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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gribble" data-source="post: 7688803" data-attributes="member: 12430">I guess having played and run both systems (including a metric ton of D&D), I just can't agree with your opinion that there is no difference. I can see all sorts of differences. But if you don't, that's fine. Enjoy whichever game(s) you enjoy. I just know that I wouldn't personally use D&D to run a "procedural" campaign. Can you make it work? Sure, but even the relatively simple tweaks you outline I can see having a number of knock on effects, that would IMO have a big effect on the system and campaign. I've outlined a few above.Why would I try and do that when I have a system that is designed from the ground up to run exactly that sort of campaign?The "no investigative skills" thing isn't a campaign management issue (unless of course you consider the choice of system part of campaign management, which based on your comment above you don't), it's totally a system issue. D&D is set up to allow characters which have no investigative talent. That's fine, because it's not a system that is designed for telling investigative stories, it's designed for "dungeon crawlin' fools", so any character you can make using the system, without constraints, should be competent for exploring dungeons, fighting monsters and looting their corpses.Similarly, it is literally *impossible* to make a character in Gunshoe who can't contribute to investigations as well as any other character. It's inherent to the system. Players can make up whatever characters they like, without constraints, and they will be appropriate to play in an investigative campaign, and have a real and meaningful impact on the story and the challenges faced. That simply isn't possible with D&D, without a lot of houserules and careful vetting of character creation and advancement. Again, can you do it effectively enough? Probably, with a bit of effort, but what's the point? If I want to tell that sort of story, I'm much better served by a system which is designed for that sort of story.You're confusing the example. I play a lot of D&D, I understand the concept of saving throws and attack rolls for spells. I'm not talking about that - the wizard still has complete freedom to choose an appropriate spell from his repertoire (will saves targeting brutes, fort saves targeting the mages, AoEs targeting the minions, etc). I.e.: he gets the choice of which spells to expend and when.What I'm talking about is a flat chance that that spell simply wasn't available. Or perhaps a better example would be if, rather than choosing a spell, the caster had to randomly select a prepared spell to cast. I.e.: whether or not he had the ability to bring his powers to bear was dependent on chance, not his choice of which spell to cast. That's the difference between rolling for additional clues or expending resources to choose when to get them.PS: I didn't say any such thing. What I actually said (really *implied*, but no point in splitting hairs) is that Gumshoe does a really good job of modelling a bunch of investigators, expert in a number of fields, working together to solve a mystery. The d20 system doesn't. Ergo, if you're running that sort of game, the Gumshoe system is a much better choice than d20. So far I've given tons of examples of how the Gumshoe system does this, and tons of counter examples of how the d20 system fails to do it as well (if at all). You're right - this probably is futile.Ultimately, if you don't like the Gumshoe system, or have a strong preference for the d20 system regardless of the type of campaign/story you're telling, that's fine. That's your opinion and choice, no harm, no foul. I know people like that - hell, I even play with them regularly. You can even twist the d20 system, or constrain your campaign and the choice of the players within it to make it work for a style of campaign it isn't suited to. As long as you're all enjoying that, that's also fine. But please don't come out and say that the Gumshoe system isn't any better suited to that style of campaign than d20. Those kinds of statements are simply not true, at least IME.</blockquote>

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