So this occurred to me during an IRC discussion yesterday - when the CBG was founded, it was very 3.5 and d20 in general oriented. So much so that other systems were often met with blank stares, and when a few (LC, Xeviat, and a couple others) advocated non d20 settings they had a bit of an uphill battle to deal with.
Now?
There's someone on this board - I honestly forget to - who's signature either states or stated - "Pathfinder - backwards compatible with suck." And that seems to be the general view of posters here, or at least the one I get - I've seen very, very few settings designed with d20 in any form in mind, and it's been ages since I've seen a post detailing a new class or race for d20. I'm curious why that happened, and if there are people still out there who like d20/use it.
Note that when I say d20 I'm including Pathfinder, since it's simply the latest update to the d20 and most of the views towards that system are wrapped up with d20 views.
In short, did you ever like d20, what changed your mind if you no longer do, and if you do do you build your settings with that in mind?
I liked d20 when it was the only system with which I was intimately familiar. I actually started RPing with Alternity and Star Wars 2e, and then AD&D. I stopped for a few years and picked up with D&D 3e. That's when I really got into it, but as time went on and I found the entire class system more and more limiting, I got tired of having ot make new classes and check balance issues every time I started a new campaign. Despite even the endless houserules to fix all the cracks in 3.x, it was the lack of versatility in the class system that did it for me.
That's when a friend pointed me at GURPS, and I fell in love with complete customizability and a system that wasn't and isn't in any way broken. It even follows as closely to the functioning of reality as any system I've seen, and the versatility in the rule set lets me run anything from over-the-top full-on WH40K-style epic space opera to the grittiest and most mundane police procedural to epic D&D-style fantasy games. One system. Complete versatility. No cracks to fix. Why should I go back?
Despite my tastes for the outlandish and my bitching about Wizards of the Coast (see my obnoxious ranting in the 5E thread), I'll admit to being something of a d20 enthusiast. It's not a perfect system and doubtless it was roundly abused & broken, but I think that, in essence, it's a pretty solid system that allows for some great roleplaying.
I think what people objected to, in part, was the creepy way that d20 started to "take over" other games, this sense that d20 wanted to be the "ideal gaming system" or something. Thus there was a d20 version of Call of Cthulhu, d20 World of Darkness, d20 Deadlands, d20 Traveller, etc. It's like the system took on this eerie borg-like aspect, assimilating settings as it went, contributing to WotC's little gaming empire (to labour the metaphor more, Pathfinder might be the Germanic hordes in this scenario...). There was this sense that d20 was selling itself as the "ultimate system" or as a kind of super-flexible, easily customizable all-purpose gaming system, which it totally wasn't. I like the OGL as much as anyone, but this was one of its unpleasant side-effects, I think.
d20 was great for a certain kind of roleplaying, and I think it's still great for that type of roleplaying - fairly heroic fantasy with powerful characters, involved combat, and a pretty solid set of skill mechanics for non-combat situations. What it's not is this brilliant one-size-fits-all ubersystem, a role it possibly aspired to. I think this is where dissatisfaction set in, but I think that as a result people tend to unfairly demonize the system itself.
I liked and still do like D20, I think it has an important place. But I also think that it is only a small part of the whole when you examine the options and the more I look at things the less well it fits the sort of games I'm interested in running. D20 is good for beer and pretzels style smash down the dungeon doors with friends games. It's abstract, straight forward, and while broken in some areas it isn't hard to run with for a casual game. Unfortunately this doesn't fit with the style of game I'm looking for right now so it's been shelved in favor of other systems.
I'd contend that it's range is significantly better than the beer-and-pretzels variety of hack & slash gaming, though it certainly does that very well. Arguably, 4E does an even better job at the "beat down the dungeon door" stuff. d20 has, perhaps, a bit more colour, a bit less balance. I think it can be used to run a pretty sophisticated game, actually, albeit one in the "high fantasy" mode. If your game is all political nuance and story, or something, then it doesn't work particularly well (though it has some social functionality and leaves room for intrigue); and if you want low-powered, hyper-deadly, simulationist grit, it doesn't do that spectacularly either (though it can accommodate some degree of roughness & danger, certainly).
