Quote from: GeekyBugle on November 29, 2023, 01:16:08 PM
Because, as others have pointed out, by retaining compatibility to other OSR (Understanding OSR as the retroclones and the games that aren't but use the same underlaying mechanics) games the pool of potential buyers is bigger, just look at Kevin Crawford, lot's of people (my self included) own his stuff while not playing his games, because I can steal from it for my own homebrew.

Take my WIP Pulp OSR Game, the bestiary is now 250 entries deep and counting, lots of those aren't on any WotC product that I know off. So, lets say your poison of choice is B/X - OSE, and you own Gangbusters B/X edition, you can, with zero to verylittle work, use any of the entries in my bestiary, so you might buy my game just for that reason.

Then there's the because I like the mechanics and because fuck WotC reasons too.

These are very good points worth considering.

Quote from: PulpHerb on November 29, 2023, 07:18:53 PM
What do you mean by D20? The specific OGL SRD? Well, despite that 3.x one now being CC-BY-SA a lot of the OSR has dumped it. In response to earlier this year BFRGP halted nearly all supplement releases to go back and remove all SRD language resulting in BFRPG 4th coming out. Pazio just released new PF for the same reason. The recently KS ACK: Imperial Imprint removed all OGL material (and AM argues it is better for it, at least around spells). So, it's pretty clear for that definition of D20, it's going, going, and soon gone.

If you mean the through line of using a D20 for combat along with six stats and so on, why is it used?

Because it is the lingua franca of the hobby. It always has been.  Even in the 80s there were multiple translations of other things to and from it but rarely between other things directly. The oldest SRD, IMHO, is The Challenges Game System by Tom Moldvay after he left TSR. It was published in the late 80s to use as a reference to write D&D material without TSR lawyers calling you.

Nothing has replaced the system for that. It's going to be hard to get people who want to engage a play style popular among D&D players prior to Moldvay's pseudo-SRD to move to GURPS or Savage Worlds or even BRP which at least dates to that era.

So as I see it - OSR = d20. Pick whatever edition, stripe etc. Not just the WotC pap, but let's not lose sight of the fact they are, and always will be the 80-ton shit-flinging pink-haired gorilla looming over our village. The OSR, and basically every other indie-publisher (which is everyone) - is on the receding line from that. When the 80-ton gorilla goes off to cave and seals itself inside, as it's about to do... I'm wondering what is the attraction to d20 as a system other than familiarity?

While I confess I do possess the strain of hubris that believes I can make a better d20 mousetrap. I'd not be lying when everytime I get a wild hair up my ass to do it (not to mention the *time*) to start putting it together beyond the basic structures I've made, I always feel this energy could/should take it into better abstractions that make it qualitatively less d20. There is *definitely* a sweet spot where d20 sings, no question.

I suspect the following: I like running big big sweeping sandbox campaigns, where PC's start wherever we decide (normal people, exceptional people, whatever) but I want them to have unlimited scaling potential to grow within the constraints of the setting, *not* the rules. d20 *really* starts to strain post 10th level. Which is FINE. There is scant support for GM's to learn how to run games post-10th, much less on a chassis that was never intended to go beyond 10th. But I maintain it *could* if it were re-designed correctly.

It's a me problem that 1) because *I* want to let campaigns go to Domain level, hell even extra-planar Domain level IF the setting warrants it. 2) New players don't really conceive of this level of play well, and GM's that have the capacity to maintain high-level play are rare. This gets reinforced by the fact that it takes years to learn to do this stuff on your own and I say "Why do it while working against your own mechanics?". 3) Maybe people just don't really care? This is one I'm less sure about. I waffle on it on any given day.

With the Pink-Haired Gorilla about to take a nap - I'd ideally like for us to relaim this space. By "us" I mean the casually sane people that actually like to game with a little more depth. It could be I suffer from better-mouse-trap syndrome. I firmly believe that the OSR is a "safe space" because of familiarity over actual utility. Yes I realize one can support the other. But this is effectively me being the Betamax guy.

Guys... Betamax IS technically better than VHS.

