Via Doyce, posts on 20×20 about the GoO/ADRPG deal, and the Unspeakable Horror That Is a D20 Amber Monstrosity.
Jeez, guys, give it a rest. The level of D20 animus out there is way out of proportion.
So D20 is not the be-all and end-all of RPGs. I accept that, and, in fact, agree with it. But when I read the comments of a bunch of folks basically saying “D20 sux! ADRPG roolz! And never the twain shall meet!” the contrarian in me gets a bit irked.
As GURPS has demonstrated, you can make a rules-heavy dense-mechanics system work with just about anything. And D20 is a lot less crunchy than GURPS. You may lose in D20 the carefree flexibility that seems to work so well with ADRPG — but that’s a flavor question, not a realm-of-possibility question (and is not necessarily less canonical to the books than ADRPG).
D20 is not the Antichrist. It’s not the End Times. It’s not a plot by the Elder Gods. It’s a game system. A commercially successful and fairly flexible and playable game system. Getting all religious about D20 strikes me akin to debates about Windows vs Mac vs Linux. Find what you enjoy, and be happy, but don’t turn it into the central ideology of your life, or part of some Great Manichaean Struggle. GoO issuing a D20 Amber version (particularly in parallel to a new edition of ADRPG) is a commercial judgment, just like the decision to publish a particular game for Windows (or the Mac); the Amber Police aren’t going to pry your worn copies of the original rules out of your fingers to throw on a bonfire somewhere, and if it juices up interest in the setting or the game itself, that’s only a good thing, right?
I don’t mind reasoned arguments as to the suitability or flavor of different systems and how they would support a given setting or set of tales (Doyce’s suggestion of using Trollbabe is an interesting one). But knee-jerk universal judgments about these sorts of things strike me as — well, silly.
Hell, don’t forget about GURPS-Lite, used in Hellboy and other games (I believe). That’s supposed to be decent.
I, for one, chuckle over the doom-and-gloomers about D20.
I’ve been following the discussions in various forums too, and I think most people’s arguments are less against the d20 system itself than its suitability for the Amber RPG. While systems like the one used in Deadlands may add more “flavor”, d20 is a perfectly valid system that works with any game if you want to be able to reduce everything to a die roll. Most people that currently play Amber do so because anything is possible… but you, the player, have to be clever enough to figure out how to do it.
I’m actually in favor of them putting out a d20 version, not because our game will use it (it won’t) but because it will probably attract a new breed of players that will encourage the company to put out much-desired supplements.
Agreed. I don’t think D20 would be best-suited to the Amber playing that I’ve done, but I think you could do D20 Amber. I just see way too much “D20 is Evil” sentiment out there, both in the Amber context and elsewhere — sentiment that are largely aesthetic (I prefer this type of play to that type of play), or that lambastes WotC for being (gasp!) more successful with a something that they aesthetically don’t care for (How dare other people buy something that I don’t like! How dare WotC sell it to them!).
Dave:
Put a copy of D20 on a turntable and play it backwards. Can’t you hear it saying “Paul is dead! Paul is dead!”?
Whoops–wrong conspiracy theory!