True 20 - Who here has played it, and what was your experience?

[jonrog1]

Am I? How so? Because I dare represent my honest experience with the system? I'm sorry that you resent my honest experience but that's what the OP asked for. Most of what he got was parroted ad copy hype with little or no actual play synopsis to back it up (in fact, so far as I can tell, I'm the only person on this thread who has bothered to justify his assertions with a detailed recounting of actual play issues). Man. . . it's a sad day when being honest puts one in a hole

Deep breaths.

You know, I'm counting something like twenty sample campaigns listed, and the positive testimony of multiple successful and respected game designers. That's not exactly "parroted ad copy hype." The reason people aren't listing problems they had with play experience is that they didn't seem to have any.

molonel asked for play experience, not conversion issues. It doesn't convert easily, or at least you don't seem to find it converts easily while others do. That was your big issue. Well nigh your overriding issue. People had a different experience.

With all due respect, you're not in a hole because you're the only honest man here, you seem to be in a bit of a hole because you're implying everyone else's opinions, based on much more play with the system than you've had, are somehow lies or shills. That doesn't seem very cool.

 

[jdrakeh]

You know, I'm counting something like twenty sample campaigns listed. . .

I'm not sure that a title or genre listing is a sample campaign, which is what I meant by "ad copy" -- there are relatively few details of actual play experience mentioned here, past that cited in my own posts. There is a lot of "It rocked!" and "I've run a [insert genre here] game with it!" but little beyond that. Very little substance.

The reason people aren't listing problems they had with play experience is that they didn't seem to have any.

I'm not suggesting that they list flaws (although several people have rebutted me by saying that perceive flaws, as well, while curiously failing to mention any of them). I am suggesting that they offer up some kind of substantive discussion, positive or negative. "I ran X and loved it!" isn't a recounting of actual play experience. I'm not saying that it's a shill. I am saying that it's completely uninformative.

With all due respect, you're not in a hole because you're the only honest man here, you seem to be in a bit of a hole because you're implying everyone else's opinions, based on much more play with the system than you've had, are somehow lies or shills. That doesn't seem very cool.

You know, I didn't make any kind of statement that might be perceived this way until the last post that I made, so that dog won't hunt. All I did initially was cite issues that I had with the system based on my own actual play experience. Which summariily brought about the usual bunch of system apologists.

Some of these folks actually took past posts of mine entirely out of context in some misguided effort to invalidate what I had posted here. Others launched attacks against a system that I mentioned in an effort to undermine my decision to abandon True20 for said system. Stiil others dismissed my actual play experience as abnormal and/or immaterial simply because it didn't mirror their own experience (no other justification was offered).

Are those the hallmarks of honest, substantial, debate? Not to me. To me, those are the hallmarks of unreasoned fandom gone awry.

 

[The_Gut]

I'm not sure that a title or genre listing is a sample campaign, which is what I meant by "ad copy" -- there are relatively few details of actual play experience mentioned here, past that cited in my own posts. There is a lot of "It rocked!" and "I've run a [insert genre here] game with it!" but little beyond that. Very little substance.

Actually, saying, I ran a "insert genre here" game with it, and it rocked!" is a LOT of substance. That says everything that you need to say right there. People who are looking at T20 tend to be looking for a lighter, more streamlined system than D20, or other systems. That doesn't seem to be what you are looking for - you appear to be looking for detail, or crunch. So far I've only ran one fantasy adventure with T20 - that free downloadable freeport one. No, it didn't play a lot like a D20 fantasy flavored adventure. In particular, the adept, with his telekinesis, didn't play much like a mage.

But - big deal. It was "close enough" in slang terms. The advantages - chief of which is dramatically lower prep time both up front and while running it - outweighed the drawbacks. In about 18 hours, I'll be starting a new campaign, running "Mad God's Key", a D20 adventure I converted, as the first adventure. I did the conversion very quickly. I AM handwaving a good bit of stuff though - no biggie. Hazarding a guess, it looks like you are wanting T20 to be an emulation of D20, especially in terms of D20 flavor. It isn't that - what it gives you is a faster rule system, with easier prep, and with a fairly close flavor.

As to what T20 doesn't do well yet - I don't know. I don't have enough experience with it to say. I should have that experience within a couple of months. I'm running a low level D&D style campaign (a weird amalgam of homebrew, wilderlands, Grey Citadel, Lost city of Barakus, with Mad God's Key, and Whispering Vault being thrown in as adventures). I'm toying with the idea of running a Serenity style campaign in it as well. It appears to be perfect for Firefly. Whether it is or not.... well, we will see.

 

[Psion]

Actually, saying, I ran a "insert genre here" game with it, and it rocked!" is a LOT of substance. That says everything that you need to say right there.

Dude... buh?

I could probably search the net for "it rocked" about any of hundreds of RPGs. That really doesn't tell me much other than at least one person liked the game. It does not tell me if I will like the game.

What would be informative is WHY someone thought the game rocked. What aspects did you enjoy? Without that, I have no way of predicting whether I will like the game.

 

[Father of Dragons]

Dude... buh?

I could probably search the net for "it rocked" about any of hundreds of RPGs. That really doesn't tell me much other than at least one person liked the game. It does not tell me if I will like the game.

What would be informative is WHY someone thought the game rocked. What aspects did you enjoy? Without that, I have no way of predicting whether I will like the game.

It is, however, a reasonably complete answer to the question the original poster asked. What you want seems to be the answer to the question you think they should have asked instead. I do not disagree that your question is likely to produce more useful responses.

