Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 3320936" data-attributes="member: 26473">Whether it's a "good move" or not depends on the publisher's goals. If the goal is to move enough product to make publishing games a means of feeding one's family and keeping the electricity on, then as Chris Pramas notes upthread, there is an event horizon that publisher's must be prepared to cross with respect to the singularity that is d20. If the goal is to challenge on the field of ideas rather than in the trenches of the marketplace, then a publisher is free to try any damn fool thing she likes, and all the more power to her for doing so.As far as "when," I would say that it's when d20 doesn't capture the feel or style of play that the designer wants to achieve. D20 doesn't do everything well. Traveller20 comes to mind: Part of the feel of Traveller is the relative lack of mechanical advancement for characters after chargen - characters are veterans with skills and abilities which are largely "set" once chargen is complete, usually picking up a few skill levels (a process which may take years in-game) at most in the course of their adventuring careers. (In fact a character's abilities may be just as likely to decline due to aging as the game progresses.)This isn't a style of play that d20 does well: it is supports a style of play where a variety of new and improved abilities are gained regularly during the game. (One could make the argument that one doesn't have to play d20 that way, that one could create fifth-level characters and just play those with no advancement, but if so, then there's really no compelling reason to use d20 any longer.)Another area is game balance. What "balance" exists in Traveller comes from aging - older characters usually have more skills and skill levels but may pay a price in diminished physical attributes - and from the character's Intelligence and Education attributes, which impose a hard limit on advancing skills and skill levels. However, characters with wildly divergent skills and attributes are the norm, not the exception, in Traveller - in actual play very little about character mechanics is "balanced" in this regard. In d20, characters are very carefully balanced relative to one another, and as such the system is poorly suited to creating the kinds of adventuring parties which are part-and-parcel of Traveller.T20 is a brave but fatally flawed effort because the base mechanics and assumptions are poorly suited to the those of the original. When I decided I wanted to start a Traveller game again, I considered using both d20 Future and Traveller20 and discarded both, because neither captured the feel of play that I wanted. I wouldn't use D&D to play in the Warhammer universe for the same reason: d20 doesn't capture the quirky and engaging characters and character creation process that I enjoy about WFRP.</blockquote>

Verification