Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5023546-20130910031001/@comment-11687-20131112002635

Nichosorn wrote: Alright Alzrius. We'll try it your way. I am not against the D20 system. I also create character sheets for my non-profit org, so I can begin doing one (for RWBY: H&H) that is D20 based once we have some stats and the like.

I appreciate the vote of confidence, or at least willingness to explore the possibility.

Nichosorn wrote: Perhaps at my desire to create a unique system (BTW - I have already created the system for use with other systems, or as a stand alone, story driven with dice rolls) that could have been tweaked for RWBY: H&H, I can see how using a current system (to get the game off the ground) can be beneficial.

It's largely an issue of trying to remove logistical obstacles between "wanting to play" and "actually playing." This doesn't mean that there are no such obstacles to be found, of course - just that removing (or at least reducing) the big ones of "acquiring the game rules" and "learning to play" can help markedly.

Nichosorn wrote:

So let's see how we can take the D20 system and make RWBY: H&H work with it.

To begin with (and at the risk of sounding self-aggrandizing) I'd recommend looking at the character write-up for Pyrrha that I linked to above (e.g. my personal blog).

Now, this doesn't look the same as an existing d20 System character, simply because I'm using a (free) sourcebook to utilize a point-buy character-generation method of creating characters.

This is rather ironic, since it adds to the obstacles of game-comprehension as a barrier towards play. However, here I feel that the results are not only worthwhile, but are absolutely necessary. Simply put, the "normal" d20 System is simply too rigid to (easily) allow for the amount of differentiation needed between characters. A series such as RWBY needs greater flexibility than the d20 System, on its own, offers. Hence, using this sourcebook is required in order to make characters that can better reflect the source material.

There are still a few issues, of course - but that's a truism for any game system representing a pre-existing series (or other narrative). One of the larger ones is that the wide range of the d20 System allows for a much larger arc of power than RWBY has (so far) exhibited - putting the strongest characters we've seen so far at 20th level would, for instance, be an example of us not calibrating our expectations properly. For that, we should keep in mind some caveats when converting existing characters into a game system, of any type.

To solve the problem, there'd probably need to be some sort of upper-level limit (and possibly a lower-level one, depending on the kind of game sought), a la the E6 system.

There are also smaller issues with regards to scale - e.g. making what looks like a dozen attacks in a round (e.g. when Sun Wukong attacked Roman Torchwick in episode 16). That strains the d20 System to the breaking point - but we can solve that with how we look at the scale of the action economy (e.g. that was several rounds' worth of attacks, with Sun Wukong making full attack actions, and Roman using a total defense action).

Ergo, once we get the larger issues out of the way, the key will - I think - largely revolve around how we approach the issue, and the manner in which we attempt to make the system fit with the source material.