Thoughts on d20/DnD

[Callan S.]

I'd almost actually suggest that TROS can give more hack and slash than D&D can.

In any hitpoint system, its often quite hard to kill or crumple someone in one hit. In tros you could take off a head in the first swipe.

Thats pretty powerful. And that seems to be what some players adore.

However, they also want it with a strong sense of security.

Cue any GM who starts treating luck points almost like WHFRP fate points, but letting them regen normally, and that's not a problem.

It may sound a little heretical, but TROS can be flexed in ways probably some wouldn't like, but the average D&D punter would. The system should get another gold star for this, I think.

Because in the end, sometimes you want a "greasy joes burger" and sometimes you want a fine dining experience. Both are quite valid...though the fine dining might add less to your waist line (and in RPG terms, add more to your suspension of disbelief).

BTW, that whole "SA's are straight jackets" thing is so...oblivious to how they work. Its not like you have to play up to your SA's. You can ignore them if you like, with no change of circumstance. But if you do play them, you get rewarded.

Mebe this difference isn't noticed as the RPG industry is steeped in the old writing style of "This is what you can't do" rather than more possitive stuff. A hang over from war gaming, probably.

[Jim DelRosso]

[facetious]

DRIVE: To kill things and take their stuff.
FAITH: Things should be killed, and their stuff, taken.
PASSION: Killing things.
PASSION: Taking their stuff.
DESTINY: To kill all things and take all their stuff.

[/facetious]

;-)

[Vanguard]

I completely agree with Noon, that TROS can be tweaked to provide a more...visceral...game.  And there' nowt wrong with that.  As you said, sometimes you just want that greasy burger.

But what I meant by hack'n'slash (and it's all down to definitions) is that D&D culture of formulaic combat.  There's fewer decisions involved.  It is just a case of rolling dice until the surrounding horde of goblins have lost all hit points, and hoping you've got enuff urself to soak up all their damage.  You're just not required to think as much.

In TROS, it is almost impossible to have your high-power PC being repeatedly struck by that horde of goblins whilst he himself methodically goes about killing them one by one - his vast reservoir of HP far from depletion.  In TROS, all it needs is for one foe to acquire that dreaded five-success margin on ya (past armour and TO granted)

Ths means you can have that massacre feel, should your PC be tough enuff and skilled enuff, but he can't guarantee success as easily.  It's not possible to just say, ' well, I've got 120 HP, and they're doing a maximum of 6 dmg per blow - that's a minimum of 20 blows before I die.  In TROS, all it takes is that one lucky strike.


(must control my ranting)


Take care

[Callan S.]

[facetious]

DRIVE: To kill things and take their stuff.
FAITH: Things should be killed, and their stuff, taken.
PASSION: Killing things.
PASSION: Taking their stuff.
DESTINY: To kill all things and take all their stuff.

[/facetious]

;-)

SWEEET!

Vanguard: Seriously though, I can't wait to set up a player against 5 grunts or so. The cool thing is, with the rounds being so short and most likely the grunts being spread out to search for them, I could just imagine the PC going from one to another to another, leaving all colors of devistation behind him (personally when I run grunts they'll fall to the ground when they get whitled down to a 2 CP or whatever, screaming for mercy).

Its the sort of thing you can rarely do in other systems, without somewhat cheating/doing things unusually.

[contracycle]

I'd almost actually suggest that TROS can give more hack and slash than D&D can.

In any hitpoint system, its often quite hard to kill or crumple someone in one hit. In tros you could take off a head in the first swipe.

Thats pretty powerful. And that seems to be what some players adore.

Ahuh - but, THEY can do it to you, too.

I ran an awful lot of "AD&D" with a homebrew system featuring hit locations in a manner rather similar to TROS.  We didn't really have a mode of play to explore apart from the default, kill things and take their stuff.  I ran most of the Slavers series with this system, and let me tell you it was different, WAY different to the classic D&D dungeon crawl.

First of all, missile weapons changed a huge amount.  A band of hobgoblin archers, IIRC, succesfully pinned the party down on the outer walls and caused them IMMENSE trouble.  This would never have happened in classic D&D because of the ability to simply walk through the hail of fire as a tactical option.  Seeing as I was using a conversion system from AD&D stats to my homebrew, and otherwise working straight from the module, the major NPC's didn;t come out with quite the right balance.  While they had a few powerful NPC's almost constituting a character party, to serve as stage Bosses, the translation into a hitloc system made them MUCH more dangerous to the PC's, proportionately, then they had been under the HP system.  Especially given the fact that the "wound atrrition" model was sorta still tacitly in force, by the time the PC's were in a position to confront the bosses, they were the Walking Wounded, anxc had to work really really hard.

The ultimate upshot of this is that the character drifted away from dungeoncrawling instantly.  They wanted range, they wanted missile cover, they wanted suppression fire and big shields, shock charges, escape routes.  Every tactial detail was enhabced by the fact that a single luck shot could take you out and therefore, controlling the hows, wheres and whys of a battle was crusial.  You cannot, cannot do that if you are going down a hole in the ground to a prepared enemy.  Where previously, if confronted by fortifications, the characters would just batter their way in or follow the plot hook entrance, they were now quite happy to sit outside and starve out the occupants, simply becuase it was substantially safer.

You CAN do h&S with such systems, but only IMO if you are ready for a high character turnover or have a very generous GM.  A specific hit location system changes the stakes radically, and that means that players choose different solutions to their problems.  Ambushes and assasinations Good, hack and slash Bad.  That, anyway, is my experience.

Editted to add: the overall effect was that players exploited and interacted with the environment more.  In attritive stylees, the character alone carries almost all relevant combat variables; in a non-attritional system,  deployment determines a lot of those variables.