Nice while it lasted...

[dour]

Last week at GenCon, Wizards of the Coast announced that they will, next May, be releasing the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The D&D website has full coverage of the announcement, with links to video of the GenCon seminar on YouTube.

I'm not going to rant about everything I didn't like in their presentation, and let's not even get started on

Comments

[penrynsdreams]

I had the same revelation the first time I played a non-D&D setting and I have the same preference for looser systems.

Right now I'm in a game that I love, where the only dice you need are 2d6, where the character creation & advancement process is very heavily rooted in, well, role-playing. You come up with a character and the GM (who made up the system) just sits down with you and chooses skills (manual labor +3, trustworthy +1 1/2, packing +1/2 are examples from my character) and based on how you role-play you get adds to those skills. There's more to the world and the system, but that's the basics and oh, GOD, I love it! *g*

[dour]

That sounds a lot like a system I remember from way back when, called Fudge. Web searching reveals that it's still around and has gotten significantly bigger, heh... but yeah, there's definitely a place for the ultra-simple systems when you'd rather just wing it than spend time on detailed simulation. :)

My system, for which I've yet to hit upon a properly catchy name, is just a bit heavier... roughly in the same class as Storyteller or Ironclaw, but without the stifling granularity those systems have. There's nothing more frustrating than needing four successes, and only having three dice! I've got rolls that are astronomically unlikely, but none that are literally impossible.

You need a little more than 2d6 for mine, too... but not too many more. 4d6 (used as 4d2), and a few d10... probably no more than 4 of those either. Technically it's open-ended, but I like to keep the numbers fairly small.