A couple points...
buzz said:
I dunno, in both games you're accumulating XP by adventuring and then increasing your abilities at certain breakpoints. It'd be easy to create short, low-power-creep classes a la Darkness & Dread as a replacement for careers. And since hit points are not integral to "being d20", you just replace them with "Wound Points" or whatever highly-lethal damage system you want.
I just don't see it as much of a stretch.
Neither do I. I was just trying to make the point that rather than giving out experience points that accumulate to give you a level bonus (and all that comes along with it), you break that level bonus into its 10 (or 12, or whatever) constituent pieces. To take a specific D&D example, a fighter who "levels up" improves his defensive capability, a couple skills, his melee and ranged weapon skills, and learns 1/2 of a combat feat. In WFRP terms, that's about 5-6 "advances" per level.
I agree with you that it's totally doable. But it's quite a deviation from the D20 norm. Essentially, it's more compatible with a point-buy type version - like Green Ronin's own
Mutants and Masterminds.
WFRP gives xp in 100s but the minimum cost for advances is 100 and they're all round numbers. As a result, you might as well drop the extra zeros and just call them "advances" rather than giving out experience points you number in the hundreds.
For the record, I don't think Ryan holds any particular bias for D&D (moreso than the average gamer, anyway). He has just pointed out that, for some reason, even though it wasn't first, D&D captured more of the market than its competitors. That implies that gamers, on average, judged D&D "more buyable" (dare I presume "better?") than its competition. Since the only things that distinguish D&D from its competition are its mechanic and, to a lesser extent, its "core story," its success must be due to one of those 2 things. Since the core story was borrowed a LOT, that probably doesn't explain it. Therefor, the point is that for doing D&D's core story, the d20 mechanic is "better."
What was being marketed by the alternatives? Either more "detail" or games that added something to the D&D mechanic (which they often dumped just to avoid being sued for copyright infringement). Interestingly, TSR had the system sitting under their noses - they could have swiped the "all the same mechanic" idea from Top Secret and combined it with the d20 for tasks AGES ago. They "half got it" when they created
Alternity. They standardized the mechanic across the system, but they tried to replace the D20 mechanic with something MUCH more complex. And gamers, as a whole, didn't take to it.
Near as I can tell, when they made 3e, WotC sat down and looked at that mechanic. What did D&D really HAVE over its competition, mechanics-wise? Answer - a simple combat resolution system. So they took D&D, and adopted the
Alternity concept of universal task resolution, and class + skill characters, created mechanics for setting difficulty numbers in non-combat situations so the core mechanic could handle more than just combat, and the d20 System was born.
On a related topic:
MoogleEmpMog said:
AC - Fairly strongly part of the system, although an opposed d20 Def roll would be compatible. It could tie into generic Weapon Skill ala WHFB, too.
3 saves - Ryan says they're almost a key part of the system; I'm not so sure. C&C's ability score saves are one of its few real innovations and I wouldn't be surprised to see them supplant the existing saves.
caster/spell levels - Purely a D&Dism. They have nothing to do with d20 and a d20 Warhammer neither needs nor wants such baggage.
3-18 abilities with bonus/2 levels - the ability scores themselves are part of d20. Their having the structure they have is a D&Dism like spell levels; pure bonuses ala Blue Rose are almost strictly better, including for Warhammer.
That the base AC is equivalent to "taking 10" on a Defense Roll is well-established. That Palladium books got sued because this was the core mechanic of their combat system is also pretty well-established. All having a "Parry skill" and "Dodge skill" does is add an extra roll to combat. The "defense roll" option is even in the 3.5 DMG.
I think Ryan meant that the concept of "saving throws" are a key part of the system, not the fact that there are 3 of them. He was essentially saying D&D needs saving throws. If you think the game needs more than D&D's "core 3," you can do that. Even D&D allows for "Str-based" Fort saves, "cha-based" Will saves, and so forth. Worth thinking about...
