E20?

[Korwin]

http://e20system.com/index.html

Anyone know details about it?
(I sort of skimmed the FAQ)

[Leress]

It's just another amalgam of mostly other d20 ideas, designed by committee and you can pay for higher influence in the making process. Hell, looking some of the things in the FAQ (D20 Star Wars, Modern, and Pathfinder) that doesn't look like it will bode well. The d20 system is nearly 10 years old it is mostly serviceable and many have already made there own houserules to it. Making a new game now is just seem stupid, pathfinder only really worked because Paizio's name was on it. Hell does any one even remember Trailblazer which came out a couple of months ago?

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php? ... s_id=64009

Seriously there is a lot of making the "let's fix or adjust d20" things out there. I am better off just making my own and get good artist to help.

[ggroy]

[Nicklance]

The accessibility of 3.5 is kinda one of the reasons why its still around for so long.

Not to mention its OGL. Its effectively a giant sandbox for all of us to play in.

[Username17]

http://e20system.com/index.html

Anyone know details about it?
(I sort of skimmed the FAQ)

The model is very interesting. By which I mean the financial model. I am not up to date on current printing costs, but gather they are much lower now and a 10k seed could go pretty far. Crap, even if you went with Lulu (which for many reasons, you would not), you could get an initial print run out there of several hundred.

Assuming that you went for PHB sizing, which means 8.5x11 paper, 300 pages and hardcover, you could get a unit price of about 22 dollars out of a vanity press like Lulu if you were willing to have the internal pictures be Black and White. That seems pretty plausible, especially since you could set aside a good portion of the money to commission art. Decent full pagers are surprisingly cheap if your intention is to put it into a book rather than your wall.

If there was a desire to produce a hardcover book of something like aWoD, the kickstart system seems like the way to go.

---

Now, as for the e20 Bumming around their forums a bit, I don't think I have any need to participate in their specific project. Basically these people think that d20 Modern could have been made into an effective multiplatform system. I disagree.

I really hate to agree with Ron Edwards on anything because he is an officious twit, but in this case I am going to side with him that e20 appears to be "yet another fantasy heartbreaker." At least I have the solace that my assessment of why this is the case is completely different. My assessment is instead that moving away from BAB towards a "skill based" combat system while retaining a 20 level growth curve and a d20 RNG is basically just asking people to take the random number generator and rape it.

"Those who would sacrifice mathematical stability for customization deserve neither."

-Username17

[ggroy]

[Username17]

There is nothing wrong with playing a Fantasy Heartbreaker. Before 2000, that's what we all played. Full stop. In the 90s, the 80s, and according to my dad's friends the 70s as well, what people played was D&D homebrews. The initial rules were totally fucking incomprehensible. They talked about 0-20 dice back when icosahedrons had the numbers 0-9 on them twice and you were expected to roll them with a d6 or a coin flip to determine if you were supposed to add 10 or not. About half the player base played that 19 was the highest number on the die!

The idea that people even could play the game right out of the book without massively house ruling everything and making a personal game out of the seeds that were delivered to the reader is pretty much new to 3rd edition. Open source gaming gave us a universal standard of gaming rules that did not previously exist in any form. The fact these rules are now completely unsupported and gradually accumulating homebrew patches by all the different gaming groups is to be expected. It's a return to the pre-SRD status quo.

Now that several years have passed, players have become very familiar with the subsystems and the persistent problems that remain. And they know that there will never be any more "official" patches so that any error they notice regardless of how big or small must be addressed by themselves personally.

-Username17

[RobbyPants]

Now that you mention it, I had almost forgotten how heavily house-ruled my 2E game was right before I switched to 3.0.

[erik]

Assuming that you went for PHB sizing, which means 8.5x11 paper, 300 pages and hardcover, you could get a unit price of about 22 dollars out of a vanity press like Lulu if you were willing to have the internal pictures be Black and White. That seems pretty plausible, especially since you could set aside a good portion of the money to commission art. Decent full pagers are surprisingly cheap if your intention is to put it into a book rather than your wall.

If there was a desire to produce a hardcover book of something like aWoD, the kickstart system seems like the way to go.

Something like aWoD, but not actually aWoD because we'd run into more copyright concerns than anyone would desire. Right?