I think the issue with D&D is that it doesn't adapt well to settings and, well, settings are what we deal in here.
Playing D&D (sans extreme house rules) essentially means that you are accepting magical items, vancian magic, adventurers, colored dragons, and magical music. Of course like every system it is modular of a sorts, you could cut the dragons out of Dungeons & Dragons and no one would blink - but you can only take alterations of this order so far. Cutting out the above things leaves the system crippled and depleted, especially considering that the entire game is designed (or, in gamer jargon, balanced) around these integral features.
As our settings evolve, we want to take it further and further from this status quo and consequentially we have to remove ourselves from our D20 origins.
I realize this is more of a friendly rebuke of D&D and not so much D20, but I think this is at the root of the issue.
I loved d20 when it was new, I still like d20 today. The difference is that I know of and have played many games in other game systems, which has given me perspective concerning the pros and cons of d20 as a whole. Its still a good system, and its probably the best system out there for general gaming but it really isn't the best game system if you have something very specific in mind.
Honestly, I used to design settings with d20 in mind but now-a-days I generally make my settings system-free, which gives me the liberty of using any system I fancy when I go to play in that world. Aeolond in 4E would feel different than Aeolond with Exalted or Aeolond with L5R rules - yet each is a perfectly valid system (at their core) for the world.
I think d20 works well if the general consensus (amongst players and DM) is pro-crunch gaming. I think d20 does crunch very well. Just enough customization without becoming banal. But I don't think it does fluff that well - unless of course, the DM puts some serious, or not so serious, work into adapting d20 to the setting (this seems to be a recurring point here.) And despite it's imbalance, it is a fairly easy simple to wrap ones head around; compare d20 with ADnD - THACO, +/- Armor Class, different leveling tables for every class, multi- and duel-classing.
Overall I like d20, it's basically the system I really cut my teeth on, so it's always going to be somewhat nostalgic. That being said, I'm also a fan of FUDGE, which is a very very rules light system, but fun and really easy to adapt.
I'm glad to see the overall consensus seems to be much less anti dnd that I had thought and more 'there's better out there'. The reason I ask is my players requested a game in classic, no 3rd party, heroic fantasy dnd and the group generally dislikes 4e, so I'm at the point where I have to make a dnd setting and want to post it here, but was worried I'd be getting little to no feedback which I need - that and I've fallen back in love with dnd's classes and monsters and such, and would love to post them here for feedback. (also going to post them on the OOTS forums to find members I can poach for us, but that's another story for another thread.)
I'm a home brewer. Period.
Sort of an extremist in it, honestly.
But the only two games I have really sunk my teeth into creating in the last few decades (I used to be known as someone who created a system every month) are a d100 and a d20 retro.
And much in line with Nom's train of thought, the d20 was created basically on one sheet of graph paper to start because I was asked to run a game in a situation where my d100 Guildschool rules would have done poorly; we needed quick and dirty with fast chargen. I wrote the basic rules in 30 minutes and we had 4 characters in my Accis, world of Bronze and Heroes (http://accisworldofbronze.pbworks.com/w/page/31914263/FrontPage) system. I fleshed it out and have since run a dozen quick games in it. It works because it is very heroic and swashbuckling...and i can make a character in 10-15 minutes at a normal pace.
So it is not that I don't like it, but I find it and pure class based games less suited for my longer, campaign based, games.
Quote from: lEETZBut I don't think it does fluff that well - unless of course, the DM puts some serious, or not so serious, work into adapting d20 to the setting (this seems to be a recurring point here.)
Love you, man.
Quote from: Xathan Back Again
There's someone on this board - I honestly forget to - who's signature either states or stated - "Pathfinder - backwards compatible with suck."
;). A friend of mine said that in the ENWorld chat one day when 4e was new and PF was controversial.
I used to be a big fan of d20, but now I'm not as much. I'll soon be running an E6 Pathfinder game, but if I have a favorite system now it's probably Alternity, which is d20 with more of a focus on skills. I think as with a lot of others, it just becomes the case that we find better systems for what we want to do - from the admittedly little I've actually ran them, my settings have played better in other and/or modified systems that are typically made for a grittier and more low-powered kind of game. I still run standard PF from time to time, though. I've got a soft spot for the 3rd edition Forgotten Realms.
