Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kenson" data-source="post: 312637" data-attributes="member: 2849">Re: Meeting DemandHa! That's excellent, Jeff. You really should put that in a product somewhere <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />This is becoming an interesting thread regarding how "true" a game should try to be to the published d20 System rulesets. I think that we're going to be seeing more and more diversity in what constitutes a "d20" game. Swords and Sorcery has broken the OGL barrier by doing the first major, independent OGL game (Everquest), although their system is almost identical to D&D (for obvious reasons). Odds are good that other OGL games will follow and they may or may not use the same systems. The question of at what point a d20-based game has been altered enough that it no longer has the benefit of d20's familiarity is one that will no doubt come up for many publishers.Personally, I tend to think that game rules should support the look and feel of the genre, and that when it comes down to a question of compatibility versus playability (i.e. "does a variant system work better or just feel better?") then I favor playability. That said, I think that much of the core d20 engine works for pretty much everything, so it's not hard to retain that familiarity factor while changing a few rules systems here and there. It's going to be interesting to see if those small rules changes are easy for players to handle or troublesome. For example, if armor is damage reduction in Star Wars and d20 Modern, but an Armor Class bonus in D&D, is that going to cause confusion for players moving from one game to another? Time will tell.Since Guardians of Order wants to be able to support both Tri-Stat and d20 SAS, it clearly behooves them to make the two systems as compatible as possible, to minimize the amount of conversion and dual-statting necessary. I think they did a fine job of making 90% of the Tri-Stat information useful and meaningful to SAS d20 players as well. Lastly, if anyone wants to discuss Mutants & Masterminds or its implementation of the d20 rules, feel free to drop by the Green Ronin message boards, where there's a whole section dedicated to the topic, or to start a new thread on here. I'll be happy to answer whatever questions I can.-----Steve KensonAuthor, Mutants & Masterminds Superhero Roleplaying GameComing in October from Green Ronin Publishing!<a href="http://www.greenronin.com" target="_blank">www.greenronin.com</a></blockquote>

Verification