What are your guy's thoughts on Alternity?

[giant.robot]

I played a bit of Alternity when it came out. It had/has some features I appreciate as well as some I just loathe.

Some stuff I liked:

The settings were really good in my opinion. Dark•Matter and Star*Drive are both awesome. Dark•Matter was basically X-Files with the serial numbers filed off which was great in my mind because it allowed for mystery and exploration games without being actual horror. Star*Drive was similar for sci-fi. It was an amazingly fleshed out universe that didn't have to deal with the external needs of some media license (Star Wars, Star Trek, etc). It felt very much Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica.

The fact the game was fairly modular, in that you didn't ever need to include the paranormal or supernatural in a game if you didn't need them. The game could be totally playable as just a straight modern era setting. In fact this is setting a lot of my games used.

Stuff I did not like:

The situation dice to me was one of those things that looked interesting on paper but turned out to really suck in actual play. It made results more swing-y than they needed to be. You could spend all of your time developing a skill, roll well on your control dice, only to be completely screwed up by the situation dice. Luck is already built into the roll of the control dice the situation dice was unneeded.

Alternity's interesting ideas:

Despite the situation die being a pain in the ass I found the system's degrees of success to be really interesting. Since you were rolling under your ability or skill score, if you rolled under half the value you got an excellent success, and if you rolled under a quarter of the value you got an amazing success. This made for some good "yes and..." narratives.

In combat damage was informed by the level of success. An attack like a punch normally did only stun damage but with an amazing success it did wound damage. This was a great system to allow differentiation in weapons. Two weapons might do the same amount of damage but the better one might do a worse type of damage at a lower threshold of success.

A lot of the core of Alternity got ported to D20 as D20 Modern. While I'm not the fondest of D20 Modern's rules if you're itching to play Alternity and don't want to spend as much money on old books you can go the Modern route. There was a web enhancement that covered the conversion of Alternity to AD&D 2E which allowed for the further conversion to D20 Modern.

 

[Raduin711]

Stuff I did not like:

The situation dice to me was one of those things that looked interesting on paper but turned out to really suck in actual play. It made results more swing-y than they needed to be. You could spend all of your time developing a skill, roll well on your control dice, only to be completely screwed up by the situation dice. Luck is already built into the roll of the control dice the situation dice was unneeded.

I think you make a good point... and as the situation die grows, the swingier things are likely to become. Probably something to keep in mind when assigning them.

Despite the situation die being a pain in the ass I found the system's degrees of success to be really interesting. Since you were rolling under your ability or skill score, if you rolled under half the value you got an excellent success, and if you rolled under a quarter of the value you got an amazing success. This made for some good "yes and..." narratives.

In combat damage was informed by the level of success. An attack like a punch normally did only stun damage but with an amazing success it did wound damage. This was a great system to allow differentiation in weapons. Two weapons might do the same amount of damage but the better one might do a worse type of damage at a lower threshold of success.

In games like Pathfinder, I find juggling bonuses and penalties to the roll versus rising and falling DC's to be kind of a pointless exercise... A +1 to the DC is pretty much the same as a -1 to the die roll. I like how Alternity combines these two concepts with the situation die.

I am hoping the degrees of success might make the players a little more invested in the narrative of the game and not just "you miss, you hit, roll damage..."

The varying combat damage was not something I had considered, and you're right, I do think it makes for some interesting choices for the player.

A lot of the core of Alternity got ported to D20 as D20 Modern. While I'm not the fondest of D20 Modern's rules if you're itching to play Alternity and don't want to spend as much money on old books you can go the Modern route. There was a web enhancement that covered the conversion of Alternity to AD&D 2E which allowed for the further conversion to D20 Modern.

Very cool, thanks for the link!

 

[Umbran]

Stuff I did not like:

The situation dice to me was one of those things that looked interesting on paper but turned out to really suck in actual play. It made results more swing-y than they needed to be. You could spend all of your time developing a skill, roll well on your control dice, only to be completely screwed up by the situation dice. Luck is already built into the roll of the control dice the situation dice was unneeded.

A fair point, though I think it calls for some modification. There's a bit of a learning curve for the GM in how to apply situation dice. There's a temptation to make them big quickly, which has results like you describe. If the GM keeps a bit of a lid on them, they work pretty well, in my experience.

 

[giant.robot]

A fair point, though I think it calls for some modification. There's a bit of a learning curve for the GM in how to apply situation dice. There's a temptation to make them big quickly, which has results like you describe. If the GM keeps a bit of a lid on them, they work pretty well, in my experience.

That may have been my problem with them. I haven't played the game by the published rules in more than a decade. My friends and I were new to the game and as I recall there was no good GM advice on using the situation die. There were matrices telling when to step up the die but that's not quite the same as good narrative instruction on how to use it. We had been playing AD&D and wanted a non-horror/non-supernatural modern era game. Alternity seemed like a natural segue even though we had experience with systems like BRP and GURPS. The situation die probably wasn't as natural a transition as we had assumed.

 

[joemarsh]

I wasn't a big fan of the way the rules are written, but that's more of a personal preference.

 

[sagevine]

Haven't looked at it too in depth yet, but the setting looks interesting.

 

[giant.robot]

Here's a link with a ton of still maintained Alternity resources. I thought there was a copy od the Alternity Fast Play (base rules) on the site but I'm not seeing it. I'm sure a little Google-fu could find a copy without much trouble. The fast play rules are plenty for new players if you're trying to get a game started. The core concepts of the system are presented better in those than in the Player's Handbook in my opinion in terms of conciseness.

I highly recommend playing a Dark•Matter campaign if you can get the people together for it. Tell them it's X-Files: The Game. Learn from me and be a little more judicious with the Situation Die so the rolls aren't as swing-y and I think you'll have a good time. It's nice that all of the target numbers you need to play are written down on your character sheet. There's usually not of referencing rules in the Player's Handbook. If you're GMing the game make sure you however are pretty familiar with the rules to keep the game fast paced. A game in a modern setting where you're looking up corner case rules all the time gets really boring because your players will tend to know how modern settings work since they live in one.

 

[DnD_Dad]

Alternity is great. It was the departure from anything else my group was playing. The book is written in a way that you really need to be in to gaming to grok the rules. I only had the the gm phb and equipment guide from star drive and my group played for almost a year. I think it really was the first game that I really felt like it was a tool box instead of solid liner game.

 

[Remus Lupin]

I have to say I always loved Alternity and wish it had gotten more love from WOTC, but they did give us a great setting with Dark*Matter, which I love. I do wish I could find the time and people to play with regularly.

 

[DnD_Dad]

I have to say I always loved Alternity and wish it had gotten more love from WOTC, but they did give us a great setting with Dark*Matter, which I love. I do wish I could find the time and people to play with regularly.

Yeah real life tends to get in the way.