Crow stated the main issue for me with d20 - it doesn't seem to adapt well. Sure, you can argue that with a good group you can get around this (and similar things have recently been debated on the site and in the chat), but I feel like a system designed for the game I want is more important, so I'm looking at gearing Alternity for all of my settings and am looking into Chivalry&Sorcery as a possible substitute in the Haveneast department.
As Horse says, d20 doesn't adapt as well as it tries to. It wanted to be this universal mechanic, but it was not well suited to every type of game. Some games run well enough with it. Others don't work quite right.
I never really played much d20. I got my start on AD&D and by the time 3rd edition came out I was playing other things. So, while I can see certain things it's good at and certain things it's not so good at (I've learned a decent bit about the system in the meantime) I'm not really a fan. I'd probably play in a D&D/PF/whatever game if it was run by someone I knew to be a good DM and the subject matter seemed interesting, but it's highly doubtful I'd DM any sort of D&D/d20/whatever game myself.
Quote from: Humabouta system that wasn't and isn't in any way broken
While I rather like GURPS too, this is just hyperbole.
Everything designed by humans is broken in some way or other. :grin:
Quote from: Señor Leetzcompare d20 with ADnD - THACO, +/- Armor Class, different leveling tables for every class, multi- and duel-classing
Aww, THAC0 wasn't that bad. The weird way that AC worked backwards from common sense was pretty bad, though, and it's good they got rid of that. Still, I think you're being a little hard on it-- or maybe I'm just being nostalgic. It's not as though d20 didn't/doesn't have its own share of wonky stuff though.
Quote from: sparkletwist
While I rather like GURPS too, this is just hyperbole.
Everything designed by humans is broken in some way or other. :grin:
You mean a 50-point ability that annihilates all life in the universe is broken? :p
True enough that it's not perfect, but it's the best I've found so far. D20 was good for what it did, but more than anything, I got annoyed by the railroading imposed by the class system. The generic classes in UA were the closest thing to making me happy, but they just didn't quite do it for me. I guess by the time I started looking for an alternative, I'd already turned my back on d20.
That's not to say that I don't miss the sense of wonder and magic that it evoked, but again, I suspect that was as much because it was my first real introduction to that sort of gaming as it was the system itself. Even still, I try to capture some of that feel in my games, but I don't think I'll ever go back.
Quote from: Humabout
Quote from: sparkletwist
While I rather like GURPS too, this is just hyperbole.
Everything designed by humans is broken in some way or other. :grin:
You mean a 50-point ability that annihilates all life in the universe is broken? :p
True enough that it's not perfect, but it's the best I've found so far. D20 was good for what it did, but more than anything, I got annoyed by the railroading imposed by the class system. The generic classes in UA were the closest thing to making me happy, but they just didn't quite do it for me. I guess by the time I started looking for an alternative, I'd already turned my back on d20.
That's not to say that I don't miss the sense of wonder and magic that it evoked, but again, I suspect that was as much because it was my first real introduction to that sort of gaming as it was the system itself. Even still, I try to capture some of that feel in my games, but I don't think I'll ever go back.
I remember those UA classes. I thought they had amazing potential but too many of the classic ability options were dropped for them to make them truly good. That book had a lot of great ideas that helped make the game a bit more flexible.
classes are very, very hard that way. It can make for a fun game, but matching the class-crunch to specific real-world organizations gets hard after a while.
I found myself spending more time writing new classes to fit my worlds than I spent making the worlds themselves, and certainly more time than I got to spend playing in those worlds. It got old. Oh well. Life goes on, eh?
Quote from: LordVreeg
classes are very, very hard that way. It can make for a fun game, but matching the class-crunch to specific real-world organizations gets hard after a while.
This brings up the issue with d20 that it could not separate crunch from fluff in any of it's settings. I feel like half the time when ready the fluff, it would mention a character only to have the name followed by (Ftr 9) or some silly stuff like that. The same goes with terrible spell names.