Myself, I've played in the Caliphate Nights setting under True20, and I thought it was very flavorful. In play, there was enough mechanics to resolve matters without the Narrator being arbitrary, but not so much as to detract from the story telling. In that environment, conviction points provided a very useful and evocative game mechanic, allowing the Narrator to reward role-playing in the middle of the action, and allowing the characters to assume the larger than life roles that the setting called for.

As a GM/Narrator, I've used True20 to run a "wizards in high school" game, and there, again, it seemed to provide the right level of mechanics for what I was doing. Since it was my own homebrew setting, the lack of ability to simulate an existing system was not a problem (neither D&D nor D20 Modern's magic system would have been a good match, since I didn't even have a concept of clerical magic in my setting and the standard "fire and forgot" wouldn't have matched the flavor). Conviction, virtues and vices and the powers were the particular strengths of the system here.

Personally, when I want to play or run D&D, I play or run D&D. I primarily use True20 to implement my own settings.

 

[Kunimatyu]

See, I never said this. What I said was that True20 doesn't do everthing under the sun better than all other systems (a reality that several people on this thread seemed perfectly content to sweep under the rug). And then I gave some examples of where it broke down for me based on actual play experience. That you feel the need to trivialize that experience by using your own experience as some kind of universal measuring stick speaks to the level of your willingness to take an unbiased stance on the issue at hand.

Well, as you say all this, do be aware that a number of us promoting True20 aren't looking at it with an uncritical eye -- we just do the critiquing on a different set of boards. I'm sure Valhalla and Father of Dragons and others from the boards can back me up when i say that I've created my fair share of "Here's a problem True20 has" threads. Perhaps well over my fair share...

In any case, of COURSE True20 doesn't do everything under the sun better -- it certainly couldn't emulate the precise micro-combat abilities of Iron Heroes, or the dungeoncrawls n' magic of a standard D&D game. No one here is claiming that. What we are saying, repeatedly, is that for a setting where you would have to twist the D&D rules inside out to get a playable game, True20 can often give you the game you want with a minimum of headache. I certainly couldn't run my alt-history 1820s New Orleans game with standard D&D, and I wouldn't try -- True20 has been great for getting things to work without me inventing a ton of new material.

For World's Largest Dungeon, though -- why convert a gigantic dungeoncrawl designed to use every monster in the SRD to True20? It's a ton of extra work for no real payoff, and with that many monster conversions probability says you're bound to hit a roadblock. (Just as a caveat, though, I will say that I've cracked MM3 in the middle of a True20 game and converted the monster on the fly, and it worked fine -- though I'm sure I couldn't do that with every monster) A more normal D&D adventure, with an even mix of combat, exploration, and NPC interaction, would probably fare a lot differently.

 

[Hjorimir]

D&D is the best D&D. If you want to run another kind of fantasy - perhaps based off of a series of novels you love - True20 would be my choice hands down. It's a fantastic game. I'd also go with True20 for pretty much any other kind of game other than super heroes. For that I'd go with Mutants and Masterminds, which is almost the exact same game as True20.

 

[Flynn]

What I'm getting out of this discussion is that True20 is a very versatile rules set, but the powers section is somewhat rigid, and therefore clunky on some conversions or efforts. While I could, for example, capture the feel of Classic Traveller psionics with the system as it stands, it sounds like I may not be able to capture very well the feel of Vancian magic using powers as they stand. In addition, the vagaries of the combat system appear to make the outcome of combats less predictable, so campaigns in which a lot of combat should occur (swashbucklers, planetary romance, high action guest-ridden dungeon-fests, etc.) may find themselves derailed by an unfortunate roll from time to time, more so than standard D20 combat.

The above analysis is based on what I've read above. Please note the use of the word "may" above, as I do not wish to incur the wrath of True20 fans with the appearance of generalizations I do not intend.

Would the above analysis be appropriate, given the statements above as the source of information?

With Regards,
Flynn

 

[The_Gut]

I would agree with that Flynn, based on my limited play experience.

Though - you could, I think, make combat less deadly for the combat heavy games by increasing the amount of conviction that players get.

And, I don't get that True20 fans are unusually aggressive fanboys. Jdrakeh does have a rather unusual take on magic, and recreating a fireball (his is more like a burning sphere) than many people. For the way he does magic, T20's system IS worse. I just don't think his take is the one most people do.....

 

[Urizen]

When I first started learning True20, I found the hardest thing to do was "un-learn" the D20 system.

Many of my issues stemmed from previous experience with D20. I initially found the Damage and Toughness saves to be difficult to wrap my head around. Even then though, I felt the concept was great. Once I had a better handle on combat I found it went really fast and seemed (at least to me) to be much more in line with my own thoughts about how combat should be. I love the lack of experience.

Some would argue that having no experience is a bad thing, but I believe it gives the Narrator(GM) more creative license when designing adventures and campaigns. The narrator is also free to judge how characters are developing in-game, instead of using some arbitrary point scale which focuses on only one aspect of role-playing; combat.

I'm still not sold on powers. I tend to prefer spells. I just like the concept better.

I'm not one of those people who likes the idea of one power encompassing a number of different (D&D) spells.

I like the 3 roles. I like the companions rules for creating new roles. The development team for Blood Throne: The Survivor's guide to the Age of Blood took those concepts further and created Path masteries, which are similar in many ways to prestige classes.

Obviously I'm biased but I think Path Masteries give players much more flexibility in terms of hero advancement. The rules allow you to make new path masteries for say, a specific organization, like an assassin's guild.

You could use them to re-create any prestige class you want.

But I digress.

Aside from the convoluted power system, there really isn't much about this system that isn't cool.