Darrin Drader
Explorer
I originally posted this to the True20 forums last Tuesday, and then in less than half an hour the news broke that Gygax, whom I greatly admire, passed away, so I decided not to cross post it here at that time. However, this might be of interest to one or two of you over here, and it has been a week, so here's what's new with me these days.
It's been a few months since I came out strongly in favor of True20 as the premier source for Modern and Future games. I've obviously done design work for Wizards of the Coast, I'm a former employee of theirs, and by all rights I should come out strongly in favor of the D20 Modern game. Modern isn't a bad game, I've written a book for it, I've had a lot of fun with it, however, I find the simple act of creating a character for the system tedious at best. I also think that when we start talking about things like firearms and energy weapons, hit points aren't really the best measurement of how your character is doing. In these games, it isn't like D&D where you're some guy encased in steel, letting your armor take the brunt of the blows. I think Hit Points are reasonably believable in a fantasy setting, but when we're talking about a firearm discharged at your skull, frankly, a real person's chance of survival will have more to do with their luck and a measure of their toughness. True20 supports this style of play, and better yet, character creation is not overly complicated.
So to get to the point, I've been out of game design for about a year and a half now. The reason is simply that real life demands were severely cutting into the amount of time I had for game design. That is no longer the case, I've decided to make the transition to full time writer, and my time as a writer is going to be about evenly split between fiction and game design.
More to the point, as I said before, I've written books for D&D, I've written a book and some web enhancements for D20 Modern, but the one thing that I've never had the opportunity to do is work on a project of my own. I've always been more or less a hired gun. There's nothing wrong with that since that's how freelancers make their money in this business. At the end of the day though, it left me wondering if I've ever really contributed anything substantial to the hobby I love.
I am pleased to say that I have made arrangements with a publisher that's willing to take a risk on True20, and I'm working on something that I'm actually pretty excited about. I can't go into any real details right now, other than to say that its going to be a new setting book, it incorporates a lot of the elements of what I've always enjoyed or thought was cool about the genre for about as long as I can remember, and it is very likely the start of a new product line that will be exclusively for the True20 rules. Be watching for an announcement soon. I'm pretty excited about this because not only is this an opportunity to bring my vision to this hobby, but its also giving me a chance to work with some great people whose work I have admired for a while now.
So to sum it up, I'm back in the gaming industry, I'm in all the way this time, and at least for the time being I'm hitching my cart to the True20 rules.
It's been a few months since I came out strongly in favor of True20 as the premier source for Modern and Future games. I've obviously done design work for Wizards of the Coast, I'm a former employee of theirs, and by all rights I should come out strongly in favor of the D20 Modern game. Modern isn't a bad game, I've written a book for it, I've had a lot of fun with it, however, I find the simple act of creating a character for the system tedious at best. I also think that when we start talking about things like firearms and energy weapons, hit points aren't really the best measurement of how your character is doing. In these games, it isn't like D&D where you're some guy encased in steel, letting your armor take the brunt of the blows. I think Hit Points are reasonably believable in a fantasy setting, but when we're talking about a firearm discharged at your skull, frankly, a real person's chance of survival will have more to do with their luck and a measure of their toughness. True20 supports this style of play, and better yet, character creation is not overly complicated.
So to get to the point, I've been out of game design for about a year and a half now. The reason is simply that real life demands were severely cutting into the amount of time I had for game design. That is no longer the case, I've decided to make the transition to full time writer, and my time as a writer is going to be about evenly split between fiction and game design.
More to the point, as I said before, I've written books for D&D, I've written a book and some web enhancements for D20 Modern, but the one thing that I've never had the opportunity to do is work on a project of my own. I've always been more or less a hired gun. There's nothing wrong with that since that's how freelancers make their money in this business. At the end of the day though, it left me wondering if I've ever really contributed anything substantial to the hobby I love.
I am pleased to say that I have made arrangements with a publisher that's willing to take a risk on True20, and I'm working on something that I'm actually pretty excited about. I can't go into any real details right now, other than to say that its going to be a new setting book, it incorporates a lot of the elements of what I've always enjoyed or thought was cool about the genre for about as long as I can remember, and it is very likely the start of a new product line that will be exclusively for the True20 rules. Be watching for an announcement soon. I'm pretty excited about this because not only is this an opportunity to bring my vision to this hobby, but its also giving me a chance to work with some great people whose work I have admired for a while now.
So to sum it up, I'm back in the gaming industry, I'm in all the way this time, and at least for the time being I'm hitching my cart to the True20 rules.
