Starting a Game!

[Jonathan Moyer]

I'm pretty excited - I got a crew of enthusiastic gamers together from my FLGS and we're going to play a game! It's mostly a standard D&D sort of thing - there are elves, dwarves, halflings, etc. and, at least at the start, there will be dungeon crawl sort of adventures.

The PCs are a human warrior with lots of "go first" Feats, a dwarven expert with tons of Craft/mechanical skills, an elven adept that's basically a bladesinger (wheee!!!), and a gnome adept with an animist/druid schtick. I would have preferred more humans, but whatever I guess.

I don't really know what it is about True20 feats and powers, but the players thought they were cooler than d20 spells. Even though a d20 wizard can augment himself and others, the player of the elven adept thought his Combat Sense arcana was cool. The player of the gnome liked Beast Link, too.

The world is basically the Wilderlands of High Fantasy (the home city is the City State of the Invincible Overlord), but I'm borrowing liberally from other game worlds, particularly Blue Rose. The Aldean Empire is a sybaritic and degenerate domain, there's going to be a Jarzon clone run by an intolerant, vicious theocracy, and I'm going to have the Matriarchy of Lar-tya around. I'm not going to worry *too* much about geography or history (I'll make most of it up on the fly, possibly with the players' help). I think it'll be lots of fun.

The group is basically in the employ of the Overlord in a manner similar to the Sovereign's Finest from BR. Their first adventure will be the Lost Vault of Tsathzar Rho, a Dungeon Crawl Classic that I convert to True20 a while ago. I'm going to make Tsathzar Rho be a Sorcerer King who is now in the service of the Cult of the Yellow Sign and their Unspeakable master. It'll be a hoot.

I'll give everyone an after-action report next week!

[timemrick]

I don't really know what it is about True20 feats and powers, but the players thought they were cooler than d20 spells. Even though a d20 wizard can augment himself and others, the player of the elven adept thought his Combat Sense arcana was cool. The player of the gnome liked Beast Link, too.

From my limited experience with the system (combing over the rules repeatedly, a few talks with other players, and a single Blue Rose one-shot), I think the appeal of the True20 magic system is as follows (in no particular order):

* No arbitrary spell level charts: Most powers are not directly tied to level, except relatively few powers that have prerequisites, and as a limit on how many you can take.
* No "slots per day" bookkeeping: You can use a non-fatiguing power as often as you want, and a fatiguing power as often as you can make the save (or can spend Conviction to offset the penalties).
* Flexible powers: Many powers allow several separate effects, so take the place of several d20 spells. Even those with pretty much just a single effect (like Cure) often replace multiple d20 spells--that one power simply scales up as you advance in level, obviating the need for minutely graded spells (cure A/B/C/etc. wounds).
* You only have to choose the powers you want: One gripe I and others have with d20 is the "all or nothing" side of class features--you can't swap an ability that doesn't fit your character concept for a more appropriate one. In True20, all those special abilities are translated into feats, and you can choose just the ones that truly fit your character. And this flexibility applies to more than just powers/arcana.
* Elegance: The True20 system makes more logical sense than the d20 magic system, and has simpler rules. Also, it's much easier to explain how powers work in character without the d20 gamespeak of levels, spell slots, etc.

[Jonathan Moyer]

I'm not so sure it's a rules thing for my group, it was more of a flavor thing - the arcana felt like they were somehow a part of the character in a way that was subtley but fundamentally different from d20 spells. It felt more organic, if that makes sense. That feeling is really difficult for me to define, unfortunately.

[DnDChick]

I am always happy as a dancing GIR when someone gets to run a True20 campaign.

I'll start my own soon, after I tie up all the loose ends and plot holes in my 4-year-old Lord of the Rings game.