Will Spycraft dominate d20 Modern?

[JPL]

Well, I think the decision to release Spycraft 2.0 was independant of the decision to return Rokugan to its non-d20 roots but I think both decisions had to do with sales.

Chuck

Agreed, but I think it's all indicative of a company that is not poised to "dominate" the field of modern d20 gaming, regardless of whether Spycraft is somehow just plain better than d20 Modern.

d20 Modern, I should mention, still has plenty of ground to cover --- d20 Military, d20 Espionage, d20 Supers, d20 Martial Arts, etc....basically, "official" versions of everything Chuck has done over the last few years. Or they can reach into the old IP and do a new one-shot version of Boot Hill or Star Frontiers or Gangbusters or Dark Matter or Top Secret SI. I think any one of these would be a solid seller, enough to keep the line active and healthy.

 

[Vigilance]

Agreed, but I think it's all indicative of a company that is not poised to "dominate" the field of modern d20 gaming, regardless of whether Spycraft is somehow just plain better than d20 Modern.

Yeah, I agree. I also think if you put 5 gamers in a room and forced them to read Spycraft and d20M you'd get 6 opinions.

d20M requires a paradigm shift in the way you see your character which is somewhat jarring the first time you come to it from a traditional d20 game. One of Spycraft's strengths is that it doesnt make you shift gears. You pick an archetype and run with it till (or if) you decide to multiclass.

d20M more or less forces you to multiclass and presents characters who dont slot neatly into archetypes.

How you feel about those issues and others, which the games handle in drastically different ways, depends on where you will come down in preferring one or the other.

Chuck

 

[C. Baize]

I think both are valid points. Specific to your second point, I think the audience is there. Right now, many rpg-ers use d20 for Fantasy and other systems for modern or sci-fi games because many seem to feel that d20 Modern is merely D&D with modern window dressing. I have yet to read one review that suggests that d20 Future provides the same depth or utility as Star Hero or GURPS Space for example. The only criticism I ever read about Spycraft 1.0 on a RPG forum was that it's classes weren't broad enough to emulate the full range of modern styles of play (unsurprising in a game called Spycraft). Maybe its fans were just more vocal, but most forum posters who had both books seemed to prefer Spycrafts mechanics over d20 Modern (Vitality/Wounds, firearm rules, etc.) The Stargate RPG shows that the game can handle other genres.

So Spycraft 2.0 comes out for the core audience. World on Fire provides the official spy-action campaign. What about future supplements? Rather than focusing a licensed property like Stargate, show how Spycraft can be massaged (as d20 Future did to d20 Modern) to supporting a sci-fi genre (Space Opera, Cyberpunk, Apocalyptic, etc.). If Spycraft rules can be adapted to supporting alternative genres (Pulp, Technothriller, Occult, gritty military, near-future sci-fi, far-future sci-fi, etc. as examples) I think we could have a much stronger base for growing a d20 fan base that isn't focused on Fantasy.

If Spycraft meets or exceeds my expectations, then I would definitely want to see a Blood & x update/variant with Spycraft tweaking.

Azgulor

Personally, I rather like the toolkit approach of D20 Future. It doesn't need to be so in-depth that there's no wiggle room for my own setting style.

 

[Azgulor]

I don't understand the comment that d20 Modern support from WotC has been "lip service"...aside from the fact that the whole idea of the OGL is to allow 3rd party publishers to create support products, there's actually been a steady stream of new books from WotC, covering quite a bit of ground in terms of content.

I also don't understand your perception that "if WotC wanted to drop d20 Modern tomorrow, there wouldn't be even a moment's hesitation." WotC is a business, and I imagine they will keep doing d20 Modern as long as that's a good business decision.

d20 Modern seems to be taking a modular approach, and I like that. Here's a campaign sketch, here's some rules options, now get in there and play.

This is just my personal opinion....but with AEG, I feel like every setting --- Theah, Rokugan, Shadowforce: Archer --- has an impossibly convoluted backstory spread out over a dozen or more supplements, with far more attention paid to the doings of various NPC movers and shakers that to the PCs. And the metaplot is driven by collectable card games or something like that, right?

I mean, when I was twelve, I had the time to read and reread the Forgotten Realms old grey box...those days are long past. Now, everytime I sit down and try to read the summary of Rokugan's history in the back of Oriental Adventures, my eyes glaze over. It's too much information that just has nothing to do with introducing new players to the world.

