I paged through Pathfinder at one of my local gamestores yesterday. Really, really not my speed, but you know what? I wish 'em the best. It's a gorgeous book and if was a 3.5-head (or prone to liking illustrations of fighters with daiklaves ::shudder::) I'd be on it like white on rice.
Being on the DriveThruRPG mailing list, I was clued in to another d20-derived rulebook that actually has piqued my interest: Fantasy Craft. From the folks who brought you Spy Craft. I see a theme in their naming conventions unfolding here.
At any rate, it's only available in PDF right now, I believe, but I'm seriously considering downloading the beast and taking a looksee. If it bridges the gap between rules-light retro-clones, Castles & Crusades, and True20, then I may have found my system du jour.
The reviews on DTRPG look promising:
My favorite part of the book is chapter 6: Foes. It allows you to build any type of npc that you can dream up. The OGL conversion section makes me glad that I never threw out my 3.x monster manuals.
I like this quite a bit as it would let me adapt material from the various and sundry d20 products that I use (Blue Rose, the 3.5 Wilderlands supplements, C&C stuff) under one umbrella.
The Skill System: FantasyCraft's skill system, while still very familiar to the D20 formula, is a staple within the engine. Not a small sidenote to accent your character's Damage-per-round like in other systems, but an actual fleshed out system to handle everything (and probably thensome) of what a character would want to do....RPG friendly. That may venture the question, "How can an RPG book be RPG unfriendly?" Well... just look at other systems. It treats RPGing as second nature, and merely a small diversion to hacking and slashing. In FantasyCraft, your skills and your imagination can lead the way. Not everything is about Damage....
This addresses one of my main disappointments with the True20 system: it streamlines d20, but doesn't really take the emphasis off the combat mechanics.
The NPC creation system. Remember spending hours upon hours trying to drudge up and balance NPCs in other systems? The mind-numbing death spiral of time spent that went into creating 'bosses' for your group to fight? Not any more! FantasyCraft's NPC system is, perhaps, the most fluid, easy to use system I've ever seen. The NPC design scales (almost effortlessly) to fit the party. ..and it's actually FUN (again..) to create NPCs!
Oh man, if this is true then it is HUGE by my lights.
The NPC creation system allows an adventure to be scaled quickly and easily to any character Level. And the Reputation system helps GMs control the 'magic item lottery' that focuses too many fantasy games on all the magic 'bling' the characters can accumulate, and not on their innate skills.
Finally, the system actively encourages tweaking, through the use of campaign qualities. Want a historical game and no magic? Easily do-able. Want characters to have more/less feats, skill points, critical hits? All easily done.
I love the scaling idea too. It would allow me to use a bunch of higher-level adventure material at lower levels, since my campaigns rarely reach high levels.
Despite all these promising qualities, I'm still not totally sold. I'd love to see an in-depth review or two. More cogitation is required.
There's a thread on RPG.net in their D&D subforum that seems to into quite a bit of depth about the game. (My interest was piqued, too.)
ReplyDelete"If it bridges the gap between rules-light retro-clones, Castles & Crusades, and True20, then I may have found my system du jour."
ReplyDeleteIt is supposed to be the fantasy version of SpyCraft - which in turn is a rules-heavy game based on the d20 Modern system.
I doubt it is anything close to rules-light or even as simplified as True20.
I admit I don't have a copy of it yet, I'll wait for it in print. But I do have the second edition of Spycraft and it is a mighty big (and awesome) rules-heavy book - right in the same line of material as 3.5e
blizack: Thanks for the pointer! Time to start reading.
ReplyDeleteDyson: Fair enough. Although I have to say that I don't mind rules-heavy if it's streamlined and done well. At 400 pages, I wasn't expecting FC to exactly be light...I guess what I meant by "bridging the gap" was more along the lines of finding a sweet spot between detail and ease of use. True20 tried to make 3.5 easier to interface with as a GM, but didn't go far enough, whereas the retro-clones and C&C offer rules light options but lack some of the more fun/interesting toolkit options of 3.5 and 4e.
I've been reading through my pre-order copy (brag, brag, brag) and the thing to keep in mind is that judging the book by its weight or size is just about as useful as judging it by its cover.
ReplyDeletePaizo has done something past systems haven't and that's combine concepts from two books into one. Magic items, dungeon mastering and environment are all in here. Everything you need to get a game going is in one book. And if weight bothers you then you can buy the PDF for $10. No one has ever offered a deal like that, for this much content.
Book heavy doesn't equal rules heavy and if you're a fan of 3E (3.0 or 3.5), you're very likely to like the Pathfinder RPG, even if you're a beginner.
The language of the book is also straight forward and clear, makes no assumptions about your gaming preference or pedigrees and, best of all, contains no insinuative ego or "don't try this at home, kids, I'm a professional designer" vanity.
There were hard copies available at GenCon. I perused one and was intrigued, but was already close to what I'd budgeted for RPGs, so I passed. I might pick it up another time though.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading the PDF version for the last couple of weeks and I have to say the rules are very detailed but they are streamlined. The basic mechanics are simplified and streamlined from basic d20 but the options are vastly expanded both from a player perspective and a GM perspective. There are a few default rules that might rankle some players that have been on D&D for awhile, such as "Lifestyle" which defines how much money a character starts an adventure with as well as how much money they get to keep at the end. It has some other functions as well but its taken some convincing to get my players to agree to play with that rule. It makes perfect sense the way they explain it but I've found most of my D&D gamers to be an ornery bunch, resistant to change.
ReplyDeleteCrim: Still casually reading through my own PDF, but so far I agree with you on both counts. I love, love, love how FC keeps most of the crunchiness on the player's side of things. FC stat blocks for NPCs and monsters are a thing of beauty. And yes, despite my enthusiasm, selling FC to my regular players might prove difficult. We'll see. For now I'm sticking with C&C, but I'd love to give my Wilderlands campaign an FC overhaul at some point in the not-too-distant future.
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