06-20-2015, 05:18 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-20-2015, 05:27 AM by Lunamancer.)
It's been a couple of years since I played anything at all, really, but recently got hooked back in.
So it got me to thinking of a dilemma I've had, an insignificant one until 15 years ago when D&D 3E was released.
I've got tons of gaming books. Mostly D&D of various editions. Before 3E, I used to mix and match different versions. Everything was compatible like that. It required no conversion. You could easily have all non-human characters take on the demi-human classes as per OD&D, but allow them to multi-class according to the AD&D rules if you really wanted to.
My biggest gripe about 3E is it was horribly not backwards compatible. Yes, you can use the open license to make old-school clones, which has been done. But it's not as if I could pull a Pathfinder module off the shelf and run it in OSRIC without looking at stat blocks that are essentially total gibberish.
This is terrible, because if I want to be part of the larger "D&D" community, I have to learn a needlessly complicated system that I don't really like while all those treasures I've accumulated gather dust on my shelf. OR I could go to RPGnet, where the prevailing belief is that no one game can be all things to all people. It's best that each RPG should specialize in its narrow niche. And you feel a certain itch needs scratching, you go and pick up the RPG that does that one thing the best. Maybe a lot of people in the hobby outside of RPGnet believe that, too.
I say nonsense. One of the features about the vast majority of RPGs that is most endearing to the vast majority of players is the idea of growing a character over a long period of play. A narrow niche, itch-scratching, or flavor-of-the-month game just isn't going to cut it.
What I need is a game that is versatile enough to handle all different sorts of play so I don't have to keep jumping from system to system. And it should allow me to use all those game books I've collected over the years. Without overly-complex conversions. And without losing the feel of the material.
A tall order, you say?
Well, at least I can start by making something that works for the games I love the most. Lejendary Adventure and Dungeons & Dragons. Lejends & Dragons, if you will.
A percentile system is most natural, because at the end of the day, no matter how exotic an RPG's core mechanics are, a particular character at a particular time in a particular place attempting a particular task could yield a number of different possible results. Each of those results has some probability of occurring, and the probability can, in plain English, be expressed as a percentage.
So this amalgam is going to look more like LA than D&D in terms of mechanics, though I hope to capture the feel of the material (magic, monsters, etc) of D&D and allow you to take either approach to playing it--class-based or skill-based, beginning low-powered and rising in level or have a more moderate starting point and stay there longer. Or any mixture.
Just some things I'm discovering as I embark on a very exacting conversion process that I thought people might find interesting. (I always think an honest, value-free comparison of two RPGs is interesting).
What I wonder is, am I really alone? Am I the only one who both wants to get use out of all the different RPG books I have on my shelf AND play one consistent character over a long period of time rather than hop from system to system?
*Many LA powers allow the option to add additional AEPs. These are obviously going to be more powerful than their grade otherwise suggests. But compare the most powerful Heart's Desire, which may eat up all your AEPs and has a chance for failure, to a 9th level Wish spell in D&D, which has no chance to fail. Magic in LA is clearly much weaker than in D&D, so the level 3 = grade 10 is a pretty fair assessment overall.
** Notice how common peasants in LA, then, tend to be sturdier than 0-level NPCs in D&D. This shows how exaggerated the power scale in D&D is. One house rule I began using about 3 or 4 years ago in my D&D games is to begin all characters with a number of hit points equal to their full CON score. Subsequent hit points are determined normally each time the character levels, so in the long run it doesn't change the game at all. It just increases survivability at low levels.
So it got me to thinking of a dilemma I've had, an insignificant one until 15 years ago when D&D 3E was released.
I've got tons of gaming books. Mostly D&D of various editions. Before 3E, I used to mix and match different versions. Everything was compatible like that. It required no conversion. You could easily have all non-human characters take on the demi-human classes as per OD&D, but allow them to multi-class according to the AD&D rules if you really wanted to.
My biggest gripe about 3E is it was horribly not backwards compatible. Yes, you can use the open license to make old-school clones, which has been done. But it's not as if I could pull a Pathfinder module off the shelf and run it in OSRIC without looking at stat blocks that are essentially total gibberish.
This is terrible, because if I want to be part of the larger "D&D" community, I have to learn a needlessly complicated system that I don't really like while all those treasures I've accumulated gather dust on my shelf. OR I could go to RPGnet, where the prevailing belief is that no one game can be all things to all people. It's best that each RPG should specialize in its narrow niche. And you feel a certain itch needs scratching, you go and pick up the RPG that does that one thing the best. Maybe a lot of people in the hobby outside of RPGnet believe that, too.
I say nonsense. One of the features about the vast majority of RPGs that is most endearing to the vast majority of players is the idea of growing a character over a long period of play. A narrow niche, itch-scratching, or flavor-of-the-month game just isn't going to cut it.
What I need is a game that is versatile enough to handle all different sorts of play so I don't have to keep jumping from system to system. And it should allow me to use all those game books I've collected over the years. Without overly-complex conversions. And without losing the feel of the material.
A tall order, you say?
Well, at least I can start by making something that works for the games I love the most. Lejendary Adventure and Dungeons & Dragons. Lejends & Dragons, if you will.
A percentile system is most natural, because at the end of the day, no matter how exotic an RPG's core mechanics are, a particular character at a particular time in a particular place attempting a particular task could yield a number of different possible results. Each of those results has some probability of occurring, and the probability can, in plain English, be expressed as a percentage.
So this amalgam is going to look more like LA than D&D in terms of mechanics, though I hope to capture the feel of the material (magic, monsters, etc) of D&D and allow you to take either approach to playing it--class-based or skill-based, beginning low-powered and rising in level or have a more moderate starting point and stay there longer. Or any mixture.
Just some things I'm discovering as I embark on a very exacting conversion process that I thought people might find interesting. (I always think an honest, value-free comparison of two RPGs is interesting).
- Level 3 spells in D&D are roughly on par with Grade X activations in LA.*
- A starting Avatar is about equal to a level 5 D&D character. Thus having access to Grade X activations (equivalent to 3rd level D&D spells) is right on.
- A +4 sword--a powerful magic weapon by D&D standards--is equivalent to a 10 precision extraordinary sword in LA that adds 3-5 preternatural harm.
- Situation modifiers are weighted nearly twice as heavily in LA compared to D&D.
- One hit point in D&D is roughly equal to 2 points of Health in LA.**
- Similarly, each point better of AC in D&D is roughly equal to 2 points of AP in LA.
- Although not a part of this conversion in particular, skills possessed by a 3E character of 7th-10th level are about equivalent to a starting LA Avatar.
What I wonder is, am I really alone? Am I the only one who both wants to get use out of all the different RPG books I have on my shelf AND play one consistent character over a long period of time rather than hop from system to system?
*Many LA powers allow the option to add additional AEPs. These are obviously going to be more powerful than their grade otherwise suggests. But compare the most powerful Heart's Desire, which may eat up all your AEPs and has a chance for failure, to a 9th level Wish spell in D&D, which has no chance to fail. Magic in LA is clearly much weaker than in D&D, so the level 3 = grade 10 is a pretty fair assessment overall.
** Notice how common peasants in LA, then, tend to be sturdier than 0-level NPCs in D&D. This shows how exaggerated the power scale in D&D is. One house rule I began using about 3 or 4 years ago in my D&D games is to begin all characters with a number of hit points equal to their full CON score. Subsequent hit points are determined normally each time the character levels, so in the long run it doesn't change the game at all. It just increases survivability at low levels.