I like DnD. I like some d20. It's not my prefered game, but a lot of my friends like to play it, and I like to have fun with my friends.
DnD is fun too, it's a good time. My DM knows it well enough to fix all the broken bits. The System is robust and capable of providing a lot of player options.
I don't know quite the word to explain it, but it seems like DnD naysayers were hoping Candyland was in the Monopoly box. DnD does what DnD does, the haters wanted it to do something else and got disappointed.
That, and there also tends to be elitism when it comes to a market. Mac vs. PC, Starbucks vs. You favorite Local Coffeeshop, McDonalds vs. Carl's Jr.. So if I like DnD, then WoD is pretensious crap! Or if I like GRPS, then Hero is utter trash!

Quote from: KrakaJakI don't know quite the word to explain it, but it seems like DnD naysayers were hoping Candyland was in the Monopoly box. DnD does what DnD does, the haters wanted it to do something else and got disappointed.

Even though I don't mind the occational game of Monopoly, I personally get a little edgy when I'm told that:
1) You can do Candyland (and Parcheesi and Chicago Poker) with Monopoly, just house rule it.
2) Just look at the market share. Nobody really likes Candyland anyway, freak.

EDIT:  AoO ROCCKEZZZTH ur HizHowsers!!!!!  Just drop $25 on a Battlemat and a couple of wet erase markers. Then use beer bottle caps, 1" squares of paper, and grandma's bingo chips for 'minis'. It's all good from there.  I strongly suggest that's how D&D was designed to be played, on a grid with a grid. For better and worse.

Quote from: SpikeThen there comes up the topic of 'builds', like the slightly infamous 'spiked chain' build, designed solely to exploit AoO's.

I found that once you applied the rules properly where 50% cover (i.e. someone your size in the square between you and the wielder) negates the threat then the spiked chain wasn't nearly as bad powerwise as it was just plain animie-style goofy. YMMV.

I don't have much use for 3e itself. I don't like the setting assumptions, the magic system, the races or classes... but I do like several of the varients, and I love True20, it has everything i like about d20 and none of what I don't like.

Quote from: AosI don't have much use for 3e itself. I don't like the setting assumptions, the magic system, the races or classes... but I do like several of the varients, and I love True20, it has everything i like about d20 and none of what I don't like.

A friend of mine has been feeding me the True20 love-thang since he got Blue Rose, and in exactly those terms Aos. I don't know enough about d20 to compare the 2, but I've got True20. I like the look of it, and I can see what he and you are getting at when I compare it to the D&D3.5 material I do have.

Quote from: blakkieEven though I don't mind the occational game of Monopoly, I personally get a little edgy when I'm told that:
1) You can do Candyland (and Parcheesi and Chicago Poker) with Monopoly, just house rule it.
2) Just look at the market share. Nobody really likes Candyland anyway, freak.

EDIT:  AoO ROCCKEZZZTH ur HizHowsers!!!!!  Just drop $25 on a Battlemat and a couple of wet erase markers. Then use beer bottle caps, 1" squares of paper, and grandma's bingo chips for 'minis'. It's all good from there.  I strongly suggest that's how D&D was designed to be played, on a grid with a grid. For better and worse.

D20 I think it what you're talking about here right?
 
I think D20 did Call of Cthulhu pretty good. Mtants and Masterminds is a great use of the mechanics. It's probably the only dcent application I've seen for dramatic action rather than tactical.
 
I see D20 kind of like grand theft auto. Where you can do a lot of things but other games do the individual parts better. Like in GTA you can do driving, but Gran Turismo is better at it. In GTA you can go shoot people, but Counterstrike is better for that.
 
D20 can Do Zombies Horror but AFMBE is better at it. It can do Modern Vampire PC's, but Vampire is better for it. It can do over the top wuxia action, but feng shui is better at it.  It's built more for "Gamist" play in a fantasy setting, but it is capable of far more. With a little tweak or two it is able to do a pretty good job in other genres too.

Levels.
Ugh.

Classes.
Ugh.

Hitpoints.
Ugh.

Passing itself off as a generic system when it takes some SERIOUS crowbarring to make it do any sort of genre emulation at all really.

D&D comes with a whole host of assumptions (some contradictory to other assumptions it has) that I don't care for, simply put. That isn't to say D20 can't be a good game (Cloak of Steel, Lone Wolf, Mutants and Masterminds, Spycraft 2.0 and True20 variations are all quite good.) its just that D&D to me is not.


Concepts I find problematic: Hit Points being skill and luck not just health as handled--I don't mind the abstraction its just the handling of it is odd. It IS on the other hand simple and easy to grasp, so it does have a boon in that respect.  (I'd much prefer Drama/karma Points and seperate Health records )

Classes as cultures as opposed to professions. See Barbarian. Most fictional barbarians were NOT berzerker sorts with battle rage.)

