True20 Adventure Roleplaying Game

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I take a great delight in seeing GR change its mind. There were some fanatics who aggressively quashed anything resembling conversation over at the Blue Rose forums (as if publishing the rules separately had any bearing on their enjoyment of the BR setting... sigh). Some of that posturing against anyone asking questions deviating from canon was soooo ironic considering the overtly accepting nature of the BR setting, but alas.

Of course, a great deal of that can be explained that the "dialogue" was, initially, opened up by people with tank-mounted flamethrowers rolling their way into the forum. It's all well and good to ask the people you agree with to be the bigger people, but it's not terribly realistic. Right or wrong, they were conditioned to respond that way by certain people from the ENWorld community who went over there specifically to flip over tables and start fights.

 

[Akrasia]

... I did not want to inadvertently send the message to Blue Rose fans that we are not every bit as behind the game a we were when we conceived and released it. I REALLY did not want to give the "I hate even the concept of the setting" group reason to speculate that Blue Rose had failed, or to second guess our motivations and assume that our plans for True20 was proof or validation of the objective "rightness" of their opinions. ...

Well I have no idea how well Blue Rose is doing, but I don't see why releasing True20 as a separate product would imply that BR has failed -- anymore than it would imply that M&M has failed. (Yes I know that M&M isn't quite a 'True20' system, but it is close enough.) Similarly, I don't think that the eventual release of a setting-neutral version of Heroquest implies the 'failure' of Glorantha, the availablity of the BRP rulebook and eventual release of 'delux' BRP implies the failure of Call of Cthulhu, etc. I love WFRP, but if BI/GR released a 'setting neutral' version of the rules, I would not take that to mean that the 'Old World' setting had 'failed' (and it certainly would not detract from how much I like that setting).

Given that 'romantic fantasy' is of limited appeal to most gamers, but that the True20 is a very interesting system, I think it is great that GR is releasing the system alone. The fans of romantic fantasy get BR, the rest of us get True20. Everybody wins.