That "Four Equals Two" thing...
Been stuck reading the tripe, and it's been quite painful. Now 290 pages into the pile, which means I've finished the big blue book of the default core rules, and the setting material for one (yes, just one) of the actual games (the big green book of gold glitter, if anyone cares). Two hundred and ninety pages that I've had to slog through to get to the first bit of it that's actually supposed to be interesting. And people wonder why White Wolf's so ardently transitioning themselves into being just another producer of non-sanctioned supplements for Dungeons & Dragons.
And that seems to be the whole point of the second second edition, making the games that used to be The! Other! Thing! more accessible to people who can't imagine that there are games (such as Yahtzee) that could ever use more than three dice at one time. From using Strength as the default attribute to determine the accuracy of melee attacks, to replacing the existing Merits and Flaws system with a collection of traits that offer incremental enhancements to basic stats (such as Initiative or Speed) or to ignore particular penalties to rolls in a narrowly defined situation (such as Stunt Driving).
Yes. The entire Storyteller System has been retrofitted to be more easily converted to and from D20 Modern. Even to the point of evaporating the concept of "freebie points" so as to allow each clan and covenant, tribe and auspice, or path and order neatly line up into prestige classes without any pesky variations in the number of skill points that each basic starting character gets.
After all, the D20 conversion of the Aeon line was such a sweeping disaster for them; why shouldn't they just throw all their eggs into the least individual-looking basket they can find? I mean, what's recognition of a brand name worth when you could have your books sorted alphabetically by author amid the products of a dozen other companies, and the customers wouldn't notice the difference?
Fuckheads.
And that seems to be the whole point of the second second edition, making the games that used to be The! Other! Thing! more accessible to people who can't imagine that there are games (such as Yahtzee) that could ever use more than three dice at one time. From using Strength as the default attribute to determine the accuracy of melee attacks, to replacing the existing Merits and Flaws system with a collection of traits that offer incremental enhancements to basic stats (such as Initiative or Speed) or to ignore particular penalties to rolls in a narrowly defined situation (such as Stunt Driving).
Yes. The entire Storyteller System has been retrofitted to be more easily converted to and from D20 Modern. Even to the point of evaporating the concept of "freebie points" so as to allow each clan and covenant, tribe and auspice, or path and order neatly line up into prestige classes without any pesky variations in the number of skill points that each basic starting character gets.
After all, the D20 conversion of the Aeon line was such a sweeping disaster for them; why shouldn't they just throw all their eggs into the least individual-looking basket they can find? I mean, what's recognition of a brand name worth when you could have your books sorted alphabetically by author amid the products of a dozen other companies, and the customers wouldn't notice the difference?
Fuckheads.
posted by Alexander Lambert at 4:22 PM
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