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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 2408492" data-attributes="member: 32164">Okay, I've spent the last few pages keeping my mouth shut and reading, but I need to chime in again. First off, to correct an analogy that I know a little something about...As someone who runs a cable company, I think this is a bad analogy. With a few exceptions (many large cable companies own a few channels of their own), cable companies buy content from those who make it, package it together, and sell it to customers. In effect, they are "distributors." Here's the kicker. A television channel is what marketing people call "an experience good" - people have to be able to try it to decide whether they like it. When you want to break into the cable industry, you offer your product for FREE or, in some cases, pay the distributor to carry it (that's how ESPN built its following). Only after you've built up brand identity can you charge for it. That's the same principle behind giving people "free trials" of premium channels like HBO and Showtime. That doesn't work in roleplaying because once people have "tried out the game" they know how to play it.On another topic:After our first session of the new WFRP, I commented to my group that Warhammer was basically d20 played in its "sweet spot" with limited advancement. The careers are like really short classes. Each 5% increase is equivalent to +1 on a d20. The difference is that Warhammer allows for a lot less variability in the success between a beginning character and a more advanced one. Shadowrun is basically similar to this. Obviously, you could run d20 this way, but the much more limited and discrete advancement would be a fundamental change to the game's basic assumption about increasing power levels.One of the concepts of Shadowrun, IIRC, was that a very advanced character could be easily done in by a total rookie. There just wasn't that much of a power discrepancy between the two. One of the central "genre assumptions" is deciding how much a character's power level is going to increase. There's a very interesting discussion of this very issue in the .pdf Four Color to Fantasy, which is, IMO, a fascinating toolkit for the d20 system.Starting characters at the equivalent of 6th-level and capping advancement at 12th doesn't necessitate a new gaming system. However, you might want to break the advancement up into smaller discrete "chunks" than the level system allows. Otherwise, your character only "gets better" 6 times, which means either the campaign is short or you get bored using the same abilities for long periods, meaning you need something else (a great story maybe) to keep you entertained.</blockquote>

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