Hi, I finished most of my development on a free D&D style game called TOCC and I'm trying to get the word out to see if anyone is interested.  You can find the game's website here if you're interested.  When I started making TOCC I decided to try to improve on D&D by tossing out things I didn't like, such as alignment and equipment dependency.  While adding in things that I thought would enhance the playing experience such as parrying, dodging out of the way of attacks and greater flexibility.

Now, TOCC is very crunchy and doesn't have a whole lot of fluff in the rules at all so it isn't for everyone and I understand that.  In TOCC you play a superhuman in a world filled with normal people and monsters.  I've done my best to avoid creating a default setting, but it looks like that might have been a mistake so I am trying to add some setting advice to the website.  I appreciate all feedback I can get about TOCC, even negative feedback.  I recently setup a board on the TOCC site as well so if you have any questions you're more than welcome to ask there as well as here.

Have you posted anything on enworld and/or giant in the playground?

Don't back down over not providing a default setting. Default settings are pretty generally shitty, in my opinion.

I've never been to ENWorld and I always thought that giants was about D&D pretty much exclusively given the content of the comic so I never posted there about it.  I have posted on the XKCD forum, The Forge and on RPG.net so far, but I will give those sites as try.

As for the default setting thing, I've never been a big fan of default settings, but at least it gives potential players an idea of what to expect from the game.  When I write monsters a bit of that bias already slips in so I don't see the harm in including a few pages about potential settings for TOCC adventures, including major figures.  Not as part of the rule book obviously, but as a a guide on the website.

So what would you say it improves about d20?

I would say the biggest improvement comes from allowing characters to respond to events outside of their turn.  When rocks fall you can jump out of the way.  This isn't a matter of DM fiat, it's just part of how the game works.  You don't need to think about anything extra beyond the simple, "How far do I need to move to avoid them".  This exact same mechanic can be used to avoid attacks, or leap in the way of an attack that would kill one of your allies.

TOCC also includes a karma system which mitigates the effect of bad rolls by allowing the player and GM to reroll a limited number of dice.  The karma system also gives the GM the ability to hand out rewards besides experience.

TOCC also manages to stay true to a high fantasy setting filled with monsters and indestructible heroes without bogging them down in equipment details.  Characters won't be dealing with mountains of gold just to buy a +4 con boosting item since magical items of that sort don't really exist.  There is no strong incentive for characters to even replace their original low quality weapons with superior ones unless their originals break or for flavor reasons.  Now there are magical weapons, but they grow on their own and don't require characters to waste the GDP of a small city for upgrades.

Finally, the biggest improvement in my opinion is that it tightens things up.  The rules are a lot more internally consistent than a game like Dungeons and Dragons that requires special exceptions and clauses for even mundane occurrences like a foot race between two characters.

What was the reason for making a system 'from scratch', rather than adapting d20?

I found that existing d20 systems failed to capture the basic needs of a system like TOCC.  In a way you can think of TOCC as being a physics engine that was built up in the form of a d20 RPG.  Yes it does what current d20 games like dungeons and dragons and d20 modern can do (that one requires a good amount of rules knowledge and modern fire arm rules), but it can do so very well.

I started to make TOCC when I found out that normal d20 combat couldn't keep up with really cinematic battles.  Fights simply became too unbalanced when abilities like parrying and dodging were added.  Knockback and tumbling also didn't mesh with the older system's design.  When I first made TOCC I just wanted a system where you could have a fight with a dragon dodge its breathe and then be smashed into a wall by its tail after flying back five feet, and have an ally jump in the way in order to save you from the dragon's finishing flow.  I got all that and more out of TOCC.