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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TrippyHippy" data-source="post: 7731230" data-attributes="member: 27252">The very first dice-pool system was that of Ghostbusters (which also had Greg Stafford in it's design team, incidentally). This was then developed into the WEG Star Wars D6 game in about 1987, and dice pool systems then became highly fashionable. Shadowrun was also a prominent dice pool game, that was certainly influential on White Wolf's Storyteller system (Mark Rein-Hagen made reference to it), but it tended to adopt the complexities of long lists of skills and structured combat mechanics (modifiers, etc) that most of the other dice pool designs (including Vampire) were deliberately moving away from. While it is related, therefore, it isn't as directly influential in terms of Vampire's design intent as Prince Valiant is (the notion of 'simple and elegant' design). Another dice pool game of note is Over The Edge (1992) by Jonathon Tweet who had collaborated with Mark Rein-Hagen in the making of Ars Magica but had taken a sabbatical from the rpg hobby in the interim. Ars Magica was very much the antecedent to Vampire: The Masquerade in terms of setting (with the 3rd Edition of the game unofficially being the medieval background of the World of Darkness, although the idea was jettisoned later). However, Mark Rein-Hagen's strength was really in setting design and the mechanics were really Tweet's forté (he went on to be lead designer of D&D 3rd edition). Over the Edge's dice pool system, however, really was very simple and elegant and some have argued that this was basically closer in design intent than the occasionally clunky system that Mark Rein-Hagen came up with in the end for Vampire. Over The Edge, in turn, became influential towards the design of things like Fate.</blockquote>

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