AEG seems to get on the d20 bandwagon and get off...well, "without a moment's hesitation," to use your phrase...with d20 rules for Rokugan and Theah introduced and then dropped.

And then there's Stargate and Farscape...maybe it's not their fault, but when AEG comes out with a licensed setting, can anyone really count on it to be around for long?

Having no AEG products in my RPG library at present, I can't speak to their past performance. As I understand it, however, the Stargate license was pulled/not-renewed by Sony. Farscape as a series didn't survive long after the RPG came out.

That aside, when I say lip service, I'm comparing D&D level of support to d20 Modern support. Now I know D&D is the cash cow, but other companies' games (GURPS comes to mind) provides 200+ page hardback or 120+page softback supplements for the sci-fi genre. Looking at d20 - how about Darwin's World or Dawning Star? WotC will slice the fantasy genre upteen-different-ways, (e.g. Sandstorm at 224 pages) but release a 96p book for "d20 Past"?!? (Which has been almost universally panned in the reviews I've seen.) That's lip service.

I can appreciate the business realities of D&D outselling d20 Modern. They'll sell fewer books. So print fewer books. But don't issue a mini-book that can hardly do a genre or topic justice (esp. when it has to follow the WotC model of new Feats, Prestige Classes, Spells, etc. your page count to cover the setting/topic/genre is diminished) and say they're fully supporting the line. I mean, who wouldn't want an official WotC starship construction system comparable to the never-saw-print Warships for Alternity?

Azgulor

 

[JPL]

No RPG in ANY genre has ever sold as well as D&D, has it? No, WotC has never cranked out that many d20 Modern books, and never will. But 4 to 6 products a year is not too bad. And d20 Modern, unlike Spycraft, has Chuck Rice, and the Game Mechanics, and other 3rd party publishers producing some excellent supplements on a regular basis.

To answer your question...no, Spycraft is never going to "dominate" d20 Modern. But I think what you're really getting at is, "I think Spycraft is better than d20 Modern." Different strokes for different folks, but don't assume you personal tastes constitute the majority, and don't assume that even an intrinsically superior game by AEG can "dominate" a game from WotC --- business considerations make that highly unlikely.

 

[PJ-Mason]

I don't see Spycraft 2E dominating the scene anymore more than Spycraft 1E did when it came out. I hope they fixed all the problems 1E had, though.

I have only the SRD versions of D20 Modern and D20 Future, so i can't really comment on how great the books are. But i know that D20 Apocalypse was a terrific book. I don't see how they are just paying lip service to D20 Modern. The D20 Modern and D&D markets are two radically different beasts. Of course their product schedules and capacities would be different. What have they put out for the D20 line?

D20 Modern
D20 Future
D20 Past
D20 Apocalypse
D20 Menace Manual
D20 Weapons Locker
D20 Urban Arcana
D20 Cyberscape (very soon)

Thats pretty good for less than 3 years. If this slow pace allows them to produce great books like D20 apocalypse, then i am all for it.

I do think your right about them leaving no room to hang themselves with this line, though. I think they weren't a 100% sure that this line would be successful, so they didn't go full tilt at it. Or they had excellent foresight. Either way, it turned out for the best i say. YMMV.

 

[SWBaxter]

Does anyone know what the plan is for the Spycraft line to support other genres (as in supplements)? If Spycraft will be able to support a broader range of modern games, I for one would love to see a company really get behind a sci-fi (or series of sci-fi) treatment of Spycraft.

I believe some AEG folks have commented over on RPG.net that they'd like to publish supplements for lots of modernish genres. Whether they do so is dependent on sales.

And on that note, if Spycraft 2.0 sells anywhere close to as well as d20 Modern has, AEG will be jumping for joy and doing backflips. It's highly unlikely that either will "dominate" the other.

My own personal opinion is that AEG puts together some pretty decent RPGs with great settings, but linking them to CCGs with all the metaplot that entails often makes their settings all but unusable to me. Looks like Spycraft is taking the same approach - judging by the fact that "www.spycraftrpg.com" takes me to a page labelled "Spycraft Collectible Card Game" with RPG info as an afterthought - and as such it is of pretty much zero interest to me. YMMV.

 

[Azgulor]

No RPG in ANY genre has ever sold as well as D&D, has it? No, WotC has never cranked out that many d20 Modern books, and never will. But 4 to 6 products a year is not too bad. And d20 Modern, unlike Spycraft, has Chuck Rice, and the Game Mechanics, and other 3rd party publishers producing some excellent supplements on a regular basis.

