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Message: <blockquote data-quote="swrushing" data-source="post: 1505970" data-attributes="member: 14140">First off... i am a staunch advocate of GENREic games (rules designed for the setting, rules serve the setting not vice versa) as opposed to GENERIC games (where it always feels like the setting and genre are "made to fit" the rules.)A year ago, maybe 18 months ago, i would have agreed much more with you.In the early days of D20, all we saw were DND knockoffs... no one daring to make any significant changes to the d20 core.In the last two years, that has changed and making serious changes to D20/OGL is being done and, in some cases, being done well. Speaking from my own experience...Mutants and Masterminds captures superhero genre better than any super hero game i have ever played. It very much does feel like supers and not "dnd with capes." The damage save imo is a beautiful alternative to hit points, creating a muh more dynamic combat and has applications far outside of just MnM. I really think it should be used well in any sort of gunplay d20 over the hit points or wound/vitality systems.Midnight, while still a fantasy, is very different  from DND and the mechanics match the setting. they Stargate is perhaps the cleanest and best iteration of the d20 engine i have seen. My MAJOR disagreement is in their use of wound/vitality. I feel the wound/vitality does not adequately portray gunplay well, but... it was fairly easy to borrow the damage save from MnM/UA and tweak it to get the "like the show feel" to the gunplay. (Matter of fact, the AEG guys will tell you, the stargate rules are ported almost untouched from spycraft, their james bond spy game... and i think if you look at it, you will see the "setting issues" for stargate stem much more from a difference between "james bond spy films" and the stargate setting... like wanting autofire to be ineffective to simulate the dozen agents trying to shoot bond with machine guns and missing as opposed to the rather effective autofire used by Sg-1 on the show. AEG saw stargate as a toolkit to add "military scifi rpg component" to their spy game... which is great for a product line but, IMO at least, not good for stargate which is definitely not "military scifi" nor is it "a spy show". )In short, now that designers are willing to step away from the DNDisms and use just the core d20 as modified as they please, the problem of DND -flavored d20 games to me is no longer there.At its core, D20 is... six attributes, skills, feats, and other abilities defined as necessary with a d20 rolled for success/fail. It may or may not have hit points (vitality points have several systems and there is the damage save.) It may or may not have armor as "harder to hit" (may have armor as reduction in damage by several different methods.) It may be classed or point buy. So, i gotta admit, i am getting happier and happier with the way i see D20 being morphed to fit the genres and am getting a whoile lot less "generic" feel from d20 games as i am getting "genreic" feel.</blockquote>

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