Iron Heroes - Why?

[Wombat]

Personally, I like the pruning away of magical items. In most stories of old, the hero might have a couple of magical items, but that would be all. In D&D (and D20 by extension) there is the notion of "the only way we can survive is if we hit MagicMart first!"

Though I do not own a copy of the book yet, I have looked through a friend's copy and I am impressed with it. It would probably not work in a standard D&D game world, but then again I never run such. I think the rules would work well for a Newhon game ... and that excites me!

 

[Einan]

I agree with most of what's been said above. I enjoy magic item bonanzas, but it is nice to have an alternative.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Would have went with an answer that included A, B & C, so I went with B (makes warriors mechanically fun and/or interesting to play).

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I agree with most of what's been said above. I enjoy magic item bonanzas, but it is nice to have an alternative.

Ditto.

IH would make for a great way to make another continent of my campaign world to seem exotic and different from the one where the D&D paradigm holds sway.

 

[Agamon]

EVerybody would have taken "all of the above". I think the idea is to weed out which one is most important. To me, it's 1, but 2 qnd 3 are nice, too. I can say it wasn't for the magic system. *ba-dump-bump*

 

[wingsandsword]

I definitely went for the Christmas Tree of Magic selection, although the other two I also agree with to a lesser degree.

I like the idea of a fantasy RPG where magic isn't so common that the system inherently presumes that everybody is carrying around loads of magic items.

Ideally, I would say that any "permanent" (i.e. not consumable) item would be pretty much Lesser Artifact status (to use the D&Dism), each with a name and legend unto itself. Think of LotR, you can name every magic sword and ring the party carried, and Frodo's armor, and that's about it for what in many ways is the archetype of an adventuring party. If they were a D&D party, each one would have had a magic sword, armor, several wondrous items, a few potions each, and some stat-boosting items too.

I see Iron Heroes in many way as taking fantasy RPG's back to their roots, heroic high action where magic is rare, special and not something to meddle with, instead of something most characters get to cast eventually (8 out of 11 classes getting spells or spell-like abilities?).

Iron Heroes is also good for quasi-historic RPG's, since you can run low (or even no) magic games without the entire game feeling crippled, since D&D is built on such a high-magic framework.

Personally, if I was running a typical fantasy game with Iron Heroes (currently only playing in it), I'd import a different spellcaster (like the AE Magister), but keep magic items very rare.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

EVerybody would have taken "all of the above". I think the idea is to weed out which one is most important.

That was my thinking, indeed. Also, there's no "because I think this is what a fantasy roleplaying game should be about" because, in my admittedly limited experience, people making those criticisms tend to focus heavily on D&D's plethora of magic items.

It's been very interesting to see what everyone thinks.

 

[GlassJaw]

I enjoy magic item bonanzas, but it is nice to have an alternative.

There have been many other "alternatives" on the market for quite a while now.

 

[Aldarc]

There have been many other "alternatives" on the market for quite a while now.

Yes they have, but Grim Tales is not suited for every campaign. And the "alternative" model that Iron Heroes presents is a high fantasy Sword and Sorcery model.

 

[Kaos]

B and C were sort of the same thing, IMO; the stunts are a big chunk of what makes... well, all non-spellcasters more interesting to play. (Not that the *idea* hasn't always been there, but...)

I went with A anyway, though, because the biggest draw for me was the idea of heroes who are powerful instead of heroes who are outshined by their powerful gear.
(Grim Tales et al sound interesting too, but they seem more focused on low-magic in general than just non-reliance on magic gear.)