An Unholy Union

Sometimes I think people are running out of ideas.

I, like many gamers in my generation, started off playing D&D. I watched it evolve, albeit slowly. I was shocked by d20 - open source role playing. Intriguing. But, in all honesty, a long time player can look at d20 and see the layers. You see where D&D began and you can see where they added elements on top of the out-dated system. It may be true that d20 is the most popular system out there, but that's like saying Intel is the most popular computer chip. Both are the best sellers - but they are not the best on the market, merely the most used.

I've played plenty of other games, used plenty of other systems. I have my favorites. When I started playing White Wolf's Story Teller system, I didn't get it. It was too lite. I got that they wanted the players to worry more about role playing and less about rules - but I felt that the rules were just, well, not there. Now I get it - the rules were "not there" on purpose. If you were not acting as a rules lawyer, you had more time to think about the actions and motivations of your character. After playing for a while, I usually just stashed my character sheet and role played - really role played. It was quite liberating.

I see now that White Wolf has produced a version of the World of Darkness (WoD) for the d20 system: Monte Cook's World of Darkness.

This I do not get at all! White Wolf already has a working system. d20 already has plenty of books that you could use to run a WoD-like game. Do they really think the average person is going to shell out $50 for this book?

Okay, I want it understood that I haven't actually seen a copy of this book. I only found out about it a few days ago and I only have the advertising copy to go by - but I already have lots of doubt. Let's start with said copy:

"Dead souls returned to claim living bodies, creating blood-drinking undead fiends: vampires. Bestial spirits came as well, to create werewolves, and demons formed bodies from worldly matter. Magic crashed back into the world, and mages wield its power for whatever purpose suits them. Humans called the Awakened unknowingly keep the darkness at bay. These supernatural creatures struggle against each other and clash in the shadows ..."

Shadows ... you mean like Shadowrun? It's vampires and demons instead of trolls and dragons! Am I the only one seeing that? Instead of porting over the immensely rich World of Darkness to d20 - it sounds to me like they are reinventing the wheel and failing in the process.

For $50 bucks, I think you could do a lot more with your money. For example, if you must have d20 - and there's nothing wrong with that - hit eBay or Amazon or Half Price Books and buy a used copy of d20 Modern. I see it for about $20, which leaves room for a d20 Monster book - at less than $10 bucks used. There, I just saved you $10 to $15 even after shipping. Heck, grab d20 Call of Cthulhu and drive your characters insane! It's $50 and it, too, is written by Monte Cook!

I personally think you would do better with new or used copies of the WoD books. Amazon has the World of Darkness and Vampire: The Requiem hardcovers, new, for $40, you will qualify for free shipping, too. Your local used shop will have them even cheaper.

If you want my favorite, or if you just have to have lots of rules to lawyer over, you'll need to look a little harder. Start with the GURPS Basic Set, 3rd Edition or 4th Edition - whichever you prefer. Then, go looking for GURPS Vampire: The Masquerade. It's out of print, but you can find plenty of used copies out there. There are a few other GURPS/White Wolf books, but I leave it as an exercise for the reader to go find them. I bet you could put together quite the collection of used GURPS books for $50!

I guess you could also just wait a year for this $50 book to hit the shelves of your local used book store. It might almost be worth $25 bucks at Half Price books.

To sum up, I think the RPG industry, if it's going to survive, will need to do more than take a well known brand, affix it to a questionable premise, bolt that to a kludgey rule set and then over charge for the package.