T20 and d20 Future

[Muaadeeb]

Originally posted by hunter:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Malenfant:
Of course, I have to wonder why you're using D20Future to run Traveller when there's a purpose-built d20 Traveller game you could use instead that you don't need to convert stuff to...

Well to be fair, T20 doesn't use the d20 Modern rules so maybe GURPS is easier to covert...

*grin*

Hunter </font>[/QUOTE]Good question. Probably because I just spent $300.00+ at Gen Con at the Gurps booth and had never been exposed to Traveller before.

When I can scrub up some more cash I will probably pick up the D20 Traveler version for quality referance material. I am looking forward to getting my hands on all the Traveller stuff can.

 

[Muaadeeb]

Well I've just re-read the ship design section in the D20 Future book and I will have to agree it does leave a lot to be desired.

I was trying to determine how many small ultra-light fighters a starship could hold and I found that there is no method I could use to determine this.

I am going to read through Blood and Space (since I own a copy) and see if this will help with my question.

 

[Muaadeeb]

Well - I think Blood and Space is pretty good but I think I have relented. I just ordered the T20 Traveller book. .

So to recap my findings:

D20 Future is a good book if you are not looking for starship design.

But I feel I really can't run a future space opera/chase style of game without specs on new ships.

 

[tjoneslo]

I absolute support the idea of getting the T20 book. I know from the discussion on the ENWorld site that the original D20 future rules were adopted from the Alterity's Warship rules (download a free copy from http://alternity.net/). But were mercilessly edited into uselessness. None of the D20 based rules for starships actually answer the question of "How big is my ship so I can draw deckplans?", except the T20 rules.

 

[Nurd_boy]

I always thought that T20 should have been OGL...
otherwise, does one use D&D 3.0, 3.5 or D20 modern, what about the OGL cybernet? stempunk?....

anyhow, I use D20 modern as MY core....
I had Alternity, interesting mechanic, cruddy (imho) ship system and rather off beat way to do planets also....but, I'm an old LBB guy from '77.

 

[GJD]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Yeah, the design system in D20F is rather sucky. Particularly where it's basically a case of swapping out something that's fitted to the standard ship for something else, but there's no restrictions on size or power or anything like that - you just change one thing for another.

The star system design is also highly crappy. Makes me wonder why they bothered putting it in.

From what I understand the ship designs were all created with the ALternity rules and then converted. They're planning on a full ship design sequence based on Warships as a web enhancement (as well as stats for the Sathar - woo, and indeed, hoo).

G.

 

[clementk]

The d20 Future SRD has been released.
Grouped (singled .zip file) SRD download link

I don't have the d20 Future book yet so can't compare it to this SRD. >.<

Casey

 

[GypsyComet]

My only use for the D20Future book at this point would be to grab the D20 versions of the Weren, T'sa, and a couple other races (all of whom are "afterthoughted" in the last ten pages, bleh). No use for the rest of the book, though I have yet to look at the feats.

I saw where they were going with ship design when they put the preview in Dungeon magazine two issues back, and was certain at that point that they weren't going to get my money for the "basic" book...

 

[Colin]

I got it. Had my reasons (2320 to D20F conversion). I like the D20M/D20F chargen, and some of their mechanics, like wealth. The ships looked neat, but I haven't read enough to decide. T20 ship, vehicle, and planet creation is far better. All-in-all, much of D20F struck me as being kind of "GURPS-y" and I'm not sure why.

Colin

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Having just closed it from the first read, I think it is a slick, overall quite good overview of basic Sci Fi concepts in the RPG context. Yes, it is GURPS-like, but doesn't overstate things.

I like the way that the different campaigns are encapsulated.

I like that the Draslites are back

I like the Art.

 

[Malenfant]

Problem is, I think it's just too darn vague on what it covers. It doesn't really give you much help in running your own campaigns (GURPS Space on the other hand has a lot of advice on interstellar government, effects of FTL travel, and so on), and the ones provided in D20F are somewhat lack-lustre and not devastatingly original.

It's not a bad book, but I think it could have been a lot better if say, it had been more the size of D20M.

 

[Flynn]

I personally think that D20F is pretty broad in scope and shallow in depth. There's enough there to run a barebones game of various types, but there's a lot of detail that could have been added. In fact, if you've read any of the authors' postings on various message boards, they submitted almost twice as much as what saw print.

I admire the authors for the quality of their work and their herculean efforts to paint with a big brush. I do, however, wish there'd been a little bit more there, though. I would have loved to have seen the book be twice as thick.

This does leave room for enterprising authors to add significantly to the body of D20F, however, if such is their inclination. The OGL is pretty cool in those regards.

Enjoy,
Flynn

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

How is "Star Law" or "Mecha Crusade" Vague? I don't think they are intended to be original, or to do all the work.

 

[Malenfant]

They're OK if you just want to run a quick d20 scifi campaign - but there's just no depth there. Plus they're rather cliched. The settings seem aimed more at the casual scifi GM than someone who's really into it (the rest of the stuff in the book is generally useful for all sorts though).

