Apathy Blogs

Last week I mentioned True20 as a possible alternative to 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. This week I took a closer look at True20, and I’m not certain if that really is the case. Not to say that True20 is a bad system, but it definitely doesn’t feel like D&D. I would say that it is a good system if you want a light rules set that is easily customizable to any setting. I will admit when I first glanced at it, I felt it didn’t have a lot of substance to it. I saw it as a set of rules that formed a solid basis, but needing a little more to make it feel complete. After closer examination however, I find that isn’t the case. It comes with four sample settings in the back of the book which help fill out the game. They are useful not only as settings in themselves, but as guidelines to help you tailor the rules to suit whichever setting you decide to use. Of course there are quite a few settings books also published for the system, so there is plenty of material to work with should you decide to invest in the system. I myself plan on examining Roma Imperious, an interesting alternate history setting which has also been published using the Iridium lite system.

One of the things that stands out about True20 are the Roles. The basic book has only three Roles, which take the place of the many classes of D&D. There are Adepts, which have a weak attack bonus progression, that can be customized to be any character that draws upon supernatural powers. If you want to be a psychic, wizard, alchemist, mad scientist, or shaman, Adept is the role for you. There are Experts, which have a moderate attack bonus progression, and can be anything from thieves, doctors, or priests. And of course there are Warriors, which have the best attack bonus, and are the soldiers, mercenaries, gladiators, or bounty hunters of the world. Each of these roles can be customized by different archetypes, which are usually setting specific, that open access to certain feats or skills. The intent is to have a simple core mechanic that can be styled for many different character types. It is a fairly elegant system, and keeps things rather balanced.

Combat is another thing that is quite a bit different from the game’s d20 roots. Instead of weapons doing a variable amount of dice worth of damage, everything is represented by a damage bonus. Characters don’t have a hit point total, they have a list of injury states. When someone is hit in combat, they roll a saving throw with the difficulty modified by the damage bonus. The amount they fail determines what injury state you receive. So if you just barely miss your save against a fist, you’ll just be bruised. If you fail by a lot against a laser pistol, you will be seriously injured. Since injury states have penalties attached to them, this can lead to a slow wearing down of a characters defenses. Extremely tough characters may be able to simply shrug of many light blows, coming away from a fight completely unscathed. I also noticed the removal of attacks of opportunity, which tends to make it easier to run combat without miniatures. This can be a pro or a con depending on your taste in gaming.

Overall, I like the system and think it holds a useful niche. If you want either a more gritty or a more cinematic game than D&D, True20 can work for you. If you are looking for a more skill based role-playing system, with a light rules set that emphasizes story over mechanics, this game is worth checking out. If you are mostly happy with 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons and simply want a refinement but not the complete overhaul that is 4th edition, I’ll be looking at the new Pathfinder RPG from Paizo next which may be more your style.

Apathy Rating: 3/5

So I wanted to wait a little while to really get a feel for 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons before writing a review of it. I know that many have mixed feelings about the new version, especially so soon after 3.5 came out. I do find it interesting that do to the Open Gaming License 3.x will live on in other companies through the likes of True 20, Pathfinder RPG, and other 3rd party projects. So if you decide that 4th Edition is not for you fear not, there will be plenty of d20 products for the foreseeable future. I also highly recommend anything by Monte Cook which you can read more about at his page.

Enough about other products though, you’d like to hear about Dungeons and Dragons. First off, the new edition definitely takes the game in a new direction. So how much you like the game will depend a lot on whether or not you like the new direction. While the transition from 2nd to 3rd edition felt like a natural progression from DnD’s roots, 4th edition feels very new. It has been streamlined and balanced so that everyone has roughly equal power during combat. It definitely feels as though most of the non-combat has been stripped from the game. Skills are trimmed down a lot, being more similar to 2nd edition proficiencies than 3rd edition skills. You have two to six skills, which have much broader definitions now, and the bonus is determined by your level and the associated attribute. Just about everything else has a direct bearing on combat.

Every class has the same progression of powers as each other. So I do worry how they will manage to keep expanding new classes and keep them feeling different. On the other hand, they do an excellent job of keeping every player involved during combat. There is also a definite teamwork feel to things. As we played we discovered that our actions interacted with each others turns a lot more than they used to. As an example, I once placed a storm cage around a dragon with my mage. The rogue then used a positioning strike to push one of the nearby minions into the cage instead of the sneak attack he planned on using.  You really get the sense of working together. I’m not sure how well it scales down to few players though, it is designed for groups between four and six. I know this isn’t usually a problem for my current group, but I remember the days when I would play with just one or two others.

From a game master’s perspective the game is certainly easier to manage. Monsters are a lot simpler to put together, even NPCs with class levels. Instead of fleshing out a full character, which is definitely a lot faster at higher levels than it used to be, you just pick one or two powers at close to the level of the npc. It is a great improvement over spending labourous hours building up an npc in 3.5, only to have it be killed in a few rounds of combat. Even if you want to spend time preparing fully fledged characters, the creation process is streamlined and a lot easier.

So as much as I’d like to gripe about how messed up things are in the new version, I have to say I’ve enjoyed playing it. It won’t be for everyone, because it definitely is a different game. But if someone else had published it and given it a different name, I’d have to recommend looking into it. It may not be what you are looking for, but it is definitely a fine game.

In an unrelated note, I have recently acquired a large collection of older games. Expect to see reviews of some old classics, plus updates on the latest versions of these, in the near future.

Apathy Rating: 3/5