Quote from: tenbones on November 30, 2023, 03:36:24 AM
When the 80-ton gorilla goes off to cave and seals itself inside, as it's about to do... I'm wondering what is the attraction to d20 as a system other than familiarity?

That's a pretty big advantage, and it will remain for quite some time. If WotC leaves the TTRPG industry entirely, and leaves it open to some other manufacturer, then yeah, we would see over a couple decades something new building up. But for the foreseeable future, something D&D adjacent will have the lowest barrier to adoption.

Quote from: tenbones on November 30, 2023, 03:36:24 AM

Quote from: PulpHerb on November 29, 2023, 07:18:53 PM
What do you mean by D20? The specific OGL SRD? Well, despite that 3.x one now being CC-BY-SA a lot of the OSR has dumped it. In response to earlier this year BFRGP halted nearly all supplement releases to go back and remove all SRD language resulting in BFRPG 4th coming out. Pazio just released new PF for the same reason. The recently KS ACK: Imperial Imprint removed all OGL material (and AM argues it is better for it, at least around spells). So, it's pretty clear for that definition of D20, it's going, going, and soon gone.

If you mean the through line of using a D20 for combat along with six stats and so on, why is it used?

Because it is the lingua franca of the hobby. It always has been.  Even in the 80s there were multiple translations of other things to and from it but rarely between other things directly. The oldest SRD, IMHO, is The Challenges Game System by Tom Moldvay after he left TSR. It was published in the late 80s to use as a reference to write D&D material without TSR lawyers calling you.

Nothing has replaced the system for that. It's going to be hard to get people who want to engage a play style popular among D&D players prior to Moldvay's pseudo-SRD to move to GURPS or Savage Worlds or even BRP which at least dates to that era.

So as I see it - OSR = d20. Pick whatever edition, stripe etc. Not just the WotC pap, but let's not lose sight of the fact they are, and always will be the 80-ton shit-flinging pink-haired gorilla looming over our village. The OSR, and basically every other indie-publisher (which is everyone) - is on the receding line from that. When the 80-ton gorilla goes off to cave and seals itself inside, as it's about to do... I'm wondering what is the attraction to d20 as a system other than familiarity?

While I confess I do possess the strain of hubris that believes I can make a better d20 mousetrap. I'd not be lying when everytime I get a wild hair up my ass to do it (not to mention the *time*) to start putting it together beyond the basic structures I've made, I always feel this energy could/should take it into better abstractions that make it qualitatively less d20. There is *definitely* a sweet spot where d20 sings, no question.

I suspect the following: I like running big big sweeping sandbox campaigns, where PC's start wherever we decide (normal people, exceptional people, whatever) but I want them to have unlimited scaling potential to grow within the constraints of the setting, *not* the rules. d20 *really* starts to strain post 10th level. Which is FINE. There is scant support for GM's to learn how to run games post-10th, much less on a chassis that was never intended to go beyond 10th. But I maintain it *could* if it were re-designed correctly.

It's a me problem that 1) because *I* want to let campaigns go to Domain level, hell even extra-planar Domain level IF the setting warrants it. 2) New players don't really conceive of this level of play well, and GM's that have the capacity to maintain high-level play are rare. This gets reinforced by the fact that it takes years to learn to do this stuff on your own and I say "Why do it while working against your own mechanics?". 3) Maybe people just don't really care? This is one I'm less sure about. I waffle on it on any given day.

With the Pink-Haired Gorilla about to take a nap - I'd ideally like for us to relaim this space. By "us" I mean the casually sane people that actually like to game with a little more depth. It could be I suffer from better-mouse-trap syndrome. I firmly believe that the OSR is a "safe space" because of familiarity over actual utility. Yes I realize one can support the other. But this is effectively me being the Betamax guy.

Guys... Betamax IS technically better than VHS.

The biggest advantage to the d20 is that it's in 5% increments.  Mathematically, each unit is significant enough yet small enough for some good granularity.  There's a bunch of different ways you could use a d20 because of this, most aren't exploited by any game mechanic I know of.  No other die I know of is this perfect.