Quote from: sparkletwist
Aww, THAC0 wasn't that bad. The weird way that AC worked backwards from common sense was pretty bad, though, and it's good they got rid of that. Still, I think you're being a little hard on it-- or maybe I'm just being nostalgic. It's not as though d20 didn't/doesn't have its own share of wonky stuff though.
Speaking as someone that played in AD&D and even has a (little) bit of nostalgia for it, THAC0 wasn't the stupidest mechanic in the history of game design. But it makes the list--for the simple reason that the very need for such an acronym is ridiculous. Someone, somewhere before publication should have looked at the whole THAC0/AC system and asked, "do you think we're making this more complicated than it needs to be?"
If a mechanic works counterintuitively, it better have a
really good reason for doing so.
Quote from: Phoenix
Quote from: sparkletwist
Aww, THAC0 wasn't that bad. The weird way that AC worked backwards from common sense was pretty bad, though, and it's good they got rid of that. Still, I think you're being a little hard on it-- or maybe I'm just being nostalgic. It's not as though d20 didn't/doesn't have its own share of wonky stuff though.
Speaking as someone that played in AD&D and even has a (little) bit of nostalgia for it, THAC0 wasn't the stupidest mechanic in the history of game design. But it makes the list--for the simple reason that the very need for such an acronym is ridiculous. Someone, somewhere before publication should have looked at the whole THAC0/AC system and asked, "do you think we're making this more complicated than it needs to be?"
If a mechanic works counterintuitively, it better have a really good reason for doing so.
Right.
I did my d20 bronze reto with modern DCs to hit, just because it makes so much more intuitive sense.
I played a ton of AD&D with the combat matrix, and some thaco....I don't miss it.
Quote from: Steerpike
I'd contend that it's range is significantly better than the beer-and-pretzels variety of hack & slash gaming, though it certainly does that very well.
It's range certainly is. I never said that was all it was good for. That is just where it shines.
That's true - fair enough.
Quote from: PhoenixTHAC0 wasn't the stupidest mechanic in the history of game design. But it makes the list--for the simple reason that the very need for such an acronym is ridiculous.
Yeah, by saying it "wasn't that bad" I never meant to imply I thought it was good.
It's amazing what we put up with back then. Actually, looking at 4e, it's amazing what we still put up with. I guess rule 0 really does win out. :D
It's weird. I'm called out as one of the earlier break aways (I think I was looking into M&M first, which is still d20 ...), yet now I'm one of the drifters. Then again, I think d20 is referring to the D&D3 core system, while I'm saying that I'm drifting back to D&D.
I'm one of those people that think everything can work with every system given enough wrangling, but I like wrangling. The only thing d20 doesn't do well are games where levels don't feel right, but I like levels because balancing without them is very hard.
If I don't end up liking D&DNext, I'm probably going to fudge together some amalgam of D&D3 and 4, much like Xanthan is doing, with some influence from M&M, L5R, and WoD.
I can't go back to naked D&D3, though. The fractional saving throw progressions sicken me.
The really, really great thing that D&D did (and still does, to an extent) is that it acted as an excellent "gateway game" for a lot of people. It's got a huge market share, it's got name recognition within the popular culture that nothing else in the hobby has got, it ends up being the first game for a lot of people, the thing that gets them interested in gaming.
Maybe most importantly for people like us, OGL was huge. I don't even know how many third-party publishers are fueled by OGL. (Even FATE uses it.) When I first started working on the Jade Stage, I had visions of publishing it as a hardcover setting book with a skeleton of heavily-modified, OGL-licensed 3.5 D&D-ish mechanics underneath it all. It is totally insane that that WotC said "here's this ruleset, it is free. Take it, distribute it, put it on websites, write your own stuff based on it and sell it for money if you want to." That is a completely crazy business move that I don't think gets enough credit. It blew the doors wide open for a ton of innovative stuff from other people (arguably including most of us here).
LC's right. I wouldn't have done as much as I did if it wasn't for the lofty goal of publishing my own setting. D&D4 killed that, and took away a bit of the magic, likely sending us running for other systems. Hopefully D&D5 brings it back, it was so magical (and I'd love to stick it to the Pathfinder players, hah).