Abstract Melee vs Blow by Blow ranged (according to D&D a single roll of dice is not a single strike--per se, its just a single chance of a series of blows to be a telling one.) yet the game treats ranged attacks differently (you keep track of each arrow for example) I don't mind abstractions but I'd prefer them to be equitable across the board.

I don't like eastern tropes in my western fantasy RPG's (Monks for example)

All the above are preferences--I like Elves and Dwarves and classic fantasy (Lord of the Rings, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, style) but I just don't feel that D&D does it well. It works for a lot of other people and thats a GOOD thing. It just doesn't work for me.

QuoteWhy the D&D and D20 hate?

I can kind of understand it. I really don't like WotC's D&D. There is simply no room for feats or (non-thief) skills in my vision of D&D. I also prefer more difficult  multi-classing, class restrictions for demihumans, slow leveling, etc. I even hate the art. All of this strongly inclines me to turn to the Cyclopedia for my D&D games.

Oh, my sweet, sweet Cyclopedia...

Ahem.

Given that much dislike, I can see how some might be inclined to generalize it to encompass d20 stuff in general. I think that's a mistake, with all the great stuff like Mutants & Masterminds and Castles & Crusades that d20 and the OGL have spawned, but I can still understand it on a base, emotional level. I mean, I myself used to see d20 as that...thing...that ruined my favorite game, but I wised-up once I realized that it was more than D&D, and I'm glad now that I didn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

For me it's that the parts of the mechanics that I dislike combine with D&D's ubiquitousness to create a sort of perfect storm of pissing me off.
I don't care for some of the mechanics in Savage Worlds, either, but it doesn't bother me because I can find a local game that isn't Savage Worlds.  Of course that local game is D&D, which doesn't help any.

Too many mechanical details to keep in your head, IMO. Feats and spells and special-case rules and all that jazz.

I'll play d20, but only in its D&D format, and only to get my fix of D&D - brave adventurers plumb dark holes in the earth and abandoned ruins to get richer, more powerful, and with any luck survive to a ripe old age. I will not, however, run it, nor consider it the go-to system for other genres (ablative, escalating damage points + firearms = fails in every regard for me unless I'm playing a robot). But I find it passable to get my D&D on in.

Quote from: Christmas ApeToo many mechanical details to keep in your head, IMO. Feats and spells and special-case rules and all that jazz.

I'll play d20, but only in its D&D format, and only to get my fix of D&D - brave adventurers plumb dark holes in the earth and abandoned ruins to get richer, more powerful, and with any luck survive to a ripe old age. I will not, however, run it, nor consider it the go-to system for other genres (ablative, escalating damage points + firearms = fails in every regard for me unless I'm playing a robot). But I find it passable to get my D&D on in.

You might look at Castles and Crusades (no feats, only class based special rules--plus much better art IMHO.
Or Questers of the Middle Realms--using PDQ system. (PDF only)

Quote from: Christmas ApeToo many mechanical details to keep in your head, IMO. Feats and spells and special-case rules and all that jazz.

I'll play d20, but only in its D&D format, and only to get my fix of D&D - brave adventurers plumb dark holes in the earth and abandoned ruins to get richer, more powerful, and with any luck survive to a ripe old age. I will not, however, run it, nor consider it the go-to system for other genres (ablative, escalating damage points + firearms = fails in every regard for me unless I'm playing a robot). But I find it passable to get my D&D on in.

some of the varients don't have ablative armor -Conan; others don't have hit points- M&M and True20...

Well, I hated TSR for their habit of terrorizing the game field with threats of lawsuits while not having the balls to go after people outside the game biz when they spandered gaming, like the people calling D&D satanic or that greaseball geraldo rivera for saying D&D was responsible for 3 drug addictyed punks murdering one of their parents to collect insurance to buy drugs with.

That's why I hated TSR. As for D&D I don't hate it, I just don't like it and I don't like d20. Jesus, can't I not like a system without having to hate it? Where the hell did the attitude "If you don't like something you have to hate it" come from anyway, some extremist nutcase?

Quote from: SilverlionYou might look at Castles and Crusades (no feats, only class based special rules--plus much better art IMHO.
Or Questers of the Middle Realms--using PDQ system. (PDF only)

I've taken a look at both of them; C&C is a little too light for me, and QoMR, while entertaining, is sorta Heroquest Light. I've got Heroquest, so...*shrug* Didn't really seem necessary.

Quote from: Aossome varients don't have ablative armor -Conan; others don't have hit points- M&M and True20...

Hit Points only bug me when there are guns involved, so there's nothing about Conan I dislike. I don't really enjoy supers games - never been into the genre - and while M&M can do other stuff, so can Heroquest and with less fiddling. True20 is, admittedly, D&D for me, though I tend to shave everything off the feats but flavor text and run it 'from the hip'.