RE: [DL] Re: deadlands D20

[Allan Seyberth <darious@darious.com>]

 >Then I think that maybe Deadlands fans aren't really a position to be
 >commenting about the nature of other games...

This one is when you consider that he's been in gaming for 20 years now and 
has probably played 90% of the systems that have come out.  And while there 
is some dissent in my group over which is actually the worst game we've 
seen (One friend insists that it's Rifts, another claims it's some game 
called Cynabar ( ? I've never seen it myself) and I myself KNOW the worst 
RPG is World Action and Adventure) and we have seen elegant mechanics (Ars 
Magica), complex mechanics (Phoenix Command/Rhand/Living Steel), simple 
mechanics (Amber), generic mechanics (Fudge/Gurps), solid mechanics 
(Chaosium), silly mechanics (Toon, Marvel), almost there mechanics (Golden 
Heroes), etc. etc.

And while none of us are old enough to have played the original 3 booklets, 
we have played Fantasy Wargaming and we all have different things we look 
for in pretty much agree that the D20 mechanics are bland, flavorless, 
needlessly complex and are generally unsuccessful in evoking any kind of 
setting flavor.

They are some very pretty books however.

And I have to admit that, internally, the mechanics are very consistent and 
very well play-balanced, with far fewer logical flaws than any other game 
that I've seen.
The ones we found are the halfing strength/weight ratio making them the 
ideal mule train, the well publicized half-orc fighter with greatsword 
being less threatening than a gnomish thief with a carrot, the superiority 
of the javelin over pretty much every other weapon, the near pointlessness 
of the heavier armors, the rapid weakening of the AC system in general once 
you get beyond third level, the Jack of All Trades benefits that means that 
it is near pointless to play a single class character unless you are spell 
caster (my next character is going to be a 
thief/fighter/ranger/monk/paladin), the imbalance between threat ratings 
and the EP given, and about two or three more bits here and there.

But we can rip pretty much any game system apart in minutes.  You should 
have SEEN Jeff rip through Sword and Fist.  Sometimes I think we like the 
dissection of the games more than the games themselves.    But that's 
neither here nor there.

And yes - we did notice the near-herculean efforts the D20 design team took 
with the system.  That still doesn't change our opinion of it.  It's just a 
dern shame that WotC was albatrossed by the need to make the system even 
partially backward compatible.

And they are a very pretty set of books.




-------------------
Allan Seyberth
darious@darious.com
Deadlands fan site - http://www.darious.com/

Dear Star Fleet,
Hate You.  Hate the Federation. Taking Voyager.
                 - Janeway