>>The same goes with terrible spell names.
What is wrong with the spell names?
Bigby's Crushing Hand, Tenser's Floating Disk, Melf's Acid Arrow- great names all!
Quote from: Light Dragon
>>The same goes with terrible spell names.
What is wrong with the spell names?
Bigby's Crushing Hand, Tenser's Floating Disk, Melf's Acid Arrow- great names all!
Well those are the best! They have some flavor and character about them. But a name like "Magic Missile" is terrible. We've all been subjected to it for so long that it no longer seems strange, but it's terrible.
But on the other hand, some of those names are so iconic - like Magic Missile, or the Bigby spells - that it would be a shame to change them.
Quote from: Señor Leetz
Quote from: Light Dragon
>>The same goes with terrible spell names.
What is wrong with the spell names?
Bigby's Crushing Hand, Tenser's Floating Disk, Melf's Acid Arrow- great names all!
Well those are the best! They have some flavor and character about them. But a name like "Magic Missile" is terrible. We've all been subjected to it for so long that it no longer seems strange, but it's terrible.
But on the other hand, some of those names are so iconic - like Magic Missile, or the Bigby spells - that it would be a shame to change them.
Yeah, if you step back from Magic Missile and its history, it is a silly name for a spell. And really, it was kind of a silly effect. So I shoot a wad of pure magic that never misses and deals a small amount of damage? A bolt of fire, a blast of telekinetic energy, or almost anything would have seemed more in line with sword & sorcery inspirations.
But there would be outrage if it was changed now. Hell, apparently there was outrage that 4e made people roll to hit with it as though it were, I don't know, any other attack in the game.
On the other hand, I always thought the named person spells had dumb names. My campaign setting probably never had anyone named Melf, and I'd rather the broad rules like spell names not try to insert the flavor of someone else's setting into mine. I suppose to each his own, then.
Quote from: PhoenixOn the other hand, I always thought the named person spells had dumb names. My campaign setting probably never had anyone named Melf, and I'd rather the broad rules like spell names not try to insert the flavor of someone else's setting into mine. I suppose to each his own, then.
Actually, all of those spells are renamed in the SRD (and presumably need to be renamed in anybody's published d20-based settings) because those namesake NPC wizards are not OGL.
spellcasting (and magic) is one of those places I get heretical. I know Vancian magic was there from the beginning, but it is such a narrow fit in terms of fluff...One of the biggest reasons I had to go homebrew in the beginning is that Vancian magic's fire and forget/spell slots per level fits a certain type of fluff and game, and not others.
And, on the other side, creating spells for the game is a neverending source of quiet joy; each one another brick in the wall of versimilitude.
You know, LordVreeg, that was the first thing that slapped me in the face way back in highschool when a friend tried to explain in AD&D to me. We argued for an entire lunch about how silly it was that a wizard would just forget what he knew a moment before. Even with slightly different fluff, it never sat well with me, and it eventually drove me to just start making new spellcaster classes in 3.x. There were a lot of cool options for magic 3.x, but ultimately, redesigning classes to fit the fluff got tiring (even if I did enjoy it).
It's like has been mentioned. In d20, the fluff is intrinsic to the classes, so it tends to necessitate class genesis everytime you make a new setting. The same can be said for other Gurps, too (see Dungeon Fantasy templates for an exampel), but I guess I like having the option to not restrict anyone's character creation process unduely (yeah, I don't allow fantasy barbarians to have points in Bioengineering; sue me).
Quote(yeah, I don't allow fantasy barbarians to have points in Bioengineering; sue me).
Pardon me, I was just having a daydream about the kind of setting where this might be appropriate. Sorry if I spaced out there for a minute.
Quote from: LordVreeg
spellcasting (and magic) is one of those places I get heretical. I know Vancian magic was there from the beginning, but it is such a narrow fit in terms of fluff...One of the biggest reasons I had to go homebrew in the beginning is that Vancian magic's fire and forget/spell slots per level fits a certain type of fluff and game, and not others.
And, on the other side, creating spells for the game is a neverending source of quiet joy; each one another brick in the wall of versimilitude.
