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I'm amazed
Mar. 22nd, 2009 01:33 pmWow. Someone finally made a D20 System game that not only could I stomach, but I'm actually WANTING to play. It's called Passages, and you can find a review here.
They changed the base D20 system by removing the classes, levels, and races; eliminating the idiotic "fire and forget" magic system (it doesn't have one at all); kept hit points relatively low; and added combat skills and a point buy system along with advantages and disadvantages. This resolves pretty much all my major problems with the D&D/D20 system, turning it into a sort of D20 based GURPS or West End D6 system. Now if only other D20 companies would adopt the same changes.
The setting is what caught my attention, though. It's an historical Victorian setting with a twist: All the popular fiction of the day, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, War of the Worlds, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, etc, are travelogues rather than fictions. There are portals to other worlds, and those worlds are the ones in the stories, as we know them. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, and would have been likely to consider picking up the book for the setting alone, but I was surprised and pleased to find that it also contained a reworked D20 system that answered many of my complaints.
They changed the base D20 system by removing the classes, levels, and races; eliminating the idiotic "fire and forget" magic system (it doesn't have one at all); kept hit points relatively low; and added combat skills and a point buy system along with advantages and disadvantages. This resolves pretty much all my major problems with the D&D/D20 system, turning it into a sort of D20 based GURPS or West End D6 system. Now if only other D20 companies would adopt the same changes.
The setting is what caught my attention, though. It's an historical Victorian setting with a twist: All the popular fiction of the day, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, War of the Worlds, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, etc, are travelogues rather than fictions. There are portals to other worlds, and those worlds are the ones in the stories, as we know them. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, and would have been likely to consider picking up the book for the setting alone, but I was surprised and pleased to find that it also contained a reworked D20 system that answered many of my complaints.