That doesn't mean we have to shackle ourselves to WOTC at all.  They don't hold a patent on the die nor do they hold control over those that use it for play or game design.

Even though I disagree with you and think we should keep our d20s, I have a great appreciation for you bringing this topic in.  It gives us all a real chance to look at a nexus of ideas, game design, and affiliation.  Thank you.

Greetings!

I'm Old School. I like D20. The simple system and mechanic for just about everything. It is the system I have been accustomed to using now for decades.

I have played and GM'd other game systems. Pendragon, Rolemaster, WFRP, Talislanta.

Still, most of the players in my circles, love D20.

I am just not enthused about learning and embracing new systems. Old School D&D is good enough.

At this point, I have developed my world, systems, and everything to a point of running like a very smooth and reliable machine. My game world and the sub-systems embraced within essentially run themselves.

As far as WOTC goes, what they do or don't do--is now entirely irrelevant to me. I used to be a fan, and a regular customer--being something of a "whale"--spending thousands of dollars on WOTC each and every year. Now? Fuck 'em. I buy weird, third-party books and supplements now, and buy my game miniatures from Reaper Miniatures, or from Etsy. Furthermore, my own personal library literally has multiple bookcases, filled with row upon row of gaming books. I have a dozen game systems, besides D&D, at my fingertips. However, as I mentioned though, I like D&D. I am, however, way past the point of giving a fuck what WOTC does. As the recent expression goes, "ZERO FUCKS GIVEN!" *Laughing*

Of course, I never imagined in the past that I would be here, concerning WOTC, as I am now. *Shrugs* Right? It is what it is.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Funny how we're debating d20 versus the world when there is division in how to use the d20 itself. Black Hack and a few others cling to roll-under but roll-over clearly dominates. D&D uses both but leans heavily on Roll-over.

Quote from: tenbones on November 30, 2023, 03:36:24 AM
I suspect the following: I like running big big sweeping sandbox campaigns, where PC's start wherever we decide (normal people, exceptional people, whatever) but I want them to have unlimited scaling potential to grow within the constraints of the setting, *not* the rules. d20 *really* starts to strain post 10th level. Which is FINE. There is scant support for GM's to learn how to run games post-10th, much less on a chassis that was never intended to go beyond 10th. But I maintain it *could* if it were re-designed correctly.

It's a me problem that 1) because *I* want to let campaigns go to Domain level, hell even extra-planar Domain level IF the setting warrants it. 2) New players don't really conceive of this level of play well, and GM's that have the capacity to maintain high-level play are rare. This gets reinforced by the fact that it takes years to learn to do this stuff on your own and I say "Why do it while working against your own mechanics?". 3) Maybe people just don't really care? This is one I'm less sure about. I waffle on it on any given day.

My experience is that no mechanic really scales well for zero to almost god-like when you consider all aspects.  Some mechanics scale well within the constraints of the intended settings, conceits, play style, and complexity of the game. However, those all involve compromises. Just a few examples of what I mean:

A universal mechanic makes your game easier to learn.  It can also easily fall into making it seem more bland than it has to be.  This is the real unsung hero of the d20 for most things, with other dice for damage and niche effects in d20-style games. I have some players that have played for over 3 decades (albeit not all d20 style games) who still occasionally will pick up a d10 instead of a d8 or vice versa.  Games just aren't on their brains enough that they have instant pattern recognition for die shapes like we do.  Every now and then, I'll catch one of them rolling a d12 for a d20, and wondering why they can't hit anything. (About once a year this happens.)  I shudder to think what trying to play DCC would do to them.   Outside of those rare exceptions though, the mistakes are confined to damage dice, where they don't really slow the game down much and don't even affect the outcome all that drastically. 

Of course, this is also an argument for a game using nothing but d6s.  Even the most casual player struggling with other parts of GURPS or Hero System will come to the game with pattern recognition for 3d6 vs 1d6 vs 1d6+2. I suppose it would apply to games with all d10s or any other die as well, though I don't have enough long-term play with either to say for sure.  (All d10s are often really d100 + d10 using the same dice. A new player doesn't always immediately understand d100, roll under, but it isn't something that takes long to get, and it doesn't get mistaken for anything else once it is understood.)