To be the Devil's Advocate here, it is somewhat easy to create new spell-casting classes for a particular campaign (Vancian magic aside) simply by plugging in spells form the list and aiming for a certain aesthetic.
The classic magic school wizards aside, I think there are lots of possibilities if a.) someone wants to work a little bit and b.) no one is a balance fascist, since undoubtedly spell-casting classes with flavor in mind will not all end up equal, the Soothsayers of Nym, with
detect alignment and
alarm will not be nearly as useful in combat as the Ash-Eaters who fling
fireballs, lay down
wall of flame and blast everything with
scorching hands.
I like d20 a lot, mostly due to familiarity. It and other DnD-type games seem by far the best fit in my mind when it comes to a class-and-level game. To be fair, the 3.x/3.5 implied setting was too high-magic for my taste, and although I'm not familiar with Pathfinder, I'd guess it's the same. That's a personal aesthetic issue though, and Iron Heroes and other variants fix this more than adequately, as far as I'm concerned.
Quote[d20] and other DnD-type games seem by far the best fit in my mind when it comes to a class-and-level game.
On the other hand, though, how many other class-and-level type games can you think of? I'm sort of coming up empty.
Quote from: Luminous Crayon
Quote[d20] and other DnD-type games seem by far the best fit in my mind when it comes to a class-and-level game.
On the other hand, though, how many other class-and-level type games can you think of? I'm sort of coming up empty.
tunnels and trolls, the fantasy trip, C&S, al come to mind quickly
Quote from: Señor Leetz
To be the Devil's Advocate here, it is somewhat easy to create new spell-casting classes for a particular campaign (Vancian magic aside) simply by plugging in spells form the list and aiming for a certain aesthetic.
The classic magic school wizards aside, I think there are lots of possibilities if a.) someone wants to work a little bit and b.) no one is a balance fascist, since undoubtedly spell-casting classes with flavor in mind will not all end up equal, the Soothsayers of Nym, with detect alignment and alarm will not be nearly as useful in combat as the Ash-Eaters who fling fireballs, lay down wall of flame and blast everything with scorching hands.
Honestly, some of the most enjoyable classes I made involved only a hint of vancian casting. My best was probably a blood sorcerer type that used some vancian casting mixed with warlock-style invocations. I don't recall limiting the lists, but rather flavoring castign options. And even that aside, writing new spells is just plain fun.
As far as balance is concerned, I think that largely depends on the applications the class excells at. Mr. Pyro might be awesome in combat, but his lack of subtlty could get him into trouble in a political campaign. In that arena, your soothsayer sounds like a natural. Across the entire spectrum of adventurers, they might be perfectly balanced, but their usefulness in a given situation certainly isn't.
Yeah, my favorite Vancian-style magic thing is in Amber Diceless, where you typically "hang" spells in advance of when you need them because they take a long time to perform from scratch, but you can essentially make up whatever spells you want, so there's none of this element of choosing from a list. It's more of a "here's the basic set of guidelines for wielding these primal forces, see what you can come up with, try not to get caught with your pants down."
It's a unique sort of ability in the game, though (and there are numerous magic-like powers that do not work that way at all), so it's definitely something that players can either use and enjoy or skip without missing much, depending on whether they have the "invent everything in advance" mindset or not.
I like the "hanging" the spells approach, too, or, really, even just 3e's change in parlance from "memorizing" a spell to "preparing" a spell. It seems to make a lot more sense that the spell requires some advanced preparation and the actual casting is just finishing a very long incantation-- rather than the whole idea of completely forgetting the spell from one's mind.
I'm not a huge fan of "Vancian" stuff in general, really. I definitely don't like 4e which kind of pushed everyone in that direction. :P
Personally, as a bit of a tangent, I'll say that I really like more "freeform" power schemes like Ars Magica and such. It allows GMs to really develop a power and its various uses, and players to have a lot of flexibility and really feel like they've mastered this magical power they hold in their hands. In addition, it forces the GM to really think through the ramifications and potential alternate uses of a certain variety of magic, which a lot of spell lists focused on a single task tend to greatly neglect.