Modern d20 RPG

[exile]

To hijack the thread for just a bit...

jonrog 1,
You mixed five genres in a Savage Worlds game? Do we get a story hour out of it anytime soon?
Chad

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Weird, sorry it didn't work the first time. I just copy-pasted from an open window, when I went there to make sure it still worked before I posted it up for people.

As to SAVAGE WORLDS: I ran a game of that from their test-drive rules just a few days ago ... was pretty sweet. My wife and brother in law were desirous of some fun and wacky-brutal zombie killing and that system seemed very nicely suited for it. Decent rules for called shots (shotgun to the head, zombie? Don't mind if I do) and a very very fast and smooth system. I'd like to buy the full book now and continue some games of that. I stole Talien's "National Center for Reanimation Prevention and Control" and turned it into the hard-luck under-funded secret government agency for zombie elimination and research. No 5000 dollar toilet seats funding THAT project.

As for brilliant game philosophy hampered by bad mechanics ... my wife got me a copy of GODLIKE recently, got to run some of that. Fell in love with the setting, fell in love with the Will system and character creation ... absolutely cannot STAND the way combat runs. It's a great, gritty system where even super-men can take a bullet in the head and go down instantly, but the "Initiative" system is horrible. Beyond 4 individuals in a combat and you get piles of dice and ten minutes trying to figure out who declared first and got the widest set and tallest set an did the German get me before I got him and did my Gobble Dice reduce his width so that Bob's shot took the Kraut before he put one through my eye ... oi fricken vey. It's meant to be a troupe-style game, but running a squad is impossible. I'd play that game every day if it weren't for that one aspect: combat initiative.

--fje

 

[buzz]

But Alternity really doesn't *work well* for anything other than sci-fi and modern. It isn't designed for anything else.

The people using Alternity for fantasy over at http://www.alternity.net would probably disagree with you. So would the folk at TSR who were contemplating its use for AD&D3 until d20 came along, IIRC.

 

[buzz]

Wow. You're going to actually keep track of each character's credit card balances, interest rates, and credit histories? You must be a financial advisor or something. Most GM's would just use wealth checks.

Or, even easier, GMs could use the basic knowledge of how money works from their daily lives.

Not that I have any problem with the Wealth system; I love d20M. But I also can see many type of campaigns where keeping track of money in anything more than a as-needed-for-plot capacity is totally unnecessary.

 

[buzz]

Nope. It was killed because it didn't sell very well. It didn't sell very well because it wasn't a very good game (in the opinion of most gamers).

Unless you conducted an extensive poll yourself, I'd avoid attributing opinions to "most gamers". Alternity sold very well; this has been documented. However, TSR/WotC was hoping that it would sell as well as D&D, and no RPG in hstory has yet done that. Ergo, the bean-counters canned it.

Alternity was a good RPG. Maybe not a great RPG, but a good one. I don't see why it should be necessary to rip on it so. If history had been a little different, we'd be using the step table and Action Checks for our D&D games.

 

[Vigilance]

Alternity was a good RPG. Maybe not a great RPG, but a good one. I don't see why it should be necessary to rip on it so. If history had been a little different, we'd be using the step table and Action Checks for our D&D games.

Well, at the risk of "beating up on it" some more all I can say is thank god history was different.

Alternity was a pretty good game, but replace D&D with it? No thanks.

Chuck

 

[Sebastian Francis]

Unless you conducted an extensive poll yourself, I'd avoid attributing opinions to "most gamers".

Well, an extensive poll has already been conducted. It's called "history." *Obviously* most gamers didn't like Alternity. *That's why it is no longer with us today.* Alternity sales were consistently poor. If they hadn't been, the game would still be around.

Natural selection, son. Natural selection.

 

[barsoomcore]

Right. Because in THIS industry, everybody makes rational decisions based on market performance.

No, wait, that was a typo.

That should be "Somebody makes rational decisions based on market performance." I mean, there's gotta be someone in this industry doing that. Odds are. At some point in history.

Oh, and because the RPG market is definitely a market in which the superior product ALWAYS beats out the inferior.

Oh, sorry, another typo. That's "The RPG market is probably a market in which the superior product OCCASIONALLY beats out the inferior."

My bad.

Carry on.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

"Didn't sell well" is a relative term in the RPG industry. While Alternity fell quite short of WotC sells expectations, it sold in numbers that most small press companies would kill for. The sad fact is that a game line with D&D scale production cost and a GURPS sized player base wasn't sustainable.

 

[Von Ether]

Or, even easier, GMs could use the basic knowledge of how money works from their daily lives.

Not that I have any problem with the Wealth system; I love d20M. But I also can see many type of campaigns where keeping track of money in anything more than a as-needed-for-plot capacity is totally unnecessary.

My d20 Farscape had a complete lack of money and it was great. Every other game was motivated a "lack of supplies."

And Savage Worlds ... Mmmmm. Good.