For me, there is another consideration, that I apparently don't share with most gamers:  I like my complexity front-loaded into character creation whenever possible, not during play. It's because game time is at a premium compared to out of game time--and I don't mind the natural filter this puts on players.  (This is another hidden "feature" of AD&D that often provoked gripes of being a bug.  See also GURPS and Hero System.)  I strongly dislike having to answer the same mechanical questions over and over during play, as it completely destroys the flow of the game.  However, games that go ultra simple for casual play do so at the expense of detail. So how do you get detail into the hands of casuals without overloading them?  You move it to a time when they aren't under pressure, resolve it to something much simpler on their character sheet, and then let them use that.  I don't pretend this doesn't have its own issues, not least of which it put a lower bound on how simple you can make that character sheet.  And it won't appeal to the kind of gamer who really eats up something like B/X, where all the detail is mostly the imagination and deeds of the character in the game.  Still, if you've got players that aren't going to be system wonks but want some of the detail of somewhat more complex games, there's a narrow window in which the design can operate, and this necessarily constrains other aspects, including die mechanics. 

To the extent you want specific details instead of generic (with effects layered on top), the previous point is even more telling.  The intersection of detail with mechanic and ease of use puts a brake on your scale.  Then it's just a matter of deciding how much tweaking to do to try to make the scale work well enough for those parameters.

Quote from: Ruprecht on November 30, 2023, 07:20:50 AM
Funny how we're debating d20 versus the world when there is division in how to use the d20 itself. Black Hack and a few others cling to roll-under but roll-over clearly dominates. D&D uses both but leans heavily on Roll-over.

  I think that's because the concepts of a 'natural 20' and 'critical hit/success' have so thoroughly permeated gamer culture that anything that goes the opposite direction is going to feel 'wrong' to a lot of people.

Also, the d20 is the dice that combines the most results in a single die with availability (except d6s).

I kinda like them.

Quote from: tenbones on November 30, 2023, 03:36:24 AM
I'm wondering what is the attraction to d20 as a system other than familiarity?

---snip---

Guys... Betamax IS technically better than VHS.

Those two items combine show me what you don't get.

While for most technical measures Betamax is better than VHS (although the initial two tapes for many movie problems was one place it was not) for the average person by the mid-80s VHS was infinitely superior to Betamax for one simple reason: you could rent more movies in that format.

For the average consumer the comparison was not "do I rent the inferior picture VHS version of Arthur or the high quality picture version of Arthur" it was "do I get my Dudley Moore comedy fix or pass it up because only the inferior version is available".

I mean, they're renting Arthur, not Romantic Comedy so quality isn't their first issue (Crazy People is still five years out).

You are a serious hobbyist as I am and a lot of people around here.  In that the WOTC people are right, we are not the norm even when the hobby is not a fad.

Let's look at another one of my hobbies, model railroading, for an example. The most popular scale in most of the world is HO and even the UK where OO is more popular the gage of the track is the same.

HO is 1:87.1. What kind of scale ratio is that. It makes sense neither in Imperial or Metric measurements. It replaced O, 1:48 in the US (O gage in the UK is a bit larger for the same reason as OO vs. HO). Meanwhile S scale: 1:64 or 3/8 inch to the inch languishes. TT at 1:120 or 1/10 inch to 1 inch is dead in the US (although being revived in theUK and popular in Eastern Europe).

Why is a weird scale, 1:87.1, that you have to buy special rulers to measure materials to build things, the most popular? Because it was the first scale that could find a sweet spot between being big enough for companies to manufacture items while being small enough for a typical person to have room for a layout.  Once that happened it gained a momentum others couldn't over come. N scale hit in the 60s as manufacturing tech improved but even it hasn't caught HO.

