Or something inbetween?   I'm curious as my only experience with it was a short lived two session campaign using Star Trek Adventures 1st edition and I saw that it's used for pretty much everything Modiphius puts out themselves.   Scifi?  Yep (Star Trek Adventures)   Post Apocalyptic?  Yep (Fallout)   Sword and Sorcery/Fantasy?  Yep (Conan now OOP).  Plus their Cthulu, Dune, and Infinity games as well.  Is it really that versatile across so many genres or is it just easy for them to use as they developed/own it?   My experience with it is quite limited and a few years old/hazy at this point anyways so I figured I'd ask in case anyone here had more time/rolls with the system in its various incarnations.

My only experience with it is from their Conan game, which I played in for about a year.

I'd say the system is versatile, in the sense that it's going to do every genre about as poorly. (I don't like it, if that isn't obvious). The basic structure solid enough, very similar to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying in fact: not-quite-classes ("archetypes" instead of professions), attributes with associated skills, talents, roll against a static difficulty to attack, use your reaction to dodge/parry, hit location, armor soak, a similar-ish approach to wounds/HP (I think? It's been a while), weapon traits, fortune/fate points etc. My beefs with it are the statistical spread of the Xd20 roll, the over-reliance on metacurrency and the need to "build-path" talents to have an effective character.

But to be fair, there's nothing about the system that is too genre-specific, or unable to be tweaked for other genres. The Conan incarnation of the system is definitely designed for heroic pulpy roleplaying, and would struggle with doing horror or anything where the PCs are supposed to be more fragile, but you could tweak the armor/health rules and back off the metacurrency element and change that.

I would assume that the reason they use it for so many games is partially that it's proprietary, and partially to make it easier for players to switch between their games. As D&D used to know, having lots of games built around the same skeleton is a selling point for a system, since people are lazy and don't want to learn a whole new set of rules. Its especially a smart strategy when your business model is based on licensed properties. People want to play in their favorite franchise settings, but with a few exceptions (Star Wars, LOTR and maybe Star Trek), they don't tend stick with them past one or two campaigns.

The family of 2d20 games show that it can be altered to fit a great many settings. The key here is altered, as each incarnation is slightly to substantially different from the next. This is not Savage Worlds where the system is almost identical with just a few extra setting rules bolted on to tailor it to fit. In 2d20, sometimes you have skills, sometimes you have fields (much broader areas), sometimes you have traditional advancement (like Conan) and sometimes your characters are relatively static (Star Trek). The core mechanic of rolling 2+ d20s to resolve tasks is really the only thing that is a certainty of commonality among the 2d20 games.

I have looked at closely four different iterations of the 2d20 system; Conan, Infinity, John Carter of Mars, and Star Trek.  While each version shares the same core mechanics, they are different from each other.  Not by much but enough to trip you up if you're not careful.

It's overused if you ask me. It seems to work okay, though. I can't imagine Modiphius using a completely different system for each game. In a way it's like GURPS, but they redo the system for each game. I expect in 20 years they'll have more than a shit ton of very similar games.

Quote from: BadApple on November 18, 2024, 10:24:06 PMI have looked at closely four different iterations of the 2d20 system; Conan, Infinity, John Carter of Mars, and Star Trek.  While each version shares the same core mechanics, they are different from each other.  Not by much but enough to trip you up if you're not careful.

Sample of N=1 but...

We played John Carter of Mars with a group that had been playing weekly for 18 months.

Nobody had fully learned the rules. There are just so many because of the meta-currency and multiple wound tracks.

The constant need to meta-game in order to generate the meta-currency needed to activate skills, that encounters expect you to have access to, totally destroyed any immersion or chance at role-playing.

Thanks for all the replies.  I'm debating picking up the Fallout starter set but might instead just relook at my STA 1e book instead to reacclimate to the system rules in general.

Quote from: Tod13 on November 19, 2024, 08:30:51 AMSample of N=1 but...

We played John Carter of Mars with a group that had been playing weekly for 18 months.

Nobody had fully learned the rules. There are just so many because of the meta-currency and multiple wound tracks.

The constant need to meta-game in order to generate the meta-currency needed to activate skills, that encounters expect you to have access to, totally destroyed any immersion or chance at role-playing.

I'm not opposed to metacurrencies personally but they did seem integral to the game from my admittedly hazy recollection from years ago which I'm not a fan of.   I'd prefer them to be icing rather than the base of the RPG cake and it sounds like it may more be the latter from your description.