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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Graf" data-source="post: 1026269" data-attributes="member: 3087">Uhh... not according to the people who made the game. One of Ryan D's big points with the new system 'D20' was that you could effectively break off the mechanics of system generation from story ideas. If you had a cool idea involving zombies you didn't need to kill yourself thinking about creating a task resolution system, you could just focus on your story and use the D20 engine.Incidentally this worked out basically as planned. The roleplaying market went through a tremendous upheaval. The market for D20 products (mostly D&D) grew tremendously until it dwarfed the rest of the market.  And new a lot of games come out in two versions: a standard D20 version and whatever-the-other-proprietary-system-is.The power of D20 to unify does continue somewhat. Monte Cook scrapped his new armor system because it wouldn't have been D&D anymore.... So people who want to use monsters/characters/magic armor from his new line without having to tinker with it nearly as much.This was one example where the standardized system, and people who use it, won out. And Monte won their business, at least for his monster book.I didn't say broken. I was also talking about the market not the game system. But suit yourself.I deliberately avoided discussing whether this is a good age or a bad age of D&D. I don't really think you can tell for sure. Especially since one of the products in question isn't even out yet.Initially I thought this was a good point. But what does core 3.0/3.5 mean? If you were thinking about Runequest then it certainly  gives you a lot of new info about the game. If you were talking about D&D then there's not so much info. You need to get technical.It's funny that you're presenting this as a choice. And one that you've phrased in an excessively pejorative manner, for that matter.I wasn't talking about 2nd edition, or the 1980s.You are technically correct. There are/were certainly more than a thousand people playing oD&D and nonD20 games.But the vast majority played D&D games which were very similar to each other.I'm a frequent and obsessive house ruler myself. I house rule things constantly. We had 30 odd the last time I made a list, from how we rolled hit points, to changes to races to a new mechanic for trips and tumbling, to completely different rules for Druidic spell aquisitition and so forth.But while I might love and cherish my little tweaks (and happily argue about them for hours on the internet and with players) they're just that... tweaks. Nothing more. Despite the feelings of some people to the contrary house rules are rarely blazing examples of raw creativity and more frequently just adjustments to personal taste. One more thing for the record.... I'm not anti-non-D&D games. There really isn't much to say about that. [I recently lobbied the group to start a Vampire game and got voted down.] The idea that anyone who talks about the current state of the market, or it's future, is a rabid hater-of-things-I-happen-to-like is kind of silly. I don't hate your favorite game system. I don't mind that you play it. This has nothing to do with that.[Though I have to think that the current "my version rocks! your version sucks!" etc. vibe is continuing to permeate some people's thought processes such that they can only think in those terms. And ascribe their mindset to people who don't have it.]I did really like the fact that I could go out and pick up any given fantasy supplement and, in all likelihood, it was written with the system I was running my game in mind. I liked the fact that I could go home and have three people in three wildly different worlds and have a clear and easy idea about what they're games were like. The standardization of D&D was a tremendous boon to the average player, and to DMs who wanted to incorporate the ideas of others. I see a future where this fragmentation becomes more and more pronounced.</blockquote>

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