I have a reputation as one who chases the shiny, the new hotness, an ever revolving swirl of Kickstarters and spanking new tabletop roleplaying game lovelies. A recent example would be the new Warpstar from Fire Ruby Design. Dom’s provided a great review of this excellent fastplay space opera right over here.
Of late though, I have been obsessed with abandoned and forgotten games of the 2000s in Omni and True20. Though slightly different games, they are close kin, utilising a single d20, bonus driven to get high numbers. One uses a universal outcome table, the other cleaves closer to the D20 OGL from back in the day. Both are generic systems for play across types of settings.
It’s been interesting gathering resources and thoughts on these systems from the wild Internet. Whereas both may have some adherrents, they seem to be semi-abandoned by the game playing population. “I had a lot of fun with that game back in the day” whilst swerving around 404 dead Yahoo websites. The search has me pattern matching old memories and their footprint on the Web. Physical copies are hard to come by at decent prices without American shipping.
In a way it is a bit embarrassing to say, “hey, I’m really getting into True20”. People will look at you, furrow their brows and think “yeah done that, moved on”. It’s like turning up to a party that is long finished, only to find the traces of empty bottles and some discarded food packaging. The energy has departed.
I’m not bothered. True20 is currently front and centre of my interest, presenting a nice implementation of the d20 SRD, factoring in powers, modular class and levels and, critically, a damage system that throws out hit points, presents some wound conditions and a ‘not increasing by much’ toughness save to resist incoming damage. This seems to me to completely alter the feel of the game. Whereas characters become harder to hit, they remain vulnerable to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
But a game read and liked isn’t as much fun as a game liked and played. So, I am blending a whole range of things.
- True20 game system
- Greyhawk game setting – yes another even more oldie
- Borrowing from a Westmarch style of play, with a community of players, tempting maps, rumours and scenario possibilities but formation is player led.
- A wiki to provide some lore history: http://greyhawk.ttrpg.uk
- Utilise the brand new Role VTT.
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| Role VTT – just me on it… |