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[bryant]

WISH 74 is all about dreams and hopes:

Name three or more supplements (or core books, for that matter) for existing game systems that you’d like to see. Why? What inspires your interest in these supplement? What existing supplements or materials are you using instead?

I’m not an Amber player anymore, but I’d still kind of like to see ??Rebma??… no? OK, I‘ll come up with three others.

First off is a two in one, since the reasons I want them are similar. I would like to see the promised Heresy RPG. The background was cool and the card art was superb and I like games that use the Christian mythos quite a bit. Heretical cyberpunk hit all my buttons. I want Anoch’s Mystick RPG for similar reasons; the cards hinted at a dense intricate background which played to my love for conspiracy.

Mind you, in both cases I expect I would have been disappointed. It’s unfair to expect game companies to live up to my inchoate dreams, and neither of the sourcebooks would have been 500 pages long.

In lieu of these sourcebooks, I hang around people who make up cool conspiratorial stuff and that scratches my itch. I also read Eco novels. It works out OK for me.

Second: Trinity. Lots more Trinity. Preferably written by me, but really, any Trinity would do. In particular, I really sorely wish I’d gotten to work on the full-size aliens supplement. I wanted to write the Coalition chapters so badly. (Pause for a moment of self-indulgence.)

Since the supplement probably isn’t happening any time soon, I make up my own Coalition material, which bears a certain resemblance to what might have been published.

Finally, I’d like to see a D20 Modern Fantasy supplement, adapting the D20 Modern rules to fantasy usage, preferably from WotC. I’m pretty sure that D20 Modern characters are a bit weaker than characters of equivalent level in D&D, but I like the D20 Modern approach to classes somewhat more than I like the D&D approach. So a supplement which presented a beefed up set of classes would be vastly appreciated. Alternatively, of course, I could just start everyone at third level. (Tip of the hat to Gamma World D20 Modern.)

Comments

[marphod.livejournal.com]

RE: your third choice: What do you find lacking in D20 Modern Urbana Arcana? It is worth noting that, by the rules in d20 modern, a High School/Collegiate graduate would be about level 3 or 4. So starting at that point doesn't seem unreasonable (although a bit counter to the 'standard' d20 starting point).

[bryant]

I'd probably move spellcasting abilities over into the Feats, with advanced classes that had Divine/Arcane Spellcasting as an entrance requirement. That way you can do spellcasting characters from level 1.

Alternatively, yeah, starting at a higher level so you can cast spells from day one of the campaign.

[marphod.livejournal.com]

Well, if you want more powerful characters, you could always take a lead from XCrawl, and do a fairly simple translation of base DnD3.x into modern times. The XCrawl universe, itself, is quite cute, but even without the setting, the rules allow for modern weapons, and modify the system for a modern feel. Although, this brings back the higher powerlevel of the DnD base classes, and loses a lot of what makes D20 Modern "A Better Game".

There are a handful of problems with making spellcasting a feat based system. First, spells are powerful. A character than can case a 1st level spells, or even just a handful of 0th level spells a day, vastly changes the power balance. Esp. since the characters are of lower power levels overall. In particular, the spells that cannot be duplicated by technology (Light isn't all that impressive, given flashlights, and Message is repalced by cell phones and walkie-talkies. But Daze, Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Cure Minor Wounds, and REsistance all affect power balances).

Second, as spells are quite powerful, I don't see an easy way to adept them to a feat system. Adapting the D20 feats that grant a limited number of 0th level spells/pi powers per day (akin the the Gnome racial ability, witha little more selection -- I forget which ruleset has these feats) is probably fine, but those are fixed abilities that don't grow with the character level. Any spell ability that grows with character level, even slowly, quickly will putstrip the power of other feats. Although, this might work as a pre-req to an Advanced/Prestige cspellcasting class.

(A pure feat system for spellcasting wouldn't work, IMO. A pure spellcasting type would lose a huge amoutn of flexiblity and individuality, as they would all have the same set of feats. Further, taking a item creation feat would slow down advancement in spellcasting, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.)

[bryant]

Oh, sorry, I see the confusion. I'm going the other way. I like D20 Modern; I was thinking about using something more like D20 Modern as a fantasy system. I don't want to use D&D 3e as a modern system.

[alex-victory.livejournal.com]

I'll second that vote for Heresy. I still have a ton of the cards and just in the flavor text alone is an incredible background.

[ratmmjess.livejournal.com]

Let's see now...btw, I love this question....

GURPS Byzantium, because the most overlooked Great Empire in history deserves the sort of treatment that the best GURPS books bring. Preferably with Ken Hite throwing his bits of his usual brilliance.

d20 Bronze Age, because the world needs a definitive Bronze Age rpg, and a d20 system would allow for a properly interesting range of skills.

And a White Wolf/Storyteller Historical Pirates game, which would range in time and space from the Caribbean sea dogs we all know and love to the Barbary Pirates to the 19th century fleet of the Chinese pirate queen (true historical personage, though I'm forgetting her name) to modern (and quite unromantic, alas) pirates of SE Asia. 'cause piracy, using roughly the same rule set as Adventure!, would be loads of fun.