I know that d20 is good in D&D, but what about other settings?
- Thread starter Gideon Krieg
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Desdichado
Hero
Y'know I hear this occasionally, and I completely don't understand it. d20 works just fine for futuristic, modern, past, fantasy, etc. What in the world about d20 inherently "blows" for future? Oddly enough, whenever I ask this question I get no coherent answers.arnwyn said:
Personally, I like d20 a lot. It's not perfect; I'd really prefer a more granular advancement strategy than levels, but other than that, I think it's absolutely fine. I use d20 these days for everything I run or play, it seems. Grim and gritty horror? Check. High fantasy? Don't actually play that much, but check. Low/dark fantasy? Check. Modern action movie stunts? Check. Modern conspiracy theory investigation? Check.
I'm not familiar with (nor do I really care to be) the Japanese big-robot/mecha genre, but I see no reason at all why d20 would be a priori a bad system to run it. I know for a fact that several d20 mecha variants are in print, and I've heard nothing but good about all of them so far.
EDIT: And as someone mentioned on page 1, I actually don't particularly like D&D these days; I think it's one of the worst implementations of d20 that I own, out of half a dozen or more d20 games.
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Ranger REG
Explorer
I disagree. And you can pelt me with your truckload of dice. Of course, if your excuse is that they're for your other games like the WEG d6 games, it only reaffirm my dislike for the "bucket o' dice" games even more.diaglo said:
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Ranger REG
Explorer
Or you could use the Action! System, released under the OGL for some time.arnwyn said:
Arnwyn
First Post
Sure y'have. You probably just choose to ignore it (especially if some of your posts in the movies forum is any indication). But, I'll humor you and what you're trying to imply. Among the things that I find that "blows" is the severely limited class-based systems in use, the current autofire rules (again, somewhat limited), and the seemingly lack of technological "effects" on characters (i.e. technology doesn't seem to have as much of an impact on characters and their abilities than I would think). And, as I've made perfectly clear in my first post, it's all IMO.Joshua Dyal said:
Can they be fixed? Yeah, of course. But they haven't yet. (And if they did, it would look a heck of a lot like Fuzion, which I've already got without having to spend time and effort with the fix.)
So, for what has been released so far for d20 and the futuristic genre I've found inadequate compared to other systems - and Fuzion supports exactly the game that I want to run. Now, I don't know if that's a "coherent" enough answer for you, nor do I particularly care - I'm not asking you to believe me.
I would never have guessed. Suffice it to say that my opinion of d20 and how it works within the futuristic genre is in no way an attack on your preferences.
Color me shocked.
And now you have.
But don't worry - I'm not trying to convince you, or even ask you to understand. If you're cool with d20 for the futuristic genre, that's cool. I'm just expressing my particular opinion.
Aaron2
Explorer
arnwyn said:
I'm not following your lines of reasoning ('cept, of course, about autofire but that's completely independent of the rest of d20.) What do you mean by "severly limited"? What "effect" should technology have on a character? This last one I'm not even close to understanding. How (and why) should a character's abilities change if confronted with new (or old) technology? Neither GURPS nor Hero (the two mutli-genre games I'm most familiar with) change characters as tech changes.
Aaron
Joshua Dyal said:
I don't know about "blows", but d20 as defined by the STL pretty much requires a game system in which combat power and survivability are closely linked to experience (and hence level), and skills and abilities are closely linked to class. Many modern and future-type settings - and heck, even a bunch of medieval settings - aren't modelled well by that kind of system, and shoehorning them in can be awkward. For example, you can easily end up with a brilliant physicist who has better combat stats than the soldiers sent to guard him, just because he's a 10th level important NPC and they're 1st level grunt NPCs.
That can all be avoided by going OGL, but then the game is no longer necessarily d20, and tends to depart a fair ways from the D&D paradigm (which is usually what people have in mind when they talk about d20). So IMHO, d20 has to pick its spots when it comes to non-D&D settings - d20 Modern isn't too bad at the action movie genre (and is a rules set that I really like), but it tends to creak and eventually fall apart when asked to produce more realistic results. YMMV.
Desdichado
Hero
No, I haven't. I still haven't after reading your post.arnwyn said:
You're a real piece of work, there arnwyn. In the movies forum, you made a similar accusation out of the blue, and when I asked you what you were talking about, I didn't hear anything back for a week or two that I continued to check that thread for updates. This isn't about your little cult of personality thing, this is about what you say standing or falling on its own merits. And I think what you said falls spectactularly. What you said, in the context that the question was asked, can only be construed as "d20 as a broad system is unsuited to anything futuristic." That's absurd. And it's quite something, the little coup you pulled off; "see, when he blows apart my ridiculous statements, it's just because he's an arrogant ass that ignores stuff he doesn't like!"arnwyn said:
Severely limited? Uh, have you read the d20 Modern classes? They are as open and generic as you can get, and you can multiclass freely and without penalty, and are in fact, encouraged to do so! Not only that, you can use (or create) any class that you want -- if you don't like the Modern ones, you've got the T20 classes, for instance, you could use instead. How in the world is this a future specific limitation? If it's a limitation at all (which I don't at all believe it to be) it's true for fantasy, modern, horror, Renaissance, or whatever other "time period" you claim to want to play in, not just for future.arnwyn said:
Are you serious? That doesn't even have anything to do whatsoever with your claim that d20 is fundamentally unsuitable for futuristic gaming. That's a complete non sequiter and has no business even being in the discussion. Disregarding for the moment how easy it is to use some other d20 variant of that, or house rule it yourself.arnywn said:
Yet it has the same (or very similar) effects as pretty much every other system. And what, pray tell, are these great effects supposed to be anyway? People are still pretty much just people regardless of when they live. Technology has very little effect on that other that in general people are healthier and better nourished.arnwyn said:
Well, actually, no, you didn't. I mean, you did throw out the little (IMO)'s, but you made a categorical value statement nevertheless. You didn't say, "I don't like the way d20 works for future, because I think the future should be modelled such and such a way, which is not conducive to a d20 interpretation." You said:arnwyn said:
So, I mean, yeah, obviously that's your opinion, but you didn't qualify it in any way, you haven't explained it in any way; it's simply a value judgement statement by you that stands alone and makes no sense.
Oh, sure, that makes sense. But you didn't say, "I really like the way Fuzion plays; it's a great system for the genre you're looking for." You said, and you've said in the past, that d20 simply doesn't work for futuristic games, which is complete hogwash. It works, and it works great. It may not be your style, which is perfectly fine, but again; that's not what you said.arnwyn said:
And I didn't interpret it as one. However, given the initial question of the thread, I think your point deserved some examination. If it's really just coming down to, "I'd play with Fuzion for that genre; I think it works great," then that's fine. But to make a blanket accusation about how d20 doesn't work for an extremly broad, vast set of genres, the only thing in common between them that they are futuristic, is gonna get some "WTF?" responses, especially on a message board full of d20 fans.arnwyn said:
Great. Although in an advice thread of the nature of this one, I'd expect it to be questioned if it's based on some dodgy logic.arnwyn said:
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