Why we love D&D but hate d20

[dead]

D&D Buffy? Sorry. Insert D&D Star Wars

Unearthed Arcana? OK, insert Diamond Throne.

Conan? Yes, that was an originator of D&D but so was Fritz Leiber's Lankmar and that, in my opinion, was butchered by AD&D.

D&D 3rd Ed is still D&D all the way. I can feel 1st and 2nd ed. in its bones and 3rd ed. would be nothing without 'em. It is glitzier now, however, and has that "cool" alias: d20.

 

[Zappo]

Humm...

Theory: 3E D&D = evolution of AD&D.
Agree. So what? 3E is still a better game than AD&D under any point of view that I've been able to rationally conceive. I don't see why scorning AD&D and happily playing 3E should be strange.

Theory: making d20 games makes them D&D-like, and thus worse because each game must have its own system.
Disagree. GURPS has lots of fans and it is not made for any setting at all, and several d20 games are considered very, very good. There are some that flunked, but isn't that true of anything?

It is true that the system and the setting are heavily correlated, but not so much that any two given games must have completely different systems down to the dice type. That notion stinks of blind anticonformism, which is pretty stupid if you ask me. The changes between two variants of d20 are more than enough to support their respective settings. The "core" d20 mechanics are very generic and while they do have their flavor, that flavor is a part of a great many genres.

Which makes them generic. Universal? No. No system is. Not even GURPS, despite the title. But generic? Hell yeah.

I don't think anyone will argue that just because it uses a twenty-sider, a game is contaminated by D&D, right?

 

[Samothdm]

It is glitzier now, however, and has that "cool" alias: d20.

I bet that there's also a conspiracy to market it in Dragon magazine.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

D&D Buffy? Sorry. Insert D&D Star Wars

Unearthed Arcana? OK, insert Diamond Throne.

Conan? Yes, that was an originator of D&D but so was Fritz Leiber's Lankmar and that, in my opinion, was butchered by AD&D.

D&D 3rd Ed is still D&D all the way. I can feel 1st and 2nd ed. in its bones and 3rd ed. would be nothing without 'em. It is glitzier now, however, and has that "cool" alias: d20.

I don't see what you mean by 'cool' alias. I mean, the old Star Wars System was d6. Does that mean d6 was the 'cool' alias for it? Nah, just a name for the system it used. That's all d20 is.

Though I do LIKE the old WEG Star Wars, I think the d20 version is a much better system and my players love it.

 

[trancejeremy]

I dunno. d20 to me seems about as generic as any other generic system. Maybe even more so, as it can do a credible job at being realistic (IMHO) and sill do superhero games

I also don't think it feels all that much like D&D. Yes, I think d20 modern feels too much like D&D for my taste, but I was pleasantly surprised by SG-1 and Spycraft. Those feel like a whole other game.

 

[Crothian]

D&D 3rd Ed is still D&D all the way. I can feel 1st and 2nd ed. in its bones and 3rd ed. would be nothing without 'em. It is glitzier now, however, and has that "cool" alias: d20.

Yes, third edition is D&D; thus why its called D&D third edition. But d20 Star Wars is not D&D. Neither is d20 Coc or Traveler. If someone is playing these other games and it feels like D&D, I would have to say they are probably missing the point of the games.

 

[MerricB]

I've just been reading through "D&D Stargate", and there is so much in there that isn't D&D.

Some of that is bad - the initiative system looks horrendous. Oh, for a nice simple initiative system.

Cheers!

 

[arscott]

It's Interesting to note that many of the games on your list have concurrently published non d20 stuff. Rather than the setting not matching the system, couldn't it simply be the case of specific rules and challenges designed for one system, and then poorly adapted to fit another?

Silver Age Sentinels D20, by Guardians of Order is a perfect example of this. Instead of adapting d20 mechanics for a superhero feel, GoO just adapted them to match their in-house d10 system

 

[Ron]

Personally, I avoid d20 games other than D&D or its look alike, such as Conan, because I liked to experiment game systems. Furthermore, I had an awful experience playing firearms with d20 rules. I don't think it captures the feeling as well as most of other games. As such, I keep d20 exclusively for fantasy, even considering that I like to introduce primitive gunpowder weapons in my fantasy setting, which could be described as three musketeers with magic.

 

[Etan Moonstar]

All these RPGs deserve their OWN system because, like it or not, a system is never “invisible” -- it colours the campaign world itself.

There are two types of systems in my experience: generic systems which are (or at least, try to be) invisible and don't have any particular influence on game play, and idiosyncratic systems which are specifically designed to be noticed by the players and provide flavor to the game. Personally, I generally tend not to like the latter variety, since most idiosyncratic systems tend not to be particularly simple or consistent.

D&D is big swords and big spells, it is hit points being sloughed off in waves by fire, acid and lightning. It is not a system that lends itself well to science fiction, nor is it a generic system

Agreed, -D&D- is all of those things. D20 is not. Want a game where PCs don't get better during the course of the campaign? Give out things like karma points (used to reroll or modify the results of dice rolls) instead of experience points. Want a game where players don't automatically get better at fighting as they learn new things? I came up with a skill-based combat system for d20 within a month of d20 Cthulhu's release. Want a game where players don't have loads of hit points to slough off? Great, just don't have players increase their hit points as they level up. From my point of view (yours can and obviously does vary), d20 is the simple, flexible, and consistent system (with a large base of players that already understand the basics) that I have been waiting for--roll a d20, add your modifiers, beat the DC. It is much, much easier and less time consuming for me to take this core system and make a few tweaks to achieve the exact results I want than it is for me to thoroughly learn another rules system, persuade my players to try it out, and teach them the system. I have satisfactorily run d20 high fantasy, grim and gritty fantasy, modern horror, hard sci fi, Star Trek, Star Wars, and modern espionage games with mild tweaks to the core system that makes it fit the genre just fine, and in every case the tweaking has taken less time than it would take me to learn another system, and teaching the tweaks to my players has taken an average of 10 minutes because they already know the system itself.

Let me give you a different analogy to sum up my view of diverse rpg systems (versus, say, d20): an rpg system isn't so much a skeleton as it is the core genetic code of a DNA sequence. Just like God, nature, chance, or whatever creative force you believe in has created a huge diversity of body types with DNA sequences that share a huge percentage of identical genetic code, with some new sections of DNA added to account for the individual characteristics of each organism, so I keep the core of the d20 system for all of my games and tweak some sections of the rules to suit the setting or genre.