The settings also are presented kinda like closed campaigns. They present low level, mid level, and high level flavours, all of which imply to me that there's a definite progression in how the characters see the setting as they advance, which I found somewhat restricting. At low level you're just finding out how things work, and at high level you're getting closer to finding the Truth Behind The Setting or The Bad Guys Lair. It sounds too much to me like the settings are presented as the framework for a specific campaign, rather than as a general setting to game in.

 

[etherflyer]

Originally posted by Qstor2:
Do any of the settings in the book adapt well to Traveller?

I'm not much a gearhead. Would the ship stats adapt well too?

Mike

Not really. Starship combat in d20 Future is essentially personal combat. Ships take up from 1/4 to 16 squares on the movement grid, have movement rates rather than accelerations, and fire relatively short-ranged weapons. So your small SDBs can gang up on the giant dragon -- oops, I mean dreadnought.

The combat feels more like Babylon 5 than Traveller.

 

[etherflyer]

I think the best way to sum up d20 Future is that it does a good job of handling Sci-Fi as portrayed in Hollywood blockbuster films. Action and cool effects are king, actual science is there to provide neat names and plot mcguffins.

Animals are treated as monsters, with no effort at handling biochemistry, ecology, etc.

Star systems are defined by the colour of the star and the number of planets. And stars can be green.

Starships move and fight like people, just using a bigger grid: 500 foot squares instead of 5 foot squares.


And so on...


What I find amusing is that the authors are aware of the difference between space opera and hard science fiction, and so deliberately avoided some space opera elements to give a hard science fiction game. (From the interview on the WotC web site.) If this is there idea of hard science fiction, I cringe at the thought of their space opera...

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Sooner or later the realization must come that Hard Science Fiction isn't as popular as some would like it to be, and that there are people that would much rather go on adventures. I bet 10 credits that they dropped the Idea for a "hard" book, because it wouldn't sell if it wasn't accessible. Hasbro likes to make money. Lot of games go under because they fail to see this.

Not everyone is into hard Science Fiction. I once played in an "All Hard" game once. It broke down into endless discussions about Orbital Mechanics and such, and broke down to the point of where we all wondered why we had the game at all, and didnt just have a beer-soaked discussion on Orbital Mechanics in the first place...

I have also played in many "quick" games, but never in a "quick" Campaign, unless you count the one I got thrown out of. That was quick.

To be frank, I'm glad there are people into Science Fiction at all. Something must counterbalance mysticism as the only outlet for imagination. I'm cool with all of it. Even "silly" things that make kids want to be astronauts is fine.

 

[Malenfant]

I think most people realise that hard sci-fi isn't very popular. They chose to make the sci-fi a bit squishier and more cinematic in D20 Future (it's not like d20 is a particularly realistic system anyway), and that's probably what most people who get the book are looking for anyway.

But that said, books like GURPS Space and Star Hero show that it is possible to make a book that appeals to both ends of the spectrum.

 

[Nurd_boy]

I get the impression the word 'hard' is the main put off for fantasy gamers.
'Hard' has so many negative Connotations (remember space opera? other suns? aftermath?)difficult mechanics....and that seems to be where ends.
'space opera' has that OPERA word and invokes images from tv soaps (all my children, etc) or stage operas (anyone for carmen?) ...dull, over dramatic, slow, fat ladies singing in italian...

just my thought....

 

[etherflyer]

Here's the interview I was talking about:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20modern/article/20040824a

Of course, it's a puff piece by WotC, so you can expect things like:

"Wizards: The Starships chapter is both comprehensive and notably detailed. In your playtests and personal campaigns, did you find that players grasped starship combat relatively easily?

snip

Christopher: The Starships chapter received a great deal of attention. One of the biggest criticisms about the starship combat system in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game has nothing to do with the quality of the mechanics. It's a great system; unfortunately, very few GMs and players are actually using it. To overcome this barrier, we designed the d20 Future starship combat system to work very much like character combat, which means that anyone who knows the d20 Modern combat rules can figure out the starship combat rules quickly and easily. In this game, starships have more in common with monsters fighting on a one-inch square grid than with the Star Wars system. My only regret is that we couldn't include some cut-out starships and a poster map in the book for production reasons. If the new starship rules prove to be popular, however, we could conceivably include such features in a future product."

"Wizards: And how much hard science versus space opera did you elect to include in this new book?


JD: I personally included a lot of hard science, especially in the chapters on "traveler science" and time travel. When I discovered that I'd be working on those parts of the book, I pulled out all the old reference books I had used when I was working on Alternity (particularly the Star*Drive book I co-wrote). But at the same time, I tried not to forget that hard science bores some people to death. So for the scientists in the crowd, I explained just how long it would take to travel to, say, Alpha Centauri, and why a human couldn't really do so at any rate approaching the speed of light. For those who want to throw away most of the science and just have fun, I included rules for faster-than-light travel without the negative effects of time dilation."