I need to find my olde rpg drawings I've done now that I have a decent scanner. I'm sure there's some denizens who are artistically inclined that would enjoy providing art on demand.

Someday it might be fun to whip up something not burdened by copyright issues and make a community project of it to either have a professional lookin pdf (with pretty pictures, double column printing per page, lovely fonts and backgrounds) and later a hardback copy.

[Username17]

Something like aWoD, but not actually aWoD because we'd run into more copyright concerns than anyone would desire. Right?

Absotively. aWoD uses a bunch of copyrighted names and concepts and is specifically and exactly a total rip on the intellectual property of White Wolf Publishing. So long as it is distributed free in a digital form, there's no problem.

So, a note on copyright is probably in order. No one can copyright game mechanics or the idea of role playing. It's not even possible for reasons that should have been applied to Monsanto's ownership of the Soy genome. And most fantasy concepts are not owned by anyone in particular, being based on myths that are hundreds if not thousands of years old.

• Hobbits Tolkien's Estate owns Hobbits. People use halflings, or gnomes, because those words are public domain.
• Orcs Surprisingly, it's an obscure, but old, word. And no one owns it. Booyeah! Similarly, most of the savage humanoids (even Gnolls) are open source. Hobgoblins, Goblins, Ogres, all completely unprotectable.
• Ilithid While it hasn't been enough to keep Dominions from straight up using the Ilithid and Aboleth by name, they are native to D&D and I think WotC could sue if they noticed. The concept of a Mind Flayer is completely unprotectable. It's basically a Lovecraftian Cthulhi. Final Fantasy has the "Soul Flayers" that are exactly the same thing with a different name, and you can do anything like that you want. Up to and including just calling them Star Spawn.
• Gods Lolth is proprietary. So is Gruumsh, Pelor, and Maglubiet, and Sauron. But you can use close rips of them, such as Velma Green from Billy & Mandy. And surprisingly, Loviatar and Asmodeus are totally public domain. Indeed, most of the demon lords, whether they be D&D classics like Pazuzu or Diablorifics like Mephisto are pulled out of classic books of demonology that are hundreds of years old, and not subject to copyright.
• Drow Totally a German word! Not copyrightable. It's the same word as Derro, and indeed the Dark Elves and the Dark Dwarves are not mythologically distinct. Individuals like Dr'zzt or places like Menzowhathefuckistan are copyright. But if you were making a new setting you would make new cities anyway. But you can have Dark Elves who run around in black spider web armor who shoot poison and keep slaves and even call them "Drow."
• Githyanki The name was created by George R. R. Martin and the faction created by Charlie Stross. In both cases, unrelated to TSR and more importantly: not copyrighted as such. So... prior art baby, the Gith are public fucking domain.
• Tieflings: The name was created out of whole cloth during the days of Planescape and totally put under perpetual Copyright forever. Same with Genasi and Durgazon. The essentially interchangeable Draeni are likewise copyright (by Blizzard), but the concept of someone who got the bad-touch from magic beings and is magic inherently is not something subject to copyright because it is fucking old. You could as easily call them Cambion, Hanyo, Anakim, or a hundred other names. Because the concept is thousands of years old and present all over the world.

Edit: Almost forgot. Games Workshop owns "Skaven" but they do not own "Nezumi." They own Slaan, but not the Saurus.

No one owns Elves or Dwarves.

-Username17

[Lokathor]

"Just as Wikipedia makes everyone an editor, the 'e20 Project' makes everyone a designer."

Oh, the horror.

<public domain stuff>

This post will be highly helpful to me in selecting monster names for my recently started Roguelike. Thanks.

[hogarth]

[*] Githyanki The name was created by George R. R. Martin and the faction created by Charlie Stross. In both cases, unrelated to TSR and more importantly: not copyrighted as such. So... prior art baby, the Gith are public fucking domain.

This is gibberish. "Prior art" relates to patents, not copyright, and the Berne Convention says that every written work is copyrighted "as such".

[Username17]

[*] Githyanki The name was created by George R. R. Martin and the faction created by Charlie Stross. In both cases, unrelated to TSR and more importantly: not copyrighted as such. So... prior art baby, the Gith are public fucking domain.

This is gibberish. "Prior art" relates to patents, not copyright, and the Berne Convention says that every written work is copyrighted "as such".

