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Dungeons and Discworlds !?!
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<blockquote data-quote="Jürgen Hubert" data-source="post: 3376399" data-attributes="member: 7177"><p>Pantheons with myriads of gods have been around for far, far longer than the Forgotten Realms. And the Discworld novel might have started out as a parody of fantasy tropes, but they have now become literature of their own right - too vast and complex to be seen merely through the lens of D&D references.</p><p></p><p>Frankly, if there's any RPG writer whose style reminds me of Terry Pratchett, then it's Ken Hite - and he predominantly writes for Steve Jackson Games. Take a look at his "Suppressed Transmissions" essays, and you will see what I mean - like Pratchett, he is well versed in the breadth of human existence and history.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>D&D might be able to handle the standard humans and dwarves and trolls, but what about tooth faeries, bogeymen, umpteenth varieties of vampires and werewolves (all of which seem to have different abilities), Small Gods and Susan Sto Helit? The array of different character backgrounds evident in the novels is staggering. If you wanted to create a d20 Discworld sourcebook that made playing all of these possible, you'd probably spend at least half of the book on describing all sorts of racial templates. With GURPS, it's ridiculously easy to custom-build the precise abilities of a character - that's what that game is for.</p><p></p><p>And then there are the characters who have learned how to use supernatural powers. How do you handle the fact that even the most powerful wizards hardly ever seem to do any magic? How do you describe the mental powers of witches shown in the series?</p><p></p><p>I could go on and on and on. But the point is that as written, D&D works best for games with strong archetypes represented by its character races and classes. But the characters in the Discworld novels hardly ever fit those archetypes at all. Thus, if you are serious about running an authentic Discworld game, it's better to use a system where character creation already is extremely flexible, such as GURPS. With D&D, you'd first have to basically rewrite much of the rule system - and once you have done that, you would have little space left over for describing the world.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jürgen Hubert, post: 3376399, member: 7177"] Pantheons with myriads of gods have been around for far, far longer than the Forgotten Realms. And the Discworld novel might have started out as a parody of fantasy tropes, but they have now become literature of their own right - too vast and complex to be seen merely through the lens of D&D references. Frankly, if there's any RPG writer whose style reminds me of Terry Pratchett, then it's Ken Hite - and he predominantly writes for Steve Jackson Games. Take a look at his "Suppressed Transmissions" essays, and you will see what I mean - like Pratchett, he is well versed in the breadth of human existence and history. D&D might be able to handle the standard humans and dwarves and trolls, but what about tooth faeries, bogeymen, umpteenth varieties of vampires and werewolves (all of which seem to have different abilities), Small Gods and Susan Sto Helit? The array of different character backgrounds evident in the novels is staggering. If you wanted to create a d20 Discworld sourcebook that made playing all of these possible, you'd probably spend at least half of the book on describing all sorts of racial templates. With GURPS, it's ridiculously easy to custom-build the precise abilities of a character - that's what that game is for. And then there are the characters who have learned how to use supernatural powers. How do you handle the fact that even the most powerful wizards hardly ever seem to do any magic? How do you describe the mental powers of witches shown in the series? I could go on and on and on. But the point is that as written, D&D works best for games with strong archetypes represented by its character races and classes. But the characters in the Discworld novels hardly ever fit those archetypes at all. Thus, if you are serious about running an authentic Discworld game, it's better to use a system where character creation already is extremely flexible, such as GURPS. With D&D, you'd first have to basically rewrite much of the rule system - and once you have done that, you would have little space left over for describing the world. [/QUOTE]
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