Jürgen Hubert
First Post
You might have heard of Urbis, a small setting which I am currently developing for eventual publication. And currently I need to make a decision about the future development of the setting.
It has always been my intention to base Urbis on the SRD, and no other third party material - with only small additions written by myself. I didn't want to clutter the setting with too much additional rules complexity - in my humble opinion, d20 has far too much of that already - and I also wanted to see what I could do with just the SRD, by working out all the implication of these rules and trying to create an exiting and novel world around them.
Of course, the SRD represents more than just the D&D 3.5 Core Rules. For example, the complete rules for psionics are also in it. But unlike the Core Rules, not everyone could be expected to have the Expanded Psionics Handbook, and I still wanted to make the setting accessible to them. So I compromised by saying that psionics are almost non-existent amoung the standard player character races for hereditary reasons - those few that do exist usually have some sort of tainted ancestry, their blood mixed with a decidedly non-human race. And the only major psionic-using culture is on the fringe of the map, so game masters can feel free to ignore psionics in their campaign entirely without missing out on too much of the setting.
However, I've just discovered that material from the "Deities and Demigods" supplement has made it into the SRD. And as far as I am aware, that book is far less common in gaming libraries than even the XPH.
Well, the inherent abilities of deities and their avatars aren't an issue - Urbis is not a world where the gods are in the habit of stomping across the landscape (and indeed, the very existence of some of them is in doubt). But other aspects - the feats, spells, and especially the new domains - would have to be integrated into the descriptions of NPCs and the deities who grant those spells and domains.
So now I have to ask myself - and you - whether to include this material. Would the setting benefit from their inclusion? Or would it decrease its accessibility?
Your thoughts, please.
It has always been my intention to base Urbis on the SRD, and no other third party material - with only small additions written by myself. I didn't want to clutter the setting with too much additional rules complexity - in my humble opinion, d20 has far too much of that already - and I also wanted to see what I could do with just the SRD, by working out all the implication of these rules and trying to create an exiting and novel world around them.
Of course, the SRD represents more than just the D&D 3.5 Core Rules. For example, the complete rules for psionics are also in it. But unlike the Core Rules, not everyone could be expected to have the Expanded Psionics Handbook, and I still wanted to make the setting accessible to them. So I compromised by saying that psionics are almost non-existent amoung the standard player character races for hereditary reasons - those few that do exist usually have some sort of tainted ancestry, their blood mixed with a decidedly non-human race. And the only major psionic-using culture is on the fringe of the map, so game masters can feel free to ignore psionics in their campaign entirely without missing out on too much of the setting.
However, I've just discovered that material from the "Deities and Demigods" supplement has made it into the SRD. And as far as I am aware, that book is far less common in gaming libraries than even the XPH.
Well, the inherent abilities of deities and their avatars aren't an issue - Urbis is not a world where the gods are in the habit of stomping across the landscape (and indeed, the very existence of some of them is in doubt). But other aspects - the feats, spells, and especially the new domains - would have to be integrated into the descriptions of NPCs and the deities who grant those spells and domains.
So now I have to ask myself - and you - whether to include this material. Would the setting benefit from their inclusion? Or would it decrease its accessibility?
Your thoughts, please.
) SRD. In that case, I don't see any accessability problems.
