).

So there will be some "fluff" from me in the future.

That said, I write so much crunch because it warms my heart

Chuck

 

[Garnfellow]

I'm not sure I'm following. Grim Tales is not a d20 Modern product, its a plain-d20 product (just like I'd prefer d20 Future and d20 Past to be). How does a good plain-d20 product demonstrate that d20 Modern is vastly superior?

Well, actually much of Grim Tales is retasked d20M. Its base classes, for example, are the six d20M classes.

I prefer plain-d20 because d20M has too many built in assumptions about campaign styles. Unlike plain-d20, which makes it easy to ignore most aspects of the rules, a d20M book requires the use of many of its default assumptions (action points, occupations=backgrounds, only basic classes at 1rst level, etc) even when those assumptions don't fit the style or basis of the campaign.

Well, I think I agree there /are/ certain inherent assumptions in the d20M ruleset -- for example, it's geared to model heroic, cinematic types of games. But I think that it's much, much easier to tinker with d20 modern than D&D. You could drop central concepts like occupations or action points, for example, and a d20M game would still run fine. But try to drop something like alignment from D&D -- it sounds simple enough, but it immediately impacts several classes as well as many spells. Can you still have paladins and clerics without alignments? Well, maybe, but both basic classes will need to be tweaked out in such an environment. And if you ditch clerics and paladins, the loss of healing magic really upsets the whole balance of many encounters.

At the end, I really can't see d20M having more built-in assumptions than D&D. It seems like the d20M designers went out of their way to build a plain vanilla, generic system that could then be flavored as the GM sees fit.

 

[baileyrecords]

BK: Why?

Why not let them produce core rules and let the third party publishers support them?

This sounds like the PERFECT example for the d20 license in action, doing exactly what WotC wanted it to do from the beginning.

Agreed!

 

[Jer]

Well, based on what's been speculated for d20F, d20P should have a few old TSR/WOTC campaign setting in them. For example, Boot Hill, hopefully MotRD (maybe for a Living Death 3.0?).

Anyone else know what kind of pre-Modern stuff TSR/WOTC did in the RPG scene that's not D&D?

I'm not so sure that what they're doing for the d20 Future supplement will hold for a d20 Past supplement. TSR's old Sci-fi settings have many more "identifiable" items about them than their pre-modern settings did. For example, Star Frontiers has some highly identifiable signature alien species that make any conversion stand out as at least inspired by Star Frontiers.

In contrast, Boot Hill was really a fairly generic Western game and Gangbusters was a pretty generic 1920's crimebuster game. Someone else mentioned "For Fairie Queen and Country," which was an Amazing Engine game that had a fairly interesting setting, but it was never very popular so I'd be (pleasantly) surprised to see it show up. (I liked it...) And "Masque of the Red Death" is part of the Ravenloft setting and I'm fairly certain that WW/Arthaus is planning a Masque sourcebook.

Other than the AD&D 2e Historical Reference series, I can't think of a lot of older game lines that would be in here. On the other hand, I can't believe that WotC would try to cram thousands of years of history into one book, so having this book cover Progress Levels 0-4 like someone else said seems like it would be a bit improbable to me.

I'm hoping that its more than just a weapons/technology book for d20 Modern, and that there are some real campaign options in it. Think about everything that could be in a book with a name like "d20 Past" - WWII, 1920's Pulp Adventure, Victorian Steampunk, Old West, American Civil War, Napoleonic Era Europe, etc. (And that's mostly just Europe/North America!) Just the last 300 years could stuff a book easily. I'm definitely anxious to hear more about this one.

Jer

 

[Aaron2]

Never mind.

 

[buzz]

You could drop central concepts like occupations or action points, for example, and a d20M game would still run fine.

Or heck, drop FX entirely. You try that in D&D and you're messing with a *lot* of cascading factors. d20M seems to handle varying degrees of FX really well.

 

[buzz]

Never mind.

Hope it doesn't seem like we're bringing the smack down or anything, Aaron. I'd be interested in hearing your take on the assumpitons thing.

 

[Kiln Publications]

BK: Why?

Why not let them produce core rules and let the third party publishers support them?

This sounds like the PERFECT example for the d20 license in action, doing exactly what WotC wanted it to do from the beginning.

WELL SAID!!!

 

[Ranger REG]

I just want to see a tad more out of them.

* shrugs *

As long they got third-party support, and the rulebooks are being bought regularly, does it really matter if WotC publish supplements? I mean, if they follow the current D&D marketing plan, all we have to do is wait for a rulebook revision to come out in Year 3.

 

[Aaron2]

Hope it doesn't seem like we're bringing the smack down or anything, Aaron.

I felt that I was starting to sound bitter. I'd rather be positive ("I like d20") than bitchy ("I hate d20M"). I'll bring the topic back up when I have a work-around or alternate rule to fix what I don't like.

Overall, I'm glad that any sort of historical d20 book is coming out at all. On the plus side, d20M things tend to get into SRD form more often than D&D things.


Aaron