Don't be retarded. Yes, the specific text appearing in the Githyanki description is totally copyrighted by Wizards of the Coast. However, because th word was already in use, the word Githyanki cannot be copyrighted by them. And the concept of descendants of a slave revolt who scamper about as a tribe of mentally disciplined warriors in another world is not, and cannot be copyrighted.

So you can put "Githyanki" into your game and even have them led by a lich queen, so long as it is not a word-for-word copy. While technically, George R. R. Martin owns the word and will continue to do so until 2015, he isn't going to sue you before he sues Hasbro.

-Username17

[ggroy]

[Lokathor]

I'd toss in Earthdawn

[Username17]

Oh don't stop there!

Age of Conan
Castles and Crusades
Trailblazer
Fatasycraft
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Tunnels & Trolls
Iron Heroes
Palladium
Powers & Perils
Runequest
...or get your degree.

I would not classify Shadowrun as a Fantasy Heartbreaker, because it is in fact a future/modern game. Hell, it's a direct predecessor to Vampire (as in: Tom Dowd worked on both projects and explicitly scavenged ideas from SR into Vampire). You can sort of classify Gamma World as a Fantasy Heartbreaker because it goes all out with the whole Gygaxian spiel that it's so far in the future that people take swords and spells seriously.

It really is a huge genre.

-Username17

[ggroy]

[Username17]

Pathfinder only has buzz in the internet community. In the recent survey of advertised games at Dundracon I note that there are only 2 Pathfinder games out of over thirty 3rd edition games total. That puts at literally twice the popularity of obscure niche products like Castle Falkenstein, Ars Magica, or Castles & Crusades. And half the impact of such niche titles with real staying power like GURPS or FATE (4 advertised games each), and nothing like the interest provoked by tried and true convention classics like Call of Cthulhu (14 advertised games, roughly equal to 4e).

Pathfinder is a meaningless footnote. There was some discussion about whether it would in fact become the inheritor of the 3e standard of play and become the thing that by default all roleplayers played if they weren't playing something else. And that was a reasonable discussion to have. If they had been a bit bolder and more consistent and scientific about addressing the problems of 3rd edition and made it an evolving ruleset that made a legitimate claim to fix the problems of the game in a mass appeal fashion - then it easily could have. Both K and I tried to steer it in that direction. Unfortunately, it was just another dude's set of D&D house rules. And as such, it has become a minor footnote in gaming history. Ten years from now people won't even mention it when they talk about edition wars.

No more than they'll talk about Master Rules or Fantasycraft or True20.

-Username17

[ggroy]

[HouseEros]

There was some discussion about whether it would in fact become the inheritor of the 3e standard of play and become the thing that by default all roleplayers played if they weren't playing something else. And that was a reasonable discussion to have.

This was a fool's errand even back then, when Pathfinder was first announced.

I'd say in hindsight, you are correct. Pathfinder lacked a clear, effective, and well designed solution to any (in my opinion) of the actual problems in 3.5E in need of fixing.

But at the time? No one but they could have figured it out since no one knew what they would attempt (rules wise).

Pretty much any "fantasy heartbreaker" rpg is largely driven by the head designer's huge ego. (For that matter, any other rpg). At the other extreme, design by committee is not much better especially if nobody has an absolute veto over any design decision.

Pretty much any project is larger drive by the head designer's ego. The assumption that you can do better (without solid proof) is primarily an ego-driven decision. It is only after the fact (if you succeed) that people accept it as something else.

[ggroy]

[HouseEros]

This was a fool's errand even back then, when Pathfinder was first announced.

I'd say in hindsight, you are correct. Pathfinder lacked a clear, effective, and well designed solution to any (in my opinion) of the actual problems in 3.5E in need of fixing.

But at the time? No one but they could have figured it out since no one knew what they would attempt (rules wise).

I was basing my judgment on how large rpg projects of any kind, look like they are largely done by a "gang that couldn't shoot straight".

Everything from GURPS to D&D 3.5 to White Wolf's stuff then?

[ggroy]

[ggroy]

[Korwin]

First draft e20 lite

The first draft looks more like 4e than anything else, sadly...


Edit:
Well, beside that multiclassing is possible (and encouraged) and there are generic classes.