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<blockquote data-quote="innerdude" data-source="post: 9430121" data-attributes="member: 85870">The real standout for me would have been Fantasy Craft. If the crunchy goodness of 3.x is your thing, FC was/is bar none the absolute best reincarnation of the 3.x chassis, completely broken down to its foundation and rebuilt from the ground up. It is objectively a better system in terms of balance, DM friendliness (the monster templating system was absolute genius), and flexibility in terms of races and classes than anything d20 released in the same time horizon---certainly a better game than Pathfinder 1e (which I GM'd for 9 months from 2009-2010 for characters level 1-8).&nbsp; The problem was timing. It was literally released within weeks of Pathfinder 1e (PF 1e general public release was at GenCon 2009 in August. FC was released a month later in September 2009). It was now fighting for the same audience as Pathfinder (3.x holdovers who had no interest in the direction of 4e), but doing so with vastly less budget and fanfare. And too, FC didn't explicitly call out that it was 3.x &quot;backwards compatible&quot; (which as we all know was somewhat less than as advertised for PF1e), so players didn't know what to do with it. &quot;So you keep talking about this Fantasy Craft thing. It's not 3.5 or Pathfinder, but a different thing?&quot; &quot;Well, sort of. It's definitely based on 3.5, but it does a lot of stuff differently and better.&quot; &quot;So it's like 4e? 'Cause I don't like 4e.&quot; &quot;No, it's not like 4e really at all, it's an advanced, streamlined, more coherent, better developed 3.5.&quot;&quot;So it's like Pathfinder?&quot;&quot;No, not really, it's actually a better, more coherent system than Pathfinder--&quot;&quot;Yeah, but Pathfinder is backwards compatible, and has a zillion adventure paths, modules, maps, and GM stuff already. Why would I even look at this Fantasy Craft thing?&quot;It did sell well enough to get a second printing that fixed a few typos and one very minor mechanical fix for large-sized PC races + large weapon sizes, and a small &quot;advanced player's guide&quot; supplement. But there was a full-fledged &quot;tome of magic&quot; enhancement that was announced and never saw the light of day, and near-zero GM adventure module support (a quick search on DriveThru shows exactly two &quot;official&quot; modules from Crafty Games).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="innerdude, post: 9430121, member: 85870"] The real standout for me would have been Fantasy Craft. If the crunchy goodness of 3.x is your thing, FC was/is bar none the absolute best reincarnation of the 3.x chassis, completely broken down to its foundation and rebuilt from the ground up. It is objectively a [I]better[/I] system in terms of balance, DM friendliness (the monster templating system was absolute genius), and flexibility in terms of races and classes than anything d20 released in the same time horizon---certainly a better game than Pathfinder 1e (which I GM'd for 9 months from 2009-2010 for characters level 1-8). The problem was timing. It was literally released within [I]weeks[/I] of Pathfinder 1e (PF 1e general public release was at GenCon 2009 in August. FC was released a month later in September 2009). It was now fighting for the same audience as Pathfinder (3.x holdovers who had no interest in the direction of 4e), but doing so with vastly less budget and fanfare. And too, FC didn't explicitly call out that it was 3.x "backwards compatible" (which as we all know was somewhat less than as advertised for PF1e), so players didn't know what to do with it. "So you keep talking about this Fantasy Craft thing. It's not 3.5 or Pathfinder, but a different thing?" "Well, sort of. It's definitely based on 3.5, but it does a lot of stuff differently and better." "So it's like 4e? 'Cause I don't like 4e." "No, it's not like 4e really at all, it's an advanced, streamlined, more coherent, better developed 3.5." "So it's like Pathfinder?" "No, not really, it's actually a better, more coherent system than Pathfinder--" "Yeah, but Pathfinder is backwards compatible, and has a zillion adventure paths, modules, maps, and GM stuff already. Why would I even look at this Fantasy Craft thing?" It did sell well enough to get a second printing that fixed a few typos and one very minor mechanical fix for large-sized PC races + large weapon sizes, and a small "advanced player's guide" supplement. But there was a full-fledged "tome of magic" enhancement that was announced and never saw the light of day, and near-zero GM adventure module support (a quick search on DriveThru shows exactly two "official" modules from Crafty Games). [/QUOTE]

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