And that mass market affects companies. The entry level cost to S scale (which I'd actually like to model in) is much higher both in money and skill. I can buy a Walthers train set with locomotive, track, cars, and control for $199.99. This is not a toy, but actual modeler level quality items. That is my entry point. Just the locomotive equivalent in S scale is $249.95 at the same store. Some of that is size, but most of it is the tooling has to be amortized over a lot fewer people, probably three or more orders of magnitude fewer.

The same issues apply to RPGs. D&D and its near cousins are familiar. People who've played one can adapt to the others quickly. And note, I said near cousins, a field larger than your D20 definition because I'm including Palladium, Ysgarth, etc while I doubt you are. Plus, there are several orders of magnitude more players in the D20 realm than pretty much any other system. Pick a system and almost any regular player will know D20 if they've been in the hobby more than two years. That's not true of Savage Worlds or GURPS or Cyber or Storyteller/ing/path.  As a producer picking D20 over any of those is adding two or more zeros to my sales numbers.

I know you're about to say you can adapt Savage Worlds on the fly. I know I can't, but I could adapt Cypher on the fly. I figure estar could adapt GURPS on the fly. All of those are learned skills and learning those skills has a cost. Just running each of those is a learned skill. Sure, most DMing skills cross boundaries, but understanding the canon of the rules and their precedents is not and, especially for the DM but for the players as well, is time and energy spent on something other than actually playing the game.

What you need to do to get the OSR off D20 (although I agree with estar that's got a lot of hidden assumptions and missing a lot of others) is to demonstrate that the costs of learning those rules and their precedents will provide enough added enjoyment because they are better that I will recoup in a reasonable time the investment.

tl;dr; Betamax is better than VHS but how long of a wait for the Beta version to finally get realized will the improved picture quality of Betamax support?

Quote from: migo on November 30, 2023, 05:24:12 AM

Quote from: tenbones on November 30, 2023, 03:36:24 AM
When the 80-ton gorilla goes off to cave and seals itself inside, as it's about to do... I'm wondering what is the attraction to d20 as a system other than familiarity?

That's a pretty big advantage, and it will remain for quite some time. If WotC leaves the TTRPG industry entirely, and leaves it open to some other manufacturer, then yeah, we would see over a couple decades something new building up. But for the foreseeable future, something D&D adjacent will have the lowest barrier to adoption.

Maybe, but in 60 years N scale hasn't overtaken HO in the model train world.  Momentum is a powerful thing.

Compatibility doesn't necessarily require one strictly use d20, see attachment, conversion between systems keyed to d20 numbers is still conversion. (these numbers were based largely on 3e since that was the first version to give us ability scores for monsters as a general thing and since D6 is based on ability rolls or skill rolls derived/stacked therefrom. I'd call it osr but i'm a hillbilly with tourettes.

Some variant of d6 mechanics, is a good solution; if you really want to stray away from WOTC.

Quote from: PulpHerb on November 30, 2023, 11:13:01 AM
That's not true of Savage Worlds or GURPS or Cyber or Storyteller/ing/path. 

I found GURPS to be incredibly easy to transition to from AD&D. They just replaced 1d20 with 3d6, with the same 10.5 midpoint. There's no learning curve. The difference now is since 2000 D&D has been roll over, while GURPS is still roll under.

Quote from: PulpHerb on November 30, 2023, 11:19:28 AM

Quote from: migo on November 30, 2023, 05:24:12 AM

Quote from: tenbones on November 30, 2023, 03:36:24 AM
When the 80-ton gorilla goes off to cave and seals itself inside, as it's about to do... I'm wondering what is the attraction to d20 as a system other than familiarity?

That's a pretty big advantage, and it will remain for quite some time. If WotC leaves the TTRPG industry entirely, and leaves it open to some other manufacturer, then yeah, we would see over a couple decades something new building up. But for the foreseeable future, something D&D adjacent will have the lowest barrier to adoption.

Maybe, but in 60 years N scale hasn't overtaken HO in the model train world.  Momentum is a powerful thing.

So is marketing. And getting the same thing at a different scale isn't the same as getting a quite different tool. The TI-83 is probably the standard graphing calculator, and Casio isn't going to take over making the same thing at 87% of the size. But they might by offering new functionality that is very useful to people.