The ability scores are another D&D legacy. You can change their range, or alter the bonues, or use point-buy or whatever. The only reason for 3d6 is that it produces a bell curve with mostly average results, a few good ones and a few bad ones.
The spell system is integral to D&D, NOT d20. Alternative magic systems is an innovation I wish we'd see more of. The game finally has a few (
Wheel of Time, Midnight, Black Company, the forthcoming
Iron Heroes, and so forth.
Now, on to some of the
Alternity concepts...
Henry said:
Alternity on the other hand, had three wound totals, with very different consequences for taking damage in each, and body armor had a definite effect to ward off different types of damage. While not quite as simple as d20 hit points, it definitely gives the feel of dramatic wounds, without making calculations too difficult, and it's a system I miss from time to time due to its lack of circulation in the d20 community.
Alternity was a fascinating game that might qualify as being OGL-compliant. Maybe. More on that below, however first I'm going to quote from the Alternityrpg website as part of my response...
Most games fall into one of two categories, class/level based (like D&D), or skill-based (like GURPS). Alternity has taken the best of each style. While there are classes for characters (such as Tech Op or Combat Spec), they are simply rough templates to help players to get a handle on their new creations...The skill system is driven by ability scores, so that a hero with high strength will be better at hand-to-hand combat, while one with high intelligence will be better at programming a computer.
All die-rolls are based on the control die, a d20. Situation Dice are added to or subtracted from this roll, which is compared to the ability scores, modified by the skill. To succeed, the roll must equal or undercut the ability score (for instance, Personality if the hero is trying to sweet-talk a customs officer). Penalties are added to the roll, which makes it harder to equal or undercut the required score, and bonuses are subtracted from the roll...
So bonuses and penalties are expressed as situation dice, which are added or subtracted from the roll of the control die. For instance, if one is trying to grab a rope thrown from a ship in heavy seas, the GM may rule that the hero must roll against Dexterity with a +3 step penalty, to account for the difficulty of the task. In this case, the hero would have to roll a d20 (the control die), and add d8 to the roll (the situation die). Beating the required score spectacularly will result in a better than hoped-for success, while failing the roll miserably will result in a disastrous botch-up.
It was a cool system, but I always found the implementation a bit wonky. On the other hand, likening a die roll to a numeric penalty or bonus is not new, or particularly excluded from d20. The defense roll above is one example. Opposed skill checks is another. "Hyper Rolls" in
Four Color to Fantasy is a third. Armor DR as a variable is a fourth, and so on. The core task resolution is still a d20. Other than having high ability scores (So you could roll under them) and penalties as additions and benefits as subtractions, (good god, was everyone at TSR THAT influenced by THAC0??), it's just not that different.
For instance, nothing about the d20 mechanic prevents you from using a +1d4 rather than +2, or a +1d12 rather than +6. Or about ruling that failing by 1 is different than failing by 10, or that beating a DC by 20 ought to be worth more than doing it by 1. In fact, I think Mike Mearls is using the former in the "armor as DR" rules for
Iron Heroes while the latter (at least on the success side) is being tapped for that game's "skill challenge" system. Mearls seems to be retaining hit points primarily in order to retain compatibility with the D&D monster manuals.
As an aside, Bill Slavicsek probably deserves an enormous amount of credit for the creation of the d20 System. He used difficulty numbers in WEG's
Star Wars, then designed [/i]Alternity[/i], and then went back to difficulty numbers (same levels of "easy (5)," "average (10)," "tough (15)," "challenging (20)," "formidable (25)," "heroic (30)," and "nearly impossible (40+)" as SW) in d20. Coincidence? I doubt it. I'd say Bill was building on the D&D mechanic from the beginning. The default roll of 3d6 produces the same average, so you can set an "average" task DN at 10, the default combat TN in D&D. Heck, if you like d6's,
Unearthed Arcana tells you how to use 3d6 to replace the d20 rolls, making bonuses matter more and chance matter less.