To answer your question...no, Spycraft is never going to "dominate" d20 Modern. But I think what you're really getting at is, "I think Spycraft is better than d20 Modern." Different strokes for different folks, but don't assume you personal tastes constitute the majority, and don't assume that even an intrinsically superior game by AEG can "dominate" a game from WotC --- business considerations make that highly unlikely.

Considering that I don't own Spycraft or any other AEG books but merely indicated that the Spycraft 2.0 previews looked promising, I am hardly in a position to say Spycraft is better than d20 Modern so you've apparently completely missed the original question. What I was suggesting/asking was the following:
1. Prevailing opinion (based on what I've read) seems to be that overall, Spycraft had "sexier" game mechanics. Examples of d20 Modern mechanics that have been debated at length include firearm rules, MDT vs. W/VP, a bolt-on of the D&D spell-slot system, and nonlethal damage.
2. AEG is making the claim that Spycraft 2.0 will be suited for other styles/genres apart from it's spy-genre core focus. They've also suggested that most of the supplements will stand-alone.
3. For those who have both books, if Spycraft 2.0 made good on its claims, would Spycraft's engine become their modern d20 engine of choice?

I'm curious because I'm considering abandoning GURPS for modern and sci-fi games. GURPS is a great game that I can customize any way I want but as of late I don't have the time to do all of that customization myself. I LIKE the d20 Modern class system b/c it seems a good middle ground between free-form character creation and archetype-based classes. However, while GURPS has numerous full-fledged supplements of high-quality for the modern and sci-fi genres, WotC has adopted a much weaker approach to supporting the game with sourcebooks of comparable quality/thoroughness to their D&D sourcebooks.

Since I haven't yet played d20 Modern, I'm not invested in the system from a campaign perspective. (I do own several d20 Modern books and some Blood-&-____ supplements.) If I'm going to change rules on my players however, I'd like to do it once and for it to be successful. So I thought I would get the opinions of those who had played or at least read, both games. Crazy, I know.

As to WotC, I don't care about the quantity of d20 Modern rulebooks so long as the quality is on par with the core d20 Modern rulebook. I've seen numerous posts where criticisms about the starship and mecha rules appear. And even where buyers have been satisfied with the content of d20 Future, d20 Past, and d20 Apocalypse they've expressed that they wish there had been more content.

Clearly, "dominate" was a poor word choice on my part but just so we're clear, if I feel the ridiculous need to incite a pointless flamewar where I just have to sing the merits of one system over the other, I'll frame it as follows to ensure I'm adhering to the RPG Rabid-Fan-boy Internet Forum Rules of Engagement:
"Game A sucks and Game B rocks"

Azgulor

 

[The_Universe]

I liked the original spycraft, but I chose to use D20 Modern for my modern era games because of the larger leve of support, and the relative ease of pulling in other supplements to support my efforts at a particular modern genre. In short, D20 Modern was more flexible, so that's what I used.

I might buy Spycraft 2, but I'll probably stick with modern, anyway.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I prefer D20 Modern to Spycraft 1.0 by a lot. However, Spycraft 2.0 previews in the other thread indicate that AEG has fixed at least some of the things I didn't like about Sp 1.0, such as armor entirely removing Defense.

I will probably still go with D20 Modern (I like those flexible classes too much, and I didn't like how Sp 1.0 has 1001 classes) but I'll at least follow Sp 2.0 reviews to see if I'm missing something positive or negative about the new system.

I noticed a couple of mentions of FX rules. I don't particularly care, but some people do. I know Spycraft has some kind of FX rules, they're just not in the core rules. (They use vp as spell points, which I don't like, but some people like such a system.)

As for firearms, I think Spycraft has better feats, but I don't ever want to see a weapon do 5d4 damage again. No, really, follow the KISS rule.

It seems to me that AEG really does support Spycraft more than WotC supports D20 Modern. It's not the number of products in itself, but I would really like to see someone officially write a D20 Modern non-FX setting. (I've only seen two so for - Colombia D20 and Haven, but maybe Blood & Buts counts.) I'd like to see free D20 Modern adventures like the ones at the Living Spycraft site so I wouldn't have to be forever converting Spycraft adventures to D20 Modern, or something like Modus Operandi for D20 Modern.