Jacobus wrote:PhishStyx wrote:Jacobus wrote:I didn't see any trashing, but then again that is just me.
His posts directed at me were very dismissive and have a smug tone of superiority in spite of being factually incorrect in a number of areas.
Eh. I didn't get that. Then again I know next to nothing about the settings you pair were referencing. The ones I did recognise, which was pretty much only ShadowRun. I would have to agree that it wouldn't suite very well.
Just as an aside, as far as I know there doesn't have to be classes, level or alignments in the D20 System. But I don't know exactly what the open source d20 rules are.
Yea, I was smug, mea culpa.
As to d20, you don't
NEED levels and classes, much like you don't need water to go swimming. RPG rules are how you mediate the whole "Bang your dead! No I'm not! Are to! Are Not!" debate. Each set desides what kind of game you're playing, what's important in that game, and then builds from there. We do this in none ruled settings too, If you're benign a cowboy, you expect your buddy to be the indian, if he's a ninja, you're expected to be a pirate (or samuri) and if you're sitting at Sister's Tea Party table, my heart goes out to you, you poor sap. If though, you bring the Ninja and the Cowboy to the Tea party, Mom's getting called in really quickly.
So each rules set handles things differently. Shadowrun handles Tech+magic beautifully. I haven't had a chance to push and try and break it, but I'm sure there are things it doesn't do well. Same can be said for every system. D20 was written to be generic, you can be cowboys, ninjas, or ladies. It works best in Pre-1900 settings, d20 Modern covers more modern ones. It's got a fairly balanced magic system, and a lot of combat rules. Where it's weakest is social rules. If you want to bash your buddies head in, teh rules are clear and easy to follow. They may not allow for crazy things, like jumping of the railing, swinging across the room on the chandelier, kicking him and his three lackeys in the head as you do so, but tactical semi-realistic stuff is well done. However, you're at a loss if you want to convince your buddy to eat a slug. The rules just don't handle that. Others handle it better.
Here's the problem though, if I have rules for combat, and everyone and their mother writes a rules supplement for the game, suddenly you've got 5,000 pages on how to fight, and about 1/3 of that is so unbalanced that you might as well be Chandelier swinging. So the detractors will say it's for "roll-playing not role=playing", that its just "hack-and-slash" and that it's a sell-out. I'm a big believer in GIGO - Garbage in Garbage out. If the DM can't run a good game, then he'll suck running a d20. Sure, you might be able to find a rules set where his ineptitude is mitigated by the rules set, but by and large, a good DM can run anything, irregardless of rules, and make it good.
So what do we want for ShadowGirls, the RPG? We want it accessible, this will be attracting non-gamers. We need solid magic system in place, one third of the signature characters are mages. We need something to handle combat, this is an action heavy environment. We need a middling level of realism. There may be mages and monsters, but by and large, normal people obey normal physics and can't do superhuman things. True20 provides these. It's not the best fit by these criteria, its the unwritten criteria (two starving artists need to be able to afford the official license) that made the final call.
When life gives you Lemons, if you've got sugar and water, make Lemonade. Otherwise, SUCK LEMONS!
Dwarves don't apologize, they go to WAR!
